Justin Taylor's Blog, page 351

A Response to Inclusivism

Those looking for a thoughtful, biblical response to the issue of inclusivism (in its various forms) should check out the book Faith Comes by Hearing: A Response to Inclusivism, edited by Christopher Morgan and Robert Peterson (IVP, 2008). "Inclusivism," broadly speaking, is the idea that salvation only comes through Jesus' work but that it is not necessary to hear the gospel in order to be saved.

Below are the table of contents and some of the endorsements:

Introduction, by Robert A. Peterson
Inclusivisms and Exclusivisms, by Christopher W. Morgan
General Revelation: Sufficient or Insufficient? by Daniel Strange
Exclusivism: Unjust or Just? by William Edgar
Other Religions: Saving or Secular? by Eckhard J. Schnabel
Holy Pagans: Reality or Myth? by Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.
Saving Faith: Implicit or Explicit? by Stephen J. Wellum
Inclusivism versus Exclusivism on Key Biblical Texts, by Robert A. Peterson
The Gospel for All Nations by Andreas J. Kostenberger
God's Zeal for His World by J. Nelson Jennings
Answers to Notable Questions by Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson

"For those who are more interested in faithful alignment with what Scripture says than in sentimentality on this extraordinarily challenging subject, this is now the book to read. Courteous in tone yet thoroughly engaged with those who take contrary positions, the contributors lead us with exegetical care, theological poise and pastoral sensitivity through a thicket of common objections. I warmly recommend this book."

—D. A. Carson, Research Professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

"No greater challenge faces the church of Jesus Christ than religious inclusivism—the belief that sincere people of many religions have enough truth to be saved from spiritual ruin. In an age of tolerance for all that does not seem to hurt or inhibit, no note sounds more discordant than an exclusivistic requirement of faith in Jesus Christ. Yet—with patience, respect and biblical rigor—Morgan, Peterson et al. show such an exclusive claim is in the Bible. Nothing could be more insensitive and arrogant than repeating this claim—unless it is true. Then, nothing could be more gracious and necessary than this book's message."

—Bryan Chapell, President, Covenant Theological Seminary

"The fate of those who have never heard the gospel is one of the great mysteries of our faith. Christians have long speculated about whether and how God may have spoken to those who have not been exposed to the church's preaching of salvation through Christ alone. This book deals respectfully with the different views of the subject which are found among evangelical believers while seeking to remain faithful to the teaching of Jesus himself. It is a model of how we should discuss such a delicate matter and come to a decision which upholds the uniqueness of the one and only Savior of mankind."

—Gerald Bray, Research Professor, Beeson Divinity School

"These thoughtful, irenic and informed essays provide an important response to more 'inclusivist' perspectives on the question of the destiny of the unevangelized. This is a helpful contribution to a complex and controversial set of issues."

—Harold Netland, Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Intercultural Studies, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

What Is Universalism?

J. I. Packer:

A universalist is someone who believes that every human being whom God has created or will create will finally come to enjoy the everlasting salvation into which Christians enter here and now. Universalism is the recognized name for this belief. . . .

Among Christian theological options it appears as an extreme optimism of grace, or perhaps of nature, and sometimes, it seems, or both. But in itself it is a revisionist challenge to orthodoxy, whether Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant evangelical; for the church has officially rated universalism a heresy ever since the second Council of Constantinople (the fifth ecumenical council, A.D. 553), when the doctrine of apokatastasis (the universal return to God and restoration of all souls) that Origen taught was anathematized.

—J. I. Packer, "Universalism: Will Everyone Ultimately Be Saved? in Hell Under Fire, ed. Morgan and Peterson (Zondervan, 2004), p. 170.

For audio of Packer teaching about hell—including a refutation of the idea that the Greek words aion and aionos don't really mean "eternal"—take a look at this helpful post by Martin Downes.

Don't Take Sunday Strolls Along the Highway

Wise words from Michael Horton:

Some Christians surf the net not only for vitamin supplements but for their meals.  All of this makes sense in an evangelicalism that is already disposed toward treating the physical aspects of reality as merely "external" (like a coat you can put on or take off) in contrast to the inner realm of the Spirit.  But as Christians we believe that the Word became flesh.  We aren't looking for out-of-body experiences, but for the God who still descends to us, binding us to his Son through such mundane matter as preaching, water, bread and wine. And like these means of grace, the communion of saints is also a tangible, earthly, embodied reality.  They are my brothers and sisters: not ideas, resources, or bloggers. It's a family dinner, not a drive-thru meal.

But does that mean that there's no place for the web?  Not at all, as long as we know its limits.  I'm glad there are highways when I want to get downtown, but I don't take Sunday strolls along it.

Imagine concentric circles.  At the widest, you have the rapid exchange of ideas and information.  Of course, there's nothing better than the Internet for that one.  I often go to Wikipedia for quick data on a person or date in history, but I'd never allow my students to cite Wikipedia as a source in their research papers.  That's because a research paper is more than information.

The next ring in on my concentric circles is for informal get-togethers with brothers and sisters in Christ, including conferences.

But the bulls-eye is the Lord's Day gathering of the covenant family, beneath the pulpit, at the font, and at the table.

All of this reminds me of that stanza in T. S. Eliot's "The Rock":

"Where is all the wisdom we have lost in knowledge and all the knowledge we have lost in information?"

Information is good.  Resources can set us on a wonderfully new track.  But what we'll always need most—in spiritual as well as domestic terms—is a good bath, a good meal, and a good word from our Father, in his Son, by his Spirit.  Nothing beats that.

Reviewing Rob Bell

Tim Challies has the first review of Rob Bell's Love Wins, based on an Advance Reader Copy sent to him for review purposes.

Here is one of Bell's quotes:

A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. . . . This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus' message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear. (preface, vi)

Bell also argues that the historic understanding of God's character and salvation—that eternal punishment awaits those who reject the gospel in this life—is "devastating . . . psychologically crushing . . . terrifying and traumatizing and unbearable" (pp. 136-7).

I'll post my own summary and link to other reviews next week when the book is officially released.

God, Freedom, and "The Adjustment Bureau"

Russell Moore theologically reflects on the new movie, The Adjustment Bureau.

Conclusion:

"The Adjustment Bureau" might prompt questions of freedom and sovereignty, but it really won't further a good in-house discussion between Christians. The questions are more first-order than these debates.

This film might, though, prompt us to see in our neighbors a sense of helplessness, a sense of captivity, and a rage that, just maybe, is misdirected toward God. And, perhaps, the film will spur us to wonder whether our neighbors are feeling something of what is true for all of us, apart from the liberating power of the devil-defeating Cross: We are being chased.

Coming at an Hour You Do Not Expect

The return of Christ will be a sui generis event. It will be unlike anything we've ever seen or experienced.

Jesus "will come [again] in the same way as [they] saw him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11). "The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God" (1 Thess. 4:16). "Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him" (Rev. 1:7).

The following is some footage of Sgt. Adam Sniffen from the 101st Airborne Division delivering the gameball before a Michigan football game.

When you watch it, let it be just a faint echo, a taste, a foreshadowing, of your "blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13).

8 Symptoms of False Doctrine

J. C. Ryle Quotes is a nice repository of ever-relevant quotes from the 19th century pastor.

Here is the latest:

Many things combine to make the present inroad of false doctrine peculiarly dangerous.

1. There is an undeniable zeal in some of the teachers of error: their "earnestness" makes many think they must be right.

2. There is a great appearance of learning and theological knowledge: many fancy that such clever and intellectual men must surely be safe guides.

3. There is a general tendency to free thought and free inquiry in these latter days: many like to prove their independence of judgment, by believing novelties.

4. There is a wide-spread desire to appear charitable and liberal-minded: many seem half ashamed of saying that anybody can be in the wrong.

5. There is a quantity of half-truth taught by the modern false teachers: they are incessantly using Scriptural terms and phrases in an unscriptural sense.

6. There is a morbid craving in the public mind for a more sensuous, ceremonial, sensational, showy worship: men are impatient of inward, invisible heart-work.

7. There is a silly readiness in every direction to believe everybody who talks cleverly, lovingly and earnestly, and a determination to forget that Satan often masquerades himself "as an angel of light" (2 Corinthians 11:14).

8. There is a wide-spread "gullibility" among professing Christians: every heretic who tells his story plausibly is sure to be believed, and everybody who doubts him is called a persecutor and a narrow-minded man.

All these things are peculiar symptoms of our times. I defy any observing person to deny them. They tend to make the assaults of false doctrine in our day peculiarly dangerous. They make it more than ever needful to cry aloud, "Do not be carried away!"

~ J.C. Ryle

Warnings to the Churches, "Divers and Strange Doctrines", [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1967], 76, 77.

The Complex of God's Emotions: Beware of Putting God in a Box

One of the mysteries of Scripture is that "God desires all people to be saved" (1 Tim. 2:4), and yet all are not saved. Some think that this desire of God means that all must be saved in the end; others think that God only desires the salvation of all kinds of people, not all individuals; others believe that God cannot accomplish this desire given the nature of genuine love.

John Piper's essay, "Are There Two Wills in God?" has been the most helpful piece for me in wrestling with this. Here is an excerpt:

Putting it in my own words, Edwards said that the infinite complexity of the divine mind is such that God has the capacity to look at the world through two lenses. He can look through a narrow lens or through a wide-angle lens.

When God looks at a painful or wicked event through his narrow lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin for what it is in itself and he is angered and grieved. "I do not delight in the death of anyone, says the Lord God" (Ezekiel 18:32).

But when God looks at a painful or wicked event through his wide-angle lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin in relation to everything leading up to it and everything flowing out from it. He sees it in all the connections and effects that form a pattern or mosaic stretching into eternity. This mosaic, with all its (good and evil) parts he does delight in (Psalm 115:3).

God's emotional life is infinitely complex beyond our ability to fully comprehend.

For example, who can comprehend that the Lord hears in one moment of time the prayers of ten million Christians around the world, and sympathizes with each one personally and individually like a caring Father (as Hebrews 4:15 says he will), even though among those ten million prayers some are broken-hearted and some are bursting with joy? How can God weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice when they are both coming to him at the same time—in fact are always coming to him with no break at all?

Or who can comprehend that God is angry at the sin of the world every day (Psalm 7:11), and yet every day, every moment, he is rejoicing with tremendous joy because somewhere in the world a sinner is repenting (Luke 15:7,10,23)?

Who can comprehend that God continually burns with hot anger at the rebellion of the wicked, grieves over the unholy speech of his people (Ephesians 4:29-30), yet takes pleasure in them daily (Psalm 149:4), and ceaselessly makes merry over penitent prodigals who come home?

Who of us could say what complex of emotions is not possible for God?

All we have to go on here is what he has chosen to tell us in the Bible. And what he has told us is that there is a sense in which he does not experience pleasure in the judgment of the wicked, and there is a sense in which he does.

The Exultant Joy of the Miserable Sinner

B. B. Warfield on the incomparable joy of "appeased remorse":

The attitude of the "miserable sinner" is not only not one of despair; it is not even one of depression; and not even one of hesitation or doubt; hope is too weak a word to apply to it.

It is an attitude of exultant joy.

Only this joy has its ground not in ourselves but in our Savior.

We are sinners and we know ourselves to be sinners, lost and helpless in ourselves. But we are saved sinners; and it is our salvation which gives tone to our lives, a tone of joy which swells in exact proportion to the sense we have of our ill deserts; for it is to he to whom much is forgiven who loves much, and who, loving, rejoices much.

Adolph Harnack declares that this mood was brought into Christianity by Augustine. Before Augustine the characteristic frame of mind of Christians was the racking unrest of alternating hopes and fears. Augustine, the first of the Evangelicals, created a new piety of assured rest in God our Savior, and the psychological form of this piety was, as Harnack phrases it, "solaced contrition."—affliction for sin, yes, the deepest and most poignant remorse for sin, but not unrelieved remorse, but appeased remorse.

There is no other joy on earth like that of appeased remorse: it is not only in heaven but on earth also that the joy over one sinner that repents surpasses that over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance.

—"'Miserable-Sinner Christianity' in the Hands of the Rationalists," in The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. 7, pp. 113-114.

How Do God's Love and God's Wrath Relate?

Don Carson:

One evangelical cliché has it that God hates the sin but loves the sinner.

There is a small element of truth in these words: God has nothing but hate for the sin, but this cannot be said with respect to how God sees the sinner.

Nevertheless the cliché is false on the face of it, and should be abandoned. Fourteen times in the first fifty psalms alone, the psalmists state that God hates the sinner, that His wrath is on the liar, and so forth. In the Bible the wrath of God rests on both the sin (Rom. 1:18–23) and the sinner (1:24–32; 2:5; John 3:36).

Our problem in part is that in human experience wrath and love normally abide in mutually exclusive compartments. Love drives wrath out, or wrath drives love out. We come closest to bringing them together, perhaps, in our responses to a wayward act by one of our children, but normally we do not think that a wrathful person is loving.

But this is not the way it is with God. God's wrath is not an implacable blind rage. However emotional it may be, it is an entirely reasonable and willed response to offenses against His holiness. At the same time His love wells up amidst His perfections and is not generated by the loveliness of the loved. Thus there is nothing intrinsically impossible about wrath and love being directed toward the same individual or people at once. God in His perfections must be wrathful against His rebel image-bearers, for they have offended Him; God in His perfections must be loving toward His rebel image-bearers, for He is that kind of God. . . .

The reality is that the Old Testament displays the grace and love of God in experience and types, and these realities become all the clearer in the New Testament. Similarly, the Old Testament displays the righteous wrath of God in experience and types, and these realities become all the clearer in the New Testament. In other words both God's love and God's wrath are ratcheted up in the move from the Old Testament to the New. These themes barrel along through redemptive history, unresolved, until they come to a resounding climax in the Cross.

Do you wish to see God's love? Look at the Cross.

Do you wish to see God's wrath? Look at the Cross.

—From D.A. Carson, "God's Love and God's Wrath," Bibliotheca Sacra 156 (1999): 388–390.

HT: Tony Reinke