Defining Precise Limits on God’s Grace?
I teach Cultural Anthropology, Inter-religious Dialogue, and Contemporary Issues in Missions. Note that none of these are standard theology courses. So you would be right to think that I am not the most meticulous and studied Christian theologian out there.
That being said, those three courses keep bringing up certain questions… and these questions are the types of questions that theologians really need to address. Such answering should not be done in a (dusty?) library but in the streets where theology is lived out.
A question that comes up pretty often is “Are people who never heard the gospel saved? Or do they at least have the potential of being saved?” “Were all of our ancestors damned who lived and died before the Gospel message arrived to our people?”
For some people, the Verse-droppers, these are easy questions. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but through Me.” Of course, that doesn’t answer the question, because then the question becomes, “Are there people who are saved by Christ, the way truth and life, who knows them even if they don’t know Him?” This may include groups like infants who die, or the deeply mentally ill or debilitated, or Old Testament saints, or those who never heard the Gospel. The list could go on.
Others, may give a different verse-drop: “For by grace are you saved through faith and not of yourselves– it is the gift of God. Not of works lest anyone should boast.” For this “verse-dropper” the answer is that if a person does not have faith, clearly they are damned. Of course, that leads to many other questions. A hard-core Reformed individual may say, that the faith itself is a gift of God (imputed faith)… thus the real determiner is God’s election. But that opens up new questions. “Can a person who never heard the Gospel be declared the elect from before time?” “Can a person be a member of the elect with no discernible/outward qualities of having faith?” Taking a similar thought from a different angle, if salvation is by faith and not by works, does it mean that faith and works are completely decoupled? “Can a person be saved based on a ‘faith’ that is no more than doctrinal assent?” Again, “Can a person be saved by a faith that does not have any discernible qualities of having such faith?”
My answer is that “I don’t believe I can place any limits on the mercy of God.” Some people find this wishy-washy, but it is Biblically sound. God, as written in the Bible, does not answer many of these questions. We can set up models and traditions that give clear answers but God simply has not chosen to answer all of our questions. That is not necessarily bad. We are not God and it is good to be reminded of this sometimes. An important component of theology is mystery.
Let’s consider this from another direction— I have been asked what a pastor should say when a family member asks something about a deceased loved one at a funeral such as, “My father wasn’t really a good Christian. maybe not one at all. He never accepted Christ into his heart as far as I know. Where is he now. Will he be in heaven?” The response I have used and I have suggested to others is, “All I know is that he is in the hands of a loving and merciful God.” I told a friend of mine this who is a conservative Christian chaplain. He smiled one of those, “That sounds pretty liberal/bad theology, giving people false hope.” But actually, what I said is absolutely and completely Biblical (consistent with what the Bible teaches), and consistent with my own limitations. As Jesus said, “God judges that heart” and I am not God. I don’t believe I can place any limits on the mercy of God.
Of course, this works two ways. I have seen people take a pluralistic view of salvation and declare that there are many paths to Heaven that God will honor. Others may say that God, ultimately at least, saves everyone. But that is still placing a limit on God’s mercy— and one that we may not be justified to say. There is mystery… God is God… and we are NOT God. Hiebert’s “Centered-Set” way of looking at who are redeemed and who are not… is just putting this mystery into graphical form.
Why do we place limits on God’s mercy when such limits appear to be (intentionally?) not revealed to us? I suppose we don’t really like ambiguity. We know Who Saves (Jesus). We know How He saves (through God’s grace via His atonement). Each of us even can know, according to I John, one’s own salvation (whether one is a Child of God or not). But most of us are not satisfied with that. Knowing that I am saved is nice, but I want to know about other people. I want to figure out who are “US” and who are “THEM.”
Missiologically, I want to motivate people to go out as missionaries and evangelize, and so giving nuanced and uncertain answers as to questions of the spiritual state of unreached and unengaged people groups, may feel rather demotivating. Evangelists also want to give hard numbers as to how many people have become saved due to their ministry and how many are still unreached. Let’s be honest— people love to hear exactly how many “people groups” there are. People love to know how many “UPGs” or “UUPGs” there are. They want to know exactly how many languages there are and how many have Bibles and how many don’t. The fact that the numbers are not particularly well-grounded makes their use dubious, but that does not stop them being thrown around over and over again.
I had this problem when we were doing medical missions. I tracked how many people were treated (medical, dental, surgical, eyecare, etc.) , how many prayed to receive Christ, and how many wanted to join a Bible study. Over the years, we treated around 30,000 people with a little over 10,000 people being recorded as having said the “Sinner’s Prayer.” Does this mean that 10,000 people have been added to the Kingdom of Heaven. Almost certainly not. Many people here will go along with the prayer as a way of saying Thank You for the free treatment and medicines. Many go along with the flow. And frankly, many evangelizers think it is more impressive to have bigger numbers and so inflate their response numbers. (One place we went, our local partners claimed 95% response rate… not even theoretically possible considering how many infants and toddlers were treated.) But I do get it. People like numbers… and so I would give numbers but I would also try to give some context, focusing on the increase in Bible studies, or the success in establishing new church plants. These numbers I believe are much more useful… and helps us gain insight in who to partner with for future medical mission events.
In answer to the title of this post. No, we cannot put limits on God’s mercy. This does not mean that there are no limits. It simply means that God has chosen not to reveal fully those limits. And that is fine.
