One In Jesus

Available Light

So this inevitably brings up the question of “available light” — the theory that God saves those who’ve never heard of Jesus, at least, those who are good people.

I debated this question with Al Maxey back in this series. (The series with Brother Al is fairly brief, and it’s followed by an extensive deeper reflection on the problems raised by the theory, also available through the same link.)

I just plain don’t agree with the available light theory — largely because it promises to save people who don’t have faith based on some supposed theory of salvation by good works.

But many of the objections go away if we suppose not salvation but a painless, punishment-free cessation of existence for those never taught Jesus. It’s still problematic but not nearly as problematic. Continue reading →

Pre-resurrection Gentiles, again

If I’m right that the sinned-against deserve justice from God, then we have to admit that, so far as the scriptures reveal, there is no justice pre-Jesus. If the evil people of the pre-Jesus Gentile world simply died and ceased to exist, then their victims receive neither eternal bliss nor justice.

I don’t know the answer because, the best I can find, it’s not revealed. I can think of two possibilities — Continue reading →

Has Paul prophesied that the Jews will eventually be saved?

The hard question is whether God has promised that the Jews will enter the Kingdom sometime  in the future. N.T. Wright says no —

It is at this point, of course, that many have tried to mount an exegetical argument to say that, while Paul has indeed explained the renewal of the covenant, the rethinking of election, as I have expounded it above, he here offers a different argument, supremely in 11:25–26, for thinking that God is also providing a special way of salvation, still reserved for Jews and Jews only. Indeed, not to mount such an argument is to run the risk of being accused of that current heresy, ‘supersessionism’, the mere mention of which is enough to drive otherwise clear-headed exegetes into abject apology and hasty backtracking. Has Paul really so redefined election around Messiah and Spirit that there is no room for anyone who clings to the original election while rejecting those two redefining poles? Is not Paul’s whole argument in chapter 11 that, despite their unbelief, the Jewish people are still ‘beloved because of the patriarchs’ (v. 28)?
Continue reading →

The fate of the Jews

Now, I suppose I should address whether the Jews are a special case. And the great theologians differ. But I think we can lay a few principles down pretty clearly, even if we can’t answer every question with certainty.

First, Paul goes out of his way to specify that, after Pentecost, the Jews will be saved by faith in Jesus or not at all. That’s the point of his great missionary midrash on Deu 30 in Rom 10 — Continue reading →

Justice vs. forgiveness

Ah, but there is a problem with Wright’s thesis. The saved — Christians — will have the opportunity to forgive those who’ve sinned against them, thereby releasing themselves from the hold that the sin of others has over them. I entirely agree. But what of the lost?

Well, the lost will cease to exist. They will be destroyed and, to the extent God’s perfect justice so requires, they will be punished for their own sins. And they will be vindicated, in that those who’ve sinned against them will suffer the same fate — except, of course, for the saved. But the saved who’ve sinned against others — all of us — will be forgiven by God but at the price of being made fully aware of the awful price that our sins have cost God — especially Jesus on the cross. (I both look forward to and dread that day!) I mean, we can’t become truly in God’s image and not be fully aware of the cost of the cross. Continue reading →