While I was on my holiday, Aron Wall commented on the Theological Term post on inclusivism. I’m not sure he’ll be back to see my reply, because it’s been a couple of weeks since he made his comment. But even if he doesn’t return, I think it’s important for me to respond to what he wrote, because the Theological Term posts don’t drop off into the bloggy netherworld, but are accessed repeatedly over the years. So for the sake of Aron, if he returns, and all those who look up inclusivism in the future, here is the first part of my reply to his comments. (When I’m finished replying, I’ll link to my replies in another comment on that post.)

Aron’s comments are in the block quotations and my responses are below them.

Despite the fact that this post has made me cranky, because this is my first comment on your site I should tell you that it is a lovely place and that I have enjoyed reading it several times. It astonishes me, however, to find someone who truly loves God so much and talks about grace so much, and yet believes that God is so stingy in giving his grace to our unrighteous race.

Thank you for your kind words about my site.

I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around the phrase “stingy in giving his grace.” It’s a nonsense phrase, really. By definition, any act that comes from grace is an act of generosity. That God saves any one at all precludes the accusation that he is stingy.

Was Abraham saved by “explicit faith in Jesus Christ”? Did Abraham call on the name “Jesus”? He did not. Rather, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Does that mean that Abraham was saved apart from faith in Jesus Christ? Absolutely not, but it does not seem to pass the test of “explicitness” required by the exclusivist for the modern day unevangelized person. Rather, he had faith in God’s promise, which *turned out* to be about Jesus (but without Abraham knowing that).

Yes, the Old Testament faithful looked forward to the provision God would make for them, trusted in what he would provide, and were saved on account of their faith. But they still had to know the good news of the promise of God in order to trust in it. Salvation still required special revelation; they needed to hear and believe the promise of God. Those Gentiles who remained unaware of the promises of God, who did not know of God’s special revelation given to the Jews, were “without hope” (Ephesians 2).

Now that the promise has been fulfilled, the provision has been made, and more has been revealed, we must trust in the the fulfilled promise, the work accomplished, and the new revelation—or the good news of Christ and his work. How explicit someone’s knowledge had to be on order for them to be saved depended on how much had been revealed by God at their time in history. But it has always required special revelation from God; it has always required “good news” proclaimed and heard and believed.

But as for the quotation from Romans [10:14-17], exclusivists are on sketchy ground when they derive their position from Paul’s rhetorical questions “How can they call on…etc.” The exclusivist assumes that the answer is “They cannot.”

It’s not simply an assumption, but a logical conclusion. For one, if the questions are rhetorical, their answer has to be, “they can’t,” because a positive rather than a negative answer would require an explanation in the reply. If the answer is positive, the questions aren’t rhetorical.

What’s more, the questions form a logical argument which ends in a statement—a conclusion—about the beauty of the feet of those who preach the good news. Why are those feet beautiful? Because they represent people’s only hope salvation: hearing the good news preached by preachers who are sent to them.

And then the passage is summed up with this statement: “faith comes from what is heard,  and what is heard comes through the message about Christ.” This is exactly what we would expect as a summary statement of the argument made by the preceding series of questions if the expected answer to those questions is “they can’t.”

I encourage you to go through the list of questions and answer them in the positive. When you do that, do the questions build an argument that leads to the logical conclusion that the feet of those who bring good news are beautiful? Can it be summarized by the statement that “faith comes from what is heard,  and what is heard comes through the message about Christ”?

The trouble is that Paul goes on to give a different answer in just a few verses.

No, he doesn’t, not if the passage is interpreted in context, but that’s a matter for another post on another day.