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(Posting # 20) From Tiessen's Who Can Be Saved? [This article appeared in the May 24, 2004 issue of the Christian Courier, under the tital "Who can be be saved? A new slant on an old debate."]
Who can be saved? by Prof. Terrance L. Tiessen (InterVarsity Press, March 2004) is “A book that will become a reference point for all further work in the field” (John G. Stackhouse Jr., Regent College).
In his book Who Can Be Saved? Tiessen heads in the direction suggested by the great mind and heart of C.S. Lewis. It is eminently worthwhile to carefully consider what Tiessen finds on his theological journey.
Tiessen traces the history of inclusivism (his term is “accessibilism”) back to the second century. He provides convincing biblical evidence for the following truths among others: all persons are sinners; no one can be saved except through Christ; there is an urgent need for missionary endeavor; no one is condemned apart from personal, willful, and final indifference to or rejection of whatever revelation God has given of himself to that particular individual; salvation is possible without a New Testament knowledge of Jesus Christ; at the moment of physical death each person's eternal destiny is already determined.
Tiessen also furnishes an amazingly detailed biblical basis for dialogue with other religions while fully maintaining the exclusivism of Christianity. Such dialogue is required of evangelical Christians in our increasingly smaller world. Serious students of “the plan of salvation” owe it to themselves to examine this well-written scholarly 500-page work with their Bibles open.
No evangelical theologian has come as close as Tiessen has to what I have been attempting to say for many years. Both of us begin our journey with the teaching of the early church fathers. By examining their teachings in the light of the Scriptures we both reach the conclusions mentioned above. On one section of the trail we take divergent paths. He calls the path he takes “accessibilism.” I call the route I take “biblical universalism.” Accessibilism
The unique characteristic of “accessibilism” is: “God's saving grace is universally sufficient so that, on at least one occasion in each person's life, one is enabled to respond to God's self-revelation with a faith response that is acceptable to God as a means of justification” (p. 25). To appreciate the extremely significant nuances that flow from this claim one must read Tiessen's book. Evangelical Inclusivism
The essence of “Evangelical Inclusivism” is: “We must accept the so-called ‘universalistic' texts as written. We may allow only those exceptions that are necessarily imposed upon these passages from the broader context of the Scriptures as a whole.” To understand that the same good and necessary implications stem from this claim one should read Unconditional Good News (Eerdmans, 1980) or its brief summary So Also In Christ (Northland Books, 2002).
Although “accessibilism” and “evangelical inclusivism” are largely compatible, in this paper we look at the divergent section of the paths taken. There is a basic difference in our understanding of how God's grace becomes effective in the life of sinners. Below I point to the most important impediments I see on the pathway of “accessibilism.” Undoubtedly Tiessen sees stumbling blocks on the route taken by “evangelical inclusivism.” Accessibilism's Essential Requirements Faith has an essential role to play in the existential experience or application of salvation, according to accessibilism. It is so indispensable that there is no existential application of salvation apart from a deliberate, positive, personal response of faith exercised by the person who is brought to salvation.
This essential relationship is so intimate that accessibilism draws this conclusion: Saving grace must be universally sufficient and efficient (but not necessarily effective) so that every person, on at least one occasion during their life-time on earth, is enabled to respond affirmatively to the self-revelation God has given to that particular person. This is true for those who die in infancy, the mentally challenged, those who may be saved without a New Testament knowledge of Jesus Christ as well as for those who are saved through hearing the Word preached.
This function of faith in the application of salvation is so essential, according to accessibilism, that God must and in fact does reveal himself to every person (including infants and those mentally challenged) in a way that is compatible with the varied circumstances found in the totality of that person's life experience. God uniquely determines the amount and kind of self-revelation given to each person, to which they must respond positively, in order to be saved. The effective power of the Holy Spirit to respond in a way that is pleasing to God is given only to the elect.
By reason of physical and other constraints we cannot meaningfully communicate with infants in the womb, other very young infants, some mentally challenged people and with people living in countries where the gospel has never gone. From this fact we may not conclude that God is also so limited. Tiessen mentions the way the babe in Elizabeth's womb responded to the greeting of Mary (Luke 1:41). Tiessen, himself a former missionary, also speaks of the experience of missionaries. They report that when the gospel is proclaimed many respond to the good news by saying that this is the kind of hope and God (or religion) they have been in search of for many years.
Tiessen notes that it has always been the teaching of the church that salvation comes by grace "through faith." The Bible explicitly says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6). Tiessen correctly stresses that in proclaiming the gospel the urgency and necessity of faith cannot be over emphasized.
One benefit that flows from accessibilism, according to Tiessen, is that this universally sufficient enabling grace reveals God's justice in imposing judgment upon those who reject or remain indifferent to this enabling grace (p.478). Traditional Calvinism carries the burden of teaching that the non-elect are never given a grace that enables them to believe. Accessibilism Acknowledges God's Sovereignty
Arminianism teaches that all persons are provided with a potential salvation that can be existentially realized by all who choose to believe. This implies that the saved individual has some reason to boast. Accessibilism acknowledges that this universal, sufficient, enabling grace is sovereignly made effective by the power of the Holy Spirit only in the lives of God's elect. Therefore for the redeemed all boasting is excluded.
I see the following impediments to Tiessen's “accessibilism”:
1) That there is in accessibilism a “universally sufficient, enabling, grace [that] reveals God's justice in imposing judgment upon those who reject or remain indifferent to this enabling grace” is not very convincing. There is no bar or court of justice before which God is compelled to stand in order to be vindicated. God is “self-vindicating.” Anything God does is right, true and holy for no other reason than that God does it. God is not answerable to anything outside of himself.
2) Nineveh had “more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who [could not] tell their right hand from their left.” This undoubtedly means that those persons did not have the most elementary capability of knowing the simplest things in order to make a judgment (right or left hand) based upon their knowledge. By extrapolation there are many millions of people today, most of whom are young infants including those still in their mother's womb, who cannot “tell their right hand from their left.” If these persons are incapable of telling “their right hand from their left,” it seems most unlikely that the Scriptures intend to teach that all such individuals, who die while still in their immature ignorance, know about and are accountable for making a critical decision. A decision that determines their eternal weal or woe depending on how they respond to whatever measure of self-revelation God has given them.
3) With accessibilism's strict adherence to the teaching that there can be no existential application of salvation apart from deliberate, personal, exercised faith we must also add the condition of doing works “worthy of repentance.” “For you see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.” “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.” Such faith cannot save.
4) Even though it is engendered and directed by the Holy Spirit in the lives of God's people, deliberate, personal faith is a human act. No matter how tenuous this human act is, in so far as it is a human act, it is imperfect and stained with sin. Nothing that is imperfect and stained with sin can be essential to effectively apply Christ's saving work to his people. Faith is the Fruit of Salvation Not a Prerequisites for Salvation
Reformed theology has recognized that personal faith is the fruit of salvation. It is not a prerequisite or condition essential for salvation. Martin Luther observed that we have no more to do with our rebirth than we had to do with our physical birth. Lutheran theologians have noted that — by the time a person is inwardly or subjectively changed to such a degree as to be able to accept grace, he or she is no longer the old, natural man who regards the Gospel as foolishness, but a new man, completely transformed within, who has learned to regard the Gospel as the wisdom of God.
That salvation is exclusively God's work completed for us in Christ, and is not dependent on some human act to effectively establish us in the state of grace, is seen in the analogy between Adam and Christ in Romans 5:12-21. "For just as through the disobedience of the one man [Adam] the many were made [Greek-"constituted"] sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man [Jesus Christ] the many will be made [Greek- "constituted"] righteous" Vs. 19. No further human act was necessary to make Adam's sin the sin of those he represented, so also no further human act is necessary to make the righteousness of Christ the righteousness of those who were represented by him. An Already established State of Grace
Faith is a matter of trusting the good news of God's Word regarding our already established new standing in Christ. This "new standing" was determined apart from any faith, act, or attitude of ours. It was established by the one "who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not in virtue of our works but in virtue of his own purpose and grace which he gave us in Christ Jesus ages ago" (2 Tim. 1:9).
The terms “faith” and “grace” are synonymous in regard to the role they play in bringing sinners to the existential fulfillment of salvation. “Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all of Abraham's offspring” (Romans 4:16). To be saved or “justified by faith” is to be “justified by grace.” “There is no difference,” everyone who is justified is “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24).
The frequent and urgent calls to faith found throughout the Bible should not lead us to conclude that there must be an essential relationship between faith and being a recipient of God's grace. There is a subtle but nevertheless very real hazard in drawing such a conclusion. In the very nature of the case all the demands to believe, repent and to walk in joyful obedience to God's will, as these activities are described in God's Word, come only to accountable persons to whom the message of the Bible has been meaningfully communicated. Why must those who hear repent, believe and obey?
These demands are not imposed on this clearly defined segment of humanity in order that through these acts God's saving work may be actualized in their lives. Faith, repentance and obedience are absolutely required of all accountable persons to whom the good news of salvation has been meaningfully communicated. This is so, however, because for such persons to neglect or remain indifferent to these demands would be for them a willful, deliberate and damnable rebellion against the will of God as it has been made known to them.
From what is said in the preceding paragraph we draw this conclusion: There is no positive role that the imperfect and sin-tainted act of faith, or repentance. or obedience that must be fulfilled in order to make actual the sinner's salvation. Therefore it can not be said that a deliberate, personal act of faith is essential for the salvation of infants who die in infancy and those who are mentally challenged throughout their lifetime on earth. Premise "A"
The problem that accesibilism attempts to solve results from the fact that ever since about the time of Pelagius mainstream theologians have understood the message to be that: “All persons will be lost except those who the bible declares will be saved,” that is Premise "A" (See Posting # 1). With this perspective we expect the Scriptures to describe those who will be saved and how they become so.
The Bible does not tell us how sinners become new creations in Christ. Consequently innumerable proposals have been advocated to account for the way in which those who are totally corrupted by sin can come to an actual, existential, experience of salvation. Among these proposals are such schemes as: Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism, salvation only within the established church, traces of original goodness that remain in every sinner; a seed of faith implanted in every sinner's heart, an enabling grace that attends the word preached, Religious Instrumentalism, God's foreseeing those who would of their own accord believe, Relativism, God selects a limited number of persons to whom he sovereignly gives salvation, Hypothetical Universalism, etc., etc.
To this long and still growing list Tiessen adds "accessibilism." Premise "B"
On the basis of the so-called “universalistic texts” Evangelical Inclusivism recognizes that the message of Scripture is: “All person will be saved except those who the Bible declares will be finally lost.” With this perspective we do not expect the Bible to tell who will be saved and how they become so.
It is indisputable that the so-called “universalistic” texts speak of a “certain to be realized” salvation (as Calvinism correctly maintains) in terms of “all persons” (as Arminianism rightly affirms) [This claim is substantiated in Posting #2, above]. When interpreting these passages we must necessarily view them with both our focused and peripheral vision. To do less is to distort what these texts say.
With our focused vision we see that these texts, within and including their immediate context clearly say, “All persons will be saved.” When so viewing them we are cognizant of the exceptions that are described in our peripheral vision (the broader context of the Scriptures) that reveals that certain persons will be finally lost. Those, the reprobate, are described in no other way in the Scriptures than those who willfully, persistently and finally reject or remain indifferent to whatever revelation God has given of himself to them.
To view any passage of the Bible without using both our focused and our peripheral vision necessarily results in error. Paul says, “Everything is permissible for me” (1 Cor. 6:12). If we view this text with our focused vision exclusively (seeing nothing but the text and its immediate context) we would have to conclude that murder and adultery were permissible for Paul. No Other Mediating Factor, Not Even "Faith"
By using both our focused and peripheral vision when interpreting the so-called “universalistic” texts, we can agree with these words of Dr. John Murray:
“The one ground upon which the imputation of the righteousness of Christ becomes ours is the union with Christ. In other words the justified person is constituted righteous by the obedience of Christ because of the solidarity established between Christ and the justified person. The solidarity constitutes the bond by which the righteousness of Christ becomes that of the believer. Once the solidarity is posited there is no other mediating factor that could be conceived as necessary to the conjunction of the righteousness of Christ and the righteousness of the believer” (p. 70, The Imputation of Adam's Sin ; emphasis added).
Not even “faith” can “be conceived as necessary to the conjunction of the righteousness of Christ and the righteousness of the believer.” Faith is the fruit of an already established union with Christ.
In this essay we focused on the one element of “accessibilism” that differs from “evangelical inclusivism .” This should not create the impression that the two views are in opposition to each other. Those who have serious questions about "evangelical universalism" will have many of those questions answered by reading Tiessen's book. Those who were inclined to favor what I have been proposing will be grateful that Tiessen provides a great deal of biblical evidence that is missing from my writings.
Cordially, Neal Punt
Return
to Postings or contact the Author, Neal
Punt at: whenindoubt1@charter.net
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