James McGrath and Michael Halcomb have been engaging in a fruitful conversation today that I have been reading intently and on which I have commented. I thought I would pose some questions directed at what seem to me to be the central issues.
McGrath offers this thought experiment "The Flaming Meteorite Test":
Basically, it involves a reenactment of the story from Acts 10 about Peter being sent to communicate the Gospel to Cornelius, a non-Jew who has nonetheless been righteous enough to be noticed by God.
Now, imagine that, as Peter is on his way to tell Cornelius about Jesus, a flaming meteorite appears in the sky, heading towards Cornelius' house. BAM! It is levelled and all inside are killed.
So, the question is, how do you view Cornelius? On the one hand, he had already through his righteous life achieved recognition in God's eyes. On the other hand, he had still not been told about Jesus. If you think that God can have a place for Cornelius in his kingdom, then you are an inclusivist. If you think that Cornelius came close, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades but not salvation, then you are an exclusivist.
In response, Halcomb then argues:
To try to say, for example, that Paul was “either” an inclusivist or exclusivist is misleading. Paul was both at the same time. As I’ve already stated in previous conversations with James, Paul’s view was that while there is always an open invitation to Christ (inclusivism), the reception of that invitation calls and forces one to place their allegiance in Christ alone (exclusivism). Furthermore, Paul believed that Jews/Judeans could maintain their Jewish practices and be Christ-followers as long as they did not mandate those practices (for inclusion into the Body/salvation) upon Gentiles. So, while Paul allows for a type of religious pluralism (e.g. you can maintain the Law of Moses if you are Jewish and you don’t have to if you are Gentile), it is not a type of soteriological pluralism. If anything, Paul argues vehemently against this in his letters and at times, even uses himself as an example.
My question is this: what do we mean by "allegiance"? Is this a vocal assent, a proclamation, to Christ as Lord in the same vein as a subject of a kingdom? It is hard not to see these kind of military metaphors in Paul. But as Michael rightly puts it, in my view, it is a different kind of allegiance than we would associate readily with a medieval understanding of a subject to even a benevolent king where it is either this kind of allegiance or death. Rather, we are dead already and it is this allegiance that gives life.
But this raises another pertinent question and that is the role of baptism. If baptism is the incorporation into the body of Christ, then this is such a pledge to confer membership into the Kingdom of God. For some the act of baptism follows precisely this vocal and public pledge of allegiance to Christ as Lord and Savior. For others it is an act that confers this membership as an infant through the washing of sin in which case the faith of the parents acts as the subject giving one's child into the care of the church as a response, again, to God's grace. In either case, following the baptism, the actions of the newly baptized ought follow in response to this act of grace bestowed by God and symbolically instituted through the church. But is baptism the means of this grace alone as membership into the Kingdom of God? A lower sacramentology relative to the Catholic view that I would support here would say no.
But Paul is a little more complex here. It is not quite this cut and dry – either pledge your allegiance or die. He also paints another picture that is eschatological as it relates to the function and efficacy of the cross and the resurrection as Jesus of Nazareth becomes the Cosmic Christ more akin to the Jesus we begin to see towards the end of the Gospel of Matthew. The fear of Calvinists and their kin is that any action on the part of human beings to receive salvation reduces the efficacy of the cross to an action initiated by the human being. Thus, even seeking God and claiming any allegiance to Christ is something that God must initiate. This is where both Pelagianism and Arminianism come to the fore in just about any evangelical seminary – take your pick, it's always a hot debate.
But Paul does not draw these doctrinal lines with such distinction and many will tend to read him through so many of these lenses. In Romans 5 Paul writes:
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
It is clear that for Paul the cross contains the final judgment on sin and salvation and it is nothing that human beings do to receive this forgiveness – it is an act of God alone through Christ. Everyone has fallen short, everyone is in need of salvation, and the cross is that means of salvation for everyone – quite literally. So there is an inherent tension that Paul sets up here between the act of the cross that is the means of salvation for all regardless of human agency and the necessity of human allegiance to Jesus as Lord.
Paul does not resolve this tension and in the chapters following Romans 5 he clearly gives ethical demands that ought to set apart the followers of the God of Israel apart from all other people groups. It is an act of grace that there is this possibility for universal inclusion into the covenant with Israel. But even between these arguments, there is chapter 8 which reinforces and vacillates back to the universal notion of God's love in Christ in which "there is therefore no condemnation".
So the question in my mind is this: Does inclusion into this covenant as radically re-instituted by Christ through the Cross require a public pledge or affirmation of allegiance? Or does the Cross have efficacy beyond the public recognition of people of its efficacy? Here is an anecdote to illustrate this perhaps a little more fluid than McGrath's "Meteorite". Let's also assume the low sacramentology I described above:
Two people recognize a poor person in need and offer them a meal. Both do this not for any other motivation than they recognize a person who needs help and feel obligated to their neighbor to offer their assistance. One is a Christian who believes they help people out of response to God's grace in Christ to whom they have pledged their allegiance in a public ceremony (adult baptism, church membership, the baptism of their child, etc.). The other is a Muslim likewise helping a neighbor, but out of a strong desire to fulfill Zakat on a daily basis out of allegiance to Allah and only Allah. The observable actions are identical as are the internal motivations when they come into contact with such a person – recognizing a neighbor in need who needs help and feeling obligated to do so. What is different are the conditions that establish this internal locus of motivation – one out of a specifically Christian conviction, the other out of a specifically Muslim conviction. Thus, it seems, without the pledge of allegiance in any form to the Lordship of Christ, the Muslim will not share in the Kingdom of God on earth much less as a cosmic instance.
Does this reduce the efficacy of the Cross since the the Muslim does not initiate it through an act of allegiance of some sort (I specify public above, but let's include private commitments to Christ as well since those are often prior to public recognition or declaration in some traditions)? Or, can the behavior of loving one's neighbor with a motivation not self-directed act as a further conduit for the grace of God to work out the Kingdom of God in our midst – even through the actions of a Muslim? If the latter, does the Muslim as such an instrument of grace not partake in the eternal Kingdom of God as a direct result of not making a pledge to God in the midst of the contingency of time and space? That is to say, is the absence of a contingent pledge of some kind on the part of the Muslim a direct attribution for the eternal consequence of not participating in the Kingdom of God?
One final question here is the inclusion of the eschatological pronouncements and the final judgment here.
Related posts:
