Who Benefits from Salvation?: II

James and Ken Brown have offered responses to this conversation since I last offered my take with a few questions that Michael's response to James raised. There I raised a few questions that I think are still hanging somewhat:

• 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?
• 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?
• 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?

James' address seems to be along the lines of saying that such a declaration of faith or pledage is not the important issue with regard to the efficacy of the Atonement:

I think that Paul would have been the first to recognize in those outside the Christian community who showed the defining features of true faith in God (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self-control…) individuals who knew God and stood in a right relationship to God. His emphasis was on calling people from living according to the flesh to life in the Spirit, and from defining themselves in ethnic or communal terms rather than according to things that really matter. In other words, I understand Christianity to be about the gathering of individuals who are characterized by and agree on the importance of the goals and emphases of the Bible's most foundational principles, rather than about the attempt to claim that only those who are Christians have those characteristics.

This would appear to mean that the confession, declaration, pledge, what have you, of "Jesus is Lord" does not constitute the Body of Christ, but it is in good works as exemplified by what we know to be the case in Scripture that constitutes this body. While I agree with this in principle, I do question the purpose of baptism and of public declarations of faith. Baptism seems limited to social-ritual functions and for the spiritual affirmation and nourishment of the individual, but not as constituting the incorporation of anyone into the Body of Christ in a spiritual sense. At best it serves as a symbolic or metaphorical function. Thus, it is an act of initiation to the degree of its social rather than spiritual function. I would be interested to hear James' take on baptism and the function it serves.

Ken focuses on the offices of Jesus as prophet, priest, and king (Calvin just smiled by the way) and on what this means for the assertion that "the New Testament is clear that “salvation is found in no one else” but Jesus. He then follows with this statement:

But (the road of self-sacrifice and service is the road to Christ) is a hard road, and the chance that someone will choose to follow it without the hope that Jesus offers is tenuous, at best. Therefore, it is possible to follow Jesus without knowing it, and thus it is possible to be saved without hearing his name.

Thus two questions seem to be in play and in tension:

1. What constitutes the Body of Christ?
2. What is the overall effect of the Atonement on humankind with respect to the Body of Christ?

I tend to side with James on the first. I also think that Ken's understanding of the atonement as not a limited event but something for all is accurate (so much for TULIP). This brings me back to the issue of declarations of faith and allegiance to Christ, and their significance in the salvation history of the church. As Ken writes:

If Jesus really is the victorious King who defeated evil once and for all, then that effects everyone, not just those who hear about it. By the same token, if Jesus really is “our great High Priest,” his death was sufficient to cover all sins, even those of people who never hear of him.

To this point I want to discuss the basic nature of communication with respect to someone "hearing" the Gospel. There seems to have been in the history of evangelicalism an undue amount of pressure on the hearer of the Gospel to convert to Christ through a visible declaration of allegiance or make peace with their own eternal damnation. However, communication is not simply about the receiver of the message, but the role of the speaker as well. The communicator is as responsible in the transmission of the message as the one who receives and decodes it in terms of their own cognitive structure. For instance, a bible tract or the Christian Fright House are both media to communicate the Gospel which many people have received to some degree. But what people are actually receiving is a specific packaging of that message that cannot be separated from the spirit of the message itself. The way that the message is communicated may rather lead someone not to believe at all (what if Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen, and Fred Phelps were the primary means of communication of the Gospel for instance?). There is thus a dual responsibility in the relationship of discourse between the speaker and the receiver of the message.

"Hearing" as a condition for salvation is therefore not plausible or quite fair on these grounds alone. The emphasis on those who have heard who are now responsible to respond to what they have heard runs counter to the "get out of jail card" among those who have not heard. I am arguing that "hearing" is neither a fair nor plausible condition for salvation based on the responsibility of the speaker. Hearing does not account for the variables that must be in play from the structure of the message itself that will distort that message to varying degrees.

Therefore, it is an issue of discernment. But we cannot expect a person who has "heard" the Gospel in a Chick Tract to be responsible even to pursue the spirit of the Gospel on those grounds since we cannot expect a very savvy spirit of discernment in that person's ability to hear. This takes training to achieve.

Related posts:

1. revised statement of faith