This is supposed to be a quiet week between Christmas and a New Year.
There are these two guys duking it out in my head — two of my favorites in this world. And they seem to disagree. Both are Christian men of God, their agreements are more significant than their disagreements: they both accept Christ as one born to a virgin Mary, who died for our sins, and who rose again to become our living Savior.
Most of their disagreements I can chalk up to time. God doesn’t experience time the way people do, and He is infinite. It is therefore not surprising there are multiple solutions, akin to multiple intercepts, to the equation that maps truth about God to the finite axis of people experiencing a finite world. One example: one says communion elements become the body of Christ before they are eaten. The other says no, they are symbolic. But that second one agrees Christians form the body of Christ his church and so he too thinks the elements are the body of Christ once digested and incorporated into the Christian. They are argueing over the point in time of transformation. One stresses Jesus’s power through his disciples to bind on earth as in heaven, the other stresses the people’s decision for Christ. Often they are stressing opposite ends of a paradox that God wants us to hold — e.g. infinite grace AND infinite justice.
The two men are Pope Francis and Dr. Albert Mohler. Both are alive today and I would like nothing more than to lock them in a room and not let them out until they can agree. God does nothing by accident and it is His providence that they are sent to sharpen each other and all of us in these confusing days. Failing the power to lock them in that room, they duke it out virtually, bouncing around the neural circuits that are my brain.
Albert Mohler makes it very simple. For him it is this simple equation: Answer the question “Jesus _________ the son of God.”
It is a multiple choice question with these choices as answer:
IS (=Christian)
IS NOT (= damned to fires of destruction for all eternity)
People answer the first way cannot, to him, be worshiping the same God as the people who answer the other way. He bases this on a scriptural if and on if. The if side is John 8:19: “If you truly knew me, you would know my father also.” In case anyone thinks the folks that claim Jesus is only a man “truly know him” the same chapter quotes him as saying “Before Abraham was born, I am.” That is more than just a person, that is God. For the only if there is John 8:42 ““If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here.”
Theologian Stanley Slade that said when we are saved we committing what we know of ourselves to what we know of God, and the rest of our lives we learn more about each. Sometimes we learn a lot more later, but never all.
Pope Francis says all the Abrahamic faiths worship the one God. It sounds good, and seems peaceful and generous. The trinity is a hard concept even for Christians to understand, and many have a hard time with it. Many liberal protestants and Catholics, as well as people of other faiths, can be found having a hard time. In our day, many have a hard time admitting any active inputs by God from outside the universe at all. Sending a part of God to be born human is significant outside input.
Pope Francis seems to be willing to let that mystery lie unresolved while dialoguing with people of other faiths and no or little faith. He goes off the deep end from from Albert Mohler’s perspective if he says he therefore does not recognize a commission to tell the full gospel to those people. However, he did not say exactly that (see source link). It appears to me he made a finer point: non-Christians should not be compelled to follow Christian rules before they have Christ. We must share the story of the gospel, and leave it God to meet them in person as he did for the Ethiopian — it is God’s to make their hearts leap for joy, so that they go away rejoicing. To be able to share, we must dialogue, starting in the place where they are.
I conclude for today nothing so large as a whole religion counts as able to answer Albert Mohler‘s construct. Islam, for example, is not a human heart. People who follow Islam may never have heard the true gospel — only some distorted version of it (even founders of a religion after the time of Jesus may be in that state). People who have not heard are not equipped to take the test. There can be human hearts called by God inside all religions and outside any religion. God will call them as he sees fit but in our age he has ordered Christian followers to tell the full story of Jesus Christ to all of them. After they have heard the gospel then they are ready for the test. If they are called by God, their hearts will leap at the name of Jesus and they will jump for joy at having found Him. Others will deny, sticking to an alternative set of rules that in the end do nothing for them. Only God will be judge of who has heard the gospel, not man. Many will deny multiple times before accepting.
God told Moses “I am who I am”. God’s signature is that of creator of the universe. There can’t be more than one of those. Either we worship that one or we don’t, and John 8 says if we know God we will recognize his son. However, it is not left to us to know conclusively for other people who is in each of the three sets: IS, IS NOT, NOT YET HEARD.
Jesus said in Matthew 8:10–12
10 When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him,
“Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel[a] have I found such faith. 11 I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven,12 while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Time’s up for this round… no knock-out for either earthly dude, only for the One found in Scripture.
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