The Shack and Universalism (Part 2), [or why Brock could never get a job at a Baptist church]

In my previous post, I critiqued some of the arguments made to show that The Shack presents universalism. If it is not universalism, what position then, does it offer? [If this explanation is too long, sorry. I had material for more than double what I've placed here!]

Allow me to begin with an excerpt from The Shack:

“Who said anything about being a Christian? I’m not a Christian… Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions. I have followers who were murderers and many who were self-righteous. Some are bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians. I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, into my Beloved” (182).

There are at least three ways this passage can be read, but for the sake of the attention of my readers, I will focus on one: There are religiously practicing Buddhists, Mormons, Muslims, and even non-religious folk who are just as much followers of Jesus as Christians. Or we might say, some practitioners of other religious groups look a whole lot more like Jesus and live a life of agape love far better than some life-long members of Christianity.

On this reading, let’s pose the question: “Can a Buddhist/Mormon/Muslim go to heaven?” Well, for starters, since Buddhism can be conceived as a way of informing one’s life to connect with ultimate reality, rather than the worship of a particular deity, it’s certainly possible that one could engage in some of the life practices of Buddhism while maintain faith in Jesus Christ. As for Mormonism and Islam, if one views these religions as heresies of Christianity rather than entirely different religions, it’s possible to conceive there are some within these ranks that have managed to connect with the real Jesus. Indeed, there is testimony of Muslims, based solely on reading the excerpts about Jesus in the Koran who have believed in Jesus, and “if anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him” (1 Jn. 4:15).

But this answer only speaks to the possibility of people with other religious labels to also be connected with the real Jesus through some level of [untraditional] connection to the historical Jesus. But is it possible to be rightly related to God without having knowledge of the historical Jesus? This is the question posed by Christian Inclusivism (CI), a position held in some way or another by Justin Martyr, Origen, Karl Rahner, C.S. Lewis, Brian McLaren, Tony Campolo, Dallas Willard, and even Billy Graham in recent days. CI preaches the orthodox message of the Good News of Jesus, but leaves open God’s grace and mercy to extend beyond the walls of Christianity. To state it otherwise, CI teaches that Christ is “the way” (Jn. 14:6), but he may even be “the way” for people who have never heard of Jesus or been exposed to Christianity.

Let me backtrack to help make this clearer. Some Christians hold that knowledge of the historical person, known as Jesus of Nazareth, who died and rose again as a 1st century Jew is necessary for salvation. This view holds that there is some salvific power in the name spelled “J-E-S-U-S” and knowledge of the historical person who bore that name is necessary. But if knowledge of the historical Jesus is absolutely necessary, then Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, and every Old Testament saint do not qualify. Sure, the OT figures placed faith by looking forward to a future hope of a promised Messiah (as described in Gen 3:15; 12:3; 2 Sam. 7), but what they envisioned hardly amounts to Paul’s summary of the gospel message (1 Cor 15:3-4).

In other words, even the most fundamentalist, exclusivist Christians hold to some level of inclusivism. They must hold to some view of God’s mercy that extends beyond knowledge of the death and resurrection of Christ if OT figures are to be saved—as well as infants who die or the mentally incapable, a position held by many Christians.

In his latest book, Knowing Christ Today, Dallas Willard points out that belief in the “historical” Jesus was not even what his closest disciples needed to believe in. In John 14, “his closest disciples still did not know him (14:7-9), though they knew Jesus of Nazareth. It was not the historical Jesus that Philip did not know (v. 9). Who he was clearly amounted to much more than a carpenter of Nazareth… He was and is the eternal Word” (185). Thus, Willard distinguishes between the historical Christ and the “Cosmic Christ,” the eternal God and Savior.

Let’s put this conclusion into a question: Is it possible to be connected to Jesus, the Logos who was at the beginning with God (Jn. 1:1) without having knowledge of the historical Jesus? To this question, scholars throughout church history have answered, “Yes.” Justin Martyr, one of the first Christian theologians, suggested Plato, Socrates, and the Greek philosophers were Christians without realizing it by their commitment to the Logos (Reason) and their love for Wisdom/Truth.

Romans 2:14-16 suggests there will be Gentiles who stand before God on the day of judgment whose consciences will defend them even though they “do not have the law.” These individuals will be saved on account of God’s promise that “To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life” (2:7). Those who seek the Good (God) through faith will find him (cf. Heb. 11:6), even if this search amounts to an extremely limited blind groping for an “unknown God” (Acts 17: 27, cf. v. 23). God has “overlooked” ignorant and imperfect worship of him in times past (Acts 17:30) and pursues and finds even those who were not looking for him (Rom. 10:20; Isa. 65:1)! Indeed, he accepts imperfect worship from all of us!

What would be the content of such a person’s faith if they had never heard of the man known as Jesus of Nazareth? Paul’s message in Acts 17 provides clues where he neither mentions Jesus’ name nor even alludes to any atonement theory (instead, he quotes from two sources of pagan literature!). We get the most cryptic allusion to Jesus, namely that God is going to judge the world via a “man” he has raised from the dead. This was the content of those who believed Paul’s message. Sure, Paul would have encouraged the believers to increase their level of knowledge about God; but if such scant information is all that is necessary to “reach out for [God] and find him” (v. 27), clearly we can posit the possibility of people who have never heard of Jesus, contemplating a belief in a Supreme Judge, being convicted of a need to be put in right relationship with him, and concluding that God somehow has taken care of it.

Keeping the Acts 17 account in our minds, we might look at this issue from a literary perspective. Jesus, as a redemptive image, is an archetype and parallels of his story and message can be seen both in the Old Testament and in the surrounding religious and mythical stories of his time. In the Old Testament, the redemptive acts in the stories of Joseph, Moses, Joshua (which is the Hebrew name for the Greek, Iesou, or Jesus), and David all foreshadow Jesus as Messianic figures). And Rob Bell notes, (in his Nooma video entitled “You”) that at the time of the 1st century, one of the most popular gods of the Roman Empire was Mithra, a god believed to be born of a virgin, was a mediator between God and man, and had ascended to heaven. And Caesar Augustus believed himself to be the son of God, sent down from heaven to inaugurate an unprecedented reign of peace (in fact the disciples, in Acts 4:12, borrow from Augustus’ most famous catch phrase, “there is no other name under heaven by which men are saved but Caesar”). Many similar parallels have been made between Jesus and gods from other religious traditions, such as the ancient Egyptian sun-god, Horus.

So if Jesus is the ultimate redemptive archetype that all of these messianic stories point to, if all of these other redemptive stories ultimately culminate and are fulfilled in Jesus, what is to prevent one from becoming rightly related to God through other “redemptive analogies” (to quote Don Richardson from the “Peace Child”)? Consider this: what if there exists a person who has read The Chronicles of Narnia but has never read the Bible (which is quite possible), who believes in Aslan, hoping his message is true, and whose life is changed by the truths of Narnia? Are they in right relation to God? Lewis himself suggests something similar at the end of The Last Battle when Emeth, a Calormene and follower of Tash winds up in “heaven” standing before Aslan, the real God he took for a myth. When Emeth sees Aslan, he recognizes him as the “Glorious One” and despairs that he had worshiped in ignorance all of his life. But Aslan explains to Emeth, who was a sincere seeker of the truth, that all the good deeds he did in the name of Tash (who does not really exist) must have been for Aslan, the author of all things good.

This scene raises the question, going back to Romans 2:7, what would it look like for someone without knowledge of Christ to persist in doing good and seek glory, etc? Certainly it would involve more than what it means to “be a good person” in our common understanding today, and it would have to involve faith over some belief that I can attain God’s pleasure through my own deeds alone. In this vein, Dallas Willard (180) recalls 1 John 4:7 - “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” In other words, it is impossible to practice agape love without real connection with God. James reminds us, “Every good and perfect good is from above, coming down from the Father” (James 1:17). We might translate, all the goodness we see in the world, even the good actions of people, is evidence of God’s goodness in the world.

Who then determines if one passes such a test? I’m not running for that position and choose to leave it up to God. But CI leaves the door open for God’s mercy to extend as far as possible while providing an adequate interpretation of New Testament faith.

Today I Believe

This past Sunday at church, we sang this Celtic prayer from the Northumbria Monastic Community. It's been a while since I was moved by a worship tune, so I thought I'd share these lyrics

Lord, You have always given
bread for the coming day;
and though I am poor,
today I believe.

Lord, You have always given
strength for the coming day;
and though I am weak,
today I believe.

Lord, You have always given
peace for the coming day;
and though of anxious heart,
today I believe.

Lord, You have always kept
me safe in trials;
and now, tried as I am,
today I believe.

Lord, You have always marked
the road for the coming day;
and though it may be hidden,
today I believe.

Lord, You have always lightened
this darkness of mine;
and though the night is here,
today I believe.

Lord, You have always spoken
when time was ripe;
and though you be silent now,
today I believe.

What Kind of God Are You?

In my last post, I mentioned my dreadful situation of watching my son choke and my response to the situation. That experience also got me thinking about the nature of God. Depending on your theological persuasion, there are a number of emotions that God does or does not experience. Or if you’re an Aristotelian, you’re inclined to say that God is pure thought, so to speak of God and emotion at all is to venture into the realm of metaphor. Generally speaking, there are two schools of thought on this issue (that’s being reductionistic, of course, but the other views seem to be varying degrees of the following two):

The God of Neoplatonic thought, and Calvinism in many respects,(and what is often viewed as orthodox) has a limited scope of feelings. This God may (metaphorically) experience love, joy, peace, anger, righteous indignation, and desire justice. That may even be going too far; perhaps God IS these things (e.g., “God is Love”), but to say he experiences these things would be to place him in the realm of time. But this God certainly does not experience fear, panic, the pressure of taking risks, courage, doubt, the feeling of second-guessing himself, or the sheer delight of surprise. On the other hand, the God of Open Theism and other related views says that God experiences all of these feelings.

There are people—smart and contemplative people, I might add—on both sides. And they don’t take a side due to some shallow shot at proof-texting. Each position can present reasonable and convincing arguments for their case. And each position caters to a certain list of Scripture passages for support (or a certain method of interpretation of Scripture).

The Calvinist resorts to verses that support God’s omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, immutability, impassibility (does not feel emotion), foreknowledge, and timelessness (terms which have come from Greek philosophy, I might point out). They cite, “For I am the Lord, I change not” (Mal. 3:6), “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to me” (Ps. 139:16), “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son…And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified” (Rom. 8:29-30), “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world” (Eph. 1:4), or “From one man he made every nation of men…and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live” (Acts 17:26).

The Open Theist resorts to verses that support God experiencing emotion (and Christ’s humanity), not knowing what will happen due to human freedom, and working in tandem with man to bring about his goals for the world (e.g., such as prayer changing God’s mind). They cite, “But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. ‘O Lord,’ he said, ‘why should your anger burn against your people…’ Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened” (Ex. 32:11-14), “The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, ‘This is what the LORD says: … you are going to die; you will not recover.’ Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD…Then the word of the LORD came to Isaiah: … ‘This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life” (Isa. 38:1-5), “I thought that after she [Israel] had done all this she would return to me but she did not” (Jer. 3:7), “The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth” (Gen 6:6), and “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened” (Jonah 3:10).

My concern is not which position is “right.” If there was a definitive conclusion, one would think that the Holy Spirit would have told us by now or that God would have been a bit clearer in his directions.

I am more interested in the psychology between why someone chooses one over the other. Both positions are concerned with preserving something they consider central to God’s character. The Calvinist wants to preserve God’s sovereignty; the Open Theist wants to prevent God from being the cause of evil. The Calvinist wants to preserve God’s transcendence and sing, “How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out” (Rom. 11:33); the Open Theist wants to preserve God’s immanence, to have a “high priest” who is able to “sympathize with our weaknesses” (Heb. 4:15). We could say, both positions are often argued for out of the best of intentions.

Since Scriptural support can be found for both (and both sides could easily appeal to the Holy Spirit to claim they’ve got it right!), I’m convinced that the majority of people fall down on one side of the spectrum or the other, in the end, because it is the position that provides them the greatest sense of security, hope, or sense of justice (that is, unless they just blindly accept one since its been taught them…). Actually, most people probably hold to the synthesis of the two positions (e.g., I know many professing Calvinists who sincerely believe in the power of prayer), not realizing that, to many philosophers and theologians, they are mutually exclusive. Ironically then, the nature of God’s emotions (or lack thereof) is decided on by emotion! One person finds security in a God who is cool in the face of evil and suffering and death because he is orchestrating it all and knows how it will pan out. Another finds security in a God who creates space for true human freedom. One finds refuge in God’s constancy; the other finds peace in a God who understands the roller coaster that constitutes human existence.

So I ask myself, thinking about the feeling of panic—an urgency that motivated me to action and was fueled with love and deep concern—I experienced when my child was choking, do I want a God who is sovereign but impassible in my time of need or a God who “panics” for the sake of his people? If God is Father, if I’m to learn how to be a good father by looking to the Father (there's another metaphor), what kind of God is helpful for me in this situation? How do I pray to a God who doesn’t understand the feeling of panic when his child is in danger—or can’t share with me in the delight of surprise, for that matter (just think about it, isn't the delight of surprise one of the greatest things about life?)?

On the other hand, the God I am now describing is starting to sound a little like Santa Claus, there at my beck and call, or at the very least, a tamed God who I can comprehend and fits within certain parameters and expectations (which is bordering on idolatry). Then again, the God of metaphysics is pretty tame (i.e., predictable).

With all these meandering ramblings, I end this post and return to my fussing child. I wonder how God feels about fussy children (he has lots of them!).