Professor John Stackhouse, Jr., is the Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of seven books, the most recent of which is Making the Best of it: Following Christ in the Real World (Oxford University Press, 2008). He is a senior advisory editor to Christianity Today and advisor to the Centre for Research on Canadian Evangelicalism. Editor-in-Chief and White Horse Inn host Michael Horton recently spoke with him on the topic of inclusivism.
Can you give a brief sketch of an evangelical or orthodox inclusivist and how that position differs from what traditionally has been understood?
Part of the problem here is that the term "inclusivism" is itself inclusive of several different theological points of view-most of which I myself disagree with as being insufficiently orthodox, and particularly as being insufficiently grounded in the finished work of Jesus Christ. There are, for instance, people who call themselves inclusivists who say that as long as you are faithfully practicing some other religion, God will count that in your favor. I don't think that's true.
Do you think that's a little closer to the position of Karl Rahner and the Second Vatican Council, for example?
Yes, I think there are some elements like that, and in some other thinkers as well who seem to think that sincerity of belief in at least a religion that we count as a good religion-and you can hear all those qualifications in the background, can't you?-is what God is looking for. I don't think that's true. I think God is looking for what the Bible calls faith: faith in the one true God, faith in God as he has revealed himself to us, as both holy and merciful, and trust in God to provide for us a salvation that we cannot earn for ourselves.
Evangelical inclusivists believe, with all of our orthodox friends, that the only basis on which anyone is saved is not whether they practice their religion correctly-you can't get saved by practicing even Christianity correctly. We believe we're saved by the work of God based on the finished work of Jesus Christ and his life and death and resurrection and continuing ministry for us, and we put our trust in him. Where we have a disagreement then is over the question: does somebody actually have to know about Jesus, do they have to have the gospel preached to them, in order for them to understand it and respond to it in faith? That's what most Christians over most of Christian history have believed. Or, is it possible that the Bible suggests that some people will have encountered the true God in their hearts by the Holy Spirit, will have been convicted of their need for God and have trusted him sincerely in their hearts, but have not yet heard about or encountered Jesus Christ by name? Those of us who are evangelical inclusivists suggest that that is a good way to understand the Bible.
What scriptural passages would you use to make that argument?
I think what we see partly is the theological expression of the gospel. What is the way in which any of us understand how we come to God? We come through faith, as Hebrews 11 tells us, that those who come to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently seek him. We connect that with Jesus' teaching that no one comes to him unless the Father draws him. We believe with all orthodox Christians that God's grace always has to come first-what theologians call prevenient grace-God draws us to himself; nobody would do that on their own without God's mercy. And, particularly, we look at Old Testament examples of people who have not apparently heard of Jesus and yet are held up to us as examples of faith-most obviously Abraham, but many others as well-who put their trust in God as far as their theology has advanced about God and who trust him for their salvation. And so they are, in terms of their knowledge, before the time of Jesus. And we wonder then whether there are people elsewhere in the world today who-even though they live chronologically after Jesus-are living before the message of Jesus has come to them, and might be in a position similar to Abraham or, more interestingly, Melchizedek, who is not of that same line of revelation and who also is identified as a priest of God Most High.
How would you respond to those who would say that the New Testament, especially Paul, interprets Abraham as looking forward to Christ, as the paradigm example of someone for whom Christ was the object of faith, even though that revelation wasn't as clearly revealed as it became in the New Testament? How would you respond to someone who said that's obviously different from the qualitative difference you have with someone who not only doesn't see Christ as fully as New Covenant believers, but really doesn't have Christ as the object of his or her faith?
I think that in the case of Abraham, even if we give Paul's views a pretty strong and broad interpretation, I don't know that most biblical scholars would think that Abraham actually had prophetic visions of the work of Jesus and actually saw him, so to speak, in the future as a clear historical figure. But even if he did, I don't think most of us would then go on to say that everybody in Israel had such a clear sense of Jesus, and that it seems much more likely that the children of Israel came to whatever salvation they enjoyed because of their trust in Yahweh, the one true God, and in following God's instructions to them.
Again, they didn't earn their salvation-the blood of bulls and goats can never atone for sins-but they put their trust in God somehow to save them. And my sense is that many people today-in non-Christian situations and even in some Christian homes and some Christian churches-are perverse in their teaching and awful in the way they treat one another. For instance, I think of abusive homes or groups of Christians with bad theology where we trust that the light of God's truth-and not just of God's truth in some propositional sense but the light of God's own character-that God's own person shines through by the power of the Holy Spirit such that people can truly encounter God and are given the gift of faith. That's the kind of viewpoint I'm suggesting here.
So you wouldn't see a qualitative difference between the faith of Abraham and, say, the faith of Mohammad?
Well, I don't know about the faith of Mohammad. What I do know is that Mohammad's theology was really bad; at least as we have it mediated to us in the Quran and the broader Islamic tradition. I could not presume from the outside to know whether Mohammad is going to end up in heaven or not; but frankly I find it difficult to believe that he will, given that he seems to have known quite a bit about the orthodox teaching of Jesus Christ and seems not to have taught it. So, my hope for Mohammad is pretty slender. I have to be honest about that. Whereas I think in the case of some Muslims around the world, who have been brought up in that erroneous tradition, nonetheless they learn some true things about God-that there is one God and that he is great and merciful. The testimony of many missionaries to the Muslim world tells us of people there who have realized that there is a true God in whom they can put their trust. And, frankly, many Muslim converts to Christianity don't believe that they're changing gods when they come to Christian faith; they believe that they have come to a much clearer understanding of the god they have previously worshipped-just as the apostle Paul didn't believe he switched gods but actually came to a much fuller understanding of the God he had always but erroneously served.
What about the biblical passages that speak of all of humanity being under God's judgment apart from faith in Christ, of salvation coming only to those who call on Christ's name, or of faith that comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ? What do you say to people who find it inconceivable that these passages could be interpreted in an inclusivist way?
Romans 10 is a fascinating study of Paul mixing and matching references to God in the Old Testament with references to Christ, isn't it? It seems to me then that it is not a helpful passage for the particular question we were discussing; namely, is there a necessity for people to hear about Christ or "just" about (the one, true) God? I submit that this passage so blends the two that there is no helpful way to tease them out for this debate.
Now, I don't want to over-read this. I think that the primary way God brings men and women, boys and girls to himself around the world is through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think that the normative Christian tradition has always said that and I think the Bible says that. Let no one take false hope from what I'm saying today, that there are many people who are going to be reconciled to God who have never heard the gospel preached. The standard practice of the church is to get out there and to preach the gospel, and we definitely should do that. I'm simply saying that in the case of the millions of people who have lived and died between the time of Jesus and their own time-who have never had a chance, apparently, to hear the gospel-I don't think we should write them off as necessarily lost. I'm suggesting that perhaps God in his mercy has spoken to them in the way in which they could hear according to the limited light they were given. And that seems to be what missionaries testify: as the gospel goes out, people encounter remote villages and individuals who have some vision or dream or inclination toward the true God. And here's the test: when they hear about Jesus Christ, do they recognize this as the true gospel about the true God? Mostly they do. If they don't, then they are turning aside from the only true God and their souls really are in peril.
So that's how you would interpret the Gospels? For example, the religious leaders who hear Jesus preach the gospel are responsible for what they hear, but they reject it, which is why Jesus says essentially that they are children of hell and that they will be condemned?
I think that's crucial for us. When people have the gospel preached to them, and here's the second qualifier-when they have truly heard it-then they are responsible for it. The reason I am putting the emphasis on the qualifier here is that, again, I have taught students who have come from terrible Christian homes for whom the actual message of the gospel is deeply intertwined with abusive parents or with irresponsible pastors, and so, for them, they can't yet separate out the wonderful Good News of Jesus from these terrible experiences. Now, God knows those things and God can separate out those things. But what I think we need to say is that the normal picture presented in Scripture is that when the gospel of Jesus Christ is preached, we are responsible to repent and to accept that message in faith; and if we don't, we are in peril.
In the opening argument of Romans 1-3, it seems that Paul is clearly laying out an argument from general revelation that it's law, not gospel. God exists, he's good, righteous, just, and angry with sin. All people are under the condemnation of the law, whether they have it written on their conscience or on tablets of stone, namely Gentiles and Jews together, and the only way out is through faith in Christ. And he says there, explicitly, through faith in Christ. How then would someone be able to respond to the light of nature in a saving way if the content of that faith is in fact not gospel but simply God as creator and judge?
There is no way to get there from here; there is no way to be saved on the basis of inference from what we think we see about God in nature. I agree with your reading of Paul there. I think it's interesting that you properly connect what Paul says about Gentiles with what Paul says about Jews. And if we read those chapters the wrong way, we'll come to not just Paul's wonderful and terrifying conclusion that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, but we'll come to the conclusion that everybody is condemned unless they have heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and responded to it, which is our context today.
But Paul doesn't mean that. Paul doesn't mean that nobody among the Jews was saved until his own generation. He believed, of course, that many faithful Jews had come before him who were saved by the work of Jesus Christ and by faith in the God of Jesus Christ. I think the better way to read Paul is that he is showing us that the only basis of salvation is neither the Gentile adherence to the light that they'd been given nor the Jewish adherence to the law that they'd been given, for all fall short of the glory of God, but through the saving work of Jesus Christ. We're all agreed on that. The question is, How is the benefit of that saving work mediated to two classes of people: first, to the people who lived chronologically before Jesus and didn't have a chance to respond to the good news of someone who didn't yet exist, at least not in the flesh; and, second, to those people who lived after Jesus, who are in cultures and societies where they are cut off from hearing that gospel? That's what we're talking about.
So the evangelical inclusivist position would say: we are saved by grace alone, in Christ alone, but not necessarily through faith in Christ alone?
That's right, with the particular phrase, "faith in Christ alone." We must have faith in God, and that he is-we believe because of the revelation given to us-the God and Father of Jesus Christ. And in that sense, it is faith in Jesus Christ, who is of course the only true God. But what we're saying is that although someone might not yet know the story of the historic character of Jesus Christ-that incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, that good news about his life and death, resurrection and ascension that occurred in Israel two thousand years ago-they may be able, nonetheless, to put their faith in the true God as he has revealed himself to them and to trust him to save them somehow.
I'm not sure how many of the Old Testament Israelites really believed that the sacrificial system could save them. I expect a lot of them did. But their own prophets were telling them that this really won't do. There was this tension in the Old Testament as to how the blood of bulls and goats could ever take away sin. There must be something else, and this something else, of course, is Jesus. I think that same apprehension, by God's mercy, shows up in some other cultures where people think: "There's no way that sacrificing to this idol or practicing this religion can possibly do for me what needs to be done." All over the world, people have the sense that they need to be saved: they can't just be good Buddhists or good Hindus on their own. And so, they come up with gods to try to save them. I think there is this divinely given instinct that we need a savior. Only God knows if people are then reaching back to him sincerely in their hearts, toward the only God who can save.
So if they call on one of these other "gods" or even an assembly of "gods" for salvation, are you saying that as long as they realize that they can't save themselves and they're looking to a god to save them, that is an inchoate calling upon the name of Jesus?
It might be, but it also might not be. I'm a big C. S. Lewis fan, but I think one of the least helpful passages in Lewis's writings comes from the final book of The Chronicles of Narnia where we have Emeth, the hero from the side of the bad guys, the Calormenes. His name means "truth," but he has faithfully served the god Tash, the almost satanic figure of the Calormenes. At the end of the story, Aslan, the Christ figure, welcomes Emeth and says, "All the good that you rendered toward Tash, I am happy to accept myself." I think Lewis sets things up in a way so problematic that I just have to disavow it; I think it's wrong. Because the way he depicts the god Tash is so satanic and dark, I don't see how you can get to Aslan that way. I'm not talking about theological fuzziness; I'm talking about theological flat contradictions here, where Tash is pictured quite clearly as antichrist. It would be like worshipping Kali in the Hindu pantheon. So I don't think that sincerely believing in some particular god is going to necessarily be accepted by Yahweh as proper. In fact, throughout the Old Testament, Yahweh is pretty severe about the worship of other gods. Instead, I think we have to have a situation in which the only true God makes himself known to people somehow through their hearts such that although they have fuzzy theology, they put their trust in him. I think that is extremely difficult to do in some religious contexts, which is why God has to resort to visions or dreams rather than through the established religion, because the established religion is so far away from Christian truth that there is no way to get home by way of that religion.
So if anyone is saved in other religions, it will be in spite of the teachings of that religion rather than through those teachings?
I agree with that and the only qualification, I'd say, is that I think in most religions there is something that is probably true in some ways. It would be hard to imagine a totally false religion that got everything wrong, that would actually have any adherents. But they will not be generally saved in any religious structure that presents the gods or god in a way that is deeply different from the God of the Bible. I don't see how that could happen. So, if in the case of some religions, there is a kind, good, strong, provident, and merciful God such as we see, for instance, in Vishnu of Hinduism or in Allah in some forms of Islam, then I could imagine our true God speaking through those pictures to somebody who is otherwise not going to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, drawing them toward himself through that confused but somewhat accurate theology. But you hear all the qualifications I'm putting on. The fundamental bottom line here is: are they apprehending the true God by God's gracious intervention in their lives, and are they responding with the gift of faith that God alone gives? I can imagine that happening in the case of people with fuzzy theology; but we need to get the gospel to them as soon as possible so they're not groping around in the dark, and so they can get to know the Jesus Christ we know and love.
