Is there saving grace for those who do not profess faith in Jesus Christ?
Rev. Dr. Malcolm Brownlee
Interim Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Beckley, WV.
Must persons explicitly confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior if they are to be saved by God? There is confusion and disagreement among American Christians about the answer to this question, especially when it is raised most often concerning the relationship between Christianity and other religions. The Presbyterian Panel reports that a third of the members of Presbyterian (U.S.A.) churches “strongly agree (5%) or agree (28%) that ‘all the different religions are equally good ways of helping a person find ultimate truth.’ ... Around four in ten members and elders strongly disagree or disagree, with the remainder unsure.”
The question also arises at times of death. People are concerned about what it takes to get their loved one into heaven. Is there a pastor who has not received a request like this one: “Preacher, my cousin Joe is getting close to the end, and we don’t think he’s ever accepted Christ as Lord. Would you go by and talk to him about it?” Somebody may tell us as we prepare our funeral message that we may want to know that “Before she died, Susie told Bill that she trusted God and wasn’t worried about a thing.” On the other hand we have also been told,” Maybe Mary wasn’t religious and never went to church, but she believed in God and was always helping people. If anybody ever went to heaven, she did.”
It is customary to divide approaches to this question into three main categories: pluralism, inclusivism, and exclusivism. I propose a typology that makes additional distinctions that I believe useful. I distinguish two kinds of pluralism: one that looks for commonality among religions, and another that glories in diversity. More important, I replace the category of exclusivism with the category of particularism. This enables me to distinguish between a closed particularism, that believes explicit faith in Christ is necessary for salvation, and an open particularism, that contends salvation is not possible apart from the work of Christ, yet remains agnostic about the necessity of explicit faith in Christ.
Pluralism assumes many paths to salvation. While Christians are saved by their belief in Christ, others find enlightenment, liberation, renewal, union with the divine, and moral strength in other religions. There are two broad streams within pluralism. The first is common-core pluralism, which tries to discover the common beliefs, practices, and concerns of followers of different religions despite their differences. Such pluralism de-emphasizes specific, concrete elements that distinguish the religions, focusing instead on the general themes uniting them.
For example, John Hick defines salvation “as an actual human change, a gradual transformation from natural self-centeredness to a radically new orientation centered in God and manifested in the ‘fruit of the Spirit.’” Therefore, Hick is able to affirm “that salvation is taking place within all the world religions — and taking place, so far as we can tell, to more or less the same extent.” He believes that all religions are human responses to the Real (his term for God) and sees Christology as an obstacle to religious unity. He urges Christians to exchange the view that Jesus was God incarnate for a belief that Jesus embodied the moral attributes of God and thus “made God real to us” in the fashion of other religious leaders.
A second stream of pluralism may be termed “diversity-is good” pluralism. This view does not seek unity among different beliefs. Rather, it celebrates the differences among people, and believes that truth is a mosaic comprised of insights from a variety of understandings. Various religions provide different perspectives on the same reality, like the six blind Indians who touched the same elephant and (depending on the part they touched) called it a rope, a tree, a wall, a sword, a snake, and a fan. In this vein, Paul F. Knitter writes: “The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist a Christian. But each must assimilate the others and yet preserve its individuality and grow according to its own law of growth.”
This is not the place to discuss all the difficulties inherent in pluralism. One stands out, however: the pluralist focus upon human knowledge and morality rather than upon the grace of God. The metaphor often used for the pluralist view of religions is that of many paths going up a mountain. People climb the mountain along the paths of their different religions to reach “God” at the top. In the Christian view, however, salvation is achieved not by the efforts of people to reach God, but by God reaching out to people. “Christian faith is, in the final analysis, not about our going to God, but about God’s coming to us in Christ. Christian faith is not about discovering God; it is the experience of having been found, despite our resistance and rebellion, by a God in search of us.”
Inclusivism, the second major approach to this question, holds that Christianity is the fulfillment of other religions in much the same way that the New Testament fulfills the Old Testament. Just as Old Testament persons were justified by a faith that awaited its fulfillment in Christ, followers of other religions are saved by the work of Christ even though they have not yet confessed their faith in him. Inclusivism goes beyond the conviction that non-Christians can be saved, holding further that non-Christian religions are to some extent inspired by the Holy Spirit and are used by God as a means of grace to bring people to saving faith. Faithful adherents of non-Christian religions can thus be regarded as “anonymous Christians” (Karl Rahner’s term) or “pagan saints” (Clark H. Pinnock’s term). They may be saved by their Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, or other faith, even though the person who accepts Christ “has a better chance of being saved.”
Inclusivism is correct in recognizing truth, beauty, and righteousness — wherever they are found — as products of God’s grace. When such graces appear in other religions, we should give thanks to God. In the end, however, this view makes the grace of God in Jesus Christ unnecessary. It is true that the life and death of Christ are seen as the ultimate expression of grace, but nothing Christ did is necessary for salvation. Even if Christ had never lived, there would be enough evidence of God’s goodness and God’s will for people to believe in God sufficiently to be saved.
Making Christianity the fulfillment of other religions fails to honor their distinctiveness. Each religion must be understood on its own terms, some of which are compatible with Christian belief, but others of which are incompatible. For adherents of other faiths, following Christ sometimes means an affirmation, a broadening or an invigoration of cherished traditions, but often it entails the surrender of such traditions.
Particularism, the third major approach, holds that apart from Christ’s work there is no salvation. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. Having affirmed this foundational conviction, I want to distinguish between a closed particularism which holds that no one is saved apart from explicit faith in Jesus Christ, and an open particularism which holds that no one is saved apart from the work of Christ but which acknowledges the possibility of salvation without faith in Christ.
Closed particularism, usually called exclusivism, holds that all who do not accept Jesus as Lord and Savior are lost forever. Christianity is the only true religion; all others are false. Any elements of truth in them are subterfuges that hide their demonic effects. This approach is buttressed by numerous texts from Scripture; for example: “There is salvation in no one else (but Jesus Christ), for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:5-6).
Though the texts used speak of the centrality of Christ, exclusivists talk more about the superiority of Christianity as a religion. According to exclusivists, Christian belief and practice and membership in the church form the only path to true life in this world and eternal life in the world to come. Confessing faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior becomes a work — often the work — that wins a person’s salvation.
This approach fails to acknowledge the abundant evidence of God’s grace outside the Christian Church. How can we overlook spiritual fruit in the lives of many men and women who follow non-Christian religions, or who have no affiliation with any organized religion? Don’t all of us have non-Christian friends whom we admire?
Evidence of God’s presence can be seen also in cultures outside traditional Christendom. When the Bible is translated into the languages of non-Christian people, translators have almost always used that culture’s word for “God.” Missionaries have judged that to start with the partly right, partly wrong ideas that people have about God is better than to use foreign words such as theos or Yahweh.
With adherents of other religions and typical American non-church-goers alike, effective evangelism helps hearers recognize that God has already had an important place in their lives, and points them to good evidence to support such a claim. Paul uses this method in Athens by noting the inscription “to an unknown God,” and continuing, “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23). The doctrine of prevenient grace teaches that God’s work in the non-Christian begins long before the Christian evangelist arrives.
Open particularism holds that salvation is possible only because of the work of Jesus Christ. But it does not restrict the saving grace of God to those who profess explicit faith in Christ. It begins by affirming the necessity of the saving work of Christ. He is “the way, the truth, and the life.” No one comes into a saving relationship with God except through him. It is Christ’s “life, death, resurrection, ascension, and final return that restores creation, providing salvation for all whom God has chosen to redeem.”
Alongside this affirmation of the particularity of God’s redemptive work in Jesus Christ, this approach acknowledges the universality of “God’s wish that all people be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4). “God does not want anyone to perish, but wants everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). That God desires salvation for all does not mean, of course, that God effects salvation for all. Few open particularists adopt a universalistic route. Yet they cannot neglect the Biblical witness to a God of grace and mercy who reaches out to every creature. Our own experience of salvation witnesses not to the merit of our saving faith, but to the power of God’s saving grace that overcomes our resistance and indifference, and to our undeserved privilege in having received an effective witness to the gospel. Therefore the church “must confess that it does not know the limits of God’s grace. We cannot be certain that God will not impart saving faith in Christ, even perhaps where his name is not explicitly known.”
Open particularism makes a distinction between the work of Christ and the Christian religion. We do not proclaim the superiority of Christianity, but rather the good news of Jesus Christ. Karl Barth wrote, “The statement that Jesus Christ is the one Word of God has nothing to do with the arbitrary exaltation and glorification of the Christian in relation to other people, of the church in relation to other institutions, or of Christianity in relation to other conceptions.” The church is neither the possessor of salvation nor the fulfillment of what others experience only partially. The church is called to be the sign and firstfruit of God’s salvation, but it can fulfill that role only as it experiences the judgment, grace and transforming power of God. It witnesses both to its own weakness and to the strength it receives from God.
Open particularism is broader than exclusivist particularism not only in its view of who can be saved, but also in its appreciation for the expansive productivity of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. The effects of God’s life-giving work can be seen throughout God’s creation, among Christians but also among people of other religions and of no religion. In Jesus Christ we see God’s love reaching out not just to Christian believers, but also to every creature. Christ is the expression of God’s love not just to faithful church members, but also to nominal Christians who never go inside a church except at funerals and weddings. “He came not to condemn, defeat and lord it over those who rejected him but to give his life for them, to restore to them their lost humanity and to reconcile them to God and their fellow human beings.” He is Lord over the whole world, the “risen Lord who continues his healing, reconciling, liberating work everywhere in the world.” The Holy Spirit “blows where it wills,” not only in the church “but is loose in the world to create not only new Christians but a whole new humanity.”
The belief that God is guiding non-Christians and revealing truth to them positions Christians to learn from other religions. Because non-Christians lack crucial knowledge about Jesus, which is determinative for the salvation of the world, we have something important to share with them. But persons of other faiths also can share with us. The Crucified One is Lord lists several ways Christians can learn from others. First, “Sometimes other religions challenge us to embrace more deeply the implications of our own faith.” Their discipline of prayer or their challenge to our materialism may call us to become more deeply Christian. Second, “Other religions may also teach us fresh wisdom that is entirely in keeping with the gospel of Christ” — for example, meditative techniques, art forms, or patterns of worship which enhance Christian devotion to God. Third, we encounter persons whom God calls us to love, and in loving them and being loved by them we appreciate their differences and see how God has touched them.
Most open particularists are “agnostic” about the possibility of salvation for those who do not explicitly accept Jesus Christ as their Savior. According to Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ, written by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Office of Theology and Worship, “No one is saved apart from God’s redemption in Jesus Christ. Yet we do not presume to limit the sovereign freedom of God . . . Thus, we can neither restrict the grace of Jesus Christ to those who profess explicit faith in Christ nor assume that all people are saved regardless of faith. Grace, love and communion belong to God, and are not ours to determine.” W. A. Visser’t Hooft wrote, “I don’t know whether a Hindu is saved: I only know that salvation comes in Jesus Christ.”
This “agnosticism” may be unsatisfying for those who wish to leave no question unanswered. Hans Küng and other Catholic theologians have criticized it as being irresponsibly neutral. It is, however, in harmony with the attitude of humility that Jesus commanded in discussions about the reach of salvation. Repeatedly, he cautioned against judging, that is, thinking that we know God’s judgments. Jesus’ parables and other statements about the last day are full of surprises and reversals. “Reformed theology has always taught that salvation is ultimately in God’s hands, beyond the pale of human understanding.” According to John Calvin, “We must leave to God alone the knowledge of his church, whose foundation is his secret election.”
If we hold this view, part of what we say about the salvation of non-Christians involves what we believe about grace, predestination, and human responsibility. On the one hand, God desires the salvation of all persons, and is working to bring them life in all its fullness before and after their deaths. Therefore we will desire their salvation. We will desire with all our hearts that somehow God will be able to bring about God’s purpose for their lives. On the other hand, some people set themselves in opposition to God in a way that brings God’s judgment upon them, and blocks God’s redemptive purpose for them. All this is true of non-Christians and Christians alike.
Such wrestling with the relation of grace, predestination, and human responsibility still leaves unanswered the question whether explicit faith in Christ is necessary for salvation. Most open particularists are “optimistic agnostics” about this question. We believe the answer is known to God alone. Yet what we know about the power of God’s work in Christ and about God’s love for sinners — especially God’s love for us in our sin — makes it difficult for us to believe that God will not find a way to reconcile even those who hear the gospel and reject it. It is even harder for us to believe that God will not find a way to save those who have never heard the gospel proclaimed faithfully.
The admission that we do not know the limits to God’s wondrous grace does not lessen the joyous responsibility of Christians to share the good news of Christ with others. To be a Christian is to be claimed by Christ, to know that we are loved by God, and to be called by God to a life of purposeful service. To withhold this knowledge is to be indifferent to the needs of others. As Christians we are entrusted with the biblical story of God’s way in the world, and especially with the good news of Jesus. We must tell that good news to others — not because we do not respect them, but because we love them. Many non-Christians may be better, godlier persons than we are; but we are the ones who have been called to share the story. We are to share it humbly, without coercion, trusting the Holy Spirit to use it to touch the hearts of those to whom we speak.
Salvation means much more than a ticket to heaven. It is a change of allegiance by which Christ becomes the Lord of our lives. To speak of salvation without repentance, personal cleansing, freedom in the Spirit, renewal, reconciliation and calling is to speak of an empty salvation, foreign to Biblical thinking. Christian salvation is both more demanding and fuller of joy and purpose than a salvation whose focus is otherworldly.
The salvation of individuals is part of Christ’s cosmic salvation. He came proclaiming that the kingdom of God is at hand. He believed that God’s saving purpose for the world would be accomplished by his ministry. Through his life, death, and resurrection the powers of evil were defeated decisively, though their final demise will not be accomplished till he comes again at the end of history. The salvation of anyone, Christian or not, would be impossible if Christ had not already changed the structures of creation — including political and social structures — and if in the eschaton he were not to complete God’s work and to subject the hostile powers under his feet. To be saved is to cooperate with God in that cosmic work of salvation. It means becoming an active participant in God’s plan for our own lives and for the whole creation.
Bibliography
________. The Crucified One Is Lord, Reformed Church in America Commission on Theology, published by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Theology and Worship. Louisville: Congregational Ministries Publishing. 2000.
________. Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. Louisville: Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Office of Theology and Worship, 2002.
David J. Bosch. Transforming Mission. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1991. (Especially pp 474-489)
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion. Library of Christian Classics, ed. John McNeill, tr. Ford Lewis Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960.
Shirley C. Guthrie. Always Being Reformed. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press. 1996.
Lesslie Newbigin. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1989.
________. The Open Secret. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1978. (Especially pp 181-214)
Dennis Okholm and Phillips, Timothy R., eds. Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Books, 1995.
