I have a certain propensity to want to know who is in the kingdom of God and who is not. I don’t know where this comes from. Well…maybe I do. You see in the type of Christianity I was raised with, there were good deeds, which didn’t get you into heaven, and then there were good deeds that were a consequence of your faith in Jesus. The former was meaningless and the latter was meaningful. I like to think about this in terms of epistemology and ontology. You can do ontology, but if it doesn’t have the right epistemology associated with it, it was deemed worthless.
Consequently a critical tenet to the Christianity I grew up with, was that you didn’t get to heaven by being a good person. This was important because it gave us something to start our proselytizing with. The problem with me these day is that though we have our John 14:6’s the verse that my growing up brand of Christianity puts on banners and never lets you forget about, we also have and I think a substantial amount more of the gospel given to verses like Matthew 7:21. Here the issues seems to be that those who think they have correct epistemic notions about Christ, haven’t done will of the Father, what we might take to be correct ontology.
So who is in and who is out?
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9 comments:
I'm in
-k-dog
I'm also in
Ditto. In.
Oh, and by the way... missed y'all tonight, but we totally understand.
I tell you all the time about how excited I am that Roy is so close, and I mean it. It's one of the few things I think about these days.
I have been thinking about this a little bit this last year just realizing that the framework of belief that has been set in evangelical Christianity does not fit what is found in the text. There is a sense in which living in the tension of God being bigger than us which provides a problem in a place where our personal freedom is so highly touted. I am learning to try to speak truth where I can and realize that I am never in charge of boundaries. When did Peter convert? Or Paul? Are they IN?
i'm in, because we are all in. god is that good.
I'm in but I'm NOT giving up cigarettes or "R" rated movies. Neeners!
Josh,
I'm not trained in religious thought or scripture, by any means. So, I'm definitely out of my field here. But, if the acts that get us into Heaven must necessarily be derived from our faith in God, where does that leave the 5 billion around the world who aren't Christians? Shouldn't there be a place for Buddhist and Hindu folks who live spiritual lives, but do not worship or believe in the same God? I asked that question to my local pastor when I was in high school and he told me that unless they convert and give themselves to Jesus, there is no place for them in Heaven. I found that to be a very self-righteous and unattractive feature of Christian doctrine. Any thoughts?
Tim
Tim your question is a good, and one that I hope my posts indicates I share with you. One solution is that of C.S. Lewis, John Wesley and more recently Clark Pinnock who suggests what has popularly become known as inclusivism. To use the language I used in the post, they suggest that Jesus is ontologically necessary for salvation, but not epistemologically. That is no one is saved without the blood of Jesus, but some may be saved by Jesus without having explicit knowledge of who Jesus is.
Take for example Cornelius in Acts 10. He seems to be getting it right ontologically, but yet in the mission of God epistemology is important, and so God sends Peter to tell Cornelius the narrative of the story he is already participating in. Would Cornelius be in had Peter never made it there to tell him the good news? I hope so.
I would probably throw myself into this “inclusivist camp.” Yet of late I find myself to be more agnostic towards the question. I think the big relief is that the Biblical narrative encourages us not to make these sort of judgments about who is in and who is out, only to live the kingdom life and hope that our countercultural living brings others into kingdom participation along with us. We are to I suppose, let God decide who is in and who is out.
The Catholic Church says that it is a heresy to teach universalism, but not to hope for it. I probably fall here. I hope this helps.
Carney
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