Posted on

Salvation: For Christians Only? (Part Two of Three)

We ended part two by noting that the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Love, according to the Bible. We also noted that Paul himself refers to God as the savior of all men and especially those who believe, but not exclusively or only those who believe, making it rather difficult to suggest that the God of the Christian Bible is a God only interested in allowing Christians into His kingdom. But if this is so then why does Christ Himself say in the scriptures that “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6)? And if explicit acceptance of Christ as Lord and savior does not constitute the fundamental prerequisite for human salvation, what, Biblically speaking, does?

First, let me preempt a criticism someone would be sure to level at me. “There is no way Christ can be Lord and savior,” I know many think, “if He is not the only way to salvation.” Indeed. But in saying that non-Christians may be saved I’m not saying that all religions are equal, nor that one may find salvation through Buddha or Muhammad, etc. Yes, I do believe that many great spiritual teachers have contributed mightily to the goodness of the world and have served God in their own ways. But I believe in Jesus Christ, not only as my personal Lord and savior, but as that of the world. Yet when I say this I am not speaking with simple religiosity as many Christians do, but rather I am speaking of spiritual truths which, incidentally, is the manner in which the Word of God speaks.  In this vein there is an absolute standard for salvation which the Bible lays out, the meeting or missing of which determines where all of us will spend eternity. That standard is whether or not we accept within us the very Spirit of love itself: God’s Holy Spirit.

Prominent atheist author and intellectual Sam Harris made a documentary that focused largely on the claim that Jesus suggests all atheists (and virtually all non-Christians, though I suppose that using his logic most Jews would be exempt, a thing that apparently did not register to him ) are going to Hell. In it he seizes upon one passage to make his point, but interestingly that passage is not John 14:6. It is in fact Matthew 12:31,32, which is the very passage I see as underlying the Biblical truth that all people who are born of love (regardless of religion) are ultimately saved. How could two people have such radically divergent interpretations of the same words? Well the truth is, many Christians would probably agree with Sam Harris’s interpretation of Matthew 12 over mine. Nonetheless, they are all wrong. Jesus’s words here are as follows:

“Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.” (Matthew 12:31, 32)

What did Jesus mean when He said these words? Sam Harris took these words as meaning that all those who did not believe in the existence of the Holy Spirit would be cast into Hell. This was the basis of his argument with respect to the unjust premise of Christ’s teachings. But in truth, these words in the gospel of Matthew have nothing to do with accepting or rejecting the existence of the Holy Spirit. I wish Mr. Harris had consulted a few more Christians before publicizing this argument because context is key here, and Jesus is not here nor is He anywhere else in the scriptures conversing with atheists. (The subject of atheism is in fact only rarely addressed in scripture, for there were even fewer atheists then than there are now.) Jesus is instead speaking with the Pharisees (the Pharisees represented a sect of Judaism), men who obviously believed in the existence of the Holy Spirit (the Old Testament does mention the Holy Spirit several times). Just prior to these words of Christ, he was seen by these Pharisees and others healing a man who was blind and mute of his afflictions, allowing him to both see and speak. Upon seeing this, these Pharisees who were enemies of Christ charged him with acting on behalf of Beelzebub (Satan), of using the devil’s power to heal the sick and the lame. But Jesus was using the Spirit of God’s love, His Holy Spirit, to work His miracles. Therefore, in saying that those who speak against the Spirit are not forgiven, what He means is that it is those who identify the Spirit of love and call it evil who are truly evil, and it is these and these alone who are damned. So then does Christ say in the gospel of John that “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” (John 3:18).

So it is that those who speak against the Spirit of love itself are damned from the beginning because they have a nature which rejects the Spirit of God. But wait, doesn’t this mean that those who do not believe in Christ are condemned already? Only in the spiritual sense, which is the only relevant sense. For we have already heard Jesus say that those who speak against Him are forgiven, and surely one cannot both believe in Christ and speak against Him. Hence by Christ’s own words we understand that speaking against Jesus is not in and of itself a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, though He be one with God. So then does Jesus clarify the nature of the ultimate transgression in the following verse in John, which is not that one has not believed in Christ, but rather “that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” (john 3:19). Of those who do not believe in Christ, there are those who do not understand His place under God nor His divinity. These, if they do not blasphemy the Spirit of love, of God’s love, will be forgiven. Then there are those who understand Christ’s goodness, and reject it precisely because they in their hearts reject that which is good. It is these who will not know forgiveness. For as the gospel of John says, those who believe in Christ will receive the Holy Spirit. But it is the Spirit Himself Whom Christ (being born of the Holy Spirit as the physical manifestation of such) identifies as being solely critical to the salvation of a man’s soul. Not that Christ and the Holy Spirit are separate, of course, in New Testament theology. They are one. To accept the Holy Spirit in one’s heart therefore is indeed to accept Christ, whether one ever achieves an adequate scriptural understanding of Jesus or not (something the large majority of Christians never have and never will. Through most of the history of Christianity the vast majority of Christians could not even read the Bible). When Christ said that He was the only way, therefore, He was again speaking of the Holy Spirit with Whom He was One. He was not speaking of Himself as a Man, but as a vessel of the Spirit and a servant of God the Father whose will alone, not Christ’s will (understanding of course that Jesus’s authority only derives from His oneness with God) is sufficient to deliver one into the Holy Spirit and into salvation. Why else would Jesus say what He said in Matthew? Why else would He speak these words in John?

Then Jesus cried out and said, “He who believes in Me, believes not in Me but in Him who sent Me. And he who sees Me sees Him who sent Me. I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness. And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.” (John 12:44-47)

So it turns out that God is just. Why should anyone be surprised?…

Posted on

Salvation: For Christians Only? (Part One of Three)

We live in a majority Christian nation (83 percent of Americans, according to a recent ABC News poll, identify themselves as Christian) and studies show that African-Americans constitute the most religiously adherent subgroup of America’s very large Christian majority. As such religious and perhaps more particularly theological issues carry great importance in our Christian community generally and the African-American Christian community in particular. There is no shortage of controversial topics of discussion relating to Christian beliefs, what the Bible really says and what it actually means. But the most important, I would argue, is the question regarding that which constitutes salvation and, specifically, whether or not non-Christians can be saved. Because in a very real way, the way in which a Christian answers this question indicates the vast trend of all the rest of her or his spiritual and theological thinking.

My firm opinion is that non-Christians can, and often are, saved. It is a controversial point of view within the church but one that I imagine a significant portion of worshipers white, black and otherwise in this country yet share, whether minority or majority however I’m not sure. Socially conservative evangelical Christians however are among all other Christian groups least likely to believe that salvation is available to those who do not accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior and these represent the single largest group of Christian believers in this country, whether white or black, so the view that non-Christians cannot be saved should probably be regarded as, both historically and contemporaneously, the dominant view. It’s entrenched, supposed obviousness gives it quite a convincing advantage in religious debates on the subject, and while I’m always heartened to hear the likes of professor Cornell West and professor/minister Michael Eric Dyson (both of whom I have precious little in common with politically but whose personal philosophies I find much to admire in) opine on this matter in the direction of God’s limitless love and forgiveness for all his righteous children, I’m often a little embarrassed by the inability of proponents of this point of view to deliver a sound theological argument for it’s merits, rather than retreating to extra-biblical platitudes which can be of very limited persuasiveness to those who are more religiously conservative and those who are rooted in the technical substance of the Word. (I squirmed to watch popular and fashionable pastor Rob Bell, author of the book Love Wins, being interrogated like a guilty child by MSNBC’s Martin Bashir for seeking to manipulate the Bible into being  “palatable,” to a modern audience, never managing to give a solid scriptural response for his position.) The truth is however that it is the traditional point of view regarding the accessibility of salvation that is so clearly weak from a scriptural perspective. It is time for those of us who take the word of God seriously to explain why.

I could call upon many passages in the Bible to support the idea that salvation goes to all righteous people, and I will, but in truth I only need call upon one verse to make this clear for in fact it is stated quite explicitly. For Paul writes to his junior in ministry, Timothy, the following saying “For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe.” (1rst Timothy 4:10). Now Paul says quite clearly that God is the savior of all men, especially those who believe, in saying so he is quite clearly not saying that God is exclusively the savior of all men who believe, for that would render his words non-nonsensical. I do think there is some context to be taken into account here, inasmuch as I do not believe that Paul means to suggest that un-Godly people are saved by God. (I do feel strongly that there is a Hell to which evil people go for eternity, thus disqualifying me really as a liberal theologian.) But it is clear that God can be and often is the savior of non-believers. Of course, those who believe otherwise who are aware of this blatant statement hidden in the many under-perused passages of scripture will argue, as a friend of mine did to me once, that what Paul meant was that God had prepared salvation for all in the same way a person might prepare a meal for many, but that just as many who were invited might not show up for that meal, so will many not believe in the Christ who has offered them salvation. A worthy attempt at a rationalization, I think, but woefully unconvincing simply because the analogy so misunderstands the statement. Paul does not say that God has prepared to save all but has not, in the way that a mother might prepare to feed all her children but is unable to. Paul says that God has and will save all, as a parent who has and will feed all his or her children. There is no other way to interpret this without betraying what it is the Word says.

But this is just the first step in unwrapping the paper tiger that is the unbiblical, mostly conservative Christian belief in Christian-only salvation. For if Paul means what he says, then we still have to consider what it is Jesus means when He says “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6) and others like it. The true meaning of this verse reveals the true spiritual message of Christianity that we will expound upon in the second and third segments of this series, one which stands in such stark opposition to Christianity in it’s typical, religiously oriented conception.

The spiritual root of the scriptural message is contained in the oft-cited words of the apostle John, who wrote: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1rst John 4:7, 8). Notice that John says that everybody who loves is born of God, making no distinction between believer and non-believer. But the more relevant point in these words for our purposes are in the simple phrase “God is love.” Those of you who have a decent command of the scriptures probably recall Jesus informing the disciples that “God is Spirit.” God is not a man like deity in the clouds, but an omnipotent spiritual force and the essence and nature of that force, John reveals, is love. The Holy Spirit therefore, the Spirit of God, is itself the Spirit of love. Only in understanding this can we truly begin to understand the Bible…

Posted on

What’s Faith Got To Do With It?

Faith is defined as,  “a strong belief in God or the doctrine of a religion”. I am no expert on faith, or on marriage, but I know traditionally faith has played a significant role in marriage. Couples vowed to stay together until death do them part or fear the wrath of God. These marriages lasted decades. A lot has changed since then. Which begs the question:

As people lose faith in God, will they also lose faith in marriage?