Molinism, the Unevangelized, and Cultural Chauvinism
1
ON THE AFTERLIFE, HELL, AND THE UNEVANGELIZED
On a Molinist View of Sovereignty, Hell, and Salvation
Dear Dr. Craig,
In your debate with Bradley on hell,1 you allude to the possibility of individual “S” being saved in one feasible world, but not another—even that you yourself might not have been saved had God placed you in Nazi Germany or some other set of circumstances. Ultimately, given middle knowledge, it seems to become somewhat arbitrary (or predetermined) that God afforded me the appropriate circumstances to come under saving grace, but not my friend “S” while knowing all along that “S” would have been saved had he been born elsewhere or at a different time in history while I, or you, would not have been saved had God varied the circumstances in any number of ways.
Note, despite the notion of compossibility where the variable influence of rearranging individuals in feasible worlds changes things to some degree, we are left with nothing more than God deciding on some so-called optimal feasible world with the best balance of saved and damned. Of course, that is merely a numbers game. There is still the possibility of the feasible 10 person world where all might be saved, but so few overall, or a world with just a few more saved than the actual world, even if just that many more damned? God had to make a cut at some level of relatively more good and evil, saved and damned.
I’ve always felt God yearned equally for all individuals, the notion of leaving even the 99 for the one. Middle knowledge solved the problem of someone receiving less than their fair share of info assuming God knew they would not have responded had they heard it. But, if I would have been damned in feasible world #2 for God (which He did not create and which had 10 more folks than the actual), but my friend “S” would have been saved, then there is nothing unique about me that affords the true libertarian freedom to enjoy saving grace.
That brings me to the final question. What then is different or unique about each soul placed into a body, time, and set of circumstances? Are all souls equivalent and then the circumstances take over, or does God create (you favor soul creation ex nihilo, as do I, not Oregon-ism or Traducianism) souls with unique properties, intrinsic or otherwise? It amounts to God’s putting in certain soul qualities—plus or minus—coupled to a certain body, time, and set of circumstances, all of which equal whether in that situation any given individual would be saved. Had I been born better looking or more athletic, given the same intrinsic soul, perhaps I would have gone astray. Basically, I feel lucky, and as we often say in surgery, “better lucky than good”, though I’ve always disliked that statement. Any thoughts on how to reconcile these things would be appreciated.
Sincerely,
Kevin
United States
Dr. Craig’s Response
The question you’re raising, Kevin, concerns God’s sovereignty with respect to election of the saved. Molinism, like Calvinism, has a very strong doctrine of divine sovereignty but differs in that it also affirms libertarian freedom.
The Calvinist thinks that God unilaterally elects and causally determines who will be saved. The Molinist also affirms God’s sovereign election of the saved but denies that people are causally determined by God to respond to His grace. Rather, God’s saving grace is extended to every human being with the desire that he respond freely to it and be saved but with the knowledge that certain persons will freely reject God’s grace and so damn themselves, contrary to God’s perfect will. People in any possible world freely determine their own destiny by how they respond to God’s saving grace, but it is God who decides which possible world to actualize. He doesn’t simply “roll the dice” to see which world comes up (a gamble that might prove disastrous). Rather, He sovereignly chooses a world. As one French Molinist nicely put it, “It is up to God whether I find myself in a world in which I am predestined; but it is up to me whether I am predestined in the world in which I find myself.”2
It’s sobering to think that had God chosen some other world, I might have been born in Nazi Germany and become a member of the Hitler Youth Corps or been born in Afghanistan and joined the Taliban. Not that I would have been determined to do those things; but I would have perhaps freely chosen to do those things under those circumstances. Whether you’re a theist or an atheist, we all face the realization that had circumstances been different, we might have been guilty of all sorts of horrors. Philosophers sometimes refer to this as “moral luck.” Calvinists and Molinists attribute moral luck ultimately to God’s free and sovereign choice. Lucky for you, God chose a world in which you were born in the USA; Heinrich was not so lucky.
The great thing is that on Molinism, God loves Heinrich just as much as He loves you and so accords him sufficient grace for salvation and seeks to draw him to Himself. Indeed, God may have known that through the guilt and shame of what Heinrich did under the Third Reich, he would eventually come to repent and find salvation and eternal life. Paradoxically, being a Nazi may have been the best thing that happened to Heinrich, since it led to his salvation. Of course, one may wonder about those poor people who suffered in the death camps because of Heinrich. But God has a plan for their lives, too, that includes their salvation and He accords them, like Heinrich, sufficient grace for salvation. Moreover, He knows what impact these events will have upon their children’s lives and their children’s children’s lives and the lives of those with whom they come into contact. You can see that in no time we spiral into a complexity that only an infinite mind could encompass.
I’ve suggested, based on my reading of the New Testament, that God would choose a world having an overall optimal balance between saved and lost. This is far from just a numbers game. God wants as many people as possible to be freely saved and as few as possible to be freely damned. It’s possible that the actual world is such a world. God wills the salvation of every person He creates and accords to each one sufficient grace for salvation. Whether they are saved or damned is up to them.
Of course, there is the sobering thought once more that had I been created under different circumstances then perhaps I would have freely rejected God’s grace and been damned. But I see no problem in saying that had God actualized a different world, then I or any other saved person would have freely rejected His grace and been damned. For since God has chosen to actualize this world, in which we are freely saved, that counterfactual truth is of no consequence. The more difficult question is whether there are persons who freely reject God’s grace and are damned but who would have freely been saved had God chosen to actualize some other world. On the one hand, that may just seem to be inevitable moral luck; the point remains that God strives to save them, and they freely spurn Him. They and they alone are responsible for their damnation.
But I have suggested that there is another possibility. Maybe God has so providentially ordered the world that all those who freely reject His grace and are lost are persons who would have freely rejected His grace under any circumstances and so been lost in any world feasible for God. We could say that such persons are trans-worldly damned. These would be incredibly reprobate people. If they do not appear so bad in this world, that may be because the actual world is one of the worlds in which they come closest to salvation, though in the end they freely thrust it from them. Thus, it’s possible that there just are no such people as “S,” as you’ve envisioned.
INSIGHT
Note Dr. Craig’s other possibility articulated in these paragraphs. What do you think? How might it be apropos (compared to the alternatives) to some of Kevin’s questions/objections? It seems that there is some intentional emphasis on Dr. Craig’s part to apply the insights of Molinism to this question in order to help Kevin see a context for his questions.
I don’t understand, Kevin, why you think such a view denies your uniqueness or your libertarian freedom. Quite the contrary, the view wouldn’t make sense without those elements. The idea is that God has selected a world containing just those persons in just those circumstances so as to maximize the number of those who would freely respond to His grace and be saved, while minimizing the number of those who would freely reject His grace and damn themselves and that, moreover, He has ensured that anyone in the world who would under any circumstances be freely saved is freely saved. You can’t do any better than that!
Does Creation Benefit the Lost?
Dear Dr. Craig,
Although I’m an atheist, I have a deep respect for you and other Christian philosophers, and I must thank you personally for forcing me to abandon my position of arrogant atheism (that of Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris) and adopt the position of friendly atheism. It was a major revelation to me that someone defending Christianity could sound so rational, and even beat atheists in debates. (For the record, I think you have only possibly lost two or three debates, and none of those were on the existence of God, though I think some are too close to call.)
Now, on to my question. In your debate with Victor Stenger, he advanced the argument that God could not logically be a perfect being and creator of the universe. In response you stated that God does not create because of anything lacking in Himself, but because the creation of the universe benefits man, because he can come to know God and have a loving relationship with Him. I was just wondering, how does this square with the Christian doctrine of Hell? If Christ is the only way to God, and unbelief is punished by eternity in hell, it seems likely that the vast majority of people, or at least a good number, will end up in hell. In what way could we say that creation benefited these people? The doctrine of hell has always been one of my major problems with Christianity, and it was my main reason for becoming an atheist.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Mark
Dr. Craig’s Response
Thanks so much for your kind letter, Mark! As one who has been privileged to have experienced firsthand the ongoing revolution in Anglo-American philosophy since the late 1960s, it often pains me to see how desperately ignorant many young atheists and agnostics are. Often as arrogant as they are ignorant, they just have no inkling of the incredible intellectual resources contemporary Christian philosophers have provided for the formulation and defense of basic Christian doctrines. I’m so glad that you’ve escaped from that unhappy subculture.
As for your question, my point in response to Stenger was that because God is a perfect being, complete in Himself with no need of anything, creation cannot have been motivated by any need or deficit in Himself. Creation, then, must be an act of grace, something done not for God’s sake but for the sake of those created; namely, they are given the unspeakable opportunity to be personally related to the locus and source of infinite goodness and love. We were made to know God, and this is, in view of its object, an incommensurable good, incomparable to anything else, to any finite goods. It really is an amazing privilege when you think about it.
Now, the tragedy is that the unbeliever freely rejects this incomparable good that God offers him. So in that sense he does not benefit from being created. Nonetheless, it remains true that the reason God created him was for his own benefit, that is, for his own good, and every created person has the incredible benefit of the opportunity of knowing God, a benefit not enjoyed by persons whom God did not create (obviously!).
Think of it this way: if someone offered you a great gift with no strings attached simply because that person loved you, and you freely rejected the gift, then you wouldn’t in the end have the benefit of the gift. But still the person offered it to you for your own benefit. And even having the opportunity to have such a great gift was itself a tremendous benefit that you were fortunate to have.
INSIGHT
There are some interesting nuggets of insight and wisdom in these comments. One important one is that if creation is a gift, it is to be received with gratitude. For gratitude, and even ingratitude, can shape our epistemology and view of ourselves in relationship to each other before God.
It can’t be overemphasized that according to the Bible God desires every human being to be saved and find eternal life (1 Tim. 2:4), and He takes no pleasure whatsoever in the death of the wicked (Ezek. 33:11). God created us for our benefit, not His, and every created person has the benefit of the opportunity to know God and His love forever, if only he will accept it. If he chooses to repulse God and His every effort to save him, the life of the unbeliever is ultimately tragic because he has freely rejected the benefit that God offers him.
Can People in Heaven Sin?
Dear Dr. Craig,
I was in attendance at one of your lectures in Baltimore around two years ago at the “Two Tasks” conference. I appreciate the tireless work you are doing. May God continue to strengthen you, while deepening your personal relationship with Him.
There is one question that is related to the problem of evil that has not been resolved in my mind. This question has chronically baffled me, and I feel leaves me intellectually vulnerable in defending Christianity.
One way to open up the issue is with the following question:
How does God guarantee that there will be no evil among the saved in heaven?
Some possible answers are sketched below. This is a product of my own thinking, influenced by lay research into the subject. Skeptics have posed the problem as well. Please help me decide which is the best, most biblical, most philosophically coherent answer, or point out an alternative that I have not thought through.
Note: Below, I use the pronoun “we” as a short-hand for the saved/elect.
Answer 1: There is no free will heaven. The saved are immutably good and have neither choice nor temptation to sin.
Rebuttal: Can lack of free will coexist with love of the saved towards God? (If answered yes, the free will defense of evil crumbles.) How would love not be diminished or extinguished without free will?
Answer 2: There is free will in heaven—we have the capacity to choose evil. But in our glorified body and regenerated nature, we abhor evil (no evil desire), and, therefore, never choose it. To back this up, consider God, who is free, despises evil, and is one of supreme love. Perhaps free will must be narrowly defined as having the ability to choose something, but not whether one would ever choose it because of one’s nature.
Rebuttal: If this is the case, why does God not create Adam such that he has no desire towards evil in the first place? Also, how is Adam’s pre-fall nature different from the one characterized in answer 2?
Answer 3: There is no free will in heaven. However, we cannot consider heaven in isolation from the earthly decision that led to eternal life. We had free will on earth, and God simply permanently cemented that freely chosen (salvifically efficacious) decision to accept Christ upon mortal death. Love still exists in heaven because God affirms the free-willed decision to follow God while on earth. (This is a tenuous underdeveloped train of thought).
Thank you very much.
Gary
Dr. Craig’s Response
We’re simply speculating when it comes to questions like this, so there may be more than one plausible answer. Insofar as skeptics are concerned, it’s up to them to prove some sort of incoherence here, which would be very difficult to do.
My own inclination is for a view along the lines of (3). God has created us at an “epistemic distance,” so to speak, which allows us the freedom to rebel against Him and separate ourselves from Him. This world is a vale of decision-making during which we decide whether we want to live with God forever or reject Him and so irrevocably separate ourselves from Him. As discussions of the so-called “Hiddenness of God” have emphasized, God could have made His existence overwhelmingly obvious, had He wanted to. During this life, we “see in a glass darkly,” as St. Paul put it; but someday we shall see “face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). Medieval theologians liked to talk of the “Beatific Vision” which the blessed in heaven will receive. There, the veil will be removed, and we shall see Christ in all of His loveliness and majesty. The vision of Christ, the source of infinite goodness and love, will be so overwhelming as to remove all freedom to sin. I like to think of it like iron filings in the presence of an enormously powerful electromagnet. They would be so powerfully attracted to the magnet that there is simply no possibility of their falling away. So with the blessed in heaven.
Something like this may have already occurred with angelic beings. Originally created “at arm’s length” from God epistemically, they had a time to choose either for or against God. Those who chose for God were then sealed with the Beatific Vision, so that no further fall is possible. Fallen angels are Satan and his minions.
I find this a satisfying account of the matter. But the doctrine of middle knowledge affords a version of (2) that is viable as well. One could hold that God via His middle knowledge knew exactly which persons, if saved and glorified in heaven, would freely persevere in grace, even though they would retain the freedom to sin. It’s not that they have a different nature than others; it’s just that this is how they would freely choose. God has chosen to create a world in which all the saved are precisely such persons. Hence, everyone in heaven will freely persevere. They could fall away but they just won’t. Interestingly, creating a world like this could involve God’s having to put up with a lot of otherwise undesirable features of the world, such as vast amounts of natural and moral evil. Perhaps only in a world like that would all those who come freely to know God and His salvation be persons who would freely persevere in heaven. This view would have obvious relevance to the problem of evil.
My own preference remains for (3) simply because it seems right to think that the unalloyed vision of Christ would be something so overwhelmingly attractive that freedom to resist it would be utterly removed.
Do the Damned in Hell Accrue Further Punishment?
I have a concern with something I read from your article database. I find your explanation about sinning in the afterlife and what you believe that entails something of an oddity given the gulf between death and life and based upon the finality of judgment expressed in the Judeo-Christian heritage.
In your article “How Can Christ Be the Only Way to God?”3 you mention that those who have been damned to hell continue to sin. This seems to fail on three levels:
1. Sin appears to be an earthly predisposition, not one that follows into eternity. The Greek “hamartia” implies “missing the mark.” So as Christians, if we believe the “mark” is God or is righteous perfection, isn’t that something that is achieved or absolutely not achieved in the afterlife? It would seem that if we leave open the possibility that a person continues “missing the mark” then we must also assume that the antithesis of this is that the saved somehow keep “gaining the mark” whether this be God or righteous perfection. Now, while I’m aware that we will continue in our knowledge of God throughout eternity (as Paul mentions), I don’t see this as being the opposite of those who are damned. For their knowledge of God doesn’t fail or diminish either it seems.
2. The idea of continuing to sin in eternity seems inadequate by way of analogy. Once a criminal is judged and sentenced for his crimes, he goes to prison. Let’s say he gets life with no parole. Now, even while he may do deeds in prison that are abominable, say he kills another man in a fight, because he’s lost all hope, can we really say it has any bearing on the judgment that has already been passed? There are some cases where that person might get another one hundred years slapped on, but we all know this is only a formality. He’s not leaving his prison. There is no real hope of him achieving release.
3. The idea of continuing in sin is not wholly endorsed in Scripture. The real inadequacy I find in this example is the possibility it leaves open. Namely, if sin is what a person is judged upon in eternity, their rejection of Christ being the sum total of the individual sins, the possibility that a person (and not everyone damned) can go on sinning in hell implies the possibility that a person can also have a change of heart. And I think we see evidence of this in the example of Lazarus speaking to Abraham. Not everyone in hell, given this example in Scripture, seems to go on sinning. Some seem genuinely disturbed by their earthly decisions and want out. And when Lazarus speaks to Abraham, Abraham doesn’t rebuke him for not accepting God’s revelation in nature or through the law. He merely tells him there is a gulf between them. So saying that it’s still a heart condition in Lazarus who is merely just trying to avoid the pains of hell is an inference that doesn’t bear out in the dialogue.
So on the basis of these three objections, I’m wondering how adequate the idea of an eternal place of torment is?
In His Grace,
Trey
Dr. Craig’s Response
Thanks for your thoughtful question, Trey! It’s important that we first set the context for my proposal. I’m attempting to deal with the objection, urged not only by unbelievers but also by annihilationists, to the doctrine of hell, that hell is incompatible with the justice of God because the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. Even sins like murder and cruelty, it is alleged, don’t merit everlasting punishment, for these sins are of finite significance, whereas everlasting punishment is infinite in severity.
Now, my response to this objection is twofold, having the form “Even if … but in fact …” That is to say, I first argue ex concessionis, conceding the assumption made by the objector that no sin that human beings commit deserves an infinite punishment and trying to show that even on that assumption, the objection does not go through. Then I argue that we don’t need to make the assumption presupposed by the objector and propose a quite different solution to the problem, which I, in fact, find preferable. So you mustn’t take the first part of my response out of context, as though I did not offer the second part of the response.
Concerning, then, the first part of my response, what struck me as I thought about this problem is that it doesn’t follow that because every sin that we commit deserves only a finite punishment, therefore no one merits infinite punishment. For if one commits an infinite number of sins, the sum total of sins would, indeed, merit infinite punishment. Of course, no one commits an infinite number of sins in his earthly life. But it occurred to me that in the afterlife one could commit at least potentially infinitely many sins, if one just keeps on sinning forever. And when one thinks of the damned in hell, it is not at all implausible to think that they do, indeed, continue to sin. Rather than repent, they grow only more implacable in their hatred and rejection of God.
I find it striking that when in the book of Revelation the bowls of God’s wrath are poured out in judgment upon mankind, those judged are not repentant but curse God all the more: “men were scorched by the fierce heat, and they cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues, and they did not repent and give him glory … men gnawed their tongues in anguish and cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores, and did not repent of their deeds … and great hailstones, heavy as a hundredweight, dropped on men from heaven, till men cursed God for the plague of hail, so fearful was that plague” (Rev. 16:9–11, 21 RSV). Whether in this life or the next, to hate and reject God is to sin, for we are morally obligated to worship and love God. Sin cannot go unpunished, since God is perfectly just, and so these sins in the afterlife must also be punished. Hence, because sinning goes on forever, so does the punishment. So even if we concede that every sin deserves only a finite punishment, hell is unceasingly self-perpetuating.
Let’s consider, then, your objections. First, can or does sinning continue on in the afterlife? Well, why not? Men are morally obligated to worship God, and to fail to do so is, as you put it, to fall short of the mark. The damned surely fail to fulfill their moral obligations toward God. You say, “But then we must also assume that the saved somehow keep ‘gaining the mark,’ whether this be God or righteous perfection.” Well, certainly we must say that the blessed no longer sin and in that sense continue to hit the mark, though we needn’t think that they attain moral perfection, a property which plausibly belongs to God alone. Far from failing or diminishing, I should think that the blessed knowledge of God would grow without limit. So I don’t see any problem here.4
Your second objection is based on an analogy to someone sentenced to prison. Now, I don’t know much about criminal jurisprudence, but I really doubt that if someone in prison murders another prisoner (or a guard!) that he gets away scot-free in the eyes of the law. Surely he will be prosecuted and held responsible for such a crime—at least, I hope so! You say that if he’s already received a severe sentence, then an additional one hundred years is a mere formality. Ah, but you’re forgetting that we’re granting the assumption made by the objector that our sins deserve only a limited punishment. A proper analogy would be someone who has to serve only a brief sentence but who continually keeps committing petty crimes in jail, thereby accruing more and more terms. It would make a huge difference if he continues to commit crimes in prison, thereby prolonging his sentence.5
Your final objection is based on Jesus’ parable of Lazarus and the rich man. Certainly the rich man in Hades exhibits a repentant heart. The problem here, Trey, is that it is a mistake to press parables to extract Christian doctrine. This is a well-known principle of hermeneutics (literary interpretation). The parables are generally meant to illustrate one central point, in this case that if people won’t listen to Moses and the prophets neither will they be moved by miraculous signs, and it’s bad exegesis to take doctrine from the circumstantial details of parables. The rich man in the parable is almost a cartoon figure, and it would be a serious mistake to use his situation as a basis for a theology of the damned in hell.
Nonetheless, I completely concur with you that we should not think of a person’s rejection of Christ as being the sum total of his individual sins. I, too, am uncomfortable with the idea that the damned could escape hell by repenting and serving out their time (that smacks of purgatory). That’s why I went on to offer the second, better solution: that the rejection of Christ as Lord and Savior, being a rejection of God Himself, is a sin of infinite gravity and proportion and, therefore, plausibly does merit infinite punishment. So seen, people are sent to hell, not so much for murder and theft and adultery, but for their rejection of God. Moreover, if God has middle knowledge, then we can say that He allows the damned to pass from this earthly life only once He knows that their rejection of Him is irrevocable. The damned are thus responsible for their own fate and cannot impugn God’s justice.
Molinism, the Unevangelized, and Cultural Chauvinism
I feel that William Lane Craig’s argument that God has arranged for those whom He knows will respond favorably to the gospel to live in parts of the world where they are most likely to be exposed to the gospel smacks of “cultural chauvinism.” It means that swathes of humanity are written off, presumably because even if they had heard they would not have believed. I find C. S. Lewis more convincing on that issue; that Christ’s blood can save people who may not necessarily know that it is by Christ’s blood that they are saved. Could you correct me if I have understood your position incorrectly?
Roger
Dr. Craig’s Response
While I think that you may have understood my position more or less correctly, Roger, I don’t think that it has the implications you suggest. Before I explain why, let me clarify my proposal.
The basic problem with which I’m wrestling is the fate of the unevangelized, those who never hear the gospel. I suggest that it’s possible that God, desiring that all men should be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:4), has so providentially ordered the world that anyone who would believe in the gospel if he heard it is born at a time and place in history where he does in fact hear it. In that case, no one could stand before God on the Judgment Day and complain that, while he may not have responded to God’s general revelation in nature and conscience and so finds himself condemned, he would have responded to the gospel if only he had had the chance.
C. S. Lewis was an inclusivist who apparently thought that the problem of the unevangelized is solved by adopting the view that people can be saved on the basis of Christ’s death by an appropriate response to the light that they do have. You say that you find Lewis “more convincing.” I think you should have said “more appealing.”
Lewis’s view, which I once held to, is inadequate for two reasons:
(1) No honest reading of Romans 1 can give grounds for optimism that very many of the unevangelized will be saved by their response to general revelation. Perhaps a few will (and my own view allows for that), but we can’t paint a rosy picture of the fate of the unevangelized after reading this passage. Lewis’s view is appealing and comforting, no doubt, but difficult to square with biblical teaching.
(2) Lewis’s inclusivism doesn’t really solve the problem. The problem with inclusivism is not that it goes too far but, in truth, that it does not go far enough. For it accords salvation only to those who do respond affirmatively to God’s general revelation. But it says nothing about those who reject God’s general revelation and so are lost, but who would have responded to the gospel and been saved if only they had heard it. The problem of the unevangelized is a counterfactual problem: what about those who are damned but who would have been saved if only they had been born at a time and place where they heard the gospel? Their damnation seems to be bad luck, the result of historical and geographical accident. Inclusivism like Lewis’s doesn’t even speak to this counterfactual problem and thus fails as a satisfactory solution to the problem. That’s why I had to go beyond it.
INSIGHT
Note this particular objection to Lewis’ inclusivism (and any that attempt to mimic it). It doesn’t deal with the problem of the unevangelized as a counterfactual problem.
I think it’s clear that on my view no one is “written off”: every human being is given sufficient grace for salvation, even the unevangelized. Salvation is universally accessible. But God is too good to allow folks to be damned because they happened to be born at the wrong time and place in history. So He places those who would respond to the gospel if they heard it at times and places in history where they do hear it. He does no injustice toward the unevangelized who reject the light of general revelation and are lost because He knows that they wouldn’t have responded to the gospel anyway, even if they had heard it.
So is my view culturally chauvinistic? Before I address that question, let me comment on the weight of the objection. The objection challenges neither the possibility of my solution (which is all I need to solve the problem) nor its truth. It just finds my solution to be unpalatable. I’m not sure how serious such an objection is. After all, if we believe that human persons are individuated by their souls, then my soul could have been placed in a different body so that I should have been a person of a different race or ethnicity born at a different time and place in history. On such an understanding of human personhood, bodily characteristics are of much less significance than on a materialistic view. Still, the Bible tells us that in the eschaton there will be people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation (Rev. 5:9), so we should ask if my view precludes this.
The answer is: not at all! Anyone who thinks that evangelical Christianity is a white man’s religion is just ignorant of the demographic facts of world Christianity. Did you know that today two-thirds of all evangelicals are living in the Third World, as Christian growth rates are exploding in Asia, Africa, and Latin America? Did you know that in 1987, the number of evangelicals in Asia surpassed the number of evangelicals in North America, and in 1991 the number of evangelicals in Asia surpassed the number of evangelicals in the entire Western world? If anything, Christianity today is an Asian religion. It may well turn out that Caucasian, European Christianity was merely the means by which God reached the majority of mankind with the gospel. When you think of the whole of human history from beginning to its end, you see that my view is not at all culturally chauvinistic.6
1. This is available for free at ReasonableFaith.org (http://bit.ly/CraigBradley).
2. Theodore Regnon, Bannesianisme et Molinisme (Paris: Retaux-Bray, 1890), 48.
3. You can access this article for free by visiting ReasonableFaith.org (http://bit.ly/OnlyWayToGod).
4. For more on this, see the question above, “Can People in Heaven Sin?” (pages 259–61).
5. As a side note Dr. Craig notes that analogies are a poor form of argumentation because they cannot prove anything; they serve only to illustrate.
6. There is a broader discussion to be noted here in Dr. Craig’s writings. For more on this very important issue take a look at ReasonableFaith.org, go to articles, and access “Scholarly Articles: Christian Particularism” or “Popular Articles: Christianity and Other Faiths.”