Christian Doctrines IV

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Christian Doctrines IV

Christian Particularism

There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

Acts 4:12 RSV

1—Introduction

The apostles of Jesus Christ believed and preached that there was no salvation apart from Christ. Indeed, the conviction that salvation is available through Christ alone permeates the New Testament. Paul, for example, invites his Gentile converts to recall their pre-Christian days: “Remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). It is the burden of the opening chapters of the book of Romans to show that this desolate condition is the general situation of mankind. Paul explains that God’s power and deity are made known through the created order around us, so that people are without excuse (Rom 1:20), and that God has written his moral law on all hearts, so that they are morally responsible before him (Rom 2:15). Although God offers eternal life to all who will respond in an appropriate way to God’s general revelation in nature and conscience (Rom 2:7), the sad fact is that rather than worship and serve their Creator, people ignore God and flout his moral law (Rom 1:21-32). Paul’s conclusion is that all people are under the power of sin (Rom 3:9-12). Worse, Paul goes on to explain that no one can redeem himself by means of righteous living (Rom 3:19-20). Fortunately, however, God has provided a means of escape: Christ has died for the sins of mankind, thereby satisfying the demands of God’s justice and facilitating reconciliation with God (Rom 3:21-26). By means of his atoning death salvation is made available as a gift to be received by faith.

The logic of the New Testament is clear: the universality of sin and the uniqueness of Christ’s atoning death entail that there is no salvation apart from Christ. This particularistic doctrine was just as scandalous in the polytheistic world of the Roman Empire as in contemporary Western culture. In time, however, the scandal receded, as Christianity grew to supplant the religions of Greece and Rome and became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Indeed, for medieval thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas, one of the marks of the true church was its catholicity, that is, its universality. To them it seemed incredible that the great edifice of the Christian church, filling all of civilization, should be founded on a falsehood.

The demise of Christian particularism came with the so-called expansion of Europe, the three centuries of exploration and discovery from about 1450 until 1750. Through the travels and voyages of men like Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, and Ferdinand Magellan, new civilizations and whole new worlds were discovered, which knew nothing of the Christian faith. The realization that much of the world lay outside the bounds of Christianity had a twofold impact on people’s religious thinking. First, it tended to relativize religious beliefs. It was seen that far from being the universal religion of mankind, Christianity was largely confined to Western Europe, a corner of the globe. No religion, it seemed, could make a claim to universal validity; each society seemed to have its own religion suited to its peculiar needs. Second, it made Christianity’s claim to be the only way of salvation seem narrow and cruel. Enlightenment rationalists like Voltaire taunted the Christians of his day with the prospect of millions of Chinese doomed to hell for not having believed in Christ, when they had not so much as even heard of Christ. In our own day, the influx into Western nations of immigrants from former colonies and the advances in telecommunications that have served to shrink the world to a global village have heightened our awareness of the religious diversity of mankind. It is estimated that somewhere between 15 and 25 percent of the world’s population have still not yet heard the gospel of Christ.

The missiological and theological consequences of the challenge posed by religious diversity have been major. Mainline churches have largely lost a sense of calling to world evangelization. No longer is the task of missions to carry the life-giving message of the gospel to a lost and dying world; rather, the missionary task is reinterpreted as social improvement of developing nations. The task at hand is to bring assistance to these countries in agriculture, medicine, and economic development—a sort of Christian Peace Corps. The theological fallout has been just as serious: it has marginalized the person of Christ. This is epitomized in the pilgrimage of the philosophical theologian John Hick. Hick began his career as a relatively conservative theologian. His first book was titled Christianity at the Centre. But as Hick became acquainted with adherents to other world religions, it seemed inconceivable to him that these people should all be destined to hell. Their own religions must be equally efficacious avenues of salvation. But then Christ can no longer be at the center; somehow he must be marginalized. Hick therefore came to edit the book The Myth of God Incarnate, in which he rejects the incarnation and divinity of Christ as a myth. Thus the missiological and theological consequences of the challenge posed by religious diversity have been serious indeed.

2—The Problem Posed by Religious Diversity

But what exactly is the problem arising from religious diversity supposed to be? How is traditional Christianity undermined by the existence of other world religions? In exploring this problem, it will be useful to draw some distinctions. First, we may distinguish between universalism and particularism. Universalism is the doctrine that every human being will partake of God’s salvation; particularism is the view that only some, but not all, human beings will partake of God’s salvation. Obviously, from this definition particularism may range from a narrow particularism, according to which comparatively few persons will be saved, to a broad particularism, according to which comparatively few will be lost. A second distinction is between accessibilism and restrictivism. Christian restrictivism maintains that salvation is available only through an appropriate response to God’s special revelation concerning Christ, which requires a faith response to the message of the gospel of Christ. Christian accessibilism, on the other hand, maintains that for those who have not had the benefit of special revelation, salvation is available through their appropriate response to God’s general revelation in nature and conscience. Finally, we may distinguish between exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. Christian exclusivism is the view that people actually appropriate God’s salvation only on the basis of Christ’s work and through explicit faith in him. Christian inclusivism is the view that people actually appropriate God’s salvation only on the basis of Christ’s work but not always through explicit faith in him. Again, inclusivism may range from broad inclusivism, which endorses universalism, to narrow inclusivism, which implies a narrow particularism. Pluralism is the view that people actually appropriate God’s salvation through a multiplicity of conditions and means in various religions.

These different schools of thought are obviously closely related, but it is important, if confusion is not to result, that we do not conflate these distinctions. For example, although we are apt to associate restrictivism with particularism, this is not always the case: some restrictivists are universalists because they envision the possibility of postmortem proclamation and reception of the gospel. Or again, we are apt to think that pluralism implies universalism; but that need not be the case, since the pluralist may regard some religions—for example, those that practice human sacrifice, cultic prostitution, or satanic worship—as inefficacious channels of salvation.

The question, then, is what problem is posed by the reality of religious diversity and for whom? When one reads the literature on this problem, the recurring challenge seems to be laid at the doorstep of the Christian particularist. The phenomenon of religious diversity is taken to require the truth of universalism, and the main debate then proceeds to the question of which form of that doctrine is the most plausible. But why think that Christian particularism is untenable in the face of religious diversity?

When one examines the arguments on behalf of universalism, one finds them to be of very uneven worth, some objections being little more than ad hominem attacks on particularists. For example, it is frequently asserted that it is arrogant and immoral to hold to any doctrine of religious particularism because one must then regard all persons who disagree with one’s own religion as mistaken. This is an odd objection, since the truth of a position is quite independent of the moral qualities of those who believe it. Even if all Christian particularists were arrogant and immoral, that would do nothing to prove that their view is false. In any case, it is not only incorrect to say that arrogance and immorality are necessary conditions of being a particularist—the Christian particularist may have done all he can to discover the religious truth about reality and humbly embraces Christian faith as an undeserved gift—but, even more fundamentally, those who make such accusations find themselves hoisted on their own petard. For the universalist believes that his own view is right and that all those adherents to particularistic religious traditions are wrong. Thus he himself would be convicted of arrogance and immorality if he were right that holding to a view with which many others disagree is arrogant and immoral.

Or again, it is frequently alleged that Christian particularism cannot be correct because religious beliefs are culturally relative; for example, if a Christian believer had been born in Pakistan during the Abbasid Dynasty, he would likely have been a Muslim. But such a claim simply has no relevance to the truth of Christian particularism or to one’s justification in accepting it. If one had been born in ancient Greece, one would likely have believed that the sun orbits the earth; but is our belief in heliocentrism therefore false or unjustified? Evidently not! And once again, the universalist finds the rug pulled from beneath his own feet: for had he been born in medieval Spain he would likely have been a Christian particularist. Thus on his own analysis his universalism is merely the product of his being born in late twentieth-century Western society.

Or again, it is sometimes alleged that the Christian particularist cannot be warranted in believing that Christianity alone of all the world religions is the truth. But that is a matter for Christian apologetics to decide. In any case, this fact in and of itself would not show that Christian particularism is false. And, we may ask, what warrant is there for believing that universalism is the truth? The alleged failure of arguments for the Christian worldview is in itself no reason to think that universalism is true.

Thus many of the arguments against Christian particularism frequently found in the literature are unimpressive. When these objections are answered by defenders of Christian particularism, however, then the real issue separating universalists and particularists tends to emerge in the discussion. That issue is the fate of unbelievers outside one’s particular religious tradition. Christian particularism consigns such persons to hell, which universalists take to be unconscionable.

But what exactly is the problem here supposed to be? Is it supposed to be simply the allegation that a loving God would not send people to hell? It seems not. The Scriptures indicate that God wills the salvation of every human being. “The Lord is . . . not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet 3:9 RSV). He “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4 RSV). Thus, for example, God speaks through the prophet Ezekiel:

Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord GOD, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live? . . .

For I have no pleasure in the death of any one, says the Lord GOD; so turn, and live. (Ezek 18:23, 32 RSV)

Say to them, As I live, says the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die? (Ezek 33:11 RSV)

Here God literally pleads with people to turn back from their self-destructive course of action and be saved. Thus, in a sense, the biblical God does not send any person to hell. His desire is that everyone be saved, and he seeks to draw all persons to himself. If we make a free and well-informed decision to reject Christ’s sacrifice for our sin, then God has no choice but to give us what we deserve. God will not send us to hell—but we shall send ourselves. Our eternal destiny thus lies in our own hands. It is a matter of our free choice where we shall spend eternity. The lost, therefore, are self-condemned; they separate themselves from God despite God’s will and every effort to save them, and God grieves over their loss.

Now the universalist might admit that given human freedom God cannot guarantee that everyone will be saved. Some people might freely condemn themselves by rejecting Christ’s offer of salvation. But, he might argue, it would be unjust of God to condemn people forever. For even grievous sins like those of the Nazi torturers in the death camps still deserve only a finite punishment. Therefore, at most hell could be a sort of purgatory, lasting an appropriate length of time for each person before that person is released and admitted into heaven. Eventually hell would be emptied and heaven filled. Thus, ironically, hell is incompatible, not with God’s love, but with his justice. The objection charges that God is unjust because the punishment does not fit the crime.

Some Christian thinkers have sought to avoid this objection by adopting the doctrine of annihilationism. They hold that hell is not endless separation from God, but rather the annihilation of the damned. The damned simply cease to exist, whereas the saved are given eternal life. Other Christian philosophers have denied that hell involves retributive justice, that is, appropriate punishment for our deeds, on God’s part. Rather, it is simply the result of God’s allowing free creatures, out of respect for their moral autonomy, to separate themselves from God forever rather than to coerce submission on their part. God would permit the damned to leave hell and go to heaven, but they freely refuse to do so. Rather than repent and ask God for forgiveness, persons in hell continue to curse him and reject him. They grow only more implacable in their hatred of God as time goes on. God thus has no choice but to leave them where they are. In such a case, the door to hell is locked, as Jean Paul Sartre said, from the inside. The damned thus choose eternal separation from God.

Such views are rather difficult to square with the biblical data, however, which do seem to present hell as everlasting punishment (Mt 25:46; 2 Thess 1:9). Such modifications of the traditional understanding do not seem to be necessary, however. At least two responses to the objection are in fact available on the traditional view.

1. The objection that eternal punishment does not fit the crime equivocates between every sin we commit and all the sins we commit. We could agree that every individual sin a person commits deserves only a finite punishment. But it does not follow from this that all of a person’s sins taken together as a whole deserve only a finite punishment. If a person commits an infinite number of sins, then the sum total of all such sins deserves infinite punishment. Now, of course, nobody commits an infinite number of sins in the earthly life. But what about in the afterlife? Insofar as the inhabitants of hell continue to hate God and reject him, they continue to sin and so accrue to themselves more guilt and more punishment. In a real sense, then, hell is self-perpetuating. In such a case, every sin has a finite punishment, but because sinning goes on forever, so does the punishment.

2. Why think that every sin does have only a finite punishment? We could agree that sins like theft, lying, adultery, and so forth are only of finite consequence and so only deserve a finite punishment. But, in a sense, these sins are not what serves to separate someone from God, since Christ has died for those sins; the penalty for those sins has been paid. One has only to accept Christ as Savior to be completely free and clean of those sins. But the refusal to accept Christ and his sacrifice seems to be a sin of a different order altogether. This sin repudiates God’s provision for sin and so decisively separates one from God and his salvation. To reject Christ is to reject God himself. And in light of God’s status, this is a sin of infinite gravity and proportion and therefore plausibly deserves infinite punishment. What makes sin against God so serious? We can think of the seriousness of sin against God either in terms of God’s being wholly other than finite moral agents in moral virtue—for example, of his being the locus and source of all moral value and obligation, or else in terms of a universally applicable moral principle—for example, that the more loving a person’s overtures the more morally reprehensible it is to reject him. We ought not, therefore, to think of hell primarily as punishment for the array of sins of finite consequence that we have committed, but as the just due for a sin of infinite consequence, namely, the rejection of God himself. Thus it seems that the problem raised by mankind’s religious diversity cannot be reduced simply to objections to the doctrine of hell.

Is the problem perhaps supposed to be that a loving God would not send people to hell because they were uninformed or misinformed about Christ? Again, the answer would seem to be no. Here the Christian particularist may endorse some form of accessibilism. He may argue that according to the Christian view, God does not judge people who have never heard of Christ on the basis of whether they have placed their faith in Christ. Rather, God judges them on the basis of the light of God’s general revelation in nature and conscience that they do have. The offer of Romans 2:7—“To those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life”—is a bona fide offer of salvation. This is not to say that people can be saved apart from Christ. Rather, it is to say that the benefits of Christ’s atoning death could be applied to people without their conscious knowledge of Christ. Such persons would be similar to certain figures mentioned in the Old Testament like Job and Melchizedek, who had no conscious knowledge of Christ and were not even members of the covenant family of Israel and yet clearly enjoyed a personal relationship with God. Similarly, there could be modern-day Jobs living among that percentage of the world’s population that have yet to hear the gospel of Christ.

Unfortunately, the testimony of the New Testament, as we have seen, is that people do not in fact measure up to these much lower standards of general revelation. So there are little grounds for optimism about there being many, if any at all, who will actually be saved through their response to general revelation alone. At best a narrow inclusivism might be true. Nonetheless, the point remains that salvation is universally accessible for anyone who will respond to God’s general revelation in nature and conscience, so that the problem posed by religious diversity cannot be simply that God would not condemn persons who are uninformed or misinformed about Christ.

Rather, the real problem seems to be this: if God is omniscient, then even logically prior to his decree to create the world, he knew who would freely receive the gospel and who would not. But then certain very difficult questions arise:

What is the Christian particularist supposed to say in answer to these questions? Does Christianity make God out to be cruel and unloving?

3—The Problem Analyzed

In order to answer these questions it will be helpful to examine more closely the logical structure of the problem before us. The universalist seems to be alleging that it is impossible for God to be all-powerful and all-loving and yet for some people to never hear the gospel and be lost, that is to say, that the following statements are logically inconsistent:

1. God is all-powerful and all-loving.

2. Some people never hear the gospel and are lost.

The problem thus has the same logical structure as the logical version of the internal problem of evil; indeed, it is a sort of soteriological problem of evil. Accordingly, the free will defense ought to be relevant to this problem as well as to the general problem of evil. For we can ask, why think that (1) and (2) are logically incompatible? After all, there is no explicit contradiction between them. But if the universalist is claiming that (1) and (2) are implicitly contradictory, he must be assuming some hidden premises that would serve to bring out this contradiction and make it explicit. The question is, what are those hidden premises?

Although universalists have not been very forthcoming about their hidden assumptions, the logic of the problem of evil suggests that they must be something akin to the following:

3. If God is all-powerful, he can create a world in which everybody hears the gospel and is freely saved.

4. If God is all-loving, he prefers a world in which everybody hears the gospel and is freely saved.

Since, according to (1), God is both all-powerful and all-loving, it follows that he both can create a world of universal salvation and prefers such a world. Therefore, such a world must exist, which is in contradiction to (2).

As in the logical version of the internal problem of evil, both of the hidden premises must be necessarily true if the logical incompatibility of (1) and (2) is to be demonstrated. But are these premises necessarily true?

Consider (3). It seems uncontroversial that God could create a world in which everybody hears the gospel. But so long as people are free, there is no guarantee that everybody in such a world would be freely saved. In fact, there is no reason to think that the balance between saved and lost in such a world would be any better than the balance in the actual world! It is possible that in any world of free creatures that God could create, some people would freely reject his saving grace and be lost. Hence, (3) is not necessarily true, and the universalist’s argument is fallacious.

But what about (4)? Is it necessarily true? Let us suppose for the sake of argument that there are possible worlds that are feasible for God in which everyone hears the gospel and freely accepts it. Does God’s being all-loving compel him to prefer one of these worlds over a world in which some persons are lost? Not necessarily; for these worlds might have other, overriding deficiencies that make them less preferable. For example, suppose that the only worlds in which everybody freely believes the gospel and is saved are worlds with only a handful of people in them. If God were to create any more people, then at least one of them would have freely rejected his grace and been lost. Must he prefer one of these sparsely populated worlds over a world in which multitudes believe in the gospel and are saved, even though that implies that other persons freely reject his grace and are lost? This is far from obvious. So long as God gives sufficient grace for salvation to all persons he creates, God seems no less loving for preferring a more populous world, even though that implies that some people would freely resist his every effort to save them and be damned. Thus the universalist’s second assumption is not necessarily true, so that his argument is revealed to be doubly fallacious.

So neither of the universalist’s assumptions seems to be necessarily true. Unless the universalist can suggest some other premises, we have no reason to think that (1) and (2) are logically incompatible.

But we can push the argument a notch further. We may try to show positively that it is entirely possible that God is all-powerful and all-loving and that many persons never hear the gospel and are lost. All we have to do is find a possibly true statement that is compatible with God’s being all-powerful and all-loving and that, together with (1), entails that some people never hear the gospel and are lost. Can such a statement be formulated? Let us see.

As a good and loving God, God wants as many people as possible to be saved and as few as possible to be lost. His goal, then, is to achieve an optimal balance between these, where optimality involves not just absolute numbers but also the ratio between saved and lost. Among those worlds known via his middle knowledge to be feasible for him to create, God restricts his creative choice to that subset of worlds in which an optimal balance between saved and lost obtains and chooses to create one of these worlds. But, then, it is possible that the actual world (which includes the future as well as the present and past) has such a balance. It is possible that in order to create this many people who will be saved, God also had to create this many people who will be lost. It is possible that had God created a world in which fewer people go to hell, then even fewer people would have gone to heaven. It is possible that in order to achieve a multitude of saints, God had to accept a multitude of sinners.

It might be objected that an all-loving God would not create people whom he knew will be lost, but who would have been saved if only they had heard the gospel. But how do we know there are any such persons? It is reasonable to assume that many people who never hear the gospel would not have believed the gospel if they had heard it. Suppose, then, that God has so providentially ordered the world that all persons who never hear the gospel are precisely such people. In that case, anybody who never hears the gospel and is lost would have rejected the gospel and been lost even if he had heard it. No one could stand before God on the judgment day and complain, “All right, God, so I didn’t respond to your general revelation in nature and conscience! But if I had just heard the gospel, then I would have believed!” For God will say, “No, I knew that even if you had heard the gospel, you would not have believed it. Therefore, my judgment of you on the basis of nature and conscience is neither unfair nor unloving.” Thus (5) is possible:

5. God has created a world that has an optimal balance between saved and lost, and those who never hear the gospel and are lost would not have believed in it even if they had heard it.

So long as (5) is even possibly true, it shows that there is no incompatibility between an all-powerful, all-loving God and some people never hearing the gospel and being lost.

On this basis we are now prepared to offer possible answers to the three difficult questions that prompted this inquiry. To take them in reverse order:

These are possible answers to the questions we posed. But so long as they are even possible, they show that there is no incompatibility between God’s being all-powerful and all-loving and some people’s never hearing the gospel and being lost. Furthermore, these answers are attractive because they also seem quite biblical as well. In his open-air address to the Athenian philosophers gathered on the Areopagus Paul declared:

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth. . . . He himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, “We are his offspring.” (Acts 17:24-28 NIV)

Now the universalist might concede the logical compatibility of God’s being all-powerful and all-loving and some people’s never hearing the gospel and being lost but insist that these two facts are nonetheless improbable with respect to each other. People by and large seem to believe in the religion of the culture in which they were raised. But in that case, the universalist may argue, it is highly probable that if many of those who never hear the gospel had been raised in a Christian culture, they would have believed the gospel and been saved. Thus the hypothesis we have offered is highly implausible.

Now it would, indeed, be fantastically improbable that by happenstance alone it just turns out that all those who never hear the gospel and are lost are persons who would not have believed the gospel even if they had heard it. But that is not the hypothesis. The hypothesis is that a provident God has so arranged the world. Given a God endowed with middle knowledge of how every free creature would respond to his grace in whatever circumstances God might place him, it is not at all implausible that God has ordered the world in the way described. Such a world would not look outwardly any different from a world in which the circumstances of a person’s birth are a matter of happenstance. The particularist can agree that people generally adopt the religion of their culture and that if many of those born into non-Christian cultures had been born in a Christian society instead, they would have become nominally or culturally Christian. But that is not to say that they would have been saved.

The universalist might claim that such a world would look significantly different from the actual world, that persons who would have been no more than nominal Christians had they been born in a Christian culture would be perceptibly different from people who would have become regenerate Christians. But this claim would be manifestly untrue. It is a simple empirical fact that there are no distinguishing psychological or sociological traits between persons who become Christians and persons who are nonbelievers. There is no way to predict accurately by examining a person whether and under what circumstances that person would believe in Christ for salvation. Since a world providentially ordered by God would appear outwardly identical to a world in which one’s birth is a matter of historical and geographical accident, it is hard to see how the hypothesis we have defended can be deemed improbable apart from a demonstration that the existence of a God endowed with middle knowledge is implausible. But objections to middle knowledge have been shown to be inconclusive at best.

In short, there is no logical incompatibility in the biblical view of Christian particularism, and with the resources of a doctrine of divine middle knowledge a plausible account can be given of God’s universal salvific will and the perdition of those who never hear the gospel. Therefore, the fact of mankind’s religious diversity does not undermine the Christian gospel of salvation through Christ alone. On the contrary, the view here expressed helps to put the proper perspective on Christian missions: it is our duty as Christians to proclaim the gospel to the whole world, trusting that God has so providentially ordered things that through us the good news will come to persons who God knew would accept it if they heard it. Our compassion toward those in other world religions is expressed, not in pretending they are not lost and dying without Christ, but by supporting and making every effort ourselves to communicate to them the life-giving message of Christ.

Chapter Summary

The problem posed by religious diversity has to do with the fate of those who stand outside the community of Christian faith. The problem is not simply the claim that the existence of hell is incompatible with a just and loving God, for on the Christian view people freely separate themselves from a loving God despite his every effort to save them, and the retribution they suffer for this sin is consonant with God’s justice. Nor is the problem the claim that persons who are uninformed or misinformed about Christ are unjustly judged by God, for the New Testament suggests that persons will be judged on the basis of the information they have and that salvation is universally accessible through God’s general revelation in nature and conscience, even if, unfortunately, it is rarely so accessed. Rather, the real challenge posed by religious diversity is a soteriological problem of evil: the fact that some persons never hear the gospel and are lost seems incompatible with the existence of an all-loving and all-powerful God. But the key assumptions presumed by the universalist have not been shown by him to be necessarily true, so that this argument is defeated. Moreover, we can construct a scenario to show that the facts of God’s existence and the perdition of the unevangelized are consistent. God could so providentially order the world that all those who would believe the gospel and be saved if they heard it are born at times and places in history such that they do hear it. Given that such a world would be empirically indistinguishable from a world in which the facts of a person’s birth are the result of historical and geographical accident, such a scenario is not merely possible but is also not improbable as well.

Checklist of Basic Terms and Concepts

accessibilism

annihilationism

atoning death

catholicity

exclusivism

expansion of Europe

general revelation

inclusivism

particularism

pluralism

religious diversity

restrictivism

retributive justice

salvation

soteriological problem of evil

special revelation

universalism

world evangelization

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