[This is a guest post by Nathan Jowers, with commentary by me in italics.
Nathan is commentary on a post found here:
http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2015/04/re-post-relying-on-grace.html]
The debate between universalism and conditional salvation
interests me, so I'm going to try my hand at another critique.
In the post you say "For if what is required in
reliance on God and God alone to save us, then that was possible before Jesus
died." and then "So if people are even capable of "relying on
God's grace" then this obfuscates the need for Jesus Christ's sacrifice on
the cross." Against this I have three points.
1.
If it was necessary that Jesus' death tear down the structures of
sin before any criteria for salvation is exist, it is not necessarily the case
that the criteria being reliance on God's grace means that salvation was
possible before Jesus' death. It could be that Jesus' death was exactly the
thing that set the criteria up in the first place. That said, the prophets do
seem to indicate that salvation is possible through this method before Jesus'
death, or at least that the people before the cross can be saved, so this
argument is largely mute.
The question is why one should believe this to be possible. WHY do
we think that Jesus’ death was necessary? If the answer is that this is because
of God’s own justice, which is the most common Christian answer, one may ask
whether such a God can, in any way, be love, as scripture says He is in 1 John.
If the answer is because of satan, one can ask why a sacrifice is necessary to
defeat satan. If God is all-powerful, then why not just, you know, defeat
satan. Additionally, if God can account faith as righteousness, as both Genesis
and Roman claims that He can, then why not just account faith as righteousness,
and leave it at that? Why not just forgive us when we try to rely on His grace?
Of course one can say that God’s entry into the world leads
inexorably to the Cross as such is God’s nature. But then that just brings up
the very problem I’m pointing to. If sin simply IS the pain of God, if God’s
response to sin IS the Cross, then what more is there to say about it than
that? What is justice, or mercy, or anything else, against such a pain?
But, really, that is just a side note. It seems to me that Nathan
has missed the central argument of the entire post he’s referring to, which is
found here:
*The prophets and wisdom writers are ostensibly bringers of God's
word. For plenary inerrantists, they literally spoke and wrote only God's word.
Well those writers came and told the Jews that they were not saved by their own
power, but by total reliance on God. The law was not some road map to receiving
grace, and fulfillment of the rituals of the law accomplished nothing,
according to the prophets. It was God's unearned favor that brought the hope of
salvation, and God's choice to forgive sins and see His people as blameless.
The idea that some payment had to be made to receive God's forgiveness flies in
the face of almost everything the prophets and wisdom writers said. In other
words, there was no 'payment of sin' that was necessary if one only relied in
God's grace. So if people are even capable of "relying on God's
grace" then this obfuscates the need for Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the
cross.*The prophets and wisdom writers are ostensibly bringers of God's word.
For plenary inerrantists, they literally spoke and wrote only God's word. Well
those writers came and told the Jews that they were not saved by their own
power, but by total reliance on God. The law was not some road map to receiving
grace, and fulfillment of the rituals of the law accomplished nothing,
according to the prophets. It was God's unearned favor that brought the hope of
salvation, and God's choice to forgive sins and see His people as blameless.
The idea that some payment had to be made to receive God's forgiveness flies in
the face of almost everything the prophets and wisdom writers said. In other
words, there was no 'payment of sin' that was necessary if one only relied in
God's grace. So if people are even capable of "relying on God's
grace" then this obfuscates the need for Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the
cross.*
The point is that the prophets are saying that IF you rely on God’s
grace, salvation is assured. They deny that anything else is needed. The point
is that Jesus only becomes necessary if the prophets were wrong about God’s
grace or if mankind was simply incapable of doing what the prophets asked them
to do. Jesus’ sacrifice makes sense in light of the Old Testament when you
look at the Old Covenant as having failed to do what it was intended to do. How
did it fail? By the law being unable to save us? Uh-uh, that was already
established by the prophets. They already KNEW that animal sacrifices and following
every law wasn’t enough. The question is what does Jesus bring to the table?
Where is the failure or limitation in the Old Covenant?
2.
That salvation was possible before Jesus' death does not mean that
salvation was possible without Jesus' death. Anticipation or promise of a
future event can affect the conditions present. All of reality (or at least the
parts involving salvation) was formed around Jesus' redemptive action,
formed with the anticipation of it in mind. The anticipation of at least the
general form of Jesus' death and resurrection would be enough to allow for
some of the soteriological framework that would result from it to be in the
place from the beginning. While our anticipations may or may not come to pass,
because Jesus was God's anticipation, because everything was framed around it,
salvation could proceed with surety that it would come to pass. Now, if it
were to happen that did not come to pass, then stuff would have gotten really
bad really quick, but because God was behind it there was a sureness to
its occurrence. The prophets would be living in the "now and not
yet" of Jesus' death and resurrection, even as we are living in
the "now and not yet" of his enactment of the Kingdom of God. In
other words, we act at time in ways that make it seem the Kingdom of God is
already fully here, like evil has already been cast out. So they could have
acted at times like the cross (or some similar thing) had already come to pass.
This does not mean that everything that is possible due to Jesus'
death and resurrection was possible before it, that there is no before and
after. It may have been sure in its eternal generality, but it was not sure in
its temporal particulars (assuming open theism or something like it). The
actualization of its temporal particulars would allow for some
new possibilities that could not have been before it the death
and resurrection, Pentecost being one of them.
I don’t really have a problem with this, but the question is about
the content of the prophets’ message and the limitations of the Old Covenant.
Where is all this stuff about the need for a sacrifice in what they are saying?
If something other than reliance on God’s grace was necessary, why didn’t they
say so? But taking what they say as the Word of God, then it seems to me that there
is no reason to just stick Jesus in as a medical adhesive strip to bridge the
gap. Either reliance on God’s grace is possible in any way, and God can just
choose the bridge the gap as the prophets said He could and would OR there is
no way we can put our faith in faith. It isn’t enough, and can’t be enough.
Whence does this sense of an add-on come?
3.
If, however, the above idea is completely bunk and we must
assume that salvation was not at all possible before Jesus' death, we can still
say that salvation for those people who came before still happens after the
death and resurrection. The traditional concept of the judgement takes
place at the end of days, with the resurrection of everyone. If it is at
that point that salvation happens, those who acted in accordance with the
salvation criteria even before the cross could be covered by it. Or, if there
was some sort of cosmic waiting room for the righteous (which is more or less
the Catholic interpretation of 1 Peter 3:18-20 and the 5th article of the
Apostles Creed) he could have then saved those who followed before the cross.
I don’t think there is any reason to think the above is ‘bunk’.
As for your assertion that we do not live like we truly
believe the cross, that is somewhat true, though I do not feel to the degree
you make it out to be. While we may have fallen from being the image of God, we
still have something of it in us, however muddied and battered. While we may be
hopeless to break the chains of sin ourselves, we are still enough ourselves to
hold the chains out to be broken by the Holy Spirit. We still choose to follow
Jesus, and while we may still believe only momentarily, we would have believed
not at all without that decision.
I do not believe in total depravity. Nor do I think we are in all
ways incapable of relying on God’s grace. I just think our reliance is too weak
to support our salvation. If it were, then one would wonder why Jesus has to
die. Why can’t our meager attempts simply be completed by the Will of God? Additionally,
there is a paradox here. If I rely on my reliance on Grace as a feature of my
salvation, then it seems to me that I am relying less on Jesus Christ, than if
I simply accept Jesus’ sacrifice as full and sufficient unto itself. The irony
is that the universalist, in my opinion, is relying more on God’s grace than
the conditionalist.
The best,
Nathan Jowers
P.S. While I may disagree with the man on many things, Kierkegaard
can write.
I, of course, agree.
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