Universal Revelation Accessibilism

KEVIN HARRIS: Welcome to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. I'm Kevin Harris. If you've ever wondered what Dr Craig's position is on the question “What about those who have never heard the Gospel of Jesus? What happens to them? Can they be saved?”, today you'll hear a good portion of Dr. Craig's answer and perhaps get some clarification as you think through that common question. This is why Dr. Craig and Reasonable Faith are so important. People ask good questions, and we need to give them good answers. So if you've been thinking about supporting the work of Reasonable Faith, don't hesitate. In fact, now would be a really good time because our annual matching grant is going on, and whatever you give will be doubled by a group of generous donors. So whatever amount you give, they will double it up to $250,000. That's happening now until the end of the year. So consider making this part of your year-end giving. You can give online at ReasonableFaith.org. And while you're on our website, check out Equip. It's a free course that will teach you how to make an intelligent presentation and defense of the truth of the Christian faith. So many of you are going through the course and getting a lot out of it. So take advantage of this excellent free material and spread the word. Thanks so much.

Bill, about four years ago this blogger, Terrance Tiessen of the Thoughts Theological blog, wrote how delighted he was that you affirm universal revelation accessibilism, which we'll define so everybody hang on. Let's find out what that is and if he's interpreting you correctly. He begins the article^[1],

When I wrote Who Can Be Saved?, everything I had read by William Lane Craig regarding his Molinist understanding of the situation of the unevangelized fell within the gospel exclusivist position. . . . At that time, he posited that “God in his providence so arranged the world that those who never in fact hear the gospel are persons who would not respond to it if they did hear it” (The Only Wise God, pp. 150-51). What I was hearing him say then is that knowledge of the gospel is necessary to salvation, but that we need not be troubled by fears that some people are eternally lost because the church had failed to get the gospel to them. Even if we had taken the gospel to them, they would have been lost.

So far, so good, Bill?

DR. CRAIG: No! If you turn to page 150 of my book The Only Wise God, you'll find that this sentence is pulled out of context. Here's the context.

However God judges them [that is, the unevangelized], it might be claimed that an all-loving God could not send people to hell for rejecting the light that they had (general revelation in nature, for example), if he knows that they would have received Christ if only they had heard of him. An all-loving God would make sure that the light of the gospel, to which he knows they would respond, would reach such persons.

And it's that hypothesis that then I go on to reject in the sentence he quoted. That is to say, for people who do respond affirmatively to general revelation in faith and repentance, God can apply to them the benefits of Christ's atoning death without their conscious knowledge of Christ just as people in the Old Testament like Abraham were saved through Christ's atoning death even though he had no conscious knowledge of Christ because Abraham was faithful to the light that he had. My concern is with persons who do not respond to the light of general revelation that they have but who would have responded to the Gospel had it been shared with them. My Molinist suggestion is that it's possible that there are no such people – that anyone who rejects the light of general revelation would also have rejected the light of special revelation (that is, the Gospel) had it been shared with them. So that's a quite different view than Terrance is laying out here. I think he's misunderstood me.

KEVIN HARRIS: Let's continue the article. He says,

I cited Craig’s position regarding the salvation of the unevangelized, in the chapter in which I was asking: “Can People Be Saved if They Only Have General Revelation?” (Who Can Be Saved?, pp. 138-64), and I did not, at that time, hear Craig affirming that this would be possible. Hearing the gospel was deemed necessary for saving faith, but God chose to actualize a world in which everyone who would believe if they heard the gospel, does hear it.

Whether Craig has changed his position since my book was published, or whether I had simply failed to come across a different perspective than I had encountered in my reading of his work, I do not know. But, I can say that I am delighted to have read yesterday his answer to the “question of the week,” on July 8, 2018  (“Q&A #586 Middle Knowledge and the Essentialism of Origins.”) What I read there indicates that Craig does not now belong in the category of gospel exclusivism, but he affirms “universal revelation accessibilism.” (By “accessibilism,” I mean the belief that every human being receives divine revelation that is sufficient for salvation, because the faith that is instrumental in justifying sinners is appropriate to the revelation which God has given of himself to an individual.)

Bill?

DR. CRAIG: He correctly understands my view now, but the change has not been in my view as I just illustrated. It's been in his more accurate understanding of my view. It's basically that God will judge people based on the light that they have.

KEVIN HARRIS: Continuing,

I want to draw attention to Craig’s clear affirmation of the possible salvation of people who receive no more than God’s universal revelation. God’s universal revelation, in other words, is sufficient for salvation, if one responds to it with the faith which is appropriate to such revelation. I see that faith clearly delineated in Romans 1:21. This puts him firmly outside of the gospel exclusivist camp, and I am delighted that he holds this view, since I myself am a convinced accessibilist (a term, incidentally, which I appropriated from Craig (“Politically Incorrect Salvation,” in Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World, p. 84).

You were one of the contributing authors in that book.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. This is a book that was edited by Timothy Phillips and Dennis Okholm. Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World. In it I defend the view that I've just laid out; namely, that salvation is universally accessible to all persons at all times in history because God will judge people based upon the light that they have. A great example of this would be persons in the Old Testament that are often called “holy pagans” of the Old Testament. I'm thinking here of people like Job. Job was not even a member of the Old Testament covenant. He was not a Jew. He was not part of the covenant, much less a believer in Christ, and yet if anyone had a personal relationship with God clearly it was Job. So Job was faithful in responding to the light that he had, and he enjoyed a personal relationship with God. So I do think that salvation is universally accessible, and I hope very much that we might see people like Plato and Aristotle someday in heaven. That would be fantastic.

KEVIN HARRIS: I wonder if we ought to talk about or at least define what he means by “gospel exclusivist.” He's used that term a couple of times: “gospel exclusivism.”

DR. CRAIG: Yes. The idea here, I think, is that it is impossible for anyone to be saved except through hearing and believing in the Gospel. Now, obviously that would need to make exceptions for people living prior to the time of Christ because obviously Adam and Eve and Abraham and Moses hadn't heard of Christ or placed their faith in the Gospel. So you'd have to make exceptions in their case. But perhaps what the Gospel exclusivist would say is that after the advent of Christ, salvation is available exclusively through faith in Christ in response to the preaching of the Gospel. That would be Gospel exclusivism, a view that I do not accept. It seems to me that the transition from the old covenant to the new covenant doesn't take place instantaneously the moment Christ died. Rather, it grows progressively from first century Israel out across the globe as the Gospel expands and the frontiers of darkness are pushed back and more and more people come to hear the Gospel message and therefore become responsible for their response to it. But for persons who lie outside that perimeter of light, so to speak, they are in effect still under the old covenant or perhaps under no covenant at all, like Job, and so will be judged on the basis of their response to God's general revelation in nature and conscience.

KEVIN HARRIS: The article gets into that some more here. Next Tiessen writes,

In his answer to the question of the week, Craig states: “There may be people who never hear the Gospel and are saved through their response to God’s general revelation in nature and conscience alone, but who would also have accepted the Gospel (had they heard it) and been saved.” He posits that “there may be people who never hear the Gospel but who would have accepted it, had they heard it.” Some theologians have drawn on Molinism to assert a position I call “Molinist accessibilism,” but Craig is not taking that route. For this I congratulate him. Rather than affirming that God saves people through a faith they do not have but would have had if they had received sufficient revelation, Craig asserts that the revelation God gives of himself to everyone, is sufficient to elicit actual saving faith, if it is the only means by which God makes himself known to a person.

Bill?

DR. CRAIG: Well, he's correct in saying that my view is not that God judges people on the basis of what they would have done had they heard the Gospel. That would be manifestly unjust because in that case they never did have faith, and you can't justify a person because under some other circumstances in which he is never placed he would have done something differently. After all, if I had been born, say, in Nazi, Germany, perhaps I would have been a member of the Hitler Youth Corps and an atheist and rabid anti-Christian. But God will not judge me because that's what I would have done and believed. He will judge me on the basis of what I did do and believe. Similarly, I think those who respond to God's natural revelation in nature and conscience by repentance and faith in the God of the universe will be saved by Christ's atoning death through their response to God's revelation in nature and conscience.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's the conclusion of the blog.

The principle I see at work here is that, although the new covenant has been instituted through the death of Christ, God does not require new covenant faith from people who do not receive new covenant revelation. God judges people according to the covenant under which they live existentially (though not historically), and salvation was always possible by faith under every covenant. The faith God requires is determined by the covenant under which one lives, and that is determined by the revelation God has made known to an individual.

Craig might not state his present position in the way I have just done, but what he does clearly affirm is consistent with that framework, and I am delighted to see this.

Your summation, Bill?

DR. CRAIG: I would just say that it's not a matter of whether you exist under the old covenant or under the new covenant because, as the case of Job shows, there are some people who aren't under either covenant because they're not Jewish. So what he says about the transition from the old to the new covenant is right for Jews, I think, but more generally it also applies to people who are under no covenant at all to whom then the new covenant revelation comes through the historical expansion of the Gospel around the world. And when that message of the Gospel comes then they become responsible for their response to it.^[2]