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#728 The Fate of Those Who Reject Christ

April 18, 2021
Q

Dear Dr. Craig,

Thank you for all the work you do. It is a huge blessing. I am writing to you out of a very dark and difficult place in my life. I am really struggling with different issues concerning Christianity.

One of the issues that has really been bothering me is the idea of Christian particularism. I think many people my age ( I am 20 years old) struggle with this issue and cannot be very effective testimonies for Christ as a result. This is how I came to struggling so much with this issue. I enjoy reading and listening to apologetics material. I understand that there are good and reasonable reasons to believe in Christ. But, what really troubles me is reading testimonies of different people who searched for truth and said they found it in Islam or some other religion. Maybe they didn’t have all the right tools, but with the evidence they had, the best choice for them was the religion they chose.

Many say they have experienced God. In one testimony, the person said “Looking back, I can't see anymore how Islam could ever have been so hard to understand or accept; it is so obviously the truth to me now that it practically screams it out.”

My problem lies not so much in defending Christianity (although sometimes I wonder if I can really know if it is true), but how can God allow people to seek truth and say they have found it in another religion? Why did He not provide evidence for them that Christianity is true? Many of these people came from Christian backgrounds yet chose not to follow it because the evidence they had didn’t convince them. So, this has led me to wonder if people can be saved in another religion.

Reading your work, I understand that you believe that someone who hasn’t heard of Christ can be saved if they respond to the revelation of God in nature and conscience. So, someone can be saved if they respond to God through nature or conscience without explicitly believing in Christ. But then, how can God reject someone who seeks Him and says they have found Him in another religion? And many of these people have heard of Christ yet don’t believe in Him. Is salvation about responding to God in an appropriate way or realizing our sinfulness and forgiveness through Christ? Can someone love God in another religion yet be damned because they have not trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins?

All I am saying is that it seems incoherent to say that someone can be saved by responding positively to God in nature and conscience but someone in another religion who responds to God in the best way they know how will be damned because they have not believed in Christ as the Son of God who died for their sins and rose again. I hope I am making sense because these things have been profoundly disturbing me. If someone can have eternal life by seeking for God without believing in Christ then why believe in Christ at all? Why share Christ with others if they can find God in another religion? And what about the message of the Gospel which says that we are saved by grace? That salvation is not about being a moral person or even experiencing God but about receiving God’s free gift of eternal life. What is salvation according to Jesus? Hopefully, you can help me with these questions. I think many young people would enjoy answers to these tough questions.

Camille

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Dr. craig’s response


A

These are certainly agonizing questions, Camille, with which I, too, have honestly wrestled. To begin with, notice how I have titled this Question of the Week. It is not about the salvation of those who have never heard of Christ (which would include Abraham and Moses and therefore hardly be puzzling!) or even those in other religions who have never heard of Christ. Rather we are talking about persons who have heard an accurate proclamation of the Gospel and reject it and turn away from Christ.

Jesus promised, “If any man’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether my teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority” (John 7.17). Here Jesus says that someone who is honestly seeking God and who confronts Jesus’ teaching will know that his teaching is indeed from God. It follows that anyone who does not recognize that fact does not really want to do God’s will. How can Jesus make such an audacious claim?

The answer is that God’s Holy Spirit is at work to convict and draw people to a saving knowledge of God (John 16.8). What Paul calls the “natural man” is in a state of alienation and rebellion against God, dead in his sins, and therefore does not seek but rather resists God (Romans 3.10-11; I Corinthians 2.14). The only way such a person can come to a saving knowledge of God is through the convicting and drawing power of the Holy Spirit. Anyone who refuses to come to faith in Christ is at some point guilty of resisting the Holy Spirit and so separating himself from God. The Bible says that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance (II Peter 3.9). The only reason therefore that some people fail to find salvation is that they freely resist God’s every effort to save them.

So think of people who knew the Gospel but who now claim to have found the truth in Islam or some other religion. It is emphatically not true, as you say, that “with the evidence they had, the best choice for them was the religion they chose.” Wholly apart from the question of whether they ignored apologetic evidence for Christianity, what you need to keep in mind is that, even more fundamentally, they suppressed the witness of the Holy Spirit to them that the Gospel is true. They repudiated God Himself and His testimony to them of the truth of Jesus’ teaching. They have thus separated themselves from God.

Sure, they can report religious experiences in another religion. Obviously! But anyone who says that Islam “is so obviously the truth to me that it practically screams it out” is, frankly, self-deceived. The Qur’an has such an historically inaccurate view of Jesus of Nazareth, even claiming that Jesus was not crucified, that it becomes indefensible, and the concept of God in Islam is so morally abhorrent, asserting, as it does, that God hates unbelievers and only loves those who love him, that it cannot possibly be true.

You ask, “how can God allow people to seek truth and say they have found it in another religion?” Because He has given us free will and so will not coerce us to believe. Some Christians say that God’s grace is irresistible. I disagree. “You stiff-necked people,” Stephen declared, “you always resist the Holy Spirit!” (Acts7.51). God’s Spirit seeks to draw each one of us to Himself, but ultimately if someone freely chooses to go his own way, God will not force him. “Why did He not provide evidence for them that Christianity is true?” He did: the witness of the Holy Spirit to the truth of the Gospel. “Many of these people came from Christian backgrounds yet chose not to follow it because the evidence they had didn’t convince them.” No, they chose not to follow it because they resisted the Holy Spirit (wholly apart from whether they resisted the apologetic evidence). 

I hope you can begin to see how different the biblical perspective on unbelief is, compared to the perspective dominant in our religiously relativistic culture.

Yes, I affirm that people who have never heard the Gospel can be saved through Christ’s atoning death by their response to God’s general revelation in nature and conscience. For they may not resist, but respond to, the light that God has given them. “But then, how can God reject someone who seeks Him and says they have found Him in another religion?” The question is misstated. The proper question is, how can God condemn someone who has turned away from Christ to another religion? The answer is, because such a person resists and ignores the Holy Spirit. “Is salvation about responding to God in an appropriate way or realizing our sinfulness and forgiveness through Christ?” The question is unclear. Do you mean, do we come to salvation by responding to God in an appropriate way or by realizing our sinfulness and seeking forgiveness through Christ? The question posits a false dichotomy. Yes, we come to salvation by responding to God in an appropriate way, and the appropriate way for those who have heard the Gospel is to repent and believe in Christ for salvation. On the other hand, a person like Moses cannot seek forgiveness through Christ because he has never heard of Christ. So he will have been given another way to respond appropriately to God. “Can someone love God in another religion yet be damned because they have not trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins?” No, because if they reject Christ, then they do not truly love God (think of John 7.17), whereas if they truly love God, then their failure to trust in Christ must be because they not have heard of Christ, and so they are not damned, but are responding appropriately to the light that they have.

Is it “incoherent to say that someone can be saved by responding positively to God in nature and conscience but someone in another religion who responds to God in the best way they know how will be damned because they have not believed in Christ”? No, not at all! For those who are saved through their response to nature and conscience have not rejected Christ but are responding positively to God in the best way they know how. But those who consciously reject Christ are not responding to God in the best way they know how but rather are resisting the Holy Spirit. They are like the drowning man who thrusts away the life preserver thrown to him.

If someone can have eternal life by seeking for God without believing in Christ then why believe in Christ at all?” Anyone who is positively responding to God’s general revelation in nature and conscience will also respond positively to God’s special revelation in the Gospel. If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know that Jesus’ teaching is from God. “Why share Christ with others if they can find God in another religion?” Because those who find salvation through general revelation, if any, are relatively rare, and the Gospel is a much more powerful revelation of God’s truth that attracts even those who reject general revelation. “What about the message of the Gospel which says that we are saved by grace? That salvation is not about being a moral person or even experiencing God but about receiving God’s free gift of eternal life?” If you think I’m saying anything else, then you have not understood me. God’s free gift of eternal life is found preeminently in Jesus Christ, so that someone who rejects him rejects God’s free gift of salvation. “What is salvation according to Jesus?” It is reconciliation with God, achieved through the death of Jesus.

As you think about these things, Camille, you’ll find abundant resources on the question of Christian particularism on our website.

- William Lane Craig