Religious PluralismReligious Pluralism

APOL 6543APOL 6543

PluralismPluralism

• Particularism– Jesus Christ is the only way to God

• Pluralism– More than one way to God

PluralismPluralism

• remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. – Ephesians 2:12.

PluralismPluralism

• All men are without excuse because God’s power and existence are made plain in creation– Romans 1:20

• God’s moral law is written on men’s hearts, so that they are morally responsible for their actions.– Romans 2:15

PluralismPluralism• People ignore God and float his moral law

– Romans 1:21-32.

• All men are under the power of sin.– Romans 3:9-12.

• We can’t redeem ourselves through good works.– Romans 3:19-20.

PluralismPluralism

• Jesus’ death offers us reconciliation with God.– Romans 3:21-26.

PluralismPluralism

• But so many people aren’t Christians, how can they all be wrong/going to hell?

Objections to ParticularismObjections to Particularism

• Arrogant and immoral for Christians to think they are right and everyone else is wrong.– Ad hominem.

Objections to ParticularismObjections to Particularism

• You are just a Christian because you’re born in a Christian country. If you were born somewhere else you’d be a Muslim, Hindu, etc.– Genetic Fallacy

Objections to ParticularismObjections to Particularism

• Would a loving God send people to hell?– God doesn’t want anyone to go to hell– God wants everyone to be saved

• The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:9.

• [God] wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 1 Timothy 2:4.

Objections to ParticularismObjections to Particularism

• Is the punishment too harsh? How can my sin in this finite life lead me to deserve infinite punishment?– Every sin and all sins we commit– Sinning in the afterlife– Rejecting God deserves infinite punishment

Objections to ParticularismObjections to Particularism

• What about those who haven’t heard the Gospel. Is it fair that they go to hell?– General revelation, creation, moral law– Job, Melchizedek

• God “will repay each person according to what they have done.” To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. – Romans 2:7

Objections to ParticularismObjections to Particularism

• What about someone who rejects general revelation but who would have accepted Christ if he or she had heard the Gospel? Why didn’t God bring the Gospel to them?

More Objections to ParticularismMore Objections to Particularism

• Why did God create a world when He knew so many people would not believe the Gospel and be lost?

• Why didn’t God create a world where everyone freely believes in the Gospel and is saved?

Getting to the Core of the Getting to the Core of the ProblemProblem

• Pluralist claims that the following claims are inconsistent1. God is all-powerful and all-loving2. Some people never hear the Gospel and are

lost.

Uncovering Hidden AssumptionsUncovering Hidden Assumptions

1. If God is all-powerful, He can create a world in which everybody hears the Gospel and is freely saved.2. If God is all-loving, He prefers a world in which everybody hears the Gospel and is freely saved.

3. If God is all-powerful, He can create a world in which everybody hears the Gospel and is freely saved.• But logically impossible to force someone to freely

choose, so God cannot create this world. So, 3 is not necessarily true.

Uncovering Hidden AssumptionsUncovering Hidden Assumptions

4. If God is all-loving, He prefers a world in which everybody hears the Gospel and is freely saved.• But what if such a world would only contain 3 people?

Should God still prefer such a world?

Uncovering Hidden AssumptionsUncovering Hidden Assumptions

Initial ResponseInitial Response

• It’s possible that the actual world has the optimal balance between people freely choosing to be saved and people being lost.

• Discuss responses and ideas

Responding to another key Responding to another key challengechallenge

• Why would God create persons who will be lost, but would have been saved if they had heard the Gospel?– But why think there are any such people?

Couldn’t God order the world so that those who heard the Gospel were those who would accept it?

Consider this proposed responseConsider this proposed response

5. God has created a world that has a 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 possibly true, there’s no

inconsistency with an all-loving, all-powerful God and some people never hearing the Gospel and being lost.

Scriptural ClosingScriptural Closing• The God who made the world and everything in it is

the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, 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. – Act 17: 24-28.