by Robert L. Reymond
in ePub, .mobi & .pdf formats
....men, not professing the Christian religion, [cannot] be saved in any other way whatsoever, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature, and the laws of that religion they do profess. And, to assert and maintain that they may, is very pernicious, and to be detested [Westminster Confession of Faith, 10.4]
There was a time in the not too distant past when evangelical leaders were in agreement regarding the eternal destiny of the unevangelized masses of mankind. Their commonly-held view was that people, absent personal faith in Jesus Christ, are lost. This belief was one of the chief motives that drove the entire evangelical missionary enterprise. It was not at all uncommon to hear these leaders speak of a “lost and dying world” or an “unsaved world.” Today this view is called “exclusivism” in the sense that it restricts salvation exclusively to those who consciously trust Christ. But increasing numbers of spokesmen for evangelicalism today are stating either that such exclusivism simply is not Biblically defensible, or that the Bible is not clear about the eternal state of the adherents of other religions. They are opting for what they call “inclusivism,” the teaching that God’s mercy is so wide that it can and does embrace many, if not all, non-Christian religionists on the globe-a doctrine, as we have just read, that the seventeenth-century framers of the Westminster Confession of Faith described as “very pernicious” and “to be detested,” a judgment that the Confession is not inclined often to make, particularly with the adverb “very.” Before we look at this “downgrade” trend within Evangelicalism, I want to say something about this teaching within Theological Liberalism and Roman Catholicism.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Theological Liberalism’s Doctrine of Religious Pluralism
Rome’s Doctrine of Inclusivism
Evangelicalism’s Doctrine of Inclusivism
General Revelation Condemns, not Saves
The New Testament Repudiates Inclusivism
Rebuttal of Evangelical Inclusivism
Conclusion