Image, Incarnation, and Christian Expansivism

A Meta-Philosophy of Salvation

McLeod-Harrison

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781532606434
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

I am the way, the truth, and the life, says Jesus. Yet the kingdom of heaven consists of all tribes, races, and peoples. How do people of tribes who've never heard the word of Christ enter the kingdom of God? A strictly exclusivist account of the gospel seems to keep many people out of the kingdom of heaven. An inclusivist approach is more consonant with Scripture and the love of God. Yet standard models of inclusivism are problematic. In this book McLeod-Harrison--a Christian philosopher--considers what's wrong with both narrow exclusivist and narrow inclusivist accounts of the gospel and proposes a broad inclusivism called "expansivism." An expansive account of the gospel helps us understand the uniqueness and the openness of the gospel together. Narrow exclusivism can lead to existential crises. Narrow inclusivism appears to make not preaching the gospel better for those who've never heard it. Expansivism makes human access to the gospel unique to the individual person and enables Christian theologians to provide lots of different, potentially conflicting and yet true accounts of the theological underpinnings of the salvation provided by Christ.

Chapter 1

Setting the Salvific Stage

God’s expansive salvation is the lead actor in this essay, with the image of God and the incarnation as supporting cast. My originating intuition is that the oft-times narrowly construed understanding of salvation some Christians hold does neither the Scriptures nor human individuality nor the love of God justice. That is the starting place. But although the nature of salvation and our human access to it are my main themes, the background topics of image and incarnation are important for it is from them that my claims about salvation and human access flow. Without some grasp of the theological notions of the image of God, which all humans—including Jesus—share, it is difficult to understand what need there is for an incarnation and, by extension, what need there is for the salvation that the incarnation and the death and resurrection of Jesus provides.

This chapter introduces some central terms and notions to which I appeal through the book. Section I presents what I call “Christian salvific exclusivism.” Section II considers Christian salvific pluralism and Christian salvific inclusivism.

I

In order to set the context for the ensuing discussion, let’s begin with a brief description of what I call “Christian salvific exclusivism.” Christian salvific exclusivism (CSE) includes three components. I call them the metaphysical realist, the ontological monistic, and the access components. First, the metaphysical realist component.

1. There is only one true description of reality, including salvific reality. The Christian description of salvific reality is that one true description.1

This component is typically rooted in an overall commitment to metaphysical realism where (for the most part) reality is what it is independent of human noetic contributions to the nature of that reality. William Alston notes that most religious believers are realists about their religious beliefs.2 The metaphysical-realist component of CSE tries to capture that commitment. It is natural for Christians to think of reality as largely (human) mind-independent because, after all, God, not humans, created the world. Thus, it is no surprise that the Christian salvific exclusivist has a commitment to metaphysical realism somewhere as a backdrop for her thinking about the world and God’s role in it. If she did not, it would be hard to see, initially at any rate, how her claims to exclusivism would be founded. Exceptions can, of course, be made to a global metaphysical realism. For example, when I am thinking, that fact alone makes it so that I’m thinking, and so sometimes reality directly depends on one’s mind. Also sometimes we construct parts of reality, for example, marriage and legal entities such as corporations. For the holder of CSE, such exceptions do not extend to the religious realm; religion is not merely a detached language game with no root in independent facts. Just the reverse. Christian claims to reality, where true, are the basis for the rest of the facts about the world.

Now to the ontological monist component.

2. The one true description of the Christian faith tells us that entering into a proper relationship with God through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit is necessary and sufficient to be saved. Christ’s incarnate work on earth—birth, death, resurrection—provide the monistic ontological basis for salvation.

The monistic ontology of salvation is entailed by 1. Accepting 1 commits CSE to a (general) monistic ontology whereby I mean that there is only one way the world is. That ontologically monistic understanding extends to the conditions described by Scripture and made true by Jesus and his work. The nature of that work can ultimately be described (truly) in only one way.

Finally consider the access component.

3. A particular and unique necessary and sufficient human means grants access to the proper salvific relationship to God through Jesus Christ.

It is important to note that in one sense Jesus is the access to salvation, a point meant to be captured by 2. God calls humans into a salvific relationship through the work of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. As such, we could say Jesus is the path to salvation in God. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” says Jesus, “no one comes to the Father but through me.” The particular or unique human means of accessing that path, as opposed to the path itself, is the focus of this third component. This access is necessary and sufficient (on the human side) for entering into the salvific relationship with Jesus Christ.

One who holds all three components is a Christian salvific exclusivist. Not only is there a singular true description of the (larger) created and uncreated order (the created world and the divine world, one might say) but that description includes both a description of the ontological basis for salvation (Christ’s work) and a description of the means of accessing Christ. It is this sort of account of the Christian order of things that has motivated, at least in part, much that has gone on in the name of Christian evangelism and missionary activity. If, in order to be saved, one must access the gospel of Jesus Christ through a particular human means (let’s say conscious faith in the work of Jesus), then people need to hear of the gospel of Jesus. Hence, Christians preach and engage in other evangelistic missionary work. I am opposed to neither, but I believe the basis on which we engage in such activities needs to be different from what we often believe (based on CSE, at least).

The phrase “particular and unique means” from 3 stands in need of analysis. The most natural reading is that there is a single and fairly simple means of access. Perhaps the most frequent (Protestant) account would be that one is saved by “faith alone.” But the term “faith” needs analysis too. It is an understatement to say that Scripture itself is not completely clear on this topic. Consider the contrast between the Pauline corpus with its emphasis on faith alone and the Jamesian “faith without works is dead.” No less a theologian than Martin Luther worried that the book of James, along with Hebrews and John’s Revelation, didn’t belong in the canon because they conflicted with Paul. James was, in Luther’s often-quoted phrase, “an epistle of straw.”

What is faith? It is certainly true that in many New Testament contexts where salvation is considered, faith is part of the discussion or at least in the background. Yet it is not always explicit. Jesus himself gives different salvific directions to his interlocutors. Consider Jesus’ response to the rich young man’s question, what must I do to be saved? Jesus is direct. After a brief discussion of whether the young man has followed the law (he has!), Jesus tells him to go, sell everything he owns, give it to the poor, and come follow Jesus. (A very high bar to reach, it might be added, especially for us relatively wealthy Western Christians.) No explicit mention is made of believing that Jesus is the Messiah. Although one might argue that faith would be involved in such a move by the rich young man, one wonders if hope would be enough. Or perhaps not even hope. Perhaps the young man, having followed, apparently, the law rigorously from his youth, was a particularly strong A-type personality, one who naturally fell in with following the rules strictly. Perhaps he believed, hence, not in Jesus’ grace but instead sought to follow Jesus in the way in which he had always sought to follow the law. Perhaps he believed that following Jesus was the means of accessing salvation but did not have faith or trust in Jesus. Or suppose the circumstances were different again. What if the young man just followed Jesus because his parents taught him to, as many young people might even today? Such a person might participate in all the right things (follow the law!) but not really believe in Christ and certainly not trust Christ for his salvation. It’s just a community thing one does.

Now consider Jesus’ response to the woman at the well. He engages her in a theological discussion about worship at the end of which she is convinced that Jesus is the Messiah. (Or almost—she still is wondering “can this be the Christ?”) She becomes the first evangelist for Jesus being “the savior of the world” as her Samaritan neighbors later state it. This Samaritan woman is not asked to sell what she has. Jesus doesn’t even ask her to follow him. He simply reveals (to someone not a Jew) that true worship is worship in spirit and truth and that translated into knowing who the Messiah is. Note, too, that in neither the case of the rich young man nor the Samaritan woman does Jesus’ interlocutor have any sense that Jesus will die on the cross within a few short months, let alone that he will be raised from the dead.

Of course, in both cases one can read the passages as ones in which Jesus is calling for faith in himself. “Come follow me” demands, perhaps, as much. But the term “faith” is too broad and loose a term. I want to point toward what I will call the “interior framework” of faith, for interior frameworks of faith will be distinct from one another. Faith is, I suggest, different for each of us or, at least, for many of us. What the rich young man experiences as the call to faith demands his giving up his wealth. In the story about the woman at the well, Jesus treats her with respect and dignity, engages her theological questions, and, so to speak, “sees into her soul” in a way no one else ever had. Her response to faith doesn’t require her to give up her wealth but to respond to the healing—emotional, intellectual, and spiritual—that Jesus provides. Her excited response “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” indicates how important Jesus’ acceptance of her as a complete person was.

To get at what I mean by “interior framework” we have to begin with the basic notion of faith. To have faith might be thought of as a certain set of propositional attitudes—belief or acceptance of a proposition—and/or an attitude of trust toward a person—say God. But what surrounds that faith or the steps by which one fulfills the obligations of faith may be quite different for different people. Some might think faith calls them to attend church, others to feed the poor, still others to deal with their failing marriage in a more charitable manner. Faith, in other words, will be lived out in specific ways and those ways can be very different among people and if the biblical examples I just gave are correctly interpreted, then what Jesus expects the interior framework of a given person’s faith to be will be specific to the situation of the person involved.

The interior framework of faith cannot, in the end, be separated from faith. Faith is embedded in, and shaped by, an individual life and looks different for individual people. I heard a story of two friends listening to a “mediocre” sermon. When one friend turned to the other to criticize and make fun of the sermon, he noticed his friend’s head bowed, tears rolling down his cheeks. Salvation doesn’t come to all of us the same way. But perhaps we need to go further: to think not merely of different responses of faith but of alternative accounts of human access. Do we access the grace of God’s salvation via a mental attitude one should take up (taking up faith, taking on hope, accepting forgiveness, feeling more compassionate)? Is it developing a deeper spiritual relationship with Jesus (praying more, trying to rely on the strength of the Holy Spirit)? Is it loving one’s neighbor (selling all one has and giving to the poor, taking up a cause such as fighting sex slavery), accepting healing and becoming grateful for God’s grace (such as the one out of ten lepers healed who returned to thank Jesus), or is it something else again? What I propose is that the holder of CSE, while often just listing one of these sorts of things (personal faith being the most favorite evangelical Protestant item) also builds into that one a combination of other things. Thus, a person who holds CSE may take a union of some of these—say having faith and accepting God’s forgiveness—and then hold that union as the only means of access to the work of Christ. The main point for the holder of CSE is that she takes her list of human means of access and understands it as jointly necessary and sufficient to access the work of Christ.

The inclusivist, in contrast, will have a problem with the necessity claim (the sufficiency of individual components remaining unproblematic). My point is that so long as a Christian holds a union of some of the possibilities as a union and claims that that union is necessary for salvation, so far forth that person is a holder of CSE. The holder of CSE cannot make a disjunctive list of items. She can’t say either have faith or love Jesus or love your neighbor or become Christ-like. That would make her an inclusivist. The holder of CSE must have a fused notion of the one (joint) thing one must do to be saved.

So there are two aspects to what I’ve been saying. First, the single access upheld by the holder of CSE is often a fused access where faith (or something else) enfolds other things, such as living morally, developing a good prayer life, etc. Secon...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Setting the Salvific Stage
• Chapter 2: On Being the Literal Image of God
• Chapter 3: Existentially Problematic Salvific Exclusivism
• Chapter 4: Why We Should Preach the Gospel
• Chapter 5: Toward an Expansive Gospel
• Chapter 6: On Becoming Second Incarnations
• Appendix: Theistic Irrealism’s Ancestors
• Bibliography