What Is an “Exclusivist,” Anyway?
What is an “exclusivist,” anyway? It sounds like a very nasty thing to be. Sean Carroll is a physicist who teaches at Caltech. He speaks a lot (he was in our neighborhood just a few days ago, giving a public lecture at Fermi Lab) and writes a lot (he’s very good at both). He has a wonderfully titled blog, Preposterous Universe, which features this epigraph at the top of the page: “in truth, only atoms and the void,” a saying attributed to the Pre-Socratic philosopher Democritus. Clearly Sean Carroll is an exclusivist, too: a naturalistic exclusivist. But of course any account of How Things Are excludes rival accounts.
Christians—not just evangelicals but Christians generally—have good news to share. That inspired my grandmother to go China as a missionary around 1920. When she was younger, she had dreamed of becoming an architect, but that path wasn’t open to her. Eventually, she took a degree from Moody Bible Institute, then worked for a while as a city missionary in Aurora, Illinois, west of Chicago. Much of the work she did there involved helping immigrant families. For her, providing practical aid was simply part of sharing the gospel.
When she went to China, in her mid-thirties, she met a missionary whose wife had recently died, leaving behind a little son (who was to become my Uncle Larry). My grandmother and the widower were married, and in due course had two children: my mother, Elizabeth, and my mom’s brother, Edward, a couple of years younger. My mom lived in China until she was 11 years old.
My grandmother was a very strong presence in my life. My parents were divorced when I was five years old, and Grandma came to live with us. She would have relished the opportunities open to women today. She loved to build things (a predisposition my brother shared with her—I didn’t), and she always had at least one project going. For years she was a choir director, and she and my mom often sang duets. She read in the Bible every day.
I remember trying to understand, as a boy, how “salvation” worked. What about all those people in China? What about people who had lived in parts of the world where there were no missionaries at all until recent times? And so on. “God looks in the heart,” my grandmother told me.
And my grandfather? When he came back from China with his wife and children, the U.S. was in the depths of the Great Depression. Soon after their return, he announced that the Lord had called him to itinerant evangelism, leaving my grandmother with the responsibility of providing and caring for the children. He would return home now and then before setting out again. What could be more important than bringing souls to Christ? One day, when he was about to depart, my grandma told him that if he left this time he shouldn’t plan on returning. He left. I never met him (nor did I know this back story until I was in my twenties.)
A lot of missionaries visited our house when I was a boy. Some were retired, some were on furlough. Listening to their conversations, I heard a range of opinions and attitudes expressed, just as I did in the various churches we attended over the years. Some missionaries emphasized the utter wrongness of the cultures to which they intended to bring good news. Other missionaries talked of the way in which God had prepared the hearts of the people they sought to serve: “It was as if they had been waiting for us to come—waiting for the gospel.”
Evangelicalism as I experienced it, then, was a good deal more varied than some accounts (my good friend Karl Giberson’s, for instance) might suggest. What I was taught was this: every human being has an opportunity to reach out and grasp the saving hand of Christ—a choice with eternal consequences. Not all evangelicals agreed, then or now, but neither is this an eccentric minority view. How exactly Christ’s redemptive work is accomplished in all times and places is not for us to say. We put our trust in a God who is perfectly loving and perfectly just. A hymn that we sang often when I was a boy—and still sing today—puts it well: “I know not how this saving faith to me he did impart.”
What matters finally is not who said what to whom, but whether what’s said is true. Hence Democritus, via Scott Carroll: “in truth, only atoms and the void.” There are rival accounts of the preposterous universe we inhabit. If the good news that Christians proclaim is true, no apologies are necessary, no hesitation in sharing it is called for.
I'm not sure this is intended, but it seems like you're implying that Karl dismisses the exclusivity of religious truth claims and is soft on the idea that decisions pertaining to faith might have eternal consequences. It also sounds like you took his weariness of sectarian chauvinism and doctrinal thought policing as apologizing for the gospel. I didn't get any of that from Karl's essay.
The truth of the gospel / the revelation of Christ is not something that came in pride and arrogance because it's right and can back up its claims, yet that is how a lot of people "proclaim" or "defend" it. The good news has a motive and goal of love and unity; its wholly human bearers often do not. Have Evangelicals failed exceptionally in this regard? I think Karl is saying they have, and I think the larger culture generally agrees. So do I.
The failure is exceptional because Evangelical views of salvation and the church are so often *not* aligned with the wholly orthodox and ancient view you describe as your own but are instead full of the presumptuous certainty about others and their relation to us and God. Sarah called it "blasphemous" with good reason. Of course views held by Evangelicals vary, and everyone has their personal anecdotes, but can we honestly say this is a mainstream and majority Evangelical belief:
Everyone gets to make a choice for or against Christ, yet the manner in which this occurs — and the outcome — are not known to us.
The last part, in its uncertainty and humility, is very rare in the Evangelical world of my experience. Do you really see it differently?
In the Evangelical (and Reformed) worlds familiar to me, you and your grandmother would be regarded as "liberals" for expressing this view of the mystery of salvation, especially if you made it clear that "everyone" whose eternal destination we do not know includes Muslims, Mormons, Jews, Catholics, "liberal Christians," etc. It's not a minority or eccentric view among Evangelicals that people in these groups are not even "potentially saved" if they die unconverted. All are presumed to have decided against God or to have had it decided for them by God. This view seems to have hardened during the culture wars and intensified during our current shooting wars with gays and Muslims becoming almost an obsessively demonized Other.
Close friends and relatives received this "exclusivist" or "blasphemous presumptuous" message just as I did in churches and schools; some of our kids still get it with the contemporary emphasis on gays and Muslims. Over time it seems to drive the spirited and intelligent into doubt and skepticism while the sensitive break their hearts trying to find certainty for themselves or live with a negative certainty about others. The pragmatic come to experience faith as mere religion–conformity to a collectivist ritual emptied of personal conviction–and the truly mean are the only ones who seem to enjoy a gospel focused on scarcity and punishment for demonized outsiders.
Even in urban, highly educated Evangelical circles where people do not live in homogenous enclaves the presumption to know who is in and out of divine favor can still be heard. People who question that presumption loudly in Evangelical churches and schools have been attacked and subjected to extraordinary denunciation, including the kind of purges Karl mentioned. CT and Books and Culture covered several of these incidents over the decade or so that I followed them.
The saddest thing of all is that y/our view of salvation most often seems to offend many other Evangelicals when they see it implies the logical possibility that all people could potentially decide for Christ. This idea is commonly rejected with the greatest resentment at how unfair it would be. I've found this reaction to be common and in line with the criticism Richard Neuhaus got for Death on a Friday Afternoon: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/02/will-all-be-saved-30
To me this speaks to a crying need for there to be credible, influential Evangelical theologians or popular writers to make a stand for a more generous and open view of grace, salvation, and the church. The attempts that have been made (McLaren, Bell, Open Theism) have been poor, and the reactions to them have been worse.
I'm not sure this is intended, but it seems like you're implying that Karl dismisses the exclusivity of religious truth claims and is soft on the idea that decisions pertaining to faith might have eternal consequences. It also sounds like you took his weariness of sectarian chauvinism and doctrinal thought policing as apologizing for the gospel. I didn't get any of that from Karl's essay.
The truth of the gospel / the revelation of Christ is not something that came in pride and arrogance because it's right and can back up its claims, yet that is how a lot of people "proclaim" or "defend" it. The good news has a motive and goal of love and unity; its wholly human bearers often do not. Have Evangelicals failed exceptionally in this regard? I think Karl is saying they have, and I think the larger culture generally agrees. So do I.
The failure is exceptional because Evangelical views of salvation and the church are so often *not* aligned with the wholly orthodox and ancient view you describe as your own but are instead full of the presumptuous certainty about others and their relation to us and God. Sarah called it "blasphemous" with good reason. Of course views held by Evangelicals vary, and everyone has their personal anecdotes, but can we honestly say this is a mainstream and majority Evangelical belief:
Everyone gets to make a choice for or against Christ, yet the manner in which this occurs — and the outcome — are not known to us.
The last part, in its uncertainty and humility, is very rare in the Evangelical world of my experience. Do you really see it differently?
In the Evangelical (and Reformed) worlds familiar to me, you and your grandmother would be regarded as "liberals" for expressing this view of the mystery of salvation, especially if you made it clear that "everyone" whose eternal destination we do not know includes Muslims, Mormons, Jews, Catholics, "liberal Christians," etc. It's not a minority or eccentric view among Evangelicals that people in these groups are not even "potentially saved" if they die unconverted. All are presumed to have decided against God or to have had it decided for them by God. This view seems to have hardened during the culture wars and intensified during our current shooting wars with gays and Muslims becoming almost an obsessively demonized Other.
Close friends and relatives received this "exclusivist" or "blasphemous presumptuous" message just as I did in churches and schools; some of our kids still get it with the contemporary emphasis on gays and Muslims. Over time it seems to drive the spirited and intelligent into doubt and skepticism while the sensitive break their hearts trying to find certainty for themselves or live with a negative certainty about others. The pragmatic come to experience faith as mere religion–conformity to a collectivist ritual emptied of personal conviction–and the truly mean are the only ones who seem to enjoy a gospel focused on scarcity and punishment for demonized outsiders.
Even in urban, highly educated Evangelical circles where people do not live in homogenous enclaves the presumption to know who is in and out of divine favor can still be heard. People who question that presumption loudly in Evangelical churches and schools have been attacked and subjected to extraordinary denunciation, including the kind of purges Karl mentioned. CT and Books and Culture covered several of these incidents over the decade or so that I followed them.
The saddest thing of all is that y/our view of salvation most often seems to offend many other Evangelicals when they see it implies the logical possibility that all people could potentially decide for Christ. This idea is commonly rejected with the greatest resentment at how unfair it would be. I've found this reaction to be common and in line with the criticism Richard Neuhaus got for Death on a Friday Afternoon: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/02/will-all-be-saved-30
To me this speaks to a crying need for there to be credible, influential Evangelical theologians or popular writers to make a stand for a more generous and open view of grace, salvation, and the church. The attempts that have been made (McLaren, Bell, Open Theism) have been poor, and the reactions to them have been worse.
I'm not sure this is intended, but it seems like you're implying that Karl dismisses the exclusivity of religious truth claims and is soft on the idea that decisions pertaining to faith might have eternal consequences. It also sounds like you took his weariness of sectarian chauvinism and doctrinal thought policing as apologizing for the gospel. I didn't get any of that from Karl's essay.
The truth of the gospel / the revelation of Christ is not something that came in pride and arrogance because it's right and can back up its claims, yet that is how a lot of people "proclaim" or "defend" it. The good news has a motive and goal of love and unity; its wholly human bearers often do not. Have Evangelicals failed exceptionally in this regard? I think Karl is saying they have, and I think the larger culture generally agrees. So do I.
The failure is exceptional because Evangelical views of salvation and the church are so often *not* aligned with the wholly orthodox and ancient view you describe as your own but are instead full of the presumptuous certainty about others and their relation to us and God. Sarah called it "blasphemous" with good reason. Of course views held by Evangelicals vary, and everyone has their personal anecdotes, but can we honestly say this is a mainstream and majority Evangelical belief:
Everyone gets to make a choice for or against Christ, yet the manner in which this occurs — and the outcome — are not known to us.
The last part, in its uncertainty and humility, is very rare in the Evangelical world of my experience. Do you really see it differently?
In the Evangelical (and Reformed) worlds familiar to me, you and your grandmother would be regarded as "liberals" for expressing this view of the mystery of salvation, especially if you made it clear that "everyone" whose eternal destination we do not know includes Muslims, Mormons, Jews, Catholics, "liberal Christians," etc. It's not a minority or eccentric view among Evangelicals that people in these groups are not even "potentially saved" if they die unconverted. All are presumed to have decided against God or to have had it decided for them by God. This view seems to have hardened during the culture wars and intensified during our current shooting wars with gays and Muslims becoming almost an obsessively demonized Other.
Close friends and relatives received this "exclusivist" or "blasphemous presumptuous" message just as I did in churches and schools; some of our kids still get it with the contemporary emphasis on gays and Muslims. Over time it seems to drive the spirited and intelligent into doubt and skepticism while the sensitive break their hearts trying to find certainty for themselves or live with a negative certainty about others. The pragmatic come to experience faith as mere religion–conformity to a collectivist ritual emptied of personal conviction–and the truly mean are the only ones who seem to enjoy a gospel focused on scarcity and punishment for demonized outsiders.
Even in urban, highly educated Evangelical circles where people do not live in homogenous enclaves the presumption to know who is in and out of divine favor can still be heard. People who question that presumption loudly in Evangelical churches and schools have been attacked and subjected to extraordinary denunciation, including the kind of purges Karl mentioned. CT and Books and Culture covered several of these incidents over the decade or so that I followed them.
The saddest thing of all is that y/our view of salvation most often seems to offend many other Evangelicals when they see it implies the logical possibility that all people could potentially decide for Christ. This idea is commonly rejected with the greatest resentment at how unfair it would be. I've found this reaction to be common and in line with the criticism Richard Neuhaus got for Death on a Friday Afternoon: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/02/will-all-be-saved-30
To me this speaks to a crying need for there to be credible, influential Evangelical theologians or popular writers to make a stand for a more generous and open view of grace, salvation, and the church. The attempts that have been made (McLaren, Bell, Open Theism) have been poor, and the reactions to them have been worse.
The real problem with evangelical exclusivism is that it's an theologically, historically, and ecclesiastically preposterous position that holding to certain evangelical Protestant distinctives — which are recent and in some cases extremely recent innovations — could make for a plausible soteriology. This is a problem for *evangelical* exclusivism, though, not exclusivism as such. Catholic or Orthodox cases, provided they're prooperly qualified, are much more plausible.
I still think *soteriological* exclusivism with respect to any specific individual is impossible in the light of the Gospel (e.g. theif on the cross), but ecclesiastical exclusivism not only possible, is necessesary.