Noble pagans

This is a follow-up to my previous post:

Scott

I have always wondered about that part [about Emeth worshiping Tash as Aslan in C. S. Lewis' The Last Battle], but not yet taken the time to look it up. Does Aslan's quote about "Those who follow Tash but do good actually follow me / and vice versa" accurately reflect CS Lewis' view on the matter?

Thanks, Scott. That's a good question!

1. I'm no C. S. Lewis scholar, but to my knowledge I think Lewis may have been hopeful that some non-Christians could've been saved (e.g. Virgil). That is, my impression is Lewis had some inclinations toward inclusivism, but I don't know if he was an inclusivist. He certainly wasn't a universalist. Maybe others who know better than I do can weigh in.

2. Regarding inclusivism, the Catholic philosopher Eleonore Stump offers such an argument here. She even cites Lewis' illustration of Emeth worshiping Tash in The Last Battle. It seems to me Stump's basic argument is we're not saved by facts about a person, we're saved by a person, namely Jesus Christ, but it's possible to know a person without knowing who they are. It's possible for a person who doesn't profess to be a Christian to know and love God despite not knowing God's true identity in this life.

3. On the face of it, it sounds like a reasonable argument, which it is to a degree, but I'm afraid I don't think it works at the end of the day.

a. For one thing, there's a significant difference between loving a person and loving an idea. If we can love God by loving that which God stands for (e.g. goodness, beauty), despite not knowing which (if any) God we're loving, then it seems to me what we're really loving is abstractions or ideas. If a pagan loves an impersonal goodness like a Platonic form of goodness, or if an atheist loves beauty in nature, how would that be loving a God who is personal? That could just as well be loving the creation rather than the creator. So I think there'd still need to be a step from loving true goodness to loving God.

b. With regard to the core claims of Christianity, I don't see how philosophical or theological truths can be so detached from historical facts or foundations. After all, Christianity is a historically revealed religion (e.g. 1 Cor 15). God plants his footsteps in the sea. God works wonders for his people. God speaks to his people via his prophets. God sends his Son. All this needs to be taken into consideration. It can't be ignored or glossed over.

Otherwise, if loving goodness or beauty in the abstract is sufficient for salvation, then all who seek goodness or beauty could be scaling up a different slope of the mountain, but all will reach the same destination in the end. A villager from Africa with no knowledge of Christianity could be seeking goodness. Likewise a Native American. Same with an Australian Aborigine. All in the context of their own culture's spiritual beliefs and practices. And so on. In fact, isn't this in effect what Hinduism teaches? If so, then perhaps Hinduism is the true religion, not Christianity. Perhaps Yahweh is another name for Brahman, not the other way around.

c. Moreover, how would the non-Christian know what is true goodness and true beauty? How far can natural revelation alone take the non-Christian in knowing what is truly good? For instance, isn't there a non-trivial distinction between the regenerate person's conscience and the unregenerate person's conscience? More to the point, our consciences may indeed give us moral insight, but what's needed isn't solely moral insight, but personal repentance.

d. I suspect Stump has in the back of her mind the noble pagan who has never heard the gospel but apparently lives an exemplary life and searches for truth, goodness, and beauty. Such as the ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. As far as that goes, I don't know if men like these were so morally exemplary, certainly not by 21st century progressive values (e.g. their arguments regarding slavery, their arguments about how society should be constituted). Furthermore, many of the ancient Greeks and Romans cultivated the life of the mind, perhaps we could add some of the ancient Egyptians, Indians, and Chinese, but otherwise how common was "the search for goodness, truth, and beauty" throughout human history? At any rate, I think Stump's argument might make more headway given some versions of freewill theism, but Calvinists would have better answers to the question, in my view, which Triablogue members have responded to in the past.

e. In addition, there are plenty of non-Christians who aren't "noble pagans" but are in fact explicitly serving a god that's inconsistent with true goodness as Stump envisions true goodness. Take Muslims who love Allah. Take, for instance, that to be a good Muslim one evidently needs to treat Jews and Christians as second-class citizens in Muslim lands and one must execute non-Muslims who refuse to become Muslims. If the Muslim does that, then they might be a good Muslim, but they're not doing what's truly good and right because they're mistreating others, according to Stump's exemplar of true goodness. However, if a Muslim does treat non-Muslims much better than they deserve, then they're not being a good Muslim, and it's arguable they may not even be considered a true Muslim by Islamic tradition. In other words, it seems to me on Stump's argument these Muslims could only be saved if they're more like noble pagans than they are like Muslims. So this seems like a quandary.

Bishop Barron's inclusivism

Ben Shapiro asks Bishop Robert Barron about salvation according to Catholicism. I don't recall Shapiro asking William Lane Craig or Ravi Zacharias this question, but it's possible I missed it. Shapiro may have asked John MacArthur, but I didn't watch that episode.

What’s the Catholic view on who gets into heaven and who doesn’t? I feel like I lead a pretty good life - a very religiously based life - in which I try to keep, not just the ten commandments, but a solid 603 other commandments as well. And I spend an awful lot of my time promulgating what I would consider to be Judeo-Christian virtues, particularly in Western societies. So, what’s the Catholic view of me? Am I basically screwed here?

No surprise Barron gives a terribly unbiblical response:

No. The Catholic view - go back to the Second Vatican Council - says it very clearly. I mean Christ is the privileged route to salvation. "God so loved the world he gave his only Son that we might find eternal life." So that’s the privileged route.

However, Vatican II clearly teaches that someone outside the explicit Christian faith can be saved. Now, they’re saved through the grace of Christ, indirectly received. So the grace is coming from Christ. But it might be received according to your conscience. So if you’re following your conscience sincerely - or in your case you’re following the commandments of the law sincerely - yeah, you can be saved.

Now, that doesn’t conduce to a complete relativism. We still would say the privileged route - the route that God has offered to humanity - is the route of his Son.

But, no, you can be saved. Even Vatican II says an atheist of good will can be saved, because in following his conscience, if he does - John Henry Newman said the conscience is "the aboriginal vicar of Christ in the soul" (it's a very interesting characterization) - it is, in fact, the voice of Christ if he is the Logos made flesh, right? He's the divine mind or reason made flesh. So when I'm following my conscience I'm following him, whether I know it explicitly or not. So even the atheist, Vatican II teaches, "of good will", can be saved.

Just a brief response for now:

1. Why bother becoming a Catholic if what Barron says is true. Heck, why bother becoming a theist if what Barron says is true.

2. Barron equivocates between "following one's conscience" and "following the commandments of the law". The two aren't necessarily the same. Especially if we're referring to the 613 commandments in rabbinic Judaism. It's not as if a non-Jew's conscience (however "intact" it may be) would necessarily tell him to follow kosher laws, observe Shabbat, and wear a tallit with tzitzit.

At best, I think, conscience might coincide with the Noahide laws, but even that's hardly a given. Does a pagan's conscience necessarily tell them not to worship an idol? Doesn't a good Buddhist (Mahayana) think he's doing right by his conscience in what he does for Buddha? Doesn't a good Muslim have a clear conscience when worshiping Allah? Yet post-Vatican II Catholicism even accepts that good people in other religions can be saved.

Or take the prohibition against murder. One could be a good communist who believes murder is wrong, but who doesn't consider killing the bourgeoisie "murder". One could be a modern American progressive Catholic who believes murder is wrong, but who doesn't think abortion is murder. That's not what their conscience tells them.

3. Perhaps Barron would reply these people have a seared conscience. A good conscience would have to align with biblical morality. But how far does that go? Wouldn't a Catholic in Barron's vein accept that worshiping a false god could somehow be done unto the true God? Similar to how Emeth in The Last Battle worshiped Tash. Yet biblical ethics would say that'd be a clear violation of the ten commandments.

4. I don't follow how Christ being the Word (Logos) made flesh means our conscience is "the voice of Christ". I don't doubt God could well speak to us through our conscience. I could even agree with Barron's conclusion that a good conscience is God's voice. However I don't see what this has to do with Christ being the Logos.

5. Of course, much turns on the phrase "of good will". What does that mean exactly? Who decides? I suspect much of this turns on Catholic natural law. All this would suggest severe faultlines in Catholic inclusivist soteriology, but I'd have to do a lengthier post about all this.

Would you indoctrinate your child to save their soul?

A typically malicious analysis on Rauser's part:

https://randalrauser.com/2019/11/would-you-indoctrinate-your-child-to-save-their-soul/

This is Rauser's trademark wedge tactic. 

1. Christian parent aren't ultimately responsible for the eternal fate of their kids because they don't control the outcome.

2. There's a risk of defection if you only show them to one side of the argument as well as a risk of defection if you show them to both. So that's a wash. There's no presumption that if you only show them to one side of the argument, they are more likely to stay in the fold. Consider the countless testimonies of apostates who discovered objections to Christianity and the Bible. They were defenseless because they were never schooled in Christian apologetics.

3. But the most fundamental flaw in Rauser's argument is his defective concept of saving faith in exclusivism. Saving faith isn't an accidental default faith where a Christian is an apostate waiting to happen, who only believes in Christianity because he's been shielded from alternatives. 

That never was saving faith. That never was personal faith in God or Christ or Scripture. Rather, that was childish faith in the authority figures in his life, like his parents or pastor. And that's fine when you're a child, but you're supposed to outgrow blind faith in your parents. You can't leech off of parental faith for the rest of your life. You have to develop your own conviction. 

It's like kids who lose their faith in Christianity when they find out that their parents "lied" to them about Christianity. But that just means they became disillusioned with their parents (for stupid reasons). In a sense it's good to lose that kind of faith, because that frees up space for personal faith. 

Hell: against universalism

An excerpt from Hell: against universalism by Ioanna-Maria Patsalidou.

Modern Catholicism on hell

Here's a good example of how post-Vatican II theology struggles to make the transition from traditional Catholic exclusivism to modern Catholic inclusivism. How to straddle two diametrically opposed positions. This is euphemistically dubbed the development of doctrine. 

https://www.wordonfire.org/hope/

Why is postmortem salvation false?

Why doesn't God save anyone after they die? Isn't death an arbitrary cuff-off point? No second chance just because you're dead?

The answer depends on unspoken assumptions behind the question. In the case of Calvinism, the traditional position isn't based, in the first instance, on starting with a theological principle, then drawing an inference. Rather, it's based on what Scripture indicates about the fate of the dead. In many places, Scripture indicates that at the moment of death, the dying individual is either heavenbound or hellbound, and the trajectory they were already on at the moment of death continues in the same direction into the afterlife. Calvinism simply accepts that revelation.

However, another way of viewing the issue is the point at which a person's salvation or damnation is settled. From a Reformed standpoint, one reason there's no postmortem salvation is because their eternal destiny was never unsettled. It's not as if their eternal destiny was unsettled during their lifetime, while the moment of locks in a particular outcome. Rather, there's a sense in which that was settled before they ever existed. It's not as if their ultimate fate is still indeterminate after they die, so that the final outcome remains open-ended. Rather, the plot was written ahead of time. 

If God intends to save someone, he can save them before they die. He can save everyone he intends to save prior to death. There's no logjam at the moment of death, that must be broken after death. That was all sorted out in advance.   

In freewill theism, by contrast, the problem is the opposite. Why is their destined ever settled, once and for all time? According to inclusivism, you're not necessarily heavenbound or hellbound at the moment of death. Even if you die an unbeliever, you weren't on one pathway or the other at the moment of death. You had no set direction in this life. You had no set direction at the time of death. It was open-ended heading into death.

But that presents a dilemma for freewill theism. Even if God can save you in the afterlife, what makes that stick? Why can't you lose your salvation in the afterlife? 

Sophisticated freewill theists allow for will-setting, where prior libertarian choices in the past may fix the direction of our future choices. But that means your damnation may already be cemented well before you die rather than when you die–much less after you die.

The cult of the dead

Protestant England was particularly troubled after the war [WWI] was over, because most of its very Protestant churches were unable to permit prayers fro the dead that so many bereaved families would have liked to offer. Spiritualism, with its promise of renewed contact with the departed briefly flourished because of this, prompting Rudyard Kipling to write his poem "En-Dor," warning the bereaved that they were being cruelly manipulated for gain. P. Hitchens, The Rage Against God (Zondervan), 117. 

The cult of the dead is widespread in paganism. Necromancy is a common expression. And this remains popular with mourners who attend a séance in the desperate hope of contacting a departed loved one. A way to exploit people in crisis. 

There are different paradigms for the cult of the dead. In the West, Catholicism is the best known. That includes prayers for the dead. On that paradigm, your eternal destiny is fixed at the moment of death, but prayers can expedite the passage from Purgatory to heaven. Prayers for the dead are only availing for souls in Purgatory. You must die in a state of grace. If you die in mortal sin, you're out of luck. That's an exclusivist paradigm, although modern Catholicism is increasingly inclusivist. When traditional Protestant theology forbids prayers for the dead, that's the specific context. 

Then you have inclusivism in freewill theism, which may include postmortem salvation. On that view, you're not heavebound or hellbound at the moment of death. Your eternal destiny is indeterminate at the moment of death. That will be settled after you die. This is driven by one or more theological assumptions. Primarily, freewill theism's belief that everyone should have an equal opportunity to be saved, yet in this life, spiritual opportunities are highly inequitable, so postmortem salvation compensates for disparities in this life. It's also a way to reconcile inclusivism with the Gospel demand that indexes salvation to faith in Christ. If that's not possible in this life, you get a second chance in the afterlife. 

Another paradigm extrapolates from the principle of retroactive prayer. This can be combined with exclusivism. On this view, prayers for the dead don't change the decedent's postmortem condition. Rather, if availing, they affect his spiritual trajectory before he died. 

The basic idea is that God's relation to time is different from the supplicant. It isn't always necessary to pray before the event, as if God must wait to find out what we pray for, then act after the fact. If God is outside of time, or God knows the future, then God can set the answer to prayer in motion before we pray. That's consistent with exclusivism, but fundamentally different from the traditional Catholic paradigm. If you think about it, many prayers require the chain of events to be underway prior to prayer for the prayer to be answerable. On this view, prayers for the dead are just a special case of that general principle. The decedent's eternal destiny is fixed at the moment of death, yet postmortem prayers may retroactively affect his final destiny prior to death.  

I've discussed this before. Now I'd like to quote from a recent article that provides some additional argumentation: William M. Webb, "Petitionary Prayer for the Dead and the Boethian Concept of a Timeless God," International Philosophical Quarterly 59/1 (2019), 65-76. 

I disagree with Webb's characterization of God's viewpoint as a timeless present. I regard God as strictly timeless. But his argument doesn't turn on that nuance. 

"The paradoxes of hell"

Bill Dembski has written a very long essay in defense of inclusivism:

https://billdembski.com/theology-and-religion/the-paradoxes-of-hell/#more-53452

This post will be long, not because my responses to Dembski are all that lengthy, but due to my quoting him before responding. 

Dembski's a Roman Catholic convert to evangelicalism. Had a layover in Eastern Orthodoxy. All these experiences provide him with a comparative frame of reference. I think he took heat from progressive Christians at Princeton, he's been the target of ruthless and relentless attack from the secular scientific establishment, he's been under fire from young-earth creationists, then he was knifed in the back at SWBTS. So many enemies both inside and outside the church. It has a cumulative effect. Finally, he has an autistic son. So all these factors condition his outlook. He's a heroic figure, but there's an understandably reactionary element to his position. It's to his credit that he can muster so much grace under pressure. 

His essay is very intelligent. He's a brilliant thinker. He gives some bad answers to some good questions. His position is confused or downright pernicious. And he doesn't seem to consult commentaries to familiarize himself with the range of interpretations.

The wider hope

1. Let's define exclusivism as the view that to be saved during the Christian era a mentally competent person must exercise explicit faith in Jesus prior to death. That's controversial, but it's the bedrock of Christian evangelism. 

2. According to one version of inclusivism, a person can be saved through a receptive response to general revelation. According to a related version, a person can be saved through implicit faith. 

3. Then you have mediating positions that are technically exclusivistic, but are really face-saving versions of inclusivism. For instance, the theory of postmortem salvation, where people can be saved by exercising faith in Jesus after they die. Technically, that might be classified as exclusivism, but it's functionally equivalent to inclusivism. Put another way, it's a radical modification of what exclusivism traditionally meant. In that attenuated sense, even universalism is exclusivistic. At which point the contrast between exclusivism and inclusivism becomes moot. 

4. You also have William Lane Craig's conjecture that God has arranged history so that no unreached person would be receptive to the Gospel if given the opportunity. That suffers from several problems:

i) There's no evidence that it's true.

ii) It depends on the dubious theory of middle knowledge.

iii) It conflicts with Craig's belief that: 

The hypothesis is that God has done the very best He can, given the true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom which confront Him...God doesn’t create such a choice for Himself. The counterfactuals of creaturely freedom which confront Him are outside His control. He has to play with the hand He has been dealt. 

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/molinism-and-the-soteriological-problem-of-evil-once-more#ixzz4ahX0FLaH

But in that event, there's no justification for assuming that the card deck God has to work with includes a hand containing a feasible world in which no unreached person would be receptive to the Gospel if given the opportunity.

iv) By the same token, that's in competition with another one of Craig's conjectures:

Maybe His desire to achieve an optimal balance between saved and lost overrides the benefits of a world with less natural and moral evil. 

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/molinism-and-the-soteriological-problem-of-evil-once-more#ixzz4ahY17lxy

But that means God must be dealt two royal flushes in a row. He must be lucky enough to have a feasible world which combines both an optimal balance between the saved and the lost as well as where no unreached person would be receptive to the Gospel if given the opportunity. But on his own grounds, Craig has no warrant for believing that the card deck includes a feasible hand where both rosy scenarios coincide. 

5. C. S. Lewis famously said: "But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other [unreached] people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him.

That, of course, is very different from saying no one can be saved except through faith in Christ. 

6. There's internal pressure in freewill theism towards inclusivism because freewill theists typically subscribe to universal atonement and God's ardent desire to save everyone. But that's in tension with belief that salvation is contingent on a condition which is unavailable to many people: knowledge of the Gospel. 

Like it or not, Calvinism doesn't suffer from that internal pressure. Its commitment to exclusivism is internally consistent, given reprobation and limited atonement.  

Offhand, the only Reformed theologian I'm aware of who embraced a "wider hope" is William Shedd. He's fairly idiosyncratic. His position is likely colored by his Christian platonism. 

Let's consider some wedge issues:

7. OT saints

i) OT Jews didn't need to exercise explicit faith in Jesus to be saved. 

True, but that means the content of saving faith is indexed to progressive revelation. To whom much is given, much is required. 

ii) From the standpoint of pre-Christian Jews, there's a distinction between believing in the Messiah and believing in Jesus. They didn't know who the Messiah would be, but they knew what the Messiah would be. From our retrospective standpoint, we know that Jesus and the Messiah are one in the same person. From their prospective standpoint, they couldn't know that Jesus would be the Messiah. They didn't know about the life of Jesus. But they could still believe in the Messiah. 

It's like saying you can believe in Superman without believing in Clark Kent. If you don't know that Clark Kent is Superman, that doesn't prevent you from believing in Superman. 

To draw another distinction, you can know a role or know a character without knowing the actor who will play the role or play the character. 

iii) According to the NT, and Hebrews in particular, there was a transitional phase where, once you know who the Messiah is (Jesus), it's no longer enough just to believe in the Messiah: you must believe that Jesus is the Messiah. At that point, rejecting Jesus is tantamount to rejecting the Messiah, since Jesus is the Messiah. You can no longer separate the two. 

iv) An inclusivist might object that while there's a chronological distinction between Jews who lived before Jesus and Jews who lived after Jesus, that's analogous to a geographical distinction for gentiles who live outside the pale of the Gospel. They are in a position comparable to pre-Christian Jews. Even though they live after Jesus, they might as well be living before Jesus, because their geographical barrier is equivalent to a chronological barrier. Time and place are both buffers. 

But a problem with that comparison is that you had the same geographical distinction in OT times. Yahweh revealed himself to Israel in a way that he didn't generally reveal himself to pagan nations. And to the extent that he made himself known to pagan nations, it was in connection with Israel. Post-Christian pagans are not in a situation analogous to pre-Christian Jews. Rather, they're in the same situation as pre-Christian pagans. God generally distinguished between Jews and Gentiles, except where their lives intersected. 

8. Pagan saints

Some inclusivists classify some Biblical figures as "pagan saints": Enoch, Job, Noah, Melchizedek, Abimelech, Jethro, Naaman, the Queen of Sheba, Nebuchadnezzar, Ninevites, and Cornelius. But there are serious problems with that category:

i) Except for Cornelius, the Bible doesn't say they were saved. 

ii) To the extent that some of them were saved, they came to saving knowledge through contact with the chosen people.

iii) Some of them were recipients of special revelation.

iv) Cornelius was a Godfearer. An intellectual convert to Judaism (although he eschewed circumcision). He's in the position of an OT saint. 

v) How many inclusivists regard Job as a historical rather than fictional character?

vi) It's possible that Melchizedek was pagan. That doesn't make him a "pagan saint". That doesn't mean he was saved. His function is essentially symbolic. His typological role is separable from his person. What matters is what he represents, not his character. 

9. Babies

Even Calvinists believe that "elect" infants dying in infancy are saved. So faith in Jesus is not a sine qua non for salvation. But there are serious problems with that comparison:

i) The argument either proves too much or too little. It's not just that babies lack faith in Jesus. They lack implicit faith. They lack faith in general revelation. 

ii) Children below the age of reason lack the cognitive development to form propositional beliefs. That's not analogous to mentally competent agents. Rather, that's analogous to the developmentally disabled, or the senile. 

iii) Although "elect" infants dying in infancy aren't saved by faith, they are saved by grace. They are saved by regeneration.

iv) But it might be objected that if that's the case, why can't other people be saved by grace or by regeneration rather than faith?

No doubt God could do so if he chose to. But mercy is discretionary rather than obligatory. Fact is, the Bible stresses the necessity of faith in Christ for salvation when addressing adults. Whether or not we find it arbitrary, that's our frame of reference. Even if there are exceptions, that is only known to God. We must operate by his revealed will, not his secret will–assuming God makes exceptions. 

10. Christophanies

The OT records divine disclosure by theophanies and angelophanies, as well as dreams and visions. In the Bible, pagans are sometimes recipients of revelatory dreams. Some Christians identify certain OT angelophanies as Christophanies. Likewise, you have modern-day reports of Jesus appearing to Muslims in dreams, which are instrumental in their conversion. 

If so, then in principle, why couldn't there be Christophanies to the unevangelized? To take one hypothetical scenario why couldn't Manitou sometimes be a Christophany to heathen Indians who had no access to the Gospel? 

Several issues:

i) Even if that's hypothetically possible, unless we have evidence that it ever happens, so what?

ii) According to the Christian paradigm, faith in Jesus involves believing the gist of a biographical narrative about who Jesus is and what he did. By itself, a Christophany is not an object of faith. Even in the OT, event-media and word-media work in tandem.

iii) The OT presents the situation of the heathen as morally and spiritually dire. So does the NT (e.g. Rom 1:21-32; Eph 2:1-3,12; 4:17-19; Tit 3:3). Likewise, when Christian missionaries push into unevangelized lands, they encounter animism, paganism, and depravity. They don't encounter people-groups to whom God appeared in disguised Christophanies. 

iv) If, moreover, God were to instigate a religious movement through a Christophany, without biblical revelation, that would rapidly degenerate into a pagan cult. 

v) Now, for all we know, it's possible that God has appeared to select individuals throughout history, across the globe. But certainly not enough to establish a religious movement that allegorizes Christianity. At best, it could only be in reference to isolated cases. 

Anyone Can be Saved: A Defense of “Traditional” Southern Baptist Soteriology

http://drdavidlallen.com/uncategorized/new-book-anyone-can-be-saved/

Hmm. I thought traditional SB soteriology subscribes to exclusivism. Putting aside special cases (e.g. those who die before the age of reason), traditional SB soteriology says those who live and die outside the pale of the Gospel cannot be saved. That's a presupposition of traditional SB foreign missions. Faith is Christ is necessary for salvation. So anyone cannot be saved. 

So the book would only make sense if it represents a shift from exclusivism to inclusivism, viz. Jerry Walls, John Sanders, Gabriel Fackre, Clark Pinnock. 

The Last Battle

Bell does say it is okay to “long for” universal salvation.  So did Pope John Paul II!...Chapter 6 is about what is usually called inclusivism–that salvation through Jesus Christ is not limited to those who hear his name.  (I’ve discussed problems with restrictivism here before.)  I find nothing in that chapter that Billy Graham has not said.  (Go to youtube.com and look up Graham’s responses to questions from Robert Schuler.)

 

While reading Love Wins I kept thinking “This sounds like C. S. Lewis!”  In his Acknowledgments Bell thanks someone for “suggesting when I was in high school that I read C. S. Lewis.”

http://rogereolson.com/2011/03/25/the-promised-response-to-bells-love-wins/

This belies a fundamentally muddleheaded approach to theological questions. Merely quoting the opinion of a famous religious figure is irrelevant. Religious truth is not decided by committee. It’s not an opinion survey. It’s not about who has the most votes. Or someone we admire.

The first question we always need to ask ourselves is whether the speaker was in a position to know what he’s talking about. What’s his source of information?

Here we’re dealing with the question of what ultimately happens to you when you die. And the only reliable source of information to answer a question like that is divine revelation. This isn’t something you can determine by armchair speculation or empirical observation.

Personal experience is a poor way to discover what happens to you after you die, for if you wait until you find out the hard way, then it’s too late to make preparations for the afterlife before you die. If you find out what happens to you after you die…after you die, then you can’t go back and make a midcourse correction. You’re stuck with the outcome.

Billy Graham is a saintly man, but he’s not a great Bible scholar or theologian. C. S. Lewis was a gifted fiction writer, but The Great Divorce or The Last Battle is hardly a trustworthy way of finding out what awaits us when we die. The pope is not a prophet.

Olson is a blind guide.