Is Knowing Jesus the Only Way to be Saved? (White vs Sanders)

Debate Format and Opening Thesis

I'd like to take the opportunity first to thank a few folks. Firstly, Greg Poss, the gentleman that was just speaking, thank him for allowing this event to take place, as well as Darren Kinney, Steve Hobbs, and yes, the Finley brothers, who helped me out so much in putting this debate as well as our one tomorrow night together.

Secondly, I'd like to thank also Harborside Christian Church, Countryside Christian Center, and Lakeside Community Chapel for helping us with the event. Now, real quick, let's run down how this is going to happen.

First of all, I'd like to start off with an introduction, which is going on right now. We will have two 15-minute opening statements. We will have the affirmative starting, then the negative, then two 10-minute rebuttals.

We will then have a 10-minute break. After that, we will have 15 minutes of affirmative cross-examination and 15 minutes of negative cross-examination. After that, that will be followed by a 10-minute affirmative closing statement and a 10-minute negative closing statement.

After that, we will take about 25 to 30 minutes to take questions from the floor. And I will ask now, as well as I will ask later. Please, when you do come to ask a question, I understand that a lot of times emotions run high in things like this, but please do not take this as an opportunity to preach.

Please keep your question under 10 seconds and allow... Well, okay, 30 seconds. I've just heard so many that have gone a little out of control. 10 seconds if possible. Please make your question direct, and please do not engage in debate with the two gentlemen up here.

Give them a chance to answer, and of course, they will be allowed then to answer the question that was given to them. Well, let me first start off by, once again, stating the thesis statement. You might have seen the flyer that said, Is Jesus the only way?

The formal thesis statement is, Does God provide another means of salvation? Outside of a personal knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ for adults. And that is what will be debated tonight. First off, I'd like to introduce, in the affirmative position, Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Huntington Christian College, author of What About Those Who Have Never Heard, No Other Name, and The God Who Risks, which also, some of these books will be available through Kokesbury.

You can go over there and order them ahead of time. I'd like to introduce Dr. John Sanders. Secondly, in the negative position, I'd like to introduce Professor of Apologetics at Columbia Evangelical Seminary, and Adjunct Professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

He is the author of several books, including The King James Only Controversy, The Forgotten Trinity, The Roman Catholic Controversy, Is the Mormon My Brother?, The God Who Justifies, and The Potter's Freedom.

Please welcome Dr. James White. I would also like to ask that you keep your applause to a minimum while the gentlemen are speaking, as that will cut into their time. It would be now that I would like to just let us all bow for a silent moment of prayer.

Amen.

Thank you. We will start with Dr. White. Oh, pardon me, Dr. Sanders.

Inclusivism, Implicit Faith, and the Soteriological Problem of Evil

Does God provide another means of salvation for adults outside of personal knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ? First, three brief observations. One, the Bible, in my opinion, does not directly address our question.

It was not a question they were asking. There are elements in the scripture that we use to answer this question. But the question, as we have formulated it, I don't think is directly in scripture. We have to weave together themes to form a model in order to answer this.

And there are a great many background questions that are relevant. Depending on your answer to some of these questions will affect your answer yes or no. Does God want everyone to be redeemed? What is the nature of God's love in relation to his justice?

Does God hate sinners? What is the value of general revelation? What must be the object of one's faith? Does God place limits on the means of salvation? Or does God cut people some slack? What is the reason why anyone is condemned?

What is the role of the Holy Spirit? And does the Holy Spirit work outside knowledge of the gospel of Jesus? Those are just a few questions that impinge on it. And obviously Christians have various answers to that.

Second, most of us would agree that mere knowledge does not save anyone. Most Christians have said that just knowing about Jesus doesn't save one. It involves more than that. Knowledge of the gospel is not what we call a sufficient condition for salvation.

Third, so I'm refining the question now. Is knowledge of the gospel an absolutely necessary condition for adults in order to be saved? Most Christians, in my opinion, have answered no. Here's a simple reason.

All Jewish believers prior to Jesus are considered to have been saved. That is, those who were faithful in their belief. So we have to refine the question even more. Is knowledge of the gospel of Jesus an absolutely necessary condition for salvation of adults, for those living after the time of Jesus?

And even in response to this, there have been a great many Christian answers. Here's a little plug for my book, What About Those Who Never Heard? There's this really nifty chart in there that gives an overview of the range of major views that Christians have held throughout the history of the Church.

Everywhere from universalism, everyone will be saved, period, no matter what, through Jesus, to a divine perseverance, also called eschatological evangelization or post-mortem evangelization, that everyone gets an opportunity after death.

That is, the un-evangelized receive an opportunity after death. To my position, inclusivism or implicit faith, which I'll get to in a moment, some Christians have said that people have an opportunity.

If they are seeking, God will send the message to them, maybe even through an angel or a dream. And a position I call restrictivism, which says, no, one has to know about Jesus and has to learn of Jesus in this life and put one's faith in Jesus in order to be saved.

My initial conclusion from that very exceedingly brief overview is that many Christians have said that knowledge of Jesus is, indeed, necessary for salvation. But they disagree whether one has to obtain this knowledge prior to death and whether God might grant this knowledge in extraordinary ways.

So there's what I call a position of wider hope. There's a range of views within that wider hope as to exactly how this might happen. My own framework for addressing this question is to see it as part of the problem of evil.

In fact, what we call the soteriological problem of evil or the issue of salvation and sin. The Bible declares that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son to save it and that God is not willing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

And I take these texts as illustrative of the many passages proclaiming God's incredible love for and desire to save sinners. However, the Bible also teaches that there is only one Savior and that is Jesus Christ.

And it's through him and him alone that salvation has been brought to humanity. There is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved, Acts 4 .12.

So the soteriological problem of evil then is located between the tension of God's universal salvific love, desire to save on the one hand, and the particularity of salvation in Jesus. Jesus is the only Savior.

So, questions arise. What does the Creator God, who redeemed humanity through the death and resurrection of Jesus, do to accomplish his goal of desiring to save all? Does God make the salvation found only in Jesus available to all people?

Is salvation universally accessible? And if so, how might God accomplish that? Now, my own particular view is known as inclusivism or the implicit faith position. And I've already given you a little indicator of what motivates me to go in that direction.

And so I believe that God genuinely wants to save those, even those who have died not hearing about Jesus. And I also believe that indeed Jesus died for everyone and his death is sufficient for everyone.

So, how might God pull this off? Well, according to the implicit faith position, Jesus is the particular Savior of the world, but people can benefit from the redemptive work of Jesus Christ even though they die never hearing of Christ.

But there is a condition. They must respond in faith to God based upon the revelation God has given them. Inclusivists glean from various biblical texts an optimism of salvation for they see God working outside the bounds of ethnic Israel in the Old Testament as well as the church.

God made a universal covenant through Noah, for instance. And God's choice to work through Abraham was for the purpose of blessing all the peoples of the earth, Genesis 12 .3. Scripture mentions several nations for whom God provided land by driving out the previous inhabitants.

The prophet Amos declared that God had performed events similar to the exodus, the exodus for Israel, and God had performed those for other nations. Attention is drawn to non-Israelites and how they are looked upon in the Old Testament, people such as Melchizedek, Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, Job, the queen of Sheba, and others.

On several occasions, Jesus commented on the extraordinary faith he discerned among Gentiles, such as the Canaanite woman and the Roman centurion. And though God was doing a special work in Israel, God was also working outside the borders of Israel.

The Gentile that inclusivists look at most specifically is a fellow named Cornelius in the book of Acts. He is called a God-fearing Gentile who prayed continually. One day, an angel informs him that his prayers and alms were a memorial offering of which God took notice, and he was given instructions to send for Peter.

Peter arrives and informs the household about the redemption in Jesus Christ, whereupon the household is baptized in the name of Jesus. In light of these events, Peter declares,. From the scriptural commentary on believing Gentiles, inclusivists suggest that these God-fearers were already acceptable to God prior to any knowledge of Christ due to their act of faith in response to the revelation that they had.

The redemption of Christ is applied to these people even though they are unaware of it. Cornelius was already worshiping the God who saves through Christ. What he received from Peter's proclamation of the gospel was the fullness of salvation that comes from the knowledge of what God had done in Jesus and being incorporated into the body of Christ, the Church.

He went from being a believer to being a Christian, or in the words of John Wesley, from being a servant to a son. The Creator God, I see, is the same God as the Redeemer God. So for inclusivists, ignorance of Christ does not disqualify one from grace.

What God requires is a right disposition towards God and a willingness to do God's will. The Apostle Paul says that God will approve of those Gentiles who, though they do not have the law, the Old Testament revelation, they do by nature the things required in the law.

Abraham did not know about the Messiah to come, yet he was accepted by God because of a faithful response to what he knew about God. Christians are those who place their faith in what God has done in Jesus.

Christians certainly know more about what God has done for our redemption than Abraham, Moses, David. Yet for Paul there is continuity between believers such as Abraham and Christians such as those at Rome because both believe in and seek to follow the same God, Romans 4 .24.

There is only one God, Romans 3 .29. The Creator who gave us life is the same God who raised Jesus from the dead. Though some only know God as Creator, while others know Him as both Creator and Redeemer, it is the same God who relates to both groups.

The difference between creational revelation and biblical revelation concerns the degree of specificity about what God is doing, not a difference in kind, since it is the same God doing the revealing.

Inclusivists maintain that anyone who is saved, including the Old Testament patriarchs, will be saved only by the atoning work of Jesus Christ. In other words, the redemptive work of Jesus is soteriologically necessary, but is not epistemically necessary.

So fancy words. It's necessary for salvation, but it's not necessary to know it in order to be saved. Those who die unevangelized are able to benefit from the atonement of Christ if they will respond appropriately to the knowledge of God given them.

And we call this the faith principle, that God is looking for people to respond in faith to what they have been revealed. But how can humans, who are in bondage to sin, receive salvation and exercise faith in God?

Inclusivists respond to this question by appealing to the universal work of the Son and Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity, though particularly active in Israel and the Church, and uniquely in Christ, has also been active in other venues.

According to Justin Martyr, an early 2nd century Church father, the seed of the universal Logos is present in all races, even though the fullness of the Logos is present in Jesus. And so many have used what we call a Logos Christology to see how God is at work with them.

If a person's ability to respond to revelation is not by means of reason, or through any faculty possessed by that person, but by the initiative of God through the Holy Spirit, is not this basic orientation towards God a gift of grace?

I'll say that again. If a person's ability to respond is not based upon human reason, or something inhuman, but because God is at work in that person's life, transforming that individual, isn't that an initiative of God, and hence, isn't that a gift of grace from God?

And if so, then the question for me is, wouldn't God count that as the kind of faith that God is looking for, and hence apply the work of Jesus to that person, in the same way that God would apply the work of Jesus to Abraham, who didn't know about Jesus, but responded in faith?

Finally, let me just make a few comments about who has held this view. It's not new in terms of church history. In fact, when I did my research, I didn't find any views that were really new. The inclusivist position has a long and distinguished history.

Such widely divergent thinkers as Justin Martyr, Thomas Quinas, John Wesley, C .S. Lewis, and Pope John Paul II, and even Billy Graham. In fact, I would say that inclusivism represents the closest thing to a consensus among ecumenical Christians that we have.

Let me just finish with Billy Graham. He said, I used to think I had to play God and decide who was and who wasn't saved. He says, I no longer do that. He says, I believe that there are other ways that people can learn about God through nature, for instance, and other ways to respond to God than simply through Jesus.

And Billy Graham is perhaps the most famous evangelist ever, and yet he holds out hope for the un-evangelized, and he still evangelizes.

Thank you.

Scripture, Election, and the Necessity of Knowing Christ

Good evening and welcome. It is great to be here with you at The Grind. I have never debated at a place called The Grind before, and I've never debated without wearing a tie, and so this is quite an event for me, and I'm sure it's not nearly as much of an event for you.

We have very little time this evening, so we need to get focused on what we're talking about and get to the heart of the matter. This debate is about how God saves. Both sides confess the ultimacy of Jesus Christ as Savior.

Anyone who is saved will be saved in the final analysis through the work of Jesus Christ, but we differ fundamentally on what that means and how it works out in reality. Now, inclusivism says that there are two divine truths.

We just heard about this. It must be balanced. The finality of Christ as the only Savior must be balanced with the assertion of what is called God's universal salvific will. That is the belief that God desires the salvation of each and every individual person in the same way and in the same fashion.

As a result of these two beliefs, along with a strong commitment to libertarian free will or human autonomy, inclusivism raises the issue of the un-evangelized, those who have never heard the gospel message.

Their conclusion, giving their belief in the universal salvific will, an undifferentiated love of God for every creature, and the role of Christ as the only Savior, is that God must save outside of a personal knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is, men and women who freely make a faith move toward God, even in ignorance of the work of Christ, are saved by Christ and will come to know him only after death and eternity itself. Now, while this sounds, I believe, very attractive in our modern day, it begins with the assumption of man's goodness in the sense that there is this ability that we just heard about to make this positive move toward God.

There is also this idea in much of the writings that I have examined that seemingly God is in a position of owing to man a chance. Our purpose this evening is to ask really the most important question, and that is, what does God say about this in his word?

I'm a bit of a dinosaur in the world today, I admit, because I am convinced of the absolute consistency, integrity, inerrancy, and sufficiency of God's revelation in Scripture. I am in awe of the Bible.

And I cannot get away from Jesus' words to the Sadducees in Matthew chapter 22, that when you read the Scriptures, you are hearing God speaking to you, and you are held accountable for what you hear on that level.

So I believe the Bible is perspicuous, self-consistent, utterly harmonious in its teaching, and I take the stand fully conscious of the arguments against it and its unpopularity, having defended this view of Scripture many times in the past.

So why am I standing here this evening? What are the issues? Let me lay them out rather directly. While I agree with Dr. Sanders that anyone who will ever be saved will be saved only by Jesus Christ, we do not agree on why this is.

I believe that it is God's purpose to save a people in and through Jesus Christ. I believe it has been His purpose from eternity to redeem a specific people, known in the Bible as the elect. These people are known by God from eternity, not in the sense that God merely knew who would choose Him, but in an intimate, personal way, God chose to enter into relationship with them even before they were created.

God's grace and salvation is intensely personal, and hence we read in 2 Timothy 1 .9 that this grace was granted to us in Christ Jesus before time itself began. We can be assured that God chose His people personally, specifically, intimately, in eternity, and He chose to do so solely in Jesus Christ.

Secondly, I believe the inclusivist position denies to God a basic freedom and ability that it rightly claims for the creature man. What do I mean? Well, specifically, it shares in common with most non-reformed views the idea that while we recognize the necessity and the propriety of humans exercising choice and discernment in who we love and how we love, it denies its basic ability to God.

God, we are told, loves everyone equally and tries to save everyone equally, failing in many instances, succeeding in others, and yet this assumption must be challenged from the start. The Bible says that men are to love their wives as Christ loved the church.

Christ does not love any other body the way He loves His church. We could not say that Christ loves the UN the way Christ loves the church. He exercises discrimination in His love. We could not say that any man is to love anyone else's wife the way he loves his own wife.

We fully recognize the propriety of the fact that a mother loves her own children with a special love that cannot be extended to anyone else. If the creature can and should recognize different kinds and levels of love, why should anyone deny this freedom to God?

Inclusivism denies, as a part of its assertion of a universal salvific will, the reality that there is a redemptive love of God in Jesus Christ that comes to expression in the redemption of the elect of God.

Those who stand upon the parapets of hell and eternity, screaming their hatred of God, are not examples of the failure of Christ's love, atonement, or resurrection power. They are examples of the justice of God, not of the failure of God's love.

And, of course, if the Reformed tradition is correct in its assertion that the Bible inarguably presents a sovereign and divine decree of salvation and that God must work the miracle of regeneration in the heart so as to free men from the bondage of sin and death, then this obviously causes the inclusivist position difficulty because that universal salvific will is one of its main pillars.

If Romans 8, 29 through 30 is correct in stating that it is God who foreknows, God who predestines, God who calls, God who justifies, and God who glorifies, making the work of salvation solely to His honor and glory, then that pillar of a universal salvific will, based upon an undifferentiated love of God that tries to save everyone equally but is dependent upon the cooperation of the creature, falls.

Finally, I believe the Bible very plainly teaches that God intends to save a special people in Jesus Christ and that the divine intention is to save those people through a personal faith relationship with Him, not in ignorance of Him.

The idea that there are thousands or millions who will only come to know of their Savior after their death is, I believe, completely absent from the text of Scripture. Instead, the Bible says that Jesus Christ, our great God and Savior, gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds, Titus chapter 2.

God intends to conform His people to the image of Christ. How can He do this when these people live in ignorance of Christ Himself? But we have direct biblical teaching on this subject and in the few moments we have left, please turn with me to Jesus' own words recorded for us in John chapter 6, verses 30 and 31.

And if you didn't bring your Bible with you tonight, shame on you first of all. Secondly, let me read it for you. All that the Father gives me, Jesus says, will come to me and the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out.

For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of Him who sent me. This is the will of Him who sent me, that of all that He has given me I lose nothing but raise it up on the last day.

For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life and I myself will raise Him up on the last day. Therefore the Jews were grumbling about Him because He said, I am the bread that came down from heaven.

They were saying, is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, I have come down from heaven? Jesus answered and said to them, do not grumble among yourselves.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the prophets and they shall all be taught of God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.

Now, I could spend much more than my opening period just simply talking about this passage of scripture, I can assure you, but let me try to focus upon the most important things that are relevant to our thesis this evening.

In this context we have men who have come across the lake. They heard Jesus preaching the day before. They wanted to make Him king. They are even described as seekers of Jesus. They have come across the lake looking for Him and Jesus recognizes they are looking for more miracles.

They are not actually looking for Him as an individual. They do not understand their need. By the end of this chapter they are all going to walk away from Jesus except for the twelve. Now notice what Jesus says in John 6 .37.

All that the Father gives me will do what? Will make a positive move toward God?

No.

All that the Father gives me will come to me. And the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out. Now it is very important to notice. This coming to Christ is paralleled in this passage with having faith in Him, with trusting Him.

And this has to be in this life because obviously the second part of the verse and the one coming to me I will certainly not cast out could not be in reference to heaven. He is not saying well, you know, once you find out who I am someday in heaven, I will not cast you out.

This is talking about right now. This is talking about He is in fact here explaining why these men in front of Him He has just identified as unbelievers. He said you have seen me yet you do not believe.

All that the Father gives me will come to me. I believe that is an explicit statement on the part of the Holy Spirit in Scripture that those the Father gives to the Son come to Christ and they are the ones that Christ raises up to eternal life.

Notice verse 38, for I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of Him who sent me. This is the will of Him who sent me that of all that He has given me I lose nothing but raise it up on the last day.

So the Father gives His people to the Son and it is the Father's will for the Son that He be a perfect Savior. Jesus must be a perfect Savior for Him to fulfill the will of the Father here. This is very, very clear.

But then notice what else happens. Verse 40, for this is the will of my Father that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life and I myself will raise Him up on the last day.

See how this theme of being raised up on the last day, being given eternal life keeps repeating and who is it that gets eternal life? Who are the individuals that Jesus Christ raises up on the last day?

They are those who come to Him. They are those who behold Him. They are those who look upon Him. There is nothing here about individuals who are ignorant of Christ. Now some of you might say, well yes, all those passages only have to do with the evangelized.

They only have to do with those who have heard the message not with those who have never heard the message. Well, notice going beyond this to Jesus' statement in verse 44 when He says, No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.

This is a difficult passage for many people because many traditions in evangelicalism say everyone has this general capacity and ability. It is Jesus who stands at the heart's door and He knocks upon a door that has no knob.

That's not the biblical presentation. The biblical presentation is much more properly seen in John chapter 11 when Jesus comes to the grave of Lazarus and Lazarus has been dead for four days and as his sister told Jesus, he stinketh in the King James Version.

He was dead. He was a stiff. And yet when the Son of God said, Lazarus come forth, no one stopped to ask, does Jesus really have that right? Because you see when Jesus, the Son of God says, come to life, dead men come to life.

And the same thing is true in the spiritual realm. We are dead in trespasses and sins, but when the Holy Spirit of God works that miracle of regeneration and brings us to spiritual life, no one is going to run up to us and say, now did you give God permission?

No one ran up to Lazarus and said, well, do you really think it's fair that God raised you back to life? Did anyone consult you on this? Think about that for a moment. This is resurrection, not coercion.

Resurrection cannot be identified as coercion or force. It's a sovereign act, a sovereign act of mercy. And so we see that here in John chapter 6, all the way through verse 45, look very briefly at verse 45, it is written, the prophets and they shall all be taught of God.

Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father does what? Just has an implicit faith in God? No, comes to me. This is God's will. This is the way that he has chosen to express his mercy, which I want to emphasize, God's grace and God's mercy cannot be purchased, it cannot be merited, and it cannot be demanded.

God did not have to save anyone, but he did. He is just in the judgment of those who reject God and who live in rebellion against God, which according to Romans chapter 1 is all of us. All of us. Romans chapter 3 concludes Paul's presentation.

All of us. There is no God seeker, Romans 3 .11 says. And God would have been just to simply allow his punishment to fall upon us, but he instead has saved an innumerable number from every tribe, tongue, people and nation, as Revelation chapter 5 says, but he has done so only in Jesus Christ.

And I do not believe that the scriptures teach that he has chosen to do so in ignorance of Jesus Christ. Now in the opportunity we have coming up, we will be able to address some of the passages. What about Cornelius?

What about the Ethiopian eunuch? What about these specific issues in regards to that particular subject? We will have the opportunity of looking at those subjects when we continue in the rebuttal period.

Thank you very much.

Responses to Inclusivism, Universal Salvific Will, and Romans 8

Well, many of the things that Dr. White brought up raised those background questions that he and I definitely disagree on. So, without dealing with all of those, let me address a few of the points that he made.

First, the assertion that there is goodness in the human individual to make a positive move towards God. And I don't recall saying that, either here or in my writings. One of the things that Dr. White knows also is that when you write several things, you often forget what you did say.

But I don't believe that humans are innately good, and so we can just be walking down the street one day and go, Oh, I think I'll put my faith in God. It doesn't work that way. One of my former professors, Donald Blesch, who does come from the Reformed tradition, put it this way, that without the aid of the Holy Spirit, no one would even be thinking about God, whether it's God the Creator or God the Redeemer.

So, the question is, does the Holy Spirit enlighten everyone or only some? And here we have a basic disagreement between us. Now, the second assertion, that God owes everyone a chance to be saved. And that's a particularly American value, this issue of fairness.

And I have gone out of my way in my books to say no to that. I'm not arguing from that. I do believe that it's the goodness of God and the love of God that I see is why God wants to save everyone and why I take the view I do.

Now, we do disagree on the doctrine called various names, but unconditional election, that God simply chooses certain individuals for salvation, and he does not choose other individuals for salvation.

And the individuals that God chooses will make a positive profession of faith. So, does God want to save everyone? Well, Dr. White and I have a basic disagreement there, and we're not going to settle that here.

So, does God love everyone in a saving or redemptive way? I say yes. Now, you did raise a rather intriguing question about does God freely love or does God have to love? And I really enjoyed that. And my initial response would be that from the Holy Trinity, that intrinsically the Trinitarian relationship is one of self-giving love, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit giving love to each other.

And in the creation of beings external to God, God has chosen to share that Trinitarian love with humanity. Now, we brought up some issues of Reformed theology, but I would like for you to note that it's not only certain people, particularly Calvinists, who might disagree with me on this.

There are Arminians who would disagree with me as well. So, the only arguments against my position are not just Calvinist arguments. Secondly, there are Calvinists who agree with my position. One can look at A .H. Strong as one example in his systematic theology.

And I have had several Calvinists, and I can't disclose where they teach because they might get in trouble, who have said to me, well, of course God saves certain un-evangelized people. He just elects whom he wants and he saves them.

And I was kind of shocked to hear that. But anyway, so the particular disagreement between Dr. White and I is shaped by the traditional Calvinist-Arminian difference, but that's not the only way. So, one can be a Calvinist and be an inclusivist.

One can be an Arminian and reject inclusivism. So, even though our particular disagreement centers along those fault lines, if you will, those aren't the only positions. How much time do I have left?

Five minutes.

Oh, my.

Well, actually, let me return to this question here. And I would like to focus on the question of, is anyone in the New Testament saved without knowledge of Jesus? Were they saved prior to that? And it seems to me that the answer, from what I can tell, all Christians would actually say yes to that.

And that's because there are believing Jews who died shortly after, wherever you want to place the cut-off point, the resurrection, the ascension of Jesus, there were believing Jews and they didn't know about Jesus.

And so, it seems to me the answer to the question then has to be, yes, God saves those people. Even though they lived post-Christ, they still did not know about Jesus. And as far as the passage in John 6, again, we're going to be at loggerheads, the old Calvinist Arminian difference of interpretation versus those passages.

And my understanding of John 3 .16 and other passages would not be Dr. White's, and that's okay. Everyone who has heard of the Father comes to meet Jesus, has heard of the Father, comes to meet Jesus, says.

And I just wonder if the Father, does everyone know God as Father? Did Abraham know God as Father? Or is the concept of the Fatherhood of God one that is developed and yet some people knew about God and put their faith in Him based on the information they had.

So, what I'm seeing is a continuity rather than a sharp dividing line between people as to how much they know of God and what God is looking for in terms of their faith response. Well, I'm going to shut up there.

Cornelius, Abraham, and the Cutoff Question

This podium break is going to end up right on you guys, so I hope you're ready to catch it there. A number of things. Let's start off with the issue of Abraham. Abraham has come up. And I believe, obviously, that as Jesus taught, that in the Kingdom of Heaven we're going to recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and these people were saved.