Happy Chanukah!

[John Dibble]

but who the heck is C.S. Lewis?

All about C.S. Lewis.

[John Dibble]

This isn't a 'political correctness' issue because it has been an issue of theological discussions for many many centuries.

It has ALWAYS been a PC issue:

Rom 1:16 “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.”

To call it a matter of political correctness is to extremely oversimplify the issue. We're not talking about referring to stewardesses as "flight attendants" - we're talking about a serious matter about what people feel with their conscience is right and wrong. We're talking about something that can shatter faith altogether.

To many people the notion that the virtuous among those who haven't heard the gospel will be sent to hell by God simply because they don't believe in a gospel they've never heard of is a blatant contradiction to the notion that God is loving and just. It's the same issue when it comes to unbaptized babies that die going to hell because they weren't baptized by their parents. Such people usually only have a few options - either they stop believing in the gospel because they see it has a rather large contradiction that can't be ignored, or they believe that the virtuous among the non-evangelized have some sort of out. This might be what afleitch is suggesting, or it might be something like having an angel or Christ himself appear to them at the moment of their deaths to give them an opportunity to accept the gospel. It doesn't always involve them being saved, either. For example in Dante's Inferno the "virtuous pagans" still go to hell, but only the first circle, Limbo, which could be considered a deficient form of heaven - the people there suffer passively in the sense that they can't achieve anything greater because God isn't there, as opposed to the other circles of hell in which people are actively suffering and being tormented for their sins.

Now, you may very well be right and the correct interpretation is that they go burn in a lake of fire like everyone else, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a bigger issue than mere political correctness. Again, it's something that can be quite faith shattering.

[John Dibble]

To many people the notion that the virtuous among those who haven't heard the gospel will be sent to hell by God simply because they don't believe in a gospel they've never heard of is a blatant contradiction to the notion that God is loving and just.

You're basically arguing that only adults who have heard the gospel are held accountable to God, but the rest of the world isn't held accountable to God.  Which contradicts the need for the gospel in the first place.  So, the contradiction is with your logic, not the bible's.

So, either the world is held accountable to God and therefore the need for the gospel, or the world is not held accountable to God and the gospel serves no purpose.

I argued no such thing. Your reading comprehension is lacking as usual. You'll note that I specifically used the word "virtuous" - in this context it would mean someone who would behave as you would expect a model Christian would. You know, people who devote their time and energy to helping the sick and the poor and whatnot, general good Christian behavior, doing so without having heard the gospel tell them. We're not talking about unrepentant mass murdering sociopaths getting out of hell just because they haven't heard the gospel or anything of that nature. Aside from those self-proclaimed Christians who don't believe in hell (which I'll agree is quite silly and contradictory since the Bible explicitly states hell exists) you won't find many who object to the vehement sinners among the unevangelized being sent there.

Furthermore, even if the virtuous non-evangelized can be saved, or at least not eternally tormented, it doesn't mean there's no reason to spread the gospel. Suppose you spread the word to someone who is not virtuous and they decide to change their ways when they otherwise would have not done so, saving them and lowering the overall level of sin in the world. So spreading the gospel could theoretically result in more people being saved than if things were just left as is. Thus there is no contradiction in this logic.

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not my belief, not my issue[/quote]

I never said it was your belief, I just provided a similar example.

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what about the option of trying to spread the gospel so that you help save as many as possible?[/quote]

Would you honestly try to spread the word of a being you thought was hateful and evil? That's hardly an option for a moral person. And again, these people find the notion that a loving and just deity would send people to hell for not believing a gospel they've never heard of to be a complete and utter contradiction - why is it you can't wrap your head around that? It's really quite a simple concept.

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not my bible, not my problem [/quote]

Again, it's just a f**king example. Why is it you feel the need to dismiss and belittle the ideas of others without a second thought?

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Political correctness is petty. This is not. PERIOD. You can belittle the internal moral struggles of others all you want, but the fact that this is a serious issue that people have deep thoughts and considerations about does not change one iota.

[John Dibble]

People are NOT condemned for not believing in Christ, rather they are condemned based on their own sin.  Faith in Christ REMOVES the wrath of God for the individual:

John 3:36 “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him”

That's the thing - the people that we're talking about never had any knowledge of it. They were unaware of it, they never even heard the name of Jesus before they died. You can't reject something you know nothing of.

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You can try to justify it all you like, but the model is quite simple. Believe -> saved, don't believe -> hell.

It's all there in plain English:

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So believe or be sent to hell through God's willful wrath is the message I'm seeing here.

Or are you saying that God doesn't make the rules? That his wrath is not under his control? That he does not decide who is saved and who is condemned?

[John Dibble]

People are NOT condemned for not believing in Christ, rather they are condemned based on their own sin.  Faith in Christ REMOVES the wrath of God for the individual:

John 3:36 “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him”

That's the thing - the people that we're talking about never had any knowledge of it. They were unaware of it, they never even heard the name of Jesus before they died. You can't reject something you know nothing of.

True.  Condemnation depends on being a sinner.  The removal of condemnation depends on sinners hearing and accepting the word of Christ.

That's the problem - the people in question are those who've never been given a chance to hear the word of Christ, making it impossible for them to accept it. How is it you can expect anyone to believe that God loves these people when he never gave them a shot at salvation? Essentially it would mean he abandoned them - would you abandon someone you love?

[John Dibble]

Dibble, how is it you can follow and understand scripture, yet fail to discern what you have witnessed within this very thread?

You talk of failure to understand but it is quite clear you have no understanding of what I have been trying to tell you. I understand what you are saying quite clearly on the other hand - I just don't agree with it as being the truth, in part because I see a rather obvious contradiction.

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So let me get this straight - Christians abandoned people that at the time they did not know existed and did not have the technological means at the time to reach even if they did? In case you've forgotten there was this whole big other continent that Christian missionaries could not possibly reach for well over a thousand years. Travel by land was also very limited and dangerous, limiting the ability to spread the gospel. It's not like today when you can hop on an airplane and go almost anywhere in under a day.

You claim that God equipped the Christians to spread the gospel to the ends of the Earth, but when did he give them boats capable of traversing the vast and stormy seas that separate the major landmasses? Heck, when did he tell them that there was another major landmass that had millions of people upon it that they needed to reach? Seems to me they were under-equipped.

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Whether there were enough willing evangelists at the time is not the problem. Even with armies of preachers there were still places that could not be reached in time to spread the word to give everyone a chance to hear the gospel before they died. Do you get it - it was a physical impossibility for the gospel to reach many before they died. To claim it was the fault of the limited human beings whose responsibility it was to spread the gospel is blatantly dishonest or shows a complete and total lack of common sense.

So yes, it was God who didn't give the people in question even a chance, so unless he gave them some method to avoid eternal torment he did abandon them, thus showing that he is not a loving deity.

[John Dibble]

You claim that God equipped the Christians to spread the gospel to the ends of the Earth, but when did he give them boats capable of traversing the vast and stormy seas that separate the major landmasses? Heck, when did he tell them that there was another major landmass that had millions of people upon it that they needed to reach? Seems to me they were under-equipped....To claim it was the fault of the limited human beings whose responsibility it was to spread the gospel is blatantly dishonest or shows a complete and total lack of common sense.

Well, if men found a way to spread over the continents before:

Acts 17:26 "From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth"

surely it is "common sense" to believe the way could be found again.

It took tens of thousands of years and a land bridge that wasn't around anymore during Jesus's time for humanity to spread across the world. It took over another one thousand and four hundred years for technology possessed by Christians to reach the level where they could reach the land mass you now stand on, and even then when they finally got there it wasn't where they had intended to end up. So again, how is it you can blame the missionaries for not doing that which was impossible for them to do?

(I'm also going to nitpick that they didn't inhabit the whole of the earth - Antarctica was uninhabited for very obvious reasons, or does Antarctica not count as part of earth? But hey, it's only semantics, right? )

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I thought we already went over that "men were without excuse" (though I may have been discussing that with JSJ earlier in this thread)

Rom 1:18-20 18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.[/quote]

So God is plain to see, but we need missionaries to spread the gospel so people know about him. Sounds like a contradiction. Either people know or they don't, make up your mind.

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They've all heard about it, but we need missionaries to go and tell them about it. Seems like a contradiction. Either people know or they don't, make up your mind.