Liberalism

It's not works-based and it's not universalism (or "Christian universalism").

You simply don't know what you're talking about. It's very clear you haven't read enough of his position to understand the isolated quotes you've read.

Hardly... As I've affirmed before, no one comes to the Father but through Jesus (John 14:6). It's only "vague" to you because you either don't believe me or you don't want to believe me.

{quote]...and can be applied to mean almost anything. Even your false concept that you canbe saved without knowing anything at all about the Savior or redemption.[/quote]
I have not made the assertion you are claiming here. I've never claimed that one can be save without knowing "anything at all" about the Savior or redemption. This is either dishonest of you or an expression of your inability to follow the conversation.

It's not vague to those who understand the English language. If God gives illumination or insight to a person, obviously there is going to be a measure of understanding.

It's not false. The Holy Spirit reveals the Son, the Son has given the Holy Spirit (also called the Spirit of Jesus) to the church, the Father has revealed the Son, and the Son has revealed the Father. (Study the Gospels and Acts to see various examples of this.)

I have also referenced scripture in this regard, so you second accusation here is also false. I pointed out that Jesus said that if someone has seen Him, they have seen the Father. I don't think i gave you a scripture reference for it, but I assumed you were familiar with your Bible, so I don't worry about it too much. But you can find it in John 14:8-11.

If you don't understand what I mean you can ask. I would appreciate that much more than your wild malevolent "guesses" regarding what I mean.

When I said "The nature of the Messiah", I was referring to His identity, His timing, His purpose and His methods, among other things.

No kidding. My comment was in regard to your assertion that "The enitire(sic) gospel is that man is redeemed."

You're trying to assign a viewpoint to me that I don't hold and have never held. That's dishonest.

 

No I'm not. If that's what you think I am doing, you misunderstand my position.

 

Whatever God chooses to reveal. (I don't presume to give God a script.) I have a friend who is Cambodian and conducts mission trips to Cambodia with our church every year. He has a friend who used to be a practicing Buddhist. Over the course of a few years, God started dealing with this man while he was meditating, as well as when he was working in the fields and traveling conducting business. He started to get an awareness that there was a personal God Who was very near to him and wanted him to enter into His life. He started praying to this unknown God and moving away from his Buddhist beliefs. One night he had a vision of Jesus standing over him, inviting Him to turn his life over to God and preach the good news. The man accepted and was led to find some Christians in a nearby city to learn more about Jesus. Today, that man is a pastor of Christian churches in various villages and has been mightily used of God to preach the gospel.

I was making a distinction between my view, that God is often at work in people long before a human Christian witness arrives. You seem to present the idea that nothing happens until a written or spoken presentation of the gospel begins.

Okay, then we understand each other here.

Not really.

Up to the message I'm responding to here, you've used the word "heresy" or "heretic" at least seven times. You've declare my views to be a "false gospel", "lower than a snakes belly" and eternal destruction for those who believe the way I do. (In a post that I think has been edited or deleted, you questioned the status of my "salvation".) You've also repeatedly tried to pin me (and Dallas Willard) with the false charge of universalism.

 

Sorry to hear that, but this discussion touches on that very subject. I affirm what many Calvinist believe, that God initiates His relationship with us. That's biblical. Beyond that, I diverge from our Calvinist brothers and sister in the way it works.

Going back to Abraham, he believed God (Father, Son (the Christ), and Holy Spirit) and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.

We really are not far apart here.

 

The scripture says Abraham "believed God". Not a "what" but a "Who".

It was "reckoned to him as righteousness" on the basis of believing (that is, trusting or having faith in) God. The first occasion of this happening was in Genesis 15:4-6 where God had promised Abram he would have a son from his own body (not the house servant) and that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars.

Please note that it was a question based on your assertion, not a statement.

"right [relationship]" - The person is now in a relationship with God where they are partakers of the eternal life He offers and have a destiny with the saints of God. They are in a position of discipleship and are being transformed into the image of Christ as they cooperate with God's Spirit.

"essence [of the atonement]" - the understanding that Christ has somehow atoned for their sins, although not necessarily tied to a specific theory such as penal substitutionary atonement, Christus Victor, or moral influence theory.

"atonement" - simply put, the work of Christ that reconciles us to God.

 

Wow talk about missing the forest for the moss on a tree...

you know the Gnostics had (have lest we forget it is alive and well) that certain "knowledge" was required for salvation and only those "gifted" people who had been able to learn this special knowledge would ascend the archons and find salvation. Their whole system was set up about what you know...not Who knows you.

Christianity, well orthodox Christianity, replied (in the first century) that it is by God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ and now special knowledge whereby we are saved. The early church then decided to worry less about who's "in" and "out" and more about what they could do in their daily lives to demonstrate the grace of God to others. They were the ones who rushed into plague riddled slums of Rome to care for the sick. They were the ones who gave everything to feed the widows. They were the ones who handed over their clothes to cover the homeless.

The Gnostics sat in their elevated places of intellectual superiority (not saying intellectualism is bad btw) and talked boldly about who had this "knowledge" and how the archons were only available to some. Jesus' first followers were active in trying to find as many people to share the Gospel with and show them the grace by which we are saved.

Seems appropriate.

 

Your unwillingness to admit that I not only answered your question directly, but also pointed out that the scripture doesn't talk so much about what Abram/Abraham believed, but Who he believed, is very telling.

Abram/Abraham believed God's promise that he would have an heir from his own body, and that his descendants would be as the stars in the sky (Genesis 15:4-6). Sorry it doesn't support your position, but I since I am a conservative interpreter of the scripture, I don't feel comfortable ignoring what it actually says in favor of what we might want it to say.

I'm saying that you don't understand the purpose of the article and don't seem to have any idea of Dallas Willard's theology past that article.

The purpose of the article in question was to "role-play an evangelistic conversation with a 20 year old girl who grew up in a Christian home, but finds her worldview challenged when she goes to college." It is an example of an apologetics technique Willard uses with college students who have grown up in church but are trying to figure out if the teachings of Jesus are relevant in this postmodern age. Essentially, Willard's advice is to put the teachings of Jesus into action and see what results she gets from building her life on the firm foundation of Christ.

Then she asks the question, "But I still struggle with how I should view those who have other beliefs. I'm not sure I am ready to condemn them as wrong. I know some very good Buddhists. What is their destiny?"

This question could be a way to dodge commitment to Christ by shifting attention to the fate of someone else instead of dealing with the challenge in front of her. Or perhaps it is a question about the fairness of God. It certainly could be a little of both. Willard wisely points her to the challenge in front of her (quoting scripture) that deals with the results of following Jesus as opposed to following another teacher like Buddha. In Christ, people find transformation.

What may have disturbed you is that Willard ignores the question of whether or not she should condemn others. He points out that their actions demonstrate that they are condemned. It also may disturb you that he doesn't tell her what to think, he simply points her in a biblical direction and trusts the Spirit to guide her.

That's not universalism at all.

 

Nope. You have to use your brain and think about what he is saying. He's not preaching a sermon, but instead is engaging the mind of the questioner.

Let's look at those statements in context. I'll comment on them so you can understand the progression:

"Okay," she says, "I can acknowledge that. You know, I have read the gospels, and I think that Jesus was the greatest teacher there ever was. In fact, I'd like to live my life like him. But it feels like I have to 'buy' an awful lot more."

What I would say is this: you don't have to buy anything you don't want. We have to help people understand that belief is something that comes along as you experience. You don't have to fake anything. The way faith works is this: you put into practice what you believe. If you're attracted to Jesus, what do you believe about him that you can act on? Experience shows again and again that when you allow people to act on the little that they do believe, the rest will follow.​

In other words, act on the faith you have in Jesus and the rest (a stronger faith) will follow.

"But I still struggle with how I should view those who have other beliefs. I'm not sure I am ready to condemn them as wrong. I know some very good Buddhists. What is their destiny?"​

What is happening here is that the college girl is posing a hypothetical argument about "good Buddhists". Willard let's her think through this hypothetical argument instead of just dismissing it. The reason he does this should be clear. Unfortunately, "good Buddhists" are often much kinder and fairer to others than so-called "good Christians". They believe in karma while Christians believe in grace (at least, receiving grace for themselves).

I would take her to Romans 2:6-10: "God will give to each person according to what he has done. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger."

What Paul is clearly saying is that if anyone is worthy of being saved, they will be saved.​

Just as those who put the words of Jesus into acting will find themselves transformed, those who continue in human religions that have rejected the truth of God, will be condemned.

Willard (correctly) points out that Paul teaches that God will give to each person according to what he has done. If someone is righteous in themselves, they will be spared judgment.

At that point many Christians get very anxious, saying that absolutely no one is worthy of being saved.​

He's talking about you here.

Certainly, I would agree that there is no one worthy of being saved judgment for their deeds.

The implication of that is that a person can be almost totally good, but miss the message about Jesus, and be sent to hell. What kind of a God would do that?​

Willard doesn't believe that God would allow someone who is seeking righteousness to perish without an opportunity to hear the gospel in some way. In his book, Divine Conspiracy, Willard shares a couple of stories of people in this type of situation who have testified that God dealt with them directly and brought them enough revelation for them to seek more until they came to faith in Jesus.

I am not going to stand in the way of anyone whom God wants to save. I am not going to say "he can't save them." I am happy for God to save anyone he wants in any way he can. ​

I think Willard is simply saying that this part of the way God works in the world is mysterious, and he is not going to build a theology that claims God is not interested in saving persons unless they have certain types of initial knowledge. He knows that the heart of God does not want any to perish, but all to come to repentance. God will do what is fair and merciful.

For the purposes of the argument he is presenting to the college student, he is essentially saying the important question here is not what God is going to do about others (God will be fair and merciful), but what are you going to do about Jesus.

It is possible for someone who does not know Jesus to be saved. But anyone who is going to be saved is going to be saved by Jesus: "There is no other name given under heaven by which men can be saved."​

The two sentences you quote are back-to-back, and a philosophy professor like Willard knows that it appears to be a contradiction. But let's think about this. He is referring back to the possibility that Paul mentioned that someone could be saved from judgment if they were righteous. But then he points out that anyone who will be saved, will be saved by Jesus (obviously, there is no one who is truly righteous in their own nature).

 

And speaking of Dallas Willard and the blatantly false charge of universalism, if you had taken just a few moments to search through some of the other articles on the site, you would have found plenty of evidence demonstrating Willard is not a universalist.

For instance:

Heaven and Hell

Heaven and Hell are God’s provisions for who we choose to be. It is a natural extension of the way we live. I tell people that what they get out of this life—after this life—is the person that they become now.

Probably the simplest way to understand Hell is as a cosmic junk heap, Gehenna. You can get in a lot of arguments about the details, but the basic fact is that there are some people who just can’t stand God. That’s the way they are in this life, so he doesn’t force his presence on them in the next. I don’t think we should regard God as happy that anyone goes to Hell. Scripture tells us that "it is not his will that any should perish." But he does permit it. That is a testimony to the great value that God places on human personality. He values it enough that he is prepared for people to be eternally lost if that is what they want. I would be very happy if Hell were not an aspect of it; Hell is a terrible thought. Even among evangelicals we have people who say such an idea is not possible. I don’t feel comfortable saying that myself, partly because of what I see as the clear teaching of Scripture and partly because of what seems to me to make a lot of sense.​

Can you admit you made an inaccurate accusation?

 

I'll make the font larger for you. Go back and read it. This is important.

 

Well that totally ignores the context of what is going on in the conversation listed in the article. Willard was describing obeying the words of Jesus (I'm guessing you believe Jesus preached the gospel), so there really isn't a conflict here except the one you are trying to make.

Jesus said in Matthew 7:24-29:

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock.

"And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock.

"Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

"The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell--and great was its fall."

When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.​

That's the suggestion Willard was making.

I don't know where you see a conflict. No one is righteous in themselves, and those who put the words of Jesus into practice will experience transformation.

Having actually read a fair amount of Willard's writings, I believe I'm in a much better position to make the call.

Hardly. And since Willard is not a universalist or Christian universalist, that's obviously not what he's saying.