On Blogger, James and I have been discussing the argument I made regarding general revelation and gospel ubiquity. As a result of that discussion, some clarification seems to be necessary:
General Revelation
Creation
Paul does not claim that Creation leads cultures to general monotheism. Indeed, Paul describes many as “changing the truth of God into a lie, and [worshipping] and [serving] the creature more than the Creator” [Rom. 1:25]. The claim is not that cultures are driven to monotheism or there exists a significant cultural awareness. Rather, the argument is that the information is available to individuals, but is generally rejected.
Conscience
Nor is Paul claiming that cultures gravitate towards a Christian ethical understanding. Rather, he is saying that a general sense of morality is given to all men which they and their cultures sometimes follow. For example, when a person or a culture recognizes murder as wrong, they do by nature the things in the Law as a result of conscience. I would expect a study of cultural morals to reveal similarities in some morals to those presented in the Law, just as we have already observed religious similarities across many religions. Paul attributes these similarities to a universal conscience given to all people, providing a general moral understanding and conviction of our own moral imperfections.
Burden of Proof for General Revelation
As a result, your burden of proof is excessive. First, it exaggerates my claims from personal understanding to cultural ideas. Second, our knowledge of ancient and isolated cultures is limited at best. This makes it hard enough to know what they actually believed, let alone, what ideas they may have been aware of, but rejected.
Revelation of Christ
Regarding the propagation of the final principle of salvation I am aware of two views. First, anyone who accepts the 2 principles of general revelation will be sent a human messenger to address that question (perhaps indirectly, by making literature available or directly by word of mouth). Examples include the sending of Philip the Evangelist to the Ethiopian Eunuch [Acts 8] and the sending of Peter to Cornelius [Acts 10]. If this is true, the fact that the gospel was not sent to a Native American in AD 600 is considered proof that no Native American accepted general revelation. This is reasonable and hard to contradict. The second view observes that there is no passage in scripture in which God explicitly states He will not provide special revelation to those unreachable by the common method outlined above. After all, Jesus Himself intervened in the salvation of Paul (Acts 9) and John mentions the inner light given to every person.
Your argument seems to be that it is likely some Native American accepted general revelation and was denied the final principle for spatial reasons. As a result, you conclude that Christianity violates the salvation ubiquity criteria and must be rejected as a valid world view. At best, the existence of this Native American is highly hypothetical and rejects without substantiation the possibility of special revelation for that individual.
Conclusion
All of the above remarks substantiate my claims. Creation and Conscience are available to all men and God is more than capable of providing the specific revelation of Christ to anyone accepting the first two. A detailed study of isolated cultures is unnecessary and would be inconclusive at best given our spotty knowledge of such cultures. Christianity clearly provides mechanisms for meeting the salvation ubiquity principle. That does not make it true, but it does make it a reasonable possibility given our discussion so far. Furthermore, the salvation ubiquity principle provides a clear example of a criteria that can rationally evaluate religions, accepting some and rejecting others, providing hope that the morass of religions is not as un-navigable as Atheist Under Ur Bed suggested in the article I originally responded to or James suggested in his initial comment on my initial post.
Arthenor's Ramblings 
I apologize for not returning here for so long – I got involved in other things. I have some comments to make on this – I will use your headings so that it is clear what I am responding to.
*Creation*
You are arguing that two important pieces of information are universally available to people regardless of where or when they live: That there is one God (monotheism) and that humans are born sinful (original sin). You then claim that this is generally rejected. To reject something, of course, means that one knows what it is s/he is rejecting. Otherwise I would call it ignorance.
My response here is basically the same: How is this information available and how do you know? I previously asked you to provide evidence for this claim but you have not done so. Instead, you suggest that providing this evidence is impractical. That may be – but it is no excuse for making the claim. We actually know quite a bit about, say, Native American cultures. It would be a hugely significant find if somebody discovered that a tribe, for instance, wrote about Christianity (ie, believed these three things) before Christianity actually reached that region. Alas, I am not aware of even a shred of evidence that suggests that native cultures were aware of Christianity before Christianity found them.
*Conscience*
Your claim is stronger than what you describe here, which I generally accept. If I understand correctly, you claim that everyone is made aware of the idea that man is a fallen creature that requires salvation from some external entity.
*Burden of Proof for General Revelation*
If it is so hard to know what they believed and rejected, then you have no grounds for making the claims that you do.
*Revelation of Christ*
The first view doesn’t prove anything it merely makes an assertion. It is also extremely difficult to believe that the missionizing patterns of Christianity throughout history follow a pattern of when individuals accepted these principles – such a pattern would be far more random. Instead, Christianity spread the way any idea spreads. It makes far more sense to simply observe that Christianity did not spread to the Americas for the simple fact that for its first 1,000 years or so the Western world did not have the physical means of doing so.
That takes me to your second view, which is a far cry from actually demonstrating or providing evidence that such “special revelation” was in fact provided. Paul, of course, was already familiar with Christianity before his conversion because he considered himself a critic or enemy of Christianity. Divine revelation is not required to explain Paul’s conversion.
“At best, the existence of this Native American is highly hypothetical and rejects without substantiation the possibility of special revelation for that individual.”
It is hypothetical, but believable given what we know about Native American beliefs and culture. I am not rejecting the “possibility” of special revelation. I am rejecting it as a claim that has not been reasonably demonstrated as true.
One could make all of your same arguments with regards to Islam and revelation. The first and second points – monotheism and the idea that man is fallen and needs moral guidance – are indeed a part of Islam. Thus, one could proceed to argue along the same lines that the revelation of Islam – the five pillars of the faith – is ubiquitous. There is no passage in the Qu’ran in which God explicitly states He will not provide special revelation to those unreachable by the common method. If you find that utterly unconvincing then maybe you can appreciate why I remain unconvinced by these arguments.
To summarize: You have not supported the claim that monotheism and original sin are available to everyone at all times. You assert that this information is available, but I fail to understand why that must be the case. You have not supported the claim that God, beyond being merely capable (we can imagine God as capable of anything), actually does specially reveal knowledge of Jesus to those who happen to accept the first two.
Basically, if all that you assert is true, I would expect to see in history Christian communities, even if only a few, appearing all of a sudden in isolation from the rest of the Christian community before the physical word itself reached them. It is difficult to believe that not a single record of a single native american becoming Christian exists in the 1,400 or so years between Jesus and the arrival of Christian Europeans if any of what you claim is true. If it did, that would be an astonishing find – one that would seriously require me to re-evaluate my beliefs.
By: James | anatheist.net on January 7, 2009
at 04:03
I understand that you have been busy, especially over Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Years. Thanks for taking the time to respond. 🙂
*Clarification*
Essentially, based on scripture, I am making several claims:
1. Creation implies:
a. supernatural intelligence
b. A unified Godhead
2. Every human being has an inate conscience that:
a. Provides an inate sense of morality
b. Convicts of Sin
c. Implies absolute morality
3. To anyone who accepts the truth concerning Creation and Conscience, God will either:
a. Provide direct revelation regarding Christ
b. Connect that person with the revelation already given regarding Christ (Bible/Missionaries)
*Evidence*
You claim that if this is true, one would expect to see the spontaneous establishment of Christianity around the globe in unreached places. This is only a reasonable demand if 3a is true, and I am not necessarily claiming that it is. In most cases, scripture clearly presents the final necessary information through contact with previously revealed truth. The passage regarding the “inner light” is not specific enough to make the claim that scripture teaches that Jesus will spontaneously reveal Himself. It may merely be refering to a divine guiding and conviction towards these truths.
Furthermore, I am not making the claim that all these implications of Creation and Conscience were widely accepted or even understood. What I am claiming is that Creation and Conscience, which are universal to all people (all people interact with and make observations about nature and all have a sense of morality), rationally imply a divine Creator and Lawgiver whose Law we have all violated. Because I am claiming only that these things are rationally discoverable and not that everyone has a complex understanding of all these issues, your insistence that a proper burden of proof requires extensive study of remote civilizations and must discover these concepts in each one oversteps the claims I am making.
However, that does not mean that the demand for some evidence is unreasonable.
*Creation*
The evidence for a Creator does not demand an extensive study of cultures, but a study of the creation itself. Creation points to God in at least four ways:
1. Origin of the Universe
2. Fine-tuning for life
3. Origin of life
4. Complexity of life
I am sure you disagree on each of these issues, but it is here, not in culture studies, that evidence of my claims should be found. If you wish to discuss them in more detail we can.
*Conscience*
Again, conscience does not require an extensive cultural study. It is clear from a cursory examination of history that throughout human history a sense of morality has been ubiquitous among men. Even your own blog entries frequently attack God and scripture based on appeals to an absolute moral standard which you claim scripture, and God if scripture is true, violate, including issues of slavery in the Law and the sometimes seemingly brutal conquests of Israel by the direction of God. Any moral appeal of that nature demands an absolute standard or it is meaningless. Any authoritative, absolute standard requires a higher power. This points to a divine law giver. I suspect you will take issue with these claims as well and I am willing to discuss them at greater length. However, it is here, not in a detailed study of remote cultures that we should look for evidence.
*Salvation*
Lacking omniscience, we can not know every case of a positive response to the information regarding Creation and Conscience. As such, I can not go down a list of a bunch of people who responded positively and received the rest of the message from God or through outreach. Conversely, you can’t go down a list of people who responded positively and died with no answer. I could try to dig up some missionary stories regarding people or tribes who waited years for a missionary to come to their village to bring them special knowledge of God, but I suspect you would be unimpressed by such anecdotal evidence. What is undeniable, however, is that if the general revelation of Creation and Conscience truly does imply a Creator, Lawgiver, and sin and scripture speaks truthfully when it says that God is “not willing that any should perish”, He is more than capable of providing the knowledge necessary to those that respond positively.
By: arthenor on January 12, 2009
at 19:25
I think that I have left many of our conversations dangling like this one – here’s one step towards rectifying that.
This was interesting to read again after many months.
You seem to be claiming here that what is true and obvious to you, rationally, must be true and obvious to all of humanity. For example, you say that creation and consciousness “rationally imply a divine Creator and Lawgiver whose Law we have all violated”
I don’t see why that must be the case, and any cursory historical study of culture would probably reveal that it isn’t.
All that aside…the real question here if I remember correctly is whether or not remote civilizations, like those in the Americas, could receive salvation before ever hearing the gospel and having the chance to convert to Christianity. Historically I think it is indisputable that the religions of these cultures did not resemble anything like Christianity. If these people were, nonetheless, somehow saved without faith in the redeeming power of Jesus Christ – well, that just seems to me to change the requirements for salvation significantly. What those might now be I am at a loss to say.
You can say all that you want that God is capable of providing such knowledge (thereby rendering the work of the missionaries unnecessary), but that is still not evidence that they actually had such knowledge – knowledge that could only have been obtained supernaturally. For the spread of Christianity predictably follows its physical movement by Christian populations around the globe. No surprise there. That is, after all, how all man-made religions spread.
By: James on April 22, 2009
at 04:08
Your recent post seems to be primarily a restatement of your previous remarks. Therefore, I will provide a summary and clarification here. For detials, I refer you back to my previous remarks.
Summary:
1: The Bible explicitly deals with the problem of gospel ubiquity through the doctrine of general revelation, which has 3 parts:
a: Creation (Rom. 1:18-20) implies divine being
b: Conscience (Rom. 2:14-15,3:9-10,19-23) implies divine law and personal sin
c: Inner Light (John 1:9) implies divine ministry to every person
2: Scripture clearly teaches that some knowledge of the person of Christ is necessary for salvation. Therefore, God must supply this special revelation via:
a: contact with past special revelation
b: direct special revelation to the isolated person responsive to general revelation
3: General revelation does not claim that each person accepts the certainty of these facts at some point. It only claims that sufficient evidence exists for each person to draw these conclusions. Therefore:
a: Rejection is allowed, individually and culturally
b: One would not expect all cultures to reflect the conclusions of general revelation
Clarification:
Because this argument relies on the rationality of basic Christian tenants, I am not particularly surprised you are inclined to doubt. The point here, is that if Christianity is reasonable and true, it has a reasonable answer to this question. One would not expect this to be true if Christianity is fundamentally false and irrational in the first place.
By: arthenor on April 26, 2009
at 15:43
[…] but within the context of much evidence I have discussed elsewhere on my blog. For example, the General Revelation of Creation, Conscience, and the Inner Light. and the historicity of the Bible, which I have […]
By: On Merit and Rational Faith « Arthenor’s Ramblings on June 18, 2010
at 04:30