Baptist Responses to Inclusivism in the 20th and 21st Centuries (Chris Morgan)
One of the best Baptist theologians of our day is Chris Morgan, Professor of Theology and Dean of the School of Christian Ministries at California Baptist University. He is the author of many books, including:
A Theology of James: Wisdom for God’s People
Here has also co-edited a handful of books with Robert Peterson as well:
Faith Comes by Hearing: A Response to Inclusivism
Suffering and the Goodness of God
Today we would like to highlight Chris Morgan’s ETS paper titled: “What about Those Who Have Never Heard? An Evaluation of Baptist Responses in the 20th and 21st Centuries.” As the subtitle says, Morgan’s paper is an overview and evaluation of Baptist responses to inclusivism in recent years.
Morgan begins his paper by saying,
“What about Those Who Have Never Heard?” Three major positions are normally outlined. Though John Hick overviewed three major approaches to other religions, the three-fold classification of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism seems to come from his student Alan Race in 1982. They were first applied generally to the questions of world religions. In time they were applied to the fate of the unevangelized, which will be the focus of this paper.
It is important to define some key terms: pluralism, exclusivism, and inclusivism.
Pluralism (generally speaking) is the view that all religions lead to God. It denies that Jesus Christ is the world’s only Savior. People may be saved (or experience ultimate reality, etc.), therefore, as adherents of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, etc.
Exclusivism, sometimes called restrictivism or particularism, is the view that Jesus Christ is the only Savior of the world and that one must believe the gospel of Christ in order to be saved.
Inclusivism is the view that, although Jesus is the only Savior of the world, one does not have to believe the gospel to be saved.
Since the focus of this paper is exclusivism and inclusivism, allow me to distinguish the positions a bit more. Exclusivism and inclusivism agree that Jesus is the only Savior of humankind; no human being will ever be saved from sin and hell by anyone other than Jesus. But exclusivism and inclusivism disagree on the necessity of unsaved persons to trust Christ for salvation. Exclusivists insist that faith in Christ is essential for salvation but inclusivists demur, saying faith in Christ is the best way, but not necessarily the only way, for human beings to appropriate the benefits of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Said differently, inclusivism agrees with exclusivism that in terms of ontology (the order of being) only Jesus saves. But inclusivism parts ways with exclusivism in terms of epistemology when it maintains that unsaved persons can be saved by Jesus without hearing his name in this life.
Read Morgan’s entire paper here.
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