Does the Holy Spirit Speak to People Apart from Christ? (Gerald Bray)

Last week we saw the release of the January issue of Credo Magazine, “In Christ Alone.” Today we would like to highlight one of the feature articles by Gerald Bray title: DOES THE HOLY SPIRIT SPEAK TO PEOPLE APART FROM CHRIST?

First, a little about Gerald Bray. Gerald Bray (M.Litt., D.Litt., University of Paris-Sorbonne) taught full-time at Beeson Divinity School in the areas of church history, historical theology, and Latin from 1993 to 2006. In 2006, he was named research professor, and is currently engaged in writing and speaking on a variety of theological issues. A prolific author, Bray has published many scholarly articles and books, including The Doctrine of God in the Contours of Christian Theology series (of which he is also the general editor) and Biblical Interpretation: Past and Present. He served as editor for The Anglican Canons 1529–1947 and Tudor Church Reform, which contains the Henrician Canons of 1535 and the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum, and for three volumes in the Ancient Christian Commentary Series. His most recent book, Translating the Bible, was published by the Latimer Trust in July 2010. Bray is a minister in the Church of England.

Here is the introduction to Bray’s article:

What happens to people who do not accept the Gospel of Christ? This question has recurred throughout the history of the Church as Christians have wondered about the fate of those who have never heard about Jesus. It was a problem from the very beginning, because when the Apostles first stood up to preach that salvation could come only through the shed blood of Jesus, nobody knew what they were talking about. The world of the early Church was a sophisticated one, in which there were many ancient religions and advanced philosophies that offered their adherents some insight into the meaning of life, and the notion that the spiritual problems of humanity had been solved by the recent death and resurrection of a Jewish carpenter seemed preposterous. If the Gospel message was true, why had God waited so long to communicate it? Surely a message of universal significance would have been given to everyone, if not in precisely the same way, then at least in forms that were equally ancient and mutually compatible.

It was this belief that led many educated Greeks and Romans to try to synthesize the wisdom of the different nations, because they were convinced that the truth was the same everywhere. They could not accept that an individual of little education and no worldly achievements could be superior to what they had known all along, nor that their sincere efforts to achieve a good, just and peaceful existence had been fundamentally misguided. From the beginning, the message of the cross was a hard one to swallow, and that is still the case today.

Read the rest of Bray’s article here!

The January issue argues for the exclusivity of the gospel, especially in light of the movement known as inclusivism. This issue will seek to answer questions like: Can those who have never heard the gospel of Christ be saved? Will everyone be saved in the end or will some spend an eternity in hell? Must someone have explicit faith in Christ to be saved? Contributors include David Wells, Robert Peterson, Michael Horton, Gerald Bray, Todd Miles, Todd Borger, Ardel Caneday, Nathan Finn, Trevin Wax, Michael Reeves, and many others.

To view the magazine as a PDF [download format=”1″ id=”1″]

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