This is the title of chapter 40 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God, and once again it's a chapter that seems to be in the wrong section. I'm currently reading the section titled The Question of Jesus, and this chapter should clearly be in the final section, The Question of the Bible — it is, after all, about the Gospel. True, Michael R. Licona is following on from his previous chapter about whether Jesus is the only path to God, but it nevertheless seems out of place.
According to Romans chapter one, God has made some of his invisible attributes known through the world in which we live. The stars, the sun, the moon, the ocean, and many other wonders of nature were not the work of a bull, a horse, a calf, or a man. These are the products of a cosmic designer of immense intelligence. In Romans chapter 2, Paul tells us that God has instilled basic knowledge of his moral laws in our conscience, so that, instinctively, we know that actions such as rape, murder, stealing, and falsehood are immoral. We all are accountable to God for immoral actions we have committed of varying degrees. Theologians refer to this type of knowledge as general revelation. In other words, given our universe and our conscience, we should be aware that a God of some sort exists and that we have failed to live up to his moral law.
According to Licona, those who do accept the idea of a cosmic designer, but — for whatever reason — believe that the designer is some deity other than Jesus/God fall into one of two categories: those who have never encountered the Gospel, and those who have. The first category are granted salvation by virtue of their honest, blameless ignorance; the second — sorry, you got the wrong god, despite being shown the right one, so to Hell with your sinful soul.
Several times Licona admits that the Bible doesn't have specific answers to particular questions, and resorts to what he calls speculation. This, it appears, is a code-word for what Christians seem to do quite a lot in their "interpretation" of scripture — that is, they simply make stuff up.
Let’s summarize. We’ve faced the difficult questions pertaining to the fate of those who die without ever having heard the gospel as well as that of babies and the mentally handicapped who lack the mental capacity to understand the gospel. Since the Bible does not directly address either of these questions, speculation pertaining to possible solutions is our only course of action. However, we may look at other situations in which God has acted and get a glimpse into his character. We observed two divine principles: (1) God judges us according to our response to the knowledge about him we are given. At minimal, this knowledge consists of the fact that there is a Creator to whom we will stand accountable for our moral failures. (2) God does not hold accountable those who lack the mental capacity to choose between good and evil.
My own take on this "problem" is that it isn't a problem at all, but merely one more part of the obfuscation necessary in attempting to resolve something that doesn't make sense in the first place.
4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbjesus.aspx?pageid=8589952889
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