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In fact, there is no reason to think that the balance between saved and lost in such a world would be any better than the balance in the actual world! It is possible that in any world of free people which God could create, some people would freely reject His saving grace and be lost.
Hence, 3 is not necessarily true, and so the pluralist's argument is fallacious. But what about 4? Is it necessarily true? Let us suppose for the sake of argument that there are possible worlds which are feasible for God in which everyone hears the Gospel and freely accepts it.
Not necessarily; for the worlds involving universal salvation might have other, over-riding deficiencies that make them less preferable. For example, suppose that the only worlds in which everybody freely believes the Gospel and is saved are worlds with only a handful of people in them, say, three or four.
If God were to create any more people, then at least one of them would have freely rejected His grace and been lost. Must He prefer one of these sparsely populated worlds over a world in which multitudes believe in the Gospel and are saved, even though that implies that other persons freely reject His grace and are lost? This is far from obvious. So long as God gives sufficient grace for salvation to all persons He creates, God seems no less loving for preferring a more populous world, even though that implies that some people would freely resist His every effort to save them and be damned.
Thus, the pluralist's second assumption is also not necessarily true, so that his argument is revealed to be doubly fallacious. So neither of the pluralist's assumptions seems to be necessarily true. Unless the pluralist can suggest some other premises, we have no reason to think that 1 and 2 are logically incompatible.
But we can push the argument a notch further. We can show positively that it is entirely possible that God is all-powerful and all-loving and that many persons never hear the Gospel and are lost. All we have to do is find a possibly true statement which is compatible with God's being all-powerful and all-loving and which entails that some people never hear the Gospel and are lost.
Can such a statement be formulated? As a good and loving God, God wants as many people as possible to be saved and as few as possible to be lost. His goal, then, is to achieve an optimal balance between these, to create no more of the lost than is necessary to attain a certain number of the saved. But it is possible that the actual world which includes the future as well as the present and past has such a balance.
It is possible that in order to create this many people who will be saved, God also had to create this many people who will be lost.
It is possible that had God created a world in which fewer people go to hell, then even fewer people would have gone to heaven. It is possible that in order to achieve a multitude of saints, God had to accept a multitude of sinners. It might be objected that an all-loving God would not create people who He knew will be lost, but who would have been saved if only they had heard the Gospel.
But how do we know there are any such persons? It is reasonable to assume that many people who never hear the Gospel would not have believed the Gospel even if they had heard it. Suppose, then, that God has so providentially ordered the world that all persons who never hear the Gospel are precisely such people. In that case, anybody who never hears the Gospel and is lost would have rejected the Gospel and been lost even if he had heard it.
But if only I had heard the Gospel, then I would have believed! Therefore, my judgement of you on the basis of nature and conscience is neither unfair nor unloving. God has created a world which has an optimal balance between saved and lost, and those who never hear the Gospel and are lost would not have believed in it even if they had heard it.
On this basis we are now prepared to offer possible answers to the three difficult questions which prompted this inquiry. To take them in reverse order:. Answer : It may not be feasible for God to create such a world. If such a world were feasible, God would have created it. But given His will to create free creatures, God had to accept that some would freely reject Him and His every effort to save them and be lost. Answer : God wanted to share His love and fellowship with created persons.
He knew this meant that many would freely reject Him and be lost. But He also knew that many others would freely receive His grace and be saved. The happiness and blessedness of those who would freely embrace His love should not be precluded by those who would freely spurn Him. Persons who would freely reject God and His love should not be allowed, in effect, to hold a sort of veto power over which worlds God is free to create. In His mercy God has providentially ordered the world to achieve an optimal balance between saved and lost by maximizing the number of those who freely accept Him and minimizing the number of those who would not.
Answer : There are no such people. God in His providence has so arranged the world that those who would respond to the Gospel if they heard it, do hear it. The sovereign God has so ordered human history that as the Gospel spreads out from first century Palestine, He places people in its path who would believe it if they heard it.
Once the Gospel reaches a people, God providentially places there persons who He knew would respond to it if they heard it.
In His love and mercy, God ensures that no one who would believe the Gospel if he heard it is born at a time and place in history where he fails to hear it. Those who do not respond to God's general revelation in nature and conscience and never hear the Gospel would not respond to it if they did hear it. Hence, no one is lost because of historical or geographical accident. Anyone who wants or even would want to be saved will be saved.
These are just possible answers to the questions we posed. But so long as they are even possible, they show that there is no incompatibility between God's being all-powerful and all-loving and some people's never hearing the Gospel and being lost. Furthermore, these answers are attractive because they also seem to be quite biblical as well.
In his open-air address to the Athenian philosophers gathered on the Areopagus Paul declared:. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and. From one man He made every nation of men , that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.
For in Him we live and move and have our being Acts This sounds exactly like the conclusions to which I had come through purely philosophical reflection on the question! He holds a J. Barry Corey — June 30, Sarah Dougher — June 30, Joe Conway — June 30, Biola Magazine Staff — June 30, Share: Twitter Facebook. Categories: Winter. More Articles. Pandemic Redux: Redeeming the Time.
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