My friend Dave asked some excellent questions about my earlier post called “The Name of the Lord“. I think they are worth answering here in a blog post of their own. Here goes:

What do you mean by “religions”?

By “religions” I am talking about all of man’s attempts to reach God (whatever they may call him), including all theologies, traditions, and formulas.

What do you mean by the statement, “All [religions], Christianity most certainly included, go wrong in places”?

All of man’s efforts to reach God, to understand who he is and what he has done, are at best very imperfect and imprecise. We see things through a glass darkly. All of man’s religions are imperfect; Christianity is unique in that it is founded on its own imperfection—God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. Of course Christianity will go wrong; but that is our starting assumption.

Do you believe that it is impossible to understand anything about death, resurrection, and eternal life?

How could we possibly understand them? The only thing we can be sure of when contemplating these things is that they are not what we imagine them to be. They are beyond anything we can experience in the shadow which we call life. We can only think and talk about them by analogy to things that we do experience: death is ‘like’ sleep; resurrection is ‘like’ waking up; eternal life is ‘like’ our life on earth, but longer; and so on. But it only takes a moment’s contemplation to be sure that the likeness cannot be more than a very dim symbol of something much higher—imagine describing the sun as being ‘like’ a candle. The only thing we know is that we do not know.

Do you believe that it is possible to be saved without believing that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins and rose again from the dead?

A better question is this: is it possible to believe something that cannot be understood? What does it mean to die? What does it mean to die for someone’s sins? What does it mean to rise from the dead? And what does it mean to believe in these things? We are like children trying to believe that the ocean exists by trying to imagine a bigger version of our mud puddle. If our salvation depends on us ‘believing’ in what God has done for us, in the sense of us having right knowledge of what really happened at the cross—who then can be saved? We cannot know these things; they are beyond our experience and comprehension.

Yes, I do believe that salvation is possible without belief in Jesus Christ, in this sense. Salvation is accomplished only through Jesus; but not all who are saved have heard his story (look at Hebrews 11 for more than a few examples).

Do you believe that someone can be saved who specifically denies these historical facts (e.g. if one is a Muslim)?

Can an atheist, who denies God, be saved?

I don’t think they really know what it is that they are denying. Remember the dying words of Jesus: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Christ’s prayer applies to all of humanity, as does his salvation. This was the whole point of my original blog post: that accepting or rejecting the story of Jesus Christ does not necessarily correspond with accepting or rejecting him.

I do believe that God is powerful enough to save people without their mental belief in him. Atheists deny images of God because they find them ridiculous or incomprehensible; it does not follow that they are truly denying God himself. The fact that they live and love and laugh like all humans shows that they have a connection with God on some level. What that connection may turn into over the endless course of eternity, only God knows. It is their story, not ours; and just as with us, there is good hope that things will turn out well in the end by the grace of God.