I’m finally continuing my response to Aron Wall, who, you’ll remember, posted a comment on the theological term post on inclusivism. Aron is arguing against exclusivism, the stance I take, and he objected, in particular, to the use of Romans 10:9-14 as a text to disprove inclusivism, since, he argues, Paul is actually arguesing for inclusivism. You’ll find the first part of my response to his objections here.
Continuing on, Aron writes:
The trouble [with with interpreting Romans 10:14 to mean that people can’t be saved without hearing the gospel preached] is that Paul goes on to give a different answer in just a few verses.
“Consequently faith comes through hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. But I ask, did they not hear? Of course they did: `Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world” (10:17-18)
So in order to have faith it is necessary to believe the message. But who is the messenger in this passage? Whose ‘voice’ goes out into all the earth proclaiming the “word of Christ”. Paul tells us with his quotation from Psalm 19. Go back to Psalm 19 and you will find the answer: “The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands…there is no speach or language where there voice is not heard” (19:1,3).
Yes, in Psalm 19, this statement is refering to the general revelation of creation. But here Paul takes it and applies it to special revelation. We know this because the subject, in context, is the proclaimed gospel: “…faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the preached word of Christ. But I ask, have they not heard? Yes, they have: Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”
The point Paul is making is that the Jews had heard the preached message of Christ and rejected it. (The point of the passage, you see, is Israel’s rejection of Christ.) At the time Paul wrote, the gospel had already been proclaimed widely enough (“the voice has gone out to all the earth”) that Israel, as a whole, had heard it, and they could not claim ignorance. Their unbelief, then, was a knowing rejection of the gospel, a rejection for which they were fully responsible.
In other words, in the very passage which exlcusivists use to justify their position, Paul talks about faith as coming about from *general revelation* of Christ.
First, can you explain how knowledge of Christ come from general revelation? Creation tells us some things about God—specifically, some of God’s attributes—but how does it tell us about the incarnation, death and resurrection of the son of God? When Paul talks about explicitly about general revelation in Romans 1, and he explains what people can know from it, he mentions God’s eternal power and divine attributes, but says nothing about knowledge of Christ. General revelation condemns—people know enough about God to know that the gods they are worshiping are not the God who created and deserves their worship—but it doesn’t save.
What’s more, if Paul is writing here of general revelation, how does that work with the argument Paul is making in this passage, that the Jews specifically are responsible for rejecting the gospel, so the gospel is now going out to the Gentiles? If what is being refered to is general revelation, shouldn’t the Gentiles understand and know as well as the Jews do? What’s left to go out to them?