Mission in a Pluralistic Age
by Hywel R. Jones |
(page 7 of 9)
APPENDIX A
Cotterell’s Ten Theses
- To any reasonable person it would appear to be unjust to condemn
people to an eternal hell for failing to avail themselves of a
medicine of which they have never heard and, moreover, of which they
could not have heard.
- The Passion – the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ –
provides sufficient covering for all sin, of all peoples, of all
nations and throughout history.
- There is a divine self-revelation in creation which is
not of
itself salvific but which may lead to the abandoning of human
religious effort and to a flight to the mercy and grace of God.
- Those who, in the spirit of Romans 1:21-3, refuse God’s
self-revelation in creation and worship the created rather than the
Creator rightly incur the wrath of God.
- Those who have never heard the Christian Good News overtly
preached, but who perceive God’s eternal power and deity in his
creation and seek after him in faith may, by the grace of God, be
saved through the passion of that only Saviour of whom, through no
fault of their own, they have not heard.
- An individual may be saved in a religion or outside of a
religion, but cannot be saved by a religion.
- Salvation comes to us exclusively through Christ, but an overt
knowledge of Christ or of the work of Christ was not a condition of
salvation under the Old Covenant and is not a condition of salvation
under the New Covenant.
- God’s eternal power and divine nature are revealed in creation,
and the human apprehension of that power and nature is made possible
only through the illumination from the Logos, which shines upon
everyone born into the world.
- The Christian mission is valid because only in an overt knowledge
of the Good News about Jesus Christ can we hope to live a truly
human and meaningful life now, looking forward with confidence,
beyond death, to the consummation of that purpose for which we were
created.
- Any solution to the problem posed by the continuing existence of
vast numbers of those who through no fault of their own have never
heard the Good News about Jesus Christ must be formulated so as to
take into account the total character of God as revealed in the
totality of Scripture: his grace, mercy, patience, justice,
holiness, righteousness and love. And such a solution will not,
then, outrage common sense and our common ideas of justice. The Lord
of all the earth does what is right.
<< Previous Page
| 1
2
3
4 5
6
7
8
9 |
Next
Page >>
|
|