1. Accessibilism can be traced in Christian thought back to the second century.
2. By God’s appointment, the entire human race was represented in Adam in his moral probation in the Garden of Eden.
3. There is only one means by which salvation of sinners can be accomplished.
4. People experience the salvation that God has accomplished in Christ only when they respond to God in a way that satisfies him, which the Bible calls “faith.”
5. Whatever information religious or moral, a person accepts as ultimately authoritative, truth (whether this is understood to be from a personal God or not) must be believed and obeyed.
6. Since faith is essential for reconciliation with God, unbelief and its attendant disobedience leave people under God’s condemnation.
7. Salvation has always been by grace through faith, but the faith that God expects (and gives) is appropriate to the revelation of himself that he has given to a particular individual.
8. God’s knowledge of what people would do if they heard the gospel does not make salvation more accessible, but it enables him to bring about the salvation of the elect without coercion.
9. Old Testament believers were saved by faith in God and in God’s sure fulfillment of his promises to them, although the manner in which those promises would be fulfilled became clear only gradually.
10. From observing the experiences of people who met Jesus during his earthly ministry, we notice that God led them through a process that sometimes happened quickly and sometimes went more slowly.
11. The implications of the principles derived from both the Old Testament situation and from the lifetime of Jesus are particularly important for our perspective on Jewish people today.
12. The possibility and the process of salvation are no different for infants and the mentally incompetent than for competent adults.
13. All people meet Jesus Christ personally at the moment of death and they respond to him in a manner consistent with the response they have been giving to God and his revelation during their lifetime.
14. God’s saving grace is universally sufficient so that, on at least one occasion, in each person’s life, one is enabled to respond to God’s self-revelation with a faith response that is acceptable to God as a means of justification.
15. Accessibilism is not detrimental to the Church’s missionary motivation.
16. Scripture is silent about the final numbers of the saved relative to the unsaved, but we have reason to be very hopeful concerning the proportion of the human race that will enjoy life with God in the glorious new earth that he plans to bring about when his redemptive program is complete.
17. Religions develop as inherently religious people respond to God’s revelation in the forms that are accessible to them.
18. Among the religions of the world, Christianity has the great advantage of being constructed in response to God’s revelation in Jesus Christ and the Scriptures of the New and Old Testaments.
19. The biblical writers consistently bear witness to the uniqueness of the God who created all that exists and who established a covenant relationship with the people of Israel, which was later extended to the Gentiles, in the church.
20. God appropriated divine names and religious forms from contemporary culture without endorsing the religion of Israel’s neighbours.
21. Formalized religions are ambiguous responses to divine revelation, and so are the religious commitments of individual members of those religions.
22. The scriptures of other religions are not themselves instances of divine revelation.
23. After the supreme self-revelation of God in Jesus, the incarnate Word, there have been no divinely appointed prophets in the order of those in the Old Covenant, such as Moses and Isaiah.
24. (combined with #25)
25. In God’s gracious providence, he may have caused or allowed ideas to emerge within a religious context that becomes an instrument of the Spirit of God in eliciting faith in Christ. No religion saves people – only God does.
26. We can observe signs of the work of God’s common grace in the world through religions, and we should give thanks to God for this when we discern it in religions that we encounter.
27. We can discern the work of God’s grace in the teaching and life of other religions and in the lives of individuals who adhere to other religions by using three criteria: a) The extent to which the truth revealed in Scripture is attested and practiced (orthodoxy) b) The morality taught and practiced by religions and their members (orthopraxy) and c) The orientation of an individual’s heart or even a community’s heart.
28. Dialogue with members of other religions is valuable.
29. Such concerns are common to various religions, such as the dangers of secularism, the protection of innocent human life, the protection of the ecosystem, and the quest for social justice.
30. It is impossible for Christians to join in worship with members of other religions.
     

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