Nuances ...

Many years ago, back in High School, I became a believer in Jesus Christ. Like many new believers, I was filled with the fervancy of the gospel. I wanted everyone to know ... whether they wanted to or not. One day, a week after a friend's mother passed away, this friend asked me what I believed about eternity. I told her, without hesitation, that the only way to heaven is through Jesus Christ. When she told me that her mother had been a Buddhist, she gave me the chance to gracefully back out. I did not. Insteady, I told her that if her mother had been a Buddhist, and did not believe in the atoning death of Christ, she was, in fact, not only in Heaven, but in Hell. Needless to say, the conversation did not go so well after that ...

That's around about the time you all met me at Wheaton. Of course, following that incident, and the loss of a good friend, I became far less ... enthusiastic. Yes, I still beleived what I believed, but I was more jaded and cynical. It turned out that the church wasn't all that it was cracked up to be, and now I had lost something I valued.

Years later, I sought the friend out. I asked forgiveness for my arrogance. Remarkably enough, she extend to me the very grace I had failed to offer her. Now, when someone asks me whether so and so is in Heaven (especially if they believed such-and-such), I have learned to say that I do not know. What I do know is that Christ is the only way. What I do not know is what so-and-so was thinking or contemplating when they died. Nor do I know if our how God may have reached out in a supernatural way to expose them to the love of His Son. In short, I have learned that grace invovles a great deal of mercy that truth, in its nakedness, lacks.

I guess what I'm really getting at -- in a very long, round about kind of way -- is this: my answer has never waivered. Like you Matt, I too believe that Christ is the Way, and the Truth. I also believe very passionately that those who seek and knock will be answered. That is why people like Kreeft believe Socrates to be in Heaven. They believe that Greek philosophy is the tool God used to prepare the hearts of the Gentiles for the story of Christ. And if He used them as a tool, how could He not reveal to them the very thing that they were seeking?

I'm not convinced. Yes, Socrates was actively pursuing truth. But the human heart has a remarkable capacity for self-deception. Was he seeking truth for the sake of living up to it (as best as he could), or was he seeking truth for other, less altruistic motives. The human heart is rather devious, and I for one do not trust it. I guess that's one of the many reasons I have come to embrace Reformed Theology. It takes an awful lot off the human plate and places it where it more properly belongs -- on the plate of the Creator and Redeemer of humanity.