Taking a Cue from Bowman
At this point, taking a cue from Bowman,44 my object is to cast a number of principles in bold relief against the concept of implicit Christianity. The procedure, I find, is very helpful in making a decision about the real danger and inherent nature of any kind of error.

1) The Protestant Principle. Is implicit Christianity supported by the Protestant Principle of Sola Scriptura? The answer is that analogical arguments and rational processes create implicit faith and implicit Christians. Apart from devious hermeneutics, Scripture does not. Nash properly calls it "biblically unsupportable opinion."45 Inclusivists do claim Scriptural support, but the refutation of those claims is a book-length project in itself and beyond the scope of this paper.

2) The Grace Principle. The New Testament, evangelicals believe, teaches that salvation is not of works, but by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). Earlier we observed that sociologist Hunter was predicting the evangelical abandonment of the grace principle on the basis of studies done in various colleges. If implicit Christians are those who turn from their idols to serve the God whose name they do not know and need not know, are they not receptors of grace through explicit works? Is implicit Christianity anything other than latent Galatianism?

A common trait of inclusivists is a persistent failure to see that their advocacy of implicit ideas ultimately involves salvation by works. Good works are expected from holy pagans who have never received the life-changing gospel and who have never had more than general revelation to guide them.

Nash observes essentially that about John Sanders.

Once again we confront an issue on which it appears the inclusivists want to walk down both sides of that street at the same time. On the one hand, John Sanders takes the historic evangelical position that no humans "are saved by their own moral efforts."46 On the other hand, he ignores inclusivist implications to the exact opposite.47

Pinnock likewise has fallen into the same error of trying to embrace, at once, both evangelical doctrine and universalistic inclusivism.

Surely God judges the heathen in relation to the light they have, not according to the light that did not reach them. Of course God condemns those who really are his enemies. But his judgment will take into account what people are conscious of, what they yearn for, what they have suffered, what they do [emphasis added] out of love, and so forth.48

Nash observes that "Pinnock is suggesting that a person who lacks New Testament faith but produces good works of a certain kind may still be saved on that basis."49

John Sanders demonstrates this tendency again in a recent issue of the Christian Scholar's Review. Since implicit Christians do not confess Jesus Christ, we find him affirming that "effective action is the proper response to God's grace" for implicit Christians but wishing for "public badges" which he admits remain "elusive."50

When the agenda ideas of universalistic inclusivism play themselves out, the advocacy of implicit Christianity and implicit faith involves salvation by works. The implicit Christianity of inclusivism is contrary to both Galatians and Ephesians. It is just as error-laden as Galatianism or Pelagianism ever were.

Interestingly enough, some inclusivists seem not to realize that implicit Christianity ultimately includes salvation by works. One of the reasons may be that in 1990 inclusivism took the field first. Pinnock and Sanders were published first. Richard has argued against them effectively, but Nash is really the first to take them on in a public collision. As Brown has observed, orthodoxy may be expected to take the field of battle late in any case.51 The emerging attacks on inclusivism will assault the implicit ideas. Once it becomes clear under the pressure of critical scrutiny that implicit Christians have to become holy pagans to be saved by works, the violation of the grace principle will be seen as well.

3) The Name Principle. After Pentecost, Luke observes in Acts that the disciples began to minister in the name of Jesus Christ. At the gate of the temple Peter and John healed in the name (3:6). The religious authorities were aware that the lame man, more than forty years old, had been made whole in the name of Jesus (4:10). Peter's sermon includes the classic words, "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved" (4:12). When threats were issued to the empowered Church, they were told to desist using the name (4:18). Their decision was to continue to use the name because the Holy Spirit, they had already learned, was given to the obedient (5:32). They risked their lives to use the name.

By way of contrast, the implicitists who follow the universalism of Vatican II at a distance tell us that the name of Jesus Christ is not important for at least a few. Some will be receptors of grace and saved whether or not they ever get to know the name (Sanders, Osburn, Pinnock, etc.). Implicit faith for implicit Christians rides roughshod over the name. Worse, when exceptions are made which supposedly allow some to circumvent the name and still be saved, the name of Jesus Christ is by that measure diminished.

4) The Covenental Principle. One of the key ways that implicit faith advocates advance their arguments is through appeals to the Old Testament. And this is not bad in itself since Christians are to learn from what happened in the Old Testament (1 Corinthians 10:6, 11). However, to ignore the New Covenant (and the whole book of Hebrews) is surely serious business. Christ is the mediator of that covenant (Hebrews 9:15). Are there not at least two different ways God deals with man? The Old Testament and the New Testament? The Old Covenant and the New Covenant? The Old Covenant was made obsolete by the New Covenant (8:13). Jesus said at the last supper, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you" (Luke 22:20).

Implicit faith advocates are immensely attracted to the ways God worked before Christ came. Those arguments are summoned to support implicit faith and implicit Christianity. Is despite (Hebrews 10:29, KJV) being done to the blood of the New Covenant at the same time?

Jewish ministries have been appalled at implications by "evangelical" theologians that it is no longer necessary for Jews to believe in Jesus Christ to be saved.52 Arthur F. Glasser believes that Wilson, in his book, Our Father Abraham, creates a "mood that will increasingly overtake the reader's consciousness as he or she presses on deeper and deeper into this book: The church has no business evangelizing Jews" [emphasis added].53

Like implicit faith and implicit Christianity, the "evangelical" retreat from salvation for Jews apart from an explicit faith in Jesus Christ seeks to find its rationale in a Messiah-free faith-path supposedly still found in the Old Testament. Not incidentally, salvation for Jews apart from Jesus Christ shares one common feature with the inclusivism of implicit faith and implicit Christianity. Both circumnavigate the bulwark texts in John 3, John 14, Acts 4, Ephesians 2 and Romans 10 and in the case of Jewish ministries, Romans 1:16, "to the Jew first."

The validity of the New Testament and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the only mediator between God and man are antithetical to the message of salvation for Jews apart from Jesus Christ. These same concepts are likewise, in a very close parallel, antithetical to the implicit faith and implicit Christian concepts of universalistic inclusivism.

5) The Consequential Principle. Is the implicit Christian concept error in view of its consequences? Krumm suggests that differences in viewpoints are often held in the Church, until it is perceived that a viewpoint has consequential peril. Then it becomes heresy.54 Can implicit faith be a dangerous view? All one has to do is apply small doses of rationalism, logic and philosophy and one has annulled the great evangelistic texts and compromised the missionary mandate. The result is what Radmacher calls "hermeneutical leakage."55

At risk in the implicit-Christian view is the authority and integrity of Jesus Christ and Scripture, the declarations of Peter and Paul, the lostness of mankind and the necessity of obedience to the Great Commission.

At risk, ultimately, is the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.

If inclusivism finally and fully gets the heresy label, it will get it first from the evangelical missiologists. Universalistic inclusivism is at its roots, in destructive collision with the missionary mandate.

It is important to observe that these issues are not static. The evangelical appraisal of inclusivism is ongoing. Likewise, heresy, as it leavens and expands itself, is finally self-condemned according to Scripture (Titus 3:10-11), i.e., there is betraying movement inherent in it. That is why universalistic inclusivism bears watching. That is why waiting is necessary (2 Timothy 4:2-4). In the seven years that I have been focused on this issue, and coincidental with an expanding interest in the subject, I have become aware that in some parts, at least, there is a stiffening evangelical resolve against inclusivism. We are finding out what it means and where it takes us.

The consequential principle may be the principle which finally pins a heresy label on this kind of universalism in miniature. The price of allowing it free flow as a valid "evangelical option" may have already become too high, i.e., the "negation of the old missionary compulsion."56

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