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In our session this afternoon, I attempted to say some things about pluralism. As I was compiling the notes that you now have or soon will have, it seemed to me that there were two major topics related to this question of pluralism that ought to be mentioned, at least in the notes, if not in my actual talking in the sessions. They are, in the first place, the charge of anti-Semitism that is now leveled against Christianity. If one says that there is no name under heaven given amongst men whereby we must be saved, one is increasingly liable these days to be charged with, uh, being responsible for the horrors of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and all that kind of thing. Because generations of Christians have taught their children in Sunday school and in the home that the wicked Jews crucified Jesus, and have thus instilled into the hearts of Christians of many centuries hatred of the Jews that from time to time has flared up at the Inquisition and the pogroms, and more recently in the Holocaust. And of course, that, uh, that anti-Semitism is still virulent in various parts of the world. The last time I was in Poland, you could see, uh, the Star of David on the walls, plastered there, uh, and uh, uh, vulgar things said about it, Jose. And similarly in Russian, the existence of the Pamat, Pamyat is uh, is for the sake of um, attacking and persecuting Jews. The result is that uh, uh, that people argue these days that it is indecent of Christians to dare to preach Christianity to Jews and to try and convert Jews. It is said that Judaism is an equally valid way to God as Christianity is. How can you say that God-fearing Jews who believe the inspired Old Testament are going to hell simply because they can't believe that Jesus is the Messiah, when to believe that Jesus is the Son of God seems to them an outright blasphemy and contradiction to the Old Testament. And therefore, of course, particularly in intellectual circles, but in many other churches of Christendom, it is thought that any attempt to say that Judaism is not valid as a way to God is both wrong and insulting, and is, uh, bordering on, uh, fascism, the same spirit as produced the Holocaust. We have, therefore, it seems to me, to be prepared in circumstances to deal with this question of anti-Semitism. It arises in university departments of theology. There is a university department of theology in Britain, a member of which has just published, uh, recently a book, Is the Fourth Gospel True? Answer, no. The Fourth Gospel, he maintains, is rabid anti-Semitic. Has Jesus telling Jews they are the children of the devil. This is the very kind of spirit that led to the Holocaust. And, uh, Josie, you will find many who will say now that Jews are all right by themselves, let them, uh, be, they'll find their own way to God. That is the one big topic that it seems to me one must be prepared in certain circumstances nowadays, uh, to discuss with non-Christians and with Jews and so forth. The other is the great question that if Jesus is the only way to God, what about those, uh, who have never heard of Jesus? Do you see, are they lost? And in particular, of the long centuries before Jesus was born at Bethlehem, the myriads and millions who never heard the name Jesus, how could they? Not even Joseph knew it until he was told, and Mary was told. Those that never heard of Jesus must, by definition, be lost. That, to an unconverted person who thinks, would seem to suggest a God who is, uh, well, a tyrant, to say the least, and hideously unrealistic. So these are questions that would have to be dealt with if you're arguing with people who are contending with you against your idea that, uh, uh, uh, Christian, uh, Christ is the only way to God. Now, I shall not get time to do justice to those two topics, important as they are, because I want to say this afternoon a little bit about postmodernism, not so much about that as I've spent on pluralism. It's more virulent here in the United States, as far as I can gather, is postmodernism, than perhaps it is yet in Britain, though we suffer from it to some extent. And then I do want to say something about hedonism. But just to sketch in one or two things on the question of anti-Semitism. Uh, the contention, therefore, I've listed it, section five B. the contention. This, you will see, the things I've mentioned there are a mixture of truth and false deduction. In the light of the Holocaust, Holocaust and the misappropriation of the victim's gold by the Allied nations, the so-called Christian nations, and so many of them have been engaged up to their very necks in appropriating Jewish gold from the Holocaust and keeping it secret. So-called Christian nations. People say it is obscene for Christians to tell Jews that they need to be saved, and only the Christian God can save them. The, uh, last part, uh, the first part is true, of course. The second part isn't true. Similarly, the idea that Christianity has superseded Israel and that there is no future for Israel is, so we're told, insufferable conceit. Well, I want to agree with that. Though large sections of evangelicals even, let alone others, have for centuries said that there is no future for Israel and that the church has simply superseded Israel. I would want to disagree. I would want to say there is a future for Israel anyway, you'll see. I like to tell the Jews that, and they like me because of it. Uh, and then they say Judaism is an equally valid approach to God as Christianity. No, of course it isn't, on its own showing. We had in my university at one stage a little informal club. We called it the Christian Forum. We were a motley group, but we met, uh, at lunchtimes occasionally and invited people to come and address us. Atheists and agnostics and all kinds of colorful people, you see. And they came and told us what they believed, and then we allowed ourselves the luxury of questioning them, you see. One stage we had a young rabbi, he had just been appointed as chief rabbi in Northern Ireland, and he was a young man, and he was not unconscious of the, uh, the majesty of his position. So, so he, he came to talk to us, you see, and his contention was that Judaism was true. You see, he said a lot of it was invented when our ancestors were in the desert, and the laws were suitable for people in the desert, not suitable for people that were living, uh, sedentary life in cities. But the glory of Judaism, he says, we've kept the laws unchanged all the centuries. Nothing has changed whatsoever. And he held forth on this at some great length. When it come to came to Question Times, in as Christian fashion as I could, and with all gentle, uh, gentlemanliness, I summoned up with difficulty. Eh, I said, did I get you right that Judaism has changed nothing? Absolutely nothing, he said. So I said, that's, don't quite understand. Do you still offer animal sacrifices? Ah, well, he said, no, no, no, no, no, but that's not a change. We don't offer them now, you'll see. I said, how is that? Well, he said, you see, our rabbis say that in the ancient times, when a person sinned, he had to bring an ox, and that cost a lot of money. So now we do away with the ox. We don't have oxen, we just pay the money. I didn't really need to say anymore, so I didn't. In contrast to that, I was lecturing at a far earlier time to the Christian Union in Cambridge at one stage, trying to expound as best I could in a series of Saturday night lectures, the books of First and Second Kings. And after one lecture, a student came up to me and said, excuse me, my talk. I said, yes. He said, I do find it very moving to hear a Gentile like you expounding our Old Testament scriptures, from which I gathered he was a Jew. I said, well, I'm pleased to hear that. Don't your rabbis expound them? No, he said. I said, why ever not? What I said is a thing that has puzzled me. Why don't your rabbis get up on their hind legs from time to time and preach us some Isaiah? We Gentiles need Isaiah, do you know? Especially with all our modern idolatries. Don't you care for us Gentiles? Why don't you come and preach to us Gentiles, uh, lovely bits of Isaiah against our modern idolatries? Well, he didn't know why they didn't. I said, oh, is that so? Anyway, that resulted in a friendship, and he came to dinner on a couple of occasions, you'll see. And in the course of those dinners, I remarked at one stage, I said, you know, I am a Gentile, but I do admire your Old Testament, particularly the law and its tremendous standards, and the way Judaism has stood for this, that morality matters, and behind morality stands God, and when men sin, there's a penalty to be paid. So I admire that tremendously. Willie was pleased about that. I said, you know, my trouble is this, rather, I haven't kept the law. I'm very interested to see what your Old Testament says, that when people broke the law, yet God provided a way for dealing with it, and sacrifices, uh, so they could get forgiveness of sins. He said, yeah, that's right, yes, I said. Yes, he said. So I said, tell me about those sacrifices. Um, did they actually do any good? Did, I mean, did they put away sin? He said, no, he said they didn't. No. I said, they were symbols then, weren't they? Yes, he said they were symbols. I said, of what? No, he said, don't press me on that. He said that would spoil our friendship. He said, but I'll tell you something, you'd never guess. We had the chief rabbi, this was years ago, we had the chief rabbi came up to Cambridge to address our group. He was a very liberal Jewish group. He said, you'll never guess what the topic of the rabbi's talk was. I said, no, how could I? He said, well, I'll tell you. He was telling us Jews, we need to find a substitute for the atonement. They have a law with its penalties. Now nothing left. I said it interests me that you had those sacrifices until a very critical moment in history. It was very soon after Jesus Christ was crucified that the temple was destroyed, wasn't it? You mustn't press it further, says he. Yes. It's not an insufferable conceit, is it? To stress that Judaism itself, uh, pointed to the one great sacrifice for sin. That's obvious in sense. We should also be prepared, shouldn't we, nonetheless, to confess to our Jewish friends the disgraceful part that Christendom has held in anti-Semitism. I've listed some of the things here. The Romans, the classical Roman emperors protected Judaism, made special laws because of their keeping of the Sabbath in relation to military service and so on, and the emperors renewed the legislation. The beginnings of trouble for Judaism started when the church was taken over or joined up with the Roman state under Constantine, and by the time you come to Justinian, the church is now using its power with the emperor to get, uh, uh, discrimination against Jews and eventually positive persecution. We should remember what Luther said about Jews, shouldn't we? Our great Christian hero Luther, and justification by faith. In his treatise on the Jews and their lies, he calls synagogues nothing but a den of devils. Urges Christians to exercise a sharp mercy by setting fire to synagogues and schools, destroying Jewish homes, confiscating all their sacred books, prohibiting teaching, forbidding all travel, impounding all their money, and imposing forced labor on them until they become Christian. Protestants have a lot to a- answer for, haven't they? For their anti-Semitism. Of course, in complete, uh, def- disregard of Chr- Christ's own prohibition on the use of force, either to protect or to advance his kingdom. We should agree sorely with C. B. Cranfield, and he writes in the Critical and Exegietal Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, of the widespread and long current ugly and unscriptural notion that God has cast off his people Israel and simply replaced it by the Christian church. God has done no such thing. Here again, not only, uh, political but evangelical voices have served to preserve a great stumbling block for the Jews. We should be careful, shouldn't we, in our preaching, at least if we're talking to Jews, not to accuse the whole nation of ancient Israel of being responsible for the death of our Lord. The leaders were involved in Jerusalem in getting the Romans to execute him. Thousands of Jews living in the dispersion at the time only heard about the crucifixion months or years after it had happened. If you look at the way Peter and Paul address their various congregations, you'll find they're much more careful in their language. Talking to the Jerusalem Jews, Paul- Peter accuses them of crucifying Jesus. You did it in ignorance, as did also your rulers. Talking to the Jews of the Dispersion, Acts thirteen twenty seven, he says it was the Jerusalemites and their rulers did it. It's a very important distinction, isn't it? And then, of course, we should explain the deeper cause of the death of Christ. The Jewish leaders were agents, but unwitting agents, not unwilling, if you've got just got your notes, not unwilling, that's a typist error, unwitting agents in carrying out God's purpose that his son should die for the sins of the world. I had a Jewish friend in Belfast. He passed away two or three years ago. He came to some lectures I gave on Bible in the extramural department of our university. Uh, they were non-aligned in the sense they weren't supposed, I wasn't supposed to be preaching the gospel. These were university lectures. And he came, uh, I did, uh, uh, the, uh, uh, Israel's, um, back- the background in Israel to Christianity. I went through the Old Testament. He liked that very much. Next year, the class asked if I would deal with Genesis in the first half of the year and the book of the Revelation in the other, so I did that, and he kept on coming and found to his astonishment that the New Testament was a Jewish book. And then he came to dinner many times. And then he always would bring up, for he came from Vienna and just had managed to escape, uh, the gas chambers under Hitler, always bringing up this question of you Jew- you Christians caused the Holocaust by teaching people that the Jews crucified Jesus. And I used to say to him, Otto, old boy, do you know who killed Jesus? What do you mean, he says. Well, who really killed him? What, who then? I said, I did. Well, he said, well, how could you possibly? I said, well, you see, we Christians believe that when Jesus died, the reason why he died, that they were sent of God, and he bore my sins in his body on the tree. That's why he had to die, Otto. Yes, the Jews, for their own reasons, some of them, the rulers, agreed to get him crucified, scarce knowing what they did. But behind that was God and his mercy to you and to me to provide someone to die for our sins. I would never accuse you, Otto, of causing the death of Jesus, except in the sense that I caused it. That was news to him. And there are many Jews like it, aren't there? And we need to be wise in our preaching to them. Of course, there is no salvation apart from it. Isaiah fifty uh three is enough to tell them, isn't it? You see. And then I am delighted to tell my friends that I am one of Abraham's seed, anyway. You see. Galatians chapter three, if you be Christ's, then are you Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. And I like to remind them that I, as a Gentile, I don't believe in just any old God. Don't believe in Zeus, for instance, or fate. I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And point out to them the wonder of Christ. I say, you can say what you like about Jesus. He brought millions of us Gentiles to believe in your God, the God of Israel, Isaac and Jacob. What other Jew has done anything like it? You'll see. Yes. And then to preach the gospel to them from their old Old Testament, the glorious assurance. I was in Tbilisi in Georgia. That's not your Georgia, European Georgia or Asia, wherever they are. And, uh, there was a, an American girl there, brave woman she was, gone in faith to Georgia, feeling the Lord would have her there as a missionary, in very difficult conditions. Uh, even a professor in the university would be earning the equivalent of seventeen United States dollars a month, with a loaf costing half a dollar. She wouldn't, in her work, when she was able to get any, be getting perhaps more than eight dollars a month. She eventually got a job in the office of Shevardnadze, the president, secretary, and that kind of thing. An opportunity to teach Bible in the schools. At her personal expense, she'd put on for weeks at work. That very day we arrived, she was going to have the dinner. She asked us if we'd go. So we went. A great expense for her pocket, she had provided this wa- lovely dinner. And we sat down with this people, about uh fifteen or more of them. I didn't know who any of them were anyway. We hadn't been there five minutes when a rather forceful lady from the other side of the table demanded of me to know why I was in Georgia. I said, well, among other things, I'd come to look at biblical manuscripts in the Institute of Manus- uh, Manuscripts. What manuscripts? I said, well, manuscripts of the Bible. Just say I've got some famous ones there. Dead Sea Scrolls, she said. I said, no, not happen, doesn't happen. What, uh, what, what, what, what do you think of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Well, I said, the scholarly opinion is, is, um, divided, isn't it? I mean, if you are a liberal. I'd never be a liberal, she said. I was brought up Orthodox. Oh, I said, that's very interesting, you'll see. Um, I'm Orthodox, she says, but I think God is horrible. She said, you see, that's how my father brought me up. God sitting up there in heaven, uh, uh, and waiting to bash you the first thing you do. Poor old Moses in the wilderness, she said, he only had to do one sin after all those forty years, only had to do one sin, and God bashed him. You can't go into the promised land. So I think God is horrible. I couldn't be anything other than Orthodox Jew, she said. I'm still an Orthodox Jew. So I told her about my Jewish friend in Belfast and how I used to sit with him and, and read the Bible to him sometimes. I said I used to read that lovely thing, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want, you can't quote that at me, she said. I said, I particularly like that last verse. Goodness and mercy follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the Lord forever. I used to say to my Jewish friend in Belfast, I said, I said, Otto, old boy, have you got that hope? But I'm only an old Gentile, but I'm reading your book. I know what this means, Otto. I got this hope. Shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. And there I got the opportunity in front of all the folks, some of them high-ranking members of the government, to say, my dear, have you got the hope? She said, you have to have hope in this life. I said, yes, but when life is done? Oh, what a lovely opportunity how God offered the, uh, honored the faith of that American lady to put that on and have funny old guy like me just there and guide the conversation on Dead Sea Scrolls by a Jewish the other side of the table who was there explore- exploring the oil fields of Baku on behalf of her American family company, and just at the right time. What a lovely thing to be able to preach the gospel from their old, their own Old Testament. Yeah. Eh, of course it means that, um, if they reject the Savior, there can be no salvation for them. But there are many in Christendom that likewise reject him. No salvation for them either. We ought also, however, to be aware when we talk to them that the true Orthodox Jew is disgusted with the leaders of Prophet- uh, of Protestantism. Lord Jacobowitz, an earlier chief rabbi in Britain, member of the House of Lords, he will get up and protest against the compromise with practicing homosexuals, against abortion on demand, when the bishops of the church sit by and won't say anything and are themselves compromised because some of them are practicing homosexuals anyway. Who try and preach the doctrines of salvation by grace without the works of the law, when they think that these archbishops represent the gospel, then you'll find you'll have some explaining to do, won't you? We mustn't come in any boastful spirit, but with all meekness when we seek to reach them for Christ. But it is a thing that you may have to, in certain circles, deal with, even if you're not talking to Jews, amongst modernist theologians, eh, in one sort or another in various places, who now have come around to the view that it is wrong to try and convert Jews. The other question, what about those who never heard of Jesus? It's an embattled area, isn't it? Because, uh, unfortunately, Christians are sharply divided over what should be the answer to the question. Most believers are, and all should be, afraid of any ideas that would detract from the absolute uniqueness and exclusive claims of Christ. And two, they are, uh, be afraid of anything that would diminish missionary motivation. I, for my part, would want to assert, I hope you agree with me, that no one from the beginning to, from the beginning to the end of time has ever been or will ever be saved, apart from the work of atonement accomplished by the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Some hold, however, that to be saved, a person must actually hear the name of Jesus and learn about the historical fact of his birth, death, resurrection, and ascension, and put personal faith knowingly in Jesus. And they will quote the verse from Romans ten: How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? Romans ten fourteen. I will therefore like to raise a number of questions. I'm not going to go through them this afternoon, for my time forbids it. But I have raised them here in these next few pages for your thoughtful, prayerful consideration. They're not meant to be frivolous points, but serious points. And you, I'm sure, will give them your, your, uh, considered answers in your due course, but I think they are things to be considered. I would want to ask, let me take just a few sample questions. Who is Jesus? Did Jesus begin to exist at Bethlehem? Or is Jesus, the one we call Jesus, the Word of God, incarnate. Who is the Word of God, was one with the Father from all eternity. When, for instance, it is said that Abraham believed God, w- was that God composed of a Trinity in those days? The Father, the Word, and the Spirit. When Enoch walked with God, did he only walk with the Father, but not with the Word? What would you say to that? Who do you think Jesus is? That's what I'm getting at. You can't be sure that Enoch heard the name Jesus, can you? But that he walked with God, and God was triune, and God included the word. That surely is certain, isn't it? When Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness, was the fact that he didn't know that the name of the second person of the Trinity would one day be Jesus, did that invalidate his faith? Hardly. Mm. Um. Romans three twenty is a crucial verse, isn't it? God passed over the sins as done aforetime, that is before Bethlehem, and argues that God was just in doing so. So those long Old Testament saints, as we call them, God did not immediately visit their sins upon them. Why not? How was he just to, to forego punishing their sins? Was it because one day they would come to hear about Jesus and believe him? Well, they didn't, did they? Most of them. Or was it that they repented and believed and put their faith in God, and God justified them? God knowing that one day his dear son would pay the penalty of sin and be the propitiation for their sin, and by being the propitiation for their sins, would justify God in having refrained his wrath from them in the days gone by. Which, which interpretation of that verse would you give? Then I want to ask, you see, uh, about certain other questions. In Acts seventeen, Paul says that, um, God so appointed the bounds of the habitation of the pagan nations that they might feel after him, if perhaps they might find him. Granted, the Greek word means to grope, somewhat like a blind man would grope his way to something, yet it is actually said that God positively appointed their, uh, bounds of their habitation with the deliberate purpose of moving the Gentiles to grope after him if they might seek him. Did God do that, wishing that they would find him? Or knowing that for multitudes there would be no hope of ever finding him anyway. Because they hadn't heard of Jesus. Romans Romans uh, two twenty four, Romans two four says that the goodness of God is intended by God to lead people to repentance. I ask, is that true of Gentiles as well as Jews? Was God goodness to the pagan nations outside of Israel in Old Testament times? Was that goodness intended to lead them to repentance? Well, surely it was. But tell me, was God doing this to lead them to repentance, but there was no hope of their ever being saved because they didn't hear of Jesus? There are big questions, aren't there? Have we any positive indications as to what God's attitude to the people of those times was? Well, one Chron- two Chronicles six thirty two, for those who live near enough at least to hear about the God of Israel. Solomon prays that the stranger that is not of thy people, when he comes from a far country for thy great name's sake, he's heard the reputation of God, and he comes to the Jewish temple and prays to this house, hear what the stranger asks for and give it to him for this reason, that all the peoples of the earth may know thy name and fear thee. God's evangelical program for the nations in the time of Solomon. Did he want them to fear him, but with no possibility of their being saved? To the remoter nations, Isaiah uh forty five: there is no God else beside me, a just God and a savior. There is none beside me. Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else. I therefore ask the questions, you will see in what direction my heart goes, that the basic conditions of salvation in the Old Testament are laid down by the case of Abram, which is a precedent. How is a man right with God? Abram believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. God was righteous to do that because one day his son would bear Abram's sins and therefore justify God for justifying Abram. The condition was Abram believed God, and the God he believed, whether he knew it or not, was Father, the Son, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. But you will have problems, and I, with all humility, put these questions to you. It is, as I suggest, a topic that we should think through very carefully, for it will affect what we have to say to people who feel that the Christians are saying that anybody born before Bethlehem, uh, was hopelessly lost. How could God arrange any such thing, they say? And you'll be re- you'll need to be ready with some answer, will you not?