I’ve been meaning to write this post for the last couple of days. In a way it is somewhat anecdotal, but it is also richly theologically biblical. It has to do with the continual process I am in as I continue to grieve the loss of my dad (circa Jan 11^th, 2021 @4am). You see, my dad did not enter the presence of the Lord in “victory,” he entered in “defeat.” My dad loved Jesus; probably led more people to Jesus Christ in his tenure as a pastor, chaplain, and evangelist than most Christians have in history (serious). But throughout my dad’s life he also had deep trials and tribulations; I have mentioned some of that in the past. Over the last 15 to 20 years, and then in the last 2 years in particular, these trials and tribulations seemed to climax in his life. He really died a “death of despair,” which I would characterize as a slow and drawn out in front of our faces suicide (many people die and are dying from this sort of death right now, even Christians). What I am going to get into, throughout the rest of this post, gets into this issue from a soteriological angle. It will kick against the goads of popular and even technical juridical or forensic based theories of salvation, and offer the biblical alternative which is a Christologically conditioned and grace-full understanding of salvation. Rather than refer to theologians like Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance explicitly, I am simply going to refer to a few passages of Scripture (which in a way makes this seem a bit anecdotal, but in a substantive way) which indicate exactly what my thesis is. My thesis is this: ‘There is only One way to the Father: But there are many types of entrees into the eternal Kingdom.’  

Here are four passages from Scripture, which I will take in turn, in regard to some explication vis-à-vis my thesis.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14.6

³ His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us tohis own glory and excellence, ⁴ by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. ⁵ For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, ⁶ and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, ⁷ and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. ⁸ For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹ For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. ¹⁰ Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. ¹¹ For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. II Peter 1.3-11

¹⁰ According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. ¹¹ For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. ¹² Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— ¹³ each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. ¹⁴ If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. ¹⁵ If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. II Corinthians 3.10-15

²⁸ And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming. ²⁹ If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him. I John 2.28-29

In light of my thesis the aforementioned passages ought to be self-evident; nonetheless, let me provide a little explication.

As orthodox Christianity has understood for millennia, there is only One way to the Father; and that is to participate in the eternal life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and that is to be united by Holy Spirit with the mediatorial humanity of Jesus Christ. It is as a person ‘becomes one spirit’ with Jesus (see I Cor 6.17) that they are now born again of an imperishable seed that will endure as long as the eternal life of the Son in Christ endures for them; which is for eternity. So, we all affirm this basic premise if we are orthodox Christians. But there is disparity following when this gets fleshed out with reference to who will actually “make” it into the corridor of perichoretic life of the de Trino / de Uno God.

When I note above that there are many entrees into the eternal kingdom, what I mean, and I’d think this would be self-evident, is that Christians, those who are born again and adopted into the family of God by the blood of Jesus Christ, can and do enter heaven upon their death (and even upon the coming of Christ, when that happens) in at least one of two ways. They either are walking in the victory of sanctification, or the defeat of their own poor choices that leaves them broken and in despair.

As Peter notes for us: as we walk in step with the Spirit (to borrow a Paulinism) and cultivate the virtues of the eternal kingdom in our daily lives (Paul’s fruit of the Spirit), as we leave this in-between life and enter the beatific life to come, it will be a time of almost seamless rejoicing; of a race well run. But as Paul identifies, along with the theologian, John, it is also possible, even for the Christian to step into ‘eternity’ in a status that leaves this particular Christian in a momentary state of shame and fiery ordeal. This person, to be sure, is now and will forever be in the presence of the Lord, finally away from the dregs of their various and incapacitating sins, but it will, at the first twinkling entail a moment of sadness that they did not walk in the victory that they, at that point, will fully understand that Christ had won for them. They will be saved ‘but as through fire.’

Theological Iterations

A large part of my project over the years, with Evangelical Calvinism, has been driven by some of the concerns we have been visiting in this brief posting. My critique of classical Calvinism and Arminianism (which I have identified less explicitly, even though it flows from the same theological and philosophical premises that fund classical Calvinism) has been against its necessarily forensic and/or performance based notion of salvation. In order to attempt any critique of this sort, in the theological game, the critiquer must start where all things start: with a doctrine of God. As such, my critique of classical Calvinism has targeted its conception of God as One who is shaped by an Aristotelian substance metaphysic wherein he relates to the world, in a God-world relation, through the mechanism of the decretum absolutum (absolute decree of deterministic election/reprobation). My contention has been that to think God under this type of pressure is to mis-think just at the point that it departs from God’s own Self-presentation in the hyper or radically relational reality of the SON become human; insofar that this becoming, in its antecedence, presupposes that the Son has a Father (see Athanasius’ dictum here). If God is first and foremost a person and relational God, if He is first Father of the Son before He is Creator (see Torrance), then the apparatus that the decretral God of ‘classical’ pedigree operates from is necessarily null and void. If God’s act of original creation, and re-creation in the resurrection has its asymmetrical correspondence and elevation, in who God necessarily is: then God necessarily is Grace. This entails that God, thus, works immediately with us and for us, in relational and gracious ways, to the point that even if we are faithless He remains faithful for He cannot deny Himself. As such, an absolute decretive god becomes a fabrication vis-à-vis God’s own Self-presentation in Jesus Christ. As such, the God-world relation then becomes contingent not upon some sort of mercantile set of salvific conditions, such as we get in Federal or Covenantal theology, but instead upon the very life/person and work of God in Jesus Christ without rupture from the triune life of God. And so someone like Thomas Torrance can write the following with reference to the reality of the Gospel:

God loves you so utterly and completely that he has given himself for you in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and has thereby pledged his very being as God for your salvation. In Jesus Christ God has actualised his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself. Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease. Therefore, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour.[1]

Conclusion

There is one way to the Father, and that is through Christ alone! But as the Christian walks in this simul-time[2], our experiences can be very different. We can be ‘born-again,’ and become ‘blood’ children of the living God in Christ; which can lead someone like TF Torrance to write what he does above for us. And yet even as children, we can disobey and live lives that are less than pleasing to our eternal Father. There are consequences, both temporal and eternal, that follow these choices, but ultimately, like the Prodigal experienced, the Father’s graciousness far outshines our own failures while we live in these bodies of death. Our aim, clearly, as children of God, as co-heirs with Jesus Christ, is to be holy as God is holy. But depending on a variety of variables, often times unforeseen, the Christian might experience a life of continued failures rather than perfections. The classical Calvinist and Arminian systems of salvation don’t have space for failure before God—their only outs, respectively, are to posit that the “failure Christian” was never elect to begin with (Calvinist), or that the “failure Christian” simply lost their salvation (Arminian). But again, these systems, respectively, are based on a doctrine of God that is at odds with God’s own Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. They import categories and emphases about God that don’t come after Deus dixit (God has spoken), but before God has spoken (i.e. from the speculations offered by the philosophers about “Godness” and Pure Being). Maybe you can see why my whole project has been so deeply personal for me. My dad did not die in victory, but failure; but He died in the gracious and forever faithful arms of the Father and the Son, as bonded together by the unrelenting power of the Holy Spirit.   

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[1] T. F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, 94.

[2] Think Luther’s simul justus et peccator.