Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Christ, Part 51.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

Today we're going to wrap up our discussion of Christian particularism,

and I think the lesson will be fairly short today

because we're right near the end of this section. And I don't want to begin a new section

midway through the class, but put that off until next Sunday. Now, to recap what we've seen so far, we've seen that many people think that

the religious diversity in the world presents a significant challenge to the truth of salvation

through Christ alone. And after clearing away some fallacious objections to Christian particularism,

we saw that the central problem involves the fate of those who lie outside the orbit of the

gospel, who never hear the gospel of Christ, and so do not have a chance to respond to it. How will God judge

them? And in particular, we saw that those who reject the light of general revelation in

nature and conscience that is available to all persons, but who would have freely believed in the

gospel if only they had heard it present a real agonizing problem for Christian particularism.

It would seem that their damnation or salvation hinges upon the accidents of history and geography.

They just happened to have the bad luck through no fault of their own to be born at the wrong time and place in history where they do not get to hear the gospel.

But if they had heard it, then they would have

been saved. Now, God's judgment of such persons on the basis of general revelation in nature

and conscience is certainly just, but would an all-loving God allow people to be eternally lost simply because of historical and geographical

accident. That's the challenge. Now as we looked at this so-called satirological problem of evil

in more detail, we saw that like the philosophical problem of evil in more detail. We saw that, like the philosophical problem of evil,

the argument seems to be that Christian particularism involves an internal contradiction or

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