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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3251 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What's the Lewis theodicy for pre-Christian-contact humans? Jews (and people exposed to Jewish missionaries? but AFAIK they were never exactly an evangelical religion...) I assume get the "Redemption ... a different way" loophole in (5). Maybe you could also argue that e.g. the Tang dynasty might have had some kind of missionary contact, though the likely tiny ratio of hypothetical-missionary to local-established-belief-systems exposure seems pretty unfair to people required to pick the former. But the further you go from the Middle East in space or the further back you go in time, the more of a stretch it gets. In the most archetypal case of the problem, the Native Americans hit points (1) through (4) so hard that people invented entire religions to try to provide a solution.

But on the other hand, Christianity didn't collapse in 1493, so clearly there's some theodicies that make Christians happy enough. Even not knowing exactly what they are it feels like they ought to apply to extraterrestrial aliens as easily as extracontinental ones.

Lewis believed in the old Christian concept of the “Harrowing of Hell”. In summary, he did believe that Jesus saved even those who came before he was born.

As far as people who never realistically could have heard the Gospel, Lewis believed salvation through Christ was still possible.

Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him.

We can see this in his final Narnia book, The Last Battle, when a Calorman who worshipped Tash all his life get to go to heaven. When the man asks how this is possible Aslan replies

I take to me the services which thou hast done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.

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