Phil Donahue Ridicules Christian Salvation Doctrine

Meanwhile, ACLU worked overtime to take Christ out of Christmas and PBS celebrated Islam

A week before Christmas, MSNBC talk-show host Phil Donahue used his program as a vehicle to show his contempt for foundational Christian beliefs - particularly that salvation comes only through faith in Jesus Christ.

The December 17 program - titled "Do You Have to Be a Christian to Get into Heaven?" - was a follow-up to Donahue's December 3 show during which he asked Christian evangelist and Liberty University founder the Rev. Jerry Falwell if he (Donahue) had to accept Christ in order to go to heaven. The Rev. Falwell replied that the only way to heaven was "what Jesus said in [the New Testament Book of] John 14:6. He said, 'I am the way, the truth, the life, no man cometh unto the Father - no man - but by me.'"

When many in the audience applauded the Rev. Falwell's statement, Donahue expressed disdain for their reaction and evidently decided to hone in on the topic with theological guests from both sides.

For the December 17 program, Donahue assembled the Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky; Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, national talk-radio host and author of "Judaism Is for Everybody"; Michael Brown, a Messianic (Christian) Jew; Dr. Joe Hough, president of the Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan; and evangelist Flip Benham. Mohler, Brown, and Benham support the Biblical viewpoint while Rabbi Boteach and Dr. Hough hold opposing views.

Donahue first posed the question of "who goes to heaven" to the Rev. Mohler, who answered that a person goes to heaven only by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Donahue showed his scorn for Mohler's statement by replying, "I just think that [view] has the potential, and already has caused an awful lot of havoc here among the Lord's people. If you tell me that I'm not going to heaven, then why should you respect me? If the Lord doesn't respect me, why should you?"

The Rev. Mohler replied: "Well, the Lord respects you enough to have sent Jesus Christ, his son, to assume human flesh, to die on Calvary's cross for your sins." Unimpressed, Donahue asked Rabbi Boteach to respond:

Phil Donahue then tacitly agreed with the rabbi's vitriolic assessment of Christianity, noting, "And he [the Christian Klansman] goes to heaven. The guy in the sheet goes to heaven, I think is what he's saying."

Although the Rev. Mohler vehemently disagreed with the association of Christianity with the Ku Klux Klan and anti-Semitism, Rabbi Boteach continued his comments, asserting that Mohler's views transcend the issue of "just people making decisions about faith. We are talking about Jews being persecuted, slaughtered ... massacred, turned to bars of soap because of 2000 years of Christian anti-Judaism. The Holocaust didn't take place in Buddhist Europe or in Hindu Europe. It took place in Christian Europe."

To the assertion equating Nazi and Christian worldviews, Donahue responded, "I agree with you."

As the program continued, Donahue chastised a female audience participant who expressed her view that the Bible says Jesus is the only way to heaven. Donahue:

Donahue then introduced Dr. Michael Brown, who identified himself as a Messianic Jew - a member of the Jewish faith that accepts Jesus Christ as the Messiah and fulfiller of Old Testament prophesies. Upon hearing Dr. Brown's statement, Donahue said sarcastically, "Boy, oh, boy, you're breaking the hearts of a lot of very, very devout faithful Jewish folk with that. I mean, really. You don't think it's an oxymoron?"

Dr. Brown replied, "He [Jesus] came to fulfill what's written in Moses and the prophets. So either…the whole world should believe in him or reject it." Rabbi Boteach then called Brown "a spiritual bigot" and mocked the notion that Jesus is the only way to heaven.

Donahue ridiculed Dr. Mohler for suggesting in his writings that Islam is a faith that "lies about God" and presents a false gospel. "I mean, please. You're going to be sending how many people to war if you keep up commentary like this? You don't see the un-Christian nature of that comment?"

The Mohler replied: "It's not an un-Christian comment, because it is the gospel. And also, well, let's put it this way. If you have a true Muslim who understands what we believe about Jesus, he believes that we are wrong. And you [as a Christian] have to have a basic respect for truth."

Donahue then said, "But I don't know if he [a Muslim] is out there really throwing mud and calling names to people who believe otherwise. I think we can lose just a little less devotion and [have] more love and understanding and reaching out." He called on Dr. Hough to respond:

Donahue agreed and said, "You speak for me. When I see a holy person, I'm happy about that."

Throughout the program, the views of the Rev. Mohler, Dr. Brown, and the Rev. Benham were characterized as bigoted, ignorant, hateful and unenlightened, about which Donahue typically agreed. Perhaps the most telling moment in the broadcast came when one audience member asked Boteach, "Rabbi, I was wondering what you believe. … Who is going to hell? Because it seems everybody believes everybody's going to heaven, and that cannot be the case."

Later in the conversation, Rabbi Boteach showed his complete misunderstanding of sin, God's grace, and forgiveness: "If heaven is a place riddled with murderers who believed in Jesus, and hell is a place riddled with victims who had died with the wrong faith, I would choose hell every, any single day. I prefer to be with the innocent victim than to be in a heaven riddled with murderers."

In other words, the rabbi doesn't even believe in heaven, hell, judgment, grace, or forgiveness, but nevertheless is hypercritical of Christians who do. Furthermore, essentially all religious faiths practice exclusionary principles regarding salvation and the eternal destiny of the human soul. The rabbi readily confessed his unbelief; Hindus and Buddhists believe in repeated reincarnations until the soul is relieved of its bad "karma" through good works, at which time the soul simply sheds its existence; Muslims believe in a works-based judgment and that only those who accept Allah as the one true God may achieve a Paradise of abundant sensual pleasures, while nonbelievers will suffer the torments of hell.

It is a uniquely Christian belief that works cannot earn a person salvation, as St. Paul notes in Romans 3:23: "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." For Christians, acceptance into the heavenly kingdom comes only by God's grace and entering into a personal trust relationship with the Living God, Jesus Christ, whose sacrifice on the cross served as an atonement for sin. Thus believers are justified in the eyes of God.

By focusing exclusively on Christianity and ignoring the beliefs of other faiths, Phil Donahue's primary motivation was to ridicule the beliefs of Bible-believing Christians, whom he regards as intolerant to his own ultra-liberal views. Unfortunately, he missed an opportunity to present a reasoned discussion of Christian doctrine concerning salvation, which could have served to enlighten his viewers and sweep away the misconceptions raised by the audience's questions and shared by some panel members.

Perhaps Donahue's open contempt for Biblical truths and the Christian faith helps explain his dismal ratings. His MSNBC program is reportedly losing the ratings war to more conservative talk shows on the FOX network.

In retrospect, the 2002 Christmas holiday season can perhaps be best remembered as "the season without a Reason." Holiday greetings, which were once universally expressed as Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, have long since been replaced by the generically acceptable, Happy Holidays, while millions of schoolchildren who used to look forward to 'Christmas vacation' now simply enjoy their 'winter break.'

Even though Christmas is a federal holiday that celebrates and reflects the nation's Christian heritage, anti-Christian organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have been remarkably successful in eliminating Christmas symbolism from the public arena - most often by threats and intimidation without legal merit. This past Christmas season showed a continuation of this relentless assault. Among the more outrageous examples were:

The media, which once offered a multitude of Christmas-oriented programs, are now almost devoid of serious Christian themes. The Public Broadcasting Service did present a serious religious program shortly before Christmas - a two-hour discourse on the life of Muhammad produced by Muslim convert and apologist for the Islamic faith, Alex Kronemer. "Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet" aired on most of the 349 PBS affiliates nationwide beginning December 18, while the Washington, D.C., PBS station broadcast the program on December 26.

Kronemer, who has a master of divinity degree in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School, recently wrote an article for the religion Web site Beliefnet.com called, "Was Muhammad a Terrorist." In the article, Kronemer credits Muhammad for ending the "Biblical period" of violence: "By today's standards, Muhammad engaged in an appalling amount of violence - but he brought peace to the Holy Land." [Emphasis added.] Muhammad also brought a repressive code of 7th century religious laws that continues to enslave a large portion of the world to this day.

If, indeed, Muhammad brought "peace to the Holy Land" by the violent conquest of its inhabitants, it was quite obviously short-lived, which Kronemer later admits in his article: "Christianity and Islam have challenged and competed with one another ever since. The relationship has spurred both civilizations to greater creativity, but has also been the source of conflict over the centuries, which is now re-ignited on both sides of the divide."

Daniel Pipes, director of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, called the PBS documentary "an outrage … an airbrushed and uncritical documentary of a topic that has both world historical and contemporary significance. Its patronizing film might be fine for an Islamic Sunday school class, but not for a national audience."

PBS has supplemented its documentary by offering educational materials on its Web site about Islam and its relationship to women, jihad, and other religions, as well as offering a "virtual Hajj" (the Muslim's sacred pilgrimage to Mecca), information about the Koran, and a discussion forum.

Your husband is wrong. In fact, reading Scripture is an indulgenced act, and has been at least since the beginning of the last century. Do you suppose the Popes would have attached an indulgence to Bible-reading to discourage it? Hardly. It was St. Jerome, not any Protestant divine, who said, "Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." The real problem is that your husband, and many, many other Catholics just like him don't know what their own faith teaches.

Well, the problem is that Rome keeps changing its mind. I'll leave aside their persecution of early Bible translators (hint: it wasn't any Protestant that dug up Wycliffe's bones to burn).

Here is an article from an often-quoted Roman apologetics site that does some justice even if presenting a rose-colored view of Rome on this matter and leaving out some important historical information. I'll quote some of it:

During the course of the first millennium of her existence, the Church did not promulgate any law concerning the reading of Scripture in the vernacular. The faithful were rather encouraged to read the Sacred Books according to their spiritual needs (cf. St. Irenaeus, "Adv. haer.", III, iv).
The next five hundred years show only local regulations concerning the use of the Bible in the vernacular. On 2 January, 1080, Gregory VII wrote to the Duke of Bohemia that he could not allow the publication of the Scriptures in the language of the country. The letter was written chiefly to refuse the petition of the Bohemians for permission to conduct Divine service in the Slavic language. The pontiff feared that the reading of the Bible in the vernacular would lead to irreverence and wrong interpretation of the inspired text (St. Gregory VII, "Epist.", vii, xi). The second document belongs to the time of the Waldensian and Albigensian heresies. The Bishop of Metz had written to Innocent III that there existed in his diocese a perfect frenzy for the Bible in the vernacular. In 1199 the pope replied that in general the desire to read the Scriptures was praiseworthy, but that the practice was dangerous for the simple and unlearned ("Epist., II, cxli; Hurter, "Gesch. des. Papstes Innocent III", Hamburg, 1842, IV, 501 sqq.). After the death of Innocent III, the Synod of Toulouse directed in 1229 its fourteenth canon against the misuse of Sacred Scripture on the part of the Cathari: "prohibemus, ne libros Veteris et Novi Testamenti laicis permittatur habere" (Hefele, "Concilgesch", Freiburg, 1863, V, 875). In 1233 the Synod of Tarragona issued a similar prohibition in its second canon, but both these laws are intended only for the countries subject to the jurisdiction of the respective synods (Hefele, ibid., 918). The Third Synod of Oxford, in 1408, owing to the disorders of the Lollards, who in addition to their crimes of violence and anarchy had introduced virulent interpolations into the vernacular sacred text, issued a law in virtue of which only the versions approved by the local ordinary or the provincial council were allowed to be read by the laity (Hefele, op. cit., VI, 817).
It is only in the beginning of the last five hundred years that we meet with a general law of the Church concerning the reading of the Bible in the vernacular. On 24 March, 1564, Pius IV promulgated in his Constitution, "Dominici gregis", the Index of Prohibited Books. According to the third rule, the Old Testament may be read in the vernacular by pious and learned men, according to the judgment of the bishop, as a help to the better understanding of the Vulgate. The fourth rule places in the hands of the bishop or the inquisitor the power of allowing the reading of the New Testament in the vernacular to laymen who according to the judgment of their confessor or their pastor can profit by this practice. Sixtus V reserved this power to himself or the Sacred Congregation of the Index, and Clement VIII added this restriction to the fourth rule of the Index, by way of appendix. Benedict XIV required that the vernacular version read by laymen should be either approved by the Holy See or provided with notes taken from the writings of the Fathers or of learned and pious authors. It then became an open question whether this order of Benedict XIV was intended to supersede the former legislation or to further restrict it. This doubt was not removed by the next three documents: the condemnation of certain errors of the Jansenist Quesnel as to the necessity of reading the Bible, by the Bull "Unigenitus" issued by Clement XI on 8 Sept., 1713 (cf. Denzinger, "Enchir.", nn. 1294-1300); the condemnation of the same teaching maintained in the Synod of Pistoia, by the Bull "Auctorem fidei" issued on 28 Aug., 1794, by Pius VI; the warning against allowing the laity indiscriminately to read the Scriptures in the vernacular, addressed to the Bishop of Mohileff by Pius VII, on 3 Sept., 1816. But the Decree issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Index on 7 Jan., 1836, seems to render it clear that henceforth the laity may read vernacular versions of the Scriptures, if they be either approved by the Holy See, or provided with notes taken from the writings of the Fathers or of learned Catholic authors. The same regulation was repeated by Gregory XVI in his Encyclical of 8 May, 1844. In general, the Church has always allowed the reading of the Bible in the vernacular, if it was desirable for the spiritual needs of her children; she has forbidden it only when it was almost certain to cause serious spiritual harm.

One can discern a general hostility toward the ignorant masses having access to the Bible even in this sugar-coated version of Rome's history with the Bible.

The notable improvements in the state of vernacular translations since the Reformation have more to do with Rome's need to compete with Protestant scripture study among laymen, both Roman and non-Roman. Certainly, the Jesuit Bible was a direct attempt to compete with Protestantism in England (particularly the King James Bible) and to hold onto English Catholics in a country where Roman supremacy could not be imposed by secular government, Rome's favored tactic even at that late date.

For what it's worth, I've remarked many times here at FR that I think the current generation of the Roman church are probably the most knowledgable in its history and that this may very well lead to changes in the Roman church over the course of time. The Bible is, after all, a most dangerous document. Naturally, we Protestant sola scriptura types can have few objections to people reading a relatively unbiased translation of scripture.

It is correct that Jesus asked us to go and preach the gospel to all corners of the world.

regrding God sending all his messegers to one small part of the earth. Is that fair?

the vast area of this earth where most human live is Asia? and the lord did not send even one messenger to Asia?

the efficiency of reaching the most people?

By simply saying that he chose one race over another, he has created an unfair practice?

Fair Consistent with rules, logic, or ethics: a fair tactic. Just stresses conformity with what is legally or ethically right or proper.

Who decides what is fair in God's court? Is it fair that the atheist refuses to consider God's revelations? Is it fair that people choose Allah vs God? Is it fair that Jesus Christ had to die on a cross? Does the majority or minority determine what is fair?
"Well, I'll just believe in nothing; because nothing is fair."

Would it be FAIR to say, one must study the attributes of the judge The Attributes of God and the law Reasoning Through Romans to determine what is considered fair in any given society?

Should Peter Go to the Mission Field? EXCERPT: In an article in Faith and Philosophy 8 (1991), pp. 380-89, William Hasker related the cases of a veteran missionary, Paul, and a prospective missionary, Peter, who were each reflecting upon the implications of a middle knowledge perspective on the exclusivity of salvation through Christ for their missionary tasks. Peter, in some confusion, wrote to Paul for advice concerning whether he should leave his successful pastorate for the foreign field. Paul's response to Peter's letter has been obtained and is here published.

(C) If I were to go to the mission field and preach to those who otherwise would never hear the gospel, are there persons who would be saved as a result of my preaching, who would otherwise be lost?

(D) If I were to fail to go to the mission field, are there persons to whom I would in consequence not preach who would then be lost, and who would have been saved had I gone to them with the gospel?

Now in weighing a deliberative conditional, we generally assume that its antecedent is true. So doing, you may justifiably assume that the answer to (C') is "Yes." But what if the antecedent is false? In that case, though the answer to (C') remains affirmative, the answer to (C) is negative. For if the antecedent of the counterfactual expressed interrogatively in (C') is false, that is, if you do not go to the mission field, then God via His middle knowledge knew this and so has not placed any potential converts on your unreached field. Thus, there are no persons who are such that if you were to go to the field and preach the gospel they would be saved. Nevertheless, it is still true that if you were to go to the field and preach the gospel, there would be persons awaiting you as prospective converts, since God via His middle knowledge would then have known that you would leave on your mission and so placed potential new believers in your path.

Similarly, assuming that the antecedent of (D') is true, you should answer (D') in the negative because the persons to whom you would fail to preach would suffer from transworld damnation. But if the antecedent of the counterfactual expressed interrogatively in (D') is false, the answer to (D') will remain negative, but the answer to (D) will be "Yes." For if the antecedent is false, then God via His middle knowledge knew this and so has placed potential converts on your soon to be reached field. Thus, there are persons who are such that if you were to fail to go to the field and preach the gospel, they would not be saved. Nevertheless, it is still true that if you were to fail to go to the field and preach the gospel, there would be no persons out there who would be potential converts, since God via His middle knowledge would then have foreknown your failure to go and so placed only persons suffering from transworld damnation on the field.

Thus, you needn't be any more perplexed about your situation than than I am about mine. If the antecedent of (C') is true and of (D') is false, there are actually existing persons who will be saved as a result of your preaching who would otherwise not be saved. On the other hand, if the antecedent of (D') is true and of (C') is false, then there are no persons who, as a result of your failure, will be unsaved but would have been saved had you gone to the field.

In analyzing the logical aspects of the supposed problem, you go on to formulate a pair of difficult counterfactuals. But again your formulation is problematic. Using the third person for the sake of logical clarity, we ought to agree that:

2.(a) There exist persons who are such that either Peter will preach to them or Peter will not preach to them.

(b) On the assumption that Peter will preach to them, it is true that "If Peter were to preach to them, they would accept salvation."

(c) On the assumption that Peter will not preach to them, it is true that "If Peter were to preach to them, they would reject salvation."

Now what is the problem with (2)? Your first objection is that the transworld damnation of these persons depends on your actions. Not at all; your preaching to these people is merely the evidence that they do not have transworld damnation and your not preaching to them to them is evidence that they do. What does depend, at least in part, on your decision--and is different from the above--is whether the people to whom you go are persons who suffer from transworld damnation or persons who do not. How can this be? Your own answer seems to me exactly correct, in the following sense: if God knew that you would not go to the tribe, He would have placed in the tribe only persons afflicted with transworld damnation; but if He knew that you would go to the tribe, He would have placed other persons in the tribe who would have accepted the gospel. You object to this possibility that counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are not under God's control. Correct; but as I understand this possibility, no such control is envisioned. Your error lies in thinking that the same persons are involved whether you go or not. The reason you failed to see this point, I believe, may be because your vision has been obscured at this juncture by theological fatalism; you didn't see that the existence of certain persons in the world can be a soft fact dependent upon your decision to go to the mission field. But given God's middle knowledge and providence, their existence is, indeed, a soft fact.

Suppose, for example, that if the gospel had not been preached to them, then God would have foreknown this via His middle knowledge and so not created them in the first place; hence, they would not have been saved. But they are obviously not damned in such a world. Nor is there any reason to think that in such a world it would be true that were they to exist and the gospel were to be preached to them, they would not accept it.

In conclusion, then, the proposed Molinist solution to the soteriological problem of evil seems to be a consistent defense. Moreover, it is a solution that is worthy of God, something that He both could and would do. By contrast, the Augustinian-Calvinist solution makes the damnation of the lost the result of God's choice, which seems abhorrent; and the Pelagian-Arminian solution seems to make their damnation the result of historical and geographical accident, which seems unconscionable. So what alternative is there? A risk-taking God, who lacks both middle and foreknowledge, seems either indifferent to or helpless with respect to the fate of the unreached, since He is doing so relatively little to bring the gospel to them. Of course, one could simply deny that there is any soteriological problem of evil, as religious pluralists and universalists do; but such positions unfortunately do violence to the biblical data and make preaching the gospel superfluous.

So, Peter, if you feel God's call upon you to go to the foreign mission field, my advice is, by all means, go, "knowing," in the words of the first Christian missionary, "that in the Lord your labor is not in vain" (I Cor. 15. 58).

"No Other Name" EXCERPT
A Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of Salvation Through Christ: The conviction of the New Testament writers was that there is no salvation apart from Jesus. This orthodox doctrine is widely rejected today because God's condemnation of persons in other world religions seems incompatible with various attributes of God. Analysis reveals the real problem to involve certain counterfactuals of freedom, e.g., why did not God create a world in which all people would freely believe in Christ and be saved? Such questions presuppose that God possesses middle knowledge. But it can be shown that no inconsistency exists between God's having middle knowledge and certain persons' being damned; on the contrary, it can be positively shown that these two notions are compatible.

But what exactly is the problem with God's condemning persons who adhere to non-Christian religions? I do not see that the very notion of hell is incompatible with a just and loving God. According to the New Testament, God does not want anyone to perish, but desires that all persons repent and be saved and come to know the truth (11 Peter 3.9; 1 Timothy 2.4). He therefore seeks to draw all men to Himself. Those who make a well-informed and free decision to reject Christ are self-condemned, since they repudiate God's unique sacrifice for sin. By spurning God's prevenient grace and the solicitation of His Spirit, they shut out God's mercy and seal their own destiny. They, therefore, and not God, are responsible for their condemnation, and God deeply mourns their loss.

Nor does it seem to me that the problem can be simply reduced to the inconsistency of a loving and just God's condemning persons who are either un- , ill-, or misinformed concerning Christ and who therefore lack the opportunity to receive Him. For one could maintain that God graciously applies to such persons the benefits of Christ's atoning death without their conscious knowledge thereof on the basis of their response to the light of general revelation and the truth that they do have, even as He did in the case of Old Testament figures like Job who were outside the covenant of Israel.{12} The testimony of Scripture is that the mass of humanity do not even respond to the light that they do have, and God's condemnation of them is neither unloving nor unjust, since He judges them according to standards of general revelation vastly lower than those which are applied to persons who have been recipients of His special revelation.

Rather the real problem, it seems to me, involves certain counterfactuals of freedom concerning those who do not receive special revelation and so are lost. If we take Scripture seriously, we must admit that the vast majority of persons in the world are condemned and will be forever lost, even if in some relatively rare cases a person might be saved through his response to the light that he has apart from special revelation.{13} But then certain questions inevitably arise: Why did God not supply special revelation to persons who, while rejecting the general revelation they do have, would have responded to the gospel of Christ if they had been sufficiently well-informed concerning it? More fundamentally, Why did God create this world when He knew that so many persons would not receive Christ and would therefore be lost? Even more radically, why did God not create a world in which everyone freely receives Christ and so is saved?

Conclusion

In conclusion, then, I think that a middle knowledge perspective on the problem of the exclusivity of the Christian religion can be quite fruitful. Since all persons are in sin, all are in need of salvation. Since Christ is God's unique expiatory sacrifice for sin, salvation is only through Christ. Since Jesus and his work are historical in character, many persons as a result of historical and geographical accident will not be sufficiently well-informed concerning him and thus unable to respond to him in faith. Such persons who are not sufficiently well-informed about Christ's person and work will be judged on the basis of their response to general revelation and the light that they do have. Perhaps some will be saved through such a response; but on the basis of Scripture we must say that such "anonymous Christians" are relatively rare. Those who are judged and condemned on the basis of their failure to respond to the light of general revelation cannot legitimately complain of unfairness for their not also receiving the light of special revelation, since such persons would not have responded to special revelation had they received it. For God in His providence has so arranged the world that anyone who would receive Christ has the opportunity to do so. Since God loves all persons and desires the salvation of all, He supplies sufficient grace for salvation to every individual, and nobody who would receive Christ if he were to hear the gospel will be denied that opportunity. As Molina puts it, our salvation is in our own hands.

No orthodox Christian likes the doctrine of hell or delights in anyone's condemnation. I truly wish that universalism were true, but it is not. My compassion toward those in other world religions is therefore expressed, not in pretending that they are not lost and dying without Christ, but by my supporting and making every effort myself to communicate to them the life-giving message of salvation through Christ.{27}

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