Argument Against Missions
As you may know, sometimes I like to just post random thoughts. This blog is just that. One of the things I love to do is listen to all sorts of podcasts, one being a podcast called Capturing Christianity with Cameron Bertuzzi. He brings on scholars to discuss certain topics related to Christianity. This specific podcast I will be referring to, Cameron spoke with Dr. Bobby Conway about the topic of doubt.
One of the talking points that they ended up discussing was about the idea of God’s general revelation within God’s works of salvation. Now, right off the bat I would like to say I agreed with Dr. Conway on what Scripture has to say about this point. The reason why I am writing this blog is based off of an interesting comment Dr. Conway made. He mentioned that he often receives remarks that if God has given man this general revelation of Himself, then we should avoid doing missions.
To be honest I don’t think I have ever received this sort of an objection and it made me think. In essence it seemed to me the objection states: if one can be saved through general revelation (in the sense that we need to accept less truths and less doctrine), why should we then do missions? It would seem to add even more amounts of truth and more weight to what these people need to accept. If these people hear of Christ and the gospel, we are doing a disservice to them by laying so much more at their feet. Therefore missions shouldn’t be done.
So I thought about it and I will say that I liked Dr. Conway’s answer to the extent that we want these people not only to be saved but to become that ‘city on a hill,’ and transform their lives. Though I agree with his statements, in the end it seemed to me that this didn’t fully answer the argument the objector laid out, or at least I believe we need a more successful attempt at answering this objection.
With this said I would personally like to add a few points to Dr. Conway’s argument to answer what I believe the essence of the objection is. My response is that this objection seems to rest on the lack of counterfactual understanding within God’s knowledge (grant me for the sake of this blog that God does have this counterfactual knowledge, which I believe He does have). Let me give you a few bullet points in order to show you what I mean:
· It’s possible that God knew that some people would never have accepted Him on the basis of general revelation alone, but God knew that on the basis of the Gospel’s presentation that they would accept Christ
· It’s possible that God knew that the more truth these people receive the more they would intellectually or spiritually reconcile what they previously knew, and this would bring them to salvation
· It’s also possible that in these tribes or surrounding communities that have not yet received the gospel, these people have dispositions that are not met by anyone in their tribe or surrounding communities yet are meet by missionaries (this may even be the case of missions that are not strictly just proclaiming the gospel). The acts by these missionaries such as simply handing out clean water and food could very well reach these certain dispositions and bring these people to ask questions which then brings them to accept God’s general revelation or even special revelation in the future.
It would seems that God desiring people to be saved would do all He can in order to bring people freely to Him. This idea of missions hindering and even hurting man’s opportunity of salvation would be in fact false, for I have presented three counterfactual arguments that show it to be false. If this is the case, missions are something we therefore should be doing. I am sure there are plenty more arguments for missions, but for the allotted time I have to type this I thought of three. These counter arguments on top of Dr. Conway’s thoughts make a sound refuter to the argument against missions based in and on general revelation.
I just want to end by stating that this is such a great podcast, and I encourage everyone to go download it and listen!
Ryan Willert