This article is based on chapter 30 of my book What’s So Confusing About Grace? Parenthood opens you to new questions you never thought to ask before. For me, it initiated a new stage in my wrestling with salvation and the Gospel: what did it mean for my daughter to be saved? Did I agree that […]
salvation
Why would God let rapists and murderers into heaven?
According to Christianity, serial killers can be saved. Is that a reason to think that Christianity is false?
The Top Three Worst Reasons to Reject Universalism
Do All Children Go to Heaven? On the age of accountability
Would you rather be a Muslim who acts like Jesus or a Christian who doesn’t?
How I wore evangelistic T-shirts in high school to try and save … myself
In my book What’s So Confusing About Grace? I journey through several different ways of thinking about salvation that I held growing up (and into adulthood). Along the way, I summarize several “laws” that I came to believe were essential to salvation, including that which I call “Law 5”: Law 5: If you are ashamed of Jesus, […]
Does God privilege weak outsiders over powerful insiders? A response to Tim Keller
Let’s ring in the new year with a New Year’s Day tweet from Tim Keller: A salvation earned by good works and moral effort would favor the more able, competent, accomplished and privileged. But salvation by sheer grace favors the failed, the outsiders, the weak, because it goes only to those who know salvation must […]
If God wants to save us, why isn’t salvation simple?
I know what you’re thinking: salvation is simple! After all, just look at John 3:16: God loved the world so much he sent his Son so that whoever believes in him will be saved. Surely that is simple, right? It might seem so, but the closer you look, the more that initial veneer of simplicity […]
Does Calvinism offer a basis for the assurance of salvation?
Calvinism affirms a doctrine known as the perseverance of the saints according to which the truly regenerated disciple will persist in faith. In the words of the seventeenth-century Puritan William Secker, “Though Christians be not kept altogether from falling, yet they are kept from falling altogether.” Calvinists insist that perseverance of the saints is a […]
What Happens to Those Who Have Never Heard the Gospel?
I was recently interviewed by Cameron Bertuzzi of “Capturing Christianity” on the topic of salvation for those who have never heard the Gospel. You can listen to it here:
Do all adherents to non-Christian religions go to hell?
Let’s take a look at one of my recent, highly rigorous Twitter surveys: A question for Christians: Do all adherents to non-Christian religions go to hell? — Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) November 17, 2017 When I see results like this — and by “this” I’m referring specifically to that 53% — I wonder whether folks have […]
In Search of Salvation
My new video gives a twenty minute introduction to the themes of my book What’s So Confusing About Grace? Check it out!
If God wants us to be saved, why is grace so confusing?
It’s a daunting question. If God wants all human beings to be saved — and surely he does — then why aren’t the requirements of that salvation clearer? This is a central theme woven through my book What’s So Confusing About Grace?, a theological memoir spanning a forty-year journey trying to understand the nature of God’s […]
