Belief and Unbelief

W. Carl Ketcherside

[Page 149]

     A good brother whom I love is a little perturbed with me and disturbed about me because I am unwilling to concede that all of the heathen who never even heard about Jesus will be eternally lost. He is extremely anxious to herd all such unfortunates into hell in order to rescue God from any manifestation of inconsistency and to prove his own loyalty to Jesus. He thinks I may be guilty of holding out hope for unbelievers and of projecting "another way" of salvation.

     I confess that I do not share his excitement for wanting to consign all of the ignorant to the flames while the righteous continue to stand afar off and shout, "Burn baby, burn!" In the first place I do not think that God will judge the world by my interpretation of revelation and I do not expect him to send an angel to ask me to advise Him as to how I think He should proceed in order to maintain His integrity. Moreover, I'm having quite a time of it lately in trying to live up to what I know is His will and I'm being forced to rely so heavily upon grace to have any hope at all that I have been driven to the conclusion that divine grace may be a lot greater than my puny powers of comprehension.

     The brother to whom I refer points out that Jesus plainly said, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." He argues that there are only two classes, the saved and the damned, and he seems almost as anxious to damn a lot as to save a few. I accept what Jesus said but I hold that it has no bearing upon our discussion at all because Jesus was speaking only of those who heard the gospel and accepted or rejected it. "And he said unto them, Go ye into the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth (the gospel) and is baptized shall

[Page 150]

be saved; he that believeth not (the gospel) shall be damned."

     I'm not interested in arguing about the ultimate fate of the heathen. God will handle their case according to His sovereign purpose and what I think will have no bearing on it one way or another. But I am going to note our brother's position, for the simple reason that I do not think he understands the "unbelief" that damns, and it may be that the reason he does not, is because he does not understand the "belief" that saves. I trust that my readers will pardon me for the time and space I must consume in this study.

     Faith is the belief of testimony, and where there is no testimony there can be no faith. No one can believe something of which he has never heard. "How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?" (Romans 10:14). When the mind receives testimony and judges the witnesses to be credible and reliable, the intellect acknowledges a firm conviction or persuasion as to the subject of the testimony. This is not the faith that saves, however, but the foundation of it.

     One can never be saved by a mere intellectual state, because all intellectual states are involuntary and passive. An intellectual state cannot be commanded but we are commanded to believe as a condition of salvation. An intellectual state which registers either assent to or doubt of a proposition can never be made a condition of salvation. "Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe and tremble" (James 2:19). It is well and good to believe any truth which commends itself to our intellectual powers of discrimination, but intellectual assent will not save.

     One can consent to the truth of a proposition intellectually and make no reformation of life or conduct. Such a person may be said to believe exactly as the demons are said to believe in the existence of God and monotheism. All of the demons are monotheists. But the faith which saves manifests itself in the outward life because it is an act of the will. Thus it is the yielding up or surrender of the whole being or personality to the claims of Jesus as apprehended by the intellect acting upon the testimony as to his Lordship. Such surrender is voluntary. It is deliberate. It is wilful, that is, self-determined and intentional.

     Take Luke 16:11 for an example, "If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?" The word for "commit" is the very same word translated "believeth" in Romans 1:16, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first and also to the Greek."

     Or consider John 2:24. "But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men." The word for "commit" is the same as that for "believeth" in 1 John 5:5, "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?"

     The nature of the faith that saves is such that not only must a fact or truth be presented by testimony but the presentation must be in such form as to be grasped or understood by the mind. Just as the physical eye cannot have an image of that which is enveloped in darkness so the mental vision cannot embrace that upon which it has no enlightenment. To expect faith to function in that which it cannot understand is the equivalent of expecting one to see what is veiled or cloaked. The object may be there but one cannot envision it.

[Page 151]

     If a proposition is stated in a language which is foreign to me I cannot believe it because I do not understand it. It may be a fact or a truth but I do not know whether it is or not and until I understand it I cannot say that I believe it, for one can believe only to the extent that he understands. It is true that I may understand some things about Jesus Christ, and understand enough that I am willing to commit my being unto Him, without understanding all about His nature and accomplishments, but my faith in Him upon the basis of what I apprehend is one thing, while my belief about certain aspects related to Him is a wholly different thing.

     It is impossible for the mind to receive a truth it does not understand and it is impossible for it to reject a truth it does not understand. By the same token one cannot believe a thing, nor disbelieve it until he understands it. One neither believes or disbelieves what is stated in a tongue unknown to him.

     It is impossible for one who loves truth because it is truth, to reject any truth when it becomes known unto him. All truth is harmonious and consistent. One truth cannot contradict another truth. Truth is not affected by time or place. One may not have learned many truths but if he believes and adopts the truths he has learned because they are truth, he will embrace other truths as they are disclosed and he discovers them to be truth.

     The faith that saves does not require that one understand all truths but it does demand that one understand and accept the great underlying truth of the Christian calling, that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God and the Lord of life, and is, by His own testimony, the Way, the Truth and the Life. Surrender unto Him is the hope of salvation but the commitment unto One who is the truth implies that he who surrenders will accept all truths as he comes to know them. The faith which brings life begins with acceptance of a truth, and the life of faith must continue to be nurtured by acceptance of truth so long as the mind is rational and responsible.

     With this much before us we are prepared to examine the disbelief that will damn one. I hold that the nature of the disbelief that damns can only be understood in the light of the faith that saves. This will account for my lengthy preliminary.

     Unbelief is not ignorance of truth. Ignorance is simply lack of knowledge. It may be either voluntary or involuntary. Involuntary ignorance is never a sin and cannot be. It is not a deliberate act for one in the darkness of the night to say that he cannot see an object. The eye can only respond to light. Where there is no light available one is not responsible for lack of vision. Voluntary ignorance is a sin and it may be occasioned by unbelief, but the unbelief which acts as a cause and the ignorance which results, although related, are not the same.

     The unbelief which damns is not simply absence of faith. One may hear a proposition and because of imbecility of reasoning powers or slowness of perception be unable to develop a firm conviction related to it, and still not be guilty of unbelief. One may be thick-skulled without being hard-headed. Absence of faith is a mere vacuum, an unreality, and no one will be eternally doomed because of that which is insubstantial.

     Just as one may have an intellectual faith that will not save because it is involuntary and inactive, so he may have an intellectual doubt or skepticism which will not damn because it is involuntary and inactive. Such an intellectual state has no moral character, for moral character cannot be predicated of anything that is involuntary and passive. It will not of itself sever one from God because it is not the result of choice or election. One might be more true to himself with an honest doubt than with a dishonest profession of faith. It was Tennyson who wrote

               "There lives more faith in honest doubt,
               Believe me, than in halt the creeds."

     For several years I have been trying in forums to help my brethren differentiate between theoretic or intellectual doubt of a proposition and disbelief of it. Thus far I have had no success and I am not too optimistic about my present attempt. But I keep on in the hope that the light will eventually break through and we will allow the arms of fellowship to embrace those who dearly love Jesus even while they struggle with inner qualms. Wrestling with one's self is not necessarily fighting against God. I have learned that those who are so cocksure, are generally more cocky than they are sure!

     I have no doubt that disbelief will damn but I have no inclination to augment the ranks by damning in advance those who are straining to see through blurred vision. I am convinced that we have driven some to hell whom we should have led to the Divine Optometrist, and it we don't repent we may meet in hell. We'll have no trouble in recognizing them with our perfect vision.

     To make a long story a little shorter, the unbelief which the Bible calls a sin is an act of the will. It is voluntary and deliberate. It is the rejection of truth. It is closing the eyes against the light. It is refusal to see. Just as there must be a revelation of the will of God before there can be faith, so there must be a revelation before there can be unbelief. Belief and unbelief are the actions of the will in reaction to the same testimony. As there can be no belief further than there is light, there can be no unbelief further than there is light.

     Where the gospel has never been heard there is no unbelief of the gospel as there is no belief of it. There is ignorance of the gospel for there could be nothing else where the gospel has never penetrated. But there is no indication that God will damn those who have not heard and do not know. Not everyone is rebellious. Some simply have not heard.

     I am told that Jesus said, "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." I believe that! The Father has committed all things into the hands of the Son. Any person who is saved will be saved by the merit of the sacrifice of Jesus. This is true of those who lived and died before the cross. It is true of infants and imbeciles. It will be true of those who never hear the Good News if they are saved at all. Jesus is the only access to the Father. The blood of Jesus is the atonement for the whole world and those who are accepted because they are not responsible come in under the blood as does every responsible person who is saved!

     I am then asked why we should take the gospel to the heathen if they may be saved without it. I always feel sorry for those who ask this question. They only reveal how narrow and limited and circumscribed is their view of God's purpose through the gospel. They regard Christianity as a fire department rescue squad

[Page 153]

whose members can sit around the engine house playing checkers until an apartment house catches on fire, whereupon they must rush in and save the occupants from the flames.

     There is a great deal more to Christianity than keeping people out of hell. It also involves keeping hell out of people. "Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come." Christianity is not like a life insurance policy from which one only benefits by dying. There are tremendous dividends and values in this life also. We share in "all this and heaven too."

     I am in favor of taking the blessed Joy Message to the whole world! I pray that all who hear it will heed it and gain the Joy! But I do not feel that God has to damn all whom we do not reach in order to save some of those whom we do. I rejoice that His grace has touched me in my weakness and ignorance and I'll praise His holy name for a glorious salvation wrought in behalf of that mighty host "which no man can number." I've quit trying to count them!

     (Editor's Note. At the close of this year all of the issues of this paper for 1967 will be bound in a beautiful volume, fully-indexed, and bearing the title, "Apples of Gold.'* Advance orders are now being taken at a special pre-publication price of $2.49 per copy, payable at time of delivery. Send your order now to MISSION MESSENGER, 139 Signal Hill Drive, Saint Louis, Missouri 63121).