A Good Question
W. Carl Ketcherside
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A very perceptive brother in one of the western states writes as follows:
I have just read your article "Belief and Unbelief" in the October MISSION MESSENGER. I admit that you have given me some good things to think about. But I would like to have you explain 2 Thessalonians 1:8, where Jesus is pictured as rendering vengeance on them that "know not God" along with those who "obey not the gospel." These are two different groups, one knowing, the other ignorant.
A careful reading of the passage cited will show that our Lord will be revealed from heaven with his angels, "taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." It is apparent that two classes are represented since the article is repeated in the original.
Vengeance is from ekdikesis, that which is enacted out of justice. It does not imply a spirit of revenge. In the sense here mentioned, one may know God and never even have heard of the gospel. "His invisible attributes, that is to say his everlasting power and deity, have been visible, ever since the world began, to the eye of reason, in the things he has made" (Romans 1:20).
Man can be under no governing principle of which he has never heard, and to which he has no personal access. He cannot make a choice if he does not know there is an alternative. He cannot decide to be under the Lordship of Jesus if he has never heard of Jesus. But the entire world of rational beings has testimony related to God in nature. To the heathen it was said, "He has not left you without some clue to his nature, in the kindness he shows: he sends you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons, and gives you food and good cheer in plenty" (Acts 14:17).
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"When Gentiles who do not possess the law carry out its precepts by the light of nature, then, although they have no law, they are their own law, for they display the effect of the law inscribed on their own hearts. Their conscience is called as witness, and their own thoughts argue the case on either side, against them or even for them, on the day when God judges the secrets of human hearts through Christ Jesus. So my gospel declares" (Romans 2:14-16).
If the light of nature is all one has, that is all the light in which he can walk. That light is sufficient to reveal the existence of God, determined by reason. If one does not have the reasoning capacity to ascertain this, he is not accountable in his imbecility. But it is argued that the gospel was given as a light for the whole world. That is true. But the sun was also given as a light for the whole world, and yet if it is on the other side of the earth I'll be in darkness. There is nothing wrong with the sun, and I'm doing the best I can, but I'm in darkness through no fault of mine. It is just as logical to argue that people should see as clearly in darkness as those in the sunlight, since it is shining somewhere, as it is to contend that those who have never heard the gospel should be judged on the same basis as those who have constant access to it.
Those who will receive punishment for not knowing God, are those who have willfully and deliberately rejected the testimony of nature, and that of their own reason and conscience. W. E. Vine says of the passage, "The wicked persecution of inoffensive persons was an outcome of the sin of willful ignorance against God." The New English Version translates the passage more in harmony with the original, "Then he will do justice upon those who refuse to acknowledge God and upon those who will not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ."
There is a vast difference between a refusal to acknowledge that of which you have heard, or to which you have access with proof, and involuntary ignorance which you cannot help. I am in favor of taking the Good News to all men, but I do not think God has to damn all those who die before I reach them in order to save some of those who are alive when I get there.