Justice and gratitude

It is galling to be punished or even criticized unjustly. But it can also be galling to be rewarded or even praised unjustly. Over the past two years, two of my graduate students have received grants. They did all the work. But because of university policy, I had to be listed as the PI on the grants. And I’ve been getting multiple letters from the administration congratulating me on the grants. That’s galling.

I think God would be similarly galled if he were thanked for something he didn’t do, unless he did something just as good or better. And so God would have strong reason to act to ensure that such thanks would not be forthcoming.

Thus, we have reason to think that whatever people sincerely thank God for, God has either done that—or something at least as good—for them. In particular, we have reason to think that God has become incarnate and died for our sins or has done something at least as good.

Notice an interesting way that this argument makes available something like an implicit faith to non-Christian theists. For non-Christian theists also have reason to believe, on the strength of this argument, that God did something at least as good as what Christianity says he did, and to thank God for doing this. If they then thank God for "doing something at least this good", they would be implicitly thanking God for the Incarnation and Redemption, since in fact that is something God did that was "at least this good".

Faith in Christ without having heard the Gospel

There is no salvation apart from faith in Christ. But what about those who haven't heard of Christ? A standard story is that they can have a spiritual relationship with Christ even though they do not know that they are having a relationship with Christ. They can be "anonymous Christians."

But faith is supposed to be an interpersonal relationship. The kind of hidden mysterious relationship that falls under the head of anonymous Christianity seems to fall short of the best kind of interpersonality, and seems not to be very incarnational in character. Now, there is nothing wrong with saying that although it falls short of the best kind of interpersonality, it is sufficient as faith. But I want to explore a dimension that gives more of an interpersonal and incarnational aspect to being an anonymous Christian.

Suppose that our anonymous Christian is blessed by being in a community with other anonymous Christians. They are all, unbeknonwst to themselves, animated by the grace of Christ. They are all, unbeknownst to themselves, members of the body of Christ. Thus in relating to one another they are relating to Christ. But their relations to one another do have the right kind of interpersonality and incarnational character. The presence of Christ through other anonymous Christians in their community—maybe even everyone in the community is an anonymous Christian—make their implicit faith in and love of Christ much more of an interpersonal relation than it would otherwise be. And of course in this regard they are not that different from explicit Christians, since so much of what we know of Christ is based on what we know of people whose lives are made radiant by Christ's grace.