Скачать или смотреть The Pre-Christian Gentiles (Ephesians

Jews and Gentiles United in Christ (1): The Pre-Christian Gentiles (Ephesians 2:11-12) by Rev. Angus Stewart
I. What They Were Called
II. What They Were Without
III. How We Should Respond
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153): “Many labouring to make Plato [or any other pagan] a Christian, do prove themselves to be heathens.
John Philips (1585-1663): “Gross, therefore, and absurd is that libertine opinion that any may be saved in any religion, leading an outward civil life; the Turk in his Mahometism, the Jew in his Judaism, the heathen in his Paganism. They may as well say that in the deluge a man might have been preserved out of the ark, on some tree or house top; or that a limb separated from the body, or a branch cut off from the vine may live” (The Way to Heaven, p. 46).
William Cunningham (1805-1861): “The history of theology affords abundant evidence of the tendency of the doctrine of universal atonement to distort and pervert men’s views of the scheme of divine truth ... The idea very naturally occurs to men, that, if Christ died for all the human race, then some provision must have been made for bringing within all men’s reach, and making accessible to them, the privileges or opportunities which have been thus procured for them. And as a large portion of the human race are, undoubtedly, left in entire ignorance of Christ, and of all that He has done for them, some universalists have been led, not very unnaturally, to maintain the position—that men may be, and that many have been, saved through Christ, or on the ground of His atonement, who never heard of him, to whom the gospel was never made known, though Scripture surely teaches—at least in regard to adults—that their salvation is dependent upon their actually attaining to a knowledge of what Christ has done for men, and upon their being enabled to make a right use and application of the knowledge with which they are furnished” (Historical Theology, vol. 2, pp. 367-368).
Scottish Confession (1560): “… we utterly abhor the blasphemy of those that affirm that men which live according to equity and justice shall be saved, what religion soever they have professed” (Article 16).
Canons of Dordt III/IV:4: “There remain, however, in man since the fall, the glimmerings of natural light, whereby he retains some knowledge of God, of natural things, and of the differences between good and evil, and discovers some regard for virtue, good order in society, and for maintaining an orderly external deportment. But so far is this light of nature from being sufficient to bring him to a saving knowledge of God, and to true conversion, that he is incapable of using it aright even in things natural and civil. Nay further, this light, such as it is, man in various ways renders wholly polluted, and holds it in unrighteousness, by doing which he becomes inexcusable before God.”
Canons of Dordt III/IV:R:5: “... the Synod rejects the errors of those ... Who teach that the corrupt and natural man can so well use the common grace (by which they understand the light of nature), or the gifts still left him after the fall, that he can gradually gain by their good use a greater, namely, the evangelical or saving grace and salvation itself. And that in this way God on His part shows Himself ready to reveal Christ unto all men, since He applies to all sufficiently and efficiently the means necessary to conversion. For the experience of all ages and the Scriptures do both testify that this is untrue. He showeth his Word unto Jacob, his statues and his ordinances unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his ordinances they have not known them (Ps. 147:19, 20). Who in the generations gone by suffered all the nations to walk in their own way (Acts 14:16). And: And they (Paul and his companions) having been forbidden of the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia, and when they were come over against Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit suffered them not (Acts 16:6, 7).
Westminster Confession 10:4: “… men, not professing the Christian religion, [cannot] be saved in any other way whatsoever, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature, and the laws of that religion they do profess. And to assert and maintain that they may, is very pernicious, and to be detested.”