Thank you for such a thoughtful and gracious contribution. I genuinely appreciate the clarity of your theological framework—especially your emphasis that faith is not something we generate by force of will, but something given from outside ourselves.
That’s where I find a real point of contact. Because if faith is, as you say, a gift—bestowed by God through the Word and Spirit, not summoned from within—then a difficult moral question follows: What happens to those who never receive that gift? Not out of rebellion or pride, but simply because it never came?
We can speak of people rejecting the truth once they’ve seen it. But I’m speaking of those who don’t see it—who are open, reflective, even hopeful, but remain unconvinced. Not through stubbornness or sin, but through sincere and honest engagement that doesn’t culminate in belief.
If belief isn’t something we can will, and if our background, exposure, temperament, and the movement of the Spirit all play a role—then can we really call unbelief a moral failing?
You write that faith is a gift, but that what we do with it matters. I agree. But what of the person who never feels that gift arrive? Who listens attentively, searches earnestly, even longs to believe, but cannot?
This is the heart of my concern: If belief is not fully under our control, how can it be the basis for ultimate judgment? Isn’t it unjust to condemn someone for failing to produce what, by your own account, only God can give?
Thanks again for your thoughtful and sincere engagement. I’d be genuinely interested in how you navigate that tension within your own tradition.
I hear your valid concerns, and I have honestly wrestled with them myself. I am so sorry for you that your encounters with those professing Christianity have not born the fruit you were sincerely hoping for. Not to push the proverb too far, I’m sure you have met some who simply moved forward in your bus, to the third or fourth row, claim to have escaped danger, and then look back on the rest of the passengers with what to you-all feels like contempt. I’m sure you have met some who simply got of your bus only to board another, maybe one that is very popular and very beautiful, but alas, is still a bus with a ticking bomb, and they are in no less peril. You may have passengers sitting beside you, claiming to be safe while denying that they are even on a bus. I don’t know; there are truly all kinds. I cannot speak for them, nor can they speak for me. It grieves me that you have had unpleasant interactions with these types, and it has obviously caused you great discomfort. It surely would be understandable if you were to see all passengers in the same spirit as those who are standing in the parking lot shouting “get off!” There are genuine people in the parking lot, but there is no way for you, from row 17, to differentiate them from the rest.
I sure hear this, and I hear your angst. All I think I can try to tell you from the parking lot is that Jesus is not the owner of the bus, and the door is not locked. The owner of the bus does not love you. The owner of the bus has orchestrated your destruction; the owner has planted the bomb. Your Father DOES love you, and IS calling you to get off.
I don’t know you, except what you have told me about yourself. I may be offering an unwelcome suggestion or one that you have already fully investigated.If it is unwelcome, please forgive me. But, nevertheless, here goes. Perhaps the din of the crowd, the noise of the engine, or just the clamor in your own mind is obfuscating the message. I don’t really know. I beieve you, I just can’t explain it. You can’t control the crowd, and you can’t quiet the engine, but you do have some control over the noise in your own head.
Maybe a quieter mind could be gained if you let go of all the hurt others have caused you, by speaking peace and forgiveness to them, in your own thoughts. You might consider quieting your own internal space with understanding, intentional acceptance that even if everything you have been told is erroneous, some of those who spoke error to you were only trying to do their best for you. Maybe rather than letting your mind ruminate on the wrongs and injustice you,and others like you have incurred, you might consider purposefully dwelling on the injustice shown to Jesus; the reality that Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something He still needed to achieve, but intentionally made Himself a lowly person of ill-repute, volitionally taking the form of a slave, the lowest caste of mankind, and in that lowness He came specifically to you in the likeness of a simple man. And while He was in appearance as a man, He literally humbled Himself, and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross, calling to you, bindwatchmaker, “Get off the bus!”. He paid the driver with His life, to save yours. That is how He has shown His love to you; that is how He is speaking to you. I think the voice you have not heard is the message spoken to you from the cruelty of his voluntary crucifixion. His Act is His Voice. Quiet your mind enough to hear what, through His own pain He quietly says to you from the Cross. “I’m paying for you, bindwatchmaker, so you too can get off the bus.”
Brother, your patience has been seen, but now is the hour for decision.
Now is the time to believe on the Son of God, to receive the crucified and risen Messiah,
and to yield fully to the Holy Spirit in every sphere of your life — heart, mind, soul, body, will.
What you seek is not beyond reach… it is not hidden, it is not far off:
“Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down) or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead)” — But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” — that is, the word of faith that we proclaim (Romans 10:6–8).
There are no more excuses. None.
“Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).
The call is for you. The invitation has your name on it.
Jesus said, “Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
He did not die for a select few, but for the world —
“He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).
“God our Savior desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3–4).
The cross stands planted in history as your invitation.
“Christ died for the ungodly… while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6,8).
“He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24).
The Spirit still speaks. “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price” (Revelation 22:17).
So come. Bow. Believe. He is near.
“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).
Once again -Thank you. Truly. Your tone here is a rare thing in conversations like this—compassionate, measured, and sincerely human. Whatever disagreements remain between us, I want you to know how much I appreciate that.
I also want to gently but clearly push back on a recurring assumption, not just in your message but in many I’ve received: the idea that my difficulty lies in unresolved pain or resentment—some noise in my head that’s drowning out the voice of God.
That simply isn’t true.
I’m not wounded. I’m not bitter. I’m not circling around old hurts or trapped in the failings of others. I’m an incredibly positive person by temperament. I don’t hold grudges, and I don’t live in resentment. I’m surrounded by people I love—some of them deeply committed Christians. This isn’t about emotional baggage. It’s not even about other people.
It’s about ideas.
I don’t reject belief because someone let me down or because I’m angry at God. I reject it because, after years of seeking, the ideas didn’t hold up. They didn’t persuade. The answers didn’t answer. And however much you might wish to interpret that as internal noise or a refusal to listen, I can only tell you plainly: it’s not that. It’s a clear-headed conclusion reached with open hands and honest intent.
You speak of Jesus’s death as God’s act of love—a message spoken through suffering. I understand that this is central to how you see the world. But I want to offer one small reversal of your metaphor: If someone voluntarily throws themselves under a bus to prove their love, and then tells me that unless I believe they did it for me, I’ll be punished eternally, that doesn’t feel like love. It feels like a test I’m not allowed to fail.
Still, your kindness here hasn’t gone unnoticed. I’m grateful for it. Whatever you may think of where I’ve landed, I hope you can at least take this: I’ve never stopped caring about truth, never stopped listening, and never stopped trying to understand those I disagree with.
With respect and appreciation
Jon (Blindwatchmaker)
Again u go on avoiding what is the basis of ur questioning, what is ur standard on which u basis ur morality, and yes idk..
If God exists—and is truly holy, all-knowing, and just—then who gets to define what justice is?
Is it you, a finite creature bound by time, error, and subjectivity? Or is it God, who sees all things perfectly, including the depths of your heart, your motives, and every moral debt?
And pls ans the can u tell questions which u have been avoiding, and ai is not good in philosophy so avoid learning from it
Jon
Your message relieved my own anxiety, like cool water to my soul. Some of your posts, and the fact you are writing on the subject for publication, led me to a false conclusion that you were battling damages of some kind. I’m happy to learn that is not the case.
I hear what you are saying about someone throwing themselves under a bus to save your life, and then if you don’t believe it you will be punished eternally. That is not at all the Good News of The gospel, even if you percieve it that way. I’m genuinely sorry it is the way you see it.
I need to leave for the evening. Sorry. Maybe I’ll stop in tomorrow to check in with you.
You continue to imply that if I’d truly searched, I’d already believe — that the only thing standing between me and faith is my pride or moral failure.
But that’s exactly the problem: you’re treating your conclusion as the default, and any deviation from it as rebellion. The world is full of people making that same move — claiming to know the answer, then accusing others of self-deception for not sharing their conviction.
If a devout Muslim told you that the only reason you don’t accept that Muhammad is the final prophet of Allah is your arrogance and spiritual blindness — and then quoted Qur’an 2:6–7 to say your heart had been sealed by disbelief — I doubt you’d feel convicted. You’d feel misunderstood. Misrepresented. You’d know you just aren’t persuaded by the Islamic claims that Jesus was a mere prophet and not divine.
That’s how your message sounds to me.
What do I reject? I reject the idea that belief is a moral achievement. I reject the claim that honest doubt is sin. And I reject the notion that truth always announces itself as certainty.
You can call me to “bow and believe,” but belief doesn’t bend to command. I’ve searched. I’ve opened my mind. And I remain unconvinced — not because I haven’t listened, but because I have.
I believe that the first inklings of belief are given to us by our parents and environment, that is, the first beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. (Part of it is what we think, and part of it is how we think.)
As we grow in infancy and so on, we create a lens by which we see ourselves and others. In a similar way to how we learn how to speak, we absorb how to think and percieve, and then form some way of translating what we percieve and storing that information.
This is your first life. The mundane life. You, as a part of this world, rooted into the ceaseless tipping of dominoes that began falling long before you were born, which continued until the day you were born, making you the next dominoe to fall along the set course that you will naturally traverse until another generation dominoes down after you.
Everything you encounter, every experience in life, goes on to confirm that your beliefs are true, valid. Your perception picks up the confirmation, and your mind ignores or dismisses anything that counters it. You are in a holding pattern, surrounded by people who continue to validate your belief as you are also validating theirs. And nothing will change this version of you. It can’t be changed. The wall is impenetrable. You see what you see, know what you know, and no one can tell you different.
And because of this, you behave accordingly, as you have been shaped to as a result of your beliefs. Every action you take and reaction you have with people, encounters, events etc becomes consistent with and correlates with those beliefs that you hold so deep inside. Belief is the pebble that hits the water, the rest are the ripples. An echo. The fruit.
Your responses are logical, calculatable, a consistent diagnosible pattern that points backward towards a specific belief, a pattern that reemerges in the lives of all those people who share that same belief, which is deeply ingrained in each one of your minds. If a knowledgeable person were to bare witess to enough of your life, as an outsider, they could clearly see the pattern unfolding as long as they themselves did not become sucked into, entangled by the self-sustaining world your beliefs create.
They are subtle hidden things, the deepest beliefs we hold in our hearts. But what a power to create and to destroy. And the course of things will continue as they will, as they are meant to, as cause and effect dictates.
Until you encounter something that forces you to question what you think you know.
A burning bush. A talking mule. A giant hand carving letters on to a wall. A vision of Christ on your way to Damascus that knocks you off your mule. A virgin with child. A person carried inside the belly of a whale. Something that whispers into the back of your perfectly grounded mind- reality isn’t quite all that you thought it was. And you ask a question. The first real question you have ever asked. A question that no one around you can truly answer because they are all still rooted into the world and what they think they know.
“Who are you?”
That question begins to shake all the foundations of what made you who you thought you were.
That is the beginning of your second life.
Where you hear a voice that says, “YHWH”
And everything is shaken down to its core. To the roots. And you can no longer believe what you believed before. Its all becoming undone. You are becoming undone. Reborn. Transformed.
Belief becomes an intentional choice. You must decide what to sow, and what to pull. Based on the fruit they produce and the world that you want to bring into existence.
And suddenly you are taking apart the world that you thought you knew. Claiming a Responsibility. Speaking in Authority. Making choices you could never make before. You know too much now. You cannot go back to sleep.
You were once the character in a fully written script being performed on stage. But now… Now you are Awake. Aware. You aren’t just mindlessly performing this show anymore, following a preset course. Now you can reshape the story by being a catalyst that changes how the play unfolds. Not a dominoe, not a ripple, not any more. You choose the seed to plant, what fruit to grow. You set the dominoes where you want them. You have become the pebble that creates the ripples in the water.
You are Alive. Truly Alive. And engaging with Life in a way you never knew existed, capable of bringing the world around you to Life as well and forever Breaking the Spell of Death over this world where, as King Solomon once wrote, “There is nothing new under the sun.”
From a world of “Nothing New” to a World where “All Things Are Made New.”
Such is the Glory of God, the Power of Belief, the Wonder of being Reborn.
There’s a poetic cadence to your post, (love the deterministic dominoes) and some of what you say early on—about the way beliefs are shaped in us by environment, culture, and experience—resonates strongly. That’s the very premise behind the question I’ve been asking.
But I have to be honest: the second half of your post takes an abrupt turn away from the issue at hand. It becomes more of a spiritual soliloquy than a response to the specific moral concern I’ve raised.
The question isn’t whether belief can be transformative, or whether people feel reborn after some kind of religious experience. It’s this:
If beliefs are, as you rightly describe early on, formed by forces beyond our control—those dominoes falling before we’re even aware of them—then on what just basis can we be condemned for holding the “wrong” ones? Especially when those beliefs are held sincerely, after genuine searching?
That’s the crux of it. I’m not asking for another metaphor. I’m asking for a moral accounting. If someone genuinely sought the truth, wrestled with it, even wanted it to be true—but ultimately found the claims unconvincing—what then?
Is it just to hold such a person morally culpable for arriving at the wrong conclusion? And if so, on what grounds?
That’s the question I keep asking, and I’ve yet to hear a serious answer that deals with it directly.
what is the question..tell it clearly in one line…
then tell if ur question is mutifaceted and can u expect a no or yes answer
clarify what is the standard on which u base ur question
can u tell (only u can ask questions, not me, if u dont answer and u wanna argue and not learn u can go to hydepark or talk to Christians u call as “serious” at Faraday Institute in Cambridge)
If God exists—and is truly holy, all-knowing, and just—then who gets to define what justice is?
Is it you, a finite creature bound by time, error, and subjectivity? Or is it God, who sees all things perfectly, including the depths of your heart, your motives, and every moral debt?
Clarify the basis of ur question by answering
I said earlier that I wouldn’t be engaging with you further, and I meant it (as it’s clearly not a productive exchange for either of us—or for anyone following the thread).
But since you’ve continued posting long strings of demands and challenges, I’ll take a moment to restate the central question I’ve been asking throughout this discussion:
Is it morally just to condemn someone for not believing something they sincerely find unconvincing—even after honest searching, or where God himself has decided to withhold the potential for belief from that person?
That’s it. That’s the heart of it. Not a trap. Not a trick. A moral question. And after countless verses, accusations, analogies, and theological declarations, I’ve yet to hear a response that seriously engages with it.
Now, because you’ve continued to insist, I’ll briefly respond to your latest barrage:
Yes, the question is multifaceted. That’s why I’ve been discussing it patiently with others in good faith.
The standard I’m using is this: moral judgment requires moral agency. If belief isn’t a choice, then punishing someone for unbelief is not justice—it’s cruelty.
I don’t claim to define justice infallibly. But if your God punishes people for being psychologically incapable of believing, I reserve the right to call that unjust. You may disagree. That’s the debate.
Involuntary belief doesn’t mean beliefs are beyond critique. It just means we’re morally responsible for how we pursue truth, not for whether we end up persuaded.
Sincerity isn’t the whole moral picture—but in the case of belief, it’s the only relevant part. If belief isn’t chosen, sincerity of search is what matters.
Phrases like “axiological frameworks” and “epistemic humility” may sound profound, but in this context they’ve functioned more like distractions than arguments. Academic-sounding language isn’t a substitute for clarity.
I’ve never claimed to have perfect knowledge. I’m not demanding omniscience—just asking whether it’s just to condemn someone for honestly failing to be persuaded and not being willing to lie about it.
You haven’t really answered that question. Instead, you’ve posted slabs of dense technical philosophy and theology in perfect prose interspersed with messages that read like they were typed by a chatbot or teenager.
I don’t say that to mock you—but to explain why this doesn’t feel like a real dialogue. Conversation requires mutual understanding and a shared willingness to engage in good faith. That’s not what’s happening here.
Of course you have every right to post whatever you wish, but respectfully, I wont be replying to any more copy/pasted lists of demands.
I wish you well, but conversation requires consent—and what we’re doing in these exchanges is not conversation.
Wow, you are up and at it early this morning (early here in NW Ohio anyway)
You are on my mind this morning, although I don’t really have much more that I can say to you; I have no magic. I previously described our conversation analogous to a car stuck in the snow that keeps slipping back into the rut its spinning tires have made. I see you are back into the same rut in your response to @Tillman. Maybe you don’t see the rut, but from where I sit, but I think I can. Here’s where I see the rut. You said:
Here is why it is a rut to me. In Christian theology, no one is condemned for holding the wrong beliefs. If somone, or even if many have told you that, they are misrepresenting the Gospel. I’d like to put the brakes on here, at the top of the rut, and let that sink in a bit. You keep coming back to this false assumption, even though I, and others have tried to show you, from our personal perspectives, what is wrong with it. You have stated it any number of ways, but the overall assertation is always the same. Let me be clear, no one is condemned for having the wrong beliefs anymore than someone drowns because they don’t believe in life preservers. If you don’t believe in the buoyancy of a life preserver, you will surely drown, but you are drowning because the ship in which you trusted sank, and you are in the icy water. The gospel is the life preserver, and without it you will surely go under. I only say this to illustrate, what looks to me to be rut for you. I can already assume your response to this, so I won’t belabor the point.
Maybe you did get on the proverbial bus because you were, like a domino, queued to do so the day you were born in the bus station. But, at some point in your life, you climbed on, under your own steam, with personal determination, and with your blind eyes wide open. At some point, this was the bus you wanted to ride. You knew climbing on was morally wrong, you read the big bold-type word DESTRUCTION written above the front windshield, your conscience opposed you, and you ignored it all, as the queue you were in pressed you on board like you were the next domino. But you knew what you were doing was unholy (imperfect), you knew your action grated against your better judgement, you knew it so comprehensively, that apparently you have questioned your decision to board the bus ever since; you have actively questioned what is wrong with being on this infernal bus. (maybe I’m wrong)
Maybe sufficient time has passed that you no longer feel any guilt; you now reassure yourself you never felt any. But, no one is condemned because they don’t believe in the rescue; anyone who may be condemned is so because of voluntary, knowledgeable, intentional, deliberate choice(s) of unholiness, even as minor as we would all like to characterize them; even if we are convinced, in my own justice system, the punishment does not fit the crime. God is Holy, and nothing less than Holiness is His standard. We won’t convince Him to lower it for our self-serving sense of justice. Either you are Holy, or you are not. God does not separate Himself from people who had no choice but to sin, God separates Himself from people who distain His Holiness, and act contrary to it. You may want three categories; “Holy”, “unholy”, and “honestly trying but can’t seem to make the cut”, but alas, there are only two, and you must find yourself in one of them. (don’t let anyone but Jesus tell you they are in the holy category. We who are clinging to life preservers are in the same icy water of unholiness as you. Only the life preserver is Holy, and we are strapping our unholy butts to it.)
I know holding on to your innocence has advantages for you, I know shifting responsibility for your dire situation on to others probably feels true and righteous. I doubt anything I can say to you would convince you otherwise, because I’ve already given you all that I have. I have labored thus, because I care about you.
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I assented this morning, in my quiet reflection, that I probably misread this conversation, and our relationship all wrong from the beginning. In my own naivety, I assumed too many things. Sometimes I can be obtuse. You did say something that gives me a little hope. You said:
Here we find fellowship. I too reject the idea that belief is a moral achievement. I too reject the claim that honest doubt is sin. I don’t actually understand your objection to “the notion that truth always announces itself as certainty”. I’m working on this one. You are a bit of an anomaly. While you say you represent others who see life as you do, I have not encountered even one. Most are antagonistic, brutally harsh, and make no apologies for their love of sin. It is refreshing to converse with a comrade who has cogently considered his own place in the cosmos, and can explain it in congenial terms. I’d be willing to discuss these ideas further, outside of this forum, maybe by email, if you think there is more to be gained by it. What this thread has become however, reads too similar to the book of Job for me. It makes me weep.
You also said:
Here too we have fellowship. I sincerely believe you, I sincerely believe this too, and I sincerely appreciate hearing you say it. If you truly care about Truth you will surely eventually find it in the person of Jesus. If you truly never stop listening, I know what you need to hear will make it to your ears.
Yet again, Thank you for such a generous and thoughtful message.
I know we’re coming at this from very different places, but I want you to know I read your words with attention and respect. That doesn’t mean I agree with all of it — as you’ll expect — but I do recognise a genuine spirit in the way you’re engaging and your obvious compassion shines out.
You mentioned the metaphorical rut I keep slipping into — the question of whether it’s just to condemn someone for having the “wrong” beliefs. I understand your analogy with the life preserver: someone isn’t punished for failing to believe in the preserver; they simply drown without it. But the metaphor assumes something I don’t accept: that I knowI’m drowning. The truth is, I don’t see any water. I don’t feel myself sinking. I hear people shouting that I’m in danger, but I don’t see the danger they’re pointing to.
(People of other faiths insist that I’m drowning in different waters too…)
So if I’m not reaching for any of the various offered life preservers, it’s not out of pride or stubbornness — it’s because I don’tsee them, and I find myself unable to see the need without role playing.
And if it turns out I was drowning all along — if the danger was real but imperceptible to me — then what, exactly, was I supposed to do? Pretend? Fake belief in a rescue I couldn’t see? Affirm what my mind couldn’t honestly accept? Would a just and loving God really hold me accountable for that?
So I’m not rejecting the life preserver out of rebellion. I’m simply saying I haven’t seen anything that persuades me it’s real — or that the water is even there.
And that brings me to another point you raised. I want to gently push back on the idea that I boarded the bus (or, in this version, jumped into the sea) knowingly, wilfully, and in full awareness of wrongdoing. That doesn’t reflect my experience at all. If anything, I’ve spent much of my adult life actively trying to understand what it is that Christians like yourself see. I’ve studied, listened, read, and asked questions — for over thirty five years. I’m not a spring chicken just now realising the bus might be going the wrong way. This isn’t rebellion; it’s where years of honest inquiry have led me. That doesn’t make me “right,” but it does mean that most of the enjoinments that can be offered here aren’t new to me. I’veheard them, considered them, and—at least so far—not found them convincing.
None of that means I’m closed off or hostile. Like you, I care about truth, I try to stay open, and I’ve never stopped listening.
And finally, I want to thank you again for your kindness and openness. You’ve engaged without arrogance, without superiority,and without assuming the worst of me. That matters — not just for me, but for the many others reading silently.You model something here that goes beyond belief systems. It speaks to character.
I’m doing research-and glad @KPuff is “picking” this up–
The Doxastic Involuntarist and Disinterest in Salvation
A doxastic involuntarist claims, “I cannot choose what I believe. Belief is not subject to the will, so if I do not believe in God or Christ, I cannot be blamed.”
This sounds like a clinical epistemological claim, but it carries immense moral and spiritual weight. The real question is not whether a person can instantly will a belief into existence, but whether the overall posture of their life, heart, and mind toward the truth is one of surrender or resistance.
When someone claims, “I would believe if only I had sufficient evidence,” they are not actually in a position of neutrality. They are saying, “I reserve judgment until the evidence satisfies my standards,” which means they sit in the place of judge over God. This is not intellectual humility…it is rebellion masked as academic honesty.
The unwillingness to believe is rarely about lack of access to truth. It is about unwillingness to bow to it. Scripture does not depict unbelief as a passive state of lacking data, but as an active rejection of divine light.
According to John 5:39–40, they read the Scriptures yet refuse to come to Christ. According to Luke 19:14, they say, “We do not want this man to reign over us.” According to John 3:19, the Light came and they loved darkness instead.
Now, someone might argue, “But I really cannot make myself believe. It is not in my power.” Perhaps, but what brought them to that condition? Scripture shows that prolonged suppression of truth hardens the heart.
The man who now cannot believe has, in many cases, arrived at that point because of years of moral resistance, pride, sin, and the rejection of lesser lights. Hebrews 3:13 speaks of hearts hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Romans 1:21–25 shows that rejection of God leads to darkened thinking. So while belief might not be volitional in the moment, the unbeliever’s condition is still the fruit of past willful resistance.
Therefore, when someone defends doxastic involuntarism and says, “I cannot believe unless forced by overwhelming evidence,”they are exposing the fact that they do not want Christ unless He fits within their framework.
They do not seek salvation, they seek intellectual control. And that is disinterest in Christ. It is not the Christ of Scripture they are willing to receive. It is an abstraction that must meet their conditions.
So yes, the doxastic involuntarist, in clinging to the view that belief cannot be morally demanded because belief is involuntary, is revealing not just a philosophical claim, but a spiritual condition. It is a condition that does not desire to submit, does not hunger for truth, and does not long for the Savior.
That is why, at the core, the doxastic stance is not neutral. It is not merely incorrect. It is uninterested in salvation.
Correct? By your own admission you said you are a “Doxastic
Involuntarist”
Yes, I describe myself as a doxastic involuntarist. I believe all people are.
But that isn’t a get-out clause or a philosophical smokescreen. It’s a sober recognition of something we all experience: that belief is not directly under our control. I cannot make myself believe something any more than you can make yourself disbelieve what you currently hold to be true.
That doesn’t mean we’re passive or disengaged. We can orient ourselves toward belief—we can seek, reflect, expose ourselves to arguments, and be willing to change. Will can guide the process. There IS a degree of accountability in this process. But it can’t guarantee the outcome. You can prepare the soil, but you can’t force the seed to sprout. Belief arrives, or it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, pretending it has is not a virtue.
You argue that unbelief isn’t about lacking data—it’s about resisting the truth. But if that’s true, we’d have to apply it consistently. You don’t believe Muhammad was the final prophet of Allah. You’ve likely heard the claims, read some of the Qur’an, maybe even spoken with sincere Muslims. But you remain unconvinced. Is that because of pride? Sin? Suppression of the truth? Or is it simply that, having weighed the evidence, you weren’t persuaded? That’s all I’m doing too. We’re just applying the same standard to different truth claims. That you have a book that you can quote from to justify your positions is no more relevant than the fact the Muslims have one too.
You say I “do not want Christ unless He fits within my framework.” But how else should one evaluate any claim if not by examining whether it coheres with reason, experience, and conscience? You yourself are doing exactly that every time you reject another religion’s claims. But I would agree it’s not rebellion. You’re just being honest - it doesn’t convince you.
You write that unbelief is often the fruit of past moral choices. But I would turn the question around: how can someone be morally culpable for the psychological consequence of actions they didn’t know would harden their heart? That makes salvation a kind of psychological booby trap. You say I now can’t believe because of prior resistance—yet you want to hold me accountable for both the current unbelief and the past missteps that allegedly led me here. That’s not justice. That’s a rigged system.
You claim that I’m uninterested in salvation. But I assure you, if I believed your account of reality were true, I would throw myself at the mercy of Christ without hesitation. I’m not standing in defiance—I’m standing in uncertainty. I’m not rejecting the lifeboat; I don’t see the storm. I hear people shouting that I’m drowning, but I see no water. I see no danger. And I just can’t fake panic to please the crowd.
Belief that isn’t real is just performance. And if there is a God, one thing I believe he would not want, it’s a performance.
If he exists and is just (according to any meaning of justice that makes sense), then surely what matters is not that I’ve failed to will myself into certainty, but that I’ve remained open, sincere, and honest about what I find persuasive and what I don’t. I’ve never stopped caring about truth. I’ve never stopped listening. And I’ve never stopped trying to understand those I disagree with—including you.
So no, I don’t think doxastic involuntarism is a spiritual pathology. It’s just a name for the common human experience of not choosing our beliefs. And I don’t think that’s something to be ashamed of.
There are two ways I would answer your concerns here.
The first is that I genuinely believe that God is truly good, just, and merciful. When, at the conclusion of history, all stand before God at Judgment, we do not have an uncaring or stoic Judge; but the God revealed through the Person and work of Jesus Christ. The God who not only loves abundantly and unconditionally, but is Himself love. What ultimately unfolds for each individual is not something anyone except God Himself knows; the hope the Christian has is that her/his sins are forgiven, truly forgiven and is justified. Not justified because of any righteousness that we bring before God, but justified because the loving God of all creation meets us in Jesus, and it is Jesus who has satisfied Divine Justice by His righteousness, and His participation in our death means our participation in His life (what Martin Luther called “the Happy Exchange”) so that the one who has faith is justified, declared righteous because of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness and is united to Jesus (Unio Mystica, Mystical Union with Christ). The one who has faith, therefore, has already died and is raised up in and with Jesus–a participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus, meaning that we trust, believe, hope, and look forward to the death of death itself for ourselves, for the whole world, and the resurrection of the dead on the Last Day. So that the one who has already died with Christ has life in Christ, a life that cannot die, the life of the Age to Come, when God renews, restores, and heals the whole of creation. A life which is now, by faith; which in the future resurrection and new creation is reified. That is the Christian hope.
Now as to why unbelief is connected to judgment. It isn’t that one happens to not believe and is therefore punished. As though by ignorance one is condemned. It is that unbelief does come from sin; it is sinful, willful unbelief. When Jesus speaks of the condemnation of unbelief it is in the context of choosing darkness and hating the light, the context of evil works (John 3:18-19). It is not, we might say, “mere unbelief” that is the issue; it is willful unbelief because of the very real problem of sin. It is not unbelief born out of ignorance, or a lack of being intellectually persuaded by a religious argument of some kind; as though being unpersuaded by an apologetic. It is a willful unbelief born of very real sin. Which is, in part, why nobody is condemned for (to quote your words) “failing to produce … what only God can give”.
Rather condemnation is something that is already, I am condemned already under a universal condemnation because I’m a sinner; a “passive” condemnation one might say. In the same way that the law which says, “Don’t speed through a red light” is not designed to harm or punish, but just the opposite, to preserve life results in me being condemned by that law by the fact that I speed through a red light. It is a universal condemnation because “all have sinned”; there is “no one righteous, not even one” “there is no one who seeks after God”. I am rightly and justly condemned because of what I do, and the same is true of all. In this sense God would be perfectly justified to simply leave us to our own devices, He would need not do anything at all–we would run ourselves, all by ourselves, into the ground and take a shovel and dig our own way down to hell if we could (and on purpose).
To borrow C.S. Lewis, in the end there are two sorts of people, those who say to God “Thy will be done” and those to whom God says, “Have it your way”.
That is to say, hell is a child of human decision–the gates of hell are, as they say, locked from the inside.
It is the intervention of grace that rescues us from our own choice of self-destruction.
But that gets us back to that first point: I do not believe that at Judgment God is going to be cold, uncaring, stoic–He is the God of love; and He does not withhold His love, He is impartial in His love because God is love. Hell is not what happens when God deprives someone of Himself and His love. Hell is what happens when someone deprives themselves of God and His love. Hell is, as I said, a child of human decision. God’s decision is always life, salvation, grace, love.
And as I also said, I do not and cannot know what ultimately unfolds for each individual. How should I regard the unbaptized child, or the infant who is lost in the tragedy of a miscarriage, or the man or woman who on the other side of the globe has never heard the Gospel? What of those who have only heard a twisted or perverted form of Christianity? What of those who call themselves atheists but who have only known a strange alien Jesus who has been presented as uncaring capricious and not at all like the actual Jesus of Nazareth? How am I to regard all possible cases? Where no one heard, and could not hear? Where what was heard was a lie, and not the truth at all? Do I believe in a God who summarily says, “I don’t care, away with the lot of you”? Or do I believe in the God who meets me in the Crucified Victim of Mt Calvary, pouring His life for a world of sinners–even the most wretched and vile sorts of sinners who no man would ever turn a merciful eye toward. I, therefore, ever trust in a God who is beyond all, love and mercy, and whose justice is a perfect justice; and I can have faith that the outcome of everything is good.
I do not say that all are condemned already, and unless one stumbles into the right theological tavern in the right religious neighborhood, then well, to hell with them (literally). I say all are condemned already, but “God has consigned all to disobedience in order that He might have mercy on all” (Romans 11:32). That mercy is the Cross of Jesus Christ, it is the Victim of Mt. Calvary, and He is for all. I cannot begin to imagine the outcome of everyone–but instead confess the hope of faith for all who are in the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.