Andrew Klavan, Me, and the Jews

Introduction
So Andrew Klavan recently kicked up a bit of dust addressing Candace Owens leaving the Daily Wire over what he and others believed were antisemitic dog-whistling remarks. This was part of the whole “Christ is King” trend on Twitter and elsewhere. Apparently, some red pilled Muslims and Christian firebrand zealot types have been using that glorious phrase as a sort of mocking insult to Jews. In the course, of Klavan’s comments, he said he wasn’t really worried about the salvation of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. He affirmed that Christ is in fact King, and that Christ is the only way of salvation, but he said he thought Peterson and Shapiro were in some way just fine. Klavan also condemned views that say God is done with the Jews, that there are no promises that remain for them. 

So we reached out to Andrew, and he was kind enough to come on CrossPolitic to talk about it. As these things tend to go, you never seem to have enough time to get through everything, but we did have a good conversation which has received some attention and some pushback and questions, including from Candace Owens. Some folks seemed to infer that the whole conversation was about the salvation of the Jews and whether Jews need to become Christians in order to be saved. But in reality, the conversation consisted of three parts: First, we gave Klavan an opportunity to explain his biblical/theological foundational assumptions about who can be saved. Second, we talked specifically about his comments regarding his colleagues Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, and finally, we talked for just a bit about his position on the Jewish people.  

Klavan & Lewis
As I understand him, Andrew holds to a view that is very similar to C.S. Lewis, which is illustrated in The Last Battle with the inclusion of Emeth, devout worshiper of Tash, in Aslan’s Country. In Mere Christianity, Lewis says, “But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him.” Douglas Wilson has helpfully distinguished Lewis’s view (which is not a vanilla Reformed evangelical view) from warmed-over liberalism, and based on everything Klavan has said, I assume he holds the same view: “In other words, it is liberalism to say that faithful Muslims, or Buddhists, or Hindus, each following the tenets of their own religion sincerely, can be saved for being good people. This is pernicious and false. It is quite a separate question to ask whether God in His sovereignty can reach down into a filthy religion, like the worship of Tash, and do an extraordinary thing by saving someone from all of that. In such a case, that person is not saved by means of his religion, whatever he conceives it to be, but rather is saved from that religion, by grace through faith (emphasis his)” (The Light From Behind the Sun, 35).

Andrew Klavan has said repeatedly that Christ is the only way to God, but he pointed to several texts in the New Testament that suggest that some people may be saved who worshiped Christ without fully knowing it. Klavan pointed to the parable of the sheep and the goats in which the sheep ask, “When did we clothe you, feed you, or visit you?” And the Lord says that when they did it unto the least of His brethren, they did it unto Him. This seems to be what Lewis has in mind when Emeth meets Aslan, “Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he may not know it, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted” (Last Battle, 189).  

Likewise, Klavan pointed to the Samaritan woman, where Jesus told her that the Samaritans worshipped what they did not know, but the Jews worshiped what they knew, for salvation is of the Jews (Jn. 4:22). And finally, Klavan pointed to the fact that Jesus made the Good Samaritan the hero of his story about true neighbor love and inheriting eternal life (Lk. 10:25-37). And remember, the Samaritans were like Old Covenant Mormons (cf. 2 Kgs. 17:29-41). In response to this, Gabe Rench pressed Klavan to make it clear that there is no other salvation except by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Which Klavan warmly affirmed. He merely wanted to emphasize that some who are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ may not know it. 

Children Dying in Infancy & Real Urgency
In response to all of this, I pointed out that the salvation of children dying in infancy is at least one other biblical example of extraordinary salvation. I certainly believe that there is no other way to the Father except by grace through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, and therefore, if any infants are saved, they are saved by that means, but clearly, in some extraordinary way. They are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ but they do not fully know it at the time. My doctrinal statement is the Westminster Confession which says this: “Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word” (10.3). I brought up this point not to say that all the Jews are saved in the same manner as children dying in infancy, as some claimed in follow up comments. Rather, it was simply to affirm that there is a biblical category of extraordinary salvation through Christ (and Christ alone). 

Immediately following my comments regarding children dying in infancy, I turned the conversation toward the holiness of God and the preciousness of the blood of Christ, driving the point that apart from the blood of Christ, we may ordinarily have no comfort before a holy God for our sins. There is to be fear and trembling and deep shame before God for our sins and our life outside of Christ, even if we can look back in gratitude at all the ways God was truly at work, drawing us to Himself. But for those who are outside of Christ, we ought to have deep concern for them. I cited the blood of the Passover as the sign of safety from the Angel of Death, and apart from being under the blood of Christ, we really cannot have true security. Klavan responded by saying that he was generally more inclined to live at peace because he is convinced that God is going to work everything out perfectly. Which is of course true, but this is where I pointed out that Paul is the same one who wrote that he could rejoice always and be content in every situation and at the same time was greatly grieved for his fellow kinsmen the Jews who did not accept Christ. And I pressed Andrew particularly on the verse where Paul says that he would be willing to be cursed for the sake of the Jews, if he might save some (Rom. 9:3). 

I think it was here that Klavan said the most problematic thing in this whole conversation and that was his point about Paul sometimes saying things in the Bible that are not the Word of God, specifically citing Paul’s vehement denunciation of the Judiazers, suggesting that they go all the way and castrate themselves. Andrew said that was clearly an example of a true saint of God losing his temper. We pushed back on this briefly, but by that point, we were nearly out of time. Chocolate Knox helpfully finished off the show pressing the point that Jesus also makes in the gospels about those who refuse to profess Him before men: He will likewise refuse to profess them before His Father, but we didn’t get much further than that. 

Two Final Points
Without turning this article into a book, let me make two final points. First, I think it is clear that Klavan has a more optimistic view about many folks presently than I do, but I don’t think it is fair to call his view full blown liberalism or heresy. However, and more specifically, given Ben Shapiro’s repeated public rejections of Jesus as the Messiah, I really don’t see how he could be secretly serving Christ while openly denying Him. I simply disagree with Klavan’s take on Shapiro. When CrossPolitic interviewed Ben Shapiro several years ago, we asked him specifically why he didn’t accept Jesus as the Messiah, and he said that the Messiah is a political deliverer and that’s not what Jesus did (!). Which, I can’t remember if I said this out loud or only thought it at the moment, is exactly why many of the Jews rejected Jesus in the first century. With regard to Jordan Peterson, I’m a bit more agnostic, since I’ve seen some clips of him talking about Jesus that seem to indicate a measure of true seeking and yet I also know he has some psychological categories doing funky things in the background. But to be very plain: I certainly believe that there is no ordinary hope of salvation outside the church, by which I mean, hearing the gospel and responding in evangelical faith and open profession of faith. Apart from Christ, no one can come to the Father, including conservative Jews and very smart Gentiles.

Second, Klavan is not crazy to cite these passages about the Samaritans, and there are more: remember, in the Old Covenant, there were many Gentile worshipers of the true God: Jethro, wicked Balaam was apparently a true prophet, Naaman the Syrian (assisting his master in the pagan temple of Rimmon), Cornelius the Centurion, and Solomon specifically asked God to hear the prayers of the Gentiles (1 Kgs. 8:41-43). When Paul preached in Athens, he said that the altar to the unknown God was actually an altar to the Living Creator God who raised Jesus from the dead (Acts 17). And in the midst of that message, he said that God had overlooked (“winked at”) the times of ignorance of the pagans, but was now calling everyone everywhere to repent and trust in Jesus (Acts 17:30). Putting all of this together, it seems reasonable that in the Old Covenant there were certainly Gentile pagans who knew very little about the true and living God and yet He overlooked various aspects of their ignorance, and they were saved (through faith in a barely known coming Christ). Somehow the pagan Magi were looking for Him when His star appeared. 

Conclusion
Finally, and now coming to the current state of the Jews, I would reiterate the point I made with Andrew on the show: Paul is clearly very distraught over the state of his unsaved kinsmen (Rom. 9:3, 10:1-3), and in the same place and in the midst of addressing that very problem, he clearly insists that salvation comes through believing in Jesus Christ and confessing that God raised Him from the dead (Rom. 10:9). And at the same time, he also believes that God has not completely cast away His original covenant people (Rom. 11). Paul’s most succinct summary of his position is found in Rom. 11:28-29: “As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes, but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.”

I will end here. But we really do need to hold all of these things together. No one comes to the Father except through Jesus. Jews are beloved by God for the sake of the fathers, but in so far as they reject Jesus the Messiah, they are enemies on account of the gospel. And I take this to mean that they are therefore enemies of God and cannot inherit the Kingdom in that state. Nevertheless, there is such a thing as extraordinary salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, sometimes with very little or no knowledge. If it was possible for God to reach down into the hearts of pagans with virtually no knowledge of the true God, then how much more likely may it be that God occasionally does that with people who have half of His Word read to them every Sabbath? A devout Jew can only be saved through Christ crucified and risen, but a devout Jew (and by this I mean one who is particularly concerned to study and live his life according to the Old Covenant scriptures) — that man is in a different position than a devout Muslim or Hindu. That man still needs the veil over his heart removed, but he is a natural branch that has been removed from the true vine and how much easier does a natural branch go back on the vine (Rom. 11:24)? 

While God has given them a spirit of slumber and blindness so that many have died in unbelief, they are still beloved for the sake of the fathers. Standing with the majority of the Protestant Reformers, God is not done with the Jewish people. When the fullness of the Gentiles has come into the Kingdom then the fullness of the Jews will come into the Kingdom as well, and so all of Israel will be saved (Rom. 11:14-26). While I’m not perhaps as optimistic as Klavan is about the current state of folks, I’m certainly optimistic about the future. The earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.