Introduction

if Jesus is truly God, then why come only to the Jews at a particular time? Why not come individually to every people and nation and tribe, and at every point of time? The answer therefore is going to be related to his reason for coming. If God willed to come at a certain time and place, we are essentially asking the following two questions:

1. How such a manner of coming could be of relevance at all times and all places, and
2. Would it not have been better to come at the very beginning and/or repeatedly and at many different places instead or not come at all, rather, just send messengers instead?

The answer must be that (2) it was more fitting to have been done in this manner and (1) that the effects of this action at one time can indeed be made application for all times, even those preceding it.

Why not at the Beginning of all History itself?

Aquinas addresses this question wonderfully well in ST III Q.33 Art.5, I quote in full:

“Whether it was fitting that God should become incarnate in the beginning of the human race?

Objection 1. It would seem that it was fitting that God should become incarnate in the beginning of the human race. For the work of the Incarnation sprang from the immensity of Divine charity, according to Ephesians 2:4-5: “But God (Who is rich in mercy), for His exceeding charity wherewith He loved us . . . even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together in Christ.” But charity does not tarry in bringing assistance to a friend who is suffering need, according to Proverbs 3:28: “Say not to thy friend: Go, and come again, and tomorrow I will give to thee, when thou canst give at present.” Therefore God ought not to have put off the work of Incarnation, but ought thereby to have brought relief to the human race from the beginning.

Objection 2. Further, it is written (1 Timothy 1:15): “Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners.” But more would have been saved had God become incarnate at the beginning of the human race; for in the various centuries very many, through not knowing God, perished in their sin. Therefore it was fitting that God should become incarnate at the beginning of the human race.

Objection 3. Further, the work of grace is not less orderly than the work of nature. But nature takes its rise with the more perfect, as Boethius says (De Consol. iii). Therefore the work of Christ ought to have been perfect from the beginning. But in the work of Incarnation we see the perfection of grace, according to John 1:14: “The Word was made flesh”; and afterwards it is added: “Full of grace and truth.” Therefore Christ ought to have become incarnate at the beginning of the human race.

On the contrary, It is written (Galatians 4:4): “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law”: upon which a gloss says that “the fulness of the time is when it was decreed by God the Father to send His Son.” But God decreed everything by His wisdom. Therefore God became incarnate at the most fitting time; and it was not fitting that God should become incarnate at the beginning of the human race.

I answer that, Since the work of Incarnation is principally ordained to the restoration of the human race by blotting out sin, it is manifest that it was not fitting for God to become incarnate at the beginning of the human race before sin. For medicine is given only to the sick. Hence our Lord Himself says (Matthew 9:12-13): “They that are in health need not a physician, but they that are ill… For I am not come to call the just, but sinners.”

Nor was it fitting that God should become incarnate immediately after sin. First, on account of the manner of man’s sin, which had come of pride; hence man was to be liberated in such a manner that he might be humbled, and see how he stood in need of a deliverer. Hence on the words in Galatians 3:19, “Being ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator,” a gloss says: “With great wisdom was it so ordered that the Son of Man should not be sent immediately after man’s fall. For first of all God left man under the natural law, with the freedom of his will, in order that he might know his natural strength; and when he failed in it, he received the law; whereupon, by the fault, not of the law, but of his nature, the disease gained strength; so that having recognized his infirmity he might cry out for a physician, and beseech the aid of grace.”

Secondly, on account of the order of furtherance in good, whereby we proceed from imperfection to perfection. Hence the Apostle says (1 Corinthians 15:46-47): “Yet that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; afterwards that which is spiritual . . . The first man was of the earth, earthy; the second man from heaven, heavenly.”

Thirdly, on account of the dignity of the incarnate Word, for on the words (Galatians 4:4), “But when the fulness of the time was come,” a gloss says: “The greater the judge who was coming, the more numerous was the band of heralds who ought to have preceded him.”

Fourthly, lest the fervor of faith should cool by the length of time, for the charity of many will grow cold at the end of the world. Hence (Luke 18:8) it is written: “But yet the Son of Man, when He cometh, shall He find think you, faith on earth?”

(I don’t particularly like this last reply, although Aquinas has effectively already covered this issue in the preceding):

Reply to Objection 1. Charity does not put off bringing assistance to a friend: always bearing in mind the circumstances as well as the state of the persons. For if the physician were to give the medicine at the very outset of the ailment, it would do less good, and would hurt rather than benefit. And hence the Lord did not bestow upon the human race the remedy of Incarnation in the beginning, lest they should despise it through pride, if they did not already recognize their disease.“

Continuing with the passage from the Summa, here St. Thomas seems to be effectively stating that God knows the most opportune time, not us:

“Reply to Objection 2. Augustine replies to this (De Sex Quest. Pagan., Ep. cii), saying (Article 2) that “Christ wished to appear to man and to have His doctrine preached to them when and where He knew those were who would believe in Him. But in such times and places as His Gospel was not preached He foresaw that not all, indeed, but many would so bear themselves towards His preaching as not to believe in His corporeal presence, even were He to raise the dead.” But the same Augustine, taking exception to this reply in his book (De Perseverantia ix), says: “How can we say the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon would not believe when such great wonders were wrought in their midst, or would not have believed had they been wrought, when God Himself bears witness that they would have done penance with great humility if these signs of Divine power had been wrought in their midst?” And he adds in answer (De Perseverantia xi): “Hence, as the Apostle says (Romans 9:16), ‘it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy’; Who (succors whom He will of) those who, as He foresaw, would believe in His miracles if wrought amongst them, (while others) He succors not, having judged them in His predestination secretly yet justly. Therefore let us unshrinkingly believe His mercy to be with those who are set free, and His truth with those who are condemned.” [The words in brackets are not in the text of St. Augustine]...”

Why not in a Different Place?

The reason for the choice of the Geographical location of Israel? Israel is ideally located in the place that is really from human pre-history onward is the cradle of civilizations. Moving from there into the time of Jesus there is the ideal  confluence of cultures that facilitates the early propagation of the Gospels in the manner that we presume was ideal for God’s plan- Israel is a religious state being ruled by the Romans who are the greatest administrators in history and who have subsumed the culture of the Greeks who are the greatest philosophers in history. The administrative might of the Romans and the pax Romana that is brought through Roman military might and dominance facilitates the spread of the Gospels throughout the known world, while the sophisticated philosophical language of the Greeks and their culture of writing and literacy provide the language which is the vehicle through which that gospel can be effectively elucidated to the people.

Why Come Himself?

The third alternative is that God not come at all, rather he send messengers to tell nations about him at points throughout their history and beginning at the birth of those nations. In this model there is no room for God to show us his love, rather he merely tells us about it- his prophets describe his love to us in words. This of course negates the entire purpose of the Christian Message of God’s Coming completely. It is up to the individual person to determine for themselves whether this is an acceptable alternative. That person needs also, were he seeking to choose a religion, need to consider that we do not really have any such  model anywhere in the world.

Muslims, who are the main proponents of this model actually claim that that God did send other Muslim prophets all over the world since the beginning of human history. However this is merely a faith claim, we do not see any evidence of other Muslim prophets in other places. We cannot even see this in Saudi Arabia, the prophet of Islam’s own nation. He arrives in the 7^th century AD and the people have been left to dabble in polytheism for many millennia.

The question that remains is really what of those that did not experience Jesus’ coming? This is a hard question, it is especially hard perhaps for Christians because they believe that we are only saved though Jesus’ Sacrifice. We would answer that the fate of those other peoples were in the hands of the Mercy of God whom we would trust to judge them according to what they had or had not been given to know about him at their respective times.

I’ve elaborated extensively on this central topic of the Christian faith in Sin and Redemption- Jesus’ Sacrifice of Atonement.

What of  those who never Knew Christ in their Lifetimes

The problem of those that are not born Christian, this problem extends to those who are born before the time of Christ as well as those who have no access to the knowledge of Christ at any time, for example through social isolation that exists in some communities to the present day. In Christian belief the salvation of these is up to the Mercy of God, and they will be judged according to what they have been given. This is the concept of “invincible ignorance”.  But do Christians not assert that one can be saved only through the blood of Christ? Again Christians would believe that the merits of Christ’s Sacrifice, even though it is a future event, would still be applied to these persons at their deaths. One might inquire how then might it be possible for these persons to experience the same transformation in Christ that is central to the Christian faith journey. Once again, God will find a way to make this possible for them too, one cannot guess any further than that except to have faith it will not be impossible for God. But one might also propose that God really touches these personally in some way during their earthly life, and then complete his transformative work when they finally meet him in the afterlife. There is no one who will not specifically acknowledge Jesus is Lord and bend the knee to him, and accept the merits of his Sacrifice, whether it be on this side of the veil or the other.

In fact there are two verses in 1Peter that mention this, “…he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight lives, were saved through water.” (1Pet.3:19,20). That verse seems to be saying that those drowned in the Flood were not indeed necessarily all inevitably condemned, but might have the opportunity of reflecting on God’s message after death. Again we have, “For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.” (1Pet.4:6)

Children, the Mentally Challenged- How come they go to Heaven?

When While this is a difficult question, ie how come those that are seemingly naïve to God get to go straight to Heaven, one would reply that if God wanted a certain type of being to enjoy the Company of his Presence, how does one really argue about that, it does not impact on anyone else’s ability to do so. Will they be given a fully rational “adult” mind at some point? We cannot say. Babies have a simple and total trust of their parents no matter what circumstances they are in. They find happiness in every social situation and never complain. They cry only through pain and not through anger. They do not have the complex evils of connivance and pre-meditation that adults do. They do not discriminate their carers but love equally. Same for the mentally challenged. I find myself unable to state with any confidence that such beings do not merit heaven, regardless of what significance we might place upon accountability.

The Atheists’ “Accident of Birth” Argument

I have heard some prominent atheists make the “the accident of birth” argument against true religion and this is to state that because to the largest extent (so we are told), a person’s religion is related to the “accident” of the geographical location of their birth, perhaps this is some sort of defeater for the claim that humans possess true choice when in comes to picking a religion.

The problem is that there is a strong counter argument to this contention. This is the assertion the primary premise of the argument is only a partial premise. The premise fully considered is that a person’s religion is not purely determined by the accident of their birth, rather a person’s ability to freely choose a religion is determined by a complex of factors, the most pertinent of those being freedom itself. Freedom of choice in religion is related to the geographical location of states that provide intellectual freedom politically in their form of government. Most developed countries do provide such freedom and so what religion a person freely chooses is best studies while examining these nations. Broadly speaking these nations will correspond to the geographic distribution of Christian majority nations. Having described this framework, it is then worth considering whether the fact that the number of confirmed atheists in the United States of America is only 5% is an argument for the validity of theistic claims.

The second consideration is that the reason that there are some nations in which persons do not have religious freedom is the fault of a proportion of those persons themselves, who deny the rest of the populace this freedom. Not only that, it is also the fault of those in developed countries that are not concerned with whether religious freedom exists or not in these countries. For example one would hardly expect this to be concern that is high up on the priority list of a Western atheist. So the argument “if there is a God, he would provide true choice of religion to all” is countered by the assertion “if there is a God he would give persons the opportunity to choose sin and thereby deny other’s the choice of religion”.

Atheists in the free world are atheists by choice, anyway. There’s There are nations where freedom of religion can be severely restricted, however we cannot know what the silent prayers of men’s hearts are. It does seem to be true that being born into a particular religion, especially in the developing world does predispose one to remain in that religion. All the Hindu friends I grew up with in my Catholic-run school in India, which would have comprised perhaps 75% of the total students to the best of my knowledge have remained at least nominally Hindu (I have not heard of any conversions).

Can we find Alternative Models in other religions?

In Islam, God never literally comes to Earth with his own message, rather, he sends out Islamic prophets to all the nations throughout history. One of the problems with such a claim is that we now possess a great amount of evidence with regards to ancient civilizations, especially those of the Ancient Near East mainly in the form of various writings upon clay tablets and other materials. From these it is evident that they all follow the typical model pagan pantheistic model of a “pantheon” and a the supreme deity (this is a model that survives even in the Hinduism of today). Muslims have to infer that although Islamic prophets did roam the entire world, all of their writings were lost and changed and so on an which is why we reach 632 AD with no visible trace of Islam on the globe, which is really question-begging. Further, if this was the model, then it would seem to have failed miserably anyway, if the uniformity was lost which was the whole point in the first place. We have not a scrap of archeological evidence of any monotheistic prophet of previous nations or of monotheistic religious practice among any previous nations. Rather all the evidence points to the contrary, so we do not even have an argument from silence. Even if we assume the truth of the Muslim claim that the BIblical prophets were “closet Muslims”, Israel is still a small tiny nation covering a small geographical area with minimal political influence.

HIndus, on the other hand do believe that God has come down as a man at multiple times in human history. However the basis of these beliefs are quite obscure and variable even among Hindus, and so we shall not discuss them in any great detail here. I do have an article on Hinduism somewhere, and I need to link it in here, if anyone’s interested.