Book Review: The Uncontrolling Love of God by Thomas Jay Oord

Oord, Thomas Jay. The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2015. ★★★★☆

Thomas Jay Oord is, for me, one of the most compelling open/relational theologians writing today. His particular construction of open theology resolves some of the serious problems that arise in the work of other open theologians. He accomplished this in his 2010 book The Nature of Love: A Theology, by seeking to lay out a coherent theology that revolves around love. In his new book The Uncontrolling Love of God, he uses his theology of love to address the issue of providence, particularly as it pertains to the problem of evil.

He begins in chapter one by claiming that "tragedy needs explanation." If we have any theology, it needs to reckon with the evil and suffering we experience in concrete reality. He names this concrete reality by telling several stories that involve atrocities no good theologian could bear to overlook in addressing the question of evil and providence. Wherever our analysis goes in the forthcoming pages, he says, we must refer back to these stories as the standard for whether or not our theology is compelling.

In the second chapter, he discusses the inherent randomness of life, referring to experience and to science. His discussion of randomness based on science is more compelling than that of experience, (I will return to his treatment of experience in my overview of chapter three) but his overall point is a good one—to demonstrate that, empirically, we don't consider the universe as determined. Scientists recognize elements of unpredictability in the established order, and we in our experience assume such unpredictability.

But randomness, he says, is only one side of the coin. The other consists of life's "regularities"—such as, laws of nature, and morality. These regularities show that the universe is not altogether unpredictable, but is rather partly open and partly determined.

In chapter three, Oord deals with the topic of free agency. He applies his partly-open-partly-determined view of the universe to the human's free will. Humans are not absolutely free, he says, because we, by nature, have limited options:

We all know that we cannot do just anything we might imagine. For instance, we cannot fly to Mars this afternoon. We cannot change from being humans and become toads. We cannot all be president at once. We cannot freely put the entire moon in our basements. There are many things we cannot do, so skeptics say we must not be free at all. They seem to define free will as choosing among unlimited options and having no constraints. (58)

My criticism of this passage is that Oord does not provide an example of a "skeptic" who, seeing that a human can't become a toad, claims humans have no freedom at all. This seems like an exaggeration of the skeptic's case against free will. The passage also seems like a very conservative analysis of the human's limited options. What of the limitations placed on us because of our cultural conditioning, i.e. our presuppositions, established categories, inherent cognitive framework, etc.? Oord's silence regarding human situaded-ness makes me wonder if he thinks a human can assess options in an unmediated manner.

This leads to my next criticism of Oord's chapter on freedom--his argument from 'experience':

The most powerful evidence for free will is our own personal experience. In the way we act, we all inevitably presuppose we are, at least to some degree, free. I call this an experiential nonnegotiable. (60) 

Free will is an experiential nonnegotiable, and our personal experiences tell us something true about the nature of reality. (61)

I sympathize with this approach, while, however, not being uncritical of it. I sympathize with it because, at the end of the day, we are dependent on our experience to receive any information about the material world—so much so that it is even possible the "material world" is an illusion! I am critical of it, however, because it neglects the possibility that we could be misled by our experience, that the Truth could be much different than what our experience leads us to believe.

Why does Oord think we can trust our experience regarding questions of ultimate significance? Is our experience not mediated by cultural conditioning, evolutionary conditioning, and finite scope? If I were to, for example, deem my shirt blue, I would, in Oord's mind, be justified because my experience tells me my shirt is blue. However, we know that the colors we see aren't descriptive of the objects our minds attach to them, independently of our perception. A humorous example of this, with a blue and black dress, recently went viral. The dress was blue and black, but that didn't stop thousands from seeing it as white and gold.

If Oord's argument for free agency is personal experience, I think it is in trouble, because I don't think personal experience can be used as valid evidence of ultimate truth.

Oord also discusses "the problem of good" in chapter three. He says that, while theists have to reckon with evil, atheists have to reckon with good. "The problem of good is a real problem for unbelievers," he says (68). His only justification for this claim, however, is the assumption that phenomena must have explanations. If something is good, you have to explain why it is possible for good to exist in the world. But why do you have to explain it? He says "to make sense of life" (69), but he assumes that life is ours to make sense of, and I do not think this is a valid assumption. Already, in whatever ancient year it was, the book of Job claimed that the proper posture toward the chaotic abyss of the universe was humility and uncertainty. I think this might be a better framework than Oord's necessity of making sense of life.

In chapter four, Oord provides a helpful overview of different theologies of divine providence, complete with the problems he sees in various ones. They are too numerous to repeat here, but suffice it to say, Oord's overview is widely encompassing and well-balanced.

Chapter five includes Oord's overview of open and relational theology. He avoids merely repeating what has been published several times by including authors which have not normally seen the light of scholarship, such as Lorenzo D. McCabe, T. W. Brents, Jules Lequyer, Uriah Smith, and Edgar S. Brightman. Open theologians have much to uncover in the history of open and relational theology, and a lot of uncovered material to analyse, and it is commendable for Oord to begin to do so here.

Also included in chapter five is a fair comparison of process theology and open theology, as well as a helpful overview of the ways in which science has been in dialogue with open theology.

Perhaps the best chapter is the following one, which deals with John Sanders' theology of providence. In The Nature of Love, Oord looked at Clark Pinnock's theology, laying out in what ways it is strong and similar to his own, and explaining what he thinks its inadequacies are. He does the same with Sanders, and his criticism of Sanders ends up being quite similar to his criticism of Pinnock. That is, they both claim that God's is omnipotent and could always intervene to stop evil but often allows it to happen so that humans can be free. Oord, in both accounts, does a very good job of revealing how problematic these claims are. "The one who could stop genuine evil by restraining the perpetrator of evil," he says, "is morally responsible—or better, culpable—for permitting the painful consequences" (142-143)—and I could not agree more. He compellingly demonstrates that, in Sanders' theology, love does not come first.

For those who are familiar with Oord's work, there are no real surprises in the seventh chapter, for in it Oord offers his alternative to the models of God's providence he analyzed throughout the book—his "essential kenosis" theology, which claims that God is necessarily limited in power because it is in God's loving nature as a creator to share power with creatures. While as an a/theologian I find it ultimately unsatisfying (for reasons too complicated to go into here), Oord's "essential kenosis" theology remains, for me, the most compelling construction of open theology to date.

Oord's final chapter deals with the question of miracles. Orthodox Christians—including open theists, such as Sanders—often object to Oord's theology by pointing to miracles, which seem to them to be examples of God's unilateral activity. He has responded to this objection before, but here he dives into it in a more extensive manner. While an interesting assessment of the topic, I don't think Oord's response to the problem of miracles will sway his critics. I think he would do better to dialogue with historical-critical biblical scholarship on the subject, but part of Oord's project seems to be trying to keep an orthodox theology in tact while following his theological convictions. It is a noble task, even if a troublesome one.

Petitionary Prayer: What is it Good for?

Prayer is often thought to be something that doesn't affect what will actually turn out. Because God already knows what he is going to do, so it is said, prayer is for our benefit, our own change, rather than changing what will occur.

Prayer is also often treated like a vending machine; insert a prayer, out comes a blessing. God is a genie in a bottle, to whom we can go to with any request for him to fill.

With these construals of prayer, it is widely taken for granted or trivialized. I often get the feeling in prayer groups that we're all praying for stuff to happen but we don't actually think anything is going to come from it.

Prayer has become a ritual to which we ascribe power on a surface level, but we don't use it in such a way that we take seriously the power it has.

A problem I think we have is that we pray without acknowledging any limits to our prayers, resulting in unrealistic prayers. Treating God like a genie in a bottle who can do anything for us trivializes prayer, because it doesn't ring true. We don't experience prayer that way. I do not experience the effectiveness of my prayers the same way I experience the effectiveness of a dollar when I use it to buy a Coke from a vending machine. Because of the dissonance between idea and experience--between what is thought about prayer and what the reality is--the power of prayer is demeaned, and prayer becomes just something that we do. Ask for it in prayer because that's what Christians do, but don't expect anything.

I think this trivialization could be changed if we thought about prayer more realistically. In an attempt to do so, I would like to highlight a couple of major limitations on prayer that we seldom acknowledge.

Disclaimer: Talk of what God can or cannot do must not be taken to mean I am questioning God's actual ability. I assume God's omnipotence. However, there are certain things God cannot do within the framework which he himself has set--that is, within the boundaries he set on himself and the natural order. There's a difference between the power God possesses and the power he exercises.

1. God cannot violate the free will of human beings

By saying 'Yes' to free will for humans, God inevitably said 'No' to absolute control; he chose to give humans quite a bit of control over what occurs. Thus, when we pray, we must take into account that God cannot just do anything we ask of him. Consider David Basinger's words:

God so values the inherent integrity of significant human freedom . . . that he will not as a general rule force his created moral agents to perform actions that they do not freely desire to perform. . . . [I] doubt that he would override the freedom of one individual primarily because he was freely asked to do so by another.(1)

For example, if a friend of mine is going into a job interview, I cannot realistically pray that God will simply have the employer hire him/her, as if God is going to overrule the employer's free will and give my friend a job. Put yourself in the employer's position; would God override your freedom and control your actions to accomplish a certain end?

We do not see God doing this in Scripture. Consider these examples:

All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations. Isaiah 65:2

I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?' Ezekiel 33:11

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Matthew 23:37

The Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God's purpose for themselves. Luke 7:30

You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Acts 7:51

These verses point to the reality of human freedom, and how often that freedom can oppose the will of God; and if God wants people to have freedom, there's only so much he can do in a particular situation.

2. God cannot violate the free will of spiritual beings

This one is often overlooked by Christians, but it's a big one. Walter Wink says,

Prayer involves not just God and people, but God and people and the Powers. What God is able to do in the world is hindered, to a considerable extent, by the rebelliousness, resistance, and self-interest of the Powers exercising their freedom under God.(2)

A striking example of this is found in Daniel 10, in which an angel comes to Daniel in a vision and says:

Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia. vv.12-13

This passage tells us that, when Daniel prayed, an angel was dispatched to meet his need, but was held up by an evil being! And it was so bad that had to call in for back-up. This, he says, is why it took so long for Daniel's prayer to be addressed.

Have you ever heard that passage talked about in a sermon on prayer? It gives us an incredibly different picture of the power of prayer than the one we so often engage. Prayer is not simply asking God for things. Prayer is spiritual warfare! Our prayers are spiritual contributions to the victory of the kingdom of God over evil. With prayer, we add oil to the Kingdom fire.

An Alternative View of Prayer

God is always doing everything he can to bring good out of every situation (Rom. 8:28). Terence Fretheim notes that to say God intervenes is a mistake, because it implies, "that God is not normally present but intervenes now and then with a goody or a baddy."(3) Subjectively, it may seem like God intervenes, but in such cases, our eyes are being opened to what God is always doing, or trying to do. As Greg Boyd says, "God sovereignly influences the whole process, working to bring about as much good and to prevent as much evil as possible."(4) William Hasker describes several ways God does this:

There are circumstances which God is able to arrange. There are the influences coming from other persons who are in tune with God's purposes in a situation. And above all, there is the 'internal operation of the Holy Spirit,' working within a person's mind and will in ways we only dimly understand. God respects us, but he does not 'leave us alone' to make our decision in isolation from his loving concern for us.(5)

Given this framework, our prayers create opportunity through which God can work; they create possibilities that were not possible before we prayed. As Boyd says,

By God's own design, [prayer] functions as a crucial constituent in the 'givens' of any particular situation that makes it possible for God more intensely to steer a situation to his desired end.(6)

Or, in Fretheim's words, "prayers make available to God some new ingredients . . . with which to work the divine will into a situation."(7) Put another way, Clark Pinnock says that prayer "expands God's effective presence in the world."(8) This is what we provide as vessels of the Holy Spirit.

Challenge

When you pray, think about how you are praying. Consider the fact that your prayer actually has power to affect what happens, and let that acknowledgement inspire you to pray realistically, taking the free wills of others into account.

This may sound like it limits prayer, but I think if we begin to pray realistically, we will start to pray more fervently and effectively, because it will teach us to pray for things in such a way that we acknowledge our prayer can affect what happens, instead of merely praying ritualistically.

Acknowledging parameters on how we pray will keep us from taking prayer for granted or trivializing it, and will expand our understanding of the power of prayer.

For further reading:
Gregory A. Boyd, "Praying in the Whirlwind," in Satan and the Problem of Evil (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 209-241.
Terence Fretheim, "Divine Dependence on the Human: An Old Testament Perspective." Ex Auditu 13 (1997): 1-13.
Vincent Brümmer, "Praying for Things to Happen," in What Are We Doing When We Pray? rev. ed. (Burlington, Ashgate, 2008), 33-81.

Notes:
(1) David Basinger, "Practical Implications," in The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 160-161.
(2) Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 311.
(3) This was said in a presentation Terence Fretheim gave called "Divine-Human Relationship," which can be found on Itunes U. 
(4) Gregory A. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 237.
(5) William Hasker, Providence, Evil and the Openness of God (New York: Routledge, 2004), 224.
(6) Boyd, 231.
(7) Terence Fretheim, "Divine Dependence on the Human: An Old Testament Perspective." Ex Auditu 13 (1997), 2.
(8) Clark Pinnock, Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God's Openness (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 173.

Why I Am an Open Theist

In case you haven't gotten this in my past blogs, I am an open theist. This entails many things, but the one that is distinct from other Christian views is the belief that, to God, the future is made up of possibilities and not exact certainties. Thus, God does not possess exhaustive foreknowledge (Click here if you want more information). I came to this conclusion about a year and a half ago. Here, I will not discuss all the ins and outs of how I view God's foreknowledge, but I would simply like to share why I came to this conclusion.

Because the Bible Tells Me So

I originally decided on open theism while taking a class on the Prophets. I was writing about the suffering of God in Jeremiah and I picked up Terence Fretheim's book The Suffering of God. In my reading of Jeremiah, I was struck by 26:3: "Perhaps they will listen and everyone will turn from his evil way, that I may repent of the calamity which I am planning to do to them because of the evil of their deeds." I realized that there are many verses just like this, where God says "If" or "Perhaps" in such a way that it suggests that he does not exactly know what the outcome will be. I saw that Fretheim had a chapter on the subject of God's uses of these words, and so I read it. I didn't know then that Fretheim is an open theist (nor did I know what open theism was), but when I read his chapter, I highlighted so much of it because it made so much sense to me.

It is important to note that the deciding factor for me had nothing to do with whether or not God's foreknowledge limits human freedom (which is what it was for most open theists). That idea hadn't even crept into my mind at that point. My decision was solely based on the passages of Scripture in which God doesn't seem to know exactly what is going to happen.

That being said, once I accepted the view, several other elements came into the picture.

The Traditional View Limits God's Freedom

The more I thought about the idea of God's exhaustive foreknowledge, the less I agreed with it. I read Clark Pinnock's chapter about open theism in Predestination & Free Will: Four Views. In it, he supports the idea that if God has exhaustive foreknowledge of the future, then humans do not have free will. At that point, I didn't agree or disagree with that position. I was never bothered by the idea of God's foreknowledge and my free will.

The idea that did bother me was that if God has foreknowledge, then it limits his freedom. Think about it. If God knows exactly how things are going to turn out, then he knows exactly how he is going to interact with the world for the rest of time. Furthermore, since he cannot be wrong in his knowledge of the future, he has to interact with the world in the future the way that he sees it. He can do nothing else but what he sees himself doing in the future. Thus, God's freedom is limited.

God: Past, Present, and Future?

Many would disagree with the last section because they look at the God-time relationship in a completely different manner. Past, present, and future, in their minds, are all present to God in the "eternal now." What we call past, God is experiencing as present; what we call future, God is experiencing as present. Time is a book, or a movie, with a beginning, middle and end. Since God is outside of time, and since he is omnipotent, they believe he is in every page, every moment, all at once. This view assumes that time is already completed--that the future has already been resolved and we are just living out a part of the completed product of time.

I do not view time this way. I view time more like an unfinished painting. God started the painting at the beginning of time, and equipped us with a brush and paint with which we can paint our futures. Yet, we live inside the painting (thus, not the best analogy. But what analogy could properly describe God's relationship with time?). God doesn't live inside the painting, he is beyond it. He transcends it, and yet is immanent in it. Unlike us, he is not bound by the canvas or the frame. That being said, the painting is unfinished, so there is still a past, present, and future of the painting--even to God, precisely because he created it that way.

The idea that the past, present, and future are all present to God is, to me, completely nonsensical. We definitely do not get this concept from Scripture. In Scripture, we see God in time living with his people, experiencing a past and a present and looking at a future. This doesn't mean that God is not also outside of time, but being outside of time doesn't have to me mean what many think it does. Supposing that God is in past, present, and future all at once puts a distance between him and his time-bound people. As 19th century theologian Isaak Dorner states, "the living participation of God in the world, his living communion of love with it, depends in fact upon our positing that God knows continually what is now present and that he does not have to the present simply the relation which he also has to the past and the future, as if these were just as much present for him as the former, since that would lead to a very lifeless and inadequate relation."

Does God's Foreknowledge Limit Human Freedom?

Like I said before, when I first agreed with open theism, it had nothing to do with the idea that God's foreknowledge means we can't have free will. That being said, I have now come to that conclusion.

That I have free will means that, though I chose to write this blog, given the same circumstances 30 minutes ago, I could choose not to write the blog but could go do something else. To have free will means I can choose to do whatever I want, that I am not bound to one choice.

Let us say that God knows that on January 21st, 2048, Robert Smith will go see a movie. Because God's knowledge must be true, that has to happen. When the day comes and Robert is given the choice to either go see a movie or stay home, Robert has to go see a movie. He can do nothing else. His free will is limited to that one option. Thus, though subjectively it may seem that we have free will, we objectively do not have free will because our future choices are bound to God's definite knowledge of them.

This could have (and maybe should have) been longer. I haven't included all the elements of open theism, nor I have explained in detail what my view of God's foreknowledge is, but, like I said at the top, I just wanted to share with you why I came to this conclusion.

If you would like to discuss this topic with me more, we can definitely do that.

Existentialism and Anonymous Christianity

"It is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God's sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them." Romans 2:13-15

How is one justified for salvation? Scripture tells us it is by faith (Gal. 2:16, 3:11, 24; Rom. 3:28, 5:1, 10:10; Acts 13:39). But what does it mean to have faith? James tells us that "a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone" (Jas. 2:24) and that "faith without works is dead" (v.26; see my blog on faith and works here).

Jesus also emphasized actions as an essential part of being a follower of God, saying, "only those who do the will of my father" will enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 7:21), and that in order to love him one must obey his commandments (Jn. 14:21). Furthermore, he promises that "he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him . . . we will come to him and make our home with him" (vv.21,23).

He said Christians will be recognized by their fruit (Jn. 14:20), and Christ-like fruit is defined by love (Jn 13:35). "Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love" (1 Jn. 4:7-8).  

Paul said that "God will give to each person according to what he has done. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life" (Rom. 2:6-7)

So how much does one need to know in order to be saved? Can people serve God without knowing it, and, by doing so become saved?

Preface: Existentialism focuses on one's subjective, personal experience of the world. A friend of mine and a Kierkegaard scholar once defined it to me as, "the study of how you are the decisions you make." While this was said to me flippantly, it does reflect a central aspect of existential philosophy; that is, the grand significance of one's decisions. In speaking of existentialism and Christianity, I am focusing on one's subjective, personal experience of the Gospel, and how one's decisions contribute to that experience.

The notion that people can serve God and obtain salvation without knowing it is possible because of the ability God has given us. "Behold," Christ says, "the kingdom of God is within you" (Lk. 17:21). Though it is through faith that we are saved, it is by grace that we have faith. And grace, Karl Rahner explains, “makes it possible for [one's spiritual] movement to reach God in himself . . . grace divines man and bestows upon him a share in the holiness of God.”(1) Rahner calls grace the self-communication of God. This self-communication, he says, is  

offered to all and fulfilled in the highest way in Christ . . . [and] constitutes the goal of all creation and . . . even before he freely takes up an attitude to it, it stamps and determines man’s nature and lends it a character which we may call a 'supernatural existential'. . . . This means positively that man . . . already experiences the offer of grace – not necessarily as grace, as a distinctly supernatural calling, but experiences the reality of its content.(2)

What he is saying is that grace has reworked and redefined human nature. The "supernatural existential" Rahner refers to is the indwelling grace within humans that enables them to choose God existentially--meaning, through their decisions. This was made possible by Christ, who objectively accomplished salvation for the entire world (1 Jn. 2:2). As Rahner says, "man is already subject to the universal salvific will of God, he is already redeemed and absolutely obliged to tend to this supernatural end. This . . . is an objective, ontological modification of man, added indeed to his nature by God’s grace and therefore supernatural."(3)

Objective salvation includes, however, the need for subjective participation in it in order for it to be effective in one's self. Through our decisions, we either choose salvation, manifesting the objective truth that Christ established, or we choose to step away from God. This is why "whatever is not from faith is sin" (Rom 14:23), because faith means subjectively embracing the objective reality that Christ accomplished on the Cross; in rejecting that reality, one embraces lies and, consequently, sin.
The Trinity is in the business of drawing all of humanity to them (Jn. 12:32). The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are constantly trying to reconcile all people through self-communication(4) so that everyone might experience the love that is contained within the Holy Union. As Clark Pinnock says,

The Spirit embodies the prevenient grace of God and puts into effect that universal drawing action of Jesus Christ. The world is the arena of God's presence, and the Spirit knocks on every human heart, preparing people for the coming of Christ; the Spirit is ever working to realize the saving thrust of God's promise for the world. From the Spirit flows that universal gracing that seeks to lead all people into fuller light and love.(5) 

With this understanding, we can see that when God says to Paul in Acts 18:10, "I have many people in [Corinth]," he is referring to the people that have been choosing him with their thoughts and actions without necessarily knowing the Gospel message. They had responded positively to the Spirit of God. They had said 'Yes' to God; they accepted divine grace.(6)

This understanding leads us to the possibility of the anonymous Christian, a belief that has been embraced throughout church history. Origen believed it to be true, stating, 

Emeth, from C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle

It can happen that a person who lives under the law, even though he does not, because of the common belief [of his people], believe in Christ, nevertheless does what is good, practices justice, loves mercy, observes chastity and continence, acts modestly and gently and practices every good work--such a person . . . cannot be lost."(7)

 Similarly, John Wesley believed that we have reason to hope that, although they live among "heathen," many people are "quite of another spirit, being taught by God, by his inward voice, all the essentials of true religion."(8) 

C. S. Lewis thought it was even possible for there to be "people in other religions who are being led by God's secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it."(9) He wrote the character Emeth (the person in the picture at the top) in his book The Last Battle as an archetype of such a person. Emeth grew up a worshiper of a god named Tash. He also thought Aslan, the God of Narnia and the Christ-figure, was the enemy. He ends up realizing the true evil nature of Tash and crossing paths with Aslan. "Alas, Lord," he says, "I am no son of Thine but the servant of Tash." Aslan then answers him:

"Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. . . . I take to me the services which thou hast done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. 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 know it not, 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. . . . unless the desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek."(10)

Consider also a real life example. Richard Wurmbrand wrote about a Russian lady officer he approached on the street to talk to her about Christ. "Do you love Christ?" she asked, and he said "Yes! From all my heart." She fell into his arms and started kissing him, and then exclaimed, "I love Christ, too!" Wurmbrand found out that "she knew nothing about Christ--absolutely nothing--except the name. And yet she loved him."(10)  There is no limit to what the Spirit can accomplish, even with those who have no knowledge of the Gospel.

God is a god that will find every reason to bring people up to him (cf. 1 Cor. 3:10-15). But don't get me wrong, there is weight on what a person knows (or does not know). As Christ said, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be required" (Lk. 12:48). To whom much knowledge of Christ is given, much is required. Likewise, to whom little knowledge of Christ is given, much is not expected. As my grandfather likes to say, "You know what you know and that's all you know!" Many people don't know about Christianity or the Bible, and God knows that. God is "the God of all nations," says Abraham Joshua Heschel, "and all men's history is His concern."(12) God is gracious enough to make provisions for those that have little knowledge of him. Many people "know not what they do" (Lk. 23:34), and God understands that. He knows everyone's heart and the fruit that each bears, and he will judge accordingly.

Most Christians know the saying of Christ that "He who is not with me is against me" (Matt. 12:30 & Lk. 11:23). But elsewhere Christ also said, "He who is not against us is for us" (Mk. 9:40).(13) If people do not know Christ, then they are not against him, unless they go against him with their thoughts and actions. But if they are for him in their thoughts and actions (for he would know if they were) then they are indeed with him. If the fruit of their hearts point to God, then they are for him, and bringing them up to Heaven is not a violation of their free will (see the section "The Power of Choice" in this blog to understand what I mean here).

I contend that this is exactly what the Romans passage at the top means. In fact, I think you could take what Paul is saying about the law and apply it to the Gospel. It is not the hearers of the Gospel, but the doers of the Gospel that are justified and righteous in God's sight. Those who do instinctively what the Gospel requires are a Gospel to themselves, because they show that what the Gospel requires is written on their hearts (which was what God wanted to accomplish with the New Covenant; Jer. 31:33).

To conclude, those who do not hear the Gospel message can do the will of the father, and by doing so be granted admittance into the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 7:21). They can persistently pursue glory, honor, and immortality in their actions, making them worthy of eternal life (Rom. 2:6-7). By their Christ-like fruit, they will be known (Jn. 14:20). Paul says "those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God" (Rom. 8:14). They, by responding affirmatively to God's grace, can be led by the Spirit to God's embrace. They, through obedience to Christ's law written on their hearts and through their love and service to others, can existentially love Christ. Christ revealed that to abide in his love means to obey his commandment to love others (Jn. 15:9-17). Indeed, Christ says "whatever you [do] for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you [do] for me" (Matt. 25:40). By being led by the Spirit through their affirmative response to God's grace, by loving Christ through obeying his commands, The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will be revealed to these anonymous Christians (Jn. 14:21). The Trinity will come to them and make a home with them (v.23).
 
And this is all possible because of God's grace and his universal salvific purpose to draw all humanity to himself through his self-communication, the ever-working Holy Spirit and his son Jesus Christ, who accomplished everything we needed in order to come to his arms.

Notes:
(1) Karl Rahner, Experience of the Spirit: Source of Theology, Vol. 16 of Theological Investigations, trans. David Morland (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 40.
(2) Rahner, “Anonymous Christians,” in Vol. 6 of Theological Investigations, trans. Graham Harrison, 390–398 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972), 394.
(3) Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary, ed. Cornelius Ernst, trans. Richard Strachan (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965) 161.
(4) On the Trinity's self-communication to humanity, see Rahner, "God's Threefold Relation to Us in the Order of Grace," in The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2010), 34-37.
(5) Clark H. Pinnock, "An Inclusivist View," in More Than One Way? Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World, eds. Dennis L. Okholm, and Timothy Ross Phillips (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 104.
(6) See Rahner and Vorgrimler, 196.
(7) Hans Urs von Balthasar, Origen, Spirit and Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings, trans. Robert J. Daly (Washington D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1984).
(8) John Wesley, "On Faith," in Vol. 7 of The Works of John Wesley, 3rd ed. (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1986), 197.
(9) C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 176.
(10) Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: Collier Books, 1970), 164-165.
(11) Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ (Bartlesville: Living Sacrifice, 1967), 25.
(12) Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Perennial Classics, 2001), 40.
(13) This is actually the logical conclusion to be made from the first statement. Mathematically, the contra-positive statement is always equal to the conditional statement. Conditional: "If you are not with me, then you are against me." Contra-positive: "If you are not against me, then you are with me."