So you throw out every verse about believing for salvation, and decide atheists are saved. That's not truth.
I do not throw them out. I contextualize them and understand them as not pointing to the acceptance or rejection of a claim. It is not belief in a propositional truth that one mentally acknowledges or rejects. It is much deeper than that, and that sort of belief is not what scripture is talking about, which I'll explain. It is a matter of the heart, rather than a matter of the head.
"And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name."
Oops, nothing about the possibility of having life if you don't believe.
What does it mean to believe in God? A mental agreement that God exists? That is what it seems you limit belief to. You believe Jesus is the Christ,
as a mental agreement, and therefore you're saved? That's all it takes, is a mental acknowledgement?
Are you familiar with this verse? "Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble." Apparently belief in the way "believing in God" is meant goes beyond just believing God exists as a mere mental acknowledgement.
Eternal life as the result of belief: “that believing you may have life in His name.”5 Since Jesus Himself is life.
Eternal life is not an end, but the beginning of a relationship with the living God through Christ (17:3)
I fully agree that belief, in the way the gospel of John uses it, is necessary in order to see and experience that eternal life. But it doesn't have anything to do with believing something with your head only, which is what you seem to be thinking. It is a belief of the heart, which sees God in the present moment, and moves deeper within that. It is not about one's ideas about God. It's what one senses in the heart and responds to through faith. Without that, you can't see God, nor experience that Eternal Life, which is within you. If your mind and heart are blocked, it will be invisible to you.
But that kind of belief, has nothing to do with theology. It has nothing to do with doctrinal teachings. It has nothing to do with belief statements or agreements with church leaders. And therefore, it absolutely has nothing to do with whatsoever with specific beliefs about how to view the stories of the bible in certain belief systems, upon which one's salvation depends!
That notion is absolutely foreign to the teaching of Jesus, and does not at all reflect how John is using "belief" in his gospel. It is always about belief in Jesus, or belief in God as a movement of faith of the heart. It's never about ideas about God, or our beliefs and ideas about scripture. Our ideas can be wrong, yet our hearts be right. Or, all our ideas may be right, but our hearts are all wrong. God looks at the latter, not the former. Comprehending God with the mind, would mean no one would ever be "saved".
Without belief in the truth, that Jesus is divine, no salvation exists.
Belief in the truth of the reality of the presence of God, in however someone might imagine that to be in whatever form, yes. But not belief in the "truth" of what you or some preacher thinks is truth in a
propositional sense of the word. You can't find that supported in scripture. None of the verses you quote support that.
"Believe,” is used 98 times in John (compared to 34 times in the Synoptics and 16 times in the rest of the NT). It is presented as a response to the revelation of Jesus Christ as the Son of God.
It's actually over 100 times, and John's gospel uses it over 50% of all the references to belief in all of the New Testament writings. And never once does John use it to mean a propositional truth that one accepts as a claim, whose opposite might be doubt or skepticism. It is always about the heart seeing God.
"Believing in Jesus" by context and connotation of how John uses it, expresses, "Recognizing in Jesus the presence and movement of God in the moment". You can read any place it uses "believe" in John, and that is the meaning that it is pointing to. And the greater one's belief, the more deeply one moves into that recognition. It's not some static belief which surrounds some idea of other, but something of the heart and soul of the person. Not the head.
For instance, in John 4:48, the official comes to Jesus to beseech him to heal his son. Jesus says to him, "Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe". Yet, clearly the official has some degree of belief already in that he came to Jesus in the first place. So when Jesus says unless you see a sign or miracle you won't believe, he is not talking about belief whose opposite is doubt or rejection.
The guy clearly was neither doubting Jesus nor rejecting him (which is what you do with propositional truths or ideas). This type of belief has to do with recognizing the presence of God in the moment, without needing miracles and signs. It has nothing to do with ideas about God sort of mental beliefs. It has to do with opening the eyes of the spirit to seeing God in the present moment, to recognizing its richness and depth and movement. It's not "I believe mentally, therefore I'm saved", and that's it. That fails to embrace anything that John was saying.
Now, regarding atheists, even if an atheist rejects certain ideas people have about a god, which is what it all amounts to, it is not ideas that the "belief" of scripture is pointing to to begin with, which I'm saying doesn't ultimately matter on a spiritual level. It is a belief in the heart of "Goodness", which is for all intents and purposes "God". If an atheist who does not believe or accept the propositions of a theological, or ontological God, despite that does in fact do good in the world, he is in fact fulfilling God's Will in the world, then he will "see the kingdom of heaven" when the religionist who says they believe, yet their hearts show they don't, won't.
I could say much more to this, but will later perhaps.
