I agree that salvation originates with God but disagree that we have no natural desire toward him. We do have a natural desire toward him but we are dragged down by original sin and by temptations toward adding to our imperfect state by actual sin.
"God's salvation is provided through the vicarious death of Christ and his subsequent resurrection, "
Of course.
"to shun this or to say that other ways are also valid is to say that Christ died in vain, and that God made a mockery of him."
See you just don't understand what I am saying. Never once have I written that anyone who is saved is saved by his own religion on his own merits or by his own works. Not once have I said that other ways are also valid in and of themselves. (I would say though that other ways are only valid insofar as they mirror Christianity.) Never once would I or have I asserted that anyone could get into heaven had not Jesus died on the cross to open the gates of heaven. And I have asserted that no one who is saved and in heaven is anything but a Christian believer, though they may not have been explicitly Christian in life.
And honestly I think your position is more likely to make it seem like Christ died in vain, at least for the millions of people who never heard of him, or others who having heard the good news, for some reason, (not thier fault) that only the searching perfect God can know where not able to come to see the good news for what it really is.
I just don't understand why you don't understand.
It seems that you are saying that man can fall farther than he did in the garden. I will maintain that man is totally depraved, and deserving of Hell from his birth, there is no need to fall farther. I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this point.
"God's salvation is provided through the vicarious death of Christ and his subsequent resurrection, "
I'm glad we agree on this point.
See you just don't understand what I am saying. Never once have I written that anyone who is saved is saved by his own religion on his own merits or by his own works. Not once have I said that other ways are also valid in and of themselves. (I would say though that other ways are only valid insofar as they mirror Christianity.) Never once would I or have I asserted that anyone could get into heaven had not Jesus died on the cross to open the gates of heaven. And I have asserted that no one who is saved and in heaven is anything but a Christian believer, though they may not have been explicitly Christian in life.
And honestly I think your position is more likely to make it seem like Christ died in vain, at least for the millions of people who never heard of him, or others who having heard the good news, for some reason, (not thier fault) that only the searching perfect God can know where not able to come to see the good news for what it really is.
I will maintain that Jesus died only for the elect (those that would come to know him), not for every man woman and child on the Earth. If he had died for the whole world, then we could, by our own will, render his sacrifice as worthless by shunning him. To say that he died only for the elect validates his sacrifice in that it accomplished what he meant for it to accomplish.
As for those who came before, it is said that Christ also descended into Hell to bring them into relationship with him.
As for those who "never heard", Romans Chapter 1 states that God reveals himself in his creation so that man is without excuse (my paraphrase).
We will perhaps never agree on this either.
Thank you for being patient with me.
As for your parenthetical statement (I would say though that other ways are only valid insofar as they mirror Christianity.). When you say mirror, do you mean approximate or directly reflect Christianity. What about LDS, and Jehovah's Witnesses, that deny the transcendent divinity of Christ?