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Still, there is necessary, and there is necessary – and being part of a Christian church is necessary to a full and right relationship with this God only if – in a phrase of John Wesley's – there be "time and opportunity." In other words, it is necessary in a conditional sense only. Wesley drove home this distinction by appealing to the condition of the thief dying on the cross, for whom there simply was no "time and opportunity" to become a part of any religious community, including the religious community that is the visible church of Jesus Christ. But, then, was Jesus' promise to the thief vain? No, Wesley insisted; for all that was necessary in an unconditional sense was the thief's obedient faith, his obedient trust in God and loyalty to God in accepting Jesus' promise. Being part of a religious community -– by constantly making use of its distinctive means of salvation through faith and then joining in continually administering these means to others through bearing witness -– being part of a religious community in this sense follows necessarily frOln from the obedient faith through which alone anyone is saved solely by God's grace. But the necessity in this case is always conditional only -– always provided that there be "time and opportunity" -- – and it is in this sense, although only in this sense -- – that I answer Yes to the first part of the question, also.

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First, it's one thing to speak of things "separately," something else again to distinguish them. In both cases, one's point in speaking, presumably, is to deny that the things in question are simply identical, or one and the same. But it's being misled and misleading to suppose -– as even the philosopher David Hume once notoriously allowed himself to do--that any things that can be distinguished can also be separated. That people in our society, sacred and secular, generally speak of life and death as distinct I, too, would take to be true. But that they thereby take them to be separate seems to me to be another, and distinct, claim for which I find no compelling evidence.

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