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And those who do not claim to be followers of Jesus, yet regularly and intentionally do what he said to?

I sometimes think that we want salvation to be too transactional based on having prayed a certain prayer at a certain time and place and not filled with any mystery of dealing with the divine. While I have my convictions, God always seems to act with us in broader realms than our narrow desire for definitions allows, IMHO.

I'm guessing "ascent" here is meant to mean "assent". There's a difference in the orthopraxy involved.

I have been listening to a course from the Teaching Company on "Christianity from Jesus to Constantine. While there are many things that I don't agree with in the writings of Bart Ehrman, this is his field of expertise. It is fascinating how Christian doctrine grew out of varieties of Christian expression into what he tags as "proto orthodoxy" and finally into the Apostles and Nicene Creeds. The journey, however, had much more variety than we often want to acknowledge. Ehrman's study includes a lot of the materials that have been discovered from the second and third centuries or quotes in later authors from those sources. More than anything, I think historical awareness makes me both appreciate doctrine with a sense of divine providence about how it developed as well as with a sense of humility since all our statements about God are at best by analogy.