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Response

Classically, Protestant Christian churches have taught that salvation comes only through faith in Jesus Christ, and that those without such faith will be condemned to hell. A number of texts are typically cited in support of this position. In John 14:6 Jesus declares: ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me’. In Acts 4:12 Peter proclaims: ‘Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no name under heaven given to us by which we must be saved’. For Paul, the faithful will enjoy eternal life, but those who don’t know Christ will ‘be punished with everlasting destruction’ (2 Thessalonians 1:9). Hence his urgent call: ‘…how can they believe in the one whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?’ (Romans 10:14). Other traditions such as Roman Catholicism have an equally strong tradition of teaching on hell, but tend to apply it to those who fall outside the sacramental life of the church, or to those who forfeit their salvation by committing ‘mortal sin’.

Taking the biblical texts just cited at face value, many Evangelicals maintain that even those who fail to hear the gospel through no fault of their own will be damned. Often called ‘Exclusivists’, this group includes Hendrik Kraemer, Douglas Gevitt and R.C. Sproul. However, in recent years a growing number of Evangelicals have argued that at least some who do not profess Christ before death can be saved. Broadly defined as Inclusivists, this group includes Clark Pinnock, John Sanders and Nigel Wright.

Inclusivists often draw an analogy with the Old Testament saints. In Hebrews 11, a whole line of godly people who never knew Jesus explicitly are counted among the redeemed. Those who live faithfully within their own religious context today without hearing the good news are seen to be in a similar position, and to be similarly qualified for salvation. Exclusivists, however, reject this argument on the grounds that Jesus’ arrival on earth refocused the criteria of salvation from membership of a particular racial group to personal faith, regardless of ethnicity. Thus, they say, salvation which ‘bypasses’ overt commitment to Jesus is no longer possible.

A second argument for ‘implicit faith’ is often made from Romans 2:12-16. Here Paul appears to suggest that unbelieving Gentiles who ‘do not have the law’ will be judged according to their ‘conscience’. Inclusivists typically apply this to those who do not hear the gospel before they die. But as we have seen, Romans later makes responding to the gospel a matter of critical importance for all people, whether they have known the law or not.

The third instance in which God might be thought to save some who don’t profess Christ as Saviour concerns those who die in infancy. It may be significant here that Jesus depicted the kingdom of God as belonging to children (Matt. 19:13-15). Although we are all ‘conceived in sin’ (Psalm 51:5), the Reformed evangelical scholar Ronald Nash argues that our final judgment turns not on our sinful condition as members of a fallen human race, but on the sinful deeds we commit ‘in the body’ as an inevitable result of that condition (1 Cor. 5:10). By definition, he says, this standard cannot apply to deceased infants. He concludes on this basis that all who die in infancy within and outside the womb should be numbered among the elect.

What is clear is that if those who die as infants are granted eternal life, it will come purely by the grace of God, whom we must always recognise as the final arbiter in these matters. The same would apply to a fourth category of persons sometimes linked to the ‘wider hope’ – those whose mental disability renders them unable to respond overtly to the gospel. In this instance, as in the others we have considered, God will have mercy ‘on whom he wants to have mercy’ (Romans 9:18).

So far, we have examined only with those who die without professing faith, and who move straight from death to final judgement, as Hebrews 9:27 seems to suggest they will. However, some have extended ‘wider hope’ thinking beyond the grave, to a ‘second chance’ for those who are not evangelized in their earthly life. Pinnock and George Beasley-Murray derive this concept of ‘post-mortem’ repentance from 1 Peter 3:18-20 and 4:6, where Jesus is shown preaching to ‘the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago’ and to ‘those who are now dead’. However, most New Testament scholars deny that the texts in question have anything to do with ‘those who don’t hear’ in the present age. Rather, the ‘spirits’ of 3:19 are generally taken to be fallen angelic spirits, while the ‘dead’ of 4:6, are most likely those Christians who had been ‘dead to sin’ until they met Jesus in his earthly ministry, or those who heard him and went on to die as martyrs.

As we weigh up these different approaches, one thing must surely remain clear. Understandable though it is, we simply cannot allow speculation on how God might deal with the ‘special cases’ we’ve mentioned to blunt our evangelistic edge. We cannot second guess God. In the final analysis, our proclamation of the gospel should proceed on the assumption that those who don’t know Christ will face eternity without him — and it should be all the more passionate for that.

Further Reading

John Sanders (ed.), What about Those who Have Never Heard? Downers Grove: IVP, 1995.

Dick Dowsett, God, That’s Not Fair! Carlisle: Authentic, 2006.

ACUTE (Evangelical Alliance Commission on Unity and Truth among Evangelicals), The Nature of Hell, Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000.

FAQ Disclaimer:

FAQ responses are designed to promote clear biblical thinking about subjects that are often difficult and confusing. The responses are all considered to be compatible with the Evangelical Alliance’s basis of faith but beyond that should not be assumed to represent the Evangelical Alliance’s ‘official standpoint’ on any particular doctrine or issue.