Those Who Have Never Heard, Part 1: Three Viewpoints

Imagine hell with me for a moment. The roar and hiss of the flames mingle with a chorus of tormented screams in a ceaseless, eternal drone of horror. The people cry out in different languages, some of the voices high-pitched, others low. Sweet memories from life linger in their minds—the thrill of falling in love, a newborn’s piercing first cries, the sensation of wet grass on bare feet, the breathtaking deep oranges and reds of a sunset. All of it, lovely. All of it, gone forever. Only darkness and flame and bitterness remain.

Would anyone want this? I can't imagine so. Yet, we know from Scripture that all who reject God’s offer of salvation in Jesus will end up in such a place. This probably didn’t bother Christians of past ages, because pre-modern Westerners probably thought they comprised the majority of the world’s population. If someone rejected the gospel, he or she did so with full knowledge, and full culpability. But today, we know that millions have died throughout history without ever hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ. And if God can only save a person from eternal damnation when that person knowingly makes a free-will decision to trust in Christ, millions have gone to their graves with zero opportunity to escape hell.

This thought horrifies me, and I believe rightly so. Why would our omnipotent God arrange things this way? Does He really desire the salvation of all people as it says in 1 Timothy 2:4? This challenge, the challenge of “those who have never heard,” can be a real bear of a problem in the minds of Christians who think seriously about their faith and its implications. It raises questions of fairness. But more than this, it challenges the legitimacy of the Christian faith. To bring this out, let me ask a question: is a truth that is only available to certain people at certain times in history really the truth at all?

I’ve done a lot of thinking about this question. Beginning with this reflection (and followed by two more), I hope to show that finding answers might not be as difficult as you may think.

To set the stage, I want here to briefly address three major ways people have typically approached the question of who will and will not be saved. This will surface some of the tensions involved in our question. I also think we may begin to find some answers here. In another reflection, I want to talk about two circumstances that I think make the question much less problematic. In the final reflection, I will explore an interesting way of approaching the question that can help us deal with any remaining problems.

The three ways people have typically approached the question of who will and who will not be saved are these—exclusivism, universalism, and a more middle-ground approach called inclusivism. In exclusivism, God requires explicit knowledge of the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus (“special revelation”) for salvation. So, let’s say it’s the year 100 CE. A twenty-something ancient Mayan man—let’s call him Bob—catches an incurable disease and dies. Now, Bob is far from a perfect person, but he never killed anybody or cheated on his wife. Because he never had a chance to hear and respond to the gospel, however, he ends up in hell.

Exclusivism is far and away the most common position held among evangelical Christians, and with good reason. Among the three positions, it involves the least amount of “hermeneutical gymnastics” when approaching the relevant scriptural passages (for example, John 14:6; Acts 4:12; 1 Timothy 2:5).

On the opposite end of the spectrum is universalism. In this view, God will ultimately accept everyone into heaven, regardless of their deeds or faith (or lack thereof). Instead of being a relatively decent guy, let’s say that Bob the Mayan gets sick and dies after a wild life of partying and all manner of vice. No problem. God will eventually accept him into heaven, even though he may have to first spend two or three hundred years in hell to atone for his wickedness. As attractive as this may sound, it just isn’t biblical. The Scriptures clearly speak of two categories of people (the saved and the unsaved) and two possible destinies (heaven for the saved, hell for the unsaved).

In between exclusivism and universalism, we find a middle-ground position called inclusivism. In inclusivism, God can save a person on Christ’s merits without that person necessarily knowing anything about Jesus or the Bible (what theologians call special revelation). Rather, God can save people on the basis of their response to what can be learned from nature and reason (theologians call this general revelation). Let’s suppose again that Bob is a relatively decent guy. He recognizes that he (along with everyone else) possesses an internal sense of right and wrong—a conscience—even though he does not know where this comes from. What’s more, for all his life Bob has tried to order his thoughts and actions so as to satisfy the demands of his conscience. When Bob dies, God accepts him into heaven on Christ’s merits, not because he heard and responded to the gospel, but because he responded appropriately “to the light that he had.”

You can see why inclusivism might make our question less challenging. In this view, explicit knowledge of Christ is not an absolute requirement for salvation. For the inclusivist, there is hope that we’ll see people in heaven who died without gospel access. Personally, I hope we will see many such people in heaven.

We must concede, however, that many evangelicals do not consider inclusivism to be a valid biblical position. Beyond that, even most inclusivists lack a high degree of confidence that many people have actually been saved in the way we just considered. This lack of confidence seems justified. After all, why would Christ have given us the Great Commission to evangelize the entire world with the gospel of Christ (including pagan lands) if God could and would save mass numbers of people apart from the gospel message?

Exclusivism, inclusivism, and universalism—these are the three typical approaches held by many. But I cannot bring our discussion to a close without mentioning a fourth possible option that, to my knowledge, doesn’t have a name. It’s a mediating position between exclusivism and inclusivism. It’s really a variation of exclusivism, but one that leans in an inclusivist direction. This fourth position is based on the idea that even though most people become saved as a result of a Christian sharing the gospel of Christ with him or her, there may be some who become saved apart from a human gospel-bearer. Let’s revisit our Mayan friend Bob one last time. Bob lies on his deathbed after having lived a decent life in response to God’s general revelation. God, seeing that Bob has tried to live morally, sends him a gospel vision. Bob responds in belief before he dies, and God accepts him into heaven.

The downside of this view is that we don’t have many stories of this sort of thing happening in the world. There is one notable recent exception, however. I am referring to the “Jesus dream” phenomenon in the Muslim world. Stories of Muslims experiencing dreams and visions of Jesus—or of a white-robed man who sets them along a path that culminates in conversion—have been coming out of the Muslim world for the past several years. I highly recommend Tom Doyle’s book Dreams and Visions: Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World? on the subject. Many would tell you that even when a Muslim experiences a Jesus dream, he or she still requires contact with a Christian in order to know enough to convert. I think most cases validate this. But from what I remember, at least one of the documented stories in Doyle’s book involves a Muslim who received enough information during the Jesus encounter (or encounters) to be converted. If God can do this for Muslims, why could He not do it for anyone at any point in history throughout the world?

So there you have it—the three major ways of thinking about who will and who will not be saved. I hope our discussion has at least got you thinking about our question of “those who have never heard the gospel.” And I believe our modified exclusivism gives us a way to begin releasing some of the tension and still remain firmly planted in orthodox territory.

In my next reflection, I want to make you aware of a couple of frequently-overlooked circumstances that, in my humble opinion, make this bear of a problem into a much smaller animal. Like a coyote. Or a bobcat. Or something.