Will I Really Go To Hell?
TL;DR (Key Points):
- Exclusivism: Claims that explicit faith in Jesus Christ is the only path to salvation.
- Inclusivism: Argues that Christ is the only way to salvation, but God’s grace may reach those who haven’t heard the Gospel.
- Karl Rahner: Popularized concept of “anonymous Christians” broadened inclusivist thinking.
- Clark Pinnock: Advocated for a more open view of salvation, emphasizing God’s love and fairness.
- Church Teaching: Lumen Gentium (Vatican II) acknowledges the possibility of salvation for non-Christians.
- Core Debate: Balancing God’s justice (truth in Christ) with His mercy (openness to those who haven’t heard).
- Conclusion: The discussion reflects deeper questions about the nature of God, salvation, and the reach of divine grace.
Most Christians I know believe that if you’ve heard the Gospel and rejected it, you’d go to hell. For many, disbelieving or simply being unconvinced is congruent with rejecting salvation. This leads to an interesting dilemma. If people who hear the Gospel and “reject” it receive eternal damnation, what happens to those who never heard it in the first place? And what about those who are simply unconvinced, even when they want to believe? Thoughts like these centre around questions like whether salvation is truly open for all; whether everyone truly gets an equal chance to be saved; and whether someone can still accept the gift of salvation without actually believing the Gospel. As we’ll see, believers have different views and answers to all these questions.
Exclusivism
Imagine an indigenous tribe off the coast of Antarctica. Their people have survived on a single frozen island for generations and haven’t shared a common ancestor with most of humanity for centuries. Their language has not been heard by any other civilization since before the age of explorers. Due to being so isolated, the tribe has no books or written history that records their past.
Then one day, a giant, shiny beast breathing smoke appears on the horizon. It doesn’t look like a whale, or anything they’ve ever seen. Smaller boats come rushing at a blazing speed toward the island, with the sound of 100 sea lions screeching in the wind, moving faster than the quickest penguins or sharpest orcas. Focusing on the backs of the smaller beasts, they strain their eyes in the blinding light bouncing off the frost to see…people. These speeding white vessels with miniature stars for eyes are carrying other human beings, with flesh and bone and skin like their own. The tribes watches in awe as these boats without sails draw to a stop on the shore and the people dismount. The strangers start waving, beaconing for the gathering community to approach. They offer food, gifts, clothes, and medicine.
As time goes on, these strange men learn the local language, and the tribe learns theirs. The strange men show the tribe wonders beyond their wildest imaginations, like shiny rocks that can talk to people far away and sleighs that pull themselves. They begin to tell of a powerful God, more powerful than anything that has ever existed. One who created the stars, the sun that doesn’t set, the ice, and water. They say that this God, who created everything, gave humans the power to create as well. This God, they say, formed everyone in their mother’s womb and has a plan for their life. If one believes in him, they will live forever in paradise. If one does not, they will burn in eternal hellfire. Confused, the tribe recounts their traditions about humanity arising from the permafrost. How can there be a place with eternal fire? How can people live forever if these strange men can still die? One thing is for sure — either the strange men are wrong about God, or the tribe is. Indignantly, the tribe concludes that the strangers must be mistaken.
For many Christians today, those in the tribe who are not convinced by the strangers’ stories have chosen to disbelieve, thus rejecting God’s gift of salvation. They would say that rejecting salvation means you have chosen to live without God, and the consequence of that unbelief is eternal punishment. This view is known as exclusivism. Here’s an excerpt from GotQuestions that defines exclusivism broadly:
“Exclusivism” or “restrictivism” is the traditional evangelical Christian view dealing with the salvation of non-Christians. This is the view that a sinner can only be saved by a conscious, explicit faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Exclusivists appeal to multiple scriptures to support their view, including John 14:6; John 3:16–18; and Romans 10:13–15.
The idea here is that since one can only be saved by consciously and intentionally accepting Jesus’ sacrifice, it is impossible to attain salvation by simply being a good person. As long as you’ve heard the Gospel, and you still don’t believe it, you will receive eternal damnation. Yikes.
Now, to be clear, as GotQuestions has outlined, this might not include people who have never heard of Christianity (like our charming indigenous tribe from Antarctica), children, or people with severe mental disabilities. They point to passages such as 2 Samuel 12:23, which insinuates that David’s infant who died as a punishment for his infidelity went to heaven. Or Isaiah 7:15, which suggests that there is an age when children don’t know right from wrong.
Exclusivism is not without its flaws, though. For starters, one could argue that the passage in 2 Samuel 12:23 does not claim that David’s child went to heaven, but rather that the infant would go to the same place David would go. In fact, some Old Testament authors seem quite uncertain about the afterlife overall. Consider Ecclesiastes 3:21-22:
21 Who knows whether the human spirit goes upward and the spirit of animals goes downward to the earth? 22 So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot; who can bring them to see what will be after them?
— Ecclesiastes 3:21-22 (NRSVUE)
One can also claim that lacking the knowledge of good and evil does not absolve a person from divine punishment, which undermines the idea that infants and other “innocents” are exempt from eternal punishment. Hypothetically, if Adam and Eve didn’t know good from evil when they disobeyed God, they cannot have known that disobedience was a bad thing and hence should not have been punished. Since they were punished, however, it would follow that creatures without a concept of good and evil can also be punished. For instance, animals are held accountable for murder, even though they might not be recognised as moral agents. Genesis 9:5 and Exodus 21:28 demonstrate this.
5For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human life.
— Genesis 9:5 (NRSVUE)
28 “When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall not be liable.”
— Exodus 21:28 (NRSVUE)
Finally, exclusivism is heavily criticized because it paints a picture of an unjust and wrathful God, which is why some Christians turn to inclusivism.
Inclusivism
Imagine a world where that indigenous tribe from Antarctica wouldn’t have to go to hell, even after they already heard the Gospel. This view, aptly labeled inclusivism, has been defended by many Christian thought-leaders, including Justin Martyr, Karl Rahner, Clark Pinnock, and even the Second Vatican Council. In fact, inclusivism became quite popular over the course of the 20th century.
In November 1964, the Second Vatican Council convened by Pope Paul VI, changed centuries of Christian tradition to affirm a more inclusivist approach to Christianity. The Catholic bishops voted to not only establish religious freedom in Catholic-majority nations, but to also affirm the possible salvation of non-believers. Here’s an excerpt from one the council’s official documents, Lumen Gentium:
…it is He who gives to all men life and breath and all things, and as Saviour wills that all men be saved. Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel.
— Lumen Gentium, Paragraph 16 (1964)
About a decade later, Karl Rahner popularized the idea of the “anonymous Christian”. In his book Foundations of Christian Faith, Rahner distinguishes between implicit Christianity and anonymous Christianity. Here’s how he puts it:
We come now to what is most specifically Christian in Christianity, Jesus Christ…that there is also an “anonymous Christianity.” …There can be no doubt that someone who has no concrete, historical contact with the explicit preaching of Christianity can nevertheless be a justified person who lives in the grace of C hrist. He then possesses God’s supernatural self-communication in grace not only as an offer, not only as an existential of his existence; he has also accepted this offer and so he has really accepted what is essential in what Christianity wants to mediate to him: his salvation in that grace which objectively is the grace of Jesus Christ. But it still remains true…only someone who explicitly professes in faith and in baptism that Jesus is the Christ is a Christian in the historical and reflexive dimension of God’s transcendental self-communication.
— Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith (1978)
In this passage, Rahner reiterates the Catholic position on people who have never heard the Gospel. Later in his book, he extends this to people who haven’t quite had a complete encounter with Jesus:
We have had to emphasize very frequently in the course of our reflections that there…has to be an anonymous and yet real relationship between the individual person and…Jesus Christ, in someone who has not yet had the whole, concrete, historical, explicit and reflexive experience in word and sacrament of this reality of salvation history.
— Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith (1978)
When I first read this, I thought Rahner was paying homage to that passage in the book of Acts, where Paul simply defines a popular “unknown God” as the Christian God. But Rahner isn’t just saying that someone who hasn’t encountered Christ can receive salvation. He’s claiming that someone who doesn’t know Christ can and indeed might already have a real relationship with Him! If that’s not bold, I’m not sure what is.
In his book A Wideness in God’s Mercy, Clark Pinnock defines inclusivism like this:
By “inclusivism” I refer to the view upholding Christ as the Savior of humanity but also affirming God’s saving presence in the wider world and in other religions…Using such terms, one could say that my proposal is exclusivist in affirming a decisive redemption in Jesus Christ, although it does not deny the possible salvation of non-Christian people. Similarly, it could be called inclusivist in refusing to limit the grace of God to the confines of the church, although it hesitates to regard other religions as salvific vehicles in their own right. It might even be called pluralist insofar as it acknowledges God’s gracious work in the lives of human beings everywhere and accepts real differences in what they believe, though not pluralist in the sense of eliminating the finality of Christ or falling into relativism.
— Clark Pinnock, A Wideness in God’s Mercy (1992)
Pinnock builds his arguments on general revelation, the Pauline idea that God has made himself known through creation.
20Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been seen and understood through the things God has made. So they are without excuse.
— Romans 1:20 (NRSVUE)
While most believers use this passage in Romans 1:20 to affirm exclusivism, Pinnock takes a different approach. He claims that God has made himself obvious to everyone through nature in order to maximize salvation. Through Christ’s sacrifice, all of humanity gets a chance at salvation, even when they don’t explicitly believe in Christ himself. Pinnock advocates for a kind of judgement via moral law, a view that has sparked controversy in evangelical circles.
Naturally, inclusivism has its criticisms. As pointed out by GotQuestions.org, it does not lend itself to a plain reading of the Bible or the Gospels. Paul makes it quite clear that salvation is through faith in Christ alone. Not to mention, inclusivism blurs the lines between Christian tradition and other doctrines that some consider heresy, such as universalism and open theism. Additionally, critics argue that inclusivism disincentivizes evangelism for Christians, since it could affect non-believers’ chances of being redeemed.
Conclusion
I’m sure most of us, especially Christians, can see why this all matters. If salvation doesn’t require actual belief in Christ, or even the existence of God, then anyone can be saved. And if telling your neighbor about Jesus could mean that they go to hell, you may not want to do so. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, the point of discussions like these is to remind us that no one has a monopoly on truth, no matter how certain they feel about their ideas (we haven’t even talked about pluralism yet). This uncertainty should keep us humble and willing to learn from those around us. Like that one wise dude said
Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
— Proverbs 16:18 (NRSVUE)
Citations
GotQuestions Ministries. (n.d.). Inclusivism vs. exclusivism—what does the Bible say? GotQuestions. https://www.gotquestions.org/inclusivism-exclusivism.html
Pinnock, C. H. (1992). A wideness in God’s mercy: The finality of Jesus Christ in a world of religions. Zondervan.
Rahner, K. (1978). Foundations of Christian faith: An introduction to the idea of Christianity (W. V. Dych, Trans.). Crossroad.
Second Vatican Council. (1964). Lumen gentium [Dogmatic constitution on the Church]. Vatican website. https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html
Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Clark Pinnock. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Pinnock
Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Justin Martyr. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Martyr
Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Karl Rahner. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Rahner
