One of the most frequent challenges to Christianity is to ask how it is that people can be sent to hell simply for not hearing about Christ. But even if this were true, it must be stated that no one is sent to hell; they choose it. And God would never send the just to hell, only the unjust; no one is sent to hell for not hearing the Bible, only for sinning against a holy God. Yet, despite what many evangelicals declare, there is more to be said. The Bible does not say people will go to hell for not hearing the gospel message. They will be judged separately. Let’s have a look.
The Bible says that those who have never heard of Jesus will be judged differently than those who have heard the gospel. God will judge them based on their response to His self-revelation in nature and their conscience.
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world (Psalm 19:1-41).
The Bible states that all mankind can know there is a creator and right and wrong based on nature and what God has made, including the human soul and conscience – He has placed His moral law in the hearts of all people, making them morally accountable to Him (Romans 1:18-20; 2:14-15). In his letter to the Romans Paul says those who respond to God through their conscience will be saved (Romans 2:7), and goes on to write:
Some people do not know God’s law when they sin. They will not be judged by the law when they die. Others do know God’s law when they sin. They will be judged by the law. Hearing the law does not make a person right with God. People are considered to be right with God only when they obey the law. Gentiles do not have the law. Sometimes they just naturally do what the law requires. They are a law for themselves. This is true even though they don’t have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts. The way their minds judge them proves this fact. Sometimes their thoughts find them guilty. At other times their thoughts find them not guilty. This will happen on the day God appoints Jesus Christ to judge people’s secret thoughts.-Romans 2:13-162
The evangelical may object, citing clear passages that state no one is saved outside of Jesus, and that is true. However, just because salvation is found in Christ alone does not mean it is limited only to those who have heard of Him, as Paul pointed out. For example, a person can be saved from an illness by a medicine created by a man they have never heard of or seen. They may even receive the medicine while unconscious, yet they are still saved and remain alive regardless.
Consider those who lived before Christ, before His death on the cross, and before “the gospel” was preached by any modern evangelicals. Like all people, they lacked full knowledge, especially regarding Christ and the Gospel. However, Hebrews 11 mentions numerous examples of Old Testament “saints” who were saved and explains how they were saved. They did not accept the Gospel message as we know it today, but they demonstrated their trust and faith in God through their actions, which led to their eternal life.
These individuals were saved “by faith,” based on what God had revealed to them or what they understood about Him. Although they lacked full knowledge, they did possess faith in God. Further. Colossians chapter 1, verse 23 states that the gospel has already been preached to every living creature.
We, who have heard the Gospel and understand God’s plan for salvation, should recognize that God saved the world through Jesus’ death on the cross for those who have faith. If we have faith in God—as the Old Testament saints did—then, like them, we would believe the Gospel and respond positively. Ultimately, what matters is not knowledge but faith.
Romans also informs us that anyone who would be saved will be saved, and anyone who seeks after God will find him (also see Revelation 3:20 and Matthew 7:7). There is no guarantee they will come to full knowledge—even Paul lacked that—but they will encounter the living God, respond to Him, and be judged by that response. As is stated in Isaiah 52:15 “For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand.”3
Therefore, as much as it might negatively impact certain church fundraising missions, no one is “lost” simply for not hearing about Jesus. So it does not matter where someone is born, as everyone willing will be saved. God knows who will accept Him by their reaction to nature and their consciousness.
Additionally, no one is held accountable for sins they are unaware of; without knowledge of the law, they are considered guiltless (Romans 4:15, 5:13; John 15:22, 9:41). However, the law that is written on the hearts and consciences of individuals renders all of us guilty. But once more, it is not the hearing, or the theology, that makes the difference between the saved and the lost.
Paul argues with the Jews in Romans chapter 3, saying how can the law save? Is God, God only to those that have the law? If salvation comes by hearing and obeying, either a gospel message or the law, then God’s salvation is indeed limited., and God is the God of “only” some, not all of humanity. Thus salvation is by faith.
For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith (Romans 3 28-304).
In A.D. 150 the famed Saint Justin Martyr in his defense of Christianity wrote, “Those who lived reasonably are Christians even though they have been thought atheists.” He was not saying, nor was Paul, that works will save anyone. Only that those works demonstrate they have faith in God and are responding to his incomplete revelations. In The Drama of Salvation, speaking of those who have never heard of Christ, Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin wrote, “People in these cases, can be saved if they otherwise respond to the grace that they have been given.” And in Mere Christianity C.S Lewis wrote:
There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. For example, a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though he might still say he believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain other points. Many of the good Pagans long before Christ’s birth may have been in this position.
According to world-famous evangelist Billy Graham, people can love or know Jesus without being conscious of it. If unbelievers who do not know the name of Jesus turn to the “only light they have” they are going to be in heaven:
I think that everybody that loves or knows Christ, whether they are conscious of it or not, they are members of the body of Christ. . .. [God] is calling people out of the world for his name, whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world or the non-believing world, they are members of the Body of Christ because they have been called by God. They may not know the name of Jesus but they know in their hearts that they need something they do not have, and they turn to the only light they have, and I think that they are saved and they are going to be with us in heaven (Billy Graham).
The Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination today and throughout history- and the Church’s official stance agrees:
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 (Lumen Gentium 16).
…though God in ways known to Himself can lead those inculpably ignorant of the Gospel to find that faith without which it is impossible to please Him (Heb. 11:6), yet a necessity lies upon the Church (1 Cor. 9:16), and at the same time a sacred duty, to preach the Gospel (Ad Gentes, 7).
Do all Old Testament Pagans all go to Hell?
The possible salvation of a heretic, a Jew or a pagan is not only a theological ‘view,’ but definitely Catholic doctrine…According to Catholic theology it is, therefore, quite possible that John Hus’ soul went straight to heaven after his death at the stake, provided he sincerely believed in his own views, however erroneous. The Augustinian dictum (In psalm. cvi. 14): ‘How many who do not belong to us are really inside, how many of our own people are actually outside [the Church],’ has at all times been accepted by the Catholic Church (Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Liberty or Equality: The Challenge of our Times).
The Bible indicates that those who are without the law of God are not judged in the same way as the Jews, and therefore, they are considered guiltless in a certain sense (Acts 17:22-30; Romans 4:13-16, 5:13). After the resurrection, Jesus preached the gospel to those who had died in Old Testament times and were in Sheol, waiting for eternal judgment. They were not judged based on their earthly lives as Jews were who had knowledge of God (and yet, not “the Gospel”) and received a direct sermon on salvation from Jesus Himself. How they react to that message determines their eternal destination.
They will give an account to the One who stands ready to judge the living and the dead. For this reason the gospel was also preached to those who are now dead, so that, although they might be judged by men in the fleshly realm, they might live by God in the spiritual realm (1 Peter 4:5-6).
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring you to God, after being put to death in the fleshly realm but made alive in the spiritual realm. In that state He also went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison who in the past were disobedient, when God patiently waited in the days of Noah while an ark was being prepared. In it a few—that is, eight people —were saved through water (1 Peter 3:18-205).
What About Children?
What about children who have committed no sin, encounter no law, and have never heard of Jesus? Most Christians declare babies who die young go straight to heaven (Deuteronomy 1:39 Numbers 14:29-31, Romans 5:13, 7:9).
In Second Samuel 12, King David prayed to God to spare his son for the heinous crime he committed because he desired to see and be with his son. Yet, the infant was not spared, and in response, David says, “But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I’ll go to him, but he will never return to me.”6 David concluded that he must also go to heaven in order to see his child- already in heaven.
Conclusion
The modern evangelical salvation message and techniques arose in America in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is not the standard for salvation throughout history but a modern interpretation of scripture that is a late arrival on the scene. Despite what some will suggest, people from every nation and tongue, and even (mentally and practicing) religions, will be in heaven; Jesus did not open the gates to only “Bible-believing” Churches in modern times. And I, for one, look forward to spending eternity with people from various denominations who differ from me and realize it is not my theology nor theirs that saves, but Christ alone.
Featured: The Harrowing of Hell, St. Swithun Psalter/Winchester Psalter (12th century).
