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Scripture is clear on two themes when it comes to salvation: (1) God loves the entire world and wants all people to come into a saving relationship with him (John 3:16; 1 Timothy 2:4, etc.). (2) The way that God has made for humans to be reconciled to God and each other is through the grace expressed in the love and atoning work of Jesus (Ephesians 2:8-9; Acts 4:12; John 14:6; etc.). The intersection of these two biblical themes naturally sets up the question: But what about those people who never have a chance to know about Jesus, or who are presented with a distorted picture of Jesus and his love?
Over the last 2,000 years, Christians have offered several different responses to this question:
- Some Christians, like Augustine and John Calvin, have held to a view called Restrictivism, which claims that if someone doesn’t have the opportunity to hear about Jesus, that simply means they were not among the elect, and they are destined for hell. Woodland strongly rejects this view because it violates what we consider to be the clear teaching of the Bible mentioned above: that God loves the entire world and wants all people to come into a saving relationship with him.
- The Universal Opportunity view claims that God knows which human hearts are open to him, and that he always finds a way to get the message about Jesus to everyone with an open heart. That may mean sending a missionary to them, as in the examples of the book of Acts of Philip being sent to the Ethiopian eunuch, or Peter being sent to Cornelius (Acts 8:26-40 ; Acts 10:1-48 ). Moreover, if necessary, God may even reach out to people through supernatural means, such as communicating through a dream, a vision, an angelic visitation, etc. (e.g., ).
- The Post-mortem Opportunity view claims that all who didn’t have a chance to enter into a relationship with Jesus in this life are given a chance to do so at some point after death. Those who hold this view point to certain scripture passages that seem to suggest such a possibility, including 1 Peter 3:18-20; 1 Peter 4:6; Ephesians 4:8-10; and John 5:25).
- Finally, the Inclusivist view reminds us that when we say people must be saved through Jesus, this is not the same as saying they must know about Jesus in order to be saved. In other words, people can be saved by Jesus without knowing that Jesus is the one who saved them until they meet him in the after-life. All who are saved are saved through Jesus, whether they know it or not, because the disposition of one’s heart, not the content of the brain, determines salvation. By responding to the general revelation of God, people can be saved by Jesus without knowing his name. People who hold this view base their position on passages including Hebrews 11 ; Acts 10:34-35; Luke 12:47-48; 1 Timothy 1:13, and on the fact that all of the Old Testament people of God— like Abraham, Moses and David—were certainly saved but never knew the name of Jesus. Some people think this view undercuts our sense of the importance of evangelism, but this view has been held by a number of great evangelists, such as John Wesley, C. S. Lewis and even Billy Graham.
At Woodland Hills, we don’t teach one view as the absolute right view. We agree that the Restrictivist view does not represent the heart of God, but as to the other three views, each could possibly be true and we should be humble about this very complex question, confident that we can leave the answer up to God’s infinitely wise and loving judgment.
Recommended Resources
- “The Destiny of the Unevangelized” in Across the Spectrum: Understanding Issues in Evangelical Theology by Greg Boyd and Paul Eddy
