Is Everyone Else Going to Hell?

How can it be fair to think non-Christians all over the world are going to Hell? After all, many have led decent lives. And they practice the religion of their ancestors, just as many Christians do. Had they been born in the US, they might have been Christians themselves. Had the pope been born in Tibet, he might have been the Dalai Lama. Can it be justice for one’s eternal destiny to hinge the happenstance of birth?

My answer is that while some Christians may think this, no Christian must.

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There are competing views as to how salvation works, and more than one of them respects the core things of Christianity.

Here is one view, what I call the hardcore view: Believing Jesus is Lord is a requirement for going to Heaven.

This view is hardcore, because it would mean that remote people today who have never heard of Jesus are going to Hell. It would mean, indeed, that all non-Christians are going to Hell.

But this is not the only possible view for a Christian to have. Consider the mild view. What saves is not your belief that Christ gave himself, but the fact that He did. Beliefs are psychological states, things in our heads. Facts are states of affairs, things in the world. Beliefs, when true, make us aware of facts. But facts hold even if we're not aware of them. So, that Christ gave himself would be a fact. On the mild view, this fact is what saves, even if you aren’t aware of it.

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This makes it sound like everyone gets saved no matter what, even if they worship Sauron and eat babies and denounce God. But in traditional Christianity, that's mistaken. Christ's sacrifice by itself is not enough. Salvation also requires some response from us. The question is, What?

How about this: The needed response is to know and love and trust the living God.

Here’s the thing. You can know and love and trust someone even if you have many false beliefs about that person.

Consider an analogy. You’re stuck in jail, but every night someone visits you, a cloaked figure who moves in the shadows and speaks to you from under a hood. You converse through the bars of your cell. Over time you come to experience this person’s care for you, and you trust him in turn. Then one day, bright and early, the jailer opens your cell and sets you free.

“Why?” you ask.

“Don’t you know? The warden has paid your debts.”

“But I’ve never even met the warden.”

“Who do you think’s been visiting you all this time?”

You knew the warden even though you did not know his name. You believed in him even though you had few beliefs about him. He paid your debts and set you free, and you did not need to be aware of this in order to be free. You were made free through your relationship with him.

Christians can think of salvation on this model. The Muslim has some false beliefs about God. He calls Him by a false name. He is wrong about Jesus being a mere prophet. But the Muslim may still have encountered the one true God. The same is true of remote peoples and members of other religions.

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This is not pluralism or relativism: It admits that other religions are false to the extent that they conflict with Christianity.

This is not universalism: It admits that some people may go to Hell, for instance, someone who rejects Him no matter how many times God moves in his life. And this view makes no claims about just how many Muslims, Hindus, etc., actually know the one true God. For all the mild view says, many do. Or none do.

Even so, a Christian who holds the mild view doesn’t look out at the world of non-Christians and think “they are all going to Hell!” He thinks, instead, that he cannot know such a thing, because he cannot know the extent to which any given person has come to trust in the one true God.

Of course, a Christian needn’t adopt the mild view either. She needn’t have any specific view at all. She can always say: I reject the hardcore view, but I don’t know which the right view is. I just know there is a Heaven, there is a Hell, and Christ has atoned for my sins. I trust that, however God has set things up, He has done so in the most just and merciful way. Measly finite beings that we are, I don’t expect we’ll get the details any time soon.

Further readings

C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

Keith DeRose, "Universalism and the Bible"

Stephen T. Davis, After We Die