The issue of the destiny of the unevangelized is first and foremost a theological conundrum. The problem finds its origin in the common belief that God desires everyone to be saved. Some see this as a straightforward implication of Godās love for humanity. Others point to the scriptural basis for such a claim, including 1 Timothy 2:4, which says that God āwants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truthā and 2 Peter 3:9, which says that God āis patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.ā These passages (and others) make it difficult to make sense of the idea that there are many (probably many millions) who seem to never receive an opportunity to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are, of course many different ways to look at these theological issues and, given some of those, this problem is less pressing. Nevertheless, the destiny of the unevangelized represents a genuine theological dilemma for many ways of thinking about Godās salvific will and human salvation. While theology is front and center in the issue of the destiny of the unevangelized, apologetics is lurking close by. For many, this issue constitutes a serious challenge to central claims of Christianity: the fact that there are some who (apparently) never have an opportunity to respond to the gospel calls into question either Godās love or Godās justice or both. For others, this issue highlights possible contradictions (or at least conundrums) in Scripture. And, last, as is always the case in theological matters, oneās personal experience can intensify the power of this objectionāsuch as when oneās ancestors (apparently) never had an opportunity to hear the gospel, or if oneās child died before they had the capacity to hear and understand the gospel message.
So the problem of the destiny of the unevangelized, simply stated, is the question of how to think salvific possibilities of those who never hear the gospel. But answering this question is anything but simple. Engaging the question of the destiny of the unevangelized forces one to think about the nature of faith, grace, and salvation; Godās will with respect to salvation; beliefs about what happens to people at death; and ultimately the nature of judgment and hell. In other words, the matter of the destiny of the unevangelized is connected with some of the most significant issues in soteriology and eschatology, not to mention some important matters in theology proper, anthropology, pneumatology, and ecclesiology. It is for this reason that I call the destiny of the unevangelized a ātheological nexusāāanswering this question requires networking together a good number of theological answers.
It is the task of this book to explicate and defend a somewhat nontraditional answer to this problem. The task of this chapter is to introduce the problem itself and then introduce the traditional answers to the problem. But first, we need to address an obviously important question.
WHO ARE THE UNEVANGELIZED?
This is not a pro forma introductory question, for oneās belief as to who is, in fact, unevangelized has the power to shape their answer to this question, or at least shape their sense of what sorts of answers are possible/impossible or likely/unlikely. For the purposes of concreteness, I will offer a trio of case studies, each of which presses the issue of the problem of the destiny of the unevangelized in a slightly different way.
George. The first category of āunevangelizedā are those who never hear the gospel because of geographic or temporal isolation from anyone who could tell them about Jesus. Take for example, a denizen of Upper Mongolia in the ninth century BCE; letās call him George. George exists prior to Jesus and in a part of the world where he will not have access to the special revelation given to the nation of Israel. This does not mean, of course, that George does not receive any revelation. According to Romans 1:20, which says that God has made his essential nature known through his creation, all people, including George, receive general revelation. What is hotly debated is whether general revelation alone can be salvific. For instance, even if George walks out of his hut, looks up at the night sky, and is struck with awe by the majesty and power of Godās creation and on the basis of that experience chooses to faithfully trust the ācreator of the stars,ā some will say that he cannot be saved, because he has not heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. In other words, people like George are referred to as āunevangelizedā because (it seems) they have been given only general revelation, and general revelation (it is claimed by some) is insufficient for salvation.
There are undoubtedly many āGeorges,ā but the exact number can only be guessed at, and guesses vary widely depending on oneās view of human origins. (Do all humans come from two specially and recently created human beings? If not, are only āmodernā humans to be counted or do we include various other speciesāNeanderthals, for instanceāwith whom modern humans interbred?) Nonetheless, it is plausible that there were hundreds of millions of people who lived before Christ and had no access to the special revelation given to Israel. To that number, we must add those who have lived since the time of Christ, but have never heard his gospel. This number is also up for debate, but since there were approximately 310 million people in 1000 CE,2 and only an estimated 50 million Christians,3 it would not be unreasonable to say that there have been tens of billions of people (and maybe a lot more) who have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Baby Anna. The second category of āunevangelizedā are those who, at the time of death, lack the cognitive capacity to grasp the gospel message. Consider the example of an infant named Anna, who dies at the age of six months.4 Obviously, Anna died well before developing the intellectual capacities to understand and respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ. How should we think about the salvation of babies like Anna?5 Unfortunately, Scripture is not as helpful on this matter as we might wish. Despite the fact that the word infant (in its various forms) occurs nearly one thousand times, there is not a single scriptural text that directly speaks to the salvific status of infants who die before developing the capacity to understand the gospel.6
Nonetheless, placing infants in the same category, soteriologically speaking, as George is controversial. Even if it we grant that Scripture does not speak clearly to the salvific status of those who die in infancy, it is undeniable that, throughout history, there have been a range of ways Christian theologians have dealt with the problem of infant salvation.
Age of accountability. One common solution is to claim that since infants do not have any personal guilt (that is, guilt associated with their own conscious, intentional sin), they do not need faith until they reach what is called the age of accountability. There is no reason, of course, to think that the age of accountability can be specified precisely or is even the same for all children.7 But, however the idea of the age of accountability is understood, it is pretty clear that there are many who die before being able to understand the gospel. Defenders of the age of accountability have used a number of scriptural texts. Jesusā words in Matthew 19:14, āLet the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as theseā is commonly cited in this context, as is Matthew 18:3 and parallels: āTruly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.ā But perhaps the most significant text is Davidās words to his deceased infant son: āI will go to him, but he will not return to meā (2 Sam 12:23). The hopefulness of Davidās words, especially considered in juxtaposition to the lack of hope in Davidās words following the death of his adult son Absalom (2 Sam 18:33), has been taken to teach that infants are saved despite their inability to hear and respond to the gospel.8 The assumption here is that (1) as a āman after [Godās] own heartā (1 Sam 13:14; Acts 13:22), David is of course saved and (2) therefore, āI will go to himā should be understood as āthe infant is already in heaven and David will be reunited with him there.ā The problem with this assumption is that it projects a New Testament understanding of death and the afterlife onto the Old Testament, and the Old Testament is shockingly silent on specifics about the reality of the postmortem world, and salvation in the Old Testament was understood primarily in this-worldly terms. This leads to the following question: If someone would have asked David, āWhere is your child now?ā would he have said āheavenā? On the fairly reasonable assumption that Davidās views reflected the personal eschatology in the Old Testament, David would have likely believed that his son was in Sheol, the place of the dead. Consequently, his statement āI will go to himā was plausibly simply a statement that David, like his son, would someday die.9
In addition, the problem with the age of accountability position on infant salvation is that it does not seem to fit well with the affirmation of original sin. The essence of the doctrine of original sin is that even though infants have not yet chosen to sin, they still have a sin nature that separates them from God. They are, in other words, not in the same boat, spiritually speaking, as Adam and Eve prior to their sin. Now there are complexities here and variations of the doctrine of original sin that begin to speak to this problem, but for our purposes it is sufficient to note that the matter of original sin is a potential barrier to the simple affirmation that infants who die prior to the reaching the age of accountability are saved.10
Baptismal regeneration. A second common solution to the problem of infant salvation is to affirm that infant baptism removes the stain of original sin and therefore, if an infant who has received the sacrament of baptism dies, they are understood as part of Godās covenant people. Jesusā words to Nicodemus in John 3:5, āNo one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit,ā have been taken as supporti...
