Why would God send people to hell just because they haven’t heard about Jesus?
In a recent post, I presented three questions I’ve heard young people ask–people who think highly of Jesus and even seem to want to become Christians and follow Him, but worry they can’t without sacrificing their rationality, their decency, or both.
I addressed the first question in my last two posts. Here is the second question:
Question 2: Why would God send people to hell just because they haven’t heard about Jesus?
(I’ve also heard some related questions, such as Why would God send anyone to hell? and Why would a loving God send me to hell just because I’m not convinced Christianity is true?)
A proper look at this issue requires a lot more than a blog post. But I can explain, rather briefly, one reason people who worry about this issue don’t need to worry. That reason is that Christian theology doesn’t necessarily say that the people they’re concerned about–the ones who live and die without hearing the Gospel properly explained–are all going to hell.
There are different views on this sort of thing within the area of soteriology (the study of salvation). Here are two of the generic views:
Exclusivism: This is the view that there is one way to be saved, Jesus Christ, and that only those who follow Christ in this life will be saved.
Inclusivism: This is the view that there is one way to be saved, Jesus Christ, but that some who do not follow Christ in this life will nonetheless be saved through Him.
Obviously according to Inclusivism it is not the case that everyone who hasn’t heard about Jesus goes to hell. This is the view of C. S. Lewis as well as the official stance of the Roman Catholic Church. So you can be a Christian and not even bother asking the question!
Different versions of Exclusivism are outlined in a very good little book by Robert Wittmer. One of these versions is Soft Exclusivism, the view that, to anyone who responds properly to general revelation (the sort of revelation Paul talks about in Romans 1), God will give sufficient special revelation (the sort of revelation God gives through Jesus, an aposle, or a prophet) to be saved. Now a Soft Exclusivist can be an optimist or a pessimist. An Optimistic Soft Exclusivist thinks this actually happens sometimes; a Pessimistic Soft Exclusivist thinks it never happens. Wittmer himself is a Pessimistic Soft Exclusivist. My old theology teacher William E. Bell, is an Optimistic Soft Exclusivist, and even thinks there is some, admittedly ambiguous, biblical evidence for this view.
Obviously, if Optimistic Soft Exclusivism is correct, then Question 2 is not a big deal: People don’t go to hell just for not hearing about Jesus. People who respond to God’s general revelation properly will hear enough about Jesus to be saved, and there are some such people.
To sum up: There are orthodox views in Christianity that implicitly deny there is even any need to ask Question 2!
To sum up my last three posts:
There are three big questions that keep people away from Christianity.
Question 1 is: Can I be a Christian and still believe in evolution? And the answer is: Yes. (But you don’t have to.)
Question 2 is: Why would God send people to hell just because they haven’t heard about Jesus? Maybe the best answer to this is another question: Who says God does?
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About The Author
Dr. Mark J. Boone
Dr. Mark J. Boone is a teacher and researcher in philosophy, especially the history of philosophy, primarily the ancient and medieval eras, writing his dissertation on Saint Augustine. Dr. Boone is the Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Forman Christian College. Mark is an occasional book reviewer for the journal Augustinian Studies and has written articles dealing with Plato, William James, theology and the arts, and religious epistemology. In some of his precious little spare time Mark makes animated cartoons based on famous speeches and dialogues in the history of philosophy, available on YouTube and Vimeo under the username TeacherofPhilosophy.
This question misses the point. People who go to hell to go “just because they don’t believe in Jesus.”
People who go to hell go because they, like everyone, are sinners. They have committed cosmic treason and they justly deserve the eternal punishment they get.
An understanding of the question that doesn’t start with God’s perfect justice misses the point.
A more appropriate way the ask the heart of what this question is getting at, is “Since we all deserve hell, why does God save some people and allow them into heaven.” The answer of course is the gospel. But to posit the question from the angle that assumes not trusting Jesus and going to hell are the non-typical scenario, completely ignores the reality that since the fall, the default nature of all people is evil and not deserving of heaven.
Quite right, Jon: I did not pursue this angle in my post, but the question itself is a misunderstanding of Christian theology.
See I have always had a hard time accepting the fact that people are evil. I get that we are tainted with original sin and this does put a flaw on us (we can never be perfect) but I don’t think that we, humans, should be considered evil for it. I do not know the Bible as well as I probably should but does the Bible say all humans are evil? I have had numerous people touch my life in such special and magical ways that I cannot say they are evil. Yes, everyone makes mistakes but does this make us evil?
Hi Kelsie. Good question. This is something that Christians disagree about, so the best thing may be to look into it and see what you think. For my part, I’m with you. I would disagree with Jon that the default nature of people is evil. Quite the opposite. The primary nature of people is our first nature–in the beginning, we were created in the image of God, the image of Goodness himself! (See Genesis 1:26-27.)
With sin that good nature was indeed tainted–a good word for it. Evil cannot be basic; it cannot be prime. Evil does not exist on its own but leeches on good; an evil thing is a good thing that’s been twisted, a distorted, disfigured image. (This is actually worse than “pure evil” by default. It’s much more devastating.)
But the taint goes deep. It dapples everything, giving us a dual nature where evil ever lurks. I know this is true of my own heart. No matter how much I try, evil creeps in, in my thoughts and motives–I can never fully escape it. And I can never be whole. Things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be; not just with me, but with the world! And humans can’t fix it. Because everything we do is… tainted. All our best efforts fall short–programs to aid the poor, the justice system, modern medicine…
Only God, the Untainted One, can wipe out the blot of sin and evil completely. One day he will right every wrong; he will rescue us from the sin we brought into this world and carry in our hearts. He began the rescue with Jesus, and one day he will finish it! But he will never force us to come to him to be made untainted and whole. We must choose.
Right now God is waiting, waiting, waiting for us to choose wholeness, to choose him. Patiently he waits. But he can’t wait forever; evil won’t go away on it’s own or by our tainted efforts. One day God will break through to utterly and completely destroy all evil. But for Christ’s covering—”Christ, who had never experienced sin, became sin for us so that in Him we might embody the very righteousness of God”(2 Cor. 5:21)—this would certainly include me, for though there is good in me by God’s hand, there is evil in my by mine.