Who Goes to Hell?A Question Christians Answer Too Easily
Yesterday, I was watching YouTube.
A gentleman named MacArthur was taking questions about Christianity. Now, I like him. I respect him. I listen to him because he frequently criticizes the prosperity gospel, among other things.
An elderly gentleman stood up to ask a question. He said he had been Catholic for about seventy-five years. And he asked something very simple:
What happens to everybody else?
What happens to the Buddhist? The Muslim? The Hindu? The follower of Confucius? The African traditional religionist? Do they go to heaven?
I don’t think this man was asking an abstract theological question. I think he had somebody in mind. Maybe a friend. Maybe a neighbour. Maybe someone he loved. Maybe someone in his own family.
Because people rarely ask questions about hell merely out of curiosity. Sometimes, when somebody asks, “Can a Hindu go to heaven?” what they are really asking is: “What happens to my father?”
And MacArthur answered immediately. No hesitation. No reflection.
Here’s what he said:
“The answer to that from the Word of God is, they will all perish in hell because there is only one way to go to heaven.
There is no salvation in any other name than the name of Jesus Christ.”
Then he pivoted:
“Jesus said, ‘You will die in your sins’ to the Jewish leaders because you believe not on me.
There’s only one heaven, and there’s only one way into heaven....
It doesn’t matter how many times you went to church. It doesn’t matter how many humanly good deeds you did. It doesn’t matter how many times you took the Mass, for example, in a Catholic situation.”
I turned to my wife and said: “First, he hasn’t answered the question. And secondly, it’s not true.”
Now, before somebody throws a Bible at me...
I did not mean the Scripture wasn’t true. I meant the conclusion wasn’t necessarily true. Or, more precisely: The Scripture cited does not necessarily justify the conclusion being drawn from it.
And that distinction matters.
LAZY THEOLOGY
The following morning, I was trying to pray. I say trying because my mind had other plans. It wandered straight back to that conversation. And I began thinking about something I call:
Lazy theology.
Lazy theology is not necessarily theology without Scripture. Sometimes lazy theology has plenty of Scripture. Lazy theology is what happens when we use Scripture to avoid thinking.
A difficult question appears. We don’t wrestle with it. We don’t examine the rest of Scripture. We don’t consider two thousand years of Christian thought. We don’t ask what our answer says about the justice of God. Or the mercy of God. Or the character of God.
We just reach for a verse.
Bang!
Game over. Everybody goes to hell. Next question?
But is that theology?
LET ME ASK YOU A QUESTION
Forget Buddhism. Forget Islam. Forget Hinduism.
Let’s make this much simpler.
Imagine a man living somewhere in Africa one thousand years ago. He is born in a small village. He grows up there. He marries. He raises his children.
He is kind. He rejects unkindness. He cares for his elderly parents. He rejects selfishness. He shares his food with his neighbours. He embraces love. When families quarrel, he tries to make peace.
And the Bible calls the peacemaker blessed and “a son of God.” (Matthew 5:9)
Then one day, he dies.
According to this lazy theology:
He goes to hell.
There is only one problem.
Nobody ever told him about Jesus. He never saw a Bible. He never entered a church. He never met a missionary. He never heard the word Christianity. He never heard the name Jesus Christ.
So let me ask you: Did he reject Christ?
What exactly did this man reject?
Hmmmm...
Let’s think about that for a minute.
He rejected cruelty. He rejected selfishness. He embraced generosity. He made peace.
I am not saying these things earned him salvation. That is not my argument. My question is much simpler:
How did he consciously reject someone he had never heard of?
Are we seriously suggesting that God created this man, placed him somewhere the Gospel had not reached, allowed him to live and die without ever hearing the name of Christ... and then condemned him eternally for failing to become Christian?
Something is wrong with that picture.
And I don’t think Christianity requires us to believe it.
SOCRATES HAD A PROBLEM
Let’s take another example. Socrates.
Socrates died about four hundred years before Christ. So what exactly was Socrates supposed to do? Become Christian? There were no Christians. Read the New Testament? It hadn’t been written. Go to church? There wasn’t one. Get baptised? Into what?
You see the problem.
And Christians have actually wrestled with versions of this question for centuries. It is sometimes described as the problem of the virtuous pagan: What happens to the person who sincerely seeks truth and goodness but, through circumstances entirely beyond his control, never encounters Christianity?
That is a serious theological question. And serious questions deserve more than reflex answers.
CHRIST IS STILL THE WAY
Now somebody will say: “But Jesus said, I am the way.”
Yes. He did. And I believe Him.
Christ is the Way. Christ is the Truth. Christ is the Life.
Christianity does not require us to abandon John 14:6 to address this problem. We simply need to ask a more careful question.
There are actually two propositions here:
1. All salvation comes through Christ.
2. Only people who explicitly knew about Christ during their earthly lives can be saved by Christ.
Those statements sound similar. But they are not identical.
And this is one of those areas where I find Catholic theology extraordinarily thoughtful.
The Catholic Church does not teach that all religions are equally true. It does not teach that Jesus is merely one road among many. And it certainly does not teach that everybody automatically goes to heaven.
What it says is considerably more subtle.
The Second Vatican Council speaks of those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and strive, under the influence of grace, to follow His will as they understand it through conscience.
Such people may attain eternal salvation.
Through Christ. Through grace.
Not because Christ doesn’t matter. But precisely because Christ does.
And because Christ’s ability to save is not limited by our ability to evangelise.
That is an enormous distinction.
GOD KNOWS SOMETHING YOU DON’T
And this brings me to what I think is the heart of the matter.
God knows something about every human being that you and I can never completely know. God knows what opportunities that person actually had. He knows what they were taught. He knows what they were never taught. He knows what they understood. He knows what they misunderstood. He knows their upbringing. He knows their circumstances. He knows their conscience. He knows the light available to them. And He knows what they did with that light.
We don’t.
Yet sometimes Christians speak with astonishing confidence.
Buddhist? Hell. Muslim? Hell. Hindu? Hell. African traditional religionist? Hell.
Billions of human beings. Thousands of cultures. Thousands of years of human history.
Judgment completed in five seconds.
Doesn’t that strike you as presumptuous?
PERHAPS WE HAVE MISUNDERSTOOD JOHN 14:6
“No one comes to the Father except through me.”
“No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Absolutely.
But notice what Jesus did not say. He did not say: “And therefore, you now possess sufficient information to determine the eternal destination of every human being who has ever lived.”
We don’t. God does.
And perhaps that is where humility should enter theology.
I can proclaim Christ without pretending that I know everything Christ will do. I can believe that salvation comes through Christ while admitting that Christ may save people in ways I do not understand. I can urgently preach the Gospel without turning salvation into geography:
Born here? Heaven. Born there? Hell. Born in Rome? Lucky you.
Born in some remote village centuries before the missionary arrived? Sorry. Wrong century. Wrong continent. Eternal consequences.
That cannot possibly be the whole story.
THE QUESTION BEHIND THE QUESTION
And so I found myself thinking again about that elderly gentleman. Seventy-five years Catholic. Standing there asking: “What about the Hindu, the Muslim or the Buddhist?”
Maybe he wasn’t really asking about Hinduism. Or Islam. Or Buddhism.
Maybe somewhere in his life there is somebody he loves. Somebody good. Somebody kind. Somebody who does not call himself Christian.
And perhaps what he really wanted to know was:
“Is there hope for him?”
I would never presume to answer for God. But neither would I presume to close a door that God Himself may have left open.
Christ is the Judge.
Not me. Not MacArthur. Not you.
And that, strangely enough, should be extraordinarily comforting.
Because the final judgment of every human life belongs not to us, but to the One who knows the whole story.
The Omniscient One who knows: Every circumstance. Every opportunity. Every wound. Every act of love. Every rejection. Every response to grace.
Everything.
So yes: I believe Jesus when He says: “I am the Way.”
But perhaps part of believing that is trusting that the Way, the Truth and the Life knows how to find people we cannot reach.
