Unevangelized, The

William G. T. Shedd:

     3. In the third place, the Scriptures and the Confession teach that the Divine Spirit exerts his regenerating grace, to some extent, within adult heathendom, making use of conscience, or “the law written on the heart,” as the means of convicting of sin preparatory to imparting the new divine life; and that in the last day a part of God’s elect “shall come from the east and from the west, and from the north and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29). These are all regenerated in this life. And since regeneration in the instance of the adult immediately produces faith and repentance, a regenerate heathen is both a believer and a penitent. He feels sorrow for sin, and the need of mercy. This felt need of mercy and desire for it is potentially and virtually faith in the Redeemer. For although the Redeemer has not been presented to him historically and personally as the object of faith, yet the Divine Spirit by the new birth has wrought in him the sincere and longing disposition to believe in him. With the penitent and believing man in the Gospel, he says, “Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?” (John 9:36). Such a man is “regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit,” and belongs to that class of “elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word” (Conf. x. 3).

(William G. T. Shedd, Calvinism: Pure And Mixed: A Defence of the Westminster Standards, [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893], p. 134.)

Note: See further: Infant Salvation.

William G. T. Shedd:

     We cannot, therefore, determine from the mere idea of election how many are elected, or from that of preterition how many are passed by. This question can be answered only by God himself, and this answer, so far as he has vouchsafed to give it, is contained in his word. That the Scriptures plainly teach that the total result of Christ’s redemption will be a triumphant victory over the kingdom of Satan, and that the number of the redeemed will be vastly greater than that of the lost, we shall assume. It is also plainly taught in Scripture, that God’s ordinary method is to gather his elect from the evangelized part of mankind. Does Scripture also furnish ground for the belief, that God also gathers some of his elect by an extraordinary method from among the unevangelized, and without the written word saves some adult heathen “by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost?” We contend that the Confession so understands the Scriptures, in its declaration that there are some “elect persons [other than infants] who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word.” To refer the “incapacity” here spoken of to that of idiots and insane persons, is an example of the unnatural exegesis of the Standards to which we have alluded. The hypothesis that the Confession teaches that there are elect and non-elect idiots, and elect and non-elect maniacs, is remarkable. It is incredible for two reasons. First, idiots and maniacs are not moral agents, and therefore as such are neither damnable nor salvable. They would be required to be made rational and sane, before they could be classed with the rest of mankind. It is utterly improbable that the Assembly took into account this very small number of individuals respecting whose destiny so little is known. It would be like taking into account abortions and untimely births. Secondly, these “elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word,” are contrasted in the immediate context with “others not elected, who although they may be called by the ministry of the word never truly come to Christ;” that is to say, they are contrasted with rational and sane adults in evangelized regions. But idiots and maniacs could not be put into such a contrast. The “incapacity” therefore must be that of circumstances, not of mental faculty. A man in the heart of unevangelized Africa is incapable of hearing the written word, in the sense that a man in New York is incapable of hearing the roar of London.

     Consequently, the Confession, in this section, intends to teach that there are some unevangelized men who are “regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit” without “the ministry of the written word,” and who differ in this respect from evangelized men who are regenerated in connection with it. There are these two classes of regenerated persons among God’s elect. They are both alike in being born, “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” They are both alike in respect to faith and repentance, because these are the natural and necessary effects of regeneration. Both alike feel and confess sin; and both alike hope in the Divine mercy, though the regenerate heathen has not yet had Christ presented to him. As this is the extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit, little is said bearing upon it in Scripture. But something is said. God’s promise to Abraham was, that in him should “all the families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). St. Paul teaches that “they are not all Israel which are of Israel” (Rom. 9:6); and that “they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham” (Gal. 3:7). Our Lord affirms that “many shall come from the east and west, the north and the south, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 8:11). Christ saw both penitence and faith in the unevangelized centurion, respecting whom he said, “I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel” (Matt. 8:5–10). The faith of the “woman of Canaan,” an alien and stranger to the Jewish people and covenant, was tested more severely than that of any person who came to him in the days of his flesh, and of it the gracious Redeemer exclaimed, “O woman, great is thy faith!” These two classes of the regenerate have their typical heads in Scripture. Says Kurtz, “Of those who are blessed in the seed of Abraham, Naomi represents the people of God who are to proceed from the ancient people of the covenant, and Ruth represents those proceeding from the heathen world.” That the Church is not to expect and rely upon this extraordinary work of the Spirit, it is needless to say. That this work is extensive, and the number of saved unevangelized adults is great, cannot be affirmed. But that all the adult heathen are lost is not the teaching of the Bible or of the Westminster Standards.

     The declaration in Confession x. 4, and Larger Catechism, 60, does not refer at all to the heathen as such, but only to a certain class of persons to be found both in Christendom and heathendom, and probably more numerously in the former than in the latter. The “men not professing the Christian religion” are those who reject it, either in spirit, or formally and actually; that is to say, legalists of every age and nation, evangelized or unevangelized, who expect future happiness by following “the light of nature” and reason, and the ethical “religion they do profess,” instead of by confessing sin and hoping in the Divine mercy. The Jewish Pharisee, the Roman Julian and Antoninus, the self-satisfied Buddhist sage following the “light of Asia,” the Mohammedan saint despising Christianity, the English Hume and Mill, all of every race and clime who pride themselves on personal character and morality, and lack the humility and penitence that welcome the gospel, are the class spoken of in these declarations. They press no more, and probably less, upon the heathen than upon the Christian world; because the most hostile and intense rejection of the doctrines of grace is to be found in Christian countries, rather than in Pagan. They do not shut out of the kingdom of heaven any heathen who has the spirit of the publican, but do shut out every heathen and every nominal Christian who is destitute of it. The object of this section of the Confession, which is the same as the eighteenth of the Thirty-nine Articles, is to teach that no human creature, evangelized or unevangelized, can be saved on any but evangelical principles; namely, by unmerited grace, not by personal merit. It is only another way of proclaiming St. Paul’s doctrine, that “by the deeds of the law no flesh shall be justified.”

     That this is the correct understanding of the Westminster Standards is corroborated by the fact that the Calvinism of the time held that God has his elect among the heathen. The Second Helvetic Confession (i. 7), teaches it. Zanchius, whose treatise on Predestination is of the strictest type, asserts it. Witsius and others suggest that the grace of God in election is wide and far reaching. The elder Calvinists held with the strictest rigor that no man is saved outside of the circle of election and regeneration, but they did not make that circle to be the small, narrow, insignificant circumference which their opponents charge upon them. And there is no reason to believe that the Westminster Assembly differed from the Calvinism of the time.

(William G. T. Shedd, Calvinism: Pure And Mixed: A Defence of the Westminster Standards, [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893], pp. 61-65.)

Cf. C. S. Lewis:

But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him. But in the meantime, if you are worried about the people outside, the most unreasonable thing you can do is to remain outside yourself. Christians are Christ’s body, the organism through which He works. Every addition to that body enables Him to do more. If you want to help those outside you must add your own little cell to the body of Christ who alone can help them.

(C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, [London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2002], Book 2, Chapter 5, p. 64.)

R. C. Sproul:

There is the outer call, which is the proclamation of the gospel, and the inner call, which is the work of the Holy Spirit on our souls. Usually we think of the effectual call of God being the inward call that attends the outward call. But this section is about those who have never heard the outward call. What about those people who live in a distant corner of this world where the outward call never goes? What about babies who cannot possibly understand the gospel? Does every single baby who dies in infancy perish? Is every person who has never heard the gospel lost?

     The confession introduces this section about elect infants by affirming that God alone has the sovereign right and power to work when, where, and how he pleases, even on those who have never heard the gospel or who are too young to understand it. The first point is that God can save a baby while the baby is still a baby. The Holy Spirit doesn’t necessarily withhold the grace of regeneration until a person reaches the age of accountability. The Holy Spirit can save an infant by changing his heart, giving grace, and applying the merit of Christ to him. The Westminster divines certainly believed that babies can be saved. They did not teach that all infants are necessarily saved, but only an undetermined number of elect infants. Obviously, an elect infant is going to be saved, and any saved infant is elect, but the divines did not speculate on which infants those would be.

     I believe, following the Reformed tradition, that the children of believers are numbered among the elect and are saved. Babies who die in infancy don’t go to heaven simply because they die in infancy. People assume that the reason they go to heaven is that they are innocent, but every baby is conceived in a state of original sin, alienated from God, by nature a child of wrath. Nonetheless, I am confident that the children of believers who die in infancy are elect. Our reason for this belief is the confidence that King David exhibited at the death of his baby (2 Sam. 12:23).

     My best friend in college and seminary, Don McClure, was the son of a pioneer missionary. His father ministered for almost fifty years in the interior of Africa, in Ethiopia and in the Sudan, and was a close acquaintance of Haile Selassie. Don told me a story about a man who came to the camp one night and asked Don’s father to tell him about the Savior. He lived in a remote village and had an overwhelming experience by which he knew that there was a Savior for his sins. The native man was guided through the jungle for several miles in order to come to this camp and find out about the Savior. That did not surprise me in light of the character of God. We see it manifested in the Old Testament, where God calls people out of paganism and directs them to the covenant community. Such things are extraordinary because they are so rare.

     I have heard this comment: We can hope for the salvation of people who have never heard the gospel, but we dare not rest on it. If God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, chooses to search out some-body in a remote place in the world and change him, God can do it. No one would argue about that. But does he do it? If he does, he must not do it very often. But whether he does or not, our marching orders do not change. We are to take the gospel to every nation, every tribe, every tongue, and every living creature. Our job is to proclaim the outward call. Paul plants, Apollos waters, but God alone gives the increase. That does not release us from planting and watering. Our obligation, as the church, is to be actively engaged in missionary outreach.

(R. C. Sproul, Truths We Confess: Volume Two: Salvation and the Christian Life, [Phillipsburg: P&R 2007], pp. 26-27.)

Note: For the argument that the Confession teaches that all infants will be saved, see: William G. T. Shedd, Calvinism: Pure And Mixed: A Defence of the Westminster Standards, [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893], pp. 65-71, 131-133. Cf. John Piper, Providence, [Wheaton: Crossway, 2020], pp. 507-508.

Anthony N. S. Lane:

WHAT OF THOSE WHO NEVER HEAR?

     The most important criterion for salvation is response to Christ: ‘Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God’ (John 3:18). This immediately creates a problem. It is all very well to say that we are saved through faith in Christ, but what about those who never have the opportunity to respond to him? This is the great majority of the human race. It includes all who die in infancy (who for much of human history were the majority) and all who die without hearing about Christ (who for most if not all of human history have been the majority of adults). Is there a way that they can be saved? *Cyprian argued that there is no salvation outside the (Catholic) Church, but very few would take such a hard line today. So, for example, the *Second Vatican Council states:

Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. (Lumen Gentium 2:16)

     As we saw in Chapter 14, the work of Christ is the only basis for salvation. But is it necessary to know of that in order to benefit from it? There is some biblical evidence for answering ‘No’. The Old Testament believers did not know specifically about Jesus, but were saved by him through their faith in God’s promise. This is spelt out in Hebrews 11. Again, if one accepts that it is possible for those dying in infancy to be saved we have another example of salvation without hearing about Christ. Paul in his preaching to pagans seems to suggest that their ancestors could be saved: ‘In past generations [God] allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways’ (Acts 14:16). ‘The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent’ (Acts 17:30).

     A number of ways have been suggested in which those who have no opportunity can be saved.

OPPORTUNITY AFTER DEATH

     A few passages suggest it is possible to have an opportunity to respond to Christ after death:

• 1 Peter 3:18-20: Christ was ‘put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah.’

• 1 Peter 4:6: ‘This is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.’

     However, other passages suggest it is only what happens in this life that counts:

• Luke 16:26: ‘Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not do so, and none may cross from there to us.’

• 2 Corinthians 5:10: ‘We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.’

• Hebrews 9:27: ‘It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgement.’

‘ANONYMOUS CHRISTIANITY’

     This is the idea that those who have not heard can be anonymous or implicit Christians without knowing it. It was popularized by the Roman Catholic theologian *Karl Rahner and is widely accepted in the Roman Catholic Church. It is also held by many Protestants. We have hints of this idea in the New Testament. Jesus stated that ‘Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad’ (John 8:56). Hebrews states that Moses ‘considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward’ (11:26). This is tantamount to describing Moses as an ‘anonymous Christian’.

     The opposite of believing in Jesus is not ignorance of him but rejecting him: ‘Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life’ (John 3:36, TNIV).

JUDGEMENT ACCORDING TO THE LIGHT RECEIVED

     Another possibility for the salvation of those who have never had the opportunity to respond to Christ is that they will be judged according to the light that they have received. *John Wesley taught that all people receive prevenient grace and are judged by their response to this. Hebrews 11:6 could be seen as giving the logical minimum for faith: ‘Without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.’

     This raises the question of whether God can be known through conscience, nature and the created world. A number of passages can be taken to suggest that he can:

• John 1:9: ‘The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.’

• Romans 10:14-21 starts with need for a preacher, but possibly suggests that creation can serve that role: ‘But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for “Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world”’ (10:18). Paul is quoting from Psalm 19:4, which follows on from 19:1: ‘The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.’ Is Paul saying that all have indeed heard, through nature? This ties in with Romans 1:20: ‘For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.’

     The expression ‘God only knows’ is used flippantly by many people, but on this topic it is strictly true! We need to leave this in God’s hands. As Abraham put it, ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?’ (Gen. 18:25). We should approach those who have not responded to the gospel as lost, not as already anonymous Christians — but that does not entitle us to pronounce judgement upon them. It is God who reads people’s hearts and God who is able to work in the heart of whomever he will. If past precedent is anything to go by, the End will probably bring many surprises: ‘I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness’ (Matt. 8:11-12).

(Tony Lane, Exploring Christian Doctrine: A Guide to What Christians Believe, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2014], pp. 289-291.)

Note: Lane correctly enumerates three possibilities, however there is a fourth.

Cf. William G. T. Shedd:

     And with this will be connected another fatal error: namely, that God is under obligation to elect and regenerate every man. If justice forbids him to “pass by” any sinners, and “ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin,” he is bound to elect all sinners and “predestinate them to everlasting life.” He has no liberty or sovereignty in the case. He cannot say, “I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy, and whom I will I harden [do not soften]” (Rom. 9:18). This transmutes mercy into justice. Pardon becomes a Divine duty. The offer of Christ’s sacrifice, nay even the providing of it, becomes a debt which God owes to every human creature. This is the assumption that lies under all the various modes of Universalism. Sinful men, loving sin, bent on sin, are told that they are entitled to the offer of mercy and regenerating grace; that they must have a “fair opportunity” of salvation, if not here, then hereafter. Sinful men, full of self-indulgence, confessing no sin and putting up no prayer for forgiveness, and who have all their lifetime suppressed the monitions of conscience and quenched the Holy Spirit’s strivings with them in his exercise of common grace, are taught that if God shall pass them by, and leave them to the sin that they prefer, he is an unmerciful despot.

(William G. T. Shedd, Calvinism: Pure And Mixed: A Defence of the Westminster Standards, [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893], pp. 54-55.)

Cf. Idem, pp. 52-59.

Note: See further: Double Predestination is not Equal Ultimacy (The Nature of Non-Election).

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria