Chapter 28

Inclusivism and Postmortem Opportunity — Compatible or Competing?

Introduction: Allies or Rivals?

For over half a century, one of the most pressing questions in Christian theology has been this: What happens to people who never hear the gospel of Jesus Christ? Can they be saved? If so, how? Two of the most promising answers to this question — inclusivism and postmortem opportunity — are often treated as rivals. Scholars sometimes write as though you must choose one or the other. Either God saves people through their response to general revelation during this life (inclusivism), or God provides them with a chance to hear and respond to the gospel after death (postmortem opportunity). In this chapter, I want to challenge that either/or. I believe these two positions are not competitors in a theological cage match. They are partners. They are complementary expressions of the same deep truth: that the God revealed in Jesus Christ is relentless in His pursuit of every single human being He has made.

The thesis of this chapter is straightforward: inclusivism and postmortem opportunity are not competing positions but can be combined into a richer, more comprehensive soteriological framework. God may work through general revelation and the inner witness of the Holy Spirit during a person's earthly life — which is what inclusivism affirms — and God may also provide a more explicit postmortem encounter with Christ for those whose earthly experience left them without an adequate opportunity to respond. The two views, taken together, give us a picture of a God who leaves no stone unturned, who pursues His lost children through every available means, both before and after the grave.

To make this case, we need to do several things. First, we need to understand what inclusivism actually teaches. Too often the position is caricatured, either praised as enlightened tolerance or dismissed as dangerous liberalism. Neither caricature is fair. Inclusivism, in its best forms, is a serious attempt by thoughtful Christians to reconcile God's universal love with the reality that billions of people have never heard the name of Jesus Christ. Second, we need to evaluate inclusivism honestly — acknowledging its genuine strengths while also identifying its real weaknesses. Third, we need to show how postmortem opportunity provides exactly what inclusivism lacks: a personal, explicit encounter with the risen Christ. And finally, we need to address the particularly thorny problem of the "pseudoevangelized" — people who heard a twisted or distorted version of the gospel — where inclusivism struggles most and where postmortem opportunity shines brightest.

Let us begin by understanding what inclusivism is and where it comes from.

What Is Inclusivism?

At its core, inclusivism is the view that Jesus Christ is the only Savior of the world, but that it is possible to be saved through Christ without having explicit knowledge of Him. In other words, Jesus is ontologically necessary for salvation — no one is saved except through His atoning death and resurrection — but He is not epistemologically necessary. A person does not have to know the name "Jesus" or understand the details of the crucifixion in order to benefit from what Christ accomplished.¹ This is the crucial distinction that sets inclusivism apart from both restrictivism (which says you must hear and explicitly believe in Jesus to be saved) and pluralism (which says that multiple paths lead to God apart from Christ altogether).

Inclusivists affirm several things that are important to understand before we can evaluate the view fairly. First, they affirm that God genuinely desires the salvation of all people. This is not a throwaway affirmation. Inclusivists take passages like 1 Timothy 2:3–4 ("God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth") and 2 Peter 3:9 ("not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance") with utmost seriousness.² Second, they affirm the absolute ontological necessity of Christ's saving work. There is no hint of "other saviors" in mainstream inclusivism. Third, they affirm that some people genuinely do not hear the gospel during their earthly lives — a simple historical and geographical fact that cannot be denied. And fourth — and this is the distinctive claim — they affirm that it is possible for such people to be saved by responding in faith to whatever revelation of God they have received, whether through creation, conscience, or the inner witness of the Holy Spirit.³

It is worth noting that inclusivism, while sometimes perceived as a modern innovation, has deep roots in the Christian tradition. As Stephen Jonathan observes, following Vatican II, inclusivism became the dominant view among Roman Catholic theologians and has also become a growing force among evangelicals.⁴ Among its prominent supporters one can count figures as diverse as John Wesley, C. S. Lewis, J. N. D. Anderson, Clark Pinnock, and John Sanders. This is not a fringe view. It is held by serious, orthodox Christians who are deeply committed to the uniqueness of Christ.

Karl Rahner and the "Anonymous Christians"

Perhaps the most famous — and most controversial — version of inclusivism comes from the great Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner (1904–1984). Rahner's theology was shaped by two deep convictions that seemed to be in tension with each other. On the one hand, he was committed to the traditional Catholic teaching of extra ecclesiam nulla salus — "outside the church there is no salvation." On the other hand, he was equally committed to the biblical testimony that God desires the salvation of all people. How could both be true?

Rahner's answer was his famous concept of the "anonymous Christian." He argued that all people are capable of being members of the church in varying degrees, ranging from the full, explicit membership that comes through baptism to what he called "a non-official and anonymous Christianity which can and should be called Christianity in a meaningful sense, even though it itself cannot and would not describe itself as such."⁵ In Rahner's view, a person who responds positively to God's grace — even if that person has never heard of Jesus Christ and might even explicitly reject Christianity as they understand it — can be an "anonymous Christian," saved by Christ without knowing it. Millard Erickson helpfully defines anonymous Christians as "people who do not have an explicit, overt, or conscious Christian faith. So far as others know, or even as they themselves know, they are not Christians. Yet they are actually Christians and participate in God's grace."⁶

Now, I want to be fair to Rahner here. He was not saying that everyone is automatically an anonymous Christian regardless of their choices. As Rahner himself insisted, anyone who in their fundamental decision genuinely rejects their orientation toward God should not be designated a "theist," even an "anonymous theist." Only someone who gives — even confusedly — the glory to God should be considered as such.⁷ This is an important qualification that is often missed by Rahner's critics.

That said, there are real problems with Rahner's approach. Many have pointed out the deeply patronizing nature of calling someone a "Christian" when they explicitly identify as a Buddhist, Muslim, or Hindu. Hans Küng, himself a Catholic theologian, pushed back against Rahner on this very point. Küng preferred a "theocentric" approach that focused on God's plan of salvation rather than expanding the definition of the church to absurd proportions.⁸ Küng argued that world religions can be vehicles of salvation — not because all religions are equal, but because God's grace can work through the available religious context of a person's life until they are confronted existentially with the revelation of Jesus Christ.

The Second Vatican Council and Lumen Gentium

The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) represented a watershed moment for Catholic thinking on this question. While the Council reaffirmed the ancient teaching that there is no salvation outside the church, it dramatically broadened its understanding of who belongs to the church. The Council's constitution Lumen Gentium laid out a series of concentric circles of relationship to God's people. The innermost circle was comprised of practicing Roman Catholics who are "fully incorporated into the society of the church." The next circle included non-Catholic Christians who honor Scripture, believe in the Trinity, and have received baptism. And then — and this was the revolutionary part — the Council recognized a third group: those who have not received the gospel but who are nonetheless "related in various ways to the People of God." This group explicitly included Jews, Muslims, and even those who "without blame on their part have no unequivocal knowledge of God but attempt to live a good life by his grace."⁹

What Vatican II did, in effect, was make explicit what had been implicit in the Catholic tradition for some time: the old extra ecclesiam formula had to be understood in light of a more expansive vision of God's saving reach. This did not mean abandoning the uniqueness of Christ. It meant acknowledging that Christ's saving power extends further than the visible boundaries of the institutional church.

Clark Pinnock and the "Wider Hope"

Among evangelical Protestants, no one did more to advance the inclusivist cause than the Canadian theologian Clark Pinnock (1937–2010). Pinnock was a fascinating figure — a former student of F. F. Bruce who began his career as a conservative Calvinist but gradually moved toward a more expansive vision of God's saving love. His 1992 book A Wideness in God's Mercy became the most influential evangelical statement of inclusivism in the twentieth century.

Pinnock's version of inclusivism was built on what he called "the faith principle." The core idea is simple but powerful: what saves is not the theological content of one's beliefs but the reality and genuineness of one's faith. As Pinnock put it, "The fact that different kinds of believers are accepted by God proves that the issue for God is not the content of theology but the reality of faith.... Theological content differs from age to age in the unfolding of redemption, but the faith principle remains in place."¹⁰ This does not mean that theological content is irrelevant — of course it matters what we believe. But it means that God judges people by whether they genuinely respond to whatever light they have been given, not by whether they can pass a systematic theology exam.

Closely related to the faith principle is what James Beilby helpfully calls the "Degree of Access Principle." This is the idea that God holds people accountable to the degree and kind of revelation they have received. Those who have heard the gospel of Jesus Christ are held accountable for their response to Jesus Christ. Those who have not heard the gospel but have seen the character of God through what He has created (Romans 1:19–20) are held accountable for their response to that revelation. As Pinnock describes this principle: "Since God has not left anyone without witness, people are judged on the basis of the light they have received and how they have responded to the light."¹¹

What makes Pinnock's version of inclusivism particularly interesting for our purposes is that he went further than most inclusivists. He did not just argue for the salvific potential of general revelation in this life — he also argued for a postmortem encounter with Christ. Pinnock's rationale for combining both views was "that decisions in this life set the soul's direction in relation to God, and fuller revelation after death enables the person to pick up where things left off and decide once and for all whether to journey towards or away from God."¹² In other words, Pinnock saw no reason why God would limit Himself to a single mechanism of salvation. Inclusivism and postmortem opportunity, for Pinnock, were both expressions of the same wideness in God's mercy.

John Sanders and General Revelation Inclusivism

John Sanders, a philosopher of religion and theologian, has provided one of the most rigorous academic treatments of inclusivism. His landmark 1992 book No Other Name surveyed the full range of Christian responses to the problem of the unevangelized and became a standard reference work in the field. Sanders describes inclusivism as a wider hope view that affirms "that some of those who never hear the gospel of Christ may nevertheless attain salvation before they die if they respond in faith to the revelation that they do have."¹³

Sanders's inclusivism has a strong pneumatological component — that is, it emphasizes the work of the Holy Spirit. Inclusivists affirm that God reaches out to those who have not heard the gospel in two ways: through general revelation (what can be known of God through creation, conscience, and the moral order) and through the direct work of the Holy Spirit. This is sometimes called "Pneumatological Inclusivism," and it stresses that while the Spirit operates paradigmatically within the church, the Spirit is not confined to the church and works beyond its reach.¹⁴ As the apostle Peter declared at Pentecost, quoting the prophet Joel, the Spirit is "poured out on all people" (Acts 2:17).

The general revelation that inclusivists appeal to is not something that is accessed on one's own, apart from grace. This is a common misunderstanding. Inclusivists do not believe that people can reason their way from a beautiful sunset to saving faith through their own unaided intellectual capacity. Rather, knowledge of God may be accessible outside special revelation, but it is not accessible outside the context of grace. The Holy Spirit is at work everywhere, enabling people to respond to whatever light they have received.¹⁵

C. S. Lewis and Emeth: A Literary Case Study

No discussion of inclusivism would be complete without considering one of the most beloved literary illustrations of the concept: the story of Emeth in C. S. Lewis's The Last Battle, the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis set this story in the Narnian equivalent of the end times. The nation of Calormen, which worships a wholly evil being called Tash (the functional equivalent of Satan), has taken over Narnia. Among the Calormen soldiers is a young officer named Emeth — a name that comes from the Hebrew word for "truth" or "faithfulness."

Emeth has been a devout worshiper of Tash his entire life. He describes his religious commitment this way: "Since I was a boy, I have served Tash and my great desire was to know more of him and, if it might be, to look on his face. But the name of Aslan was hateful to me." When given the opportunity to walk through a stable door and supposedly see Tash face-to-face, Emeth eagerly volunteers. But instead of finding Tash or a stable, he enters an eschatological realm of breathtaking beauty. He wanders around in a daze until he is approached by Aslan himself — the great Lion, Lewis's Christ-figure. Emeth falls at his feet, expecting death, thinking, "Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him." But instead, Aslan embraces him and says, "Son, thou art welcome."¹⁶

Aslan then explains that all the genuine service Emeth offered to Tash, He accounts as service done to Himself. This is so not because Aslan and Tash are the same being — they are, Aslan says, "opposites" — but because "no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him." In other words, every act of genuine goodness, love, and faithfulness that Emeth performed — even though he believed he was doing it for Tash — was in reality directed toward Aslan, because goodness belongs to Aslan by nature.

There are also extratextual reasons to think that Lewis himself may have been open to postmortem opportunity. In an April 28, 1960 letter to Audrey Sutherland, Lewis wrote about Christ's descent to the dead, saying he believed "in something like" the medieval picture of Christ "descending and knocking on those eternal doors and bringing out those whom He chose." Lewis connected this to 1 Peter 3:20 and explained that this would account for how "what Christ did can save those who lived long before the Incarnation."¹⁸ While this letter does not prove that Lewis held a fully developed theology of postmortem opportunity, it shows he was open to the idea that God's salvific work extends beyond the boundaries of earthly life.

The Strengths of Inclusivism

Before I explain where I think inclusivism falls short, I want to be clear about what it gets right. This matters because the argument I am making in this chapter is not that inclusivism is wrong and postmortem opportunity is right. Rather, I am arguing that inclusivism is partly right — and that when combined with postmortem opportunity, it becomes something far stronger and more complete than either position by itself.

Inclusivism Takes God's Universal Love Seriously

The first and most important strength of inclusivism is that it takes God's universal salvific will seriously. As argued in Chapter 2 of this book, the Bible is absolutely clear that God desires the salvation of all people — not just some, not just the elect, not just those fortunate enough to be born in the right time and place. Inclusivists refuse to accept the restrictivist conclusion that billions of people are condemned to eternal damnation simply because of the accident of their birth. And they are right to refuse this. The God revealed in Jesus Christ is not a God who condemns people for things they could not possibly control.

Inclusivism Honors the Biblical Evidence of "Holy Pagans"

The second great strength of inclusivism is its appeal to what are sometimes called the "holy pagans" of Scripture. This is one of the most powerful arguments in the inclusivist's arsenal, and restrictivists have never adequately answered it. Inclusivists point to figures like Melchizedek, Job, Abimelech, Jethro, and Rahab — people who were apparently not recipients of God's special revelation to Israel, yet who are clearly presented in Scripture as people of genuine faith who were accepted by God.¹⁹

Consider Melchizedek, the mysterious "priest of God Most High" who appears in Genesis 14:18 and is invoked again in Hebrews 6–7. Melchizedek was not an Israelite. He had no access to the Mosaic covenant. He lived centuries before Christ. And yet he is presented as a priest of the true God — someone whose priestly ministry was so genuine that the author of Hebrews could use it as a type of Christ's own eternal priesthood. As Don Richardson documented in his well-known book Eternity in Their Hearts, missionaries have frequently encountered people groups who appeared to have already responded to God's redemptive work before the gospel ever reached them. Richardson called this the "Melchizedek factor."²⁰

The restrictivist response to these examples is typically to argue that Melchizedek and company must have received special revelation from God, even if the Bible does not record it. Walter Kaiser, for instance, has argued that the inclusivist's use of Melchizedek assumes he was saved apart from special revelation — an assumption Kaiser rejects. But as Beilby points out, Kaiser's counter-argument is itself question-begging. His reasoning amounts to this: (1) Salvation comes only through special revelation. (2) Melchizedek was saved. (3) Therefore Melchizedek received special revelation. The conclusion is simply assumed in the first premise, which is exactly the point at issue.²¹

Inclusivism Correctly Identifies Faith as Relational, Not Merely Informational

A third genuine strength of inclusivism is its insistence that faith is ultimately about one's relationship with God, not about the quantity of one's theological knowledge. Hebrews 11 makes clear that Abraham was saved by faith — but Abraham's faith could not possibly have included belief in Jesus Christ, the Trinity, or the substitutionary atonement, because none of those things had yet been revealed. As Beilby observes, the inclusivist's arguments demonstrate that "faith is not primarily about theological content, but a matter of one's 'directional vector' toward God."²² The Old Testament patriarchs had a God-ward directional vector. They were walking toward God, even if they could not see the full picture of what God would one day do in Christ. And Scripture honors their faith.

This point is strengthened when we consider the New Testament parallel of Cornelius in Acts 10. Cornelius was a Roman centurion — an uncircumcised Gentile — who is described as "devout and God-fearing," one who "gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly" (Acts 10:2). God sent an angel to tell Cornelius that "your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God" (Acts 10:4). Both Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin agreed that Cornelius was already in some sense a believer before Peter arrived. Aquinas wrote that Cornelius "was not an unbeliever, else his works would not have been acceptable to God, whom none can please without faith." Calvin argued that Cornelius's good works were not the means of his salvation but rather the indication that he had already been illuminated by the Spirit and had responded in faith.²³

The story of Cornelius illustrates something profound: what Peter received from his encounter was a new appreciation for the breadth of God's grace. He declared, "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right" (Acts 10:34–35). Inclusivists see in this passage a powerful affirmation that God's saving work extends beyond the visible boundaries of the church.

The Weaknesses of Inclusivism

For all its strengths, inclusivism faces some serious difficulties. These are not minor quibbles or nitpicks. They are genuine theological problems that, I believe, point us toward the need for something more than inclusivism alone can provide. My argument is not that inclusivism is entirely wrong. It is that inclusivism is incomplete. It gets us part of the way to a satisfying answer, but it leaves us stranded short of the destination.

The Problem of Implicit Faith as Salvifically Sufficient

The most fundamental weakness of inclusivism is its claim that implicit faith — faith in God that does not include any conscious awareness of Jesus Christ — is sufficient for salvation. I find myself in agreement with Beilby on this point, even as I share many of the inclusivist's theological instincts. The problem is this: if salvation is ultimately about relationship with God, and if God has most fully revealed Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, then how can a relationship that lacks any awareness of Jesus Christ be considered a complete saving relationship?

Beilby makes this point with a powerful analogy. Imagine a couple that is engaged to be married. The bride-to-be desires to be married to her fiancé. She loves him. She is committed to him. She has a clear "directional vector" toward him. Does all of that mean they are already married? Of course not. Does the fact that it is virtually certain she will pledge herself to him on the wedding day mean they are married? Again, no. They will be married when they actually pledge themselves to each other. All the proximate steps — the dating, the engagement, the commitment — are important and even necessary, but none of the proximate steps entail the final, relational end.²⁴

In the same way, I believe that an implicit openness to God — a "directional vector" aimed at God — is profoundly important. It is a good and God-honoring thing. The Holy Spirit is genuinely at work in such a person's life. But this implicit openness, by itself, does not constitute the fullness of saving relationship with God. It is the engagement, not the wedding. The inclusivist is right that faith is ultimately about relationship, not information. But the very fact that faith is about relationship is precisely why implicit faith — faith that has never encountered the One with whom it seeks relationship — cannot be the end of the story.

The inclusivist might respond by pointing to Hebrews 11:6: "Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." This verse, inclusivists argue, defines the minimal content of saving faith: belief that God exists and that He rewards those who seek Him. But as Beilby convincingly argues, treating this verse as specifying the total content of faith is to miss the entire context of Hebrews. The book of Hebrews is an extended argument that the implicit faith of the Old Testament — expressed in its covenants and priestly institutions — was not an end in itself but a means to an end. It anticipated and looked forward to the coming of Christ. The Old Testament saints persevered by faith, longing for God's promises to be fulfilled. The point of Hebrews is: if they persevered, longing for what they could only see in shadow, how much more should we persevere as those who live in light of what the Old Testament could only anticipate?²⁵ Hebrews 11:6 is not reducing faith to its minimum but pointing forward to its fulfillment.

The Problem of the Pseudoevangelized

The second great weakness of inclusivism — and I believe this is the most devastating one — is the problem of the pseudoevangelized. Inclusivism works fairly well when we consider what Beilby calls "George" cases: people who live in geographic or chronological isolation from the gospel and have simply never heard the name of Jesus. In such cases, the inclusivist can appeal to general revelation and the work of the Holy Spirit, and the argument has real plausibility. God works through what George has access to, and George is judged by his response to the light he has received.

But the world is full of people who are not "George." Consider, for example, a man Beilby calls "Kunta Kinte" — an enslaved African who has been force-fed a version of "Christianity" that was used to justify his enslavement. Kunta has "heard" the name of Jesus, but the Jesus he has heard of is the Jesus of his white slave owners — a Jesus who sanctifies oppression, blesses cruelty, and demands submission to evil. Kunta has rightly rejected this "gospel," and in doing so, he very likely views Jesus as more demonic than divine. Now here is the question: Can the inclusivist explain how Kunta might be saved?²⁶

This is extremely difficult for the inclusivist. An inclusivist who sees some salvific value in world religions might try to argue that Kunta's commitment to his ancestral faith (perhaps Islam, in this case) could be indicative of implicit faith. But it is a stretch for any orthodox Christian inclusivist to claim that Kunta is saved by virtue of his non-Christian religious beliefs and in spite of his explicit rejection of the name of Jesus Christ. The whole framework of inclusivism — general revelation leading to implicit faith — seems to break down in the face of someone who has been traumatized by a distorted presentation of the gospel.

Or consider a woman Beilby calls "Micha" — someone who grew up in a nominally Christian home but experienced horrific abuse at the hands of her Christian parents and church leaders. Micha's experience has left her without faith of any sort. Not only is she not disposed toward faith, it might be possible to say that her very ability to respond in faith has been disabled by the evil inflicted upon her. Micha is perhaps the hardest case of all for the inclusivist, because the normal categories — general revelation, the Holy Spirit's drawing, the faith principle — seem almost cruel when applied to someone whose capacity for faith has been shattered by those who claimed to represent God.²⁷

Here is where we must be honest: we have a strong and justified sense that God would not want Kunta's rejection of the slave-owners' Jesus to be his final answer. Would the God who leaves the ninety-nine sheep to seek the one lost sheep really allow Micha's broken capacity for faith to be the end of her story? I do not believe so. And this is precisely where postmortem opportunity enters the picture.

The Dispensational Boundary Problem

A third weakness of inclusivism, and one that is often overlooked, is what we might call the dispensational boundary problem. If the content of faith changes across different ages of redemptive history — as even some restrictivists like Charles Ryrie acknowledge — then when exactly does one dispensation end and the next begin? Beilby puts this problem sharply by asking us to consider a faithful Jewish person living in Alexandria who dies just five years after Jesus, but who, because of geographic isolation, never hears of Jesus or his message. Is this person judged by the old covenant or the new one? And what about someone who does hear of Jesus, but through a garbled and error-filled presentation? Such a person finds himself in the "dispensation of grace" and is therefore supposedly accountable for faith in Jesus Christ, but has never been given a reliable presentation of the good news.²⁸

The haunting question of Romans 10:14–15 belongs to these people: "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?" Inclusivism provides a partial answer by saying they can be saved through their response to general revelation. But this answer feels thin when applied to these boundary cases, where the person is not truly unevangelized but not truly evangelized either. They occupy a painful no-man's-land between categories.

The Ultimate Necessity of Explicit Faith

If I have been critical of inclusivism in the preceding section, it is not because I think the inclusivist's theological instincts are wrong. I believe the inclusivists are right that God's saving reach extends far beyond the visible church. I believe they are right that the Holy Spirit works beyond the boundaries of explicit gospel preaching. I believe they are right that figures like Melchizedek and Cornelius show us something important about the breadth of God's grace. Where I part company with the inclusivist is on the question of whether implicit faith is ultimately sufficient for salvation — that is, whether a person can be fully and finally saved without ever encountering Jesus Christ.

My answer to that question is no. I believe that explicit faith — a conscious, personal encounter with the risen Christ — is the ultimate goal toward which all of God's saving activity is directed. Implicit faith is not irrelevant. It is genuinely important as a directional vector, as evidence of the Holy Spirit's work, and as preparation for the fuller revelation that is to come. But implicit faith is not the destination. It is the road toward the destination.²⁹

Why do I say this? Because if salvation is fundamentally about relationship with God — and I believe all sides in this debate agree that it is — then it follows that the fullness of that relationship requires knowledge of the One with whom we are in relationship. God has most fully revealed Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father," Jesus said (John 14:9). The incarnation, the cross, and the resurrection are not incidental details about God. They are the very heart of who God is and what God has done. A relationship with God that never encounters these realities is, at best, incomplete.

To be clear, I am not saying that the person with implicit faith is not genuinely responding to God. They are! The Holy Spirit is genuinely at work in their lives. Their faith is real. Their "directional vector" toward God is genuine and praiseworthy. What I am saying is that God's intention for them is not to leave them at the level of implicit faith. God's intention is to bring them into the fullness of relationship — to introduce them, as it were, to Jesus. And if earthly life does not provide the opportunity for this introduction, then God, in His relentless love, will provide it after death.

This is the crucial move that takes us from inclusivism to the combined framework I am advocating. The inclusivist says: "Implicit faith is enough." I say: "Implicit faith is real and important, but God wants more for His children than implicit faith. He wants them to know His Son. And He will not rest until every person has had a genuine opportunity to meet Jesus face-to-face."

Combining Inclusivism and Postmortem Opportunity: A Both/And Framework

We come now to the heart of this chapter: the argument that inclusivism and postmortem opportunity are not competitors but partners. They are not an either/or but a both/and. And when combined, they produce a soteriological framework that is more biblically faithful, more theologically coherent, and more pastorally satisfying than either position by itself.

As Beilby has argued with great clarity, "In the final analysis, it is best to realize that God's soteriological efforts with respect to the unevangelized are multifaceted." God does not have a one-size-fits-all approach to saving people. His saving strategy has multiple dimensions, all working together toward a single goal: bringing every human being He has created into a genuine, personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Beilby identifies three dimensions of this strategy. First, God reveals His divine nature and power through what He has created — general revelation. This revelation is salvifically insufficient by itself, but it is not merely designed to leave people "without excuse." It is designed to draw people into relationship with Him. Second, working in concert with general revelation, the Holy Spirit draws all people to God, seeking to convict them of their sin and make them aware of their need for a Savior. While the Spirit operates paradigmatically within God's church, there is nothing that stops the Spirit from working outside the footprint of the church, speaking to the unevangelized in ways that we may not see or understand. And third — and this is the piece that pure inclusivism lacks — God offers those whom He deems to have not had a genuine opportunity to hear the gospel in this life a postmortem opportunity to encounter Christ.³⁰

As Beilby puts it, with characteristic directness: "I utterly reject the either/or between Inclusivism and Postmortem Opportunity. It is a both/and."³¹

Answering the Objection: "These Two Views Are Incompatible"

Not everyone agrees that inclusivism and postmortem opportunity can be held together. In fact, some respected scholars have argued that the two views are logically incompatible. Ronald Nash, in his contribution to the volume What About Those Who Have Never Heard?, went so far as to call the combination "logically incompatible."³² D. A. Carson, while wisely recognizing that Nash's charge of logical incompatibility is overblown, still expressed bafflement at why anyone would want to hold both views simultaneously. Carson offered two objections: first, if implicit faith is salvific, then there is no need for a postmortem opportunity; and second, if people will have a postmortem opportunity, then there is no need for them to hear the gospel in this life.³³

Both objections fail, and they fail for the same reason: they assume that God would limit Himself to a single mechanism of salvation. But why would we assume that? An all-wise, all-powerful, all-loving God would use every means at His disposal to reach the lost. As Stephen Jonathan astutely observes, such a God "would not need to limit himself to such humanly defined and narrow constructs as inclusivism or posthumous salvation." Could God not save some of the unevangelized through their implicit faith response to general revelation and save others — those who had not responded to the dim light of general revelation while on earth — through a postmortem opportunity?³⁴ There is no theological reason why both views cannot be held in tension and as complementary to one another.

Let me address Carson's two specific objections directly. His first objection was: if implicit faith is salvific, why bother with a postmortem opportunity? The answer is that my position is more nuanced than Carson assumes. I do not believe that implicit faith, by itself, is salvifically sufficient in the ultimate sense. I believe it is salvifically significant — it is genuinely the work of the Holy Spirit, it is genuinely oriented toward God, and it genuinely prepares the heart for the fuller revelation to come. But it is not the final step. The final step is the personal encounter with Christ, and this can happen either in this life (through the preaching of the gospel) or after death (through the postmortem opportunity). So the postmortem opportunity is not redundant; it is the completion of what inclusivism starts.

Carson's second objection was: if people will have a postmortem opportunity, why bother preaching the gospel in this life? This is the same objection addressed at length in Chapter 26 of this book, and I will not repeat the full argument here. The short answer is that hearing and responding to the gospel in this life is better than waiting for a postmortem encounter — not because God is more willing to save people in this life, but because a lifetime of relationship with Christ, growing in faith and grace and service, is an immeasurably richer existence than one that lacks such relationship. The gospel is preached not because God cannot save after death, but because God wants people to enjoy the blessings of knowing Christ now.³⁵

The Combined Framework: How It Works

Let me sketch out what the combined framework looks like in practice. Imagine God's saving strategy as a series of concentric circles of opportunity, each one wider than the last, all centered on the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The first and most direct avenue of salvation is the preaching of the gospel. When a person hears the gospel clearly and accurately proclaimed, understands it, and responds with faith, they are saved. This is the paradigmatic case — the one that Paul describes in Romans 10 and that the church has proclaimed for two thousand years. Nothing I am saying diminishes the centrality or urgency of gospel preaching. It remains the primary means by which God calls people to Himself.

The second avenue is what inclusivism describes: the work of God through general revelation and the Holy Spirit among those who have not heard the gospel. For people in this category, God's grace is genuinely at work through creation, conscience, and the Spirit's internal testimony. Their response to this grace — what we have been calling "implicit faith" — is real and significant. It orients them toward God. It prepares their hearts for the fuller revelation that is to come. In some cases, this implicit faith may become so deeply rooted in a person's character that their eventual response to Christ, when they encounter Him, is virtually certain.

The third avenue is the postmortem opportunity itself. For those who die without ever having encountered the gospel in a clear and undistorted form — whether because they never heard it at all, or because the version they heard was so corrupted as to be unrecognizable — God provides a personal, explicit encounter with Jesus Christ after death. This encounter takes place during the intermediate state (the period between physical death and the final resurrection), or at the final judgment itself, or both. As argued in Chapters 9 and 10 of this book, the intermediate state is a conscious, relationally rich state in which the person's soul or spirit is fully capable of receiving and responding to God's revelation. And as argued in Chapters 32 and 33, the timeline of postmortem opportunity extends from the moment of death through the final judgment, giving God all the "time" He needs — though time itself may function differently in the spiritual realm — to reach each person with His love.

Notice what happens when we combine these three avenues. We get a comprehensive picture of a God who pursues His lost children at every stage: before death through creation and the Spirit, at the moment of death through the encounter described by Ladislaus Boros (see Chapter 10), during the intermediate state through ongoing divine overtures, and at the final judgment through the ultimate revelation of Christ in glory. No one falls through the cracks. No one is lost because of the accident of their birth. No one is condemned because the messenger failed to arrive in time. God's saving reach extends to every human being who has ever lived, from Adam to the last person born before Christ's return.³⁶

Postmortem Opportunity Completes What Inclusivism Begins

The argument I have been making can be stated in a single sentence: postmortem opportunity provides what inclusivism lacks — an explicit encounter with Christ. Let me unpack this claim more carefully by considering several specific ways in which postmortem opportunity completes and perfects the inclusivist vision.

From Implicit to Explicit Faith

First, postmortem opportunity provides the transition from implicit to explicit faith. Remember the engagement analogy: the bride-to-be loves her fiancé and is committed to him, but they are not yet married until they pledge themselves to each other. In the same way, the person with implicit faith loves God and is oriented toward God, but their relationship is not yet complete until they encounter the One in whom God has most fully revealed Himself. The postmortem opportunity is the wedding day — the moment when implicit faith becomes explicit, when the God who has been known only in shadow and outline is finally seen face-to-face in the person of Jesus Christ.

Beilby makes a deeply important observation on this point. He argues that even if a person's implicit faith is fully "solidified" in this life — meaning that their character and dispositions make their eventual acceptance of Christ virtually certain — that fact does not eliminate the need for the culmination and commitment that come with explicit encounter. Choices create dispositions, ongoing dispositions create habits, and habits create character. It is possible that a person's implicit faith becomes so deeply woven into their character that their postmortem encounter with Christ is, in a sense, the confirmation of what was already settled. But even so, the encounter is not redundant. It is the fulfillment of what their entire life has been reaching toward.³⁷

This is exactly what we see in the Emeth narrative. Emeth's implicit faith opened his eyes to spiritual reality — he could see the beauty of Aslan's realm when others could not. But he still needed the personal encounter with Aslan to bring his faith from implicit to explicit, from shadow to substance, from seeking to finding. And crucially, when Emeth stood before Aslan, he responded with faith and love, and Aslan responded by breathing on him, taking away his fear, and welcoming him. As Beilby writes, expanding on Aslan's words: "All find what they truly seek, even if they are unaware of what they have been truly seeking until the end."³⁸

Solving the Pseudoevangelized Problem

Second, and perhaps most importantly, postmortem opportunity solves the pseudoevangelized problem that so bedevils inclusivism. Remember Kunta Kinte and Micha? Inclusivism has almost nothing to say to them. Kunta has explicitly rejected the name of Jesus — and rightly so, given the horrific distortion of the gospel he was presented. Micha's capacity for faith has been shattered by the abuse she suffered at the hands of people who claimed to represent God. For both of them, the inclusivist categories of "general revelation" and "implicit faith" seem hopelessly inadequate.

But postmortem opportunity changes everything. After death, Kunta will encounter not the slave-owners' Jesus, but the real Jesus — the One who was Himself despised, rejected, beaten, and crucified by the powers of this world. The One who said, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). When Kunta meets this Jesus, he will see that the "gospel" he was given on earth was a grotesque parody of the truth. And for the first time, he will have a genuine opportunity to respond to the real thing.³⁹

Similarly, Micha will encounter a God who is nothing like the abusers who claimed His name. She will encounter the God who "heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds" (Psalm 147:3), the God who carries His lambs in His arms (Isaiah 40:11), the God whose love is patient and kind and keeps no record of wrongs (1 Corinthians 13:4–5). In the postmortem encounter, the damage done by the pseudoevangelized experience can be undone — not by erasing Micha's memories, but by revealing the true character of the God she was taught to fear and hate.

This is something that inclusivism simply cannot provide. Inclusivism can say that God judges Kunta and Micha by their response to the light they received. But what if the "light" they received was actually darkness? What if the distorted gospel they were given actively worked against their ability to respond to God? Inclusivism has no good answer to this. Postmortem opportunity does: God will give them a do-over, not in the sense of erasing their earthly experience, but in the sense of providing a genuine encounter with the God they were never truly given the chance to know.

Universal Scope and Particular Application

Third, the combined framework allows us to affirm the universal scope of God's saving intent while respecting the particular circumstances of each individual's life. One of the limitations of inclusivism is that it tends to treat all unevangelized people as being in basically the same situation: they have general revelation, they have the Holy Spirit, and they are judged by their response. But in reality, the circumstances of the unevangelized vary enormously. A devout Hindu living in a remote Indian village is in a very different situation from an enslaved African forced to watch Christianity used to justify his bondage, who is in turn in a very different situation from an infant who dies hours after birth, who is in turn in a very different situation from a nominal Christian in twenty-first-century America who attended church every Sunday but never had a genuine encounter with the living Christ.

The combined framework of inclusivism and postmortem opportunity allows God to meet each of these people where they are. For the devout Hindu, perhaps the Holy Spirit's work through general revelation and through elements of his religious tradition has already oriented him toward God, and the postmortem encounter with Christ will be the fulfillment of what he has been unknowingly seeking all his life. For the enslaved man, the postmortem encounter will be the first time he sees the true Jesus, undistorted by human evil. For the infant, the postmortem encounter will provide the cognitive and spiritual capacity to receive and respond to God's love in ways that were impossible in earthly life. For the nominal Christian, the postmortem encounter will strip away the cultural veneer and present Christ Himself, not the pale imitation that passed for Christianity in his experience.

This is why I said at the beginning of this chapter that the combined framework is more comprehensive than either inclusivism or postmortem opportunity alone. Inclusivism alone cannot account for the pseudoevangelized or for those whose earthly circumstances rendered a genuine response to general revelation impossible. Postmortem opportunity alone, if divorced from inclusivism, might seem to suggest that God is absent from people's earthly lives — that He waits until death to begin His saving work. But the combined framework affirms that God is at work throughout a person's life, from birth to death and beyond, through every available means of grace.

Addressing the "Redundancy" Objection More Fully

Before we move to our conclusion, we need to address one more objection to the combined framework. This objection, raised by both Carson and Nash, can be stated simply: if we accept both inclusivism and postmortem opportunity, aren't we being redundant? If implicit faith can save, why is postmortem opportunity needed? And if postmortem opportunity is available, why does implicit faith matter?

I have already given a brief answer to this objection, but let me develop it more fully, because I think the answer reveals something important about the character of God.

Think of it this way. A loving parent uses every available strategy to protect their child. They teach the child about dangers (education). They put locks on cabinets and gates at the top of stairs (prevention). They keep a watchful eye on the child at all times (supervision). And if the child is injured despite all these precautions, they rush the child to the hospital (intervention). Now, are these strategies "redundant"? In a sense, yes — if the education worked perfectly, the locks and gates and supervision would be unnecessary. And if the locks and gates worked perfectly, the supervision would be unnecessary. But no loving parent would rely on only one strategy. The child is too precious. The stakes are too high. The parent uses every available means to protect the one they love.

God's relationship to His human children works the same way. General revelation, the Holy Spirit's drawing, the preaching of the gospel, and the postmortem encounter with Christ are not competing strategies but layered expressions of the same relentless love. They are "redundant" only in the sense that a safety net is "redundant" when the tightrope walker has good balance. The safety net is there not because we expect the walker to fall, but because the consequences of falling are too catastrophic to leave to chance. Similarly, God provides the postmortem opportunity not because His other saving strategies have failed, but because the stakes — the eternal destiny of a human soul made in His image — are too high for God to leave anything to chance.⁴⁰

Moreover — and this is the point I want to stress most strongly — the "redundancy" objection implicitly treats salvation as a binary switch: either you're saved or you're not, and if you're saved by method A, you don't need method B. But salvation is not a binary switch. It is a relationship. And a relationship grows richer and deeper as it moves from implicit awareness to explicit encounter to ongoing communion. The person who responds to general revelation has begun a relationship with God. The person who hears the gospel and believes has entered more deeply into that relationship. The person who encounters the risen Christ face-to-face — whether in this life through profound spiritual experience or after death through the postmortem encounter — has reached the fullest expression of that relationship available in the present age. These are not competing methods but stages of deepening relationship. And a God who is love (1 John 4:8) would naturally provide every stage, not just one.

Postmortem Opportunity and the World Religions

One of the most sensitive questions in this entire discussion concerns the relationship between postmortem opportunity and the world's non-Christian religions. If we accept the combined framework of inclusivism and postmortem opportunity, what are we saying about Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and other religious traditions? Are they "vehicles of salvation"?

I want to be very careful here. I do not believe that non-Christian world religions are intrinsically salvific. I believe this because of my commitment to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and the exclusivity of His saving work. As Beilby rightly notes, the pluralist attempt to find a common salvation in all the world's religions is severely problematic. Not only does it ignore the very real differences in how God (or "the ultimate") is understood across different traditions, it ignores the fact that different religions "face in different directions, ask different questions and look for different kinds of religious fulfillments." This is why theologian S. Mark Heim writes not about "salvation" but "salvations" — because the goals of the various religions are not the same.⁴¹

But here is the important nuance: saying that the world religions are not intrinsically salvific is not the same as saying that individual adherents of those religions cannot be saved. My commitment to the exclusivity of salvation through Jesus Christ means that no one is saved through Buddha or Muhammad. But my commitment to the universality of the Holy Spirit's work means that God may reach hearts in ways that are not overtly or obviously Christian. To the degree that a religious tradition has preserved elements of general revelation — and many of them have — it might be said that the tradition could point a person toward God, even if the tradition itself is not a "path to salvation" in any autonomous sense.⁴²

Where does postmortem opportunity fit in? It provides the crucial missing piece for thinking about adherents of world religions. Consider a devout Muslim who has genuinely sought God his entire life through prayer, fasting, and acts of mercy. Inclusivism can affirm that the Holy Spirit has been at work in this man's life, drawing him toward God through whatever true elements of general revelation are present in his experience. But inclusivism, by itself, cannot explain how this man will ever come to know Jesus Christ specifically — and I have argued that such knowledge is ultimately necessary for the fullness of saving relationship.

Postmortem opportunity provides the answer. After death, this man will encounter Jesus Christ personally. And here is what is beautiful about the combined framework: his lifetime of genuine seeking, of prayer and fasting and mercy, has not been wasted. It has been preparation. It has oriented his heart toward God. When he finally meets Christ, he may well discover — like Emeth — that what he was truly seeking all along was the God who has now revealed Himself in Jesus. His implicit faith, cultivated through a lifetime of devotion, becomes the soil in which explicit faith in Christ can take root.

Beilby develops this point with an important qualification. He suggests that when a member of a non-Christian religious tradition encounters Christ in the postmortem opportunity, there will be an element of continuity between their new understanding and their past beliefs. As Lesslie Newbigin observes, even after conversion, converts from other religions often have "the strong conviction afterwards that it was the living and true God who was dealing with them in the days of their pre-Christian wrestlings." At the same time, Beilby cautions against assuming that the most devout practitioners of non-Christian religions will necessarily be the most receptive to Christ. As John Barrett notes, "the most committed practitioners of other religions are often the least open to the message of the gospel."⁴³ Deep commitment to any belief system — even one that contains genuine elements of truth — can also produce rigidity and resistance to new revelation. This is why the postmortem opportunity must be a deep and meaningful encounter, not a passing glance.

The Solidification of Faith: A Bridge Between Inclusivism and Postmortem Opportunity

There is one more concept that deserves attention in our discussion of the combined framework, and it is one that Beilby develops with particular insight: the idea of the "solidification of faith." This concept provides a bridge between inclusivism and postmortem opportunity by explaining how what happens in this life connects to what happens after death.

The fundamental idea is straightforward: consistent choice and commitment in a particular direction produce dispositions to continue in that direction. One might call this the spiritual equivalent of Newton's first law of motion — the law of inertia. Choices create dispositions; ongoing dispositions create habits; habits create character. Over time, a person's character can become so "solidified" in a particular direction — either toward God or away from Him — that the eventual outcome of their postmortem encounter with Christ is, in a practical sense, certain.⁴⁴

This concept is important because it explains how inclusivism and postmortem opportunity work together dynamically. The Holy Spirit's work in a person's earthly life — through general revelation, conscience, the moral order, and whatever elements of truth are present in their religious environment — is not separate from the postmortem encounter but preparatory for it. Every genuine response to God's grace in this life moves the person closer to the moment of explicit faith that will come in the postmortem encounter. The person is not starting from scratch when they meet Christ after death. They are completing a journey that began long before.

Conversely — and this is the sobering side of the solidification concept — a lifetime of rejecting God's grace, of hardening one's heart against the voice of conscience and the beauty of creation, can produce a character so deeply set against God that even the postmortem encounter with Christ cannot break through. This is why postmortem opportunity does not inevitably lead to universalism (as argued more fully in Chapter 30). Some people, tragically, may have so thoroughly solidified their rejection of God that the postmortem encounter only confirms what was already decided. Their resistance is not overcome because their free will is not overridden. God respects the choices they have made, even as His heart breaks over their refusal.

But here is the hope: for those whose earthly lives were characterized by openness to God, by a genuine seeking after truth and goodness and beauty, the solidification of faith means that the postmortem encounter with Christ will be experienced not as a crisis of unfamiliarity but as a homecoming. They will recognize in Jesus the One they have been searching for all along. And when they see Him, they will fall at His feet — like Emeth before Aslan — and hear the words they never knew they had been longing for: "Son, daughter, thou art welcome."

Why the Combined Framework Matters: Pastoral Implications

I want to close this chapter by briefly considering why this discussion matters beyond the walls of the seminary. The relationship between inclusivism and postmortem opportunity is not merely an academic debate. It has profound pastoral implications for how we think about the destiny of people we love — and people we have never met.

Consider the missionary who serves for decades in a region where conversions are rare. On the restrictivist view, the vast majority of the people this missionary has served are damned. On a pure inclusivist view, the missionary's work is important but perhaps not ultimately necessary — God could save these people through general revelation alone. But on the combined framework, the missionary's work takes on a richer significance: the gospel she preaches is the most direct path to salvation, and every seed she plants cooperates with the Holy Spirit's broader work of drawing people toward God. Even those who do not respond to the gospel in this life are being prepared, through general revelation and the Spirit's witness, for the postmortem encounter that awaits them. The missionary is not working in vain. She is a partner in God's saving work — a work that extends from this life into the next.⁴⁵

Consider also the bereaved parent who lost a child to suicide, or the widow whose husband died rejecting the faith. On the restrictivist view, there is no hope. On the inclusivist view, there may be a thin thread of hope — perhaps their loved one responded to general revelation in ways that were not visible. But on the combined framework, there is a robust and well-grounded hope: the God who loved their child or their husband in this life will pursue them after death with the same relentless love, and will give them every possible opportunity to respond. This is not wishful thinking. It is the logical consequence of affirming that God genuinely desires the salvation of all people and that God's saving activity is not limited to earthly life.

And consider the Christian who is troubled by the fate of the unevangelized — the billions of people throughout history who were born in the wrong time or the wrong place and never heard the name of Jesus. On the restrictivist view, these people are simply lost, and we must accept this as part of God's mysterious sovereignty. On the inclusivist view, we can hope that some of them were saved through their response to general revelation, though we can never know for certain. But on the combined framework, we can affirm with confidence that none of these people will be condemned without a genuine encounter with Christ. God's saving reach is as wide as His love, and His love, as Paul tells us, "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (1 Corinthians 13:7).

Conclusion

We have covered a great deal of ground in this chapter, so let me summarize the key points. Inclusivism — the view that people can be saved through Christ without having explicit knowledge of Him — is a serious and in many ways admirable attempt to reconcile God's universal love with the reality that billions of people have never heard the gospel. In its best forms, as articulated by Karl Rahner, Vatican II, Clark Pinnock, John Sanders, and C. S. Lewis, inclusivism rightly affirms God's universal salvific will, honors the biblical evidence of "holy pagans" like Melchizedek and Cornelius, and insists that faith is fundamentally relational rather than merely informational.

However, inclusivism faces serious weaknesses. Its claim that implicit faith is salvifically sufficient is undermined by the very relational nature of faith it affirms — a relationship with God that never encounters Jesus Christ is, at best, incomplete. Its inability to account for the pseudoevangelized — people like Kunta Kinte and Micha, whose distorted exposure to the gospel has actively damaged their capacity for faith — represents a significant gap in its explanatory power. And the dispensational boundary problem reveals difficulties in determining who counts as "unevangelized" and who does not.

Postmortem opportunity provides exactly what inclusivism lacks. It supplies the explicit encounter with Christ that brings implicit faith to completion. It solves the pseudoevangelized problem by giving everyone — without exception — a genuine, undistorted encounter with the real Jesus. And it extends God's saving reach beyond the grave, ensuring that no one is eternally condemned simply because of the circumstances of their earthly life.

The combined framework is not a logical contradiction, despite what Nash and Carson have argued. It is the natural expression of a God who uses every available means to save His children. General revelation, the Holy Spirit, the preaching of the gospel, and the postmortem encounter with Christ are not competing strategies but complementary dimensions of the same all-encompassing divine love. They work together like the multiple safety nets beneath a trapeze artist — not because any single net is inadequate, but because the One who set them in place loves the performer too much to take any chances.

I began this chapter by asking whether inclusivism and postmortem opportunity are allies or rivals. The answer, I believe, is clear. They are allies — partners in the great work of proclaiming that God's love is wider than we have dared to imagine, that His mercy is deeper than we have dared to hope, and that His saving reach extends to every human being He has ever made, both in this life and in the life to come. As Paul wrote in his magnificent hymn to the love of God: "For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38–39).⁴⁶

Not even death. Not even the grave. Not even the failure of human messengers. Nothing.