In my past several posts, I have been building a case for why I believe that some sort of theory of Christian inclusivism is necessary if Christians want to believe everything the Bible says about which individuals will be eternally saved.

As a reminder, Christian inclusivism is the idea that although Christianity is the only true religion/faith, people who were not Christians and who never heard the gospel can still be eternally saved, because God truly wants to save all people.

However, despite this, not everyone will be saved, and so universalism isn't a biblical option. Inclusivism also denies that all religions lead to the same God or the same heaven, and thus, it is not the same as religious pluralism.

I believe that a theologically sound theory of inclusivism could be an option for Christians who might otherwise be tempted to endorse universalism. It could also resolve the negative consequences for God's character that can be implied by exclusivism.

A good theory of inclusivism could also reduce the anxiety that Christians may feel regarding the eternal destiny of our neighbors, friends, and family members who don't currently believe in Jesus, or who died without accepting Jesus, despite our best efforts to witness to them.

Three Possibilities For Christian Inclusivism

There may be historical precedent for Christian inclusivism, as demonstrated by the behavior of the earliest Christians.

It is suggested that Christians in the early church believed that God was at work in all people, and so these Christians could live with "a subtle combination of relaxation and urgency in relation to non-Christians. On the one hand, they do not seem obsessed about the fate of the majority of pagans among whom they lived, yet on the other hand they still engaged in vigorous mission activity among them."1

So although I'm convinced that some form of Christian inclusivism seems to be biblically necessary, and it might even have historical precedent, the challenge is to explain how it works.

That is, Christian inclusivists need to explain on what basis God will judge people who never heard the gospel (or who died before they had the ability to understand and personally respond to the gospel) that could lead to at least some of those people being eternally saved.

There are several possibilities I have heard Christians propose, including:

1. Each person has an encounter with God/Jesus after death, giving individuals who have not previously had a chance to accept or reject the gospel the opportunity to make their final decision regarding God's offer of salvation then.
2. God judges people based on what their earthly actions revealed about their hearts being oriented either toward God or away from God.
3. God judges people based on how they responded to the truths about God that they did have access to during their lives through nature, or maybe, through otherwise false religions.

A disclaimer: I haven't read every book or article on Christian inclusivism that exists. However, it seems to me that most proposals for Christian inclusivism would fall into one of these categories, or might make use of a combination of these basic but distinct claims.

In the rest of this post, I will explore the first possibility in more detail, and discuss some potential benefits it may have, and also some difficulties for it.

Future posts will address the second and third possibilities.

Possibility 1: Some People Can Make Their Final Choice After Death

Probably the easiest answer for inclusivism would be to say that no matter who someone was or when they lived, after every person dies, he or she meets Jesus/God face to face.

There, they will have to make a final choice for or against Jesus/God if they have not believed in Jesus/God during their lifetime.

Gregory Boyd thinks that something like this must be a possibility because of the nature of love. He writes:

But if love indeed requires choice, and if heaven is defined as participating in God's love, then it follows by logical necessity that people who never made a choice for love cannot participate in heaven, regardless of why it is that they did not or could not make that choice. Nor can such individuals participate in hell, for the state of rejecting love also must be chosen.2

Therefore, he says that although it's speculative,

I argue that those who hold to the free-will defense should logically consider the possibility that those who were unable responsibly and decisively to choose for or against God's Kingdom before death must somehow be given an opportunity to do so after death.3

Boyd uses his proposal to lead into his argument for why he believes there is a need for a place like purgatory, where people can mature and grow until they can make such a choice.

However, I disagree with and refute Boyd's argument regarding purgatory on the basis of Boyd's own logic of sanctification in my post here.

Yet I can agree with Boyd that love requires a free choice. That is why I reject both double predestination and universalism. In both theories, no one has any real free will to say yes or no to God's love, because God has pre-chosen what each person's response will be.

And I do somewhat agree with Thomas Talbott when he suggests that individuals can't properly make a choice for or against God until they have a correct knowledge of God:

In this life, of course, we rarely, if ever, choose in a context of full clarity. We all emerge and start making choices in a context of ambiguity, ignorance, and illusion, where God remains at least partly hidden from us. But that merely makes matters worse.... For insofar as God remains hidden from us and we do not fully understand the true nature of God or the consequences of separating ourselves from him, we are in no position to reject the true God at all. We may reject a caricature of God, as frequently happens in a context of ambiguity, ignorance, and misperception; but we are in no position to reject the true God until our ignorance has been removed and our misjudgments have been corrected.4

Although I don't believe that having our misperceptions of God corrected will guarantee that everyone will choose to love God in the end. After all, Satan and the fallen angels were formerly in the full presence of God in heaven, yet somehow, they still rejected God. (I want to write about how this rejection may be possible in a future post).

But if everyone must make a personal choice either to love God or not, in order to avoid the negative implications of both universalism and double predestination, then I agree that logically, if that choice can't be made in this life, it has to be made after death.

However, there are some potential difficulties with this theory about a post-mortem opportunity for personal choices for or against God.

Problem 1: Would Deceased Children Also Need A Choice?

One of the first questions that might come to mind is whether this post-mortem opportunity also applies to people who died as infants or children.

Let's imagine that a child of Christian parents dies before being able to make a personal choice to believe in Jesus as his or her Savior.

A common pastoral response to this situation is to reassure the parents that their child is now with God in heaven. The pastor might even quote 2 Samuel 12:23 as support for this idea. In this way, the Christian parents can mourn their loss while looking forward to seeing their child again someday.

Randy Alcorn, the author of the popular Christian book titled Heaven, hopes for such a possibility.

Alcorn speculates that perhaps when children are resurrected, they will be at the same age as they were when they died (or maybe just a little older, for those who died before birth). Then, their resurrected, glorified bodies will still 'grow up' as God intended, and so children who die prematurely would not miss out on childhood or the necessary process of maturing.

Its not clear whether Alcorn pictures these resurrected children growing up during the earthly Millennial kingdom that Jesus will establish after the Tribulation, or only later in the New Heaven and New Earth.

But in either case, if these children's parents are saved, then Alcorn suggests the resurrected parents could be a major part of raising their own resurrected children as they grow up.5 Alcorn proposes that the above could also apply to children who died through miscarriages or abortions.6

Alcorn's theory is attractive, because then children who die prematurely ultimately do not lose out on anything. In fact, they may be more blessed to get to grow up in a world free of sin.

Parents who are grieving can then have hope that they will be reunited with their children in heaven and won't miss out on the joys of being a parent. People who never got the opportunity to become parents in this life might also get a chance to help raise some of these children, too.

This all sounds nice, and I agree it fits well with God's loving character, and how God likes to redeem and restore what is lost (e.g. Joel 2:25). It also fits with how Jesus demonstrated a special love for parents with deceased children by raising these children from the dead (e.g. Luke 7:11-17, Luke 8:49-56).

However there are both ethical issues and theological issues to consider before we affirm this possibility.

Salvation of Children and Infants: Ethical Issues To Consider

Sometimes Christians make use of the idea that all children who die instantly go to heaven as a way to defend God's goodness despite how children experience suffering and death in this fallen world.

For example, John Piper (a Calvinist) presumes that all children who suffer horribly and/or die prematurely are elect (i.e., they are predestined to heaven apart from their personal beliefs or actions). In heaven, he asserts these children will be repaid "ten-thousand fold" for their suffering.7

Piper justifies this claim by appealing to 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, Romans 8:18, and Matthew 5:11-12, which all talk about how suffering earns eternal rewards.8

I don't find Piper's interpretation completely convincing, though, and that's not only because I disagree with him on predestination. I also question his supporting Bible verses, because in their contexts, these verses refer to rewards that are given to Christians in exchange for suffering persecution.

Although it is true that, for everyone who ends up being eternally saved, God will wipe away all our tears and we will never experience any suffering ever again (Revelation 21:4).

Sometimes, the idea that all children who die go instantly to heaven is used to justify the instances in the Bible when children are killed due to God bringing divine judgment on their societies.

We might think of the children who were alive during Noah's flood, or who lived in Sodom and Gomorrah when these cities were destroyed. It seems like a loving thing to say that all these children are now with God.

In his book Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan highlights God's command to the Israelites to wipe out the Canaanites. This included instructions to kill Canaanite children, such as when God said to slaughter everything that lives in Jericho (Joshua 6:17-21). One way to deal with this apparent problem for God's goodness is to argue that God has the right to determine how long anyone lives, and that any children who were killed immediately went to be with God in heaven.9

However, there are potentially negative ethical consequences that could arise from the idea that all children instantly go to heaven when they die. I touched on this idea slightly in my previous post on exclusivism here. However, it's worth considering again now in more detail.

Alcorn fears that this view that all children who die automatically go to heaven could be used to justify abortion. He wonders if God intentionally didn't tell us in the Bible what happens to babies or children who die, because in our twisted logic, we would end up thinking we are doing these children a favor by killing them.10 Indeed, some emotionally troubled people have thought this way in the past, with tragic consequences.11

Alcorn also worries that such a belief might reduce the concern that Christians should feel for children who are dying from malnutrition in non-Christian cultures around the world. The idea might seem to imply that if we try to save these children's lives, they might grow up to reject God and end up in hell, and so it's better for them to die young because then they will go to heaven.12

But beyond the moral issues involved, there are also some difficult theological issues with the claim that all children who die go to heaven.

Salvation of Children and Infants: Theological Issues To Consider

Many theories that claim all children who die prematurely automatically go to be with Jesus rely on the concept of an 'age of accountability'. Supposedly, after children reach this age, they become personally responsible to believe in Jesus for salvation.

However, there is disagreement over what this age is. Some think it could vary depending on the child, as some children might hear the gospel before others and be able to make a choice at a younger age, while others remain unaccountable for longer.13

By extension, some people with mental disabilities might never reach an age when they could be held properly 'accountable' by God for their personal beliefs.

However, as much as Alcorn wants to say that all deceased children go to heaven, he admits that,

Scripture makes no reference to an age of accountability, nor does it even seem to imply one. (It is an assumption based on the premise that children are born saved and the attempt to then explain how and when they could become lost.)14

Alternatively, I've heard some speculation that the idea the age of accountability could be as high as twenty years old!

This claim is made on the basis of Numbers 14:29, when the Israelites grumbled against God and feared to enter the land God wanted to give them. As a punishment, only Israelites who were twenty years and younger (plus Joshua and Caleb) would be left alive to enter the promised land after forty years of wandering in the wilderness.

But effectively, Alcorn is right that we can't know for sure what the age of accountability is, or if there is one. The twenty year limit in Numbers 14:29 might have been just for that particular biblical event. It was also related to entering the promised land, which isn't the same as eternal salvation.

So, if pastors want to reassure Christian parents that their children are in heaven, it seems these pastors need to have some sort of insight into the child's personal age of accountability. But since that insight is impossible, pastors shouldn't honestly be able to make such a promise to the child's grieving parents.

However, there is an additional and even more significant theological issue with the idea that all deceased children automatically go to heaven.

It involves the inconsistent claim that some people receive eternal life without ever having personal faith in Jesus, while other people who reach a certain age or level of ability do need to make such a choice to have personal faith in Jesus.

Theologically, the Bible says that despite being made in the image of God, ever since Adam and Eve sinned, all humans are born sinners (Psalm 51:5, Psalm 58:3, Genesis 8:21, Job 25:4). That is except for Jesus, who is a special case since he is also fully divine.

We see in Genesis 2:16-17, Romans 5:12-14, Romans 6:23, and James 1:15 that death is God's righteous punishment for sin. Thus, if infants and children die, they must be sinners, or it would be unjust for God to let them experience death.

And if even infants and children are sinners, then, Alcorn is correct when he says:

If children are saved, it cannot be because of innocence, because while they are cute and adorable and a pleasure, they are not innocent. For any person to be saved, it must be through the work of Christ (1 Timothy 2:5). Unless someone is born again he can’t enter the kingdom of God (John 3:3). How can a child be born again without consciously choosing Christ?15

Despite this, Alcorn says he still hopes that God's special love for children means that all children who die will be eternally saved, even if he doesn't understand how it might work.

In the rest of his article, Alcorn wrestles with some additional verses and discusses some other possible problems with this idea which you may want to read. Yet in the end, he admits that he can't prove his idea with Scripture.16

So if we want a sound, theologically and biblically persuasive answer to this question, we need to be more rigorous.

One attempt to theologically support the theory that all children and infants who die before some 'age of accountability' (despite the problems with that idea), is made by F. Leroy Forlines.17 Here's my summary of his argument:

1. There is a difference between 'personal guilt' which we gain when we personally sin, and 'racial guilt' that we all inherit from Adam and Eve, although we didn't sin like they did (Romans 5:12-14).
2. Children before the age of accountability only have 'racial guilt', although children's inherited sinfulness still manifests in their behavior (temper tantrums, selfishness, etc.).
3. Children are not yet fully-developed persons capable of assuming all rights, privileges, and responsibilities of being a person. Therefore, it is not a negation of their free will for God to save them by atoning for their 'racial guilt' before they can personally consent to it.
4. Jesus atoned for humanity's 'racial guilt' by identifying with humanity and Adam's sin, which meant that Jesus could pay the penalty for it, and now, God transfers Jesus's righteousness to all people to cover their 'racial guilt'.
5. Thus, children who die before they reach their age of accountability have already had their 'racial guilt' paid for on the basis of Jesus' death on the cross. Since they never personally sinned, they have no 'personal guilt', and thus, there is no reason for God to not accept these children into heaven.
6. Once a child reaches the age of accountability in this life, then they are responsible for their personal sins, and must place faith in Jesus as their personal savior to be eternally saved.

Now I'm not fully convinced by Forlines' explanation, but it's the best one I've come across if someone does want to argue that all children and infants who die always go to heaven.

My Case For The Salvation of Children and Infants

Personally, though, I think it's easier and simpler to agree with Gregory Boyd that all individuals must make their own free choices to respond to God's love either positively or negatively, including people who die as infants and children.

That avoids any of the questionable interpretations and speculations that Christians like Forlines and Alcorn make to justify their position. It also means that children and infants are not a special case who get treated differently from all other sinful humans.

Yet I admit that this position is perhaps less comforting to the parents of these deceased children.

After all, if the deceased child has free will in order to make the child's love of Jesus/God real and valuable, then there must be the possibility that the child could choose to freely reject God's love and offer of salvation.

And if this is the case, there would be no way for a pastor to know what the child personally chose the moment the child came face to face with Jesus, in order to reassure the child's parents.

So if each deceased child will have to make their own choice to love God or not, then what do we say regarding the pastoral desire to comfort grieving parents?

First, I think we should be honest with them. Now, I'm not a pastor (and you might think that's a good thing), but if I were, I would say something like:

"I'm so sorry you lost your child. Because I believe that our love for God is only valuable to God if we freely choose to give it, I believe that your child will have the opportunity to make his or her own choice to respond to God's love and accept his free offer of eternal life, or reject God and face eternal destruction. So if you have believed in Jesus, there is a possibility that you will see your child again, but it isn't guaranteed."

Despite this, I think we can still reassure Christian parents that there is a high possibility that their deceased child will be eternally saved.

That is because I suspect that the number of deceased children and infants who would freely choose to reject God's love is very, very small.

Here is my argument:

1. Because humans are made in the image of God, it means we are made for the purpose of participating in loving relationships with God and with others.

2. Yet we all develop mistrust, selfishness, cynicism, and skepticism about God's love due to our negative experiences with other sinful people, which become ingrained in our physical brains, and impact how we think and behave. (If you want more details about this idea, check out my post here.)

3. Adam and Eve first developed these traits when they chose to doubt God's love and goodness when they believed the serpent's lie and ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Eden (Genesis 3). After this, their new traits were passed down to all the rest of us, and can lead us to struggle with trusting God and loving God and others.

4. However, a deceased child or infant will have had much less experience of this fallen world, and thus, less time for these traits to develop and become ingrained in their personalities. Therefore, I doubt that the souls of deceased children or infants would have much or even any motivation to reject God's perfect love for them, especially since they would surely feel this love and want to accept it when they meet Jesus face-to-face.

5. Yet there still has to be the theoretical possibility that even the soul of a deceased infant could choose to reject God, if the infant truly has free will, which is necessary or else their love for God would become meaningless.

That's not something we like to think about, but I think it is a compelling reason to believe that an after-death encounter with Jesus is a possibility for deceased children and infants, if we don't want to say (for the various reasons given earlier) that children and infants who die automatically go to heaven.

And if deceased children and infants need to have the opportunity to accept or reject God in the afterlife, then this would also be true for people who were not mentally capable of making that choice in this life.

By extension, I think it's reasonable to propose that everyone who didn't get the chance to make that choice in this life will get it after death.

But there are some potential problems with this theory, which I'll explain in the next two sections.

Problem 2: Where is the Biblical Evidence?

A major problem for this theory that at least some people will get to make their final choice about God's offer of salvation after death is that there's no blatantly clear evidence for it in the Bible.

Yes, there are verses that talk about the final judgment and of judgment for heavenly rewards which both take place after this life is over. But there is no verse that directly says that people can choose to believe in God/Jesus after they die.

Yet there are a few small portions of the Bible that might still be relevant.

The Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man

The parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31) is often cited as evidence that after death, there is no chance for anyone to change their mind and repent of their sins. Because if the rich man was in fiery torment and could have repented to get out of it and go to be with Abraham in paradise instead, then why didn't he do so?

However, there is debate over how literally we should take the details of Jesus' parables.

As an annihilationist, Edward Fudge argues that this parable was Jesus' modification of a common rabbinical tale, and so it shouldn't be read as if it provides literal details about the afterlife.

Instead, Fudge argues that Jesus told this story in order to prove a point to the Pharisees about their current rejection of God's word, and to prophesy about their upcoming rejection of Jesus's claim to be the Messiah after Jesus would die and come back to life.18

Like Fudge, I would prefer to say that the main point of the parable is stated in Luke 16:31, which is that if people have an attitude that is hostile to or dismissive of God's word in this life, then even if they saw Jesus's death and resurrection first-hand, it wouldn't convince them to change their minds.

So at worst, this parable could be evidence that at the moment of death, the orientation of people's hearts becomes set and unchangeable, so that those who rejected God during their earthly lives will not change their minds even if they experience unpleasant consequences in the afterlife.

However, this parable is not much use when it comes to answering the question of what happens to people who never had a chance to learn about God in their lives, because both the rich man and his family did have that opportunity.

So as far as a theory of Christian inclusivism goes, this parable doesn't really relate to the question.

Jesus Preaching to Spirits in Prison

On the other hand, there are two rather obscure and difficult verses that may hint at the possibility of believing the gospel after death:

• "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being 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, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water" (1 Peter 3:18-20).
• "For the gospel has for this purpose been preached even to those who are dead, that though they are judged in the flesh as people, they may live in the spirit according to the will of God" (1 Peter 4:6, NASB).

Taken together, if these are referring to the same event, it could imply that after Jesus died and before he was resurrected, Jesus may have gone to preach to the spirits of dead people who were not yet in heaven proper (John 3:13).

And I can't help but wonder: is there any reason for Jesus to preach to the spirits of dead people who Jesus knows can't or won't ever change their minds?

So this might be the tiniest clue that maybe, maybe, people can hear the gospel and change their minds after death.

However, I've heard some interpreters claim that a better approach to these verses is to say that Jesus simply proclaimed his victory to the demonic spirits that have been in supernatural jail since the time of Noah. Presumably, these demonic spirits would be the ones referred to as 'sons of God' who may have married human women and produced the Nephilim/giants (Genesis 6:1-4, Jude 6, 2 Peter 2:4).19

And it seems that other demons do fear being condemned to "the abyss" ahead of their time (Luke 8:31), which could correspond with this same concept of supernatural prison for demonic spirits in 1 Peter 3:18-20.

In this interpretation, after Jesus's death, he might have gone to tell these disobedient spirits about his victory over sin, death, and the devil, and rubbed it in their faces. Then he left them there to continue rotting away in dread of the final judgment, where they will be condemned to the lake of fire that God prepared for them (Matthew 25:41, Revelation 20:10, James 2:19).

I'd say, though, that this interpretation doesn't really seem like the sort of thing that the Jesus I know would do. Never mind that it also seems rather pointless, since the demons already know who Jesus is (Luke 4:41, Acts 16:16-17). The demons also know that they have lost and that divine judgment will come to them, because they lived in fear of this even before Jesus died on the cross (Luke 8:28-31).

But the idea of Jesus going to preach the good news of his victory over sin and death, and offering the spirits of deceased people a final chance to believe and go to paradise with him (Luke 23:43) would be much more in line with Jesus's character and God's grace and mercy.

However, I don't feel comfortable claiming that this is definitely what these verses mean, because there are many different interpretations that commentators give to these verses.

In the end, these verses might have made more sense to the early church and the first recipients of this letter. Peter could have been referring to something he taught these Christians in person, or perhaps he was making reference to a common cultural or religious belief that has since been lost.

At best, I'll say that these are the only Bible verses I can think of that someone could use to claim that it is possible for people to hear the gospel and believe in Jesus after death. But these verses might not mean this, and there isn't enough evidence elsewhere in Scripture to back up this interpretation.

Problem 3: It Could Discourage People From Accepting The Gospel Now

Another reason why Christians might not want to promote the idea that it is possible for people to believe in Jesus after death is because it could give unbelievers the impression that they can put off accepting Jesus's free offer of eternal life until later.

However, there are some important Biblical warnings to consider on this topic.

First, there are no guarantees about how long we have before we will die:

Look here, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit." How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it's here a little while, then it's gone. What you ought to say is, "If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that." (James 4:13-15, NLT)

Jesus also told a parable that says it's foolish to presume how long we will live, and so we shouldn't become so wrapped up in earthly concerns that we neglect God (Luke 12:16-21).

Therefore, if we do hear the gospel in this life, it's very important to seriously consider it and respond as soon as possible:

Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (Isaiah 55:6-7)

That is why the Holy Spirit says, "Today when you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts as Israel did when they rebelled, when they tested me in the wilderness." (Hebrews 3:7-8, NLT)

Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. (2 Corinthians 6:2)

We can also recall the earlier discussion about Jesus's parable about the rich man, who seems to have had clear knowledge about God in his life and rejected it until it was too late, leading to an unpleasant and apparently unchangeable outcome in the afterlife (Luke 16:19-31).

Therefore, while I have made an argument that everyone will get a chance to personally believe in Jesus either in this life or the next, it doesn't diminish the importance of believing the gospel if we hear it in this life.

Thus, a good theory of inclusivism should never say that evangelism is unnecessary. It also shouldn't let people think they are safe when they intentionally put off the decision to believe in Jesus after they do hear the gospel.

Yet as I discussed in my previous post on exclusivism, I don't think that God writes people off after they hear the gospel the very first time and don't respond to it right then and there.

Instead, I believe the Holy Spirit is continually at work in every person's heart, trying to draw us closer to God throughout our entire lives. Sometimes it takes a long time and repeated attempts of sharing the gospel with someone to break through misconceptions about God, or undo the negative impressions that still-sinful Christians may have made on these people.

This final decision could only be made after each individual has a chance for all their misunderstandings about God to be clarified, which if it doesn't occur in this life, would need to take place in a face-to-face encounter with Jesus/God after death.

Thus, in the end, however it works out, I believe it will be only those people who intentionally and knowingly opt-out of salvation who will face the second death.

Conclusion

In this post, I believe I have shown that there is a case to be made for the possibility that at least some people will get an opportunity to believe in Jesus and accept his offer of salvation after death.

In particular, I believe this must be true for people who die as infants or children, or who were mentally incapacitated, and so didn't get a chance to believe in this life.

And if that possibility exists, then I don't see why God couldn't also give this opportunity to people who never had a chance to hear the gospel during their lives, since God truly wants everyone to be saved.

And because God wants everyone to be saved, I also think that an after-death encounter with Jesus could make sense as one final chance to correct misunderstandings and misperceptions of God that kept people from believing the gospel during their earthly lives.

However, I admit there is no clear evidence in Scripture to support the idea that people do meet Jesus after death and get one last chance to believe in him.

Therefore, I don't want to have to rely only on this possibility of after-death repentance to support an entire theory of Christian inclusivism.

Yet because I'm convinced that love requires free will, I still think that to avoid the pitfalls of universalism or exclusivism, we must affirm what C.S. Lewis wrote:

All that are in hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.20

Logically, such a choice must be made either before death, or after death.

Yet perhaps there are ways that people can make this choice in this life even without directly hearing the gospel. This would be the case in the other two possibilities for Christian inclusivism that I listed at the start of this post.

I will explore both of these other possibilities in future posts, before combining all three of these possibilities in my own theory of Christian inclusivism.

Footnotes:

• 1. Clark Pinnock, A Wideness in God's Mercy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 36-37, referring to George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), 58.
• 2. Gregory A. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2001), 381.
• 3. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 381.
• 4. Thomas B. Talbott, "Response by Thomas B. Talbott" in Perspectives on Election: 5 Views, ed. Chad Owen Brand (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2006), 144.
• 5. Randy Alcorn, Heaven (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2004), 298.
• 6. Alcorn, Heaven, 356.
• 7. John Piper and Justin Taylor, eds. Suffering and the Sovereignty of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 231-232.
• 8. Piper and Taylor, Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, 93-95.
• 9. Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2011), 189. Copan then has to make it clear that this is not an excuse for killing children in order to make sure they make it to heaven, as such actions would go against God's command not to murder, and is therefore a sin (Copan, 194).
• 10. Alcorn, Heaven, 356. See also Randy Alcorn, "Do Infants Go to Heaven When They Die?", Eternal Perspective Ministries, January 5, 2010, and Randy Alcorn, "If an Unborn Baby Is Better off in God's Presence, Why Do Christians Consider Abortion a Crime Against the Unborn?", Eternal Perspective Ministries, March 26, 2010.
• 11. Cynthia Mcfadden, "Yates: I'm Saving My Kids From Hell", ABC News, June 14, 2002. See a fuller background on Andrea Yates and her issues that led to this sad incident in Suzanne O'Malley, "A Cry in the Dark," O, The Oprah Magazine, February, 2002.
• 12. Randy Alcorn, "Do Infants Go to Heaven When They Die?", Eternal Perspective Ministries, January 5, 2010.
• 13. F. Leroy Forlines, Classical Arminianism: A Theology of Salvation, J. Matthew Pinson ed. (Nashville, TN: Randall House Publishers, 2011), 240-241.
• 14. Alcorn, "Do Infants Go to Heaven When They Die?".
• 15. Alcorn, "Do Infants Go to Heaven When They Die?".
• 16. Alcorn, "Do Infants Go to Heaven When They Die?".
• 17. F. Leroy Forlines, Classical Arminianism: A Theology of Salvation, J. Matthew Pinson ed. (Nashville, TN: Randall House Publishers, 2011), 236-246. For the use of Romans 5:14, see Oliver D. Crisp, The Word Enfleshed: Exploring the Person and Work of Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 137.
• 18. Edward William Fudge, The Fire That Consumes, Third Edition, (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011), 149-152.
• 19. Francis Chan & Preston Sprinkle, Erasing Hell: What God Said About Eternity, and the Things We've Made Up (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2011), 161.
• 20. C.S. Lewis, "The Great Divorce," in The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics (New York: Harper Collins, 2002), 506.