This is not to say that people can be saved apart from Christ. Rather it’s to say that the benefits of Christ’s atoning death can be applied to people without their conscious knowledge of Christ.

Rather God judges them on the basis of the light of God’s general revelation in nature and conscience that they do have. The offer of Romans 2:7—“To those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life”—is a bona fide offer of salvation.

For according to the Bible, God doesn’t judge people who have never heard of Christ on the basis of whether they’ve placed their faith in Christ.

Is the Problem Lack of Information? But perhaps the problem is supposed to be that a loving God wouldn’t send people to hell because they were uninformed or misinformed about Christ. People who have never heard of Christ or have been given a distorted picture of Christ can’t be expected to place their faith in Christ.

The real problem concerns the fate of unbelievers outside of one’s own particular religious tradition. Christian particularism consigns such persons to hell, which pluralists take to be unconscionable.

The Problem with Christian Particularism

“genetic fallacy.” This is trying to invalidate a position by criticizing the way a person came to hold that position.

Genetic Fallacy

Argument ad Hominem For example, it’s frequently asserted that it’s arrogant and immoral to hold to any kind of religious particularism because you then have to regard everybody who disagrees with you as mistaken. Therefore, religious particularism is false. This seems to be a textbook example of the logical fallacy known as “argument ad hominem,”