As some suggest that rigid readings of religious texts require harsh punishment for those who have never heard of that religion, it is sometimes raised as an argument against the existence of God, and is generally accepted to be an extension or sub-section of the problem of evil.
[2] Augustine of Hippo, however, believed that the unevangelized are condemned to hell and Thomas Aquinas held that those "brought up in the forest or among wolves" would be sent "the gospel message through miraculous means".
[2] John Sanders and Clark Pinnock propose a position known as "inclusivism", under which many of the unevangelized will receive salvation because they have faith in God as they know him (as Hindus or Muslims, for example), and they are saved by Christ's work.
[3] The Roman Catholic Church teaches that, since the Penitent Thief was granted canonization by Christ himself,[4] God saves the unbaptized through a means known only to himself.
Rather, as we want to reaffirm in conclusion, they provide strong grounds for hope that God will save infants when we have not been able to do for them what we would have wished to do, namely, to baptize them into the faith and life of the Church.
[12] In the case of the righteous unlearned, "[i]t may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity" and, by extension, God may permit them to attain salvation.
[14] The Church of England, mother Church of the Anglican Communion, has a prayer for the departed unlearned: "God of infinite mercy and justice, who has made man in thine own image, and hatest nothing thou hast made, we rejoice in thy love for all creation and commend all mankind to thee, that in them thy will be done".
[14] With regard to the fate of the unlearned, Willard Francis Mallalieu, a Methodist bishop, wrote in Some Things That Methodism Stands For:[15] Starting on the assumption that salvation was possible for every redeemed soul, and that all souls are redeemed, it has held fast to the fundamental doctrine that repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ are the divinely-ordained conditions upon which all complying therewith may be saved, who are intelligent enough to be morally responsible, and have heard the glad tidings of salvation.
And it may be said with ever-increasing emphasis that it commends itself to all sensible and unprejudiced thinkers, for this, that it is rational and Scriptural, and at the same time honorable to God and gracious and merciful to man.
[17] Latter-day Saints believe that God has provided a way so that all of humankind will have an opportunity to hear the message of the gospel, and can thereby choose whether to accept it or not.
[19] Since Latter-day Saints believe that all people must receive the proper ordinances in order to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, today members of the LDS Church participate in a massive genealogical effort to compile names of their kindred dead, and then act as proxies in ordinances performed on behalf of their deceased ancestors within LDS temples.
[26][27] In Latter-day Saint belief, only "sons of perdition" who choose to reject Jesus after receiving a sure knowledge of him are destined for a form of Hell called outer darkness.
[28] Jehovah's Witnesses believe that humans inherited sin and death as a result of Adam's rebellion,[29] and that God sent Jesus to redeem mankind from that condition.
[31] Only baptized members of the denomination[32] who are alive at the time of the Great Tribulation will survive and form the basis of a new world ruled by Christ and a relatively small group of 144,000 persons whom he invites to be his corulers.
[33] They believe that those who have no opportunity to hear their message, for example, due to government restrictions or other causes beyond the Witnesses' control, may be destroyed under a "principle of community responsibility".