The destiny of the unevangelized is an issue in various theistic belief systems concerning whether those who never hear of requirements issued through divine revelations will be punished for failure to abide by those requirements.
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In Christian evangelical belief, the issue centers on whether those who have not heard the Gospel receive salvation or damnation.[1][2]
Under an exclusivist position, those who died without an opportunity to learn of or understand the Christian message are destined to Hell, which may include those who lived before Jesus' time, those who lived in remote places and never learned of it, those who die in infancy or before birth, and the mentally disabled. Some Protestant Christians agree with Augustine that people in these categories will be damned to Hell for original sin, while others believe that God will make an exception in these cases,[3] or that God needs no human help in delivering salvation.[1][2] Theologian John Sanders noted that "Although God's decision on this issue is final, the church has never agreed on the nature of that decision."[1] 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 Buddists or Muslims, for example), and they are saved by Christ's work.[4]
In Mormon belief, only "sons of perdition" who chose to reject Jesus are destined for Hell, a form of universalism that assisted the early rise of the Mormon faith.[5]
A similar issue exists in Islam, as different authorities within the faith have issued different theories as to the destiny of those who do not know of Muhammad or Allah. In contrast to Christianity, Islam generally rejects the possibility that those who have never heard of the revelations embodied in the Qu'ran might automatically merit punishment.[6]
One view is that "A person who has never heard of Islam or the Prophet... and who has never heard the message in its correct and true form, will not be punished by Allah if he dies in a state of kufr (disbelief). If it were asked what his fate will be, the answer will be that Allah will test him on the Day of Resurrection: if he obeys, he will enter Paradise and if he disobeys he will enter Hell."[7] Another view forecloses this option and is simply that "those disbelievers who never heard of Islam will not be punished in Hell. They will be annihilated along with the animals after their Judgement."[8] But, even those who have not heard the message will be held to some standard of conduct: "Because everyone is a born Muslim, those who have never heard of Islam are only responsible for not doing what common sense tells him or her to do. Those who knowingly violate God's laws will be punished for their wrongdoing."[8] Under this view, those who have not heard the message are "excused," and Allah "rewards such people for the good they have done, and they enjoy the blessings of Paradise."[6] A similar view is that "if such people find the Creator through the use of reason, even though they do not know His Names or Attributes, they will be saved. If they do not do this, they will not be saved."[6]
Some would extend this mercy to the incompetently evangelized, that is, to people "who have been reached by the name of Muhammad but who have been given a false account," and for whom it is then said that they "have not rejected true Islam but only a distorted version of it and they will therefore be judged in the same category as those people who never heard of Islam in the first place."[8]
The problem of the unevangelized does not arise in religious or spiritual traditions such as Deism, Pandeism, and Pantheism, which do not include any revelation or require obedience to revealed rules. In Deism, some believe that we will be judged by our obedience to natural laws of right and wrong to be obtained by the exercise of reason alone, and so, failure to exercise reason in the effort to make this determination is itself the cause for punishment.
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