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Probably the best known Christian proponent of this inclusivist perspective is Karl Rahner. Christianity, he argues, cannot recognize any other religion as providing the way to salvation. However, since God is love and desires everyone to be saved, God can apply the results of Jesus’s atoning death and resurrection to everyone, even to those who have never heard of Jesus and his death or have never acknowledged his lordship. Just as adherents to pre-Christian Judaism were able, through the redemptive acts of Jesus of which they were not aware, to enter God’s presence, so, too, is it possible for adherents of other religions to enter God’s presence, even though they are not aware of the necessary redemptive acts of Jesus that makes this possible (Peterson et al. 2013, 334–335).

Inclusivists, it should be noted, differ on the conditions such “anonymous Christians” must meet. Some stipulate, for instance, that those who have never heard “the gospel” still have both some innate knowledge of God and the freedom to establish a relationship with God and, therefore, that the eternal destiny of those in this category is dependent on the extent to which they commit as much as they knows of themselves to as much as they know of God through, or even apart from, a religion other than Christianity. Other inclusivists don’t want to be as specific, maintaining only that, because God is just, there will surely be some adherents of other religions who will be in God’s presence because they have met some set of divine conditions they have it within their power to meet. But all agree these “anonymous Christians” are the recipients of supernatural grace.

Reference

Karl Rahner, “Anonymous Christians”, in Theological Investigations VI (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1982), pp. 390-398.

Further For a doctoral thesis evaluating Rahner click here