Key Arguments
Several conceptual ideas travel with universalistic inclusivism.

• In the Old Testament, the tendency is to consider Melchizedek a holy pagan, rather than someone who has had a direct revelation of God or has come to know Yahweh through Abraham.33
  
• In the New Testament Cornelius is thought to be the perfect example of a holy pagan. That Peter went to Cornelius and explained to him the words by which he was saved (Acts 11:14) is an unacceptable explanation.34 That the Scriptures clearly say that Cornelius had to receive saving words is repeatedly ignored by inclusivists. There is a distressing tendency latent within inclusivism to relieve the Church of its obligation to preach the gospel to the Jews, because if holy pagans can be saved, why cannot Jewish inquirers come to the Father under the Old Covenant? If a faith-path without the Savior can be found in the Old Testament, a mediator will not then be needed. Inclusivism has large regard for the Old Covenant but a deliberately fuzzy conception of the New Covenant.35
  
• There is a strong hope among inclusivists that natural revelation will have saving effect, that the lost may indeed be saved by looking at nature and concluding that there must be a Creator/Savior.
  
• The hermeneutics of inclusivism are indirect and elastic.36 The plain sense of many of the New Testament statements flies directly in the face of inclusivism.37 The imperative texts such as John 3:3-7; 14:6; Acts 4:12; Ephesians 2:3, 8-10 and Romans 10 have to be softened, skirted or omitted to make inclusivism work.
  
• There are necessarily strong appeals made to rationalism made in inclusivism. If God saved people in the Old Testament before the advent of Jesus Christ, why will He not save in the same way today, especially when the persons involved have never heard of Jesus Christ? Analogy and logic, legitimate though they be, take precedence over exegesis in the framing of inclusivism's appeal.38
  

Cairns has observed that "Error is perennial and usually springs from the same causes in every age. Man's pride in reason and his rationalizing tendency can still lead to heresy as it did in the Colossian church."39

• Sometimes inclusivist thinking suggests that allowing for implicit Christians is no different than believing in God's acceptance of the mentally retarded or children before the age of accountability. That "implicit Christians" are by definition accountable sinners who have broken God's law and are without excuse (Romans 1:20) is conveniently forgotten.
  
• Finally, in inclusivism rigid exegetical procedures must be abandoned since they will not carry anyone to an unbiblical result.40

Is Inclusivism Heresy?
Is it error to affirm the existence of implicit Christians? Is implicit Christianity heresy? A number of careful questions need to be asked about implicit Christians.

A third and highly significant question relates to the worldwide missionary enterprise. If there are possibly some who will be saved without ever hearing the name of Jesus Christ, is the cord of missionary urgency being cut? Hick, the pluralist, acknowledges one major result of inclusivism "is that it negates the old missionary compulsion. . . ."41 Hunter has already shown that such a negation is presently taking place.

Needless to say, this posture . . . [i.e., some hope for the Untold] does lessen substantially the sense of urgency to evangelize the unreached.42

When comparing seminarians who believe that "Jesus is the only way for salvation except for those who have not heard of Jesus" with those who believe that "Jesus is the only way period" on a number of items, a pattern was found to hold true. For example, the former were less likely to hold evangelism as the highest priority in the church, more likely to believe that social justice is "just as important" or "almost as important" as evangelism and much less likely to choose missions as a career path-by two to one [emphasis added].43

As this argumentation proceeds, the terms "implicit Christian" and "implicit faith" are used in synonymous ways, although the first tends in part to be Christological and the second almost wholly soteriological. The first is rooted in Roman Catholicism; the second is obviously a persuasive adaptation for Protestants and evangelicals who are thought to still value highly the results of the Reformation. The general subject, of course, is universalistic inclusivism.

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