An apparent contradiction is at play in apologetics and salvation theology; two claims are made which seem opposed to each other. The first is the claim of Pascal's Wager, a favorite argument of Professor Peter Kreeft's (among others) for why we ought to live like God exists. The second is the doctrine of Invincible Ignorance, which is often interpreted to mean that those who do not believe in God or His Church may still find themselves in heaven; this was certainly the view of C.S. Lewis (see The Last Battle), as well as a number of prominent (and orthodox) Catholic Theologians.

---Pascal's Wager---

Pascal's Wager was a chapter in the Pensees, in which Blaise Pascal presented an argument aimed not so much at the atheists of his day as the agnostics. The outline of the argument is as follows:

1. Man must satisfy both his intellect and his will; the demand of the intellect is to know and obey truth, the demand of the will is to seek and find the good and to avoid evil.
2. The agnostic claims that we can't know truth absolutely.
3. However, we must ultimately live as if we did know truth: ultimately, we must live as if there is God, or as if there is not God. While we may claim intellectually not to know, not living as if there is God is equivalent to living as if there is not God.
4. Since we must make a choice, our intellect is not offended by having made this choice. We therefore must choose based on our will.

Having settled the demands of the intellect, we must now turn to the demands of the will:

5. The will is ultimately satisfied with what is goo, and offended by what is evil. Therefore, gaining for ourselves (or seeking out) the greatest good is what ultimately satisfies our wills; and similarly avoiding the greatest evil.
6. Ultimately, the greatest possible good is eternal life in heaven, forever in joyful and beatific union with God; and the greatest possible evil which could befall us is eternal damnation in hell, separated forever from God.
7. Now comes the wager: either heaven and hell are real, or they aren't. Moreover, either how we choose to live (and what we choose to believe) affects our going to one or the other, or it doesn't. Therefore, we must pick: will we live as if God, heaven, and hell are real--and as if the choices we make in life will affect whether we go to one or the other--or will we live as if they are not real?

From there, Pascal considers the possible outcomes from the different choices our will makes. We can choose to live for God or not to live for God; and we can be either right or wrong in these choices. If we choose God and are right, then we merit heaven; if we choose God and are wrong, then after this life there is nothing. If we choose no God, and are right, then after this life there is nothing. And if we choose no God but are wrong, then we end up in hell. Notice but for the difference in this one life, the best case scenario for rejecting God is only as bad as the worst-case scenario for accepting Him. Since this life is short and passing--only finitely happy or finitely sad--and the potential afterlife is eternal and will be either infinitely happy or infinitely sad, we are essentially wagering the finite against the infinite. To quote from Mr Jim Eliot, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." Similarly does Saint Matthew record the words of Christ: "Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth: where the rust, and moth consume, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven: where neither the rust nor moth doth consume, and where thieves do not break through, nor steal" (Matthew 6:19-20).

The implication of this is that by conforming our lives to a life of faith, and choosing to have faith in God, we can still be saved, even if our intellects themselves cannot resolve whether or not God is real. Though we do not yet know, still we believe, we have faith that He is there and that He will grant us grace in this life and salvation in the next. Meanwhile, by rejecting a life of faith, we also reject God, even if our intellects do not know whether or not there is a God. By rejecting God, we ultimately lose heaven and are doomed to hell. Indeed, the Catholic Church has long taught that "outside the Church, there is no salvation," mirroring Christ's own words that "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me" (John 14:6).

---Invincible Ignorance---

This brings us to the concept of Invincible Ignorance. What is to be said about those people who, through no fault of their own, never knew Christ? What is to be said of those people who did not know that life was a sort of wager, that there is an afterlife in which they may either find suffering or joy? The doctrine of Ignorance applies to these people. To quote form the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Ignorance is lack of knowledge about a thing in a being capable of knowing. Fundamentally speaking and with regard to a given object ignorance is the outcome of the limitations of our intellect or of the obscurity of the matter itself....We must also note that ignorance may precede, accompany, or follow an act of our will. It is therefore said to be antecedent, concomitant, or consequent. Antecedent ignorance is in no sense voluntary, neither is the act resulting from it; it precedes any voluntary failure to inquire. Consequent ignorance, on the other hand, is so called because it is the result of a perverse frame of mind choosing, either directly or indirectly, to be ignorant. Concomitant ignorance is concerned with the will to act in a given contingency; it implies that the real character of what is done is unknown to the agent, but his attitude is such that, were he acquainted with the actual state of things, he would go on just the same. Keeping these distinctions in mind we are in a position to lay down certain statements of doctrine.

Invincible ignorance, whether of the law or of the fact, is always a valid excuse and excludes sin. The evident reason is that neither this state nor the act resulting therefrom is voluntary. It is undeniable that a man cannot be invincibly ignorant of the natural law, so far as its first principles are concerned, and the inferences easily drawn therefrom. This, however, according to the teaching of St. Thomas, is not true of those remoter conclusions, which are deducible only by a process of laborious and sometimes intricate reasoning. Of these a person may be invincibly ignorant. Even when the invincible ignorance is concomitant, it prevents the act which it accompanies from being regarded as sinful. The perverse temper of soul, which in this case is supposed, retains, of course, such malice as it had. Vincible ignorance, being in some way voluntary, does not permit a man to escape responsibility for the moral deformity of his deeds; he is held to be guilty and in general the more guilty in proportion as his ignorance is more voluntary. Hence, the essential thing to remember is that the guilt of an act performed or omitted in vincible ignorance is not to be measured by the intrinsic malice of the thing done or omitted so much as by the degree of negligence discernible in the act.

Ignorance does not remove culpability, but it certainly weakens the effects of sin. This is true in human laws--we recognize the difference between intentional murder and accidental homicide--and it is true of divine law to some extent. The Church has long taught that there are mortal sins and venial ones, and that the former are graver than the latter, both in the effect on the sinner's soul and the matter of the sin itself. This is a teaching which is rooted in Saint John's first letter, "He that knoweth his brother to sin a sin which is not to death, let him ask, and life shall be given to him, who sinneth not to death. There is a sin unto death: for that I say not that any man ask. All iniquity is sin. And there is a sin unto death" (1 John 5:16-17). Additionally, the Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that

"Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God's law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin" (CCC paragraph 1859, emphasis in original).

In his reflections on the last words from the cross and their relationship to hte seven deadly sins, Archbishop Fulton J Sheen noted that ignorance--that is, true ignorance--is the only real excuse for wronging a person. "And Jesus said: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). There is just wrath (God's wrath) and unjust wrath (our wrath as a deadly sin), and just wrath is stayed by knowing that the other is ignorant.

This brings us at last to the interpolation that Invincible Ignorance may permit some who do not know Christ--through no fault of their own--to nevertheless be saved. Indeed, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that (paragraphs 846 and 847):

How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:

Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.

This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.

Invincible Ignorance therefore implies that a person can gamble against Pascal's wager and nevertheless be saved. Or does it? There are certainly some whose solution is throw out the baby with the bathwater by siding entirely with Pascal's Wager (or vice versa). I disagree with those people.

---Reconciling the Wager with Ignorance---

I've written before about ignorance and the two type of truth (subjective-personal and objective-transcendent). It is worth returning to this topic with another brief outline.

• There are two types of truth: subjective (or personal) truth and objective (or transcendent) truth.
• Objective truth is ultimately the Truth: it is what really is true. As Catholics, we ultimately believe that the official infallible teachings of the Church are transcendentally true; Christians in general believe that God is Truth, and that all transcendent truth has its source in Him. As a less controversial example, the proposition "I exist" is objectively true; I exist whether or not you (or I) believe that I exist. In other words, objective truth transcends persons, an is independent of whether or not we happen to believe in it.
• Subjective (or personal) truth has to do with what we sincerely and honestly believe to be true. Subjective truth has as its compass the conscience: it car err--hence the need for a well-formed conscience--but it is authoritative for that person, and he must ultimately obey it.
• Ideally, subjective truth is identical to objective truth, however the two can be at odds. If I exist I shouldn't believe that I do not exist, though a great many college students undergoing existential crises do seem to fall into this category, as do some people in insane asylums.
• Finally, one source of objective and subjective truth being at odds is ignorance, which can be either invincible or vincible. The former means that the person in question is making a sincere effort to reconcile subjective and objective truth, but failing; the latter may be called a "studied ignorance," an intentional of "feigned" ignorance, a mere pretense, and it actually makes the person's situation more grave. Deliberate ignorance about God and the Faith is a serious sin, which makes other sins all the worse.

It is in this idea of subjective as opposed to objective truth that I believe a solution may be found. A person who is ignorant of transcendent truth is still in possession of subjective truth. He must therefore pursue that as best he can. By so doing, he will ultimately be pursuing God, in Christ; for such is God's mercy, and His grace. Anything which is true has as its source Christ. Thus, to pursue what we believe to be true is ultimately to pursue that whom we believe to be God. Can we still sin in following our conscience? Of course we can: but we all sin whether we know Truth or not. In sincerely striving to form our consciences and then obeying them, we are placing some faith in that conscience: which is faith in this as a source of truth, and thus ultimately faith in the One who gives us a conscience, though we may be unaware of it. We are, therefore, ultimately placing our Faith in God, which means in the Father, Son, and Spirit, though we wen it not, and we are ultimately struggling to serve Him, ignorant as we are. We do so imperfectly, and may come late into God's Kingdom, but it is ultimately His to give.

We would indeed be like the workers who were hired at the end of the day:

"The kingdom of heaven is like to an householder, who went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And having agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour, he saw others standing in the market place idle. And he said to them: Go you also into my vineyard, and I will give you what shall be just. And they went their way. And again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did in like manner. But about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing, and he saith to them: Why stand you here all the day idle? They say to him: Because no man hath hired us. He saith to them: Go you also into my vineyard. And when evening was come, the lord of the vineyard saith to his steward: Call the labourers and pay them their hire, beginning from the last even to the first. When therefore they were come, that came about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. But when the first also came, they thought that they should receive more: and they also received every man a penny. And receiving it they murmured against the master of the house, Saying: These last have worked but one hour, and thou hast made them equal to us, that have borne the burden of the day and the heats. But he answering said to one of them: Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst thou not agree with me for a penny? Take what is thine, and go thy way: I will also give to this last even as to thee. Or, is it not lawful for me to do what I will? is thy eye evil, because I am good? So shall the last be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few chosen" (Matthew 20:1-16)

Some of the workers come to God late in life--perhaps at the end--or even (and this would be speculative indeed) in the moment of death, when the scales are removed from their eyes. Moreover,we are told by the LORD Himself that

"And that servant who knew the will of his lord, and prepared not himself, and did not according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. And unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required: and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more" (Luke 12:48).

To those of us who were born into the Church, or who converted in earlier in life, much has been given compared especially to those who never so much as hear the Gospels preached. We know, or should know, more about our Master's will. Let us not protest the merciful treatment of those who--remaining ignorant through no fault of their own--do not know their Master, let alone His will. As Catholic we believe that purgatory likely awaits them--those who don't know transcendent truth still need purification before entering heaven--but after that there is heaven. Let us not prolong our own stays in purgatory, or worse.