An extremely common objection raised against Christianity concerns the people living in the Americas before European exploration. Why did the American Indians apparently have to wait nearly fifteen hundred years to hear the Gospel? If God wanted the whole world to hear about Jesus Christ, why didn’t missionaries reach the Americas shortly after Christ’s ascension? Did God somehow fail to get the Gospel there?
This question was recently sent to me by someone who was dealing with an atheist raising this very objection. In reality, however, the objection is nothing new. It is simply another variation of the old question, “What about those who have never heard the Gospel?” The American Indian before Columbus gives the atheist a particularly vivid example, but the question is much broader than the Americas. Even today, there are isolated tribes and peoples throughout the world who may never have heard a clear presentation of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the real question is not merely why the Gospel seemingly took so long to reach America. The larger question is how God deals with men who have never heard the Gospel at all.
It is a fair question, but it rests upon several assumptions that need to be examined. We need to distinguish between what the Bible actually promises, what God commanded Christians to do, and what history can actually tell us about contact with the Americas before Columbus.
First, we should at least consider the possibility raised by Romans 10:18. Paul writes, “But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.” There are places in Scripture where universal language is used hyperbolically, and there are places where references to “all the world” concern the world known to the biblical writers. At the same time, however, we should not dismiss the other possibility: perhaps the Gospel traveled considerably farther in the ancient world than the surviving historical record allows us to demonstrate. It is at least possible that witnesses of the truth reached peoples and places whose stories have simply been lost to history. Our historical record is incomplete.
There is an important detail concerning Romans 10:18, however. Paul is quoting Psalm 19:4. Psalm 19 begins, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” It continues by declaring, “There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.” Then comes the statement quoted by Paul: “Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”
The original context concerns the universal testimony of God’s creation. Every nation has lived beneath the heavens that declare the glory of God. Paul makes essentially the same argument earlier in Romans. “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (Romans 1:20). Consequently, Romans 10:18 does not require us to prove that an apostle had personally visited every inhabited continent by AD 60. But neither should we use our incomplete knowledge of ancient travel to impose artificial limits upon how far the Gospel could have traveled. The verse gives us sweeping language; history simply does not give us enough information to reconstruct every journey made by every early Christian witness.
The atheist’s objection also assumes something the Bible never promises. Where does God promise that every population on earth would receive a Christian missionary within fifty years of Christ’s ascension? There is no such promise.
What Christ actually gave was a command: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). Christ commissioned men to carry the Gospel. The command itself demonstrates that geographical distance was going to require Christians to go somewhere. If God intended simply to supernaturally announce the Gospel simultaneously to every human being, there would have been little reason to command His disciples to go into the world and preach it.
Romans 10 makes this human responsibility unmistakable. Paul asks, “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?” He continues, “And how shall they preach, except they be sent?” (Romans 10:14–15).
God chose preaching as the means by which the Gospel would be carried throughout the world. He commanded His people to go. Therefore, if Christians failed to reach some distant population quickly enough, that does not establish God’s failure. It demonstrates the tremendous responsibility God placed upon His people to obey the Great Commission.
There is also a historical assumption buried inside the objection. We often talk as though nobody from the Old World reached America before Christopher Columbus sailed in 1492. We now know that isn’t true.
The Norse reached North America centuries before Columbus. Archaeology at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland has firmly established a Norse presence around AD 1000, and modern dating has identified Norse activity there in AD 1021. This was not a nineteenth-century legend or a questionable inscription discovered on a rock. It is established archaeology.
This is particularly interesting because the Norse world was undergoing Christianization during this period. The medieval sagas describe Leif Erikson as a Christian, and Christianity was established among the Norse settlements in Greenland. Therefore, Christians were part of the North Atlantic world that reached North America approximately five centuries before Columbus.
We should not exaggerate what this proves. Archaeology does not presently demonstrate that Norse Christians conducted an evangelistic campaign among the Native Americans. It establishes pre-Columbian European contact with North America and places Christians within the culture responsible for that contact. That is significant, but it is not the same thing as proving that the Gospel was preached extensively among Native peoples.
There are claims of even earlier contact. There are also numerous claims concerning Phoenician, Hebrew, Roman, Celtic and other contacts with the Americas.
Some of those claims are fascinating. Some are extremely questionable. None currently provides the kind of archaeological certainty we possess concerning the Norse. We should therefore resist the temptation to turn an interesting possibility into historical fact merely because it would make an apologetic argument easier.
There is an important principle here: the absence of surviving evidence is not necessarily evidence that something never happened. We cannot presently demonstrate that a Christian missionary reached America in AD 100, 300 or 600. But neither can someone living two thousand years later confidently demonstrate that no Christian ever made such a journey. Ancient history simply does not preserve that kind of comprehensive record.
This is especially important when dealing with Romans 10:18. We do not have to choose between dogmatically declaring that Paul knew missionaries had reached the Americas and dogmatically declaring that no Christian could possibly have reached them. Scripture leaves us with the statement that the sound went “into all the earth,” while history leaves enormous gaps in our knowledge of the ancient world. There is nothing unreasonable about leaving open the possibility that Christian witnesses traveled farther than surviving records can establish.
Nevertheless, Christianity does not depend upon proving that such a missionary existed. The deeper answer concerns how God deals with mankind.
Romans 1 teaches that God has provided mankind with a universal revelation of Himself through creation. “Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them” (Romans 1:19). Paul continues, “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.”
The problem described in Romans 1 is not innocent men desperately searching for God while God hides Himself from them. Paul says, “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful” (Romans 1:21). Man’s problem is his response to the revelation God has already given him.
Paul makes another important statement while preaching at Athens. God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth,” and He “hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation” (Acts 17:26). Why? “That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him.” Then Paul adds the remarkable statement, “though he be not far from every one of us” (Acts 17:27).
That included the people of Europe. It included the people of Asia and Africa. And it included the people living thousands of miles away in the Americas. They were not outside God’s knowledge simply because Europeans did not know they existed.
This changes the nature of the objection. The question is no longer simply, “Why didn’t God get a European missionary to America sooner?” We must instead ask what revelation God gave mankind and what mankind did with that revelation.
God gave mankind the witness of creation. He gave men conscience. He revealed Himself progressively in history. He provided salvation through Jesus Christ. Then He entrusted the Gospel to human messengers and commanded those messengers to carry it throughout the earth.
The existence of unreached peoples therefore does not demonstrate the failure of God. If anything, it demonstrates the urgency of the command He gave His church and the failure of mankind to respond rightly to the light God has already given through creation and conscience.
“For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.” — Romans 2:14–16
God did not forget the inhabitants of the Americas for fifteen hundred years. They lived beneath the same heavens that declared His glory, possessed the same conscience that bore witness within them, and stood within the same human family that God “hath made of one blood.” The unanswered question is not whether God did His part, but whether man responded to the light he was given and whether God’s people faithfully obeyed the command: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”
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