“The question: are there few that be saved? is one that Jesus declined to answer. It is a question which seems to fascinate many Christian minds today. There are, on the one hand, those who seem anxious to keep the doors of hell wide open so that there may not be any lack of funds and recruits for missionary work. There are, on the other hand, those who seem to think that God governs the universe on some sort of referendum principle, and that it is intrinsically impossible that the majority might be wrong. It therefore appears to them that, since the unbelievers in all the range of human history are far more than the believers, it follows that God saves on other grounds than faith.

“Neither of these positions has any real ground. We have no data to answer the question. When it was put to Jesus his only reply was to advise the questioners to do their best to get in through the narrow door. We have no means of going beyond that answer. We are confronted with the total fact of Christ, crucified and risen. We are given the opportunity to repent, to believe, to be converted, to be committed to the doing of his will in this present world. We are not offered something which might be described as the best among the religions; we are offered something which, if it is true, is the clue to all history — the history of the world, and the history of my own soul.”

— Lesslie Newbigin, The Finality of Christ (London: SCM Press, 1969), 61-62.