Yup, I agree that that's a good question. (FWIW, when I was a Christian my answer was that anyone at all could, in principle, be saved by means of What Jesus Did. So "no one comes to the Father except by me", but that isn't the same as "... except by joining my club". I think this is theologically quite satisfactory. Whether there's any answer to the question "And how often, roughly, do this happen?" that doesn't either clash too badly with the Christian tradition or make God out to be monstrous, I don't know.)
I'm not sure what you mean by "If it's not" at the start of your last paragraph -- there are a couple of different things you could be referring to. But (1) even if God somehow had no choice about tying salvation to Turning To Christ, there remains the question of why he's not done a better job of getting the news out. "Beware of the Leopard" and all that. On the other hand, (2) if in fact The Whole Jesus Thing enables everyone to be saved, or everyone other than major-league psychopaths, or something, then I agree that that makes it much harder to argue "hell is evil and unjust, therefore Christianity is wrong". So, for that matter, would annihilationism, which seems pretty unobjectionable theologically and is quite popular these days even among evangelicals. So, perhaps despite appearances in this thread, I'm not inclined to make a big deal about hell -- except in discussion with people who appear to be attached to the traditional idea of eternal torment for (more or less) everyone who doesn't join the club.
(Well, there's also the fact that for most of Christianity's history that traditional idea seems to have been more or less universally believed. If I'm right in thinking that the traditional idea of hell is disgustingly unjust, then I think that's evidence that God, should he exist, isn't all that concerned to keep Christians from near-unanimous error. How much that matters is debatable.)
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I'm not sure what you mean by "If it's not" at the start of your last paragraph -- there are a couple of different things you could be referring to. But (1) even if God somehow had no choice about tying salvation to Turning To Christ, there remains the question of why he's not done a better job of getting the news out. "Beware of the Leopard" and all that. On the other hand, (2) if in fact The Whole Jesus Thing enables everyone to be saved, or everyone other than major-league psychopaths, or something, then I agree that that makes it much harder to argue "hell is evil and unjust, therefore Christianity is wrong". So, for that matter, would annihilationism, which seems pretty unobjectionable theologically and is quite popular these days even among evangelicals. So, perhaps despite appearances in this thread, I'm not inclined to make a big deal about hell -- except in discussion with people who appear to be attached to the traditional idea of eternal torment for (more or less) everyone who doesn't join the club.
(Well, there's also the fact that for most of Christianity's history that traditional idea seems to have been more or less universally believed. If I'm right in thinking that the traditional idea of hell is disgustingly unjust, then I think that's evidence that God, should he exist, isn't all that concerned to keep Christians from near-unanimous error. How much that matters is debatable.)