The Catholic view on the hypothetical tribesman

However, even with that "out" for tribesman, atheists, and even Unitarians, there's a lot more to it than basically being an OK guy.

I'm surprised Christians in general (and Catholics in particular) aren't taking the straightforward way out. It goes like this:

• God knows everything about you: what you think, what you would do in every hypothetical situation.
• Sin, as we all know, is in what you think or what you would do just as much as what you actually do.
• So is salvation.
• You are saved if, in a reasonable set of circumstances (like, for example, having heard The Truth), you would accept Christ's sacrifice and do your best to be good.

It seems like this is the core idea behind the Catholic view here, but they don't say it explicitly, and I've never heard a Christian say it explicitly. But it does have some scary implications: even those of us who are unable to pick the One True Faith out of the many pieces of hearsay reaching us can be saved, as long as we would accept God's sacrifice if we knew the truth of it. (Note that knowing the truth is different from hearing the truth: if you hear the truth among a pack of lies without enough information to pick it out, you don't know the truth.)