Sometimes the blog comments in a thread are better than the original post, and I think this was reflected in a dead tree equivalent: in this case, the tasty Correspondence section of the May First Things (not online yet) in response to this article authored by Avery Cardinal Dulles.
The original article, I think, intends to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted" with regard to the issue of salvation and as such is unsatisfying. We seek the truth in order to escape the lens of our own prejudices and yet in this instance those who are comfortable will likely assume all statements of comfort are meant for them, and those afflicted will assume all afflicting statements are for them. To the extent something contains seeming contradictions we will likely affirm in them what we already have a tendency to affirm.
The letters in response, by comparison, are models of clarity and conviction even if they don't illuminate the answer to the controversy so much as illuminate the first principles. I think the principles in regard to answering "Who will be saved?" include the attempt to look at what has been revealed to us (including from Scriptural, Patristic, & Magisterial sources) and go where the data leads you. This seems an intrinsically holy, self-effacing way to go about it.
Another method is also holy and self-effacing albeit the opposite of the previous method. It recognizes that Truth transcends the confines of Scripture and Tradition. Wherever Truth is found, God is found. So some operate on the assumption that a holy, merciful, loving God is incompatible with a God in which those who don't know Christ go to hell. This method is subject to abuse but is necessary because God does limit Himself to goodness after all, and at least since William of Occam, that attribute of God can't be taken for granted.
A third method is to see the salvation issue merely as a means to an end: the truth of how many are saved is not important except the impact it has on personal behavior of Christians. Here truth is not sought for its own sake but as a means to the end.
I recall a Baptist preacher trying to remove works from the salvation equation by saying "how many works is enough? One, two, twenty-five, three-thousand?". But that sort of line-drawing is present in his "faith alone" theory since faith is a continuum. You could say "how much faith is enough? Mere intellect assent? Enough to have felt it once but never thereafter? Enough to pray occasionally? Enough to die for Him?"
There's also the pious sentiment that "only God reads hearts, so only He knows who is saved" but I would argue it's exactly the opposite. Only God knows Himself, and so only He knows who is saved. It wouldn't matter if we could read hearts because we wouldn't know where to draw that line between saved and unsaved. It's not heart-reading that matters, but the line between Judgment and Mercy (is there one? or will they 'kiss'?), and only God knows where to draw it. Man would have to know God and man doesn't: I'll quote a mystic saint (St. Faustina) in support:
I asked Jesus why the Angels had been punished as soon as they had sinned. I heard a voice: Because of their profound knowledge of God. No person on earth, even though a great saint, has such knowledge of God as an Angel has.As a priest on EWTN's forum once wrote with regard to the issue:
Your salvation is in the hands of God. You are asked to place your faith and hope in that God, who alone knows your eternal destiny and whom alone you can totally trust. Thus, there can be no greater certainty than that in your faith and hope in God saving you. And remember that the faith and hope are themselves also gifts from God. There is no purely human knowledge of one's eternal destiny that can contain the infinitely greater certainty contained in your faith and hope through Christ our Lord.
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