Nonbelievers Too Can Be Saved, Says Pope

VATICAN CITY, NOV. 30, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Whoever seeks peace and the good of the community with a pure conscience, and keeps alive the desire for the transcendent, will be saved even if he lacks biblical faith, says Benedict XVI.

The Pope made this affirmation today at the general audience, commenting on a meditation written by St. Augustine (354-430).

On a rainy morning in Rome, the Holy Father's meditation, addressed to more than 23,000 people gathered in St. Peter's Square, concentrated on the suffering of the Jewish people in the Babylonian exile, expressed dramatically in Psalm 136(137).

The Pontiff referred to Augustine's commentary on this composition of the Jewish people, noting that this "Father of the Church introduces a surprising element of great timeliness."

Augustine "knows that also among the inhabitants of Babylon there are people who are committed to peace and the good of the community, despite the fact that they do not share the biblical faith, that they do not know the hope of the Eternal City to which we aspire," Benedict XVI stated.

"They have a spark of desire for the unknown, for the greatest, for the transcendent, for a genuine redemption," explained the Pope, quoting Augustine.

This spark

"And he says that among the persecutors, among the nonbelievers, there are people with this spark, with a kind of faith, of hope, in the measure that is possible for them in the circumstances in which they live," the Holy Father continued.

"With this faith in an unknown reality, they are really on the way to the authentic Jerusalem, to Christ," he clarified.

Continuing with his quotes from Augustine, the Pope added that "God will not allow them to perish with Babylon, having predestined them to be citizens of Jerusalem, on the condition, however, that, living in Babylon, they do not seek pride, outdated pomp and arrogance."

The Bishop of Rome concluded by inviting those present to pray to the Lord "that he will awaken in all of us this desire, this openness to God, and that those who do not know God may also be touched by his love, so that all of us journey together toward the definitive City and that the light of this City might also shine in our time and in our world."

The work is finished. There was nothing I could do to earn salvation, and there is nothing I can do to lose it. It was secured for all eternity at Calvary

Say what? That goes against an awful lot of Scriptures.

For example: "Now all these (the Jews - the so called promised people who were "saved" were later kept out of the promised Land) things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." 1 Cor 10:11-12

For the sake of brevity, the above is quite enough. Paul says we can fall. He says we can disinherit ourselves because of particular sins (1 Cor 6:9-10). Paul even says HE continues to run the race so that he will not be DISQUALIFIED. One of the most pernicious of lies is that man is "done" and can sit back and relax - this is the Devil trying to tell us that we do not have to be a disciple of Christ. Anyone reading the Gospels with an open mind cannot help but see that Christ demands a radical conversion, not some one-time proclamation.

To say that I can lose my salvation through my actions is to say that Christ's work on the Cross was incomplete and no better than the sacrifice of a goat/sheep/heifer.

No it doesn't. It says that Christ opened the Gates of Heaven to mankind. But we must turn to Christ and walk in, with His help. Christ continues to be with us, aiding us in our turning to Him. Do you think Christ is in heaven right now drinking Rum and Cokes - "oh, well, I'm done." All that talk about spiritual warfare and picking up my cross seems now like an awful waste of time now.

The work was done already. It was finished on the Cross.

Objectively, redemption is completed. But subjectively, for you and me, it is not. "Being saved" today does not necessitate being "saved" five years from now, as a person can later reject God. A person can turn away from God. As long as we can disinherit ourselves, the battle to become more Christ-like is not over.

We died that day on Calvary and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The moment we see that, the moment that fact becomes true in our hearts, than we can decrease and He can increase.

So if one has "enough" faith, they are saved? Sounds like works salvation to me. If I have enough faith, I will be saved - no matter how I act. God owes me... Hardly. Faith AND works come from God. Faith doesn't "come" from us and it is not a matter of having "enough" faith. It is a matter of putting our faith into practice - as seen in Matthew 25:31-45, for example.

As Christians we should never sin.

So what happens when you inevitably do? God doesn't care? Does He just say "Don't worry, Jesus did EVERYTHING"? That is not the message of the Scriptures, brother. If Jesus did EVERYTHING, then no one will go to hell, since the wages of sin are eternal death. Do you see that impression given by Christ?

Regards

"If any one", says St. Paul, "preach to you a gospel, besides that you have received, let him be anathema" (Gal 1:9).

"...lying teachers who shall bring in sects of perdition, and deny the Lord who bought them: bringing upon themselves swift destruction. (2 Peter 2:1)

Timothy is instructed to "war in them a good warfare, having faith and a good conscience, which some rejecting have made shipwreck concerning the faith. Of whom is Hymeneus and Alexander, whom I have delivered up to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme" (1 Tim 1:18-20)

First, the Church is merely following, like it always does, the Tradition given to it, whether orally or written. Thus, don't be angry with the Church, turn to God and the Scriptures which call us to anathema heretics.

Second, if you read the last quote carefully, you will understand what "anathema" means. It is meant to toss a person out of the community for the express purpose for that person to repent and return to the community - for outside, "there is no salvation". The intent of anathema, then, is not to condemn anyone to hell, but to bring about repentence. Anathema, then, doesn't condemn anyone to hell - again, you present the straw man called "Catholic".

Protestants do not believe the same about your eternal fate

First, you don't understand what Catholics believe, so your comparison falls short. Secondly, you must not have heard of Jimmy Swaggart, many members of the Southern Baptist Church, and a plethora of Calvinists, such as James White and RC Sproul. There is no need to type such misinformation. Most people here will see right through it.

"All the elect ..."

And there is your presumption. You KNOW you are of the elect, when you COULDN'T know. God knows, but how can we? Do Calvinists get a copy of the Book of Life? Only by our continued action, faith, and repentence do we know. We can't know what our status will be in 2008, though. This is arrogant presumption that ignores the FACT that the Scripture tells us to beware of falling, to persevere, to remain in Christ. This presumes that possibility of NOT persevering...

Rejoice? Of course. What ever led you to believe we are not? It is Advent season. We joyfully await our savior.

Regards

"This is sufficient to establish the point that there is an element of unfairness about allowing some to have differences and protests while anathemetizing others......when all are believers in Christ."

What you are proposing, Padre, is nearly universalism. On another thread, some days back, a discussion started on who is in The Church, or perhaps better put, what constitutes The Church. You may have seen it. By a review of the writings of the earliest of the Fathers, a picture of what The Church is appears. In some respects, various Protestant assemblies do carry the hallmarks of The Church but in others, they fall down seriously, even into heresy. For example, there is no Protestant Church of which I am aware that believes and teaches that there are 7 sacraments, not 2. I am unaware of any Protestant assembly, save perhaps the , and I do say perhaps, the Anglicans and the Lutherans, who share The Church's belief in the nature of the Eucharist. No Protestant assembly, save perhaps the Anglicans and some Scandinavian Lutherans can validly claim that their hierarchies are within the Apostolic Succession. Other than some Lutherans, I am unaware of any Protestant group which accepts as dogma the perpetual virginity of the Theotokos. The list goes on. The pre-schism Church held all these beliefs in common. In fact, the Post-schism Church does. If an ecclesial assembly does not hold at least these things in common with the particular Churches which make up The Church, then they are not part of The Church. They may well be good Christian assemblies, but they are not part of The Church. The salvation of the members of those assemblies is a matter for the Holy Spirit. If one does not believe, for example, in the Real Presence, or is in communion with a bishop who doesn't, then The Church says "Let him be anathema." The same anathemas apply to belief in the 7 sacraments etc. There's nothing unfair about that, Padre unless one is being anathemized for reasons other than basic Church doctrine.

This issue brings to mind something I read on Pontifications a couple of days ago. One of the Pontificator's laws is that where Rome and Orthodoxy agree and Protestantism doesn't, Protestantism looses.

Where did the Pope say this -- It would be in this section:

In it, the Father of the Church introduces a surprising element of great timeliness: He knows that also among the inhabitants of Babylon there are people who are committed to peace and the good of the community, despite the fact that they do not share the biblical faith, that they do not know the hope of the Eternal City to which we aspire. They have a spark of desire for the unknown, for the greatest, for the transcendent, for a genuine redemption.
And he says that among the persecutors, among the nonbelievers, there are people with this spark, with a kind of faith, of hope, in the measure that is possible for them in the circumstances in which they live. With this faith in an unknown reality, they are really on the way to the authentic Jerusalem, to Christ. And with this opening of hope, valid also for the Babylonians -- as Augustine calls them -- for those who do not know Christ, and not even God, and who nevertheless desire the unknown, the eternal, he exhorts us not to look only at the material things of the present moment, but to persevere in the path to God. Only with this greater hope can we transform this world in a just way.

First, the Church is merely following, like it always does, the Tradition given to it, whether orally or written.

Well, therein lies the crux of the problem.

There are two types of people: those that will, and those that WILL not. For the former, no proof is required, for the latter no amount of proof is sufficient. And for the latter, they remain deliberately and WILLFULLY ignorant.

What an enormous amount of Catholic doctrine is based upon is the supposition that the Word of God (the Bible) is insufficient in and of itself, is incomplete and lacking with respect to doctrine and truth needed for salvation and must therefor be supplemented by tradition and the philosophy of men, interpreted only by the Magisterium of the Church. Neither the Catholic Church, nor the magisterium nor its tradition existed during the 2000 years of the OT, and obviously God's Word of that era (which continues today and is larger in volume than the NT) had no need for either.

I've shown thoroughly, methodically and systematically the problems that arise with the Catholic idea that the Bible is "insufficient", and outright contradicts what the Bible says. Nor do the problems end there, indeed, they rise to the height of absurdity.

The Isodorian Decretals are the published works of the so-called Church Fathers. Within this body is a great deal of fraud that has been mixed in and has become indistinguishable from fact. But these ideas have become incorporated into the very dogmas of the Church in effect to this very day. Von Dollinger informs us that spurious tradition was manufactured and eventually became the basis for almost the entire papal system and much of canon law. The Decretals were used to build up ficticious sayings of the popes and to put tradition on par with that of Scripture.

Attributed to pope Julius in about A.D. 338 is a saying that "the Church of Rome, by a singular privelege, has the right of opening and shutting the gates of heaven to whom she will" and that the popes inherit "innocence and sanctity from Peter" and are therefor holy and infallible and all Christendom must tremble before them ¹ Von Dollinger writes about his exhaustive study of the original documents:

Towards the end of the fifth and beginning of the sixth century, the process of forgeries and fictions in the interests of Rome was actively carried out there. THen began the compilation of spurious acts of Roman martyrs, which was continued for some centuries, and which modern criticism, even at Rome, has been obliged to give up...
While this tendancy to forging documents was so strong in Rome, it is remarkable that for a thousand years no attempt was made there to form a collection of canons...more than twenty Synods had been held in Rome since 313, but there were no records of them to be found.²

Unlike the Bible, readily available in one volume, tradition is contained in many volumes: at least 35 volumes of Greek and Latin Church fathers, usually ending with Gregory I in A.D. 604; another 35 volumes of Church council decrees, 25 volumes of popes sayings and decrees, 55 volumes of alleged sayings and deeds of the saints. Ultimately this outweighs that of the Scripture about 150:1. Therefor, the average Catholic doesn't have access to the greater part of what the Catholic Church calls the Word of God.

The words "tradition" or "traditions" occur 14 times in the NT. Eight references (Mt 15:2,3,6; Mk 7:3,5,8,9,13) are Christ's statements in the Gospels, and all of them are derogatory of Jewish traditions. In Mt 15:1-9 Christ outright denounces tradition as being perverted and redered ineffective GOd's Word. Paul makes five references, two of which are clearly derogatory (Col 2:8; Gal 1:14). Peter makes one reference (I Pt 1:18) that is also deragotory. This leaves three favorable references to tradition (I Cor 11:12; II Thes 2:15; 3:6). It is upon these latter three verses that the entire position of the Roman Catholic Church rests with respect to tradition. However, none of these passages refer to Roman Catholic tradition as its developed through the centuries since the time of the apostles.

Paul speaks of things that he and other apostles had already taught, nor can any present day tradition be traced back to the apostels. It just can't be done, anybody who does so is outright guilty of fraud. Christ quoted extensively from Scripture, and claimed that all of it must be fullfilled (not tradition). Paul assures us in II Tim 3:16; II Pt 1:20,21) that all Scripture is given by the inspiration of God. Timothy is exhorted in II Tim 4:2) to preach the word, nary a word about tradition. This would be a most curious omission if tradition is essential or even valid.

Unlike the Bible, much of what this tradition contradicts, written tradition and official dogma of the Church has frequently changed (even to the degree of propounding contradictory ideas about profound issues such as abortion). Most Catholics would be shocked to discover that the infallible Church and popes have changed their minds several times on this topic alone.

Scripture says of God, "I change not." Why would His Word be subject to continual revision? And finally, Christ condemned all oral tradition developed by the rabbis as having perverted the written Word of God, so why would He want the church to have the same corrupting influence?

¹J.H. Ignaz von Dollinger, The Pope and the Council (London, 1869), pp.79-93

²Ibid., pp. 99-106

No. First of all, only those who "consciously" reject the pope and his authority, after completely understanding the correctness of the catholic position, would find themselves in a predicament, just as anyone else would. But the Orthodox have convinced themselves that the papal authority is different than what the Catholic Church declares. People in this circumstance, especially after nearly 1000 years of separation, we could not hold to culpability in this area. They may "knowingly" reject papal authority, but they do so because they disagree with it, or better, what they think it is, not because they are simply being willful or contrary. Protestants "knowingly" disagree with Catholicism on this issue and many more, but, they too, "knowingly" disagree in the sense that they think they understand the issues as presented from a Catholic POV, and disagree with them. They are in the same situation. Good-faith disagreement is different from willful rejection.

Aside from that, the Orthodox are in a much better position than Protestants. All of their Sacraments are just as legitimate as ours. True forgiveness is available to them via the confession of sins, thus they do not have to deal with the seemingly problematic question of how salvation may be attained even after post-baptismal sins have been committed. Essentially, their faith is the same as a Catholic's; nuances of interpretation exist, and sometimes the same conclusion may be reached by different avenues, but Catholicism sees Orthodoxy merely as being in a state of schism, not heresy. They most certainly are not "all lost."

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