The Limbo controversy: Time for reflection

The Tidings.com ^ | May 4, 2007 | Rev. Thomas P. Rausch, SJ

[Alex Murphy]

The recent Vatican report prepared by the Vatican's International Theological Commission concludes that the so-called teaching on Limbo "reflects an unduly restrictive view of salvation." The report generated a few dramatic headlines, but will not have much practical effect Catholic life. Nevertheless, the report is worth some reflection.

First of all, as the report argued, Limbo was never really a doctrine, that is to say, something officially defined by the Church's magisterium. While certainly it was a popular teaching and many older Catholics accepted it as Catholic belief, technically belief in Limbo was in the category of a theological opinion (a theologemenon), elaborated by medieval theologians to counter the rather harsh teaching of St. Augustine that unbaptized infants were damned, though he is reputed to have added it was the "mildest" form of damnation (whatever that means).

In the past belief in Limbo did have a practical consequence. Unbaptized infants generally did not receive a Catholic funeral; today they can. The current Order of Christian Funerals includes a specific rite for an unbaptized child.

The history of the concept of Limbo does provide a marvelous example of doctrinal development. It is related to the axiom, extra ecclesia, nulla salus (no salvation outside the Church), which was official Church teaching for centuries. Originally it referred to those who had separated themselves from the Church through schism or heresy.

By the time that most of the Roman Empire had become Christian, it began to be used for the minority that had not accepted the faith, including the Jews. What had been originally a warning to errant Christians now implied a judgment against those outside the Church.

Stressing the necessity of baptism, Augustine rejected the possibility of salvation for Jews, pagans, or even infants who died without baptism. Augustine's influence was to shape the teachings of popes and councils down to modern times. Thus, the Council of Florence (1442) taught that it "firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics, cannot share in eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels." (1)

At the same time however, another tradition was developing as early as Thomas Aquinas, who seems to have recognized an ignorance of Christ that was not culpable. But it was the so-called discovery of the "New Worlds" of the Americas, Asia and Africa with their untold millions who had never heard the Gospel that led some Jesuit in Rome and Dominican in Spain in the 16th and seventh centuries to conclude that salvation was possible for those who believed in God, even without explicit knowledge of Christ. (2)

Pius IX taught (1863) that no one could be saved outside the Catholic Church, but he also officially acknowledged for the first time that the traditional teaching applied only to those who are outside the Church because of "invincible ignorance," in other words, through no fault of their own. Those of us who were raised on the Baltimore Catechism remember that it taught three kinds of baptism --- of water, blood and desire, the last two of which are not baptism at all.

What was already happening in the popular teaching of the Church was made official by the Second Vatican Council, which acknowledged that those "outside" the Church could be saved and committed the Church to a new posture towards other religions. Revising previous teaching, it taught that the Church recognizes the Jewish people as "beloved for the sake of the fathers, for God never regrets his gifts or his call (see Rom 11:28-29)" (Lumen gentiuum 16). Though Vatican II did not teach that everyone would be saved, it recognized a wideness in God's mercy.

Furthermore, its acknowledgement that the great religions of the world "often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men and women" (Nostra Aetate 2) has enabled the Catholic Church to enter into the dialogue with other religions that is so important in the 21st century. Catholics do so with a reverence for the other, for God's truth may be present there.

Today many evangelical Protestants, lacking a teaching office and often holding to a biblical literalism, continue to struggle with this issue. Though they usually express it differently, they are not able to move beyond the traditional axiom, denying the possibility of salvation for those who have not been "born again" through an explicit, personal relationship with Jesus.

Their position, however, is not entirely "traditional." Richard J. Mouw, president of Pasadena's Fuller Theological Seminary, notes that the very orthodox Calvinists who wrote the Westminster Confession at the time of the Reformation in Scotland allowed that at least Christian parents whose children die in infancy can be assured that their offspring are beneficiaries of Christ's saving work.

Vatican II's revision of the traditional axiom as well as this recent report on Limbo shows that the magisterium is one of God's gifts to the Church. It is evidence that the Church is a living community of faith that, assisted by the Spirit, can rethink aspects of its tradition and occasionally reformulate its doctrine.

[sandhills]

Good move, Fr. Rausch. You linked Limbo with that phrase most Catholics are sure to laugh at: No salvation outside the Church.
You got Limbo away from that other phrase, which is more difficult to defuse theologically, but practically is already ignored: original sin.

[Dajjal]

Apparently modern minds have realized that Original Sin was never a big deal in the first place ... and I for one cannot understand why Christ went through all that fuss what with the passion and crucifixion over it.

To paraphrase Nixon, "We're all Pelagians now."

(/sarcasm)