No Salvation Outside the Church

Catholic Answers ^ | 12/05 | Fr. Ray Ryland

[bdeaner]

Why does the Catholic Church teach that there is "no salvation outside the Church"? Doesn’t this contradict Scripture? God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:4). "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me" (John 14:6). Peter proclaimed to the Sanhedrin, "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).

Since God intends (plans, wills) that every human being should go to heaven, doesn’t the Church’s teaching greatly restrict the scope of God’s redemption? Does the Church mean—as Protestants and (I suspect) many Catholics believe—that only members of the Catholic Church can be saved?

That is what a priest in Boston, Fr. Leonard Feeney, S.J., began teaching in the 1940s. His bishop and the Vatican tried to convince him that his interpretation of the Church’s teaching was wrong. He so persisted in his error that he was finally excommunicated, but by God’s mercy, he was reconciled to the Church before he died in 1978.

In correcting Fr. Feeney in 1949, the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office (now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) issued a document entitled Suprema Haec Sacra, which stated that "extra ecclesiam, nulla salus" (outside the Church, no salvation) is "an infallible statement." But, it added, "this dogma must be understood in that sense in which the Church itself understands it."

Note that word dogma. This teaching has been proclaimed by, among others, Pope Pelagius in 585, the Fourth Lateran Council in 1214, Pope Innocent III in 1214, Pope Boniface VIII in 1302, Pope Pius XII, Pope Paul VI, the Second Vatican Council, Pope John Paul II, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Dominus Iesus.

Our point is this: When the Church infallibly teaches extra ecclesiam, nulla salus, it does not say that non-Catholics cannot be saved. In fact, it affirms the contrary. The purpose of the teaching is to tell us how Jesus Christ makes salvation available to all human beings.

Work Out Your Salvation

There are two distinct dimensions of Jesus Christ’s redemption. Objective redemption is what Jesus Christ has accomplished once for all in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension: the redemption of the whole universe. Yet the benefits of that redemption have to be applied unceasingly to Christ’s members throughout their lives. This is subjective redemption. If the benefits of Christ’s redemption are not applied to individuals, they have no share in his objective redemption. Redemption in an individual is an ongoing process. "Work out your own salvation in fear and trembling; for God is at work in you" (Phil. 2:12–13).

How does Jesus Christ work out his redemption in individuals? Through his mystical body. When I was a Protestant, I (like Protestants in general) believed that the phrase "mystical body of Christ" was essentially a metaphor. For Catholics, the phrase is literal truth.

Here’s why: To fulfill his Messianic mission, Jesus Christ took on a human body from his Mother. He lived a natural life in that body. He redeemed the world through that body and no other means. Since his Ascension and until the end of history, Jesus lives on earth in his supernatural body, the body of his members, his mystical body. Having used his physical body to redeem the world, Christ now uses his mystical body to dispense "the divine fruits of the Redemption" (Mystici Corporis 31).

The Church: His Body

What is this mystical body? The true Church of Jesus Christ, not some invisible reality composed of true believers, as the Reformers insisted. In the first public proclamation of the gospel by Peter at Pentecost, he did not invite his listeners to simply align themselves spiritually with other true believers. He summoned them into a society, the Church, which Christ had established. Only by answering that call could they be rescued from the "crooked generation" (Acts 2:40) to which they belonged and be saved.

Paul, at the time of his conversion, had never seen Jesus. Yet recall how Jesus identified himself with his Church when he spoke to Paul on the road to Damascus: "Why do you persecute me?" (Acts 9:4, emphasis added) and "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting" (Acts 9:5). Years later, writing to Timothy, Paul ruefully admitted that he had persecuted Jesus by persecuting his Church. He expressed gratitude for Christ appointing him an apostle, "though I formerly b.asphemed and persecuted and insulted him" (1 Tim. 1:13).

The Second Vatican Council says that the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church and the mystical body of Christ "form one complex reality that comes together from a human and a divine element" (Lumen Gentium 8). The Church is "the fullness of him [Christ] who fills all in all" (Eph. 1:23). Now that Jesus has accomplished objective redemption, the "plan of mystery hidden for ages in God" is "that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places" (Eph. 3:9–10).

According to John Paul II, in order to properly understand the Church’s teaching about its role in Christ’s scheme of salvation, two truths must be held together: "the real possibility of salvation in Christ for all humanity" and "the necessity of the Church for salvation" (Redemptoris Missio 18). John Paul taught us that the Church is "the seed, sign, and instrument" of God’s kingdom and referred several times to Vatican II’s designation of the Catholic Church as the "universal sacrament of salvation":

"The Church is the sacrament of salvation for all humankind, and her activity is not limited only to those who accept her message" (RM 20).

"Christ won the Church for himself at the price of his own blood and made the Church his co-worker in the salvation of the world. . . . He carries out his mission through her" (RM 9).

In an address to the plenary assembly of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (January 28, 2000), John Paul stated, "The Lord Jesus . . . established his Church as a saving reality: as his body, through which he himself accomplishes salvation in history." He then quoted Vatican II’s teaching that the Church is necessary for salvation.

In 2000 the CDF issued Dominus Iesus, a response to widespread attempts to dilute the Church’s teaching about our Lord and about itself. The English subtitle is itself significant: "On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church." It simply means that Jesus Christ and his Church are indivisible. He is universal Savior who always works through his Church:

The only Savior . . . constituted the Church as a salvific mystery: He himself is in the Church and the Church is in him. . . . Therefore, the fullness of Christ’s salvific mystery belongs also to the Church, inseparably united to her Lord (DI 18).

Indeed, Christ and the Church "constitute a single ‘whole Christ’" (DI 16). In Christ, God has made known his will that "the Church founded by him be the instrument for the salvation of all humanity" (DI 22). The Catholic Church, therefore, "has, in God’s plan, an indispensable relationship with the salvation of every human being" (DI 20).

The key elements of revelation that together undergird extra ecclesiam, nulla salus are these: (1) Jesus Christ is the universal Savior. (2) He has constituted his Church as his mystical body on earth through which he dispenses salvation to the world. (3) He always works through it—though in countless instances outside its visible boundaries. Recall John Paul’s words about the Church quoted above: "Her activity is not limited only to those who accept its message."

Not of this Fold

Extra ecclesiam, nulla salus does not mean that only faithful Roman Catholics can be saved. The Church has never taught that. So where does that leave non-Catholics and non-Christians?

Jesus told his followers, "I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd" (John 10:16). After his Resurrection, Jesus gave the threefold command to Peter: "Feed my lambs. . . . Tend my sheep. . . . Feed my sheep" (John 21:15–17). The word translated as "tend" (poimaine) means "to direct" or "to superintend"—in other words, "to govern." So although there are sheep that are not of Christ’s fold, it is through the Church that they are able to receive his salvation.

People who have never had an opportunity to hear of Christ and his Church—and those Christians whose minds have been closed to the truth of the Church by their conditioning—are not necessarily cut off from God’s mercy. Vatican II phrases the doctrine in these terms: Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their consciences—those too may achieve eternal salvation (LG 16).

Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery (Gaudium et Spes 22).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches:

Every man who is ignorant of the gospel of Christ and of his Church but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity (CCC 1260).

Obviously, it is not their ignorance that enables them to be saved. Ignorance excuses only lack of knowledge. That which opens the salvation of Christ to them is their conscious effort, under grace, to serve God as well as they can on the basis of the best information they have about him.

The Church speaks of "implicit desire" or "longing" that can exist in the hearts of those who seek God but are ignorant of the means of his grace. If a person longs for salvation but does not know the divinely established means of salvation, he is said to have an implicit desire for membership in the Church. Non-Catholic Christians know Christ, but they do not know his Church. In their desire to serve him, they implicitly desire to be members of his Church. Non-Christians can be saved, said John Paul, if they seek God with "a sincere heart." In that seeking they are "related" to Christ and to his body the Church (address to the CDF).

On the other hand, the Church has long made it clear that if a person rejects the Church with full knowledge and consent, he puts his soul in danger:

They cannot be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or remain in it (cf. LG 14).

The Catholic Church is "the single and exclusive channel by which the truth and grace of Christ enter our world of space and time" (Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism, 179). Those who do not know the Church, even those who fight against it, can receive these gifts if they honestly seek God and his truth. But, Adam says, "though it be not the Catholic Church itself that hands them the bread of truth and grace, yet it is Catholic bread that they eat." And when they eat of it, "without knowing it or willing it" they are "incorporated in the supernatural substance of the Church."

Extra ecclesiam, nulla salus.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR



Fr. Ray Ryland, a convert and former Episcopal priest, holds a Ph.D. in theology from Marquette University and is a contributing editor to This Rock. He writes from Steubenville, Ohio, where he lives with his wife, Ruth.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

I pray that I might in some small way be like unto my idol Jesus Christ.

Christ is not an idol. At least not in Christian churches. There is not one time in Scripture where the term "idol" is anything but a "false god."

"What say I then? that the idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is any thing?" -- 1 Corinthians 10:19

---

"I have even from the beginning declared it to thee; before it came to pass I shewed it thee: lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath commanded them." -- Isaiah 48:5

[Petronski]

Christ is not an idol.

I put the word "idol" to connote that I was using YOUR term. YOU called the Real Presence of Christ an idol.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

We are not told to re-sacrifice Him. We are not told to behold Him again. We are told to remember His one-time, completed sacrifice by partaking of the Lord's Supper.

Transubstantiation is paganism...attributing divinity to material things. It goes hand-in-had with Rome's paganism concerning Mary. "other Christs," rituals, rites, holy water, wooden statues, etc.

All-in-all, a very consistent paganism.

[Petronski]

We are not told to re-sacrifice Him.

And we do not. It is a re-presentation of the same one-time Sacrifice on Calvary.

Transubstantiation is paganism...

So you say. And to repeat: why would I care? I follow Christ's command, not yours.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

lol. Don't blame me for your nonsense. You happily referenced Christ as your idol, not me. Now when you're shown the error of that statement, you back-track.

But since a certain amount of backtracking from that error would actually be progress, God be praised.

[Petronski]

You happily referenced Christ as your idol, not me.

The posts are clear. I don't expect to get anywhere with you.

Now when you're shown the error of that statement, you back-track.

I'm not back-tracking, and the error is yours.

[papertyger]

By partaking in the Lord's Supper we are told to remember...

No, we are told to DO. Any other comment is man's (or woman's) addition.

[papertyger]

We are told to remember His one-time, completed sacrifice by partaking of the Lord's Supper.

By you.

[papertyger]

The Catholic interpretation cannot be shown false, but it seems highly unlikely, given the statements and history found elsewhere in the Bible.

Then how do you explain Matthew 16 without all the specious protestant cross-referencing?

[bdeaner]

Do you profess to the Nicene Creed? Yes or no?

[bdeaner]

In my heart that’s why I know the Catholic church is a man creation and not a God creation.

I suggest it's not your heart, it's the Father of Lies telling you that. Without spiritual discernment, it's not always easy to tell the difference.

[stfassisi]

“”The RCC keeps re-sacrificing Him “”

There you go again,Dr E. In your limiting God to WITHIN TIME you limit His power.

The following is a good explanation.....

Transcending Time and Space

The quick Protestant rejoinder to Catholic teaching on the Mass is that Christ died once for all(cf. Heb. 9:26-28; 10:10), to which the Church would say,Amen! The Church has always taught that the one sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist (the Mass) are one single sacrifice, and that the Eucharistic Sacrifice re-presents (makes present) Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross (Catechism, nos. 1366-67, emphasis in original). How can this be? God the Son created time and space and therefore is not bound by them (cf. Jn. 1:1-3). As eternal Being, Christ stands outside of time, and therefore all of history is simultaneously present to Him. We cannot fully grasp God’s omnipotence. Like the dogmas of the Trinity or Christ’s being both God and man, God’s omnipotence is beyond our capacity to understand, yet does not contradict reason. To argue that God is limited by time and space is necessarily to argue that God is not omnipotent, and therefore not God.

In short, then, God cannot create something, including time and space, that can limit Him. For example, because of God’s omnipotence, all of us, not just one of us, can be temples of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 6:19). This demonstrates His ability to be beyond space, for the Holy Spirit is present in the souls of all believers: the saints who have died (cf. Rev. 6:9-11), as well as all the faithful who are living today.

We can also speak of God’s ability to be present throughout time on earth and also outside of time in heaven. Relative to God, Who is eternal and unchanging, everything is present; relative to us human beings, everything we experience is bound by time and space. Because the Son of God is eternal and transcends time, what He does as the God-Man in history can transcend time. Jesus sacrifice on Calvary is thus once for all, yet never ending; it is timeless. Thus, when we re-present Christ’s one sacrifice at Mass, God actually enables us to make ourselves present to this timeless offering. Analogously, we become present to the sun each morning. The sun basically stays put, while we change relative to the sun because of the earth’s daily rotation.

The Eucharistic Sacrifice is foreshadowed by the prophet Malachi: For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the LORD of hosts (Mal. 1:11). The Church sees these verses as a prophecy of the Sacrifice of the Mass, for what other truly pure sacrifice could there be that Christians can offer throughout the world every day?

The Catholic Mass transhistorical nature is first illustrated when Christ offered His glorified Body and Blood at the Last Supper, the day before He actually died on the Cross (cf. Catechism, nos. 1337-40). It is illustrated thereafter in the Mass offered by His disciples. Saint Paul notes that Christ’s sacrifice as the new Passover Lamb is once for all, but he also explains that its celebration somehow continues on in history: For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Cor. 5:7-8). Thus, the merits of Christ’s sacrifice are applied to Christians throughout the centuries.

We speak of the Eucharist as an unbloody sacrifice. Christ is not killed at each Mass. If that were so, there would be many sacrifices, and Christ would not have died once for all. Rather, the Council of Trent teaches that at each Mass the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and offered in an unbloody manner (as quoted in Catechism, no. 1367).

[Dr. Eckleburg]

What you mock as an idol is the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity. I pray that I might in some small way be like unto my idol Jesus Christ.
998 posted on 06/30/2009 12:37:35 PM PDT by Petronski

[Petronski]

Yes, and your formatting does not preserve the fact that I placed your term “idol” (which you applied to Christ) in italics, to indicate I was using your term.

[Mr Rogers]

"The more natural understanding is by the time Paul rebukes Peter at Antioch, Peter has fallen back into bad habits."

Agreed. After the meeting, "11 When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face..." I did read a commentary yesterday that suggested this was after Acts 12 but before Acts 15, but others - and your Pope - say this came after Acts 15. After Acts 15 makes sense.

"The "list" argument is mighty thin once it's shown the "fear" argument has nothing to do with Acts 15."

And yet the inspired scripture says, "12 Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. 13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. 14 When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, "You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?"

The fear may not have been related to Acts 15, or James may have been the one who "has fallen back into bad habits." But Scripture, inspired by God, says fear caused Peter to pull back, and eventually reach a point where he "force[d] Gentiles to follow Jewish customs". That goes beyond hypocrisy into teaching and enforcing what is contrary.

"15 "We who are Jews by birth and not 'Gentile sinners' 16 know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified."

"On it's own...hardly a credible reason to search out other meanings for Matthew 16."

I don't need a credible reason to seek out other scriptures to enlighten me on what one passage means - I do it all the time. As much as possible, I want to interpret scripture by scripture, so I an avoid error caused by my prejudices. In all my commentaries, authors will look at how a word or phrase is used in other passages to shed light on its meaning in the one being interpreted.

"Then how do you explain Matthew 16 without all the specious protestant cross-referencing?"

This is why I believe we will need to agree to disagree. I think you MUST interpret it the way you do, since the alternative is to believe the Pope isn't the Pope, but just another...Bishop? I'm not sure what he would be called, if he isn't the Head Apostle.

Meanwhile, I've explained why I interpret it the way I do. It may be "specious protestant cross-referencing", but it is standard procedure for me.

There is nothing wrong with agreeing to disagree. I never intended to convert you to becoming a Baptist. My goal was just to convince you that Protestants can be Christians (IAW Catholic doctrine, per the original article), and that Protestants can be sincere in trying to figure out what the Scripture means.

If you can grant my intentions are honest, even if you find my conclusions faulty, then I've accomplished all I hoped to do.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Just more rationalizing of the indefensible.

The fact that God "transcends time and space" does nothing to support Rome's error of mistaking the spiritual for the material.

If what you've offered here is what Rome is teaching you, no wonder so many RCs are bewildered as to the Scriptural truth.

What you have done lately is to take every questionable practice of Rome and defend it, not by Scripture, but by a goofy mindless recitation of "God is outside of time."

There are better answers for the truth. Get a Bible and find them.

The Church sees these verses as a prophecy of the Sacrifice of the Mass, for what other truly pure sacrifice could there be that Christians can offer throughout the world every day?

The sacrifice was Christ's to offer; not our own. And that sacrifice is complete. We remember it; we don't repeat it as if it hadn't accomplished all that God ordained..

[Dr. Eckleburg]

My term; your term. You wrote the sentence and its meaning is clear. As you said, Jesus Christ is your idol.

The ease with which you made that remark is nothing to brag about.

[Petronski]

You wrote the sentence and its meaning is clear.

Yes it is.

And that's not doing you any good.

[Mr Rogers]

If “The Consecrated Host is...well worthy of our worship”, then we must disagree.

Of course, I guess it isn’t too shocking that a Catholic & a Baptist would disagree...

[redgolum]

You know that I am Lutheran right?