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.

[Iscool]

What an asinine statement. I guess the early church could just tune in their radios to gospel music, too!

Act 15:30 So when they were dismissed, they came to Antioch: and when they had gathered the multitude together, they delivered the epistle:
Act 15:31 Which when they had read, they rejoiced for the consolation.

1Th 5:27 I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren.

Your mouth must be getting sore with all those feet in it...

[cva66snipe]

So St. Paul goes against not only God, but medical science. What a bad man. I guess that the Church was entirely wrong about him and we need to trash all of his writings and expunge him from all Christianity. I suppose that he is in hell right now for not only disobeying God, but the AMA as well.

Paul was pretty cynical about marriage at all. That is likely where his own thoughts on marriage came in. Why he was who knows. Maybe it was because he may have caught flack by the Jewish leaders for also being a Roman through his fathers bloodline and sought early in his life to please the Pharisees. Paul was human and subject to his own feelings as were the others.

Paul was content being single but that was Paul. Peter was married that was OK for Peter. But it was GOD who said it was not good for man to be alone was it not? He saw this and created woman for man to fill that need? Before telling me about reproduction and be fruitful and multiply this was established before the fall of man ever happened. It was the creation.

[stfassisi]

Calvin understood sacrificial love and covenant love

Calvin believed God has both evil and good in Him and called it sovereign,thus protecting the devil as a created evil by God.

[Mr Rogers]

“The fact you’re using an (improper) analogy proves you are inferring by definition!”

What superior fears his subordinate? I never did...although I wasn’t known for fearing my bosses, either.

That may be an inference, but an inference drawn from vast experience, backed by many other people’s experience, is probably valid.

But since I’m wrong, I’m sure you won’t mind explaining WHY Peter was afraid of those sent by James.

[Jackson57]

“... WHOLE lot of really un-christian like behavior committed by the Catholic church throughout history”

It’s always interesting how Catholic-bashers like to trot out the Inquisition and the Crusades as to how bad the Catholic Church has been. Please at least be honest about it and take a look at what happened during the Reformation. Catholics were burned at the stake just for being Catholic. Wonder why France is so secular now? Most of the Catholics were killed. Entire monasteries and convents were wiped out. And the Crusades were in response to Muslim invasions.

[Marysecretary]

Sorry YOU can’t see it. Your bad.

[Marysecretary]

Yes, if they repent and turn away from their sin.

[CTrent1564]

Mr. Rogers:

Thanks for the response, I agree that the commentaries that I have read [Catholic] mention the spirits in prison are related to the angels back in Genesis 4:6. I think your Protestant commentaries agree with my Catholic on that point.

However, I think I also noted that what this passage does suggest that Christ after the resurrection or during the time between Crucifixion and resurrection [I don’t think the text is clear on that point], Christ went and preached to the sprits in prison and thus at some point, there was a state that was not Heaven or Hell. Does that place still exist?

The next passage in 1 Peter 4: 6 speaks of preaching the Gospel to the dead. While some scholars say this is related to 1 Peter 3:19, the majority of Catholic Scholarship sees this relating to Christians who had died since hearing the preaching of the Gospel from the Apostles.

One reason given as to why ST. Peter wrote this particular text is that there was an expectation among the Apostles, which did not turn out to be true, that Christ second coming would occur during the lifetime of the Apostles, thus the need to address the issue of death for Christians as pagans were thought to have said, you all embrace Christ and yet, you still fill the sting of death.

Anyway, thanks for the response

[Marysecretary]

Yeah, sure...

[Marysecretary]

God is the only one who CAN make it work. Without HIM, the change isn’t real.

[Iscool]

You can’t both be right.

How are you going to solve your differences?

IMO, this is when you start another church of your own.

Nice try but no cigar...

You guys just don't get it...Maybe it's beyond your reach...

I can go to a Pentecostal church and be among my brethren...
I can go to a Baptist church and be among my brethren...
I can go to an Anglican church and likely have some brethren there...
I can go to an Episcopalian church and be among some brethern...
I can go to a Grace Bible church and be among my brethern...
I could even go to a Catholic church and possibly bump into a brother or two there...

We don't have to agree on everything...And obviously we are not all correct on every little thing...But one thing we have no disagreement over is what we are counting on to get us to Heaven...We KNOW what we must do to get saved...

Unlike you scholars, we are mostly bible students...I may change my views on a particular verse...God may reveal something to me that He hasn't as of yet...There are plenty of things God hasn't revealed to me, or anyone for that matter...

[MarkBsnr]

***So St. Paul goes against not only God, but medical science. What a bad man. I guess that the Church was entirely wrong about him and we need to trash all of his writings and expunge him from all Christianity. I suppose that he is in hell right now for not only disobeying God, but the AMA as well.

Paul was pretty cynical about marriage at all. That is likely where his own thoughts on marriage came in. Why he was who knows.***

Who knows indeed; yet we have Paul telling us that for certain people (himself and as many as would bear it), celibacy was a preferred state.

***Peter was married that was OK for Peter.***

We have no details of Peter’s marriage, only the fact that he had a mother in law. Perhaps that is what drove him from Jerusalem to Rome. :)

***But it was GOD who said it was not good for man to be alone was it not? He saw this and created woman for man to fill that need? Before telling me about reproduction and be fruitful and multiply this was established before the fall of man ever happened. It was the creation.***

And if all of us were that way, the human race would be dead. Paul was pretty clear that it is only certain people that should be celibate. As in the Church today.

[blue-duncan]

“If you take away free will it would read.. He became incarnate to save man from God's created sin and restore the mistake made by God.”

Is man God? Can created man exercising his “free will” know what is the highest good in the mind of God without God's revelation? If it takes God's revelation then it is not “free will” since something outside of man has influenced him whether it be genetics, socialization, education, experience, opportunities, physical, mental and emotional handicaps, prejudices or whatever. Because of these stimuli, humans are “free agents” in the sense that they make their own decisions as to what they will do, choosing as they please in light of their sense of right and wrong and the inclinations they feel. They are moral agents answerable to God and each other for their voluntary choices based on the light they have.

“Free will” is an abstraction, defined as the ability to choose all the moral options that a situation offers. Augustine argued against Pelagius that original sin robbed mankind of “free will” in this sense. He stated man has no natural ability to discern or choose God's way because we have no natural inclination Godward; man's heart is in bondage to sin, and only the grace of regeneration can free man from that slavery. Rom. 6:16-23, only the “freed” will (Paul says, the freed person) freely and heartily chooses righteousness. (John 8:34-36, Gal. 5:1, 13)

[CTrent1564]

MarkBsnr:

Speaking of heretical doctrines similar to what you mentioned. There was a thread “God Needed an Image” posted on 7/2. In post #6 I asked if it was an open thread as reading it, it was obviously “modalism”, which I charitably pointed out to the nice folks over there in post #11 and 13.

It is amazing what happens when individuals who claim the Bible as their authority, apart from the Church, which canonized the Scriptures and protected and translated it down through the centuries. The consequences of the Reformation are directly related to relativism and I will make up for myself what I believe is true apart from a continuity of Tradition. Marxism is philosophically similar as it wants nothing to do with History, rather, it wants to make History in the future and create it in and fashion it according to its own marxist doctrine since history is opressive as it represents, well you know, a dogmatic claim that there is Truth, objective right and wrong, etc, etc,

[cva66snipe]

And in my case I’m a husband, step father, and even been a foster parent for a while. No kids from my own blood but no regrets for not having my own. I have the grandkids to keep me busy LOL.. A hard one too for some to accept. But I believe this too. If GOD wanted direct desendents from me some barriers would have been lowered and it would have happened. On the other hand he knew my future too. I had plenty of kids to help raise in years to come.

[Mr Rogers]

By the end of the 2nd century, the canon was largely established by common practice.

” Provisional Canon of New Testament (end of 2nd century). - By the last quarter of the 2nd century the conception of a Christian Bible in two parts, Old Testament and New Testament, may be said to be definitely established. Already at the beginning of this period Melito had drawn up a list of the twenty-two Books of the Old Covenant, i.e. of the documents to which the Old Covenant made its appeal. It was a very short step to the compiling of a similar list for the New Covenant, which by another very short step becomes the New Testament, by the side of the Old Testament. It is therefore not surprising, though a piece of great good fortune, that there should be still extant a list of the New Testament books that may be roughly dated from the end of the century. This list published by Muratori in 1740, and called after him “ the Muratorian Fragment on the Canon,” is commonly believed to be of Roman origin and to be a translation from the Greek, though there are a few dissentients on both heads. The list recognized four Gospels, Acts, thirteen epistles of Paul, two epistles of John, Jude, Apocalypse of John and (as the text stands) of Peter; there is no mention of Hebrews or (apparently) of 3 John or Epistles of Peter, where it is possible - we cannot say more - that the silence as to t Peter is accidental; the Shepherd of Hermas on account of its date is admitted to private, but not public, reading; various writings associated with Marcion, Valentinus, Basilides and Montanus are condemned.

There are many interesting points about this list, which still shows considerable freshness of judgment. (i.) There are traces of earlier discussions about the Gospels, both in disparagement of the Synoptics as compared with St John, and in criticism of the latter as differing from the former. (ii.) There is a healthy tendency to lay stress on the historical value of narratives which proceed from eye-witnesses. (iii.) An over-ruling and uniting influence is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. (iv.) The writer is concerned to point out that letters addressed to a single church and even to an individual may yet have a wider use for the Church as a whole. (v.) The sense is not yet lost that the appeal of the Old Testament is as coming from men of prophetic gifts, and that of the New Testament as coming from apostles. (vi.) It is in accordance with this that a time limit is placed upon the books included in the New Testament. (vii.) Christians are to be on their guard against writings put forth in the interest of heretical sects.

When the data of Fragm. Murat. are compared with those supplied by the writers of the last quarter of the 2nd and first of the 3rd centuries (Tatian, Theoph. Ant., Iren., Clem. Alex., Tert., Hippol.), it is seen that there is a fixed nucleus of writings that is acknowledged, with one exception, over all parts of the Christian world...

In the fixing of the Canon, as in the fixing of doctrine, the decisive influence proceeded from the bishops and the theologians of the period 325-450. But behind these was the practice of the greater churches; and behind that again was not only the lead of a few distinguished individuals, but the instinctive judgment of the main body of the faithful. It was really this instinct that told in the end more than any process of quasi-scientific criticism. And it was well that it should be so, because the methods of criticism are apt to be, and certainly would have been when the Canon was formed, both faulty and inadequate, whereas instinct brings into play the religious sense as a whole; with spirit speaking to spirit rests the last word. Even this is not infallible; and it cannot be claimed that the Canon of the Christian Sacred Books is infallible. But experience has shown that the mistakes, so far as there have been mistakes, are unimportant; and in practice even these are rectified by the natural gravitation of the mind of man to that which it finds most nourishing and most elevating. “

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Bible#.28c.29_Controversy

The bishops in the Catholic church ratified what the churches had already recognized - and it wasn’t done formally until 1546.

[Mr Rogers]

“Where in scripture does a single apostle endorse the contrary view?”

Try Acts 21 - they free the Gentiles, but left the Jews in chains...

[stfassisi]

If it takes God's revelation then it is not “free will” since something outside of man has influenced him

God revealed the devil to you,Bd-denying free will means that God created devil's decisions according to you

“Free will” is an abstraction, defined as the ability to choose all the moral options that a situation offers. Augustine argued against Pelagius that original sin robbed mankind of “free will” in this sense. He stated man has no natural ability to discern or choose God's way because we have no natural inclination Godward; man's heart is in bondage to sin, and only the grace of regeneration can free man from that slavery

Why do you guys twist Augustine without reading his retractions?

From Blessed Augustine... ” Because that discussion was undertaken for the sake of those who deny that the origin of evil is derived from the free choice of the will, and contend that God—if He be so—as the Creator of all natures, is worthy of blame; desiring in that manner, according to the error of their impiety (for they are Manicheans), to introduce a certain immutable nature of evil co-eternal with God.” Augustine-Chapter 27.— Reference to the “Retractations.”

[Mr Rogers]

“IMO, this is when you start another church of your own.”

IMO, this is where we talk and mutually seek the truth - or we just don’t worry much about it, since neither of us needs for either Peter or Paul to be perfect in teaching or example.

Protestants agree that ALL have sinned, and ALL fall short of the glory of God. And like Peter, we tell folks to look to scripture to find doctrinal answers - not men.

[papertyger]

Or he could have simply paid for an annulment.

Money doesn't get annulments. Money pays for the investigation. Do you object to that?