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.

[Petronski]

You want to play little word games to deflect from the facts you cannot address...

Quite the opposite: I'm dealing with people who cannot or will not refer to my Church by her proper name, and I am attempting to resolve that first.

[Iscool]

No no no. The problem is that parts of it don't mean what YOU say they mean.

You don't get it Petronski...Millions of us across the world can pick up a bible and immediately come to the same conclusions on much or most of what it says...How do you account for that???

You all don't even study the scriptures but get the conclusion of what it says from one and only one source, which almost always is contrary to what the millions of us strangers agree upon...

Figure it out Petronski...You're being misled, willfully...

[Petronski]

And you do realize that to get to the Vatican (where I have been), one must first go through Rome, right?

And you do realize that the Vatican is NOT Rome, right?

[Petronski]

Millions of us across the world can pick up a bible and immediately come to the same conclusions on much or most of what it says...

You can, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

You all don't even study the scriptures ...

Who is that? I'm just the one guy.

You're being misled, willfully...

Well, you're sure trying. But I'm not buying.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

Neither is the word Trinity. Do you reject the Trinity?

No Christian can reject the concept of the Trinity. The concept of the trinity is heavily supported and defined and made truth by the Bible.

Of course not. Christ founded the Catholic Church, not the thing you described.

Let's play your game. Where is the word "Catholic" in the Bible?

Even better, where is the concept of a unitary leader of the church who can speak ex cathedra with the attendant impact of such speech, anywhere in the Bible?

[Iscool]

I'm not going to bother with your moot questions or, as I said last night, fence with you in a game of Scriptural Deal-a-Meal.

Well I don't blame you...It's not that your sword has a dull blade, you don't even have a sword...

[CTrent1564]

See my post #289, which addresses your question. Petronski is a rightly a Catholic, and canonically, I think is a Roman/Latin Rite Catholic, but again, all Catholics are not Roman/Latin Rite.

[Petronski]

The concept of the trinity is heavily supported and defined and made truth by the Bible.

The concept of the Catholic Church is heavily supported and defined and made truth by the Bible.

Let's play your game.

It's not MY game, it's been yours from the start.

Where is the word "Catholic" in the Bible?

Where is Sola Scriptura in the Bible?

Where is the word Trinity in the Bible?

Even better, where is the concept of a unitary leader of the church who can speak ex cathedra with the attendant impact of such speech, anywhere in the Bible?

Even better still, where is sola Scriptura in the Bible?

[Petronski]

Catholic Church, Latin Rite.

Correct sir.

[windsorknot]

I'm dealing with people who cannot or will not refer to my Church by her proper name, and I am attempting to resolve that first.

Good luck with that! At least you don't have to come up with the proper names of over 30,000 Protestant denominations.

[Petronski]

You see this as some kind of macho slash-and-burn combat situation.

I’ve seen my share of anti-Catholic bigots slashing and burning what the Catholic Church actually teaches, so as to get all medieval on a straw man.

I’m not here to sate your need for combat.

I’m just here to rebuke the anti-Catholic lies.

[Petronski]

Even if the number is as low as 10,000 it’s still 10,000 versions of Truth.

There is only one Truth.

There cannot be multiple, mutually-exclusive truths.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

See my post #289, which addresses your question. Petronski is a rightly a Catholic, and canonically, I think is a Roman/Latin Rite Catholic, but again, all Catholics are not Roman/Latin Rite.

I understand that, which is why I was curious if he was a Roman/Latin Rite Catholic, commonly called a "Roman Catholic". Apparently he holds to that Rite, but refuses to acknowledge the common phrase to identify such a person.

[driftdiver]

DING!

[Petronski]

....I was curious if he was a Roman/Latin Rite Catholic....

There's one really cool way to find that out.

[Petronski]

That little “driftdiver is out of ideas” bell is getting quite a workout.

[CTrent1564]

PugetSoundSoldier:

The concept of Primacy is rooted in the Gospels, for example, in MT: 16:16-19 we see Christ only speaking to the Apostles (e.g. The Twelve) as the parallel texts support (c.f. Mark 8: 27-30; Luke 9:18-21). Every Christian does not have the power to “bind and loose”. This was given only to the Apostles. So, after Judas betrayal and death, Peter called the Apostles together and quoted the Psalms and said “may another take his office” (c.f. Acts 1:20). In Acts 1:26, Mathias was counted with the eleven other apostles and we now have a reconstituted twelve apostles. So again, the power to bind and loose is given to all the Apostles (not every Christian) but St. Peter alone is named the “rock” given the keys.

Two points, St. Paul states “you are members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets with Christ as the capstone” (c.f. Eph 2:20) and the “keys” are a typological sign that is found in the OT and is an OT symbol of authority (c.f. Isaiah 22: 15-23) and prefigures the role Christ gave to St. Peter. Other important texts consistent with Peter having a leadership role among the Apostles can be found in the Gospels.

For example, Jesus prays for Peter alone, that his faith may not fail, and charges him to strengthen the rest of the apostles (c.f.. Luke 22:31-32). After asking Peter 3 times do you love me [to fully atone for the 3-fold denial at Christ’s trial] Jesus charges Peter to “feed my lambs,” “tend my sheep,” “feed my sheep., which in this context means both the fellow Apostles and all of the Christian people. (c.f. John 21:15-17).

In two resurrection narratives, St. John arrives first to the tomb but waits for St. Peter to arrive, who then enters the tomb first (c.f. Lk 24:12; John 20-4-6).
As previously noted in the Acts 1, we see St. Peter taking the role in re-establishing the 12 Apostles. After Pentecost, it is St. Peter who preaches the Gospel first (c.f. Acts 2:14), it is St. Peter who works the first miracle (c.f. Acts 3:6-7), it is St. Peter who issues the first excommunication against Ananias and Sapphira (c.f. Acts 5: 3). St. Peter resolves the doctrinal issues of dietary laws for the gentiles at the Council of Jerusalem (c.f. Acts 15: 6-12).

Also, we see in 1 Peter 5:13 “The Chosen one at Bablyon sends you greetings, as does my son Mark” [NAB translation.] In the RSV, my personal favorite, as it is the most accurate according to most Catholic scholars, translates 1 Peter 5:13 as “She who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings and so does my son Mark”.

This passage indicates the underlying concept that the Church of Rome was elected/chosen, etc. and St. Peter was the leader there as affirmed by the writings of the Church Fathers (i.e St Ignatius of Antioch CA 105-107AD, ST. Ireneaus of Lyon, CA 175 AD, etc), who both affirm the Primacy of the Church of Rome which was of course dogmatically recognized at the Council of Nicea in Canon 6, see link below.

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm

[driftdiver]

“EVERYONE thinks his or her own individual interpretation of the Bible is the correct one. There is a lot of pride to go around”

You seem fixated on “individual interpretation”. Not sure where you’re getting that as there is nothing valid about that. Most individuals depend on the guidance of learned individuals. Bit it comes down to reading and praying. Listening to the Holy Spirit and seeking Gods wisdom.

Depending on the interpretation of some guy in Rome is not the mystical panacea.

“If you cannot find this teaching authority in the Catholic Church, where do you find it? Sincere question.”

Through personal study, group study, prayer, and worship with learned and Godly people. My salvation and communication to Christ does not require mediation through those people.

[driftdiver]

DING!

[PugetSoundSoldier]

The concept of the Catholic Church is heavily supported and defined and made truth by the Bible.

You do realize the catechism is not the Bible, don't you?

Where is Sola Scriptura in the Bible?

This Mediator [Jesus Christ], having spoken what He judged sufficient first by the prophets, then by His own lips, and afterwards by the apostles, has besides produced the Scripture which is called canonical, which has paramount authority, and to which we yield assent in all matters of which we ought not to be ignorant, and yet cannot know of ourselves.

- St. Augustine, City of God, Book XI, Chapter III

For the Biblical reference, see 2 Thessalonians 2:15:

With all these things in mind, dear brothers, stand firm and keep a strong grip on the truth that we taught you in our letters and during the time we were with you.

- From the Catholic Living Bible

So St. Augustine and St. Paul both call on the Divine and ultimate truth of the Bible. Sola Scriptura.

Still waiting for you to give any reference to the succession of the Pope as Biblical! Or his ability to speak ex cathedra.

Where is the word Trinity in the Bible?

The word is not. The concept is. Can you say the same about the Pope or ex cathedra writs from the Pope?