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.

[Semper Mark]

Mocking the body and the blood?

Tell me about the body and the blood then will you?

I was poking at you a little, but no, I wasn’t mocking Christ.

Christ’s body was given for us as a substitute on the cross for our sins, and his blood was shed for the forgiveness of those sins. There is no remission of sins without the shedding of blood.

How is this then applied to us? By trust, by accepting it, by believing it. Not by participating in the Eucharist.

[papertyger]

Unless you eat his flesh and drink his blood, there is no life in you.

[cva66snipe]

The Body of Christ is at the Right Hand Of GOD and Christ still occupies it now and forever. The Lords Supper is a remembrance rite just as the Feast of the Passover was. GOD has already accepted the sacrifice of Christ now and forever. He showed His body to His Disciples after he was resurrected.

The word remembrance is used in the Bible in relation to The Lords Supper. Remembrance is of an event that has past it is past tense. Christ is very much alive and His presence is already among those in church before any bread is broken or wine drank. How do we know this? Because Christ said "where two or more are gathered in my there there I am also."

Paul had to deal with a churches or several churches abuses of this as they were making it a drunken feast.

It can also be pointed out the Christ after His resurrection walked and talked with His Disciples. Luke gives the account. He gave them Bread and he gave them wine. At this point they realized who he was as their eyes were open or as it was revealed to them.

The Lords Supper is an observance in remembrance of His Body killed as the sacrificial lamb bearing our sins and His blood which was shed for us sealing the New Covenant. It is however a solemn and serious observance one of which a person should examine their heart and spiritual self before engaging in it.

[Semper Mark]

“If it wasn't for the crusades, let's face it, we would all be praising Allah today.”

My ancestors were Scots/Irish Calvinists, who left Europe for a better life some 200+ years ago.

They fought and defeated the British in the American Revolution, and if it weren’t for them, we would all be speaking English today. (big grin)

[driftdiver]

“This pardon may be received by us through His Body, the Church. “

It may be received through a simple prayer asking for it.

“Looking to the Bible, there are two means to receive this pardon: Baptism and Confession. “

Confession thru a intermediary is not required. Baptism is a profession of faith.

[driftdiver]

Does the Bible instruct us to create a doctrine separate from the Word or does the Bible say it is the Word?

People always seem to want to add more as if the Bible is not sufficient.

[driftdiver]

“When I was an Evangelical, before I was in full communion with the Church, I found it very disturbing that some of the large Evangelical churches in the U.S. refused to take a stand against abortion”

I find that disturbing as well. however it is not just Evangelical churches that do that. The Catholic church does that as well in addition to many of its more famous members. Pelosi, Reid, Kennedy ring a bell?

Giving the Catholic church credit for creating civilization is quite a stretch. It could easily be argued they’ve held back civilization with their dogma and militant ideologies. For example refusing to allow the bible to be translated into anything a common person could read, those few that were allowed to learn to read.

[Semper Mark]

I've read “Sola scriptura” mentioned on this thread a few times.

Sola scriptura: The Scriptures Alone.

The scriptures (The Word of God) alone are the basis for the Christian faith and to deny this, is to deny Christ Himself.

What is, or better yet, who is the Word of God...

Read the first chapter of John.

Scripture alone...Christ alone.

[redgolum]

Some of them are bishops.

When I lived in Lincoln, NE, the local bishop did not go as far in implying that adult, non Catholics, have a shot at salvation. Since they have reached the age of being able to decide for themselves and are aware of the Catholic Church, they have few reasons to be outside of it.

Go back to the early 1900’s and it is even more stark.

Either Vatican II changed something (which it claims not to) or the earlier times focused more on the “No” than the “maybe”.

[Marysecretary]

And Catholics adhere to the magesterium mindlessly like a cult. Don’t you ever question your beliefs? Don’t you ever investigate for yourselves if something is true the way they’ve taught you? Talk about blindly following...

[Marysecretary]

First, you can’t take a verse out of context. Read what the chapter is saying. Then see what the whole counsel of God has to say about faith and/or works. Anyone can build a religion out of a verse without considering what the rest of God’s Word has to say about that subject.

[Quix]

AGREED.

As you are aware, however,

There is a continuum between ‘normal’ . . . to significant pathology—with many points in between.

And, RELIGIOSITY is divided into

INTRINSIC vs EXTRINSIC RELIGIOSITY—i.e. the last I read on the topic.

INTRINSIC is the healthiest of all categories.

EXTRINSIC the unhealthiest of the religious categories with only

INDISCRIMMINANT ANTI-RELIGIOSITY being worse.

Would you agree that Attachment Disorder is a very serious social and individual problem with what . . . more than 95% of the prison population afflicted with it?

I remain skeptical of the research that seems to indicate a relatively small proportion of the general population afflicted with it. If my students are any clue, the proportion is larger than the statistics seem to indicate. What’s your perspective on that?

[Quix]

INDEED! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!

[Iscool]

Isn't it strange how some RCs cannot bring themselves to admit even the tiniest flaw in Peter?

And then they cut and paste a 20,000 word dissertation defending their position which generally has nothing to do with the topic at hand to try to sidetrack you...

Some of these people are so crooked they probably have to screw their socks on in the morning...

[Iscool]

By the way, you (understandably) misinterpreted this statement of the Papal Bull. It has an unintended ambiguous meaning. You interpreted the statement to mean someone who has shed SOMEONE ELE'S blood in Christ's name--which indeed would be twisted. But in fact the statement is in regard to martyrs who have had their OWN blood shed for the name of Christ. The meaning is clearer in the original language.

It's posts like this that set the tone for discussion...

Do you really think the person originally translating this piece couldn't see what you call ambiguity when he translated and then would correct it??? If the author was such a poor translator, why not correct it before it gets published or posted???

Your argument doesn't hold water...

[Petronski]

...they just do not jive.

LOL

ROFL

jive: v.intr.

1. To play or dance to jive music.
2. Slang.

1. To talk nonsense; kid.
2. To talk or chat: “You just jive in one big group, putting each other on, trying to top the last line” (Time).

jibe v.intr.

1. (Naut.) To change a ship's course so as to cause a shifting of the boom. See Jibe, v. t., and Gybe.

2. To agree; to harmonize. [Colloq.] Bartlett.

**chuckle**

[Petronski]

...they just do not jive.

LOL

ROFL

jive: v.intr.

1. To play or dance to jive music.
2. Slang.

1. To talk nonsense; kid.
2. To talk or chat: “You just jive in one big group, putting each other on, trying to top the last line” (Time).

jibe v.intr.

1. (Naut.) To change a ship's course so as to cause a shifting of the boom. See Jibe, v. t., and Gybe.

2. To agree; to harmonize. [Colloq.] Bartlett.

**chuckle**

[Petronski]

And Catholics adhere to the magesterium mindlessly like a cult.

More slander from the anti-Catholic Elim cult.

[Iscool]

If they deny the blood of Christ, then how can they be called a Church?

Exactly...We don't deny the blood of Christ...We couldn't be Christians without it...

But I for one have searched the scriptures high and low for a way for someone to make this blood drinkable and have it taste, look and feel like wine...It ain't there...