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]

It is what Jesus taught.

It is how YOU interpret what Jesus taught.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

Sure. But faith is still what’s required to be saved. Works alone will not do it; works should be an expression of your faith.

What saves a man? Works or faith? Just look at the words of Jesus himself: Mark 16:16 and Luke 7:50.

[Mr Rogers]

There is a judgment for Christians:

1 Cor 3:

“11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”

Our ministry will be judged. Our souls will not, if we have been born again.

[Mr Rogers]

Sir,

From the link you posted, Jerome to Augustine:

“5. You, however, in order to avoid doing what I had asked, have devised a new argument against the view proposed; maintaining that the Gentiles who had believed in Christ were free from the burden of the ceremonial law, but that the Jewish converts were under the law, and that Paul, as the teacher of the Gentiles, rightly rebuked those who kept the law; whereas Peter, who was the chief of the “circumcision,” Galatians 2:8 was justly rebuked for commanding the Gentile converts to do that which the converts from among the Jews were alone under obligation to observe. If this is your opinion, or rather since it is your opinion, that all from among the Jews who believe are debtors to do the whole law, you ought, as being a bishop of great fame in the whole world, to publish your doctrine, and labour to persuade all other bishops to agree with you.”

Augustine was obviously in the wrong, since what he wrote is contrary to scripture. However, Jerome is also insisting, 3 centuries after the fact, that Paul did not rebuke Peter - which clearly is contrary both to scripture, and to the account given by an eyewitness, while the other party was still alive and capable of contradicting him.

“11But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.”

And what had he done? In addition to action, he had tried to “force the Gentiles to live like Jews”. Frankly, force is a much stronger word than teach, since it implies a penalty if the teaching is not followed.

---

Also, I believe you lay at the feet of Jerome what he considered blasphemous.

“In fact, St. Jerome comments that St. Paul sometimes had envy towards ST. Peter and boasted of things that he did not do. Remember, St. Paul himself notes that he struggled with a sin throughout his life, perhaps Jerome was telling us that this may have been the struggle St. Paul had, as St. Jerome writes with respect to Paul he “had written boastfully of things which he either had not done, or, if he did them, had done with inexcusable presumption.”

But Jerome wrote: “...and to restrain the shameless blasphemies of Porphyry, who says that Peter and Paul quarrelled with each other in childish rivalry, and affirms that Paul had been inflamed with envy on account of the excellences of Peter, and had written boastfully of things which he either had not done, or, if he did them, had done with inexcusable presumption, reproving in another that which he himself had done.”

[Petronski]

But faith is still what’s required to be saved.

Faith AND works.

Do you think you will be saved with a dead faith?

Works alone will not do it...

Nor will faith alone.

What saves a man?

Faith plus works.

Works or faith?

The question is flawed: a false dichotomy.

[Petronski]

Love the Scripture. You can keep your interpretation of it.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

Faith AND works.

False. Please read the words of Jesus in Mark 16 and Luke 7. NO WHERE does our Lord require works to be saved; only faith.

Please point to where Jesus says that you can be saved by works, or that you need works to be saved. He doesn't, because that's not true.

Do you think you will be saved with a dead faith?

No. If you have faith, it is alive. Jesus does not put any qualifiers on the strength of faith, or "you must have X number of works or manifestations of faith". He simply states "your faith saves you". Period.

If you wish to take later, apostolic theology over the word of Christ that is your right; for me, I will accept the words of Jesus at face value (by faith).

Question for you: do you think you can work your way into Heaven, by doing good works?

[Petronski]

Please point to where Jesus says that you can be saved by works...

Why would I do that? I didn't say you can be saved by works.

If you have faith, it is alive.

Such is your interpretation. But those who have faith without works have a dead faith.

...do you think you can work your way into Heaven, by doing good works?

I've already made it amply clear that salvation requires faith AND works.

Hellooooo!?! McFly!?!

[Petronski]

Please point to where Jesus says that you can be saved by works, or that you need works to be saved.

Please point me to where Jesus says sola Scriptura.

[Mr Rogers]

Here is a link to the Pope’s interpretation of Galatians 2:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2095462/posts

It fails to address Galatians 2:14 - “I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

I think it also fails to distinguish between not giving offense to Jews who might be converted, and placing burdens on Gentiles who have been converted.

Other than that, pretty good stuff.

[cva66snipe]

Our ministry will be judged. Our souls will not, if we have been born again.

It was Christ who said He who gives so much as a drink of water in my name shall by no means loose their reward in heaven. The reward is for our deeds but salvation is there regardless for those who believe. Our ransom or payment for our sins has done been paid as the price was set at the cross and agreed upon. We can not repay our salvation. No deed of labor we can do is enough to purchase our salvation and no punishment we could take for our sins can possibly take them away. That leaves only one way. Through Jesus alone are we saved.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

Such is your interpretation. But those who have faith without works have a dead faith.

Please define what you mean by "dead faith". Get that settled first before we get into it.

I do not see Jesus qualifying faith as living and dead. Only as faith. Play word-games as you want; the words of the Lord are quite clear and explicit. Add to them as you will, but I choose to accept His words as perfect.

As far as sola scriptura, see Jesus' words in Mark 7:1-15. Jesus is quite explicit: tradition and non-Biblical teachings are secondary to the Bible - the word of God. You worship in vain when anything beyond God's commandment and the word of God is held equal - or above - those commandments and words.

Those aren't my words, those are the words of Jesus. I would ask you to read over and consider them carefully.

Sola scriptura does not mean all other writings and teachings are irrelevant or to be shunned; they are simply of secondary status to the Bible, and not required to grasp the message of the Bible. You do not need anything beyond its words, or you run the risk of being the hypocritical pharisees that Jesus spoke against.

[Marysecretary]

I’ll take scripture any time.

[Mr Rogers]

You have been shown numerous scriptures showing that you cannot be saved by works. I believe - correct me if I am wrong - that the Catholic Church does not suffer traditions that CONTRADICT scripture.

If you are waiting for Judgment Day to find out if you have done enough good deeds, then you violate the direct teaching of scripture.

“8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Have been saved - past tense.

Not a result of works,

so no one may boast.

[Petronski]

Please define what you mean by "dead faith".

Faith without works.

As far as sola Scriptura, see Jesus' words in Mark 7:1-15. Jesus is quite explicit: tradition and non-Biblical teachings are secondary to the Bible - the word of God.

That is YOUR interpretation.

Christ is condemning human traditions that contradict Scripture.

Traditions of the Church Christ founded are not man-made, and they do not contradict Scripture.

You do not need anything beyond its words, or you run the risk of being the hypocritical pharisees that Jesus spoke against.

Such is YOUR interpretation.

[Petronski]

You have been shown numerous scriptures showing that you cannot be saved by works.

More to the point, I have myself said numerous times that I do not believe one is saved by works.

Faith plus works.

[papertyger]

The Body of Christ is at the Right Hand Of GOD and Christ still occupies it now and forever.

Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.

All your supposed points have been used in the past to undermine the doctrine of the Trinity. Do you reject the Trinity, too? If not, then on what basis do you reject the doctrine of the Real Presence, and why do you zero in on "remembrance" while rejecting "DO THIS?"

[Marysecretary]

I don’t know any Christian who denies the blood and body of Jesus Christ. We just deny the need to re-sacrifice Him every Mass.

[Marysecretary]

Mary was not sinless. She was born into sin just like the rest of us and knew her Son was her Saviour, just like he is ours.

[Marysecretary]

Eating wafers.