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.

[MarkBsnr]

***That must be why he made it a requirement for Elders and Deacons in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.

Hey now, you can’t rely on the Bible to make your point! There’s a catechism to consider! ;)***

Funny. I’ve been posting Scripture that the Reformed are pointedly ignoring. Where are the Bible Believers (tm)? Could it be that they are Scripturally unsound?

[Mr Rogers]

Which scriptures are those? I don’t recall seeing them.

[CTrent1564]

drifdiver:

I don’t think my post is confusing. I clearly stated that the theology of the Eucharist expressed by the Church Fathers and the Councils of the CHurch is the same theology of the Eucharist held by both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church.

Now, one thing that bothers me, and this is personal thing with me, is that whenever one of these threads gets going, it is pretty obvious 1) What the Catholic Church believes, as its Doctrines are well published and 2) Given Catholics on this forum or very orthdodox, you know what each of us believes.

On the other hand, the Protestants on this forum all go after Catholics with a vengeance, not saying you all are necessarily doing that, and yet none of you all ever state what Protestant Traditon you belong to as I think if you all were to do that, we would see that your theological differences are many, yet the one thing that unites you all on this forum is your crticism of Catholic Doctrine.

[driftdiver]

“Where are the Bible Believers (tm)? Could it be that they are Scripturally unsound?”

I’m a Bible believer and I’m right here.

What does that have to do with being or not being scripturally sound or unsound? Perhaps they are spending time with family?

What scripture have you posted that nobody responded to? Do you feel ignored?

[papertyger]

Being "born again" is not a literal phrase; it is a metaphor for a spiritual action.

Which was prefaced by the phrase "Verily, verily?"

Do not presume to teach that which you obviously do not understand.

[CTrent1564]

PugetSoundSoldier:

Technically, we are saved by God’s Grace, through Faith in God. However, how is Faith defined is what differentiates Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Theology, from the “Various” theologies of the Protestant confessions.

Faith in Catholic Doctrine is defined as both a gift of God and a human act by which the believer gives personal adherence to God ,who invites is response, and freely assents the whole truth that God has revealed. It is this revelation of God which the Church proposes for our belief, and which we profess in the Creed, celebrate in the sacraments and live by right conduct that fullfills the twofold commandment of charity (as specified in the ten commandments), and respond to in our prayer of Faith. Faith is both a theological virtue given by God as grace, and an obligation which flows from the first commandment.

[driftdiver]

“On the other hand, the Protestants on this forum all go after Catholics with a vengeance”

It is a two way street and traffic has been heavy both ways.

“and yet none of you all ever state what Protestant Traditon you belong to as I think if you all were to do that, we would see that your theological differences are many, yet the one thing that unites you all on this forum is your crticism of Catholic Doctrine.”

I go to a Baptist Church but consider myself a plain ole Christian. Our theological differences are no greater than that of catholics. I’ve met good devout catholics and those not so devout. I’ve met catholics that went to mass on Saturday night so they could go out get drunk and go home with someone.

What bugs me and possibly many others is when Catholics lay the claim that they are the only way to salvation or that their priests are equal to Christ. Some catholics agree to disagree when challenged and others throw insults.

Answering every discussion with “thats your individual interpretation” is a cop out and convinces nobody. But I say go for it. I hope there are lurkers searching for an answer and I pray that answer will be one where they can pray directly to God. Where they don’t have to pay for forgiveness and where good deeds are something they do because they are saved and not to be saved. I pray they realize that acceptance and love is out there looking for them in the name of Jesus.

[cva66snipe]

To me, the transubstantiation or not of the Eucharist is really a minor point; we are not saved by communion but by faith. Baptism and communion are outward expressions of our internal faith, but are not required for a person to gain salvation.

Once a person has accepted Christ as Lord and Savior they have immediately been Baptized by Christ in His Blood {not the same as church Baptism but rather the one that purifies and saves us} and indeed have taken of His body and blood. If you eat bread or drink wine you will again be hungry or thirsty. But the bread and wine Christ speaks of are not of this world they are spiritual bread and wine. Many could not understand that concept then. They were looking for material and physical manifestations instead.

I saw some interesting scripture while looking up something else. The church leaders in Christ time on earth had created a very legalistic church. They placed conditions on their conditions and burdens man could not carry on the people.

Matt ch12 3But Jesus said to them, “Haven’t you ever read in the Scriptures what King David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4He went into the house of God, and they ate the special bread reserved for the priests alone. That was breaking the law, too. 5And haven’t you ever read in the law of Moses that the priests on duty in the Temple may work on the Sabbath? 6I tell you, there is one here who is even greater than the Temple! 7But you would not have condemned those who aren’t guilty if you knew the meaning of this Scripture: ‘I want you to be merciful; I don’t want your sacrifices.’£ 8For I, the Son of Man, am master even of the Sabbath.”

Christ addressed legalisms in the church quite a lot. The requirements kept becoming more and more rigid so much so many had lost hope. Yet Christ made it so simple for us. The Laws of Moses was the result of a stubborn peoples disobedience who in their ignorance made their own lives and many generations to follow very difficult. They wanted heavy burdens and rituals & they got them. Up till that time GOD did not ask much of man. When man rebelled much was asked.

Christ concentrated not on ritual or creating more thereof but what was in the persons heart and His main point was faith and love which conquers all things.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

See Jesus’ explanation to Nicodemus when Nicodemus says he doesn’t understand.

You will see that being “born again” is a metaphor for a rebirth spiritually, not physically.

[papertyger]

To deny that extending that understanding is a valid position for this one phrase is quite close-minded and restrictive.

straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, and few there be that find it...

[driftdiver]

“straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, and few there be that find it... “

ahh but its a simple path, straight through Jesus

[papertyger]

I know the scriptures.

Do you think that confers on you an authority to contradict Christ's clear pronouncements?

[PugetSoundSoldier]

It’s OK. I’ve been told that I have no salvation outside the Catholic Church, or that if I am saved then I am a Catholic. And that I have fallen and/or need to be pruned.

I’ve defined what I am (a Free Methodist). I have only argued from the Scripture (specifically using the USCCB - the Catholic NAB online), and using the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Which Protestant tradition do you feel is not Scriptural? What claims do we make that deny Catholics can be saved and welcomed into the kingdom of Heaven?

[papertyger]

No, I’m RELYING on the body and blood of Jesus.

I’m DENYING the bread and wine...

You can't have it both ways. Scripture give you absolutely no authority to contradict through "interpretation" a direct command of Jesus Christ.

You ARE denying the body and blood of Christ when you deny the bread and wine.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

Faith in Catholic Doctrine is defined as both a gift of God and a human act by which the believer gives personal adherence to God ,who invites is response, and freely assents the whole truth that God has revealed.

I think that fully fits what Protestants believe, too. Faith is what God gives us and what we place in Him; it can be expressed by actions, but it is not an action and not dependent upon specific actions.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

Hey, you can argue with the Words of Christ in John 3:5.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

You ARE denying the body and blood of Christ when you deny the bread and wine.

In your dogma, yes. But then, is one saved only by communion? If yes, then you must fight for your dogma. If no - it is by faith - then communion becomes somewhat less important, doesn't it?

[papertyger]

Whatever floats your boat, papertyger. I’m glad you find what you need in the Eucharist. Just don’t expect it to save you.

Do you think a worthless, powerless, doctrine of man that I subscribed to for more than twenty years will do you any better?

Vapid warnings designed to do nothing but comfort the one warning are the pettiest of jokes to someone who was blind and now can see.

[Petronski]

By pulling a single phrase out from the entire lesson of the Lord you can corrupt the meaning of that phrase.

[papertyger]

And of course you know their hearts, right? Only God does.

Then I guess your "knowing" they don't deny the body and blood is just as empty.

Really, some people would be much better debaters if they weren't so knee-jerk vindictive.