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.

[driftdiver]

Nope, I’ve looked. I don’t see the work Catholic in the Bible. The Catholic church is a creation of fallible men.

[Iscool]

You forgot, “Have you ever used a Bible other than King James? Then you are going to hell!”

I'm a KJV only subscriber...

I've been in numerous KJV churches...Never once have I heard anyone claim that someone would go to hell for using something other than a KJV bible...

[Iscool]

We know it's God's Word because the Church said so

Hahahahahahah....hohohohoho.....hehehehehe...

I missed that one...Put in a few chuckles for me as well...

[Iscool]

Then what good is grace?

Then what good came out of the crucifixion???

[Semper Mark]

“Then what good came out of the crucifixion???”

Exactly.

When Christ cried out from the cross: “IT IS FINISHED” He meant it!

Any attempt to add to His finished work is complete and utter heresy.

[redgolum]

The early church viewed it as the “Medicine of Salvation”, in that it helped cure our souls of sin.

Now, would someone like a child or catacum (studying for baptism in the case of an adult convert) be saved with out it? Yes.

In the case of someone who refuses to receive or is excluded from communion (excommunicated).. Well it isn't as cut and dried. The problem isn't so much the act of receiving the Lord's Supper, as it is not doing a direct command of Christ. And if you have be screwing up so badly that the Church kicks you out for justifiable reasons, then maybe you need to take a close look at own soul.

So in strict terms, you can be saved if you don't partake of the Lord's Supper, but why wouldn't you want to?

[Iscool]

2Co 11:3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

[cva66snipe]

I've been in numerous KJV churches...Never once have I heard anyone claim that someone would go to hell for using something other than a KJV bible...

LOL Mainly it seems to be a southern thing using in Baptist churches. Carry say a Living Bible in and it unnerves them.

[Iscool]

So in strict terms, you can be saved if you don't partake of the Lord's Supper, but why wouldn't you want to?

And yet you guys talk about the unity in your religion...You guys are all over the place when it comes to dogma and rules and doctrine...

[Marysecretary]

Amen, Mr. Rogers. I have peace amidst my afflictions that when I die I will go to be with the Lord for all eternity. That HOPE and assurance sustains me. Thank you.

[Marysecretary]

I do this in remembrance of Him as He said. I do not believe it suddenly turns to blood and wine. It was meant as a spiritual remembrance of his broken body and shed blood.

[Petronski]

It's a requirement...

Who is required to become a priest?

[Mr Rogers]

Salvation covers both justification and sanctification. One is done, the other ongoing.

Maybe I should start a thread sometime on eternal security, but it is 0630 here in Arizona, and I haven’t had my coffee!

[CTrent1564]

driftdive; iscool

Iscool:

The word mystery has different meanings in the Pauline epistles. For example, In St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, the apostle wrote that he wanted people to consider him and his fellow missionaries as “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor 4:1).On the other had, the “mysteries” also includes those things which had remained hidden since the foundation of the world, but were now revealed by Christ (Eph 1:4; 3:9; Col 1:26; 1 Cor 2:7). It is the context of 1 Cor 4:1 that mysteries are understood to referring to sacraments, which is who St. Jerome, the great biblical scholar of the 4th century translated the Greek word “musterion” or “mystery” into the Latin word “Sacramentum”, which where our English word “Sacrament” comes from.

Driftdiver:

The priest, i.e. the presbyterate, receives a gift, through God’s Grace, and as Pope Benedict writes (Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 204) “he is not the source of his priesthood. He is a priest, not through his own skills and abilities, but by the gifts of the Lord, a gift that always remains a gift and never becomes simply his possession, a power of his own. The new priest receives the gift and task of priesthood as a gift from another, from Christ, and recognizes that all he is ever able and allowed to be is a “steward of the mysteries of God” (c.f. 1 Cor 4:1), a “good steward of God’s varied Grace” (c.f. 1 Pet 4:10).

So altar Christus or acting in persona Christi, is what the article by Fr. Baker is referring to. By virture of the priest’s ordination, the one priesthood of Christ is made present through the ministerial priesthood without diminishing the uniqueness of Christ’s priesthood. Only Christ is the true priest, the others being only his ministers (CCC paragraph 1545). So, again, the article you cited is to understood in this context.

So by virtue of being ordained, the Priest for example, when celebrating the Eucharist is not speaking on his own, he is as Pope Benedict writes (Spirit of the Liturgy pp. 172-173), is stepping back and making way for the actio divina, the action of the Lord. So when the priest in the Eucharistic prayer states “This is my Body”, repeating Christ words from the Last Supper, the priest knows “That he is not speaking from his own resources but in virtue of the Sacrament that he received, he has become the voice of someone else, who is now speaking and acting. This action of God, which takes place through human speech, is the “real action” for which all of creation is in expectation. The elements of the earth are transubstantiated, pulled, so to speak, from their creaturely anchorage, grasped in the deepest ground of their being, and changed into the Body and Blood of the Lord. The New Heaven and New Earth are anticipated. The real action in Liturgy in which we are all supposed to participate is the action of God Himself. This is what is new and distinctive about Christian Liturgy: God himself acts and does what is essential. He inaugurates the new creation, makes himself accessible, so that, through the things of the earth, through our gifts, we can communicate with him in a personal way. But how can we participate, have a part, in this action? Are not God and man completely incommensurable? Can man, the finite and sinful one, cooperate with God, the Infinite and Holy One? Yes, he can, precisely because God himself became man, become body, and here, again, and again, he comes to his body to us who live in the body. The whole event of Incarnation, Cross, Resurrection, and Second Coming is present as the way by which God draws man into cooperation with himself….True, the Sacrafice of the Logos is accepted already and forever. But we must still pray for it to become our sacrifice, that we ourselves, as we said, may be transformed into the Logos, conformed to the Logos, and so be made the true Body of Christ.

In closing, it seems to me that at the root of Protestantism’s anti-Sacramentalism, is a problem with the implications of the Incarnation, that God became man, and because Incarnation is always a reality, it is never pulled away, in Catholic theology, from the theology of the Cross and Resurrection. They are always linked.

Pax et bonum

[papertyger]

What a tremendous gift it is, for me, to stand before the Eucharist and KNOW, before me, that IS My Lord present materially in the flesh in the re-representation of His Sacrifice on Calvary. Wow! And to take the hidden manna of His Flesh into MY Body -- how can I not be changed? It brings me to my knees. I wish you could have that experience just once, and then maybe, just maybe you might understand where I'm coming from...

You, my dear brother, "get it"

[bdeaner]

In the original language of the Papal Bull, it is obvious he is making reference to the martyrs. It is not enough to be martyred for Christ--one must also be in full communion with the Church to be saved--is the point, like it or not.

You are welcome to have the last word, but I am done with this particular conversation.

[Mr Rogers]

Your tagline, bdeaner: “The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? (1 Cor. 10:16)”

That passage reads:

“14 Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. 15 I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. 16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. 18 Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? 19 What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. 22 Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?”

On the one hand, that supports transubstantiation, since it compares Communion with actual sacrifices being offered by pagans to demons. However, the sacrifices to idols are new sacrifices, while Catholic doctrine agrees that Christ was sacrificed once, for all time. So the analogy isn’t precise. And when he says “we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread”, he obviously does so in a spiritual sense, not literal.

Baptists agree that when we partake Communion, that we are participating in the blood and body of Jesus, in a spiritual sense. Frankly, I don’t understand the difference between that view, and saying it becomes the actual blood and body of Christ, but that it doesn’t involve a re-sacrifice of Jesus and the physical aspects (taste, texture, etc) remain unchanged. Maybe I’m just not smart enough.

Here is what Baptists wrote over 300 years ago:

“30.7 Worthy recipients, when outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this ordinance, also receive them inwardly by faith, truly and in fact, not as flesh and body but spiritually. In so doing they feed upon Christ crucified, and receive all the benefits of his death. The body and blood of Christ are not present physically, but spiritually by the faith of believers in the ordinance, just as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.”

Unfortunately, my own denomination (SBC) has watered that down to “The Lord’s Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members of the church, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming.” I guess if you are going to use grape juice instead of wine to avoid giving offense, you can’t be taking scripture very seriously, to the terrible shame of the SBC. I suspect the Baptists of the 1600s would be as shocked by Southern Baptists as they were by Catholics...

From what I’ve read, those who argued against transubstantiation did so because they believed the doctrine required Jesus to be sacrificed all over again.

If the misinformed teachings of adherents cause us problems in discussing church doctrine in an age where anyone can go online and read the source documents for themselves, how much more so in an age when printing presses were just starting, and few could afford books, and travel meant walking!

I have many strong differences with the Catholic Church. Infant baptism makes no sense to me. Popes? No thanks! The treatment of Mary disturbs me more than Michael Jackson did. Penances and indulgences are far worse. The idea of a surplus of good deeds indicate a + / - accounting approach to justification that is totally contrary to scripture.

But transubstantiation? Don’t exactly believe it, and don’t exactly deny it. Properly explained, it doesn’t seem substantially different from what Baptists used to teach.

[papertyger]

He said "Believe in me and my righteousness; in the work I do on the cross for your sake.

Sorry, that verse must be one of the ones our fallen leaders deleted from the holy scriptures.

Of course, it could just be that some can not tell the difference between their personal dogmas, and holy scriptures.

[Mr Rogers]

Thought you both might be interested in this...Good Works, from a Baptist perspective:

http://www.grbc.net/about_us/1689.php?chapter=16

A sample:

“16.3 Their ability to do these good works does not in any way come from themselves, but entirely from the Spirit of Christ. To enable them to do good works (besides the graces they have already received) they require the actual influence of the Holy Spirit to cause them to will and to do his good pleasure. Yet are they not on this account to become negligent, nor to think that they are not required to perform a duty unless given a special impulse of the Spirit; rather, they ought to be diligent in stirring up the grace of God that is in them.”

[Mr Rogers]

“I’ve been in numerous KJV churches...Never once have I heard anyone claim that someone would go to hell for using something other than a KJV bible... “

It was a small church, about 60-70 miles north of Austin, TX. Probably 1992 or 93.

I like the KJV, but I also like the NEB & ESV. When I first became a Christian, the Living Bible was critical to me, since I couldn’t understand a more literal translation very well.