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.

[papertyger]

Would you take Jesus literally if He said you are a refrigerator??? Or What if Jesus told you that you were an oak tree???

If the one who called the universe into existence says you are those things, that's what you are.

Jesus is "right" by definition.

He not only didn't tell any of you how to turn a little cracker and a glass of wine into HIS flesh and blood but Jesus never told you to even attempt to try such a thing...

What part of "do this" is so hard to grasp?

Riiiiight...You guys don't believe the gates of hell mean the gates of hell...You claim keys of the Kingdom of God mean power...
You don't believe a thousand years means a thousand years...You don't believe 'after his kind' means after his kind and a million other statements God said...So spare me the drama...

We aren't the ones who advertise we're bound by scripture alone, then scream like offended Pharisees when that's proven false. It's not our standard of interpretation you guys can't live up to...it's your own.

Protestants just can't stand it when we take the scriptures more seriously than THEY do, because it shows they are no better than they claim we are...and with a whole lot less "seniority!"

According to your religion's private interpretation of Scripture, maybe...How many times have you mocked the idea of comparing scripture with scripture???

I don't know. I've lost count of the number of times protestants have tried to use that little trick like it was an actual command of scripture to justify their contrivances.

[bdeaner]

Nope, I’ve looked. I don’t see the work Catholic in the Bible.

You've said this before and I just haven't got around to responding. There have been A LOT of posts, most of which I haven't gotten around to addressing yet. But since this is about the 3rd or 4th time you've said this, I better address it now rather than later...

Two things before I say anything further. The word "catholic" may not be in the Bible, but neither is "trinity." The Trinity is implied by Scripture, as is the catholicity of the Church established by Christ.

The problem is that many have the tendency to understand the word "catholic" to be a denominational term, like Presbyterian or Baptist. But, in fact, it is the opposite of denominational. Catholic means "universal," and that universality is a quality of the Church that was willed by Jesus Himself, when He said: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to thse close of the age." (Mt. 28:18-20). Such catholicity came as fulfillment of many Old Testament prophecies: "all peoples, all nations, and languages serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion" (Dn 7:14).

Jesus gave the Church an authority that was properly His own--one that is extended throughout all time in every place -- always and everywhere.

From the beginning, the same early Christians who wrote and compiled the New Testament used the Greek word katholikos to describe the Church of Jesus Christ. This word comes from kata hole, meaning "pertaining to the whole" or, simply, "universal." In 105 A.D., Ignatius of Antioch wrote to the Christians of Smyrna, "Wherever the bishop appears, let the congregation be there also, just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church." We also find this same word in accounts of the martyrdom of St. Polycarp, which refers to "the holy and catholic church in every place." These statements have Apostolic authority. Ignatius and Polycarp were disciples of the Apostle John.

The Old Testament prophecy of Malachi can be applied to the Mass: "from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering" (Mal 1:11). This line appears in the earliest Eucharistic prayers, including the one in the Didache, which dates back to 48 A.D.

The primacy of Peter as an authority for this Catholic Church has been discussed already. When he died, the Church filfilled the mandate of Acts 1:20: "For it is written...'His offce let another take.'" Peter has been succeeded in his primacy by others, one of them a man named Clement, who witneesed to Rome's very catholic authority already in the mid-first century! St. Clement wrote--probably as early as 69 A.D., but certainly no later than 96--to discipline a distant congregation in Corinth. As he concluded his remonstration, he said: "You will give us joy and gladness if you render obedience to the things written by us through the Holy Spirit."

Testimony to the primacy of the See of Peter as authority of the Catholic Church is provided by the early Fathers of the Church as well.

[papertyger]

If not, it is then not voluntary...It's a requirement...

Do we have to put up with this kind of trollish baiting? By this kind of quibbling, a volunteer fireman would be nothing but a suicide.

[papertyger]

The context of these scriptures weren't about Peter, they were about Christ and who He was and is.

It's a sad thing to watch someone prostituting their intellect to deny something that is manifestly obvious.

[bdeaner]

That's because we have a commonality...We may not agree on some details but we are basically in unity as it comes to salvation, as Jesus desired...

LOL. This is such a lie, that I seriously hope you don't yourself believe it.

Just to give three examples: Baptists, Episcopalians, and Church of Latter Day Saints are about as far apart as you can get without rejecting Christ as our savior. They are each individually closer to the Catholic Church in teaching than they are to each other, with perhaps the exception of LDS, which is frankly out to lunch.

Just about the ONLY thing that unites them, other than belief in Jesus Christ, is their rejection of the Catholic Church. That's really the one thing all PROTEST-ant sects have in common -- their PROTEST against the Mother Church established by Our Lord, the Catholic Church.

If anyone wants testimony with regard to the authority of the Catholic Chuch, just watch what the rebels constantly and persistently attack. It's plain to see on FR -- that target is the Catholic Church. Dost thou protest too much? The target of the reprobates is the one, True Church. Gives it away every time.

[Religion Moderator]

This is an "open" thread in the Religion Forum. The debate can become contentious.

If this town square type of debate troubles you then ignore the "open" threads and instead post to the "prayer" "devotional" "caucus" or "ecumenical" threads.

[Petronski]

Nope...Shed blood has one meaning...It means blood leaving a body...

In English, "shed blood" has two possible meanings, because in "shed blood" the word "shed" can be read either as an adjective (as if to say "blood that has been shed") or a verb (as if to say "to shed blood").

[driftdiver]

In my heart that’s why I know the Catholic church is a man creation and not a God creation. Catholics make it super complicated and teach that you must have an intermediary because you cannot understand for yourself.

Jesus didn’t send the apostles out alone. Jesus went out among the lost to teach, heal, and bring salvation. He wanted a one on one connection with the lost sheep. He still wants that thru prayer.

[papertyger]

Of course it doesn’t say the word simple but it does give quite clear instructions one a few short steps.

Where? Saying "brain surgery" is simple, too. Doing it is another matter.

[driftdiver]

Theb why do Catholics have all the additional doctrine? Why do they consider the bible incomplete?

[papertyger]

Some things you are missing here...Most Protestants get their theology from the scriptures, only...As a result, they pour over the scriptures for truth and understanding...The bible is the 'final authority' for all matters of faith and practice...

And the part YOU'RE missing is the bible isn't comprehensive enough to be the "final authority." Your doctrines insist it is, so y'all have to contrive all manner of NON scriptural excuses to give interpretations the authority of scripture.

[papertyger]

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

St. Paul was a heretic...who knew?

Colossians 1:24

[Iscool]

Do we have to put up with this kind of trollish baiting? By this kind of quibbling, a volunteer fireman would be nothing but a suicide.

What's that??? Do firemen have to swear an oath to go down with the fire in order to be a fireman???

[bdeaner]

Colossians 1:24
24Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.

[papertyger]

It was meant as a spiritual remembrance of his broken body and shed blood.

Which may be why the protestant concepts of sin are as simplistic and sophomoric as a child who thinks arithmetic principles are the limit of "math."

[papertyger]

Salvation covers both justification and sanctification.

I'm familiar with the "once saved" doctrine. It's unscriptural.

[papertyger]

When I first became a Christian, the Living Bible was critical to me, since I couldn’t understand a more literal translation very well.

AMEN BROTHER! As CS Lewis said, when the bible tells you to feed the poor, it doesn't give you lessons on cookery. You'd think some congregations confer a degree in english lit. when you walk down the aisle.

[Iscool]

In English, "shed blood" has two possible meanings, because in "shed blood" the word "shed" can be read either as an adjective (as if to say "blood that has been shed") or a verb (as if to say "to shed blood").

If you really want to play that game Petronski, shed blood then has three (or more)meanings...

If you happen to like to store blood in your shed, you have, 'shed blood'...If you happen to like the color of blood and use blood to paint your shed, you have shed blood there...

Or perhaps your pitbull's hair will turn into blood next spring...Then, when the old growth falls out, your dog will shed blood...

Yea, there's lots of meanings for shed blood...

[Petronski]

It’s not a game. It’s two real and distinct meanings of “shed blood.”

Sorry you missed them.

[Iscool]

In my heart that’s why I know the Catholic church is a man creation and not a God creation. Catholics make it super complicated and teach that you must have an intermediary because you cannot understand for yourself.

It's all about money and power...Keep the dupes coming and paying...They can do nothing without the church...Even their babies are doomed to hell without the Catholic church...Scare the parents to keep them coming...

Jesus didn’t send the apostles out alone. Jesus went out among the lost to teach, heal, and bring salvation. He wanted a one on one connection with the lost sheep. He still wants that thru prayer.

And when they accepted salvation, they were part of the body of Christ...Jesus and Paul especially warn us about this group...