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.

[cva66snipe]

No, they pray to Mary. That’s as bad as a moon goddess. I know many born again Catholics as well. They’re good people. But there are many who don’t really have a clue.

Neither do many Protestants these days especially in more morally liberal churches. Look Mary isn't a moon goddess she is the Mother of Christ. She is Christian. What I was referring to is pagan gods as in incorporating such as some churches did. Personally as for my own belief I see no reason to go through or too Mary or anyone else who follows Christ past or present but rather through Christ.

This is a doctrine or theological dispute of churches. I see it the same as some Prots demanding spiritual gift manifestations be present at salvation. Not necessary nor an issue that makes or breaks ones salvation unless you are a member of that church wanting to convert someone to it from another church. Understand what I mean now? I like my neighbor. He is a preacher in the Church of God. {name of actual denomination}. We have considerable differences in belief as his sect requires spiritual manifestations be present in the one receiving Christ as savior. I also believe it wrong to place such a condition on it. We have many more differences too like on the Second Coming. Neither is going to change either of our beliefs. So we ask how each others family is doing etc.

[Iscool]

"It is not, in fact, real authority if it does not coincide with that truth discovered in the power of reason, even if it is a recommended authority transmitted for the use of the successors of the Church Fathers...no authority should ever distract you from what helps you understand the persuasion or true rational contemplation. In fact authentic authority never contradicts true reason neither can the latter ever contradict true authority. Both, without doubt, originate from the same source that is divine wisdom. Therefore we see the courage of reason that results in the certainty that true authority is reasonable, because God is the creator of reason”

Your pope's problem is, is that he doesn't realize those that disagree with him have just as good a logic and reason...Better, in my view...

This infallible story you guys came up with has been with you for only a couple hundred years...Now that's not logical at all...Anyone with any common sense can see how fallible that idea is...

[bronxville]

“Look Mary isn’t a moon goddess she is the Mother of Christ.”

Thank you.

[bdeaner]

Your pope's problem is, is that he doesn't realize those that disagree with him have just as good a logic and reason...Better, in my view...

On several occasions in past discussions on this thread and others, you have rejected logic and reason as a valid form of arriving at the Truth. Why the sudden change?

Otherwise, your statement is empty words. Anybody can make such claims. It's entirely another thing to back it up and point out examples to illustrate your point.

[stfassisi]

The Holy Spirit is the true interpreter, not any one church. I will trust HIM to show me the truth I need to see.

What makes you think that your interpretations of scripture are guided by the Holy Spirit and should be elevated above the Saints who gave you Bible canon?

Don't tell us it's that warm feeling in your belly that you think is from God either. The Muslims claim this too

Why should ANYONE trust you? You have no unity and God did not use you to give us the canon.

[bdeaner]

So once on understands Incarnational theology seriously, and its implications, one is moving towards the Historic Church of the first millenium, which is Catholic in the fullest sense, both Roman and Latin West and Greek/Byzantine East.

Excellent! You have wonderfully stated the Holy Father's teachings on the implications of the Incarnation working through history.

[Iscool]

The true Church of Christ consists of one membership, one belief, one liturgy, one government.

Not even close...The One True Church is the assembly of called out believers who trust in nothing but the shed blood of Jesus Christ for their salvation...

It doesn’t have one Church that condemns divorce while another associated Church approves of it.

Oh, but the true church creates annulments that take the place of divorces so it can pretend it doesn't allow divorce???

It does not have one Church condemning gay marriages while another associated Church approves of it.

I see...But it allows queer priests and allows and hides pedophile priests until the media pressure gets too heavy???

It does not have one Church condemning abortion while another associated Church approves of it.

Sure...But over 50% of it's American members who support a pro queer marriage and pro abortion after birth president are still in good standing with your church...I see...

The true Church has one faith that is guided by one Spirit, the Spirit of God.

Faith in what???

[Dr. Eckleburg]

So in answer to my question, you do not" trust yourself, and the good and pure testimony of your God-given conscience;" instead you "trust the Catholic Church that decided the canon and tells me that Saint Paul's Scripture is inspired by God and written by Saint Paul."

What a strange religion it is that denies the direct work of God in your heart and mind, and instead tells you to trust in the vagaries of tradition and speculation and other men's pronouncements over your own God-given conscience.

That's not Scriptural. Thankfully Paul trusted his God-given conscience, washed clean by the blood of Christ and made known to him through the Holy Spirit.

"Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father;

Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God.

For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake.

And ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost." -- 1 Thess. 1:3-6

Since the canon hadn't been assembled yet Rome probably dismisses the "word" Paul speaks of here as more "Protestant self-interpretation."

[Petronski]

I know your corruption of Catholicism is heretical and not representative of the mainstream. One day when you’re done goofing off you’ll learn the error of your ways.

Suddenly you switch from anti-Catholic hate to defense of the Catholic Church and one is supposed to be impressed.

[Petronski]

...he is wrong because I say he is wrong. What other reason is needed?

Hubris. Look it up.

[Petronski]

...he refused to acknowledge the fallibility of many of the Catholic Church’s teachings...

No, I refused to play your gotcha games.

...this whole thread posits that - as a Protestant - I will not be saved...

Another lie.

[Petronski]

You only have to ask Jesus ONCE to come into your life. ONCE.

After that, sin boldly!

[Petronski]

Apparently, it is the position of the author - and many Catholics in this thread - that indeed, I am not saved because I do not accept the gatekeeper role of the Catholic Church in salvation.

This claim is contrary to the information in the article.

[Petronski]

Catholic means universal. Baptist does not mean universal.

[Mr Rogers]

“This statement is a gross distortion of the Catholic conception of indulgences. It may describe abuses that were happening among individuals within the Church at certain points in history (we are all sinners), but DOES NOT reflect the infallible teaching on indulgences in the Deposit of Faith.”

I was reading last night a book about the Reformation by the guy who wrote “Here I Stand”. He said that even in Luther’s time, there were multiple views on indulgences. One well respected view was that it could only remit penalties the Pope had imposed. Very few agreed with “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.” Maybe no one...

However, that is what started Luther, and it had become a sufficiently widespread practice that Luther’s view found popular support. Of course, as a Baptist, I find penances and indulgences of any variety hard to swallow.

However, much has been said on this thread about the Catholic Church’s advantage as ‘THE Teaching Authority’. It seems to me this episode - which the Catholic Church later clamped down on, I believe - illustrates that its ability to be a true teaching authority is ineffectual.

It also relates to an earlier post you made, discussing Apostolic Succession, and the laying on of hands. I realize that no one chosen as Pope could be perfect. But if the laying on of hands results in a Leo X, then how can Apostolic Succession be considered true? He sold high office in the Church. That isn’t just a personal sin, but a gross offense against the Church. Yet it was an accepted practice - accepted not because it was reputable, but because it was profitable.

It was these sort of abuses that led to the Reformers questioning the Pope, and from there, questioning the Doctrine. Once that was done, ‘only scripture’ became dogma by default. If you cannot trust the Pope & Apostolic Succession, then only scripture remains.

[Religion Moderator]

The word "lie" implies the intent to decieve which is reading the mind of another Freeper.

Also, do not let this thread become "about" individual Freepers.

Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.

[Petronski]

Over time, you will realize that whenever they speak of faith, or the Catholic faith, it is never faith in Jesus Christ...It is faith in their religion...

Wow, another anti-Catholic misrepresentation.

[Petronski]

How do resolve this problem in your mind?

I'll take "By Ignoring It" for $2000, Alex.

[Mr Rogers]

Actually, most Protestants believe the Catholic Church started a slow walk away from the truth when it became a state church. Canon was fixed near that time. I’ve read the books rejected later by the Reformers, and would tend to agree with their assessment. However, I don’t recall seeing a lot of Catholic Doctrine that rests on those books.

I could well be wrong on this, since I’ve never studied them from a doctrine viewpoint.