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Revision as of 23:08, 30 January 2007 by 151.204.205.57 (talk) (/* Roman Catholic)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The Latin phrase Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, meaning: "Outside the Church there is no salvation", is a dogma of the Roman Catholic Church. It has been expressed in the form, "it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff" in Pope Boniface VIII's 1302 bull Unam Sanctam. It also appears in the profession of faith of the Fourth Lateran Council: "One, moreover, is the universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all is saved."
Roman Catholic statements of this teaching
Fourth Lateran Council (1215): "There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved."
Pope Boniface VIII, Bull Unam Sanctam (1302): "We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff."
Pope Eugene IV, Bull Cantate Domino (1441): "The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church."
Pope Pelagius II (578-590): "Consider the fact that whoever has not been in the peace and unity of the Church cannot have the Lord. ...Although given over to flames and fires, they burn, or, thrown to wild beasts, they lay down their lives, there will not be (for them) that crown of faith but the punishment of faithlessness. ...Such a one can be slain, he cannot be crowned. ... slain outside the Church, he cannot attain the rewards of the Church" (Denzinger, 469).
Saint Gregory the Great (590-604), Moralia: "Now the holy Church universal proclaims that God cannot be truly worshipped saving within herself, asserting that all they that are without her shall never be saved."
Pope Innocent III (1198-1216): "With our hearts we believe and with our lips we confess but one Church, not that of the heretics, but the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, outside which we believe that no one is saved" (Denzinger 792).
Pope Leo XII (1823-1829), Encyclical Ubi Primum: "We profess that there is no salvation outside the Church. ... For the Church is the pillar and ground of the truth. With reference to those words Augustine says: `If any man be outside the Church he will be excluded from the number of sons, and will not have God for Father since he has not the Church for mother.'"
Pope Gregory XVI (1831-1846), Encyclical Summo Jugiter: "It is not possible to worship God truly except in Her; all who are outside Her will not be saved."
Pope Pius IX (1846-1878), Encyclical Quanto conficiamur moerore, 8: "Well known is the Catholic teaching that no one can be saved outside the Catholic Church. Eternal salvation cannot be obtained by those who oppose the authority and statements of the same Church and are stubbornly separated from the unity of the Church and also from the successor of Peter, the Roman Pontiff"; also: Talk Singulari quadam: "It must be held by faith that outside the Apostolic Roman Church, no one can be saved; that this is the only ark of salvation; that he who shall not have entered therein will perish in the flood" (early editions of Denzinger, 1647; omitted in later editions).
Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903), Encyclical Annum Ingressi Sumus: "This is our last lesson to you; receive it, engrave it in your minds, all of you: by God's commandment salvation is to be found nowhere but in the Church."
idem, Encyclical Sapientiae Christianae:"He scatters and gathers not who gathers not with the Church and with Jesus Christ, and all who fight not jointly with Him and with the Church are in very truth contending against God."
Pope Pius X (1903-1914), Encyclical Jucunda Sane: "It is our duty to recall to everyone great and small, as the Holy Pontiff Gregory did in ages past, the absolute necessity which is ours, to have recourse to this Church to effect our eternal salvation."
Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922), Encyclical Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum: "Such is the nature of the Catholic faith that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole, or as a whole rejected: This is the Catholic faith, which unless a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved."
Pope Pius XI (1922-1939), Encyclical Mortalium Animos: "The Catholic Church alone is keeping the true worship. This is the font of truth, this is the house of faith, this is the temple of God; if any man enter not here, or if any man go forth from it, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation. ... Furthermore, in this one Church of Christ, no man can be or remain who does not accept, recognize and obey the authority and supremacy of Peter and his legitimate successors."
Pope Pius XII (1939-1958), Allocution to the Gregorian University (17 October 1953): "By divine mandate the interpreter and guardian of the Scriptures, and the depository of Sacred Tradition living within her, the Church alone is the entrance to salvation: She alone, by herself, and under the protection and guidance of the Holy Spirit, is the source of truth."
Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, 14: "They could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it, or to remain in it."
Roman Catholic interpretation
The Church's understanding of the significance of the phrase :"Outside the Church there is no salvation" is expressed in its Catechism of the Catholic Church,846-848 as follows:
- "Outside the Church there is no salvation" - How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
The following examples show how Popes quoted above as stating that outside of the Church there is no salvation did not see this statement as contradicting their other statements that salvation is possible for those who, while not knowing the Church as necessary for salvation and thus not explicitly entering the Church, nevertheless accept whatever grace Christ gives them.
Pope Pius IX wrote in Quanto conficiamur moerore, 7: "There are, of course, those who are struggling with invincible ignorance about our most holy religion. Sincerely observing the natural law and its precepts inscribed by God on all hearts and ready to obey God, they live honest lives and are able to attain eternal life by the efficacious virtue of divine light and grace." He saw their situation as different from that of people "living in error and alienated from the true faith and Catholic unity … stubbornly separated from the unity of the Church and also from the successor of Peter, the Roman Pontiff," namely those of whom the Second Vatican Council said, as quoted above: "They could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it."
In his encyclical Mystici Corporis, 103 Pope Pius XII said that "those who do not belong to the visible Body of the Catholic Church ... by an unconscious desire and longing have a certain relationship with the Mystical Body of the Redeemer.
Protestantism
The Latin phrase's antiquity has assured its continuance even within the Protestant tradition. Martin Luther, the foremost leader of the reformation, spoke of the necessity of belonging to the church in order to be saved:
Therefore he who would find Christ must first find the Church. How should we know where Christ and his faith were, if we did not know where his believers are? And he who would know anything of Christ must not trust himself nor build a bridge to heaven by his own reason; but he must go to the Church, attend and ask her. Now the Church is not wood and stone, but the company of believing people; one must hold to them, and see how they believe, live and teach; they surely have Christ in their midst. For outside of the Christian church there is no truth, no Christ, no salvation.
The Genevan reformer John Calvin, writing his Institutes of the Christian Religion at the very time of the Reformation, wrote therein "beyond the pale of the Church no forgiveness of sins, no salvation, can be hoped for". Calvin wrote also that "those to whom he is a Father, the Church must also be a mother," echoing the words of the originator of the Latin phrase himself, Cyprian: "He can no longer have God for his Father who has not the Church for his mother."
The mother of Philip Melanchthon had followed her son in the Reformation. Dying, she called him and asked him in which faith she should die. He answered: "My mother, the Protestant doctrine is easier, the Catholic doctrine surer!"
The idea is further affirmed in the Puritan Anglican Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647 that "the visible Church . . . is the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation." Despite this, it is not necessarily a commonly held belief within modern Protestantism, especially Evangelicalism and those denominations which believe in the autonomy of the local church. The dogma is related to the universal Protestant dogma that the church is the body of all believers and debates within Protestantism usually centre on the meaning of "church" (ecclesiam) and "apart" (extra).
See Sola Ecclesia for a Calvinist exposition of extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
Notes
- Sermon for the Early Christmas Service; Luke 2:15-20 (1521-1522). Luther's Works, American Ed., Hans J. Hillerbrand, Helmut T. Lehmann ed., Philadelphia, Concordia Publishing House/Fortress Press, 1974, ISBN 0-8006-0352-4 (Sermons II), vol. 52:39-40
- Institutes, Book IV, Chapter i, Section.iv
- Institutes, Book IV, Chapter i, Section.i.
- The Unity of the Catholic Church, ch. 6
- Jean-M.-Vincent Audin, History of the Life, Writings, and Doctrines of Luther, tr. William B. Turnbull, London, C. Dolman, 1854, vol.2, p. 360. - Google Books
External links
- Can Non-Christians Be Saved? by Kenneth J. Howell. - Catholic Answers
- Pope John Paul II, General Audience, 31 May 1995)