By Sean Toh
Christianity has a bold claim that no man can be saved except through Christ alone. (cf. Acts 4:12) Does that mean all non-Christians – which usually includes many of our closest family and friends – are definitely going to hell? Doesn’t that seem a little unfair?
Intuitively, it would seem odd that an all-loving, most just God would allow things to be this way. Thankfully, this is not the case. The Catholic Church affirms that salvation is through Christ alone, and yet holds that non-believers can be saved. But how do we reconcile this?
We can look to Paragraph 847 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
“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 conscience – those too may achieve eternal life. (CCC #847)
Although salvation through Christ alone, it does not necessarily follow that explicit knowledge of Christ is needed for salvation. A biblical example would be the saints of the Old Testament, who were saved without explicit faith in Christ (they could not have, for Jesus had not yet been born). Nevertheless, they responded in faith to whatever light that God gave them – and were eventually saved. God is free to save whomever he wishes, and we cannot place limitations on the extent of His mercy. This is also the reason why the Church cannot definitively proclaim that anyone is in hell; for we can never truly know a person’s heart, and the mercy that God wishes to extend to him/her.
Here the Catholic Church makes an even bolder claim – that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. This position is held firmly through the Church Fathers in the first few centuries of Christianity, and affirmed in CCC #846. What does this mean for all our non-Catholic brothers and sisters?
Once again as stated in CCC #847, “this affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and His Church.” The reason that Church is such an important part of Christ’s salvific mission is our understanding of the Church as the Body of Christ. St. Paul writes about the Church this way in passages such as 1 Cor 12:12-13, Rom 2:4-5, Eph 1:22-23 and Col 1:24. Christ and His Church are inseparable. Thus reformulated positively, this claim means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is His Body. We see this being articulated in CCC #846:
“Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse to enter it, or to remain in it.” (Lumen Gentium 14)
To conclude, the Catholic Church affirms that non-believers – who through no fault their own are ignorant of Christ and His Church – can be saved, but their salvation would and could only be from Christ alone, through the Catholic Church which is His Body. God may save whom he wishes. That being said, the Church still has the obligation and sacred right to evangelize all men. (CCC #848)