Many Protestants I know believe that anyone who does not hold to the Christian faith holds a one-way ticket to hell. Other Protestants allow that non-Christians can be saved, however unlikely or improbable that possibility might be, if they adhere to the limited knowledge of God they do possess. It wasn’t until I studied my Catholicism that I encountered a firm teaching on the possibility of salvation for those who aren’t Christian.
We must have a proper understanding of what the Church means when it teaches it is possible—although not preferable nor easy—to be saved without being a card-carrying member of the Catholic Church. Does it mean that “I’m okay, you’re okay” and that we can dispense with the uncomfortable business of evangelizing non-Catholics? Or does it mean that all religions are equally valid with truth being in the eye of the beholder? Not according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states, “Outside the Church there is no salvation” (CCC 846).
“How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers?” the Catechism continues. “Reformulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the head through the Church, which is his body: . . . 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 either to enter it or to remain in it” (CCC 846–847).
The Church Provides the Means for All to Be Saved
This passage is not aimed at 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. These too may achieve eternal salvation, although “in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men” (CCC 848).
This and the recently released Church document Dominus Iesus contradict the relativistic approach to salvation many Catholics (and others) have adopted. In other words, the Church teaches that salvation is only through Jesus Christ and his body, the Church. Yet at the same time it asserts that those who are ignorant of Christ and/or the Church through no fault of their own—what the Church calls “invincible ignorance”—may be saved.
Some people have never heard of Jesus as the Son of God (if they’ve ever heard of him at all—in most Muslim countries evangelizing by Christians is illegal) or have grown up with tremendous prejudice against Christianity or the Catholic Church (i.e., Protestants in Northern Ireland). These are quite different from those who knowingly and willingly reject the truth available to them either by refusing to embrace it or by abandoning it later on.
All mainstream Christians agree that salvation is based solely on the redemptive work of Christ on the cross. The point of disagreement between Catholic teaching and that of many Protestant denominations is whether or not God would apply that redemption (grant the grace necessary for salvation) outside the normative means (baptism and the other sacraments) that he has established.
But in 1 Peter 1:20 and other places in Scripture we read that Christ’s redemption was planned even before the creation of the world. Peter notes that the revelation of this redemption wasn’t given until “at the end of the times,” so there is an immense span of time between creation and the time when God’s plan of salvation would be fully revealed. What about those who lived before this revelation was given? Are they simply out of luck, without any hope of salvation, because they lived before the time Christ would be fully revealed?
God gave hints from the very beginning of a Savior (Gen. 3:15), but they were only hints and not full revelation. There would have been no reason to give people these clues if their salvation didn’t depend on the future work of the Savior. But their salvation didn’t depend on explicit faith in Christ because he had not yet been revealed to them.
Before the Law of Moses
Paul declares in Acts 17 that from the very beginning God’s intention was for men to seek and find him. Paul says even those without any direct revelation of God still have his moral law written in their hearts (Rom. 2:14–15) and can know much about God through the witness of creation (Rom. 1:20). God has made it possible for every person to have knowledge of him, which makes faith in him possible. No one is totally “in the dark,” and, as Isaiah attests, those who seek God and find him will find mercy and forgiveness (Is. 55:66), two necessary components of salvation.
The first covenant God makes with man after Adam and Eve’s fall is with Noah. “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God” (Gen. 6:9). Noah didn’t know of Christ, but he did have faith based on the knowledge of God he possessed at the time.
After Noah God made a covenant with Abraham, a covenant which is for Abraham and his descendants. Paul says, “The promise to Abraham and his descendants, that they should inherit the world, did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. . . . That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants—not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham, for he is the father of us all” (Rom. 4:13, 16).
Paul explains that, like Abraham, we have access to God’s saving grace through faith: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand” (Rom. 5:1). Jesus’ atoning, sacrificial death is what gains us access to this grace, through which we can have faith and be justified.
How do works fit into this picture, especially when we see in Scripture that God judges us based on our works (Rom. 2:6–8, 2 Cor. 5:10, John 5:28–29, Rev. 20:11–15, Rev. 22:11–12)? Turn to the book of James who, also using Abraham as his example, writes, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by works, and the scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’; and he was called the friend of God. You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:20–24).
As James explains earlier, “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith” (2:18). Faith—which is a gift of grace itself, not of ourselves—is the means through which God applies the blood of Christ’s redemption to grant repentance and give grace to believers so they may be able to do good works (Eph. 2:10), which he will then reward with eternal life. This is in perfect agreement with the passages of Scripture describing God’s judgment based on our works rather than whether we have explicit faith in Christ. As shown earlier, people without explicit faith in Christ can have faith in God and can repent and do good works, all of which are essential elements of salvation.
The Law of Moses
The Law of Moses was given only to the Jews, and, as Paul says in Romans 2:12–16, the Gentiles are not held accountable for revelation that God had not given them. (But they are accountable for what they can know through the natural law and creation.) What then was the purpose of the Law of Moses, which was given hundreds of years after Abraham? Hebrews 10:1–3 says the sacrifices and regulations of the law were a mere shadow of the reality of Christ’s redemptive sacrifice on the cross—the blood of sacrificed animals couldn’t take away sin.
Paul says, “I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose” (Gal. 2:21). “For through the Spirit, by faith, we wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love” (Gal. 5:5–6).
What was the point of giving the law if it couldn’t save anyone? Why didn’t God just reveal Jesus right then and there instead of waiting another 2,000 years to reveal him? As Paul explains, the Law was a shadow of the reality to come; it was preparatory in nature (Heb. 10:1–3). “So that the law as our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24). The law was never intended to be the means by which people could “save” themselves (as many first-century Jews erroneously concluded) but was given in part to show them what God’s holy standards truly were, even though they weren’t meeting them.
David was aware of this after being confronted with his sins regarding Bathsheba and her husband, Uriah: “For thou hast no delight in sacrifice; were I to give a burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Ps. 51:16–17). David understands full well the purpose of the law: It is to point to his need for God for his salvation and forgiveness. David realizes it is having our heart right with God through repentance and faith that matters.
After the Law of Moses, before Christ
Then what was the fate of Gentiles between the time of God’s covenant with Moses and the coming of Christ? Were they without hope of finding forgiveness and salvation from God, as many Jews believed? Let’s take a look at the book of Jonah, which records events during this time frame.
The first chapter of Jonah shows pagan sailors—who had apparently better sense than Jonah—crying out to the Lord for mercy and asking for forgiveness. Jonah 3:5 records the Ninevites, who were Gentiles, repenting at Noah’s warning of God’s impending judgment. It says they believed (faith) and “turned from their evil way” (Jon. 3:10) (repentance), and God spared them the judgment he had announced through Jonah (God’s mercy and forgiveness). Jonah 4:11 records God’s declaration of love and compassion for the Ninevites to his angry prophet Jonah, who wasn’t quite up to such feelings for them.
Here we have Gentiles—who had no special revelation of God (i.e., the Law of Moses or the gospel of Christ) and who were outside of God’s covenantal family—believing, repenting, and being forgiven by God. We have the testimony of our Lord himself in when He uses two Old Testament Gentiles as examples of God going outside his covenant people to show mercy and grace, which made Christ’s Jewish audience indignant (Luke 4:24–27).
This is biblical evidence that God does indeed care for those who appear to have no hope of salvation. Of course, as Paul notes in Romans 1, many of the Gentiles were wicked and rebelled against the knowledge of God they did have and therefore received God’s just punishment (likewise with the Jews who rejected the knowledge they had of God).
Paul distinguishes between three kinds of people. Those who knowingly reject God receive God’s condemnation (Rom. 1:18–21). Those who try a do-it-yourself way of salvation through following the law will be judged by the law and condemned, since they fail to keep the law perfectly (Gal 3:10, Rom. 3:20, Gal. 5:3). Both of these groups of people have rejected the merciful initiative of God’s grace in offering them salvation.
There is the third group, which actively seeks God and finds salvation in him (Acts 17 says that these can be Gentiles as well as Jews). They are responding to the initiative God makes in anyone’s salvation (John 6:44) by drawing them to himself. Just as people who lived before Christ was revealed didn’t have to know about him specifically to receive salvation, neither do people who have lived since the time of Christ have to specifically know about Christ in order to be saved if he hasn’t been revealed to them yet.
We are speaking here of those who through no fault of their own have no way of knowing of Christ or have not heard of him in a way that they can clearly understand who he is. If God commanded explicit faith in Christ and baptism as the only ways to be saved—even for those who have no way of knowing about Christ—then he would be commanding such people to do something they’re not capable of doing. This would be unjust and incompatible with his character. God doesn’t give us commands that we are not capable of obeying.
After the Coming of Christ
Paul assures us that God wills all men to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4). He must then have provided the means for that will to be accomplished, which means salvation must be at least possible for everyone. At the time the gospel first went out it was confined primarily to the Mediterranean lands. So what about the people of northern Europe, Australia, North and South America, southern Africa, and the Far East? The gospel didn’t come to the shores of the Americas until the 16th century. Even today most of the world remains unbaptized. Is the greater part of humanity without any hope of salvation? It would make no sense for God to say he wants all men to be saved and then not provide the means for them to be saved.
Through Christ God has provided the redemption necessary for salvation even to be offered, and that redemption is for all men without exception. Now all that needs to be done is to apply that redemption to each person, which is a way of describing salvation. It is repeated throughout Scripture that we are saved by grace through faith. As Hebrews 11 testifies, this saving faith doesn’t require explicit faith in Christ when there has been no revelation of Him.
This grace was given in the past without means of baptism—and in certain instances it is still given without baptism when people have either no knowledge of baptism or no access to it. Acts 10:45–47 demonstrates unambiguously God giving Cornelius the Holy Spirit (that sanctifying grace necessary for salvation) before Cornelius received baptism. This was after Christ and the apostles had already preached the necessity of faith in Christ and baptism for salvation.
Was God then contradicting himself, or was he demonstrating that he is God and saves whom he wills? Regardless of God’s reasons for making an exception in Cornelius’s case, we still have here a biblical example of God going outside the sacrament of baptism to give the grace of the Holy Spirit.
As was stated recently in Dominus Iesus, those outside the Church have a salvific link to the Church, through which all salvation comes. What that link is exactly hasn’t been revealed to us. But we do know that it exists: Scripture and Tradition attest to its existence.