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Salvation and the Non‐Catholic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2024

Yves M‐J. Congar O.P.
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The religious problems discussed most frequently in French intellectual circles are, in all probability, the suffering of the innocent, hell, the story of human origins and original sin, the salvation of non-Catholics, the value to be attached to other religions. All of these, it will be observed, represent points at which the positive economy of salvation comes into apparent conflict with the aspirations of modern man and his compulsion to give an account of human history and of human destiny in purely rational terms. Such circumstances cannot but guarantee a sympathetic public for a book of some four hundred pages bearing the promising title of The Salvation of the Unbeliever, especially when it comes from so distinguished an author as Father Riccardo Lombardi.

Profoundly aware of the distress caused by the fact that thousands of men and women have never come, and indeed never have had the chance of coming, to an explicit knowledge of Jesus Christ and his Church, Fr Lombardi approaches his subject with the avowed intention of trying to establish as wide and as optimistic a solution as possible. Such a solution appears to him to be justified, demanded even, by what St Paul says in i Timothy: ‘It is (God’s) will that all men should be saved, and be led to recognize the truth.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 38 , Issue 448-449 , August 1957 , pp. 290 - 300
Copyright
Copyright © 1957 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 R. Lombardi: The Salvation of the Unbeliever (Buns and Oatcs; 30s.).

2 This necessity Fr Lombardi, supported by the whole of Catholic tradition, characterizes as a ‘necessity of means’, an ontological necessity arising from the nature of things. It is not to be thought of as a ‘juridical necessity’, one, that is to say, which arises simply because God has issued a commandment.

3 By this somewhat technical but usefully‐condensed phrase is meant that condition which consists in the act of faith having as its object or content a God who rewards and punishes.

4 Cf., for example, De civitate Dei, I, 35; XVIII, 23, 47. Of. J. Wang Tch'ang‐tche: S. Augustin el les uertus des paiens (Paris, 1938).

5 Cf. De dono persev., xix, 48 (P.L., 45. 1023).

6 These texts, in fact, speak of retribution according to works and do not necessarily imply that there is any question of heaven. Cf. Matt. 10. 15; 11. 22, 24. Certain texts, however, do speak of a taking part in the messianic banquet in the Kingdom: Matt. 8. 10–12; Luke 13. 29.

7 Cf. Psalm 62. 13; Job 34. II; Matt. 16. 27 (cf. 25. 19 sqq.); Luke 14. 14; 2 Cor. 5. 10 (cf. 1 Cor. 3. 8); Rom. 2. 6; Eph. 6. 8.

8 The whole economy of signs or of the accession to faith in John should be studied. See, especially, John 3. 18–21 (cf. Hoskyns, The Fourth Gospel, p. 219). These, at bottom, are what St Augustine calls inchoationes fidei and of which he finds an example in the case of the centurion Cornelius. But Augustine includes in these inchoationes belief in God rather in the sense of Fr Lombardi; I should prefer to extend the application further than he has, even into the domain of the implicit, which, in my opinion, Augustine never envisaged.

9 Lombardi, op. cit., pp. 248‐66. Mgr Gloricux argues from the indivisible nature of the instant when the soul both is separating itself and is separated from the body. It is true that this consideration would allow us to speak of a last moment of lucidity and of a last decision which would be those not of a dead but of a dying man. For my part I should wish to stress the necessity of fully satisfying the revealed principle of 2 Cor. 5. 10: ‘For we must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ that every one may receive the proper things of the body, according as he has done, whether it be good or evil’.

10 St Augustine was aware of the existence of atheism, and he applied himself to the task of refuting its arguments. But for him, ‘insania ista paucorum est’: Sermo 69. 3; cf. Enarr. in Ps. 52. 2.

11 Cf. A. V. Seusraois: La Papauté et les missions au caurs des six premiers sikles (Paris and Louvain, 1953), pp. 58‐9, 106; P. Derumaux: S. Bernard (Dijon, 1954), pp. 68–79. St Augustine, for example, wrote: ‘Chorus Christi iam torus mundus est'‐Enarr. in Ps., 149, 7 (P.L. 37, 1953); ‘paucae (genres) reraanserunt'‐In Ep. Joann., tr. 2, n. 2. And the author of the commentary on the Canticle, In principio hujus libri, published under the name of St Thomas, says: ‘Quasi universaliter gentes sunt conversae, Quia plenitudo gentium jam intravit Ecclesiam’ (Vives edition of St Thomas, t. 18. pp. 611 and 617).

12 Cf. J. Lcclcr: Histoire de la taerance an siéele de la Réformc (Paris, 1955), t. i, pp. 117 sqq. (and, earlier, pp. 81‐2).

13 Cf. Pius IX, Encycl., Singular! quidem, March 17, 1856 (Acta Pit i'oni, Rome, 1870, II/I, pp. 516‐7); Encycl. Quanta afficiamur mocrore, August 10, 1863 (Acta, I, 623 sqq.; Denz., 1646‐S); Leo XIII, Encycl., Satis cognition, June 29, 1896 (A.A.S. (1895‐6), p. 708); Pius X, Encycl., K supremi, October 4, 1903 (A.A.S. (1903‐4), p. 136); Letter to the Bishops of Canada, July 10, 1911 (A.A.S. (1911), p. 564); Pius XII, Radio Message of September 5, 1948, to the German Catholics (A.A.S. 40 (1948), p. 419), etc.‐I am indebted for several of these references to F. X. Lawlor, The Mediation of the Church in some Pontifical Documents, inTheological Studies, 12 (1951)1 PP‐ 481–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar. To these may be added the very important texts of the Vatican Council, 1870, in the Schema de Ecclcsia, c. 7 (Mansi, t. 51, col., 541‐2).

14 Such seems to be the case, for example, in the Letter of Pius XI to Cardinal Schuster, April 26, 1931 (A.A.S., 33 (1931), pp. 146‐7), or in his Encycl. Nen abbiamo bisogrso, June 29, 1931 (p. 302). I may be permitted to refer also to the notice Hots it I'Eglise pas de salut, to appear in Catholicisme (Paris, Letouzey). Cf. B. Paiizram: Der Kirclien‐begriff des kaitonichen Rechtes, in Münchener Theol. Zeitsch., 4 (1953), pp. 187–211Google Scholar.