Salvation for those outside the Church?
I had another question (and a jolly good one):
Is this a true statement? I genuinely don't know:
Catholics do believe that people of other faiths can be saved.
The Catholic Church teaches that Jesus Christ is the only source of salvation, but that God’s mercy is not limited to baptized Catholics. Here’s the breakdown:
Fullness of truth in the Catholic Church: The Church teaches that it has the fullness of the means of salvation through Christ, the sacraments, and apostolic teaching.
Other Christians: Catholics believe that baptized Christians from other denominations share in Christ through their baptism, even if they are not in full communion with the Catholic Church.
Other religions: The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) taught that people who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ or the Church but sincerely seek God and try to live according to their conscience can also be saved by God’s grace.
God’s mercy: Ultimately, salvation is God’s gift, not something humans can earn. The Church stresses that we cannot limit how God works — He can offer grace to people in ways we may not fully understand.
A famous Catholic phrase from Lumen Gentium (a Vatican II document) sums it up:
> “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, strive by their deeds to do His will… may achieve eternal salvation.”
My response:
Keep in mind that what is being talked about here is *not* some sort of Universalism or Indifferentism where it does not matter what you believe as long as you believe something because it theologically doesn't really matter because everyone goes to heaven anyway. That is not what is being talked about here.
What is being talked about is the prism through which we view how God works in the world, which can be quite a different understanding than our Protestant brothers and sisters. This prism of how God operates is what we call Natural Law. Natural Law is not the laws of nature like physics or whatever. It's the idea that God implanted into the hearts of every single person very basic notions of right and wrong, the gift of intellect and curiosity, and the basic longing for something that is outside ourself and our physical reality.
By that, I mean that across cultures and across time, we see over and over this innate longing for something spiritual. We are given the knowledge that something is not quite right in the world. Something is missing. Plato, for example, believed that matter is at best a shadowy reflection of the really real reality that must exist outside the physical. almost like the way Yoda describes The Force in Star Wars. Or we see all sorts of primitive ancient cultures that built very elaborate systems of mystical worship going back to drawing on caves that seem to indicate worship of some deity or another. That innate knowledge that there is something extrinsic to human existence that we can in some way through our intellect work out that there is some sort of deity beyond and that somehow our relationship with that deity or deities is not as it should be.
In Christian theology, we understand this to be the consequences of the Fall of Adam and the need for God. Even if we live in a culture that has not heard the Gospel, there is still that fingerprint of the Divine that runs in every culture from ancient Greece to isolated stone age level tribes in the 21st Century Amazon.
Coupled with these fingerprints of the Divine that God leaves in the heart of all human beings is the fact that God never fully severed His relationship with the created world. God created the world good, and God chose not to simply walk away and let the world run itself into the ground. God uses Natural Law as a building block to bridge the gap to any person and any culture at any time. No culture is so separated from God that God is not actively working to make Himself known. This is where Catholics and some Protestants diverge. Some Protestants believe that because of the Fall, creation is severed completely from God and its only through the work of humans preaching the Gospel that anyone can possibly be saved.
Now, God certainly uses humans to proclaim His Word and His designs, but God is not bound to only save the World through the work of human evangelists. God is already at work in cultures making Himself known by whatever means that culture or belief system allows. Think for instance the story from Acts of St. Paul preaching at the altar at the Acropolis to the Unknown god. He does not say, "You heathens, you've got it all wrong. Tear that meaningless altar down" He says that God is already at work. You want to worship an unknown god?...well, let me tell you who that unknown god really is. St Paul is usually the foundation God had already laid in pagan Greece to further proclaim the Gospel. This is because God was already at work through Natural Law that gave the Greeks through their own intellect the ability to reason out that the divine exists, and that divine might even be a single God.
Coming back to the original question, the Church teaches that anyone, even those outside the Church, can be saved. But whoever it be in whatever culture, it is through the Redemption of Christ. God is a fair and just God. God knows to what degree someone has received and worked out that the divine exists. God knows whether someone has lived according to their Natural Law understanding of right and wrong. God judges everyone on what they know on the level that they were given.
God knows the heart, and God knows if someone would have, if given the opportunity, chosen to follow Christ had he been presented. This is why we can't limit how God works and why we say He can offer grace to people in ways we may not fully understand.
I AM WHO AM is the one who sends, is the one who is always there, and is the one who judges in fairness and mercy. 
I
would highly recommend reading through Lumen Gentium in its entirety.
Particularly, that last sections of Chapter II, when it is talking about
those outside the Catholic faith, or even those outside the Christian
faith. You can find the entire document here.
Keep in mind that what is being talked about here is *not* some sort of Universalism or Indifferentism where it does not matter what you believe as long as you believe something because it theologically doesn't really matter because everyone goes to heaven anyway. That is not what is being talked about here.
What is being talked about is the prism through which we view how God works in the world, which can be quite a different understanding than our Protestant brothers and sisters. This prism of how God operates is what we call Natural Law. Natural Law is not the laws of nature like physics or whatever. It's the idea that God implanted into the hearts of every single person very basic notions of right and wrong, the gift of intellect and curiosity, and the basic longing for something that is outside ourself and our physical reality.
By that, I mean that across cultures and across time, we see over and over this innate longing for something spiritual. We are given the knowledge that something is not quite right in the world. Something is missing. Plato, for example, believed that matter is at best a shadowy reflection of the really real reality that must exist outside the physical. almost like the way Yoda describes The Force in Star Wars. Or we see all sorts of primitive ancient cultures that built very elaborate systems of mystical worship going back to drawing on caves that seem to indicate worship of some deity or another. That innate knowledge that there is something extrinsic to human existence that we can in some way through our intellect work out that there is some sort of deity beyond and that somehow our relationship with that deity or deities is not as it should be.
In Christian theology, we understand this to be the consequences of the Fall of Adam and the need for God. Even if we live in a culture that has not heard the Gospel, there is still that fingerprint of the Divine that runs in every culture from ancient Greece to isolated stone age level tribes in the 21st Century Amazon.
Coupled with these fingerprints of the Divine that God leaves in the heart of all human beings is the fact that God never fully severed His relationship with the created world. God created the world good, and God chose not to simply walk away and let the world run itself into the ground. God uses Natural Law as a building block to bridge the gap to any person and any culture at any time. No culture is so separated from God that God is not actively working to make Himself known. This is where Catholics and some Protestants diverge. Some Protestants believe that because of the Fall, creation is severed completely from God and its only through the work of humans preaching the Gospel that anyone can possibly be saved.
Now, God certainly uses humans to proclaim His Word and His designs, but God is not bound to only save the World through the work of human evangelists. God is already at work in cultures making Himself known by whatever means that culture or belief system allows. Think for instance the story from Acts of St. Paul preaching at the altar at the Acropolis to the Unknown god. He does not say, "You heathens, you've got it all wrong. Tear that meaningless altar down" He says that God is already at work. You want to worship an unknown god?...well, let me tell you who that unknown god really is. St Paul is usually the foundation God had already laid in pagan Greece to further proclaim the Gospel. This is because God was already at work through Natural Law that gave the Greeks through their own intellect the ability to reason out that the divine exists, and that divine might even be a single God.
The
proclamation of the Gospel is one of the final steps where God can fill
in the final gaps (and discuss the errors) that various other religions
and cultures have with the Revelation of Jesus Christ and the nature of
the Trinity. Reason can only get us so far. God has to reveal Himself
the rest of the way. We call that Divine revelation.
Coming back to the original question, the Church teaches that anyone, even those outside the Church, can be saved. But whoever it be in whatever culture, it is through the Redemption of Christ. God is a fair and just God. God knows to what degree someone has received and worked out that the divine exists. God knows whether someone has lived according to their Natural Law understanding of right and wrong. God judges everyone on what they know on the level that they were given.
This
is why we can say that it is possible that anyone, even if they have
never heard the story of Christ, can be saved because we believe, even
at the very point of death, Christ can come and saying, Hey, you know
that belief system you have had all your life? Let me fill in the gaps,
and you can choose to believe in me, even if you were never given the
chance in your life because even in the seemingly most dire and
unChristian culture imaginable, I AM. Jesus being the second person of
the Trinity is part of that great I AM WHO AM. I AM was at work your
whole life in the background. You never quite put all the pieces
together, but I AM.
God knows the heart, and God knows if someone would have, if given the opportunity, chosen to follow Christ had he been presented. This is why we can't limit how God works and why we say He can offer grace to people in ways we may not fully understand.
I AM WHO AM is the one who sends, is the one who is always there, and is the one who judges in fairness and mercy.
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