explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. (16)
This is not Pelagianism through the back door, but presumes grace for the possibility of the ‘good life’. This is very important to stress, for otherwise the effects of original sin would be gravely eclipsed, undermining dogmatic truth.
Here we have the Christological, trinitarian and ecclesiological theologoumena delicately welded together in Catholic theology. Christ, the self-revelation of the triune God, through the power of the Spirit is the source of all salvation. But Christ through the power of the Spirit founds the Church, which is his instrument for salvation to the entire world because the Church is the sacramental body of Christ to the world. Thus all non-Christians who are saved are related to the Church. The relationship of Christ to the Church and precisely how it is to be explained in the context of the salvation of non-Christians is a matter for Catholic theologians to attend to. The Council was simply laying down the legitimate dogmatic parameters for reflection reiterating the tradition. After the Council there have been significant debates about the two central links in this claim: first, whether and how Christ is the sole constitutive cause of all saving grace; and second, whether and how the Church is the means of salvation to those who die outside its visible boundaries but may nevertheless be saved. What is important right now is to state those claims and note that there has been considerable discussion about them.17
Second, LG 16 addresses the question of non-Christians (those from other religions and none) and distinguishes their relation to the Church not in terms of those ‘incorporated’, or ‘united’, or ‘joined’, but as those ‘ordained (ordinantur – *) in various ways, to the People of God’. In the footnote to the term ordinantur, Aquinas’s Summa Theologica III, q. 8, a. 3, ad 1 is cited.18 In that section of the Summa, Thomas is discussing the headship of Christ both to theChurch and to all humans and is answering the objection that the unbaptized have no relation to the head as they are not part of the body (the Church). The answer given by Thomas resists any such decapitation and severance of relation: ‘Those who are unbaptized, though not actually in the Church, are in the Church potentially. And this potentiality is rooted in two things – first and principally, in the power of Christ, which is sufficient for the salvation of the whole human race; secondly, in free-will.’19 It should be recalled that Aquinas’s adoption of Aristotelian terms here requires ‘potentially’ to be understood as referring to something future, which at present exists only as a germ to be evolved. The potentiality has been variously interpreted subsequent to Aquinas as I have noted when looking at the medieval period above. Pius XII used the term ordinantur in Mystici Corporis (1943) of those who have not been baptized to say they are ‘oriented towards [the Church] by a certain unconscious desire and wish’ (inscio quodam desiderio ac voto ad mysticum Redemptoris corpus ordinari) (103). Here, Thomas’s ‘potentiality’ is given its future orientation towards actus (being fulfilled) in terms of ‘unconscious desire’.20 I have spent time on this matter as this issue has been hotly debated since the Council. My own elaboration of the implication of this future actualization of potentiality can be found elsewhere.21 However, let me make three brief remarks concerning salvation and the eschaton.
If it is clear that salvation is possible for the non-Christian, yet salvation involves the beatific vision (the direct vision of God as Father, Son and Spirit), then I would argue that salvation for the non-Christian is an eschatological event. It cannot be an event that happens in this life for the non-Christian who dies as a non-Christian, not because they are necessarily lost (which is contrary to church teaching), or because they lack nobility, holiness and goodness that might put many a Christian to shame, but simply because to posit the beatific vision for such a person would be epistemologically overriding their freedom, imposing upon them a relation with a reality that they do not know. Ontologically, in God’s eyes, this person is known to be saved, but the epistemological reality of this is yet to happen. Does this mean that non-Christians are any the less good and noble? Not at all. Does it mean that as human persons they do not show remarkable courage and deep compassion? Not at all. All that is being claimed here is that salvation as the enjoyment of the beatific vision is something that will be enjoyed only after this life. To further contextualize these remarks, it should also be said that apart from Mary and the saints, the beatific vision will only be enjoyed in the eschaton by most Christians. Most Christians, while being justified by baptism and faith, will die still lacking purity and perfection which is what will be required for their participation in the beatific vision. Hence, this sense of seeing the salvation of non-Christians as a future event does not in any way provide a commentary on the individual person. It is clear that their religion cannot be objectively true although it may contain many elements of goodness, truth and beauty as well as reflect the light that enlightens all men and women.
Second, this individualist manner of speaking about salvation only tells part of the story. Salvation is a deeply corporate and social event, for the body of Christ is not about the salvation of an individual but the salvation of a community. Here Karl Barth’s rereading of double predestination is most illuminating. Barth questions Calvin’s focus on the individual as the site of predestination but rather sees this double predestination concretized in Jesus Christ. First, as the damned, in so much as Jesus undertakes that which rightly belongs to the damned: death and dereliction. Second, as the redeemed, in so much as Jesus through his resurrection redeems fallen men and women and his being saved by the Father is the first-fruits of God’s reconciliation. Barth overstepped the mark, at least the Catholic mark, in then arguing from this to a form of universalism (that all men and women will be saved). Christ’s resurrection and transformation of humanity means that all men and women will have the opportunity to be saved, as taught by Vatican II and the tradition, not that all men and women will actually be saved. Universalism compromises the radical nature of human freedom. Its condemnation is only concerned with human freedom, not a meanness of spirit about the numbers who might be saved. As I noted earlier, of course, until the modern period salvation optimism was quite novel.
Third, if we are to uphold Augustine’s teaching that conversion cannot happen after death, a teaching that has been upheld my the majority of the tradition since Augustine’s days and forms one of the parameters within which we must try and address the question, have we come to a dead end (in a double sense) when dealing with the question of the fate of the non-Christian? Fortunately, there is another route to think through this matter and it is along the route related to the righteous before the coming of Christ. Remembering that this metaphoric language requires careful handling, elements of the tradition teach that Christ descended into hell to save these souls who were destined for paradise but could not yet enter the gates of heaven as they had not yet met Christ. Are there not many millions after Christ who are in an analogous situation? These people have not had the opportunity to hear the gospel but may, through God’s Spirit and thus through the promptings of grace, have followed the dictates of their conscience and the good elements within their religions and thereby sought to follow the good at great personal cost. This does not mean that they have received Christ as is sometimes taught by certain theologians, but rather that they would do (as in Thomas’s difference between potentiality and actuality) and in this sense, their future salvation may be construed.
This analogical application of an ancient doctrine is not without problems, but has the benefit of keeping intact a non-Christian’s freedom, allowing for their decisions in this life (potentiality) to bear full fruit (actuality) in the beatific vision. Clearly, there is thus continuity and discontinuity involved, but we must assume that only God is the just judge who can adjudicate on such questions and how they might be measured. After all, it took the thief on the cross, Dismas, a single moment of recognition to be assured of future salvation. One cannot imagine that after death he had much inner transformation to undergo before final purification was attained. Augustine argued that he was probably someone who had already been baptized and had fallen
