Baptism, salvation, and the necessity of the Church

In a relatively unknown interview with Fr. Jacque Servais, SJ, the late Pope Benedict XVI was asked about the apparent change in the Church’s doctrine concerning the salvation of the unbaptized. Fr. Servais begins by pointing out that at one time most in the Church believed the number of the unbaptized who were saved was exceedingly small, which is what motivated and energized the great missionary efforts of the Church in times past. But now, Fr. Servais notes, it seems that this very narrow reading of extra Ecclesiam nulla salus has given way to a far more expansive vision of salvation for those who die without baptism.

Before focusing on the answer given by Benedict, I want to affirm this is probably one of the top three unresolved theological issues of our time. Even before Vatican II, many theologians had already begun the process of greatly expanding the theological concept of the “baptism of desire” beyond its traditional formulation, which applied mostly to those who died without baptism but who were in the process of catechumenal instruction in order to be baptized. The traditional doctrine also took account of those who were martyred for the faith even if they were (as yet) unbaptized or those who longed for baptism but had no real means of receiving it.

Development and questions

But many modern theologies now call all of this into question and have inculcated a sense of religious relativism into many millions of average Catholics. In the light of the religious indifferentism spawned by these modern theologies, do we turn back the clock and reverse current theological trends in the Church to revive the older view that it is very difficult for a non-Catholic to attain salvation? Or do we accept that a development of doctrine has occurred and we need to find new ways of motivating missionary activity and personal faith commitment that do not hinge upon a notion of salvation wherein most people are destined for hell?

Pope Benedict’s answer, so typical of his incisive theological mind, is a robust affirmation that a development of doctrine has occurred, while at the same time acknowledging it has created problems requiring further nuance:

There is no doubt that on this point we are faced with a profound evolution of dogma. While the fathers and theologians of the Middle Ages could still be of the opinion that, essentially, the whole human race had become Catholic and that paganism existed now only on the margins, the discovery of the New World at the beginning of the modern era radically changed perspectives. In the second half of the last century it has been fully affirmed the understanding that God cannot let go to perdition all the unbaptized and that even a purely natural happiness for them does not represent a real answer to the question of human existence. If it is true that the great missionaries of the 16th century were still convinced that those who are not baptized are forever lost – and this explains their missionary commitment – in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council that conviction was finally abandoned.

From this came a deep double crisis. On the one hand this seems to remove any motivation for a future missionary commitment. Why should one try to convince the people to accept the Christian faith when they can be saved even without it? But also for Christians an issue emerged: the obligatory nature of the faith and its way of life began to seem uncertain and problematic. If there are those who can save themselves in other ways, it is not clear, in the final analysis, why the Christian himself is bound by the requirements of the Christian faith and its morals. If faith and salvation are no longer interdependent, faith itself becomes unmotivated.

Benedict then goes on to describe two flawed responses to this “evolution of dogma”, both of which end up destroying the objective significance of conversion to the particularity of God’s revelation in Christ.

Two flawed responses

The first way is the famous “anonymous Christian” in Karl Rahner’s theology. In Rahner’s approach, the fundamental transcendental categories of our subjectivity are intrinsically ordered toward a final resolution in the Transcendent horizon to which their inner teleology points. Therefore, insofar as we authentically pursue this deep truth of our own nature, we are engaging in a kind of act of faith that is salvific and, therefore, already latently Christian. The problem with this approach, as Benedict sees it, is that it renders the Incarnation and the Paschal events of Holy Week as mere exemplars of an always reconciled God, and therefore that these events merely make “thematic and explicit” what is “unthematic and implicit”.

In short (and in my own words), it reduces the salvific component of the act of faith to a simple act of “being true to who you really are as a being oriented to Transcendence”. Christianity is reduced to a functionalist role as the “great clarifier” of already existing realities. It further makes the philosophical, sociological, and psychological analyses of anthropology more foundationally determinative of even our religious sense than any truth about our nature that Christianity “clarifies”, insofar as the Christian clarification is itself now colored and modified by the antecedent anthropological foundation provided by these allegedly more “scientific” disciplines.

If that sounds too “academic”, in a nutshell what I am saying is that in runaway forms of Rahnerianism the anthropological tail now wags the Christological dog.

And this is what leads us to what Benedict views as the second flawed response. The “pluralism of religions” school of thought, which relativizes Christ as just one savior figure among many. It places Christianity among the various world religions as just one more “language” about God and as just one religious path among many equally valid paths.

Ultimately, this view is internally incoherent since it sets itself up as the “final and ultimate” explanation of what “religions are really doing” and thus falls upon its own sword. How do its proponents “know” that God has not given us a definitive Revelation somewhere? How do they “know” that all religions are essentially saying the same thing? And in their quest for some kind of “universalizable” theory of religions, are they not displaying a latently Christian prejudice that somehow there must be a final, one-size-fits-all explanation of the spiritual dynamics of the human condition?

In reality, such a view can maintain that all religions are essentially equal only insofar as it maintains all religions are equally trivial in their actual positive constructions. In the end, it is predicated upon a cynical agnostic apophaticism that has more in common with the chic, celebrity derision of religion than it does with any real theological concept of the theological importance of the “apophatic moment” within our doctrinal formulations about God.

Two extreme temptations

But where does this leave us? How can we affirm the necessity and centrality of baptism and the Church for salvation while at the same time affirming a capacious salvational economy that makes it possible for those outside of the Church to be saved, and in large numbers? Honesty should compel us to admit that, so far, no satisfactory theological answer has been given. In order to dissolve the cognitive dissonance such a theological aporia creates, two differing and extreme temptations arise.

The first extreme is the answer given by the so-called “radical traditionalists” who solve the problem by simply rejecting as a distortion of the tradition the dogmatic development to which Benedict points. They propose that we embrace once again a far more constricted understanding of “no salvation outside of the Church”. They cite as evidence many legitimate magisterial documents from the past, countless statements from various Saints and Doctors of the Church, as well as visions of Hell that were allegedly seen by various seers. I think it is beyond doubt that they are accurate in their description of previous Church teaching favoring a far more literal understanding of the necessity of water baptism for salvation. This is precisely why Pope Benedict, with his typical honesty, stated that what is going on right now is a “profound evolution of dogma”.

Nevertheless, I think there can be no return to the idea that the vast majority of human beings are to be damned. This would make damnation, not salvation, the most basic reality in the economy of salvation, with salvation being the exception. I further think that despite the many warnings of Hell in the Gospels, the overall trajectory of the New Testament is oriented toward salvation and not damnation. Finally, I think that despite its utility as a motivational tool for evangelization, the message of “mass damnation” from the God of love is—again, merely on the level of utility—a non-starter.

But is a more expansive view of salvation an “evolution” or a reversal of established doctrine? Benedict does not say. Regardless of which it is, I think Benedict’s reserve here is related to the fact that the changes to the doctrine in question have been proposed by the highest levels of the Magisterium, both in an ecumenical council and in papal documents such as Bendict’s own encyclical, Spe Salvi (cf. sections 46-48). Therefore, we do not have the luxury of dismissing such developments of doctrine as heretical distortions of the tradition, since the clear direction of the Magisterium for the past 65 or so years is toward a more expansive view of salvation.

In light of this, it must be stated that an “evolution” of doctrine implies organic development. It further implies that there must be “seeds” of a more expansive understanding of salvation in that same tradition. This leads us to the second extreme response to the problem, which is the growing number of folks who are moving toward some version of universalism (i.e. “Everyone is eventually saved”) on the grounds that there were Church fathers who were universalists and there are biblical passages that imply its open possibility even in the midst of the many dominical warnings of damnation.

However, those in the Catholic fold who wish to hold this view must show how this is somehow not a reversal of previous teaching but a simple “development of doctrine”. Absent that, one would have to posit that this is just a straight-up reversal of previous teaching, which would itself call for an entirely new hermeneutical understanding of what we mean when we speak of the Church’s indefectibility. Not an easy task, to say the least.

The importance of further reflection

I see both of these views as “extreme” since I think both are claiming knowledge of things that Revelation simply does not give us to know. This is why I favor the approach of Hans Urs von Balthasar, who said that we must affirm the reality and the eternity of Hell, and the real possibility that some (or even many) of us will end up there, but that the Church allows us to hope that God will find a way to save everyone. This, of course, does not answer the question of how the Church is “necessary” for salvation, given the fact that such a hope implies that all those who are outside of the visible Church are somehow still a part of it. Thus, even though I think Balthasar’s views are thoroughly orthodox any give us an inkling of a path forward, they do not resolve the question of exactly how people are saved and how the Church is somehow necessary for that.

Furthermore, I would also be the first to admit that, on a popular level, these views of Balthasar’s could become a kind of closeted universalism that dissolves the very theo-dramatic seriousness of our choice for or against Christ that Balthasar spends thousands of pages unpacking in his trilogy. His “hope for the salvation of all” is my view as well, but it is not as yet a fully developed answer to the theological question at hand and comes with its own sets of further problems.

Therefore, I agree with Benedict when he concludes this section of the interview by saying, “It is clear that we need to further reflect on the whole question.” I think it is time for all of us to acknowledge the theologically unresolved nature of this question. This is important because it points us to the need for perhaps a fresh and creative perspective that builds on the best elements of all the various approaches.

Fortunately, Benedict does give us a small hint of a way forward that involves a change in how we view the nature of our role as disciples of Christ and as members of the Church. This involves a changed orientation in how we view what it means to be among the “saved”. It involves the deeper question: What is salvation anyway and in the first place? As such, it involves a recasting of “salvation” as an imitation of, and immersion in, the intercessory and “pro nobis” nature of Christ’s mission to save us through his kenotic descent into the abyss of our sinfulness.

This does not resolve the question in its entirety. But it is, I think, pointing us in a profound direction. The Church is necessary for salvation because God has willed in the economy of salvation that intercessors are necessary, that nobody is saved as an isolated monad, and that there is a deeply corporate element to salvation. We seek baptism because it is only as one who is fully sacramentally incorporated into the Body of Christ, and one who therefore participates in the Eucharistic sacrifice, can one fully achieve union with God who is love, which is to say, who is kenotic sacrifice in His essence. The Church is necessary for salvation because we are necessary for salvation as participators in the high priesthood—the only real priesthood—of Jesus Christ.

I will conclude therefore giving Benedict the last word as he points us in the direction of Henri de Lubac for the beginnings of this answer:

Let us recall, lastly, above all Henri de Lubac and with him some other theologians who have reflected on the concept of vicarious substitution. For them the “pro-existence” (“being for”) of Christ would be an expression of the fundamental figure of the Christian life and of the Church as such. It is possible to explain this “being for” in a somewhat more abstract way. It is important to mankind that there is truth in it, this is believed and practiced. That one suffers for it. That one loves. These realities penetrate with their light into the world as such and support it. I think that in this present situation it becomes for us ever more clear what the Lord said to Abraham, that is, that 10 righteous would have been sufficient to save a city, but that it destroys itself if such a small number is not reached.