Who Can Be Saved?

What an article...

The one thing that stands out is that NO ONE in your religion is qualified to tell anyone how to get saved...

How many times have your 'church' fathers changed horses in the middle of the stream and after 2000 years, they're not done yet...

Doesn't it occur to you people that probably millions have been condemned to hell for believing your various false teachings???

One of the most interesting developments in post-conciliar theology has been Karl Rahner’s idea of “anonymous Christians.” He taught that God offers his grace to everyone and reveals himself in the interior offer of grace. Grace, moreover, is always mediated through Christ and tends to bring its recipients into union with him. Those who accept and live by the grace offered to them, even though they have never heard of Christ and the gospel, may be called anonymous Christians.

Although Rahner denied that his theory undermined the importance of missionary activity, it was widely understood as depriving missions of their salvific importance. Some readers of his works understood him as teaching that the unevangelized could possess the whole of Christianity except the name. Saving faith, thus understood, would be a subjective attitude without any specifiable content. In that case, the message of the gospel would have little to do with salvation.

You think the people that followed this false prophet ended up in heaven??? Wow!!!

Your problem starts here...You guys don't understand justification...

For justification, Paul asserts, both Jews and Gentiles must rely on faith in Jesus Christ, who expiated the sins of the world on the cross.

I have heard the arguement that those who have not heard the Gospel (so therfore have not refused it) yet believe in God and respond to the Law of God written on their heart have indeed the possibility to be saved by the Name of Jesus, though they may have never heard it, due to the mercy of a loving God.

Don't believe everythng you hear...Study and search the scripture for yourself to find the truth...

Act 13:39 And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.

Rom 2:12 For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law;

Gal 2:21 I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.

Gal 5:4 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.

Heb 9:22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.

If you are going to live by the law, you will be judged by the law...And you will be condemned, unless you come up with some blood...There has to be a blood sacrifice...And if you are under the law, you are not covered by the blood of Jesus...Better start raising some goats...

Doesn't it occur to you people that probably millions have been condemned to hell for believing your various false teachings?

My friend, all of the doctrines your denomination holds that are at variance with the teachings of the Catholic Church (and, yes, they are legion!), did not see their first sunrise until 1500 years or more after Pentecost, the birth of the Church. Yet, you have the utter gall to make the pronouncement noted above! You cannot possibly square this simple historical truth with the Providence of God when He established the Church in the first place, when He promised, among other things, that the Church would be both "the pillar and bulwark of the truth" (1Timothy 3:15) and that the "gates of Hell shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18).

If your position is in fact correct, then, clearly Jesus did allow Hell to prevail against His Church from the beginning, as the teachings of the Catholic Church are indeed traceable to the beginning. And, should you be correct, the Church was not (from the beginning, mind you!), a pillar and bulwark of the truth, but a vehicle for most egregious error. This makes Jesus out to either not really mean what He said, or shows Him to be an out-and-out liar! There is no way around this conclusion, since the Catholic Church's teaching are traceable to the Apostolic Age, and are perfectly in accord with a right understanding of Scripture, which, by the way, was also written, vetted, compiled and canonized by the very same Church, as part of its mission as the pillar and bulwark of the truth.

The doctrines you harp on incessantly on this forum, again, cannot trace themselves back more than 500 years, many of them cannot find historical evidence for their existence even 200 years ago. You rail against our beliefs and practices because they are utterly foreign to you. That's understandable, I suppose, but you must consider that they are utterly foreign to you because your ancestors, at one point or another, consciously removed themselves from the bosom of the Church. Over time, what has been "Christianity" for the entire Christian Era has become so removed from your denomination's doctrinal novelties that authentic Christianity seems little better than a cult to you. I recommend that you get with the program and do some honest, objective and thorough research into what the Church has taught and believed through the ages. Not the Hislop slop and Ralph Woodrow blow that you no doubt have memorized, but serious discussions of authentic Christian theology down through the ages. You will be shocked by what you find at total variance with what you misapprehendingly consider "Christian" teaching! Ruminate a bit on the concept of God's Providence when He established His Church, and you should expect to grow a bit warm under the collar.

Having done that, you would do well to ruminate some more on my last paragraph in post 13 of this thread, which, if I may say so, is perfectly in harmony with what the Christian Church has believed through the ages about the salvation prospects of those not receiving the Sacraments. I trust you'll know what to do next.

Do not object that the difficulties non-Sacramental Christians have in achieving salvation are mean-spirited and exclusivist. They are no more exclusivist than the beliefs of virtually all Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians with respect to the pagans. Those beliefs are, in essence, probably correct, taking the words of Scripture to heart. But, what you don't realize is that they apply to all people who do not partake of the Sacraments God Himself established. This applies to Christians outside of visible, actual communion with the one Church Christ Himself established, if for no other reason than they cannot partake of sacramental grace, and thereby find themsleves unable to avail themselves of the ordinary means of salvation that Jesus Himself ordained for us

I am well aware that you don't "buy" any of that, but that is what historical Christianity has taught throughout its 2000 year history. You better start that rumination session on God's Providence now, and try to square your novel doctrines with those established during the Apostolic Age, some 1500 years or more further back in time. Yes, to the very words of Christ Himself!

Given all of this, you will see how Catholics and Orthodox will consider your words in the passage I quoted above to be cheeky, arrogant and theologically and historically naive in the extreme. Your own prospects for salvation, measured against what the Church, which is the Pillar and Bulwark of the Truth, has taught for two millenia, are shakier than you could imagine. May God give you the grace to enlighten you.

Certainly, I agree with Fr. Hardon when he says that people in the circumstances he describes "can" be saved. But, in order for them to be saved, they must have sanctifying grace in their souls at death. No one in a state of mortal sin can be saved, by definition. This is true of Catholics, Hindus and everyone in between. Therefore, it seems to me that the issue shouldn't focus so much on whether non-Catholics can be saved, as it is understood that such is possible. Indeed, I have been using Romans 1 and 2 for years against the hyper-exclusivists myself. Rather, it seems to me that the focus should be on to what extent God goes outside of His "normal means" of bestowing sanctifying grace through the Sacraments.

Considerations in that discussion would include asking to what extent God imposes Himself on the free will of all concerned at their deaths, "enlightening" them outside of their life-long experience to bring them to some form of saving faith; how, if this is done with great frequency by God, this does or does not circumvent the real "necessity" of receiving sanctifying grace through the Sacraments; how, indeed, this sort of deathbed enlightenment of everyone doesn't make a mockery of the Cross, and how it can square with the universal call to holiness and the careful walk described in Matthew 7:13-14.

I am not an exclusivist, I assure you. But I think it is rash for us to simply assume the wide availability of deathbed enlightenment and conversion for those deprived, for one reason or another, of sacramental grace. Again, the presence of sanctifying grace is essential to gain Heaven, and we are told clearly by Our Lord Himself how to attain that grace. That He may go outside of His own established norms is truly a given - He is God. But it is prudent to suppose that He meant what He said, and that what His Church, ordained by Him as the pillar and bulwark of the truth, has taught throughout the Christian Era in regard to the Sacraments is wholly in harmony with His will.

The bottom line is that we cannot know with certainty to what extent, if any, God goes outside of His own established norms. He has not chosen to reveal that to us, and it is thus outside of the Deposit of Faith. So it is prudent to assume that even the non-sacramental Christians will have a much more difficult time dying in a state of perfect contrition - and thus having sanctifying grace in their souls - than any of us would find it comfortable to suppose.

Are there non-Catholic Christians in Heaven? Almost certainly. Are there non-Christians in Heaven? Quite possibly. But, how many? Only God knows, and He ain't tellin'! The Church, in the meantime, would do well to suppose that "ordinary means of salvation" means just that, and to continue evangelizing accordingly!

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