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John Chrysostom’s Interpretation of Romans 1:1-7 :: The Fathers of the Church
I have summarized highlights of John Chrysostom’s interpretation of the introduction to the book of Romans. I believe they foreshadow much of his interpretation of the rest of the book. Wanting my citations to be easily traceable but using an online version of the text (which does not supply the page numbers of the original), I have cited his homilies on Romans this way: § 1.1:1 = Chrysostom, “Homilies on Romans,” Homily 1, comments on Romans chapter 1, verse 1. Where no citations appear after quotations, you can see from the biblical text where I am pulling the commentary from Chrysostom: I have used the RSV in my English translation.
John Chrysostom, “Homilies on Romans,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers,First Series, Vol. 11, translated by J. Walker, J. Sheppard and H. Browne, and revised by George B. Stevens; edited by Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1889); revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/210203.htm (accessed 11.10.12).
Romans 1:1-7
(1) Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God
The fact that Paul (unlike Matthew, John, Mark, and Luke) attaches his own name to his letters becomes a textual irritant that requires explanation—a twofold irritant, since Hebrews was thought at that time to have been written by Paul but did not bear his name as in his other letters (§ 1.1:1). Chrysostom argues that it would’ve been superfluous for Moses or the gospel writers to attach their names to their writings because they were writing for people “who were present” and therefore already knew the author, whereas Paul was writing for people far away. As for Hebrews, Paul left off his name because he didn’t want to prejudice his hearers, since some of the target audience was “prejudiced against him,” thus leaving the work anonymous “subtly won their attention by concealing the name.”
God changed Saul’s name to Paul’s so that he could acquire the same preeminence of the other apostles.
Paul calls his message “gospel” because unlike the prophets who bore messages primarily of judgment, Paul’s message is primarily of the “countless treasures.”
(2) which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures,
Paul emphasizes that his message has been prophesied “expressly” and in “temper” already in the Old Testament because some have accused him of novelty (§ 1.1:2). God announces beforehand his great deeds “to practise [sic] men’s hearing for the reception of them when they come.”
(3) the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh
Paul mentions that Jesus was born “according to the flesh” before referring to his divine origin “according to the Spirit” because “he who would lead men by the hand to Heaven, must needs lead them upwards from below”—which is the same reason Jesus was first revealed as a man, then later as God; for the same reason also Matthew, Luke, and Mark began from “below” as well with their genealogies in their gospel accounts.
(4) and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,
This passage is “made obscure by the close-folding of the words” (§ 1.1:4).
It is made plain that the person of Jesus was also the Son of God by way of his generation: 1) the testimony of the prophets, 2) the way of his generation (“he broke the rule of nature” [in being born of a virgin?]), 3) by his miracles which revealed power, 4) “from the Spirit which He gave to them that believe upon Him, and through which He made them all holy, wherefore he says, ‘according to the Spirit of holiness.’ For it was of God only to grant such gifts,” 5) from the resurrection.
Chrysostom appears to take the Greek word horízô in the sense of “declared” (cf. KJV, NRS, NASB, NIV, ESV) rather than in the sense of “designated” (cf. RSV, CEB).
(5) through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations,
Paul “calls the things of the Spirit, the Son’s, and the things of the Son, the Spirit’s” (§ 1.1:5).
That grace is what causes the apostleship that brings about faith shows
… it was not the Apostles that achieved it, but grace that paved the way before them. As also Luke says, that “He open their heart” Acts 16:14; and again, To whom it was given to hear the word of God. “To obedience” he says not, to questioning and parade of argument but “to obedience.” For we were not sent, he means, to argue, but to give those things which we had trusted to our hands. (§ 1.1:5)
Here Chrysostom emphasizes that the word of God is only to be received by the apostles as opposed to handled “curiously” by adding to it or making an “argument” for it. The apostles were sent out to preach so that “we for our part should believe.”
Not that we should be curious about the essence, but that we should believe in the Name; for this it was which also wrought the miracles. … And this too requires faith, neither can one grasp anything of these things by reasoning…(§ 1.1:5)
Here we can see Chrysostom developing a dichotomization between argument, reason and novelty on the one hand, and what the role of the apostles were on the other: they were only to receive the revelation and then deliver it. Likewise, those who receive the revelation in faith are not to be “curious about the essence” because it cannot be grasped by human reason.
Chrysostom takes Paul’s claim to have received apostleship “among all nations” as an irritant that requires explanation since Paul did not literally travel and preach to all nations.
What? Did Paul preach then to all the nations? Now that he ran through the whole space from Jerusalem to Illyricum, and from thence again went forth to the very ends of the earth, is plain from what he writes to the Romans; but even if he did not come to all, yet still what he says is not false, for he speaks not of himself alone, but of the twelve Apostles, and all who declared the word after them. And in another sense, one would not see any fault to find with the phrase, if about himself, when one considers his ready mind, and how that after death he ceases not to preach in all parts of the world. (§ 1.1:5).
Paul “attaches no more to [the Romans] than to the other nations” even though they were at the top of the world so to speak, but numbers them among the Scythians and Thracians “and this he does to take down their high spirit and to prostrate the swelling vanity of their minds, and to teach them to honor others alike to themselves.”
(6) including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ;
Paul continues to humble the Romans with the use of the word “called” here which emphasizes: “you did not come over of yourselves” (§ 1.1:6).
(7) To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul continually uses the word “called” to humble the Romans since it was likely that among them were high ranking people alongside common and poor people. Thus, Paul is “casting aside the inequality of ranks” by writing to them “under one appellation” (§ 1.1:7). In verses 5-7 of Paul’s introduction, then, Chrysostom already sees the development of a Pauline tact to humble certain Roman Christians, which implies that Chrysostom thought that at least part of Paul’s motivation in writing the letter was his pastoral concern to humble certain high-minded Roman believers.
Chrysostom interpreted the close arrangement of these two thoughts of being both beloved and called as a sign that the one flows from the other; hence “love presented us with grace.” That those who are called in Rome are beloved “shows whence the sanctification was. Whence then was the sanctification? From Love. For after saying, ‘beloved,’ then he proceeds, ‘called to be saints,’ showing that it is from this that the found of all blessings is. But saints he calls all the faithful. ‘Grace unto you and peace’.”
Chrysostom takes the chain of causation further and argues that love causes grace and grace causes peace. Peace he understands in terms of happiness, joy, pleasure, and delight—and all of which he understands to come in this life (not exclusively reserved for the life to come). His rational for understanding grace as causing peace shows that his primary understanding of grace is not forensic, but transformative. He argues that peace only comes when we keep “an exact watch” on our holiness so as to have “spiritual success and a good conscience.” The implication is that grace is what causes us to persevere and grow in holiness.
For he that holds on in the adoption, and keeps an exact watch upon his holiness, is much brighter and more happy even than he that is arrayed with the diadem itself, and has the purple; and has the delight of abundant peace in the present life and is nurtured up with goodly hopes, and has no ground for worry and disturbance, but enjoys constant pleasure; for as for good spirits and joy, it is not greatness of power, not abundance of wealth, not pomp of authority, not strength of body, not sumptuousness of the table, not adorning of dresses, nor any other of the things in man’s reach that ordinarily produces them, but spiritual success, and a good conscience alone. … If then we wish to enjoy pleasure, above all things else let us shun wickedness, and follow after virtue; since it is not in the nature of things for one to have a share thereof on any other terms, even if we were mounted upon the king’s throne itself (§ 1.1:7)
The key link in grace leading to peace is holiness. Grace leads to peace through holiness, which produces spiritual success and a good conscience. This common apostolic greeting “grace and peace” is thus interpreted in a way that centralizes holiness as the product of grace and the necessary condition of peace and happiness. He also interprets Paul’s “fruits of the Spirit” in these terms, citing Galatians 5:22 which includes among them love, joy, and peace as the first three. He closes his first homily by encouraging his hearers to grow in this fruit “that we may be in the fruition of joy here, and may obtain the kingdom to come, by the grace and love toward man of our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom and with Whom, be glory to the Father, and to the Holy Spirit, now and always, even unto all ages. Amen.”
A Criticism of Scholastic Theology from an Eastern Orthodox Believer
Remember Francis Shaeffer? The great evangelical apologist who, for example, helped galvanize evangelicals over the issue of abortion? I ran across an old video of Francis Shaeffer’s son (much less known to evangelicals): Frank Shaeffer. He turned out to be an author, screenwriter and film director. He was a very adamant believer from a young age, but he converted to Eastern Orthodoxy and wrote a book Dancing Alone about his reasons for this development in his spiritual life.
I found an old video where he talks about this conversion and his reasons for it with a Reformed Evangelical host on the Calvin Forum. It was a very interesting interview, and I would recommend evangelicals especially listen to his story to try to grasp why conversions like this take place. (Note: Catholics will likely take issue with his comment that the pope had no special role in church government from earliest times). However, the most interesting part of the interview (for me) begins at 39:00 where he raises the question I’ve been struggling with for some time now about Protestantism: the problem of fragmentation. It’s something most Protestants simply take for granted and admit is a shame, but accept it as an unfortunate reality of sola scriptura (letting people interpret the Bible for themselves without being told how they should be interpreting it). Frank raises the question “Is this what Martin Luther or John Calvin had in mind?” with great eloquence and sincerity, and I think it’s worth a listen.
One of the reasons I’ve never been all that attracted to Orthodoxy is because it seems to shave off so much interesting doctrinal development that has taken place since the ecumenical councils. I find scholastic theology incredibly interesting, but he blames the Western schisms in the church (especially in Protestantism) on scholastic methodology and offers an acceptance of mystery as the solution. I think his critique may have more merit than I would like to admit.
A u d i o p o s t :: A Wake Up Call :: The Continuation of Human Slavery
For those of us who tend to think of slavery as merely a historical evil (that is, an evil only to be studied from our past) abolished years ago with the abolitionist movement: it’s time for a wake up call. Human Trafficking is arguably the fastest growing and most profitable organized criminal activity (expected to surpass even drug smuggling profits within the next decade).
The following is an excerpt from the introduction of Kevin Bales’ book Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves (Berkley, California: University of California Press, 2007), 1-2.
A u d i o p o s t :: The Great Questions
The following audio is a book reading about “The Great Questions” from William Portier’s Tradition and Incarnation: Foundations of Christian Theology (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press 1994), 9-16.
[audio https://theophilogue.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/reading_portier_incarnationtradition.mp3]Do Catholics Practice Open Communion? :: The Case of Frère Roger
Do Catholics practice open communion? In the past, I would’ve answered this with a simple: No. And perhaps on the local level for many Protestants this is the case. However, John Armstrong of ACT3 (author of Your Church is Too Small who also recently had an unprecedented ecumenical dialogue with the Archbishop of Chicago which can now be viewed here) has recently written two posts that make the picture more complicated.
He points to the example of Frère Roger of the Taizé Community, a Protestant until the day of his death who was nevertheless communed by the highest authorities in the Catholic Church for a long time. I have taken a few excerpts from these posts to give a summary. The first excerpt comes from his post entitled: “Chicago Taizé: An Event You Should Know About.”
The Taizé Community was begun after World War II by a young Reformed minister by the name of Frère Roger, or Brother Roger as we know his name in English. Roger Louis Schütz-Marsauche (1915-2005) was the ninth and youngest child of Karl Ulrich Schütz, a Reformed pastor from Bachs in the Swiss Lowlands. His mother was Amélie Henriette, a French Protestant from Burgundy (France).
From 1937 to 1940, Roger studied Reformed theology in Strasbourg and Lausanne. He was a leader in the Swiss Student Christian Movement, part of the World Student Christian Federation.
… Today the community has become one of the world’s most important sites of Christian pilgrimage. Over 100,000 young people from around the world make pilgrimages to Taizé each year for prayer, Bible study, sharing, and communal work. Through the community’s ecumenical outlook, they are encouraged to live in the spirit of kindness, simplicity and reconciliation. Some of you know about Taizé because of hymns and simple songs that you use in worship or you have attended a unique Taizé service.
In his following post, “The Life and Witness of Brother Roger: An Icon of Love and Unity,” Armstrong points out something that both surprised and delighted me when I first discovered it.
I wrote in my book, Your Church Is Too Small, of Cardinal Ratzinger serving the Eucharist to Brother Roger at the funeral Mass of John Paul II. I have had a number of responses to this statement, many claiming that Cardinal Ratzinger was “caught off guard” when Brother Roger was wheeled forward to the altar areaafter the service had already begun. With him very near the bishops there was a sense that they had to serve him the Eucharist rather than create offense. I have asked members of the Taizé community about the facts of this case and I am persuaded that I now know the truth.
The answer as follows. Brother Roger went to Rome for the funeral but did not plan to go when the day of the service came because he had arisen that morning so weak and tired. He was even late in arriving. Because he was so widely known and loved he was wheeled forward to a place where the cardinals were near to the altar. When the time came to distribute the sacred meal it is true that there was little choice but to serve Brother Roger. But what those who insist that a Protestant minister could not be communed fail to realize is that this was gladly done because it had been done for many yearsbefore this Mass seen by millions of viewers the world over. Brother Roger did not force anyone’s hand in the matter. He did not create a problem. He was placed there, by Catholic leaders, out of love. He would not have been there in the first place had others not have taken him there. But the simple fact is that he acknowledged the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, remained a Protestant minister his entire life and was routinely communed by Catholic priests, including the last two Popes.
In an unusual way Brother Roger was an icon and Taizé remains an iconic community of love and unity. This is one of the many reasons I encourage you to learn more about this remarkable mission. It is also why I encourage you, if you are between 18-35 years of age, to attend the Memorial Day Taizé conference at DePaul University.
Book Review: Symbol & Sacrament: A Contemporary Sacramental Theology by Michael G. Lawler
Lawler, G. Michael. Symbol and Sacrament: A Contemporary Sacramental Theology. Omaha, Nebraska: Creighton University Press, 1995. 293 pp.
Two foundational principles guide our author in his exploration of sacramental theology in his book Symbol and Sacrament. First, Lawler has a practical edge faithful to the ancient maxim that Sacramentum propter hominem (sacraments are for people). This helps inform his approach to the subject matter with insights from the anthropological investigation of ritual (which involves a synthesis of psychology, sociology and semiotics). Second, the author encapsulates the richness of his synthetic approach with his categorization of sacraments as prophetic symbols, successfully recontextualizing relevant findings of the modern science within a thoroughly Catholic framework. Lawler first grounds his sacramental theory solidly on both a sophisticated knowledge of semiotics (that challenges modern assumptions about what is “real”) and a historically sensitive theological framework, he then addresses each sacrament individually with a view to practical concerns without shying away from controversy.
On the basis of contemporary symbolic analysis, Lawler claims that every genuine human symbol goes beyond a mere one-to-one signification (as with simple signs) to actually concretize the reality they signify, or “make concretely present what they symbolize” (22).[1] Lawler makes the following transition: If this is true of human symbols in general, it is also true of prophetic symbols in particular, which are meant to be provocative—that is, to effect a change or response of the whole person (not just the intellect). In fact, “the most clear-cut result” of symbols is that they move people to “action and reaction” (13).
A symbol and its meaning are related correlatively and are so organically connected that they “coexist for a human interpreter, or neither really exists at all” (17). Symbols do not convey their meaning in a simplistic way, however, and this is the case for at least two reasons. First, the meaning of symbols, unlike simple signs, is multivalent. There is a certain effervescent ambiguity in the meaning of symbols; their meaning is at the same time mysterious and yet revealed in a concrete way through the symbol. These meanings are related to the symbols “only through the thoughts, the feelings, the actions and the reactions of [people]” (16). Science disinterestedly asks and answers only questions of so-called “facts” (which really turn out to be theory-laden rather than bear facts); symbols, on the other hand, ask and answer questions about meaning that can be expected to excite not only the intellect, but “arouse desires and feelings,” powerfully speaking to the whole human (intellect, will, emotions, imagination, etc.)—not merely a person’s intellect (18).
The author warns that this “subjective dynamism” by no means necessitates that true knowledge cannot be mediated through symbols (19). In fact, the author argues that “these subjective elements vitiate the objectivity of the meaning” (27). In a courageous polemic against the dominance of Western epistemological reductionism, Lawler defends symbol as “a way of knowing” that may be counter-intuitive to the indoctrinated Western mind that is prejudiced against any form of knowledge that is not Cartesian (i.e. clear, objective, scientific, etc.). “If such a personal approach to knowledge seems strange,” writes Lawler with wit, “it is only because the dominant Western scientific paradigm of knowledge has judged rational, clear, and distinct, objective knowledge to be all there is to knowledge” (19). He borrows Maeterlinck’s contrast between the brain’s “Western lobe, the seat of reason and science,” and the brain’s “Eastern lobe, the seat of intuition and symbol” (20). The goal of the Western-lobe is a meager one: to increase knowledge; the goal of the Eastern-lobe is more ambitious: “to deepen the personality of the knower” (26). Symbols do lead to abstract conceptions and determinate ideas—meanings that clustering around the “ideological” pole of meaning—but they are grasped “personally and socially” through meanings that cluster around the oretic pole (15, 22). This starts the book’s eloquent presentation off with an epistemological bite that immediately both overcomes the “classical dichotomy” between objective knowledge and religious symbols while challenging the presumptions of Western prejudice. This makes the treatment more appealing and relevant to the book’s Western audience.
The author makes many other distinctions concerning symbols before moving on to sacraments: symbol is a subunit of the larger category of ritual (which is a symbolic act); religious symbols are public symbols whose meaning “belongs” primarily to communities and secondarily to individuals; religious symbols only mediate powerful realities to those who “live into” them and thus have “the necessary disposition” to make them effective, etc. (25). In the end, symbol gets defined as a verb rather than a noun: “Symboling is a specifically human process in which meanings and realities, intellectual, emotional and personal, are proclaimed, made explicit and celebrated in representation in a sensible reality within a specific perspective” (16).
Sacraments are religious symbolic rituals. The author approaches the biblical witness with an admirable realism by not trying to eisegetically “find” the full Catholic teaching on the sacraments (or even the designation of them) in Scripture. After surveying the patristic witness (especially Augustine’s major contribution of defining sacraments as a “sacred signs” that are efficacious), our author believes the quest for a normative definition ended with Peter Lombard who defined a sacrament as “a sign of the grace of God and the form of invisible grace in such a way that it is its image and its cause” (33). In an attempt to exonerate the scholastic views of the sacraments from the mechanistic caricature, the author points out that the scholastics did not view the sacraments as efficacious in themselves even if they effected sanctification by virtue of the reality they signified—personal acts of God in Christ (34). On the one hand, Trent clearly viewed the sacraments’ efficacy as depending upon the one’s receiving the sacrament so as to not “place an obstacle” to its efficacy (which for an adult included personal intent), yet on the other hand the author laments that “the role of personal faith in its efficacy suffered detriment” in a reaction against the Reformation (37). The Council of Florence, however, balances this with a more positive affirmation that demands for the recipient of a sacrament to have a “disposition of self-surrendering faith” (40).
Our author clarifies the nature of causality in the sacraments with regard to grace: the sacraments contain God’s presence (uncreated grace) and thus as a byproduct, they result in the transformation of the worthy participant (created grace). After defining the grace of sacraments as primarily nothing other than God himself (and only secondarily in terms of created grace) the author complains that “it is no longer possible adequately to describe grace in impersonal terms like create quality, accident, habitus” (56). (This appears to be a cheap shot against scholastic theology, but why should it not be appropriate to have descriptors for both kinds of grace rather than just one?) The author’s concern is to steer us away from a mechanical understanding of causality in the sacraments and toward a deeply personal understanding of the sacraments so that we end up concluding that to relate to God through sacraments means, more or less, to relate to God personally.
After providing such a well-argued foundation for understanding the sacraments, our author proceeds to treat each sacrament with a similar command of his sources and practical sensitivity. He gives a concise and satisfying overview of certain relevant Scriptural passages along with the patristic witnesses (especially Augustine), scholastic contributions (especially Aquinas), and more recent insights from theologians such as Rahner and Schillebeeckx. These overviews have the practical intent to help the reader better understand the sacraments so that she can enjoy them more fully. The strength of his presentation lies in his command of sources (his ability to so concisely review historical developments and incorporate modern insights), his bold challenge to modern assumptions about “knowing,” his facing controversial questions with gusto,[2] and his practical considerations. Lawler’s contribution, although written almost two decades ago, is still a very helpful and stimulating introduction to Sacramental theology.
[1] For example, a man may have deep love for a woman without her even being aware of it, but when he writes her love letters, holds her hand and whispers in her ear “I love you,” or unites his body to hers in the act of sexual union, his love is not merely symbolized in and through such actions, for in some sense his love for her consists in these symbolic acts. Thus, although his love is not exhausted by such symbolic acts, these love rituals are his love for her in concrete form. The author also speaks of symbols as “participating” in the reality to which they point (23).
[2] For example, I found particularly enlightening his scuffle with French Dominican Paul Laurent Carle over whether the word transubstantiation is indispensible for expressing the Catholic perspective of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (122 ff.).
The Catholic Theology of Religions: A Genuine Doctrinal Development
Many Catholics can perhaps still remember a time when the explanation from Catholic bishops and popes about the Catholic Church’s stance on salvation outside the church was little more than a reaffirmation of the traditional and literal understanding of the ancient Cyprian formula extra ecclesiam nulla salus [outside the Church there is no salvation]. Until the official progressive view endorsed by Vatican II, the traditional understanding of this ancient phrase was fairly straightforward—if you are not visibly a member of the Catholic Church you were excluded from salvation.[1] Cyprian’s analogy was of Noah’s ark—just like Noah’s contemporaries had to be inside the Ark to be saved from the flood, so one has to be “inside” the Catholic Church to be saved.
This interpretation of the Cyprian formula, however, in spite of its historical pedigree and centrality in the Catholic Tradition in per-modern history, was reinterpreted at Vatican II. Any genuine doctrinal development that takes place on the official level in the Catholic Church is preceded by progressive views. To understand this development, however, we must first understand not only the Cyprianic formula, but the theological rationale behind it. It was argued early on (most notably by Augustine) that since Jesus and the Apostles taught that saving grace came through the sacraments (Mk 16:16; Jn 6:53; Acts 2:38), the Church is therefore necessary for salvation, for she administers the sacraments as Jesus instructed. Thus the formula was tied initially to a sacerdotal soteriology. If the progressive view was going to reshape traditional Catholic beliefs about adherents of other religions, this sacerdotal logic had to be addressed.
Vatican II[2] still dogmatically echoes the tradition that salvation comes through Jesus Christ and that this salvation is mediated through the Church. For example:
Basing itself on scripture and tradition, [this holy Council] teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mk. 16:16; Jn. 3:5), and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through baptism as through a door.[3]
The analogy used here is also similar to the traditional analogy of Noah’s Ark—baptism is the “door” one must go through to be saved. Nevertheless, whereas the Cyprianic formula was intended to be interpreted as meaning that visible membership in the Catholic Church was necessary for salvation, Vatican II only requires this as a precondition for the fullness of salvation, not salvation itself. In the Vatican II documents, different levels of incorporation into salvation are tied specifically to different ways non-Catholics can be incorporated into the Catholic Church without their knowing it.
Fully incorporated into the Church are those who … [are] joined in the visible structure of the Church of Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops. …
Catechumens who, moved by the Holy Spirit, desire with an explicit intention to be incorporated into the Church, are by that very intention joined to her. …
•
The Church knows that she is joined in many ways to the baptized who are honored by the name of Christian, but who do not however profess the Catholic faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor of Peter. … these Christians are indeed in some real way joined to us in the Holy Spirit for, by his gifts and graces, his sanctifying power is also active in them…
•
Finally, those who have not yet received the Gospel are related to the People of God in various ways. There is, first, that people to which the covenants and promises were made [Jews] … But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Moslems [sic] … Nor is God remote from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, since he gives to all men life and breath and all things (cf. Acts 17:25-28), and since the Savior wills all [people] to be saved (cf. 1 Tim 2:4). 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, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation. [4]
•
Since Baptism is necessary for salvation, all persons saved without a Christian baptism are considered incorporated into the Catholic Church by a baptismo implicitum (an implicit baptism). This way, the Catholic Church still holds to the wording of the Cyprianic formula without requiring the traditional literal interpretation, thus yielding the original formula dangerously misleading for Catholics unfamiliar with the developments of Vatican II.
This new inclusivist framework still holds that salvation is only through Christ and the Church, and views whatever goodness or truth inherent within other religions and their adherents as finding their true fulfillment in Christ.[5] In this sense, other religions can be seen as preparatio evangelica [a preparation for the fullness of the gospel].[6] Although whatever good found in other religions is “preserved … purified, raised up, and perfected” by the Catholic faith, the Church still “snatches them from the slavery of error” when she incorporates them more fully into Christ and “each disciple of Christ has the obligation of spreading the faith to the best of his ability.”[7] Gaudium et Spes nevertheless adds a comforting qualifier about the necessity of evangelism by teaching that “the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every [person] the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery.”[8]
Popes and Catholic theologians have given various assessments of Vatican II’s theology of religions. Karl Rahner’s theology of “anonymous Christianity” had a major influence on the question of whether other religions can have salvific potency. He believed Vatican II left the question “open” and does not finally resolve all ambiguity.[9] Kärkkäinen says Paul Knitter represents “one extreme” that sees mainstream Catholicism as implicitly affirming a pluralist position.[10] The majority of post-Conciliar developments, however, “usually hold the more restrictive view according to which followers of other religions may be saved but other religions as such do not have salvific structure.”[11] Theologians like Gavin D’Costa have become outspoken critics of the pluralist interpretation of Knitter and others.[12] Later encyclicals such as Pope Paul VI’s Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975) and John Paul II’s Redemptoris Missio (1990) can be seen as pastoral correctives against a de-emphasis on Christ and “the church’s central role in the history of salvation” and “practices of interreligious dialogue that stressed the commonalities among religions rather than Christian uniqueness.”[13]
In sum, the mainline Catholic interpretation of Vatican II can be recapped this way: “Followers of other religions can find salvation, but such salvation is found finally and fully in Christ and his church.”[14] In this manner, Catholics believe that because salvation comes through Jesus Christ via the Church, Catholics have an obligation and duty to proclaim the Christian faith and seek converts. On the other hand, because God desires the salvation of all people, his grace is at work outside the Church, leading people who remain in other religions to be nevertheless “incorporated” into the Church in various ways.
Bradley R. Cochran
[1] There were certain exceptions to this that one might easily anticipate. For example, if you had accepted the Church, embraced her, and were being prepared for baptism, then suddenly died before you were actually baptized, you were considered as baptized anyway (by a “baptism of desire”). Or if you had accepted the Catholic message but died a martyr’s death before you happened to be baptized, you could still be considered as baptized (by a “baptism of blood”). But these exceptions were for those who had explicitly accepted Catholicism or the message of Catholics but who were not yet baptized, not for people who followed other religions. There was a stronger precedent, however, for the doctrinal development that took place at Vatican II. Kärkkäinen, for example, notes that “as late as 1943, the highly acclaimed papal encyclical entitled Mystici Corporis (“the Mystical Body”) by Pius XII still held to the view that only ‘true’ Catholics are saved,” but he admits also that this same encyclical leaves open the door of salvation for those who have no access to the gospel. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, An Introduction to Theology of Religions: Biblical, Historical, and Contemporary Perspectives (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 111-12. Mystici Corporis taught that people who have no access to the gospel can “by a certain unconscious desire and longing” be “ordained to the mystical Body of the Redeemer.” Though initially applied only to those who have no access to the gospel, Vatican II would adopt and refine the logic used in this document in order to explain how people who remain as adherents of other religions might also still achieve eternal salvation.
[2] Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, new revised edition, ed. Austin Flannery, O.P. (Northport, New York: Costello Publishing, 1975, fifth printing 2004). The documents most relevant to the Catholic theology of religions are: Nostra Aetate (NA), Ad Gentes (AG), Gaudium et Spes (GS), and Lumen Gentium (LG).
[3] Lumen Gentium (LG) 14.
[4] LG 14-16.
[5] This is generally known as a “fulfillment theory” of religions. “That is to say, other religions are ‘fulfilled’ (find their completion and perfection) in Christianity.” Paul Hedges, Controversies in Interreligious Dialogue and the Theology of Religions (London, UK: SCM Press, 2010), 23.
[6] Kärkkäinen, An Introduction to Theology of Religions, 117.
[7] LG 17.
[8] Kärkkäinen, An Introduction to Theology of Religions, 115.
[9] Ibid., 118.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid., 117.
[12] Gavin D’Costa, ed. Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1990).
[13] Kärkkäinen, An Introduction to Theology of Religions, 120.
[14] Ibid., 120.