This post is the second one in a series by David Opderbeck.
This is the second post in my series on Gavin D’Costa, Christianity and World Religions: Disputed Questions in the Theology of Religions
What do you think of the Limbo of the Just?
As a Roman Catholic theologian, D’Costa is constrained by the doctrine of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salas – “There is no salvation outside the Church.” Catholics mean by this that the visible Roman Church is the only vehicle of salvation, although after Vatican II this is broadly interpreted. Protestants are not constrained by this doctrine in exactly the same way. A central tenet of the Reformation is that the Church is an “invisible” body based on the inner life of faith. Nevertheless, traditional Protestant teaching continues to hold that salvation is inaccessible Extra Ecclesiam – that those who are saved must belong to the Church, albeit the Church reinterpreted as an invisible body based on inward faith.
For some Christians in earlier centuries, Extra Ecclesiam was perhaps not as vexing a problem as it appears to us today. Many assumed that Christendom covered most of humanity. D’Costa recognizes the problem Extra Ecclesiam presents today: “the assumption . . . that the entire world is confronted with the gospel . . . is no longer tenable as we now know that, throughout Christian history, there have been billions of people and cultures who have not heard the Gospel.” He resolves this problem with reference to the “Limbo of the Just” and with an important move concerning the nature of participation in Christ.
The “Limbo of the Just” is a concept found in very early Christian tradition. It is rooted in the “descent” passage of 1 Peter 3:18-4:6. The early Church Fathers recognized that many apparently good and just people had lived before Christ, including the Old Testament saints and some of the Greek philosophers whom they admired. Some of these early Christian thinkers supposed that the preaching of the gospel to the dead described in 1 Peter 4:6 (“for this reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead”) referred to the opportunity for these pre-Christian people to recognize that the good towards which they strived in life was fulfilled in Christ. The time spent by Old Testament saints and “holy pagans” in the Limbo of the Just allowed them to expurgate their sins in preparation for coming to saving faith in Christ at the time of Christ’s descent.
For the Early Fathers, the Limbo of the Just was emptied on Holy Saturday. It was not an option for people living after the Resurrection, although the concept of an Infant’s Limbo eventually was developed to deal with the problem of unbaptized infants. However, D’Costa lists three reasons why the “Limbo of the Just” tradition might provide resources for the contemporary question of the unevangelized: (1) it explains how some people who did not know Christ in life could come to know him and his Church; (2) it unites the ontological experience of living a life marked by truth and the good with the epistemological status of knowing Christ as the source of all that is true and good; and (3) it provides for the fact that even those who are in some ways true and good before epistemically knowing Christ may require some degree of purification for sins committed in the flesh.
D’Costa does not suggest a simple restatement of the Limbo of the Just tradition with all of its ancient speculative cosmological baggage. He notes that “we must not imagine this solution as a celestial waiting room under the earth, but a conceptual theological datum based on the tradition that provides an answer uniting the ontological and epistemological to explain the case of [the salvation of the unevangelized.” This dense statement points towards another key to D’Costa’s proposal: a participatory ontology in which temporal, situated human beings participate in the life of the eternal, cosmic Christ. This participatory ontology is one way in which D’Costa explains how the descent of Christ on Holy Saturday can be effective for unevangelized people living in the dispensation of the Church, after the Resurrection.
More on participatory ontology in my next post. For now: Can we make use of a theological method in which traditions not explicitly mentioned in scripture inform our thinking? Does that fact that the early Church Fathers wrestled with the problem of “good” or “just” pre-Christian people, and devised a solution, help in your wrestling with problems such as the fate of the unevangelized? Are you surprised at how the first few generations of Christians interpreted 1 Peter 3-4?
I want to understand what the Church Fathers and the early Church understood on such passages, and perhaps that should well carry some weight in trying to interpret, or choose an interpretation of them. But it seems to me on first glance weak to build a teaching on such a premise. He’s going to have to demonstrate well the premise. Although I can imagine what arises out of it, particularly if it is congruent to the Story in a compelling way, might lend some weight to its credulity.
But I still need convincing (and I hope he’s pointed in a right direction).
If we are not willing to consider extra biblical traditions, we will either make up our own or else have to be satisfied with agnosticism toward many subjects.
The struggles that the Church Fathers had with questions surrounding the fate of the unevangelized mean the issue is one with no definitive answer. We’re still trying to make sense of the relevant biblical material and traditional responses to it. Maybe the obvious ambiguity shouldn’t push us away from continuing to search for possibilities, but should remind us that we cannot be too dogmatic about our various ideas. Ultimately, we place hope and trust in a faithful, loving God, who through Christ, will one day settle matters justly.
I especially appreciate D’Costa’s ideas surrounding the Cosmic work of Christ. We should also include similar notions related to the Spirit’s cosmic work. While the Church should always be engaged in specific acts of evangelism to bring the message of Christ to others, we should also believe that the Spirit has already been there before us; speaking, revealing, and drawing people to God through Christ’s finished work, even if we never reach them ourselves.
All people everywhere, therefore, participate in God’s call to salvation by virtue of this universal witness of the Spirit. While their participation may only be potential and sometimes eschatological in nature, it remains a legitimate participation nonetheless. That all human beings at some level experience this universal work of the Spirit also means that all are under grace and are therefore enabled by this grace to move from potential participation to actual participation. As Clark Pinnock observed, the “Spirit prepares the way for Christ by gracing humanity everywhere. In such global activities Spirit supplies the prevenient grace that draws sinners to God and puts them on the path toward reconciliation.”
I think D’Costa is on to something.
David,
Thanks for this post. I see all these attempts to be probings of how to connect God’s grace and justice. Whether one opts for a Limbo of the Just or not, most today want a theology that absolves God of arbitrariness and what appears to us to be either injustice or sovereign disregard, if not callousness, toward those who have not heard. A Limbo of the Just to me, then, is a valiant attempt to square what we do know about the Bible’s God.
“Catholics mean by this that the visible Roman Church is the only vehicle of salvation, although after Vatican II this is broadly interpreted.”
Catholics do not and never have said that the VISIBLE ROMAN church is the only means of salvation.
The catholic Church of Christ is that sole means of salvation. But within that catholic Church of Christ are found, even unwittingly, members of other visible churches and religions who act out of emeth, authentic truth.
The visible Catholic Church is defined by communion with the bishop of Rome (which includes Eastern Rite Catholics) but there is salvation outside that visible Catholic Church, both among Orthodox and Protestants, even outside visible Christianity.
Vatican II said that the FULLNESS of the Church of Christ subsists in the visible church in communion with the bishop of Rome.
The fundamental distinction for salvation/non salvation is between those who knowingly reject the Church in communion with the bishop of Rome and those who do so unknowingly. This distinction was made in the 19th century by Piux IX as it became clear that the Protestant schism was not going to be healed any time soon and that the descendents of the original break-aways did not have the same body of knowledge and could not make the same kind of free choice on these matters that the original Protestant Reformers did.
Children of many generations of Orthodox or Protestant upbringing through no fault of their own do not see the visible Catholic Church (communion with bishop of Rome) as the Christ-authorized fullness of the Church. Even when this belief is explained to them, they may be incapable of “getting it,” given their background and upbringing. This is true in a lot of other spheres of life: people disagree about things and no amount of explaining or debating can change their minds. This may or may not be their fault–only God knows.
Those who have come to believe that the fullness of the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church (communion with bishop of Rome) but refuse to join it are the only ones who would put their salvation in jeopardy.
This was true in the Middle Ages. For instance, Boniface VIII’s Unam Sanctam is often portrayed as condemning to hell all the Eastern Orthodox. But a careful look at the language used shows a distinction between Eastern Orthodox who deliberately and knowingly reject communion with the Bishop of Rome and those who do so through no fault of their own. Given centuries of schism and mutual hostility, whether very many or scarcely any Orthodox are rejecting communion with the bishop of Rome out of clear knowledge and full deliberation is an open question.
The same even would apply to the Jack Chick type extreme anti-Catholic Protestants. On the one hand, one would think they are very sharply and deliberately rejecting Catholicism. On the other hand, they may have grown up with or acquired non-culpably caricatures and animosities so strong that even when they “investigate” the teachings of the Catholic Church they aren’t really engaging Catholicism and thus are rejecting a straw-man, are strangers to actual Catholicism and not culpable. Only God knows what twinges of conscience they might have, to what degree they ignored the nagging question, “but is my information correct?”
The underlying problem for all of us is whether we are genuinely open to the truth, to having our minds changed–whether on religion or politics or economics or family systems. Genuine openness is a rare phenomenon. How much each of us is culpable for our own lack of openness, whether great or small, is something only God knows. It would behoove us to examine ourselves on just how willing we are to hear new and different insights about truth. Often those calling most loudly for others to be more “open” are themselves not very open.
Medieval Catholic spiritual writers, theologians and philosophers understood this last point very well. The “broad” interpretation of “extra ecclesiam” is not an invention of Vatican II.
Phil — As a Protestant studying the Catholic tradition, I welcome corrections like this. However, I think the extent to which Vatican II is a departure from the prior tradition is a matter of reasonable debate, at the very least.
Pope Urban, Unam Sanctum: “we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”
Pope Innocent, Fourth Lateran Council: “There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved.”
Pope Eugene IV, Bull Cantate Domino: “The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews, heretics, and schismatics can ever be partakers of eternal life, but that they are to go into the eternal fire ‘which was prepared for the devil and his angels….’”
Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos: “Furthermore, in this one Church of Christ no man can be or remain who does not accept, recognize and obey the authority and supremacy of Peter and his legitimate successors.”
And so on. Now, I recognize that there is lots of subtlety in how statements like this get interpreted and the degrees of authority that are assigned to them. Just like you can’t proof-text the Bible, you can’t proof-text Papal statements. But I think just about everyone recognizes that Vatican II’s explicit soteriological inclusivism marks a turn in the tradition — a turn that was, and still is, hotly debated.
Answer to the question – I am on board with Travis. It’s not whether we take extra-biblical sources, it’s which we take. Yes we should give more weight to those with proximity to the events we are trying to analyze. I don’t understand why would could possibly think otherwise.
Now, thoughts on Extra Ecclesiam
Why isn’t it clear that we are judged by what we know not by what we do not know? We are judged by our actions (in mind and body), not our hypothetical situations. Paul too says that what could be known was shown to people before Christ lived and Peter’s Jesus’ “preaching” is just a posthumous realization that they were on the right track. Imo, nothing actually changed state, it is just that *we* all realized that they were good to the best of their ability. No limbo or actual preaching, just realization that they have been in paradise since their time.
So too for unevangelized in our times. God judges based on our actions, not our hypotheticals.
Dopderbeck,
I think these statements are fairly clear regarding the possible salvation of those outside the Church in current Catholic teaching:
“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.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church)
Normally, “it will be in the sincere practice of what is good in their own religious traditions and by following the dictates of their own conscience that the members of other religions respond positively to God’s invitation and receive salvation in Jesus Christ, even while they do not recognize or acknowledge him as their Savior (cf. Ad gentes, nn. 3, 9, 11)” (Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, Instruction Dialogue and Proclamation, 19 May 1991, n. 29; L’Osservatore Romano English edition, 1 July 1991, p. III).
“Nevertheless, God, who desires to call all peoples to himself in Christ and to communicate to them the fullness of his revelation and love, “does not fail to make himself present in many ways, not only to individuals, but also to entire peoples through their spiritual riches, of which their religions are the main and essential expression even when they contain ‘gaps, insufficiencies and errors’”. Therefore, the sacred books of other religions, which in actual fact direct and nourish the existence of their followers, receive from the mystery of Christ the elements of goodness and grace which they contain.” (Dominus Iesus: I,
..should be (I, 8 ) at the very end there, emoticon error.
Tim — absolutely — and all of the statements you mention are after Vatican II. Catholic Theology after Vatican II, as I understand it, is officially inclusivist. This was a significant development. But it’s important to understand that a later Council does not abrogate an earlier council. The other statements I mentioned remain part of the Magesterium, and of particular interest to D’Costa’s subject, the various decrees of the Council of Trent remain authoritative.
So, D’Costa’s book is an effort to explain who Vatican II fits together with all of these earlier statements and decrees. Non-Catholics and even non-Christians can be saved — but how, since there is no salvation outside the Roman Church? That’s the question D’Costa seeks to answer.
Protestants are likely to be less concerned about reconciling Vatican II with earlier Magesterial teachings — since we don’t see those teachings as “Magesterial.” Nevertheless, his method and his conclusions strike me — particularly my lawyer’s mind with its inclination towards interpreting “precedent” — as helpful and well constructed.
Dopderbeck,
Formally, Catholic dogma precludes the idea of “abrogation” of any Catholic teaching as far as I understand it. But in practice, the “clarification” of later Catholic decrees do take precedence over older Catholic decrees. So, again, while not formally “abrogating” older Catholic teaching, the newer statements I referenced from the Catholic Church represent their current position on soteriological matters. The older statements are interpreted in light of the new (which, again, in many instances means that they are practically abrogated though not formally so).