Dear Catholic Exchange:
I am a Catholic in a Bible Study at work with a Baptist leader. He has confused me with some information that I need clarity from what the Catholic faith has to say. His belief is that if we are not “saved” or anyone is not saved by accepting Jesus, then they will not enter into Heaven. That excludes everyone else, even those who may not have even heard about Jesus and Christianity.
He also mentioned that Christianity has been exposed through every generation and not every person, but if their forefathers did not accept it, then they too will not be allowed into Heaven. He said I could find this information in the Book of Acts. I do not know where to find this, but I do believe it is a very narrow-minded view of salvation and the Kingdom of Heaven.
Help!
I need scripture backup on this so I can better understand my Faith and know how to comment when I hear this type of information. Thank you for your response.
Diana Dages
Diana:
Very likely, your friend is thinking of Acts 4:12: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Similarly, of course, our Lord Himself declares, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by Me.” And the Church, of course, teaches the same thing.
However, both Scripture and the Church mention other things as well.
The basic Catholic belief is “We are bound by the sacraments, but God is not bound” (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1257). In other words, those who have sufficient knowledge of Jesus to understand who He is and what He requires of us (such as baptism) are bound to obey Him and will be judged if they deliberately refuse what they know they should do.
However, those who are ignorant of Jesus' name are not therefore cut off from Him. God can still work in our lives even when we do not know who He is. That is what Romans 2 discusses. The most obvious illustration of this is the Old Testament patriarchs who a) most certainly had never heard of Jesus and yet b) are also most certainly in heaven (as we know from the lips of Jesus Himself). Salvation depends on the grace of Christ, not on intellectual works.
This does not mean we are saved by our ignorance. Rather, it means that ignorance is not a necessary bar to the Holy Spirit. But neither is it much of a help. We can sin in ignorance too. That is, we can choose to neglect what small flickers of light are reaching us from the Holy Spirit. The parable of the sheep and the goats illustrates how those ignorant of Jesus (“the nations”) can be both obedient and disobedient to Him without knowing His name, by their choices to obey or sin against conscience. Both the saved and the damned ask, “Lord, when did we see you hungry, etc…”
So as Christians, we are indeed bound to evangelize. But we are not bound to presume that we know the fate of those who have, through no fault of their own, never heard the gospel. The Holy Spirit can work in ways we do not understand. That is why we are told not to judge.
Mark Shea
Senior Content Editor
Catholic Exchange
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