I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. John 10:16
My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. John 10:27-28
So far, we’ve been considering the role of the Church in the salvation of its full members — and in the salvation of other Christians. We have seen that there is one God; and one human race. There is one destiny to which God calls us — His Eternal Kingdom — present now in the Church in seed form. The Church is communion with Jesus the King. Those who have true communion with Jesus in this life, are participating in the mystery of the one Church and of the eternal Kingdom. They will be judged based on their faith and on their obedience to what they know. Not to what they don’t know.
The Church and Non-Christians
But what is the role of the Church in the salvation of those who are not (or not yet) Christian?
Certainly, the role of the Church is to bring in such people, so that they will have communion with Christ through faith, fellowship, and sacraments. The Church must preach the Gospel so that those who hear might come to salvation by accepting the message and committing their lives to Jesus Christ.
But despite these efforts of the Church, it seems that many people never get a chance to adequately hear and respond to the Gospel.
Limits to the Reach of the Gospel
For various reasons, many people, their whole lives long, never come to know that in Jesus Christ, God has come close to us in love, and has conquered sin, death, and evil. These people may live in far off lands where Christianity has not yet been established in a stable way. Or they may live in communities where Christianity has long been present, but because of increasing secularization, or for some other reason, the Gospel never gets to them.
And it also seems that many other non-Christians, who do learn the Gospel, never hear it preached in a way that is credible. The Gospel they hear may be incomplete, fragmentary, or without living witnesses to put flesh on the words. They may have heard about Christ, and may know that Christians say he loves us and died for us, but they have no real reason to believe it. For them, by no fault of their own, the Gospel may seem like just one message among many in the marketplace of ideas.
The counter-witness of bad or immature Christians may have undermined the Gospel for some of these people. They hear the Gospel in some form, but they can’t see it for the good news that it really is. They ask themselves, “How can Christianity be true if it doesn’t seem to make any difference in the lives of Christians?” “How can Christians preach unity when they are so divided?” Their whole lives long, they remain scandalized by Christians — not evangelized by them.
Salvation is Offered to All
God offers salvation to all, and salvation is through living faith in the Gospel. So the question is this: how can people receive and respond to the call of God if they, through no fault of their own, are never adequately informed of the Gospel? How can they enter into communion with God in Jesus Christ without the means of salvation entrusted to the Church?
The Church — the custodian of the Word of God — teaches that it is possible for such people to be saved, in ways known to God Himself. This must be, for God loves everyone and “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”[1]
But here is the caveat: for this to happen, they need to receive the grace of God and respond to it with faith in some way. They must, as the Church says, “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.”[2]
Laying a Foundation for Salvation
Here, we are presented with a mystery. So, using this and other teachings of the Church, let’s reflect more deeply on this mystery. Let’s want to start with the phrase, “preparation for the Gospel.”
The Bishops of the Church use this phrase in the Second Vatican Council.[3] Those who have not yet received the Gospel remain in the darkness of error and sin. But no one can deny that they have much truth and goodness. God’s glory shines in all of His creation! Any truth and goodness anyone has is from the same God who brings us the saving Gospel. The purpose of this truth and goodness is to be “preparation for the Gospel.”[4]
“Preparation for the Gospel”! Truth and goodness, wherever they are found, are meant to prepare men and women for the fullness of truth and goodness – for God Himself.
It works like this: God prepares men and women for Himself through the goodness and truth He provides in the circumstances of their lives. And, in the ways and the times that He wills, He also offers them some share in the grace of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. By that grace, as the Catechism puts it, God “immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man.”[5] He raises the natural desire for goodness and truth beyond this world to its source in God; the Infinite, Eternal, Hidden Lord who “dwells in unapproachable light.”[6]
Receiving such preparation, a person may begin to desire and seek after God, sometimes without even knowing that this is happening. Such people want to know God and be conformed to His will. We can presume that if they knew the truth of the Gospel and the sacraments, they would embrace them. The Catechism says that such people, because of their sincere desire and seeking, because they “obey the promptings of the Spirit of truth, are already on the way of salvation.”[7]
I am reminded of the words of Saint Paul to the pagan Athenians:
“[God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us.’”[8]
The critical point is this: If God draws people by His grace to seek Him, we can be confident that in some way He will bring to completion the work of salvation that He has begun in them, provided that they respond faithfully to what they’re given.
What, then, is our role in all this? What is the role of the Church in the salvation of those who are not (or not yet) Christian, and who, by no fault of their own, apparently never come to know the Gospel?
In other words, How does God use us as instruments of salvation for people who, for whatever reason, despite our efforts, have remained outside the reach of our preaching and example?
We will address this question in the next two lessons.
[1] 1 Timothy 2:4.
[2] LG 16. This is very important. We shouldn’t let our hope for the salvation of everyone blind us to anything that the Lord teaches us in the Gospel. There will be a judgment of deeds at the end, and only those who experience the redemption of Christ through faith will be able to stand at that judgment. We must remain faithful to God’s Word, as the Church does in this teaching.
[3] LG 16; AG 3. See also John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio 28-29.
[4] Such goodness and truth are also referred to as “seeds of the Word.” See AG 11, 15, 18; RM 28, 56.
[6] 1 Timothy 6:16.
[8] Acts 17:26.