Expert: Griff Ruby - 9/26/2009

Question
QUESTION: I was reading about salvation on a Catholic web site which talked about the role and necessity of baptism in salvation except in specific situations.  

"Thus the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "Those who die for the faith, those who are catechumens, and all those who, without knowing of the Church but acting under the inspiration of grace, seek God sincerely and strive to fulfill his will, are saved even if they have not been baptized" (CCC 1281; the salvation of unbaptized infants is also possible under this system; cf. CCC 1260–1, 1283)."

I am now trying to understand the role of Faith in Catholic salvation.  Typically from a Protestant perspective, we see salvation as an act of faith in the work of Christ.  How does Catholicism see faith relative to salvation?

Thanks.

ANSWER: "Faith" is a number of things to different people.  In one sense, it refers to the contents of our religion, e. g. "Our Faith," all the things that our religion teaches us.  To us Catholics, this is often the first and most likely understanding of the word that comes mind when asked about what faith is.  However it can also refer to the intensity of our belief in these contents of our religion, or even in other things such as the general Providence of God, e. g. "you've got to have faith; if you had the faith of a mustard seed you could move mountains."  Pentecostals and Charismatics are most famous for pressing this, and certainly there is something to be said for it.
And then there is the aspect of faith that shows itself as faithfulness, e. g. This person is faithful, faithful to his spouse, keeps his promises, lives honorably, donates freely and consistently of his time and money and prayers, avoids sin, and is duly sorry and repentant for those times when he fails to avoid sin, striving to do better next time, with the help of God's grace.
So, putting it all together, "having faith" means all of believing, living, doing, adhering, and with full intensity, the whole counsel of God, not picking and choosing what we accept and what we reject merely because we don't like it or don't understand it but embracing it all, not merely assenting to the truths as if their being true didn't mean anything but living it truly and seriously in all aspects of our life, not doubting it as though there were any valid room for questioning it but trusting it with an intensity fit to move mountains, and finally that we do this in a two-way loving relationship with God and His Church that He established.
In the realm of Protestantism, there are as many interpretations of faith as there are individual Protestants, but even so, several basic currents are nevertheless identifiable.  There are those for whom Faith encompasses all that it does as I just described it above, that is, in the Catholic sense.  For those who see faith in that sense, faith is indeed enough to save, for it encompasses all that is necessary for salvation.  Those who truly see faith in this sense do not separate out "works" or "good works" since, what are "works" but simply "living one's faith"?
For others however, faith is only some subset of all of these, for example an intellectual assent to doctrines, or to the idea of a God, or to some rudiments of the Gospel (e. g. "the Four Spiritual Laws"), but most often particularly distinguished from the practical aspects of living one's faith, i. e. "works."  Such is an incomplete faith, and as such not saving at all.  The Letter of James was expressly written to refute such an incomplete faith.
Faith (it its fullest sense, or at least in the fullest sense that the individual is genuinely able to muster, given his or her particular circumstances) is always essential to salvation.  With one particular and notable exception, this always refers to the faith of the individual to be saved.  That one exception is those who (usually due to infancy, though mental idiocy in the clinical sense of that word would be equivalent to a prolonged infancy) are incapable of making their own moral choices.  For these, it can be enough that faith is expressed on their behalf through their being baptized and the faith being expressed by the parents, godparents, or others on their behalf.  This is not at all different from how it was handled under the Jewish Covenant in which a baby would be circumcised and that would make the baby a Jew though the infant has obviously had no choice in the matter.
As to the question of unbaptized infants, the mention of saying that it "is also possible under this system" merely refers to the fact that Divine Revelation has extremely little to say as to how this question is to be addressed.  As a result, churchmen have speculated on the question from the earliest days onward.  one of the chief speculations, and one which seems to fit the most facts as we have them, and which also seems most consistent with justice and mercy and what is and isn't possible given the Gospel doctrines, would be that such infants go to Limbo, which means that though they are not saved, being able to be in heaven and to see God face to face, neither are they punished for sins they didn't commit.  Others have speculated that such infants are damned (unjust) or that they are all saved (without faith, even on their behalf), or get some sort of "second chance" (though Scripture says we only die once, and mentions nothing of any "second chance" of any kind), but these minority views each have serious doctrinal problems.  The truth is we really don't know, and just have to trust that God will do the right thing by them.  Whether that "right thing" somehow includes actual salvation for any of them remains to be seen.
As to the rest, God holds us accountable to what light He give us, given our circumstances.  To whom must is given, much is expected.  Conversely it would logically seem to follow that those to whom little is given, correspondingly little is expected, but however much or little is given, that much (whatever it may be in each and every individual case) is what is expected of the individual for salvation, a clear choice for God and against sin, a seeking of God, a loving of God, and contrition (feeling sorry for our sins and failings, asking and wanting to ask forgiveness for them, wanting to do better and committing to strive to improve).  One common motif in the lives of those remote souls who find salvation is a seeking for, and accepting of, some Divine help or guidance in living rightly, for we really cannot do it ourselves.  Ultimately, it is up to God to decide who qualifies and who doesn't.


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Wow.  Thanks for taking so much time to answer my question.

I would like to dig a little deeper as I may not have posed my question correctly.  In your answer, you never mention faith in the work of Christ (e.g. His life, death and coming back to life) to pay the penalty for our sins as I have been taught in Protestantism.  I understand that you need to have faith in many things, but in more simple terms what is essential faith for salvation.  If I have faith that my priest is the ordained minister of God, but do not have faith in Christ's work where would that leave me?  More importantly, if I have faith in Christ's work but an unsure about (or have uncertain faith) in transubstantiation as an example, do I have faith that merits heaven?  E.g., like Nicodemus, what must I do to be saved? I hope this is more clear.

Answer
You are correct that I did not explicitly mention "the work of Christ (e.g. His life, death and coming back to life) to pay the penalty for our sins" (though I did indirectly hint of that in mentioning the "Four Spiritual Laws").  However, neither did I mention the Trinity nor the fact that God created the world and all of us in it.  Surely, what good would it do to believe that Jesus's death paid for our sins if at the same time we deny that He (or His Father) had anything to do with the fact that we exist in the first place?
The problem with listing some "basic teachings" as being essential, as if other teachings were somehow less important or even unnecessary, is that such an approach leaves room for someone to follow something less than "the whole counsel of God."  Granted, there is no way the human mind can take in all that there is to know of God and what God would have us believe (that's what we have all of eternity in Heaven to explore, for only such an eternity would provide sufficient time and room to learn it all fully), but whatever we can and do know we are bound to accept, however much or little of it as Providence may bring our way, or how much our limited mind can grasp in our limited time that we have.
People of all sorts have all tried to draw some arbitrary line across which a person must pass in order to be saved, some say water baptism, others say some initial repentance for one's sin or acceptance of Jesus Christ into one's heart, and so forth.  I think that whole approach fails because whatever line one draws, those who have crossed it will say of themselves "Good, now I am saved," as if that was all that is necessary and no further walk with God is necessary.  In turn, this is the root of Pharisaism in which the "holy" look down their noses at those "less holy" than themselves.
Rather, salvation or damnation, life or death, should be "reduced" (if ever it can be) to the question of (as I put it) "Which way are we facing?"  To be facing God, seeking His will, seeking to do what is right, to learn what is right, to overcome all that is in us that is not right, and so forth, whatever our closeness or distance from the fullness of faith and knowledge, is to be moving in that right direction, and there alone is any real safety.  Those who look the other way are those who look to their sins for their true purpose in life, or even those who look down their noses at those less holy than themselves rather than up to God, and it is they who are in the most danger.  That is why it was that Jesus could say of the (admittedly despicable) tax collectors and harlots that they would be entering Heaven "ahead" of the carefully self-righteous Pharisees, even though the latter scrupulously kept the Law, even to the tithing of everything right down to the dill and the cumin.  They were not looking to God to improve themselves, for they felt themselves to be "good enough" (and certainly they had surpassed any possible "line" anyone could have drawn back then), and for that reason were found "looking the wrong way" while those coming from a life of sin had nowhere to turn but to God in repentance and in that were looking up to Christ as everyone always should.
So, to the practical questions you pose here, it is one thing if a person has not heard of transubstantiation and not knowing of it, has not believed it (but neither has rejected it).  But it is quite another to have learned of this particular Divine teaching, and instead of embracing it and learning of it and coming to appreciate this particular means that God approaches us and reaches down to us, one instead rejects it, then that is again looking away from God and towards one's own opinions which one thinks superior to God, and again there is no life in the individual who reject this or any other teaching that God would have us believe, whatever it may be.