The Unique Mediator in a Unique Church

A Return to Pre-Vatican II Theology?

Many of the responses from adherents of other world religions, from the Orthodox, and from Protestants to the latest doctrinal statement from Cardinal Ratzinger were those of a surprised confidante of many years who has been stabbed in the back by a friend during an amicable conversation. The Declaration on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, (Dominus Jesus), issued by the Office of the Doctrine of the Faith (ODF), has been understood as a turning back on three decades of interfaith and ecumenical dialogue. Let us first ask: What does the document actually say?

In the first part of the declaration, the principal concern is that Jesus Christ will be bypassed or relativized in the name of a democratic levelling of values and beliefs. In response the document asserts the absolute claim, made in Christian revelation, for Jesus Christ as the definitive and complete revelation of the one and triune God. Only one Mediator exists between God and man, Jesus Christ. The claim is absolute. The declaration acknowledges that other world religions "contain and offer religious elements which come from God", and that some prayers and rituals are aids in opening the human heart to God. But in so far as other world religions contain superstitions or other errors, then their prayers and rituals are, in the light of revelation, "an obstacle to salvation". Though followers of other world religions can receive divine grace, they are, according to the document, "in a gravely deficient situation" in comparison to those in the body of Christ who have the good news and the sacraments.

Scholars can still contemplate the possibility of other salvific figures in world religions sharing in the mediation of Christ (somewhat analogous to the notion of the priesthood of all believers, e.g. each Christian is a priest by sharing in the one priesthood of Christ). But, the document insists, one should not present these salvific figures as parallel and complementary to Christ. Other religions may contain positive elements falling within God's divine plan of salvation; but the claim is made clearly and irrevocably that whoever is saved, whoever ultimately attains to God, does so through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus Christ alone is the source and fulfilment of any saving revelation which God makes to humanity. No other "economy" of the eternal Word made flesh -- such as a separate parallel economy of the Spirit -- exists outside of the body of Christ, the church.

According to the document there is no plan of salvation unrelated to the church, the unique body of Christ. However, the saving action of Jesus Christ does extend beyond the visible boundaries of the church to the whole of humanity where, as Vatican II's Decree on the Church in the Modern World (22) says, "God works in unseen ways ... in ways known to God alone." The church is not a prison for the Spirit. All persons, no matter of what religious persuasion, have the possibility of attaining salvation, always in relation to the one Mediator. God is not the private preserve of Roman Catholics -- or even of Christians.

In recent theological literature, one of the ways the one Mediator was bypassed was to speak of "a kingdom-centred" rather than "a church-unique centred" ministry. In fact, the kingdom of God (or of heaven, or of Christ) is a more expansive category than that of the church: there may be people in the kingdom who are not in the church. However, the declaration cautions, this may not be used to dissociate church from kingdom: the kingdom is present in the person of Christ, whose body the church is. If the kingdom is separated from Jesus Christ and his body, the church, it is no longer the kingdom which God revealed. The church is the seed and beginning of the kingdom.

The logic of the document binds together two main contentions: the unique role of Christ in the salvation of all of humanity, and the unique role of the church in that universal salvation. The logic is: the unique God, the unique Word incarnate who is the unique Mediator of the whole of humanity, the unique economy of salvation, and the unique body of Christ, the church, that is, the unique sacrament for the salvation all of humanity. In summary, the declaration holds that the unicity and universality of the saving mediator, Jesus Christ, continues in the body of Christ, the church founded by Christ, and which "subsists" in the Catholic Church.

The section of the document of particular concern for other Christian churches concern deals with the uniqueness of Christ's salfivic mediation being bound to the uniqueness of the Catholic church. The links between the church which Christ founded, and the Catholic Church as an historical reality, are apostolic succession and the eucharist -- though these are not to be understood in a mechanistic or ritualistic way. They are the means of handing on the full reality of the mystery of Christ, central to which is the proclamation of the word. Against those who say that the church of Christ nowhere "really exists" today (the church of Christ being only a goal to be realized in the future), the declaration repeats Vatican II, saying that the church "subsists" in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and the bishops who are in communion with him. Nonetheless, according to the document, in those churches not in communion with the Catholic Church many salvific and ecclesial elements can be found, even though these elements "derive from" the Catholic Church. The word "subsists" wishes to insist that the church Christ founded continues, despite divisions, to exist in fullness only in the Catholic Church. The word "only" does not appear in the text of Vatican II but, I believe personally, conveys the meaning of Vatican II.