Wolfe Heretic?

John Watkins · 16 Jul 2008, 18:37 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: john.watkins04 at gmail.com (John Watkins)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:37:20 -0400
Subject: (urth) Wolfe Heretic?
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Yes, it is, and yes, there is some trouble squaring it with John 14:6, which
causes trouble with conservative Protestant groups. The Catechism discusses
this in less than explicit terms, but (cherry-picking quotes), faith in
Judaism is more or less explicitly salvific:

"The Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a
response to God's revelation in the Old Covenant. To the Jews "belong the
sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and
the promises...for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable."329

Islam, too, has some sort of salvific power:  "The plan of salvation also
includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom
are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together
with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."

Judaism and Islam are "aimed at" the same Being as Christianity, and so
partake of its salvific power to some degree.  Thus Wolfe treats worship of
the Increate and the Outsider, and to some extent, worship of Pas (to the
degree that Pas is innocently mistaken as the God of monotheism.)

This sort of teaching is squared with John 14:6 and other proclamations of
Christian exclusivism thusly (emphasis mine):

"Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the
Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ
is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body
which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith
and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the
Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. *Hence they could
not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary
by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.*
336

*847 * This affirmation *is not aimed at those who, through no fault of
their own, do not know Christ* *and his Church*:  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.*337"

So, yes, there's some wiggle room provided.  Catholics can quibble about
what counts as "knowing" that the Church is necessary for salvation and what
kind of ignorance is "through no fault of one's own"?  What counts as
"seeking God with a sincere heart"?

I think Wolfe's answers can be found through the Urth cycle.
 On 7/16/08, Adam Thornton <adam at io.com> wrote:

>
> On Jul 16, 2008, at 1:06 PM, John Watkins wrote:
>
> Oh, no, I don't think he's in the Mel Gibson camp.  Some of his
>> non-mainstream views seem to be, if anything, on the other side--he
>> apparently gives great salvific power to faith in non-Christian religions,
>> and even to faith in religions with explicitly false or evil gods, and he
>> believes (or says he believes, of course) that pagan gods were real beings
>> but not demons.  So I'd say he's on the broad-minded side of orthodox
>> Catholicism.
>>
>
> Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Is it actually a permitted doctrine in Catholicism that
> faith in non-Christian religions can have salvific power?  Doesn't that
> explicitly contradict John 14:6?  Which is *another* of what I--brought up
> in, admittedly, a faith without, to be kind, much of a formal intellectual
> tradition--considered to be one of those bedrock passages.
>
> Adam
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