Do the Eastern Orthodox 'accept divine revelation as proposed by the Church'?
The assent of faith depends on the proposition and explanation of the Catholic Church.
The assent of faith depends on the proposition and explanation of the Catholic Church.
Introduction
We recently published a short and informal article about Leo XIV’s comments about “communion between Christians and Muslims.”
In this article, I wrote the following in passing:
“Charity is the supernatural love of God as the highest good, and of all other men for his sake. But supernatural charity itself is dependent on supernatural faith – the acceptance of God’s revelation, as proposed by the Church. […]
“But Muslims do not accept God’s revelation: they reject it. Similarly, we could add, Protestants and Orthodox don’t accept God’s revelation as proposed by the Church. They base what they believe on their own private judgment of what Scripture teaches, or what tradition teaches. Basically, they don’t have the supernatural virtue of faith: they have private opinions about religion, even when many of these opinions are true.”
“This is why non-Catholics can’t be said to be in communion with the Church.”
I was asked to explain what I meant by saying “Orthodox don’t accept God’s revelation as proposed by the Church.”
Building on the private response I gave to this question, let us consider the topic a bit further here. But before doing so, I must point readers to the more technical and rigorous explanation of the matter by Fr Marín-Sola, from which the below is drawn:
The Church’s authority is indispensable for every act of divine faith
The great Thomists on the Church as a necessary condition for faith
Everything written below should be understood in the terms of Fr Marín-Sola’s explanation: any accidental departure from his explanation should be disregarded.
The necessity of the theological virtue of faith
The dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church there is no salvation) is a controversial topic. Its exact meaning is a popular question, and often it is answered in a “popular” way. In Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII noted:
“Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation.”1
One reason for this is that the dogma cannot be understood apart from the nature and role of supernatural faith.
No one is saved without charity—that is, the love of God above all things, and of one’s neighbor for God’s sake. Implicit in this charity is contrition for one’s sins.
However, these terms do not refer to natural sentiments of philanthropy or remorse. They are supernatural realities; and in turn, they depend absolutely on the presence of supernatural faith.2 Holy Scripture is clear: “Without faith, it is impossible to please God.” (Heb. 11:6). While supernatural faith is insufficient for salvation on its own, supernatural charity and contrition are impossible without it. As such, it is absolutely necessary for salvation.
Pope Gregory XVI affirmed that this is itself a dogma of the Catholic faith:
You know how zealously Our predecessors taught that very article of faith which these dare to deny, namely the necessity of the Catholic faith and of unity for salvation.3
But what is this supernatural faith?
What is supernatural faith?
Faith is often understood as, in Martin Luther’s words, “a living, bold trust in God’s grace.”4 This definition—common even among misguided Catholics—is more akin to the theological virtue of hope. St. Paul, by contrast, distinguishes faith from hope, and defines the former as “the substance of things to be hoped for” (Heb. 11:1). In other words, it is not hope itself.
In the broad sense, faith means assenting to a proposition on the authority of another. When I assent to what someone tells me about their family, or I believe the doctor that this lump is nothing to worry about, I assent with human faith, or faith in the “broad sense”. It is based on the reliability or authority of the person revealing.
However, a merely natural faith is not sufficient: under Pope Bl. Innocent XI, Rome condemned the idea that faith “in the broad sense […] is sufficient for justification.”5
By contrast, the faith required for justification and salvation is supernatural—it is the “supernatural gift of God, which enables us to believe, without doubting, whatever God has revealed.”6 This supernatural faith is specifically:
A certain assent to divinely revealed truths
Inspired and assisted by grace
Founded on God’s authority, rather than our own perception of the truth of the propositions or natural reason
Proposed and explained by the Church, either explicitly (through definitions of popes or councils) or implicitly (through the universal magisterium).
God’s authority, “The First Truth”, is the formal object of the assent of faith. It is a response to his revelation, and the motive is that God is the supreme good and truth who can neither deceive nor be deceived. The nature of such faith means that the assent is absolutely certain, and irrevocable. As Vatican I teaches:
“[T]he situation of those, who by the heavenly gift of faith have embraced the Catholic truth, is by no means the same as that of those who, led by human opinions, follow a false religion; for those who have accepted the faith under the guidance of the Church can never have any just cause for changing this faith or for calling it into question.”7
Further, the assent of faith is to everything which the Church proposes as revealed by God – explicitly to that which is explicitly proposed to us, and implicitly to everything else.
As the formal object of faith is God himself, one cannot pick and choose from what he has revealed and which is proposed by the Church: this “picking and choosing” is the root of the word heresy, and is destructive of the virtue of faith itself. This is why St Thomas writes:
“The species of any habit depends on the formal reason of the object, and if this is removed, the species of the habit cannot remain. Therefore, whoever does not adhere, as to an infallible and divine rule, to the doctrine of the Church, which proceeds from the First Truth as manifested in the Holy Scriptures, does not have the habit of faith. Instead, he holds by another means what pertains to faith, but in a manner other than by faith”.8
“In various conclusions of one science, there are different means by which they are proven, and one can be known without the other… but faith adheres to all the articles through one means, namely, through the First Truth proposed to us in the Scriptures according to the doctrine of the Church who has the right understanding of them. Therefore, anyone who rejects this means totally lacks faith.”9
The Church is necessary for supernatural faith
Divine revelation reaches individuals in two ways:
Indirectly (mediately), through the Church, which transmits divine truth via the magisterium.
Directly (immediately), as in the case of the Apostles, who received revelation straight from Christ.
Outside of such cases of direct private revelation, the Church’s proposition and explanation are a condition sine qua non for the virtue of faith for us (quoad nos – see Fr Marín-Sola’s explanation of this in the articles already cited).
Those who do not submit to the Magisterium of the Church cannot have supernatural faith, unless they receive a direct supernatural revelation from God – an extraordinary case, which is not to be presumed. Without the Church (whose credentials are established on independent grounds) or immediate revelation, there is no certainty that what is believed has been divinely revealed – only opinion, however sincere.10
This is the fundamental purpose of the Church: she is the authorised means, established by Christ, for proposing his revelation to the world in an authoritative and certain sense. There is a distinction here: her proposition and explanation are a necessary condition for the assent of faith, but not its formal reason. The formal reason remains the authority of God, and she is the means of achieving certainty that this or that point is indeed what God has revealed.
Fr W.G. Penny’s explanation
It is not sufficient to hold true opinions about the Christian religion, or to pick up the Bible and “believe” (viz., come to the opinion or natural certainty) that what it contains is true, or revealed.
Fr W.G. Penny, in his 1846 work The Exercise of Faith Impossible Except in the Catholic Church, recounted a work of fiction popular among Anglicans, in which a boy was cast on a desert island with his anti-Christian father, and grew up with religious instruction – or religious “prejudice”. In time, the father died and the boy was rescued, and came across a single page of Holy Scripture. “He read on,” Fr Penny tells us, “and was highly pleased with the account, and assented to what he read.”11
Fr Penny then asks:
“Now, can we possibly call this faith? Can we, by any stretch of meaning, say that faith ran result from the reading of a chance leaf which he found by accident in the road, and which he had no means of knowing that it was ever meant as a true relation, and not as an allegory, or even as a mere work of fiction? There is not a person in existence who would say that a mere piece of printed paper, found by accident, was an authority! However true its contents may be, yet something is needed for making it an authority – some voucher for its genuineness is wanted, otherwise no opinion that we may form upon its contents can be anything more than an opinion, in that it is not built on authority.”12
He continues:
“In order, then, that a printed paper may be an authority to us, there must be some second authority upon which we receive it – some one who is strictly and properly an authority, some one, that is, whom we are bound to listen to, and accept what we are told by him, and are held guilty if we do not – some one from whom we are bound to accept the whole message that he brings us; otherwise we are not bound to accept that particular part in which he says that the Bible is the word of God, and which, if we are not bound to accept it, is not an authority.
“To speak of the Bible, then, as being strictly the sole authority in matters of faith, is in reality to deny that it is an authority, for there can be no sole printed authority. [To assert that there is, would be to fall into the absurdity above mentioned, of supposing that a savage would be bound under penalty to obey a book which he met with accidentally, and without any one to vouch for it.]
“Without recognizing, therefore, the authority of the Church, which delivers the Scriptures to us, and vouches for their truth, they are themselves no authority. We should not be held to obey them, unless there were persons appointed to deliver them to us, whom we were bound to listen to. When a savage rejects the Scriptures, and sins in so doing, his real and immediate sin consists in the rejection of the living word of the missionary who offers them, and it is for this that he will be accountable; but, as I have said before, he would by no means be accountable for rejecting the volume, if he found it anywhere, untestified, and unvouched for.
“I hope from this it will be clear that the Holy Scriptures, though every sentence and every word of them is true, are yet not an authority to those who reject the authority upon which they come to us — that of the Church, for if there was no Church, the Scriptures would not be binding.”13
Working towards the act of faith
There are two ways of establishing the Church’s position in the act of faith. They are dealt with here:
We can have natural moral certainty through treating the Gospels as mere historical records, which show that the man Jesus did this or that action, taught this or that truth, was crucified and that his Apostles taught he rose from the dead and saw him, etc. Naturally speaking, the Gospels are no less reliable witnesses of what they relate than many other ancient texts, which recount events no one would question. It is begging the question to say that this could not be so, because they include miracles and so on.
The sufficient reason for these texts including such events – as well as the later events of the conversion of the Roman Empire, the spread of the Church, and so on – is that what the Gospels recount did indeed happen.
This is a claim which can be defended in more detail on another occasion – let’s just assume, for the sake of argument, that this is correct.
There is, then, no explanation for the facts than that Jesus of Nazareth is who he said he was: divine, and so on. The miracles he did testify to his claims, as does the fulfilment of very ancient prophecies which even his enemies (the Jews) admit are legitimate prophecies.
But at this stage, this assent is still a merely human faith. Our assent is based on our own private study and opinion.
The Gospel texts also tell us that Christ established an institution which he promised would be indefectible, i.e., remaining in existence and substantially unchanged until the end of time; with which Christ would remain until the end of the world; which would speak with his authority; and which would be the only place in which this authority would be found.
We then proceed to look for this institution, seeking to identify it by certain distinguishing marks of continuity with what we find in the texts. These marks are found only in the Catholic Church, as has been indirectly the topic of the interviews I’ve been doing with Stephen Kokx.
What are these marks? Vatican I, in the nineteenth century, taught specifically that the true Church is identified by four supernatural signs:
10. So that we could fulfill our duty of embracing the true faith and of persevering unwaveringly in it, God, through his only begotten Son, founded the Church, and he endowed his institution with clear notes to the end that she might be recognized by all as the guardian and teacher of the revealed word.
11. To the Catholic Church alone belong all those things, so many and so marvelous, which have been divinely ordained to make for the manifest credibility of the christian faith.
12. What is more, the Church herself by reason of her astonishing propagation, her outstanding holiness and her inexhaustible fertility in every kind of goodness, by her Catholic unity and her unconquerable stability, is a kind of great and perpetual motive of credibility and an incontrovertible evidence of her own divine mission.
13. So it comes about that, like a standard lifted up for the nations, she both invites to herself those who have not yet believed, and likewise assures her sons and daughters that the faith they profess rests on the firmest of foundations.14
These four qualities correspond to the four marks if the creed: one, holy, Catholic, apostolic, etc. These marks are obscure today, although not impossible to find, as has been the subject of the interviews already mentioned.
In addition to these marks, the Church herself is attested by miracles and by the prophecies that are fulfilled by her existence and history, etc.
Through this, and through other lines of consideration, we arrive at the conclusion, again a natural moral certainty, that the Church of the New Testament is the Roman Catholic Church.
Thus we have found the supernatural, infallibly certain means, the source of the divinely appointed condition, by which we know what God has revealed, and can assent to it as his revelation.
Only now we can make the act of faith in what has been revealed to us mediately/indirectly: we can say “I believe all this that God has revealed, because God has revealed it and the Church teaches it.”
Direct revelation
The possibility of direct revelation is important because it can explain how a man who has no access to the Church of Christ may nonetheless make a true and salvific act of supernatural faith.
For such a direct revelation, the proposition of the Church is not necessary for the person to make an act of faith – at least, not in the same way, nor for the points which have been directly revealed. However, for all other truths of revelation, the Church’s proposition remains as necessary as for everyone else who has not received a direct revelation.
Further, as stated, direct and private revelation is extraordinary and not to be presumed. There are many delusional madmen in the world, who are convinced they have received divine revelations, when they have not. But this does not undermine the fact that when God can reveal himself directly, and that when he does so, the recipient knows that it is indeed God revealing, and assents to what is revealed on his authority. Such person can make an absolutely certain act of supernatural faith on the basis of that direct revelation; the problem of madmen simply makes it hard for other people to know that another person has really received direct revelation.
This is why direct revelation is not the basis for the assent of faith for the human race in general. While immediate divine revelation remains possible, certain principles must be upheld:
The public and mediate revelation proposed by the Church enjoys an objective certainty; any supposed private or direct revelation which contradicts it is shown, per se, to be false.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. A person who claims private revelation must have solid, certain, and indubitable grounds; otherwise, the alleged revelation lacks the certainty necessary for faith.
Revelation is not a matter of personal experience. Feelings, intuitions, or subjective convictions - even strong ones - are not divine revelation and cannot constitute the object of supernatural faith.
Direct revelation points towards the Church. Saul, despite encountering Christ directly, was sent to the Church for instruction. Similarly, accounts of Christ appearing to Muslims immediately (e.g., Joseph Fadelle) point them toward the Church for the fullness of revelation to be given in the ordinary, mediate way. As such, one who assents to a true direct revelation shortly before death, dies subject to the Church and to the Roman Pontiff (whether the Holy See be legitimately occupied or temporarily vacant – as is presently the case).
This means that without either…
The Church’s teaching as the proximate rule of faith, or
An extraordinary private revelation directly from God
… a person’s belief in revealed truths – such as Christ’s divinity – is not, and cannot be, an act of supernatural faith. Instead, such “belief” remains a matter of personal opinion or private conviction, neither of which are sufficient for justification or salvation. It is not faith.
Applied to the Eastern Orthodox and others outside the Church
The Eastern Orthodox groups are usually treated as schismatics, in that they have separated themselves from the true Church of Christ. Sometimes we are even told that they are just schismatics and not heretics.
Let us remain focused on the assent of faith and see why this is not the case.
There are many good and interesting things which the Eastern Orthodox groups have retained from before the schism, and so is understandable that these groups are attractive to some Catholics. That said, we already have everything we need in the Catholic Church. For example: although an attraction towards certain parts of Orthodox mysticism is understandable, the first three of the five volumes of the Philokalia are made up of writings from Catholic saints.
But what is not in the Eastern Orthodox groups is supernatural faith.
The Eastern Orthodox do not even claim to have received direct revelation. Like us, they claim to have received indirect or mediate revelation. But their assent to revelation is not conditioned or determined by the proposition of Christ’s Church. It is based on either a) the authority of a body which separated itself from Christ’s Church, or b) their own human study or understanding of what was taught by the first set of ecumenical councils or in tradition.
Their proximate rule of faith is not the proposition and explanation of revelation by Christ’s Church, but something else: something not supernaturally certain, or supernatural at all.
They thus lack a necessary condition of the act of faith. For this reason, they can make only an act of human faith, which is not sufficient to attain supernatural charity, a state of grace or salvation.
The Orthodox face a further problem. They not only fail to assent to revelation as proposed by the Church with regards to the truths which they accept; they also reject certain revealed truths (e.g., the procession of the Holy Ghost from both the Father and the Son, the Primacy of St Peter and his successors, the Immaculate Conception, and so on). But as we have already seen, a man who rejects even one dogma rejects divine revelation itself, and so only holds what truths he retains as opinions or based on human faith.
“Hence it is evident that a heretic who obstinately disbelieves one article of faith, is not prepared to follow the teaching of the Church in all things; but if he is not obstinate, he is no longer in heresy but only in error. Therefore it is clear that such a heretic with regard to one article has no faith in the other articles, but only a kind of opinion in accordance with his own will.”15
Therefore, these men are heretics as well as schismatics; they do not have supernatural faith.
But “without faith, it is impossible to please God”.
I have addressed these topics with regard to certain comments made by Leo XIV here:
To return to the article which prompted this response, the foregoing shows why there can be no communion without the external unity of faith.
Conclusion: Why is faith necessary for salvation?
To conclude, let us consider why that is, and why supernatural faith is necessary “to please God”, and why it is absolutely necessary for salvation.
The Athanasian Creed reinforces the necessity of supernatural Catholic faith for salvation:
“Whoever willeth to be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith, which faith, except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish eternally.”
We have already noted that faith is necessary for salvation because charity is necessary for salvation.
But we could consider the intrinsic reasons for this further. First, our supernatural destiny is to see God in the beatific vision; that is, to know and love God for all eternity. Knowledge and love correspond to our intellect and will; and these faculties must be elevated and ordered towards this utterly supernatural end. This is the role of supernatural faith and charity, which perfect our intellect and will respectively.
Second, it is through Christ’s mediation that we may attain this supernatural end. In order to benefit from this mediation, we must be united to or associated with Christ. This is why we speak of the Church as his mystical body: it is as members of the body that we are united to the head, and can benefit from his atoning and redemptive sacrifice on the Cross. But being united to Christ in the Church is not a matter of appearing in a parish register; it is a matter of being united to him by faith and charity. We must be living members of his body; that is, in a state of grace and with charity (and therefore faith) in our souls.
Third, charity is dependent on faith because we cannot love what we do not know, and faith is the means by which we attain certainty of the supernatural truths which God has revealed. Conversely, we cannot be said to love God if we refuse to believe what he has taught us. Both faith and charity represent the beginning of eternal life, here and now, and are utterly indispensable for attaining this supernatural end.
A failure to account for supernatural faith as the foundation for man’s union with God is at the heart leads to a naturalisation of the concept of faith itself – rendering supernatural faith unnecessary. It is a functional denial of the truth that “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6), and a redefinition of faith from an assent of the intellect to the “living, bold trust in God’s grace” mentioned by Luther.
This is why so many modern writers talk freely of “faith” amongst non-Catholics. As an example, Cardinal Aveline – a frontrunner in the 2025 conclave – writes:
“… the attitude that believers, in the name of their faith…”16
[Quoting Christian de Chergé] “… by the sign of their respective faiths…”17
“… our respective fidelities to different faith standards…”18
“… Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all seeking new formulations of their faiths…”19
This loose way of talking is impossible for one recognises the clear distinction between the natural and supernatural orders, particularly in relation to faith. As such, it is unsurprising that these ideas lead away from Catholic orthodoxy. The dogma of outside the Church there is no salvation becomes a “problem” to be explained away, so as to account for the “new reality” (which is not at all new) of religious pluralism. But even if it were a new reality, it would not justify a radical rethinking of the Church’s understanding of herself or of the nature of faith.
In short, the proposition and explanation of divine revelation by the Church is an essential condition, sine qua non, of the assent of faith “for us” (quoad nos). The redefinition of faith, without this condition, results in the redefinition (or functional denial) of the dogma – its reduction “to a meaningless formula” – and is the first step towards the complete dissolution of the Catholic religion.
It is, therefore, necessary to enter the Roman Catholic Church and submit to her threefold power of teaching, governing and sanctifying, in order to be saved. As Pope Boniface VIII infallibly taught:
“We declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”20
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The Church’s authority is indispensable for every act of divine faith
The great Thomists on the Church as a necessary condition for faith
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Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Humani Generis, 1950, n. 27. https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html
The so-called “Letter to the Archbishop of Boston” (1949)—the status of which is outside this piece – affirms this necessity of supernatural faith. While it discusses the idea of some persons being united to the by implicit desire, it also affirms the following:
“But it must not be thought that any kind of desire of entering the Church suffices that one may be saved. It is necessary that the desire by which one is related to the Church be animated by perfect charity. Nor can an implicit desire produce its effect, unless a person has supernatural faith […]” (Emphasis added)
While many wish to focus on the idea of being united to the Church by virtue of a merely implicit desire, few have taken sufficient cognisance of the implications of this comment.
Pope Gregory XVI, Encyclical Summo Iugiter Studio, 1832, n. 5.
Denzinger Hunnermann n. 2123. Error n. 23, Condemned Propositions of the ‘Laxists’, Holy Office under Innocent XI.
Faith in the broad sense, which is based on thetestimony of creatures or on a similar reason, is sufficientfor justification. (Fides late dicta ex testimonio creaturarum similive motive ad iustificationem sufficit)
Penny Catechism q. 9.
Vatican I, Dei Filius. https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm
ST, II-II, q. 5, a. 3.
ST, II-II, q. 5, a. 3, ad. 2.
Marín-Sola writes:
“The Church, according to Saint Thomas, becomes a true rule and a true reason for every act of our divine faith. This rule and reason do not pertain to our faith in its divine aspect, or in itself, but rather to divine faith insofar as it is ours [quoad nos]. They condition or modify the same First Truth or revealed deposit, not in themselves but in relation to us. This rule and reason are not about the formal object of faith but about its proposition and explanation. They are as necessary for every act of our divine faith as the proposition of the object by intelligence is necessary for the act of the will. A true act of the will cannot occur without this proposition, and it is reduced to a mere act of passion or sensitive appetite when this proposition is lacking. The proposing or proximate rule must belong to the same order as what is regulated. Anyone who acts against this rule of the Church’s definition, acts against divine faith – committing an act of heresy. Anyone who acts without this rule commits an act without divine faith – an act of mere science or human faith. Any explanation of the implicit or inclusive virtuality of the revealed deposit made against the Church’s definition is heretical. If made without the Church’s definition, it is purely scientific or human. If made by the Church’s definition, it is a divine explanation, a dogma of faith.”
Fr Marín-Sola, The Homogenous Evolution of Catholic Dogma. Chapter III, Section III.
W.G. Penny, The Exercise of Faith Impossible Except in the Catholic Church, p. 59. T. Richardson, London, 1846.
Penny, pp. 59-60.
Penny, pp. 61-2.
Vatican I, Dei Filius. https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm
ST, II-II, q. 5, a. 3.
“… l’attitude que des croyants, au nom de leur foi …”
Jean-Marc Aveline, ‘Évolution des problématiques en théologie des religions’, in Recherches de Science Religieuse, 2006/4 Tome 94, pp. 496-522.
“… par le signe de leurs fois respectives…”
Aveline, 2006
“… nos fidélités respectives à des normes de foi différentes…”
Jean-Marc Aveline, ‘Les enjeux actuels des relations entre juifs et chrétiens,’ Études 2010/10 Tome 413, p 355-366. Available here.
“… le judaïsme, le christianisme et l’islam, en quête de nouvelles formulations de leurs fois…”
Aveline 2010.
Pope Boniface VIII, Bull Unam Sanctam, 1302. https://www.papalencyclicals.net/bon08/b8unam.htm