CONGREGATION
FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
DECLARATION
"DOMINUS IESUS"
ON THE UNICITY AND SALVIFIC UNIVERSALITY
OF JESUS CHRIST AND THE CHURCH
I. THE FULLNESS AND DEFINITIVENESS
OF THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST
5. As a remedy for this relativistic
mentality, which is becoming ever more common, it
is necessary above all to reassert the definitive
and complete character of the revelation of Jesus
Christ. In fact, it must be firmly believed
that, in the mystery of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate
Son of God, who is “the way, the truth, and
the life” (Jn 14:6), the full revelation
of divine truth is given: “No one knows the
Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father
except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to
reveal him” (Mt 11:27); “No one
has ever seen God; God the only Son, who is in the
bosom of the Father, has revealed him” (Jn
1:18); “For in Christ the whole fullness of
divinity dwells in bodily form” (Col
2:9-10).
Faithful to God's word, the Second
Vatican Council teaches: “By this revelation
then, the deepest truth about God and the salvation
of man shines forth in Christ, who is at the same
time the mediator and the fullness of all revelation”.
9 Furthermore, “Jesus
Christ, therefore, the Word made flesh, sent ‘as
a man to men', ‘speaks the words of God' (Jn
3:34), and completes the work of salvation which his
Father gave him to do (cf. Jn 5:36; 17:4).
To see Jesus is to see his Father (cf. Jn
14:9). For this reason, Jesus perfected revelation
by fulfilling it through his whole work of making
himself present and manifesting himself: through his
words and deeds, his signs and wonders, but especially
through his death and glorious resurrection from the
dead and finally with the sending of the Spirit of
truth, he completed and perfected revelation and confirmed
it with divine testimony... The Christian dispensation,
therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will
never pass away, and we now await no further new public
revelation before the glorious manifestation of our
Lord Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Tim 6:14 and Tit
2:13)”. 10
Thus, the Encyclical Redemptoris
missio calls the Church once again to the task
of announcing the Gospel as the fullness of truth:
“In this definitive Word of his revelation,
God has made himself known in the fullest possible
way. He has revealed to mankind who he is. This definitive
self-revelation of God is the fundamental reason why
the Church is missionary by her very nature. She cannot
do other than proclaim the Gospel, that is, the fullness
of the truth which God has enabled us to know about
himself”. 11 Only the
revelation of Jesus Christ, therefore, “introduces
into our history a universal and ultimate truth which
stirs the human mind to ceaseless effort”. 12
6. Therefore, the theory of the limited,
incomplete, or imperfect character of the revelation
of Jesus Christ, which would be complementary to that
found in other religions, is contrary to the Church's
faith. Such a position would claim to be based on
the notion that the truth about God cannot be grasped
and manifested in its globality and completeness by
any historical religion, neither by Christianity nor
by Jesus Christ.
Such a position is in radical contradiction
with the foregoing statements of Catholic faith according
to which the full and complete revelation of the salvific
mystery of God is given in Jesus Christ. Therefore,
the words, deeds, and entire historical event of Jesus,
though limited as human realities, have nevertheless
the divine Person of the Incarnate Word, “true
God and true man” 13 as
their subject. For this reason, they possess in themselves
the definitiveness and completeness of the revelation
of God's salvific ways, even if the depth of the divine
mystery in itself remains transcendent and inexhaustible.
The truth about God is not abolished or reduced because
it is spoken in human language; rather, it is unique,
full, and complete, because he who speaks and acts
is the Incarnate Son of God. Thus, faith requires
us to profess that the Word made flesh, in his entire
mystery, who moves from incarnation to glorification,
is the source, participated but real, as well as the
fulfilment of every salvific revelation of God to
humanity, 14 and that the Holy
Spirit, who is Christ's Spirit, will teach this “entire
truth” (Jn 16:13) to the Apostles and,
through them, to the whole Church.
7. The proper response to God's revelation
is “the obedience of faith (Rom
16:26; cf. Rom 1:5; 2 Cor 10:5-6) by which
man freely entrusts his entire self to God, offering
‘the full submission of intellect and will to
God who reveals' and freely assenting to the revelation
given by him”. 15 Faith
is a gift of grace: “in order to have faith,
the grace of God must come first and give assistance;
there must also be the interior helps of the Holy
Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God,
who opens the eyes of the mind and gives ‘to
everyone joy and ease in assenting to and believing
in the truth'”. 16
The obedience of faith implies acceptance
of the truth of Christ's revelation, guaranteed by
God, who is Truth itself: 17
“Faith is first of all a personal adherence
of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably,
it is a free assent to the whole truth that God
has revealed”. 18
Faith, therefore, as “a gift of God”
and as “a supernatural virtue infused by
him”, 19 involves
a dual adherence: to God who reveals and to the truth
which he reveals, out of the trust which one has in
him who speaks. Thus, “we must believe in no
one but God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”.
20
For this reason, the distinction
between theological faith and belief
in the other religions, must be firmly held.
If faith is the acceptance in grace of revealed truth,
which “makes it possible to penetrate the mystery
in a way that allows us to understand it coherently”,
21 then belief, in the other
religions, is that sum of experience and thought that
constitutes the human treasury of wisdom and religious
aspiration, which man in his search for truth has
conceived and acted upon in his relationship to God
and the Absolute. 22
This distinction is not always borne
in mind in current theological reflection. Thus, theological
faith (the acceptance of the truth revealed by the
One and Triune God) is often identified with belief
in other religions, which is religious experience
still in search of the absolute truth and still lacking
assent to God who reveals himself. This is one of
the reasons why the differences between Christianity
and the other religions tend to be reduced at times
to the point of disappearance.
8. The hypothesis of the inspired
value of the sacred writings of other religions is
also put forward. Certainly, it must be recognized
that there are some elements in these texts which
may be de facto instruments by which countless
people throughout the centuries have been and still
are able today to nourish and maintain their life-relationship
with God. Thus, as noted above, the Second Vatican
Council, in considering the customs, precepts, and
teachings of the other religions, teaches that “although
differing in many ways from her own teaching, these
nevertheless often reflect a ray of that truth which
enlightens all men”. 23
The Church's tradition, however,
reserves the designation of inspired texts
to the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments,
since these are inspired by the Holy Spirit. 24
Taking up this tradition, the Dogmatic Constitution
on Divine Revelation of the Second Vatican Council
states: “For Holy Mother Church, relying on
the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred
and canonical the books of the Old and New Testaments,
whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds
that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit
(cf. Jn 20:31; 2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet
1:19-21; 3:15-16), they have God as their author,
and have been handed on as such to the Church herself”.
25 These books “firmly,
faithfully, and without error, teach that truth which
God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see
confided to the Sacred Scriptures”. 26
Nevertheless, God, who desires to
call all peoples to himself in Christ and to communicate
to them the fullness of his revelation and love, “does
not fail to make himself present in many ways, not
only to individuals, but also to entire peoples through
their spiritual riches, of which their religions are
the main and essential expression even when they contain
‘gaps, insufficiencies and errors'”. 27
Therefore, the sacred books of other religions, which
in actual fact direct and nourish the existence of
their followers, receive from the mystery of Christ
the elements of goodness and grace which they contain.
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