A representative group of Protestant theologians recently described the individualistic view of salvation (characteristic of some of the sects) which ignores the doctrine of the Church as ‘a lapse from the Gospel, from which we have largely recovered, and we assert today the faith of the Reformers that outside the Church there is no salvation’.^[1]  In support of their assertion they quote Luther’s words: ‘I believe that no one can be saved who is not found in this congregation (that is, the congregation of the saints, or the Church) holding with it to one faith, word, sacraments, hope and love;’ ‘I believe that in this congregation and nowhere else, there is forgiveness of sins.’  They also quote Calvin, speaking of the visible Church: ‘Outside her bosom no forgiveness of sins, no salvation can be hoped for’.^[2]

Pagan history is called in the New Testament ‘the times of ignorance’.^[3]  Reason and conscience were inadequate means to a knowledge of God; philosophy led to delusion, and conscience became insensitive in the unequal moral struggle.^[4]  Paganism appears in the most favourable light in the New Testament references to proselytes, i.e., converts from heathenism to Judaism.  St. Paul paints a frightful picture of the pagan world;^[5] but we know that even in this welter of wickedness there were noble souls that longed after higher things, and minds devoted to the search for spiritual truth.  And many of them found them, at any rate for the time being, in the religion of the synagogue.  Among such was Cornelius^[6] ‘a devout man, and one that, feared God with all his house’, whose account of his vision drew from St. Peter the comment: ‘I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to Him’.  The Apostle’s experience convinced him that Gentiles, even a Roman soldier, should be accepted in the Christian fellowship.  Cornelius had done all he could; he had sought and embraced the best that was open to him, and met with divine approval.  But his spiritual quest did not end in Judaism; the faith of the synagogue was for him, and for many like him, a stage on the way to Christ.  Proselytism,^[7] in fact, was to prove the very seedplot for the Gospel.