Taken from Tell Your Catholic Friend: How to Have Gospel Conversations with Love by Leonardo De Chirico. Copyright © 2025 by Leonardo De Chirico. Used by permission of B & H Publishing.

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Evangelicals tend to view conversion in relational categories, whereby God saves lost sinners in reconciling them to Himself by the work of Christ alone. The whole theological vocabulary of salvation is relational in focus and intent: regeneration (life language), justification (juridical language), adoption (familial language), and conversion (change language). These are all pictures that depict the re-enacted relationship between God and man in different ways. Contrary to Catholics, evangelicals find it difficult to conceive of salvation in sacramental terms. In the evangelical understanding and experience of salvation, the sacraments are important but not prominent. They are in the background, of course, as part of the God-given and Scripture-attested life of the church, but they are not essential to salvation or to defining who is a Christian and who is not.[1] The sacramental dimension of Christianity is “second without being secondary."[2]

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To put it simply: no born-again Christian would say that she is a Christian primarily because she has been baptized or because she is a regular participant at Communion services. The historic view of Christianity is that salvation is God’s free gift, in spite of us, through the work of Jesus on the cross and His resurrection, appropriated by faith. John Stott is helpful here:

“If there is no saving merit either in our good works or in our faith, there is no saving merit in the mere reception of the sacraments either… It is not by the mere outward administration of water in baptism that we are cleansed and receive the Spirit, nor by the mere gift of bread and wine in Communion that we feed on Christ crucified, but by faith in the promises of God thus visibly expressed, a faith which is itself meant to be illustrated in our humble, believing acceptance of these signs. But we must not confuse the signs with the promises which they signify. It is possible to receive the sign without receiving the promise, and also to receive the promise apart from receiving the sign."

The cross, not baptism or the Eucharist, takes center-stage in conversion.[3] The hapax (once-and-for-all) significance of the cross is emphasized much more than the hapax of baptism or the mallon (more and more) aspects of the Eucharist.[4] Each church tradition has its own view of the sacraments, but they should not lie at the center of their faith, nor does sacramental language define the grammar and vocabulary of the biblical understanding of what constitutes the core of being a Christian. 

Linked to evangelical uneasiness toward sacramental language is the place of the church in defining biblical Christianity. Being a Christian means having responded in repentance and faith to the gospel through the unique mediation of Christ: the church is a creature of this event. The emphasis should be placed on the direct relationship between a person saved and Christ, rather than on the Church as a corporate agent that administers grace. 

Stemming from the once-and-for-all work of Christ and the firm promises of the gospel, Christians can experience a high degree of assurance of salvation. Salvation is certain because of the juridical significance of justification and the eschatological trustworthiness of God’s covenant promises. “If I die today, I will go to heaven” is standard evangelical language. Sometimes this attitude is perceived as arrogant and misplaced by our Catholic friends, yet it reflects the “grace alone," “faith alone," and “Christ alone” Reformation emphases of what it means to be a Christian. Indeed, salvation belongs to the Lord, and those who receive it can be assured of it, despite their failures. Non-evangelical Christians often find it difficult to appropriate this assurance, and their reluctance derives from a different way of understanding the nature of Christianity and who is a Christian.  

Yet another critical side of this issue deserves attention. In present-day Roman Catholic Christianity, heavily influenced by interfaith dialogue and universalist trends of thought,[5] the discussion about nominal Christianity has taken a new trajectory. 

The Roman Catholic Church used to be committed to a strict and traditional interpretation of the dictum “extra ecclesiam nulla salus," meaning that outside of the Church there is no salvation. Those who did not sacramentally and juridically belong to the Roman Church, both non-catholic Christians and non-Christians following other religions, were not considered to be Christians in the proper sense. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) significantly changed the Catholic understanding of the meaning of this dictum, giving rise to a “gradualist” view of Christianity. 

Vatican II documents explain the change in status of non-Christian believers, just as non-Christian religions are also seen in a new light. People who follow other religions, even if far away from Christianity, are no longer considered away from Christ.  They are instead in some measure related to Christ (Lumen Gentium, n. 16), whether they wish it or not, whether they know it or not.  If we take into account the fact that, according to the council, Catholics enjoy a privileged relationship with Christ, being incorporated with Him (Lumen Gentium, nn. 11,14,31), Roman Catholicism is seen as a completion, the achievement of aspirations that are already existing in non-Christian religions. The grace of God is already present in other religions, and the church, because of its special prerogatives, is the place where they can be exalted to their accomplishment. In this post-Vatican II view, every man and woman is mysteriously associated with the “Paschal mystery” (Gaudium et Spes, n. 22). Clearly, the catholicity of present-day Roman Catholicism, which has much in common with an ecumenical theology of religions, transcends the narrow boundaries of Christianity as defined by an explicit faith in Jesus Christ and a distinct journey of Christian discipleship. 

Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner's “anonymous Christianity” is an example of this position: 

Therefore no matter what a man states in his conceptual, theoretical, and religious reflection, anyone who does not say in his heart, “there is no God” (like the “fool” in the psalm) but testifies to him by the radical acceptance of his being, is a believer. . . . And anyone who has let himself be taken hold of by this grace can be called with every right an “anonymous Christian."

Anonymous Christianity means that a person lives in the grace of God and therefore is a Christian whether or not he is aware of it; he attains salvation “outside of explicitly constituted Christianity."

Christianity is today perceived in many Roman Catholic circles in a gradualist view, giving rise to different shades of what it means to be a Christian. All people are included in one way or another in the circles of Christianity. This development may be trendy and politically correct, but it is fundamentally wrong. The gradualist interpretation of Christianity blurs the covenantal nature of the Christian faith and transforms it into a universalist religion that has little to do with the Antiochene blueprint. In today’s world, dialogue between Christian traditions must be a means of elucidating these differences with biblical clarity and frankness.[6]

To wrap up, the Lausanne Covenant is again worth quoting to bring this section to a close. 

“To proclaim Jesus as ‘the Saviour of the world’ is not to affirm that all people are either automatically or ultimately saved, still less to affirm that all religions offer salvation in Christ. Rather it is to proclaim God's love for a world of sinners and to invite everyone to respond to him as Saviour and Lord in the wholehearted personal commitment of repentance and faith” (n. 3).

And again:

“The goal should be, by all available means and at the earliest possible time, that every person will have the opportunity to hear, understand, and to receive the good news” (n. 9).

Hearing, understanding, and receiving the gospel: this is what defines a Christian. Being a Christian means having heard, understood, and received the gospel. A Roman Catholic Christian may have come close to hearing, understanding, and receiving the gospel. He may have received the sacraments, but he is not a Christian unless he is born again. In our gospel conversations with Catholics, our task is to facilitate under God and in all ways possible the proclamation and witness of the gospel to them.

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[1] This aspect is well presented in the 1996 World Evangelical Fellowship document on Roman Catholicism: Paul Schrotenboer (ed.), Roman Catholicism. A Contemporary Evangelical Perspective, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1987) par. 8.

[2] Henri Blocher, “The Nature of Biblical Unity” in J.D. Douglas (ed.), Let the Earth Hear His Voice. A Comprehensive Reference Volume on World Evangelization, cit., p. 390. Here Blocher is talking about the sacrament of baptism but his argument can be extended to the sacraments as a whole.

[3] See my Same Words, Different Worlds. Do Roman Catholics and Evangelicals Believe the Same Gospel? (London: IVP, 2021) pp. 38-45.

[4] John Stott, Evangelical Truth, pp. 34-38. I have applied this distinction in assessing the Roman Catholic language of “prolongation” of the Incarnation, “re-presentation” of the Eucharist and the “dynamic” time of Revelation: see “The Blurring of Time Distinctions in Roman Catholicism”, Themelios 29:2 (2004) pp. 40-46.

[5] For an introductory discussion on the different theologies of universalism, see James I. Packer, “Evangelicals and the Way of Salvation” in K.S. Kantzer – C.F.H. Henry (edd.), Evangelical Affirmations (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1990) pp. 107-136.

[6] As it is rightly argued by Pietro Bolognesi, “Catholicisme romain et protestantisme évangélique: réconciliation, mais sous quelles conditions?”, La Revue Réformée N. 263 (2012/4).

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