Name and cite (with quotes) a single Post-Tridentine theologian who said an infidel "could be justified but not saved." I've looked at some of the relevant past threads. Unfortunately, XavierSem was banned and apparently all his posts are gone. So name one and let's discuss this like brothers without name calling if possible. Yes, mea culpa regarding my calling you "idiot," "moron" etc.: what's good for the goose is good for the gander is not valid Catholic doctrine, and it doesn't excuse me.

Again, I've looked at the relevant threads and what I could gather despite the obliteration of Xavier's relevant posts. Xavier rejected your claim of a distinction between justification/salvation. Fortunately, at least part of his quote from one of the relevant threads is here (in Stubborn's post #106):


New St. Alphonsus Quotes on Implicit BOD - page 8 - Crisis in the Church - Catholic Info (cathinfo.com)

Here's my last post from a relevant discussion where you did your usual "run away" when cornered:

False BOD is Foundational to VatII - page 7 - The Feeneyism Ghetto - Catholic Info (cathinfo.com)


That thread has a good number of posts related to this discussion.

So, please quote one of those "Post-Tridentine theologians" with the justification/salvation distinction. And in a true Catholic spirit in search of truth, let's get it on - without name calling. I'll do my best, as poor as that often is.

Btw, the closest you came to citing something "Post-Tridentine" in those discussions was a Cardinal Dulles article and a mere description of the opinion of a Dominican  Melchior Cano (no quote from him, no citation, no discussion of his treatment) that is contradicted by the opinions of other "Post-Tridentine theologians" in the same paragraph and the next paragraph. He also mentioned "de Lugo," of whom Dulles says:

So, even in Dulles's non-scholarly article lacking quotations or citations, de Lugo doesn't apparently help you.

DR

Clearly the theologians cited by De Lugo distinguished between justification and salvation (as Father Feeney did), but I don't recall or haven't read what they say about someone who would hypothetically die justified but not saved.

New St. Alphonsus Quotes on Implicit BOD - page 7 - Crisis in the Church - Catholic Info (cathinfo.com)

Melchior Cano, O.P.

In 1547 Cano taught a course On the Sacraments in General, in which be included a dissertation On the Necessity of Christian Faith for Salvation. '6 As a faithful follower of St. Thomas, Cano taught that while, before the coming of Christ, implicit faith in Christ had sufficed for Gentiles who had no knowledge of the messiah to come, in the Christian era there was no salvation without explicit Christian faith. Furthermore, Cano understood this necessity of faith in Christ to be not merely a matter of a divine precept, but rather an intrinsic necessity following from the role of Christ as the one mediator of salvation for all mankind. It was for this reason that even for those Gentiles who had known nothing of Christ, an implicit faith in the coming mediator was necessary.

Cano also followed St. Thomas’ teaching about the first moral decision, holding that one who in that act ordered himself to the right end would obtain the remission of original sin and through grace would be justified. On the other hand, no one could be justified without faith. Hence, Cano concluded that the supernatural aid which that person received to make the right moral decision must also include an illumination of the mind such as to make it possible to make an act of faith. But since the person in question would have reached the age of moral decision unbaptized, he would not have been instructed in the Christian faith, and therefore could not have made an act of explicit faith in Christ unless the illumination had enlightened him explicitly about Christ. Cano thought that such explicit enlightenment about Christ without a preacher being sent would be highly unlikely, and he knew that there was no evidence of any such a preacher having been sent to the inhabitants of America before the recent discovery of that continent. He concluded that it would be more reasonable to believe that such persons would have been given the illumination sufficient to make an act of faith in God, as described in Hebrews 11:6, which, as St. Thomas had taught, implicitly contained faith in Christ as mediator of salvation. From this line of reasoning he concluded that a merely implicit faith in Christ should have sufficed for the justification of those people in America who had “done what lay in their power” to keep the natural law.

However, Cano could not bring himself to depart from the traditional doctrine about the necessity of explicit faith in Christ for ultimate salvation. His solution was to distinguish between what would suffice for justification (the remission of original sin) and what would suffice for eternal salvation. Thus, a person could reach the state of grace without explicit faith in Christ, but, somehow, before his death, he would have to arrive at explicit Christian faith in order to be worthy to share the beatific vision. As can easily be seen, this was a halfway solution that could hardly satisfy Cano’s colleagues in the faculty of theology at Salamanca. One of them, Domingo Soto, offered a more satisfying answer to the problem.

Domingo Soto, O.P.

In the first edition of his work De natara et gratia (1547), Domingo Soto had proposed that a person who was inculpably ignorant of the faith could be justified by responding to God on the basis of the knowledge about God that he could arrive at by the use of his natural faculty of reasoning. However, in the second edition of this work, two years later, Soto said frankly that, having thought over the matter more carefully, he rejected that earlier opinion and returned to the traditional doctrine that there is no justification or salvation without a faith that is based on divine revelation.

This led him to pose the problem: What about the salvation of the people who had lived in America during the centuries prior to the arrival of the Spanish missionaries? Some held that their lack of Christian faith was culpable, on the grounds that if they had been keeping the natural law, God would have enlightened them with the light of the true faith. But Soto held it more reasonable to say that before those people ever heard the gospel preached, their lack of Christian faith had been inculpable. If they had been keeping the natural law, with God’s help, they would have received the light by which they could have made an act of faith, without which no one could be justified. Then Soto observed that it was not easy to believe that this divine light would have been such as to bring them to explicit faith in Christ, without anyone being sent to preach the gospel to them. He noted that in the case of Cornelius, Peter had to be sent to preach the gospel to him before he could make an act of explicit Christian faith. Soto concluded, as Melchior Cano had done before him, that it would seem more credible that God would provide the light necessary for the implicit faith in Christ (Soto uses the term fides confusa) which had sufficed for people who lived before the coming of Christ.

However, Soto rejected Cano’s halfway solution that such faith would have sufficed for justification but not for final salvation. He could see no sound basis for making such a distinction, which would involve the unreasonable hypothesis that once a person had reached justification, God would have to provide the means by which that person could come to explicit faith in Christ before he died. Soto concluded that the implicit faith in Christ which St. Thomas had recognized as sufficient for the salvation of Gentiles who lived before Christ should also be recognized as having sufficed for the salvation of the people of the new world during the centuries before the gospel had been preached to them.

Two important advances, therefore, were made by the Dominicans of Salamanca: de Vitoria’s recognition of the fact that people who had heard about Christ could still be guiltless of their unbelief if the gospel had been presented to them in an unconvincing way, and Soto’s admission that implicit faith in Christ would have sufficed for the salvation of people whose lack of explicit Christian faith was inculpable. Common to these Dominican theologians was an unshaken belief in God’s universal salvific will, which would leave no one who was doing what lay in his power without the means necessary for salvation.

Juan De Lugo, S.J. (1583—1660)

Juan De Lugo taught at the Roman College from 1621 to 1643, and subsequently was named a cardinal, as Robert Bellarmine had been before him. On the question of the possibility of salvation for people who had never had a chance to hear the message of the gospel, he gave the same response that Suarez had given: that they would receive the grace with which they could observe the natural law; and if they kept this, they would be enlightened so that they could arrive at faith in God, and with this they could have the implicit desire for Christian faith, baptism and membership in the church that would suffice for their salvation.

However, De Lugo went beyond Suarez and Bellarmine in applying this solution not only to those who had never heard the gospel preached, but also to people who knew about Christ, but either did not believe in him, or had a faith that was not orthodox. De Lugo dared to suggest that heretics, Jєωs and Moslems might not be damned, as the Council of Florence had said they would, but, on the contrary, might be saved through their sincere faith in God.


Here is how he put it.


Those who do not believe with the Catholic Church can be divided into several categories. There are some who, while they do not believe all the dogmas of the Catholic religion, do acknowledge the one true God; such are the Turks and all Moslems, as well as the Jєωs. Others acknowledge the triune God and Christ, as most heretics do. . . . Now if these people are excused from the sin of infidelity by reason of invincible ignorance, they can be saved. For those who are in invincible ignorance about some articles of faith but believe others, are not formally heretics, but they have supernatural faith, by which they believe true articles, and on this basis there can follow acts of perfect contrition, by which they can be justified and saved. The same must be said about the Jєωs, if there are any who are invincibly mistaken about the Christian religion; for they can still have a true supernatural faith in God, and about other articles, based on Sacred Scripture, which they accept, and so, with this faith, they can have contrition, by which they can be justified and saved, provided that explicit faith in Christ is not required with a necessity of means, as will be explained later on. Finally, if any Turks and Moslems were invincibly in error about Christ and his divinity, there is no reason why they could not have a true supernatural faith about God as the supernatural rewarder, since their belief about God is not based on arguments drawn from natural creation, but they have this belief from tradition, and this tradition derives from the church of the faithful, and has come down to them, even though it is mixed up with errors in their sect. Since they have relatively sufficient motives for belief with regard to the true doctrines, one does not see why they could not have a supernatural faith about them, provided that in other respects they are not guilty of sinning against the faith. Consequently, with the faith that they have, they can arrive at an act of perfect contrition.


Against the position which De Lugo has espoused here, he proposes and answers the following objection:


It would follow that a Jєω or other non-Christian could be saved; for he could have a supernatural faith in the one God, and be invincibly ignorant about Christ. But such a person would not be a Christian, because one is called a Christian by reason of his knowledge of Christ. But that conclusion seems inacceptable, and contrary to the teaching of Pope Boniface in the Bull Unam sanctam, and the Decree Firmiter of Pope lnnocent , where it is said that there is no salvation outside the church.


De Lugo gives the following reply:


The possibility of salvation for such a person is not ruled out by the nature of the case; moreover, such a person should not be called a non-Christian, because, even though he has not been visibly joined to the church, still, interiorly he has the virtue of habitual and actual faith in common with the church, and in the sight of God he will be reckoned with the Christians.

However, Cano could not bring himself to depart from the traditional doctrine about the necessity of explicit faith in Christ for ultimate salvation. His solution was to distinguish between what would suffice for justification (the remission of original sin) and what would suffice for eternal salvation. Thus, a person could reach the state of grace without explicit faith in Christ, but, somehow, before his death, he would have to arrive at explicit Christian faith in order to be worthy to share the beatific vision.

by which they can be justified and saved, provided that explicit faith in Christ is not required with a necessity of means, as will be explained later on.

And yes, if one dies the state of justification it follows that they received the grace of final perseverance.

Ladislaus,

Preliminarily to getting into this further, do you have the title of the Cano work that you read in the original Latin?

I know of another forum that Xavier is on, and I can ask him if he still has the references if necessary.