No armed conflict party can claim to be inculpable. Therefore, the parties must concede and admit their respective wrongdoings against the Syrian people.
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To maintain the latter would be wrong, for inculpable ignorance of the fundamental principles of faith excuses a heathen from the sin of infidelity, and a Protestant from the sin of heresy; because such invincible ignorance, being only a simple involuntary privation, is no sin." (Michael Müller, Invincible or Inculpable Ignorance Neither Saves nor Damns a Person, Questions and Answers on Salvation by Rev. Michael Muller, C.SS.R)Questiones Disputatae de Veritate: Question Fourteen: Faith . "Granted that everyone is bound to believe something explicitly, no untenable conclusion follows even if someone is brought up in the forest or among wild beasts.
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Now, these supernatural acts of faith, hope, charity, contrition, etc., which prepare the soul for receiving sanctifying grace, can never be supplied by invincible ignorance;... But if we say that inculpable ignorance cannot save a man, we thereby do not say that invincible ignorance damns a man. Far from it. To say, invincible ignorance is no means of salvation, is one thing; and to say, invincible ignorance is the cause of damnation, is another.
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Ayatollah Mahdi Hadavi Tehrani, a prominent Shi'a scholar, coined a unique term, "jahil-e-Qasir" (literally "inculpable ignorant") for non-Muslims who are excused for remaining outside of Islam. These are non-Muslims who have not received the message, or it has been presented to them in a distorted, incomplete, or untruthful manner (such as the mainstream media or by sinful Muslims). Such people will attain salvation if they are truthful to their own religion, whatever it may be.
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This argument says that if God existed (and was perfectly good and loving) every reasonable person would have been brought to believe in God; however, there are reasonable nonbelievers; therefore, this God does not exist. Theodore Drange subsequently developed the argument from nonbelief, based on the mere existence of nonbelief in God. Drange considers the distinction between reasonable (by which Schellenberg means inculpable) and unreasonable (culpable) nonbelief to be irrelevant and confusing. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of academic discussion is concerned with Schellenberg's formulation.
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Of his Golden Rules for Directing Religious Communities..., a review in The American Catholic Quarterly stated, "... Whilst primarily intended for the superiors of Religious Houses, it will, we're sure, be appreciated by, and prove most valuable to all in authority."The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Volume 17, (James Andrew Corcoran, Patrick John Ryan, Edmond Francis Prendergast, ed.), Hardy and Mahony, 1892, p. 669 Regarding salvation for those outside the Catholic Church, Fr. Müller wrote: "The Church, therefore, is not one religious body among many; it is the only religious body, inherent in the divine order of creation...The lesson, therefore, on the Church must be plain, and solid, and deeply impressed upon all who wish to be saved; all must learn and understand that only the Catholic Church is the Teacher from God, and the reasons why salvation out of her is impossible. He wrote on the concept of invincible or inculpable ignorance: "...inculpable ignorance of the fundamental principles of faith excuses a heathen from the sin of infidelity, and a Protestant from the sin of heresy; because such invincible ignorance, being only a simple involuntary privation, is no sin.
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Theodore Drange proposed a version of the nonbelief argument in 1996. He considers the distinction between culpable and inculpable nonbelief to be unhelpful in the argument, arguing instead that the mere existence of nonbelief is evidence against the existence of God. A semi-formal presentation of the argument is as follows: #If God exists, God: ## wants all humans to believe God exists before they die; ## can bring about a situation in which all humans believe God exists before they die; ## does not want anything that would conflict with and be at least as important as its desire for all humans to believe God exists before they die; and ## always acts in accordance with what it most wants. # If God exists, all humans would believe so before they die (from 1).
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For some the church is defined as "all those who will be saved", with no emphasis on the visible church. For others the theological basis for this doctrine is founded on the beliefs that (1) Jesus Christ personally established the one Church; and (2) the Church serves as the means by which the graces won by Christ are communicated to believers. Kallistos Ware, a Greek Orthodox bishop, has expressed this doctrine as follows: The Catholic Church also teaches that the doctrine does not mean that everyone who is not visibly within the Church is necessarily damned in case of inculpable ignorance. Some of the most extreme Catholic expressions of this doctrine are: the profession of faith of Pope Innocent III (1208), the profession of faith of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the bull Unam sanctam of Pope Boniface VIII (1302), and the profession of faith of the Council of Florence (1442).
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