Volume 40, Number 16 · October 7, 1993
Not Nulla Salvatio
By Roy Andrew Miller, Reply by John Bayley
In response to Comrades
(August 12, 1993)
To the Editors:
John Bayley's citation of "no salvation outside the Church" in the context of Gorbachev and the Party in his review of Lenin's Tomb [NYR, August 12] is extremely apt; but his version of what "the medieval theologians used to say" is incorrect: not (as Bayley has it) nulla salvatio but nulla salus. And it was not really "the medieval theologians" but the fathers assembled at the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–1517) who were responsible for the phrase—and unfortunately, as usual at Councils, too few of them were theologians.
Roy Andrew Miller
Honolulu, Hawaii