Doctrine of Salvation
Lent 2008 – adult forum – Ann Boyd
“Salvation” is a complex concept, with polyvalent meaning. In purely secular use, salvation can mean political emancipation as in military coups in African states during the 1980s resulting in the setting up of “councils of salvation” that aimed at establishing political and economic stability. At the religious level, salvation is not specifically Christian. Most of the world’s religions have a concept of salvation. The understanding of how that salvation is achieved varies widely. It cannot be said that all religions offer the same “salvation”. Christianity then is not alone in investing importance in the idea of “salvation.” The distinctiveness of Christian “salvation” is twofold: a) it is grounded in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; b) the unique shape of salvation is “in and by Christ.”
Salvation is linked with Jesus Christ:
Martin Kahler asked in reference to atonement: “Did Christ just make known some insights concerning an unchangeable situation – or did he establish a new situation?” Does the cross of Christ illustrate the saving will of God or does it make salvation possible. Various theologians align on each side of the question.
John Macquarrie (Principles of Christian theology, 1966) treats the cross as a historical symbol of a timeless truth. “It is not that, at a given moment, god adds the activity of reconciliation to his previous activities, or that we can set a time when his reconciling activity began. Rather, it is the case that at a given time there was a new and decisive interpretation of an activity that had always been going on, an activity that is equiprimordial with creation itself.” That is to say, Christ made evident/ revealed in his life, death and resurrection, a truth that was eternal. God did not change but Jesus made God the Father known in a “new” way. In this perspective, Christ does not create a new “salvation” but demonstrates God’s forgiving nature.
On the other interpretative side theologians argue that Christ does not just reveal something important to us but achieves something for us. This perspective asserts that Christ is a substitute for us: He does for us something that we ourselves cannot do. In the pre-enlightenment world, the theology of salvation adhered to the notion that something entirely new happened in Christ, which makes possible and available a new way of life.
Salvation is shaped by Jesus Christ:
The Christian life is a person’s adherence to the teaching and model of life lived by Jesus, who exemplified a life in perfect relationship with God? Thomas a Kempis famous book, “Imitation of Christ” placed emphasis on the believers’ responsibility to live according to the example of Jesus.
The Christian life is a process of being transformed to Christ, a process enabled by the grace of God. Living by faith and aided by the Holy Spirit, the inner relationship with Christ leads the believer to live in accordance with the image of Christ.
These perspectives may seem very similar but they pose an important distinction. Is salvation something that has happened to the believer? Or is it something currently happening? Is there something more yet to happen? Consulting the New Testament we find salvation referenced in the past, present, and future. In St. Paul’s language, justification, sanctification, and salvation begin with the life of faith and achieve final consummation of the kingdom of God (see Romans 8: 30-34; 5:9-10; Gal 5:4-5; 1 Cor 15:2; 1:18). In sum, Christians understand salvation in terms of something important happened, that something is now happening, and something more will happen to believers.
Theories of Atonement or Soteriology:
Soteriology comes from the Greek soteria meaning salvation. Soteriology embraces two areas: the question of how salvation is possible and in particular how it relates to the history of Jesus Christ; and the question of how “salvation” itself is understood. There are four major themes or images that deal with the meaning of the cross and resurrection of Christ.
The Cross as Sacrifice. Drawing from the Old Testament, the New Testament presents Christ’s death upon the cross as a sacrifice (see the letter to the Hebrews and Rom 3:25). The Christian tradition e.g. Augustine says “Christ was made a sacrifice for sin, offering himself as a whole burnt offering on the cross of his passion.” In “The city of God,” Augustine says, “By his death, which is indeed the one and most true sacrifice offered for us, he purged, abolished, and extinguished whatever guilt there was by which the principalities and powers lawfully detained us to pay the penalty.” Athanasius expressed the idea that Christ’s sacrifice was the lamb of the Passover: “he became incarnate for our sakes, so that he might offer himself to the Father in our place, and redeem us through his offering and sacrifice….For Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed.” The sacrifice of Christ on the cross in the 16th century cast Jesus in the role of prophet (by declaring the will of God), priest (by making sacrifice for sin) and king (by ruling with authority over his people.)
In Enlightenment periods, the vicarious sacrifice was moderated somewhat. Horace Bushnell’s “Vicarious Sacrifice” (1866), asserted that Christ’s death affects God and expresses God. “Whatever we may say or hold concerning the vicarious sacrifice of Christ, we are to affirm in the same manner of God. The whole Deity is in it, in it from eternity…There is a cross in God before the wood is seen on the hill….It is as if there were a cross unseen, standing on its undiscovered hill, far back in the ages.”
Adolf Hitler’s extensive use of sacrificial imagery in justifying economic hardship and the loss of civil liberties as the price of German national revival in the late 1930s has rendered the term virtually unusable for many Christian theologians. It is however, still in use among sacramental traditions “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.”
Cross as Victory. Writers in the New Testament and the apostolic “fathers” of the church put a lot of emphasis on the victory gained by Christ over sin and death. This theme underscores much of the Easter celebration, whereby the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is God’s decisive victory over the forces of evil and oppression.
Irenaeus spoke of Christ’s death as a ransom using as text Mark 10:45, 1 Tim 2:6. Ransom as a term evokes the idea of liberation, payment and someone collecting the debt owed. All three of these understandings of ransom have been applied to the death of Jesus, by which the debt of sin is paid. Gregory the Great argued that Christ’s humanity was the bait that trapped Satan into overstepping his bounds in causing the death of a sinless man, and the divinity of Christ was the hook that caught Satan and caused Satan to release his hold over humanity. This approach created a lot of trouble because it essentially suggests that God acted in a deceptive and devious manner. Nevertheless, victory over the devil had enormous popular appeal.
During the Enlightenment, the Christus victor approach began to fall out of theological favor. Rational criticism of belief in the resurrection of Christ raised doubts concerning whether one could speak of “victory over death.” The image linked with this approach, the devil, or oppressive satanic forces, was dismissed as pre-modern superstition.
Gustaf Aulen’s Christus victor (1931) had a major influence on the subject. In his text, Aulen argues that the risen Christ brought new possibilities of life to humanity through his victory over the powers of evil. Subsequently, Rudolf Bultmann embraced the victory them as a new possibility of living an authentic life in faith. Paul Tillich reworked Aulen’s theory saying the victory of Christ on the cross was a victory over existential forces, which threaten to deprive us of authentic existence. Both Bultmann and Tillich move from Aulen’s objective position to a subjective victory within human consciousness.
The Cross and forgiveness. This version of salvation centers on the idea of the death of Christ providing the basis by which God forgives sin. Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th century developed his argument for the necessity of the incarnation as revealing the righteousness of God. It counters the Christus victor reasoning in denying equal power or rights of the devil or any deception by God in tricking the devil into releasing “his” power over death. Anselm’s argument can be summarized in five points.
God created human beings in a state of righteousness for the purpose of fellowship with God.
To remain in right relationship with God is the condition of that eternal blessedness. Sin separates humanity from right relationship.
God being omnipotent cannot be thwarted by any force i.e. Satan, or man’s disobedience. The fact that sin requires reconciliation means that some satisfaction must be offered.
Since humanity cannot provide adequate satisfaction, God supplies the means.
The God-man in the figure of Jesus as the incarnate Word takes the place of sinful man and dies to make satisfaction and thus provides redemption.
Building upon Anselm, Thomas Aquinas describes the way Christ makes satisfaction:
“A proper satisfaction comes about when someone offers to the person offended something which gives him, a delight greater than his hatred of the offence. Now Christ by suffering as a result of love and obedience offered to God something greater than what might be exacted in compensation for the whole offence of humanity: firstly, because of the greatness of the love, as a result of which he suffered; secondly, because of the worth of the life which he laid down for a satisfaction, which was the life of God and of a human being, thirdly because of the comprehensiveness of his passion and the greatness of the sorrow which he took upon himself.” This perspective stresses that love is the motive and the worth of the sacrifice lies in the divinity of the Christ.
In the 16th century three models building on Anselm’s argument sought to describe how we are saved by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Representation: Christ is the representative of humanity. Through faith, believers stand within the covenant between God and humanity by being “in Christ”. All that Christ achieved through the cross opens a new covenant between God and mankind. By coming to faith, individuals stand within the covenant.
Participation: through faith, believers participate in the risen Christ. In Christ as St. Paul often phrases it, believers obtain forgiveness of sins by participating in the benefits of the passion of Christ, so long as they are obedient to Christ. Paul taught that it is by sharing in Christ’s death, in which one dies to the power of sin, and belongs to God. Participating in Christ brings forgiveness of sins and a share of the righteousness of Christ (an idea embraced by Luther and Calvin).
Substitution: Christ is a substitute, the one who goes in our place. Sinners ought to suffer for their sins but God allows Christ to stand in our place, taking our guilt upon him and making restitution for it. This idea was subject to severe criticism during the Enlightenment because the substitution focuses on original guilt and not on the responsibility and accountability of each person for their own sins. Insisting on rationality, the substitution theory was morally suspect in the way it suggests one human being might bear the penalties due another.
The German theologian, Karl Barth extended the atonement/reconciliation in a section titled, “The Judge Judged in our Place.” Derivative of the Heidelberg Catechism, Christ is the judge who “has represented me before the judgment of God and has taken away all condemnation from me.” The language and imagery is of guilt, judgment and forgiveness. The cross exposes human sin, delusions of self-sufficiency. For Barth, the cross of Christ represents the locus in which the righteous judge makes known his judgment of sinful humanity and takes that judgment-payment upon him. Thus, Barth supports and expands the substitution-theory of atonement. The cross speaks for us and against us. Legal or penal approaches to the meaning of the death of Christ continue to have appeal – e.g. the Passion of Christ film in 2004.
The Cross as Moral example. Much of the New Testament understanding of the cross is a demonstration of the love of God for humanity. Augustine spoke of the underlying mission of Christ was to demonstrate the love of God for all creation. Clement of Alexandria points to the incarnation of Christ as representing the love of God for humanity: “For [Christ] came down, for this he assumed human nature, for this he willingly endured the sufferings of humanity, that by being reduced to the measure of our weakness, he might raise us to the measure of his power…For each of us he laid down his life, the life which was worth the whole universe, and he requires in return that we should do the same for each other.
Peter Abelard stressed “the purpose and cause of the incarnation was that Christ might illuminate the world by his wisdom, and excite it to love of himself. . . The Son of God took our nature, and in it took upon himself to teach us by both word and example even to the point of death, thus binding us to himself through love.” Abelard fails to provide adequate theological explanation for why Christ’s death is to be understood as a demonstration of the love of God, but subsequent theologians took up his approach.
F.D.E. Schleiermacher insisted that the Christ event was so that the supremacy of the consciousness of God could be established in humanity. Redemption is through the stimulation and elevation of the natural human God-consciousness in humanity. Christ is “an absolutely powerful God-consciousness.” The intensity of the witness is then able to attract human beings who then freely align themselves with the model of Jesus. For Schleiermacher, Jesus is not merely a human moral example but the one ideal example of a perfect human consciousness of God and uniquely, Jesus has the ability to communicate this God-consciousness to others.
The exemplarist approach of the cross, relegated sin to a hangover from a legalist view of God as judge, giving out rewards or punishments as a royal parent. This “weaker” notion of sin seemed inadequate in the light of Auschwitz. If the Enlightenment view of human nature was essentially positive, the atrocities of WWII encouraged “dark side” theological thought.
Mission-oriented approaches to salvation: the Nature of Salvation in Christ has taken on one or more of the above constructions in evangelism. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition the theme of redemption and deification has dominated. Extending Athanasius’ claim that God became human in order for humans to become one with God, the divine Logos is imparted to humanity through the incarnation. As a consequence of Jesus assuming humanity (generally), all human beings are able to share in the deification.
Righteousness is the fruit of salvation in that a person by grace, unmerited favor of God, overcomes or cancels the effect of sin. The gospel for Luther offered a justifying righteousness to believers that acts as a shield against condemnation and opens a path to the presence of God. Charles Wesley’s hymn, “And Can it Be” reflects the weight of sin and the merits of righteousness through Christ: “No condemnation now I dread; Jesus, and all in him, is mine! Alive in him, my living head, and clothed in righteousness divine.”
Existentialism brought a new emphasis on the human experience. Bultmann saw human beings as of duel nature: an authentic (redeemed) existence characterized by faith in God and an inauthentic existence characterized by being tied to transient order of nature. Christ made possible through his life, death and resurrection the possibility of human participation in the authentic existence.
The Christus victor approach to the death and resurrection of Christ emphasizes the notion of Christ’s victory over the power of sin and the forces of evil in this world. Proclaiming liberty from oppression, early Patristic writers e.g. John Chrysostom taught that humans are liberated from the oppressive effect of sin and evil by the cross of Christ. Paul Tillich saw salvation in terms of a victory over subjective forces that enslave humanity and trap us in inauthentic modes of existence in keeping with the existentialists. What the patristic writers treated as objective forces, became in more recent views subjective forces.
What is the Scope of Salvation?
The Christian tradition has long debated to what extent salvation is made available and possible through Christ. Two perspectives can be extracted from New Testament writings:
The affirmation of the universal saving will of God.
The affirmation that salvation is possible only in and through Christ.
Universalism asserts that all will be saved. This view is independent of a personal confession of faith but rests on the redemptive value of God’s act in the death and resurrection of Christ. Origen made this claim in opposing any form of dualism (two supreme powers, one good, the other evil). Origen argued that dualism was fatally flawed because it gives Satan equal power and status with God. Karl Barth in the 20th C extends Origen’s claim that since God is supreme, God will overcome evil and restore creation to its original purpose: fellowship with God.
Only Believers will be saved is posited by Augustine based on Jesus’ claims in John 6:51, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven, if anyone eats of this bread, they will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” Aquinas in the Middle Ages agreed with Augustine that an act of faith was necessary for salvation. Dante in “Divine Comedy” deals with the issue in saying “To this high empery none ever rose but through belief in Christ either before or after his agony.” Calvin rejected the notion that pagans could be saved: “All the more vile is the stupidity of those people who open heaven to all the impious and unbelieving, without the grace of him whom Scripture teaches to be the only door by which we enter into salvation.”
John Wesley argued that faith in God is necessary for salvation but did not insist in a fully Christian faith. Wesley thought a specifically Christian belief led to the full benefits of the redeemed life, whereas theists were servants of God but not sons, and lack the full assurance of salvation which is available through faith in Christ. C.S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity” argues that those who commit themselves to the pursuit of goodness and truth will be saved, even if they have no formal knowledge of Christ.
Karl Rahner, a Jesuit theologian asserts that non-Christians may be saved and that non-Christian religious traditions have access to the saving grace of God in Christ. Rahner views Christ as the self-revelation of god in history. Those living before the birth of Christ would be excluded from the possibility of salvation were it to rest on a confession of faith in Christ, which seems arbitrary and contrary to the saving will of God. Despite errors, non-Christian religious traditions are capable of mediating the saving grace of God – until their members are aware of the Gospel. A faithful adherent of a non-Christian religious tradition is thus for Rahner an “anonymous Christian.”
The most extensive pluralistic view may be represented by John Hick. In his book, “God and the universe of faiths, 1973” Hick argues for a need to move away from a Christ-centered to a God-centered approach. Like Rahner, Hick argues for the universal saving will of God. If God wishes everyone to be saved, it is inconceivable that the divine self-revelation would be restricted to a small portion of humanity. Hick posits that all religions lead to the same God. Hick takes the view that approaching plurality of beliefs through the construct of “both-and” rather than “either-or” gives more credence to a complementary approach over a competitive one. While Hick argues his views are theocentric, rather than Christocentric, Christian orthodoxy insists that God is revealed in and through the life, death and resurrection of Christ.
Reference: “Christian Theology” Alister E. McGrath, Blackwell Publishers, 1997.