Christian Approaches to Salvation
Christian Approaches to Salvation
“Salvation” is a complex notion. First, we need to note that the term “salvation” does not necessarily have a specifically Christian reference. The term can be used in a thoroughly secular manner. For example, it was common for Soviet writers, especially during the late 1920s, to speak of Lenin as the “savior” of the Soviet peoples. Military coups in African states during the 1980s frequently resulted in the setting up of “councils of salvation,” concerned to restore political and economic stability. Salvation can be a purely secular notion, concerned with political emancipation or the general human quest for liberation. Similarly, other religious traditions also speak of offering “salvation,” even if they define these notions in ways which differ significantly from their Christian equivalents.
The distinctiveness of the Christian approach to salvation lies in two different areas. In the first place, salvation is understood to be grounded in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; in the second, the specific shape of salvation within the Christian tradition is itself established by Christ, and reflected in him. These ideas are complex and require further exploration before we can proceed.
Salvation is Linked with Jesus Christ
First, Christianity holds that salvation – however that is subsequently defined – is linked with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This interconnection of Jesus Christ with the achievement of salvation has been characteristic of Christian theology down the ages. While a wide range of metaphors are used in the New Testament and the Christian tradition to describe the transformation of the human situation through redemption, all of them converge on the person of Jesus Christ as their ultimate ground and goal. The Confession (1967) of the Presbyterian Church (USA) set this out in contemporary language:
God's reconciling act in Jesus Christ is a mystery which the Scriptures describe in various ways. It is called the sacrifice of a lamb, a shepherd's life given for his sheep, atonement by a priest; again it is ransom of a slave, payment of a debt, vicarious satisfaction of a legal penalty, and victory over the powers of evil. These are expressions of a truth which remains beyond the reach of all theory in the depths of God's love for people. They reveal the gravity, cost, and sure achievement of God's reconciling work.
A significant debate in more recent theological literature has concerned whether the cross can be said to be constitutive or illustrative of salvation. In his Doctrine of Reconciliation (1898), the noted German theologian Martin Kähler (1835–1912) posed the following question concerning theories of the atonement: “Did Christ just make known some insights concerning an unchangeable situation – or did he establish a new situation?” With this question we come to a central aspect of soteriology: does the cross of Christ illustrate the saving will of God, giving shape to a hitherto vague notion? Or does it make such a salvation possible in the first place? Is it illustrative or constitutive?
The second such approach has been characteristic of much traditional Christian theology. Christ is seen as having achieved something which makes possible a new situation. Redemption is the direct result of Christ's life, death, and resurrection. To put it more forcefully: salvation is grounded in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. There has, of course, been much debate on precisely how Christ made such a new situation possible. For example, Irenaeus developed the idea of “recapitulation” – the “going over again” of all the events in history at which humanity lost its way. Christ thus “recapitulates” the history of Adam, succeeding where Adam failed and thereby undoing the fall of humanity.
When [Christ] was incarnate and became a human being, he recapitulated in himself the long history of the human race, obtaining salvation for us, so that we might regain in Jesus Christ what we had lost in Adam, that is, being in the image and likeness of God.
The former approach has, however, been characteristic of much writing inspired by the Enlightenment, which treats the cross as an historical symbol of a timeless truth. Christ does not establish a new situation but discloses what is in reality true, even if humanity has not been fully aware of it. John Macquarrie (1919–2007) firmly defends this approach in his Principles of Christian Theology (1966):
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.
A similar approach is associated with Oxford theologian Maurice F. Wiles (1923–2005), who argues in his Remaking of Christian Doctrine (1974) that the Christ-event is “in some way a demonstration of what is true of God's eternal nature.” Christ is here understood to reveal the saving will of God, not to establish that saving will in the first place. The coming of Christ is an expression and public demonstration of God's saving will.
Others have vigorously opposed this approach. In his Actuality of Atonement (1988) the English theologian Colin Gunton (1941–2003) suggests that these kinds of approaches to the atonement risk falling back into exemplarist and subjective doctrines of salvation. It is, he argues, necessary to say that Christ does not just reveal something of importance to us; he achieves something for us – something without which salvation would not be possible. Raising the question of whether “the real evil of the world is faced and healed ontologically in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus,” Gunton argues that there must be a sense in which Christ is a “substitute” for us: he does for us something that we ourselves cannot do. To deny this is to revert to some form of purely subjective understanding of salvation.
Gunton's approach may be regarded as characteristic of much of the pre-Enlightenment Christian discussion of the foundations of salvation, which reflects the fundamental conviction that something new happened in Christ which makes possible and available a new way of life. This approach continues to be definitive within modern evangelicalism, and has exercised a deep and continuing influence over the hymns and liturgies of the Christian church.
Salvation is Shaped by Jesus Christ
Alongside the characteristic Christian insistence that salvation is linked with Jesus Christ may be found a further Christological assertion: salvation is shaped by Christ. In other words, Jesus Christ provides a model or paradigm for the redeemed life. While the Christian tradition has been thoroughly unsympathetic to the idea that the imitation of Christ in itself is or gives rise to the Christian life, there is widespread agreement that Christ in some sense gives shape or specification to that life.
The idea that the mere external imitation of Christ gives rise to the Christian life has generally been regarded as Pelagian (see pp. 333–4). The mainstream Christian approach has tended to argue that the Christian life is made possible through Christ, while recognizing two quite distinct manners in which the resulting Christian life is “shaped” by him. We shall set these two positions out as follows:
The Eschatological Dimension of Salvation
A final issue which must be addressed at this early stage concerns the chronology of salvation. Is salvation to be understood as something which has happened to the believer? Or is it something currently happening? Or is there an eschatological dimension to it – in other words, is there something which has yet to happen? The only answer to such questions that can be given on the basis of the New Testament is that salvation includes past, present, and future reference. We may illustrate this by considering Paul's statements on justification and related themes.
In dealing with Paul, it is tempting to adopt a simplistic approach to the chronological question just noted. For example, one could attempt to force justification, sanctification, and salvation into a neat past–present–future framework, as follows:
But this is clearly inadequate. Justification has a future, as well as a past (Romans 2: 13, 8: 33; Galatians 5: 4–5), and appears to relate to both the beginning of the Christian life and its final consummation. Similarly, sanctification can also refer to a past event (1 Corinthians 6: 11) or a future event (1 Thessalonians 5: 23). And salvation is an exceptionally complex idea, embracing not simply a future event but something which has happened in the past (Romans 8: 24; 1 Corinthians 15: 2) or which is taking place now (1 Corinthians 1: 18).
Paul uses the language of justification to refer to both the inauguration of the life of faith and its final consummation. It is a complex and all-embracing notion, which anticipates the verdict of the final judgment (Romans 8: 30–4), declaring in advance the verdict of ultimate acquittal. The believer's present justified Christian existence is thus an anticipation of, and advance participation in, deliverance from the wrath to come, and an assurance in the present of the final eschatological verdict of acquittal (Romans 5: 9–10).
In dealing with the Christian understanding of salvation, we must therefore appreciate that it has past, present, and future elements. It is not simply a future hope, nor is it simply a past achievement. It is about a past event which secures the foundation of salvation; the present-day assurance that something has happened which transforms the believer's relationship to God and to others; and the fact that something remains to be achieved, in terms of both personal transformation and the consummation of the believer's hopes in the New Jerusalem. Or, to put this in even more simple terms: the Christian understanding of salvation presupposes that something has happened, that something is now happening, and that something further will still happen to believers.