9. The First and Primary Meaning of Salvation Is This: To Preserve Things in the Good.
9. The first and primary meaning of salvation is this: To preserve things in the good.9
Having lived seventy-nine years on this planet, and having heard quite a few sermons and religious teachers over the years, I remain quite nervous whenever I hear the words “salvation” or “redemption.” Perhaps that is because history reminds us that those who are busy “saving” or “redeeming” others are often rather shortsighted regarding their own limitations and those of the ideologies to which they adhere. I am thinking of crusades and inquisitions, of witch burnings and book burnings, of declarations of heresy and all the rest—dark forces of projections and scapegoating done in the name of a punitive deity wrapped in the clothing of orthodoxy and power. The term “lord and savior Jesus Christ,” for example, often makes my hair stand on end—savior of what? Of whom? From what? From where? For what end?
It is so rare, therefore, to hear words like those of Aquinas at the start of this chapter. He gives us his definition of salvation—good! That is so needed if we dare use the word at all, for it is, as I indicated above, so easily misused and abused in the name of a punitive deity. Not only does he provide a meaning of “salvation,” but he insists that his meaning is both “first” and “primary.” A double first! “Salvation squared,” we might call it.
And what does he come up with? Salvation, first and foremost, means: “To preserve things in the good.”
Isn’t that stunning? Notice what he is not saying. He is not saying anything about saving us from hell or even getting to heaven, a place beyond this place we call earth or a time beyond our lifetimes. Nor is he even talking about humans in particular. He is talking about things—about all things, about beings, about creation, about the cosmos, about the earth, about the elephants and giraffes, the rainforests and the oceans, the fishes and the soil, the trees and the birds and, yes, humans. He is applying the theme of cosmic awareness that we discussed in a previous chapter.
And he is also talking—still again—of goodness. Goodness preoccupies Aquinas. Goodness comes first. It is always on his mind; he sees it everywhere. He says God is “sheer goodness.” And again he applies goodness too to the entire cosmos when he says: “All things are good because they flow from the fount of goodness. We can praise God through all things!” God is the fount of goodness, therefore, who bestows the “infinite goodness on each creature according to its unique capacity.” Think of it! Goodness is everywhere, every being is bearing goodness. “Every being as being is good,” he insists. We live in, breathe in, and swim in a world of goodness.
Furthermore, in Aquinas’s worldview the universe is not only good—it is very good. Commenting on the creation story presented in the first page of the Bible, he writes: “In the Book of Genesis it says, ‘God saw all things that God had made, and they were very good, each one of them having been previously said to be good. For each thing in its nature is good, but all things together are very good, by reason of the order of the universe, which is the ultimate and noblest perfection in things’” (98). Here again he is celebrating the interconnectivity of all things. But he also names the “ultimate and noblest” perfection in things as their relationship to the overall order of the universe.
Taking on the temptations of anthropocentrism and narcissism head on, he declares that “it is false to say that humanity is the most excellent being in the world” (89). The universe is the most excellent thing! “God wills that human beings exist for the sake of the perfection [or coming to maturity or wholeness] of the universe” (93). Once again, Aquinas is high on existence, high on all the parts of creation, but the creation itself as a whole is the “most excellent thing of all.”
“All nature is good. … All things are good because they flow from the fount of goodness. We can praise God through all things!” Furthermore, “nature is related to blessedness as first is related to second. Blessedness is grounded on nature. There is no thing that does not share in goodness and beauty” (96). What a cure for patriarchal cynicism lies in these words!
To praise and sing and celebrate the goodness in things and in the whole is the very starting point of Aquinas’s theology. There is another theological word for goodness and that is blessing. What is blessing? He says: “To bless is nothing else than to speak the good. In one way we bless God and in another way God blesses us. We bless God by recognizing the divine goodness.” Notice what he is saying: to adhere to original blessing, to see our lives and home—the universe—as original blessing, and our earth and its bountiful creatures is how “we bless God.” He tells us that the “Holy Spirit proceeds as the love of the primal goodness whereby the Creator loves the Godhead and every creature” (159). The term “primal goodness” sounds an awful lot like “original blessing” to me. As do his terms “original goodness” and “original freshness” (100).
Our blessing God is an act of returning goodness for goodness, blessing for blessing, to recognize goodness all around us (and within us). This seems to be very much a statement about the “kingdom/queendom of God” of which Jesus spoke so often. It is all around us and among us and within us—and of course it is very good, and it is blessing. We bless God by acknowledging this. It is creation.
But Aquinas adds another point when he adds: “And God blesses us by causing goodness in us.” Once more, notice what he is not saying. He is not saying that God blesses us by giving us things or answering our prayers or by intervening miraculously in the midst of our woes. No. God blesses us “by causing goodness in us.” God blesses us by causing blessing in us, by beautifying us from the inside, by rendering us good on the inside just as the rest of creation is good. Goodness is not an outside thing—it is an inner thing. Blessing is that way too.
Aquinas gifts us with a profound theology of original blessing. For the universe is original, it alone houses our origins, and it is the “most excellent thing of all,” the ultimate in goodness or blessing.11
Now we can more fully grasp Aquinas’s understanding of salvation, a meaning of salvation that is perfectly fitted for a time like ours when the goodness of creation is in jeopardy. Just today, as I write these words, there are fires raging here in northern California. Over 75,000 acres have already burned up, and hundreds of homes and businesses have been destroyed. The skies are grey and the air toxic—so toxic that I wonder if I dare take my dog for a walk for concern that she could be harmed by inhaling the fumes of smoke and fire. What a contrast to the blue skies and greenery for which northern California is so famous!
Here we move from blessing and goodness to curse and toxins—that is what climate change is bringing about. All creatures are suffering from it, including many parents whose children cannot go to school, business owners who have to abandon their stores, workers of all kinds who are prevented from getting to work.
We live in a world now that can no longer take health for granted. Or blue skies, for that matter. Or green lands, pure air, or clean water. We are losing goodness, losing blessing, because we have taken so much for granted for so long and thereby concluded that we can treat the land however we like.
It is in this context that Aquinas’s definition of salvation shouts out to us: “To preserve things in the good.” Can we do that? Are we up to it? How do we do that? What resources of intelligence and creativity must we muster to preserve the goodness of this planet? That is a question for all scientists and engineers, healers and politicians, educators and lawyers, ministers, priests, rabbis, and imans, artists and filmmakers—indeed, all citizens must answer. We share this understanding of salvation in common: Preserving things in the good is the name of the game today. We are not making things good. Nature has done that. Creation and Creator have done that. We are here to keep that good going, to preserve things in the good. All hands on deck! This is why we are all called to be at this common work, a salvific work, together—to preserve things in the good, in their state of original blessing.
It is our invitation to pass on the goodness to future generations not yet born. To “preserve things in the good” is to preserve them in their original blessing. Thomas Berry calls this “the great work.”12
Finally, notice that in this “first and primary” meaning of salvation there is no word about (1) avoiding hell; (2) getting to heaven after this life; (3) curing an original sin; (4) obeying all the rules; or (5) pleasing a punitive father God. The whole context for religion is flipped when one begins with original blessing—as Aquinas does in this teaching. He is calling us to our responsibility as participants in the community we call earth and our home, the universe. He therefore gives us an eco-theology (since “eco” means home).
The same Spirit
who hovered over the waters
at the beginning of creation
hovers over the mind of the artist at work.