In Georgia, as in Texas, people are apt to walk up and ask, Are
you saved? Our Bishop in Georgia, Frank Allen, was visiting my congregation.
Someon asked him, What do you say when people ask you if you are saved? Bishop
Allen replied, I say "yes." That’s a joke because any other answer would lead to a
conversation no one wants to have. He went on to say, he thought to himself, "yes, I have been saved, I am being saved, I hope someday to be saved." He was suggesting the Anglican answer of a 17th Century theologian, Richard Hooker. So what does it mean to be saved? How does it
work?
I don’t mean to challenge anyone’s beliefs or sell you some other idea. I
just want to look at some answers that have been Christian teachings at
different times in history. The ideas that are dear to some hearts are
horrifying to others. Maybe that’s why Christian understandings of salvation
have shifted from century to century.
The first question is whether there is
even a problem. Many people today say there is no problem. Everything is just
fine. All we need to do is relax and enjoy it life. William James called that
“the religion of healthy-mindedness." Norman Vincent Pealed called it “positive
thinking.” But James didn’t think Don’t worry. Be happy, was a sufficient
response to the hard situation of being human. St. Augustine, Freud,
Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, and countless great minds have seen a dark thread
running through humanity and the whole world. If there’s no problem, then
salvation isn’t an issue. If there is a problem, then we have to ask: What’s to
be done about it? The various Christian answers are called atonement doctrines.
II. WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT SALVATION?
Let’s start with the Bible.
Biblical scholars often say there are phrases that might be elaborated into
atonement doctrines. There are suggestions of eight quite different atonement
doctrines on just two pages of Romans -- but no full doctrines. For the past 400
years, most of us have had a particular understanding. It comes from John Calvin
and is called penal (as in penitentiary) substitution. It goes like this: God
has rules. If they are broken, someone has to be punished. We break the rules,
so we deserve to be punished. Jesus suffered in our stead to satisfy his
Father’s need for retribution. When we see the world "for" in the Bible, we read
that penal substitution doctrine into it. Christ died for us means instead of
us. He took our punishment. I’m not saying that isn’t true. But some people
don’t like the way God comes across in that understanding. Someone breaks the
rules; God gets so angry; someone has to be die to make him feel better; so he
tortures and kills his son and that makes everything ok. That isn’t a God some
people can love.
Some people cherish the penal substitution doctrine -- others
hate it. It’s drawn some into the Church, but kept others out. I just want to
show you there’s more than one way to look at it. Actually, penal substitution
didn’t come along for the first 1,500 years of Christianity. But isn’t it in the
Bible?
Morna Hooker, a leading New Testament scholar, did an in-depth study of
salvation in the New Testament. Hooker says the New Testament passages about
salvation often include the word "for"-- as in “Jesus died for us.” But what does
that mean? The issue is how we interpret the word "for." Calvin and many of us
hear it as, “Jesus died instead of us.”
But Hooker tells us that isn’t what the Bible says. The New Testament uses
four Greek different words, all of which we translate as for. Three of them, peri,
dia, and huper mean such things as around, for the sake of, or for our benefit.
Not one of them means instead of.
Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me” -- not “I’ll take up my cross so
you don’t have to.” The fourth Greek preposition anti could mean instead but it
appears only twice, and both times it suggests a different atonement doctrine
called “ransom.” We’ll get to that idea in a few minutes.
Only one Bible verse,
even in translation, sounds like penal substitution. 1 Peter 2: 24 – he bore
our sins in his body on the tree. But in Greek that means he took our sins to be
crucified there, not that he was crucified for our sins.
Biblical scholars often
say the Bible teaches salvation but not how it works Hooker says we can’t find
an atonement doctrine in the New Testament because we’re asking the wrong
question. Our basic assumptions are so different from the 1st Century worldview
that the New Testament isn’t answering the question we are asking. We assume
that each of us is a free moral agent who makes bad choices and should have to
pay for those choices. We want to know how Jesus’ death gets us off the hook.
But the the Ancient World view didn’t think so much about individuals except as
members of families, communities, and nations. The New Testament is concerned
with the salvation of communities.
Hooker says the closest thing to an atonement
doctrine in the Bible is about covenant: A covenant is a three-way contract with
the parties being person A, person B, and God. Covenants organize communities
around God. We have duties to one another and those duties are holy. In Jesus’
day, the most sacred obligations were “Blood Covenants” -- solemn vows sealed by
blood, often the blood of lambs. The New Testament calls Jesus “the lamb of
God.” Jesus sheds his blood to seal a covenant with humanity. That covenant
binds us to God and to each other.
Healing our relationship with God and our relationship with each other goes hand
in hand. The crucifixion is the primal ritual covenant ceremony. When I was a child,
we’d cut our fingers and bleed into each other’s wounds to seal an oath of loyalty.
In Jesus, God and humanity bleed into each other to form the new covenant. Before
we get to the different theologies that came along after the Bible, we need to see how
salvation connects with healing.
The word "salvation" is used over and over in the Bible.
We usually think of that word in legal terms. We have been condemned for our crimes.
Salvation means a pardon. But that isn’t what the word means in either English
or Greek. It isn’t a legal term meaning pardon. The English root is salve – as
in salve, a healing ointment. It’s a medical term – not a legal term. So why do
the English translators use the word salvation instead of pardon? They are
translating the Greek word, sozo. Sozo literally means rescue from any kind of
danger. But its most common use in Bible times was about bodily health. It meant
being healed from a sickness, not pardoned from a sentence.
There was a Greek
word for pardon, apoulo. The Old Testament used the word pardon 17 times. Jesus
and the authors of the New Testament knew it well, but they never used it – not
once. They used sozo – seeing sin a wound to be healed -- not a crime to be
pardoned. If salvation means healing, Jesus’ healing miracles aren’t just
showing off his power. They’re signs of what he will do on the cross. When the
Canaanite woman called to Jesus, “Lord, have mercy on my son. He has seizures
and is suffering greatly,” she isn’t asking for pardon but for healing. To go a
little deeper into what healing meant, after a miracle Jesus would sometimes
say, “Your faith has made you whole.” He wasn’t just curing a disease. He was
restoring the wholeness to people who were broken apart. We’re often scattered
into different parts, feelings and thoughts rushing in different directions.
Wholeness is coming back together and finding ourselves. Now let’s look
different ways the Church has explained salvation through the centuries. There
have been a lot of ideas about salvation through the years. I’m just telling you
about some of the main ones.
III. RANSOM THEORY
Around 165 A. D., St. Justin Martyr gave us the Ransom Theory. Ransom was by far
the party line of Western Christianity for 1,000 years and there are echoes of it today. "Ye chosen seed of Israel’s race, Ye ransomed from the Fall . . .. " The Ransom doctrine goes like
this: We have fallen into bondage to something evil that exercises power over us
– that “holds us in sin’s dread sway” the hymn says. We have made our pact with
the devil to get whatever it is we wanted. That’s what’s happening in Goethe’s
Faust, which is based on folklore going back to Justin’s saying “we’ve sold our
souls but Jesus bought them back.” The way to free us from the dark power was to
pay its bloody price. Jesus ransomed us because we were hostages to evil. God in
Jesus redeemed us. Redeemed means bought back. Jesus bought us back from the
power that held us in sin’s dread sway to quote another hymn. Jesus, our blessed
redeemer died for us, but it wasn’t to satisfy God’s need for vengeance. He died
to pay our debt – not to God – but to the devil and sets us free to be ourselves
again. The one demanding the blood isn’t God, but Satan.
If bondage to the devil sounds too superstitious, we can demythologize it this way.
We live out of self-interest and do what the world demands in order to give us what we want.
That’s the deal we make and it costs us our freedom. So, what constitutes our
bondage? Most psychologies deny that our freedom is sufficiently robust to
empower us for full humanity. There’s Darwin, Freud, Skinner, Systems Theory,
you name it. The prevalent theory today is from French sociologist, Paul
Bourdieu, and Canadian philosopher, James K. A. Smith. They say assumptions and
patterns of believing, feeling, and acting are hard-wired into us by our
culture. Those patterns are so entrenched we don’t even notice them. For Justin,
the problem is this bondage and the goal is freedom. Jesus paid the worldly
system’s price or Satan’s price with his life. The problem is bondage and the
answer is liberation.
A shortcoming of the ransom model is that it’s all about
the cross, and doesn’t see the point of the Resurrection. In the 6th Century,
St. John Chrysostom focused on the Resurrection. He saw the crucifixion as
setting the stage for the Harrowing of Hell. 1st Peter says that after the
crucifixion Jesus “went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits.”
Originally the Apostle’s Creed said,“He descended into Hell.” That sounded a
little too shocking so we’ve changed it to “He descended to the dead.” But John
Chrysostom knew it as “He descended into Hell. Hell means eternal separation
from God represented by the gates that swing only one way – in – and the sign
over the gate: Leave All Hope Ye Who Enter Here. According to John Chrysostom,
Jesus was crucified so he could descend into Hell, then break out in the
Resurrection, emptying hell and shattering the gates so that they swing both
ways.
IV. SATISFACTION THEORY
Justin Martyr’s ransom theory was the main
understanding of atonement until 12000 AD. In the feudal society of the high
Middle Ages, St. Anselm rejected Ransom Theory, saying it allowed too much power
to evil. In his day, the Church was in charge of society. He didn’t see his
world as under a dark power. Bondage was not the problem since the system is
good. In a feudal society, Anselm reframed salvation in a feudal way. God was
the King in the hierarchy of the world. His position was clothed in honor.
Disobeying God was an affront to God’s honor just as if a vassal disobeyed his
feudal Lord. God’s honor demands satisfaction to preserve the system. God cannot
rest until the divine honor has been vindicated. That would require sinners to
go to Hell, but God loves us too much for that. So, God takes human form in
order to play both roles. God crucifies Jesus to satisfy God’s honor. But it
isn’t a matter of God’s wrath. He just has to save the system.
V. MORAL INFLUENCE THEORY
But is God really so insecure that God needs to torture someone
to feel better? Anselm’s younger contemporary, Peter Abelard, disagreed. He
taught the Moral Influence theory, which is all about love. Sin makes life
miserable. The cross is God’s response. Out of love God goes to the cross to
suffer with us. God plunges into the brokenness of human experience. But how
does that save us? Abelard said sin isn’t breaking rules. It’s failing to love
God, who is the heart of Reality, the heart of all our experience. If we don’t
love God, we can’t love anyone or anything, not even ourselves, rightly. That’s
why sin makes life miserable. But when we look to the cross. we see God’s love
and we love God back. That restores our connection to everything. Loving God
heals our core spiritual wound.
VI. ASSUMPTION THEORY
Abelard’s theory is first cousin to what St. Athanasius taught in the 4th century.
It’s called TheAssumption Doctrine. Assumption means God assuming human nature.
The whole Jesus story – not just the Cross – – birth, death, and resurrection -- saves us.
God assumes all of human of our experience, joyful and tragic – even death.
Athanasius said, That which has not been assumed has not been redeemed. Jesus
rejoices and suffers with us, which means when we rejoice and suffer, we rejoice
and suffer with him. Because we are united to him in life and death, we are
united to him in Resurrection. The chasm of sin and death separated us from God.
We couldn’t cross the chasm to God, so God crossed it to us.
VII. THRE-STAGE SALVATION
The 16th Century theologian, Richard Hooker, offered a nuanced doctrine of salvation. He said there are three parts to salvation. Justification is being set right with God, forgiven, reconciled in relationship. Sanctification is being made holy. God loves us as we are but he loves us too much to leave us the way we are. God makes us better, makes us holy. Union means becoming one with God.
Hooker asks two questions of each part. When does it happen and who does it? He answered Justification happened at the cross, before we are even born. Baptism is a seal to the Justification that has already happened. God does it before we exist.
Sanctification is a lifelong process. We do it with God in partnership.
Union happens in the life to come. At that point, there is no question of who did it. We are one.
VII. CONCLUSION
The
Bible doesn’t give us a definitive explanation of salvation. There have been
many explanations over the years. We aren’t bound to buy any one of them. Our
salvation doesn’t depend on holding the right opinion.
If one of these explanations helps brings us closer to Christ, we can think of it that way.
Or we can take a little from one and a little from another. What matters is that
Christ saves us.
