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Some
Thoughts Concerning Christian Soteriology
1. What was the act? 2. Who was the actor? 3. What was the significance of the act? 4. What was accomplished by the act? So, for example: Rosa Parks 1. What was the act? * Someone sat in the front of a bus (and wouldn't get up). 2. Who was the actor? * This wasn't just any person on any bus. It was an elderly black woman sitting in the front of a bus in the deep south, and wouldn't get up when told to do so by a white man. 3. What was the significance of the act? * Blacks will no longer accept second-class status * In the press, whites stand convicted of their hypocrisy and pettiness (Consider the southern ideal of the "gentleman": a man asks an elderly woman to stand up and move out of the way, so that he can sit down.) 4. What did it accomplish? What difference did it make for others? * Inspired others. * Gave hope. * Helped lead to bus boycott. * Important moment that galvanized the civil rights movement in the south. How about the Easter event? 1. What was the act? * Passion, Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost * A man was executed by being hung on a cross. * According to his followers, he was actually dead and had been buried, but rose again from the dead on the third day and appeared first to the Eleven Apostles, and then to others. Eventually, he was taken away from this visible plane of existence, but because of his closeness to the Father (ratified by his obedience even unto death on a cross), and because he now transcended the bonds of time and space, he was still able to be present to believers and to "incorporate" them into his mission by sending his Holy Spirit into their hearts. 2. Who was the actor? * A Jew from Nazareth, Galilee. * Fully man and fully God: one Person, two Natures. * One of the Persons of the Trinity (the Son of God) incarnate. 3. What was the significance of the act? * Establishing the "Kingdom of God" * "Redemption" * A Jew, celebrating a meal with his disciples, culminating in the Passover: This meal, done in remembrance of Him, commemorates and makes present His sacrifice on the cross. He is the Lamb of God who is sacrificed; His blood is the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.
* It's the memorial (making present) of a sacrifice; it's a communion meal. But it is a communion meal because of the union we have by being incorporated into the Body of Christ. (We love, because God has loved us first. God's love flows in and through us, just as branches attached to a vine draw nourishment through it.) 4. What did the act accomplish? What did it do for us? What difference does it make? * Remember the problem: People created good, but who have turned away in sin, and thus incurred death. More on this later, but for now: * Man is set against himself - The body is split away from the mind and the spirit - The mind and spirit are split away from the Truth * Man is set against man * Pride: Men don't think they need others and don't value their infinite dignity. * The think the way to become more is to give less and keep more. The think self-love involves selfishness rather than selflessness. * And so we get, along with Pride, things like Envy, Anger, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, and Lust. * Man is set against God: God is a big "kill-joy," an arrogant law-giver, not a loving Father. God, rather than being seen as the source of man's greatness (we are made "in His image") or man's liberator (the Savior), is now seen as a burden and a threat to man's freedom. What does the act accomplish? * Communion. * Sin has destroyed an original communion by alienating man from God, from himself, and from his fellow men, and by destroying harmony that should exist between man and God, and thus by extension between himself, man and his neighbor, and man and the world. * Out of His gracious love, the Father has decided to restore this communion of love with and among men. How? * We love because God has loved us first. * How does God show us His love? He delivers His love in person. He speaks to men as friends and dwells among them to call them into a fellowship. He shows that His love transcends even our sin by taking upon Himself our sin and our death. Death: - Man against man. - The crowd shouts out to convict an innocent man and heap upon him the worst tortures. - We kill him. We give Him the punishment we deserve: namely, death. - He enters into our separation from the Father ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,") but remains obedient nonetheless to the Father's will in faith and love ("Father, into your hands...), thus revealing God's great love for us. His love is so great that He was willing to become so low. - Since He has completely taken on human nature, His victory over sin, suffering, and death is also our victory. - He restores communion. He destroys the rule of sin (by sending the Holy Spirit into our hearts). He destroys the rule of death (we too will rise from the dead and be unified with God). - He shares the divine nature with us, but first we must be "baptized" into His death and resurrection. (We must be cleansed from all our idols and impurities -- put our selfishness and self-idolatry aside. He will write His Law on our hearts, and put His Spirit in our hearts, ) If through sin, human nature itself has been affected by corruptibility and has been pushed to the brink of nothingness, we need a Redeemer who recreates our human nature and restores it to health. If we have been estranged from God, from ourselves, and from each other, we need to be reconciled and united with God and thereby recognize and accept our true selves and the selves of our fellowmen as creatures and images of God. If, unwilling to know God, we have turned to the world of matter, our "sight" needs healing so that we may see the love of God behind the material world (gratitude) and come to realize that the goods of the world are meant to become instruments of God's love. If our will has become incapable of breaking out of its self-induced imprisonment, we need to be restored to true freedom (by means of God's grace, healing our natures and spreading charity abroad in our hearts). If our sins earned death for us, we need someone who did not have to die so that by dying freely out of love for us, he may save us from death. - He took upon himself the punishment due to us. - Would it make a difference to you if someone had been willing to die for you? Would it make a difference if you were to be executed for a crime and someone volunteered to be executed in your place? (Maximilian Kolbe; Saving Private Ryan; Tale of Two Cities) If we have come under the dominion of the devil (of sin), we need to be rescued. (NB: Just as the Jewish people gave themselves over to Pharoah and then needed to be rescued.) If we could not give ourselves over to God (and others) as a gift in sacrifice, then someone else has to help us. A) The Metaphysical Foundation of Redemption - The eternal Son, the Word of God, has made our human nature his own. There is a mysterious (but very real) relationship of solidarity and even identity between the incarnate Son of God and all mankind, a relationship which has resulted from the assumption by the Son of our human nature. He is "leaven" for the whole loaf of bread. (See "The Obstinate Toy Soldiers," p. 102: The difference it makes to the whole human mass.) - Creation: Re-Creation - Image of God: Restoring the image - Wisdom and love embodied in creation - Salvation History (culminates in Christ) - Wisdom and love embodied in the Law - Wisdom and love embodied in the person of Jesus Christ B) Christ as Mediator - He reveals the Father, in visible, tangible form. The embodiment, instrument of God's love. - "Bridge" to the Father. - How can Christ join together God and man if he is in himself neither God nor man? C) "He who descended is the very one who ascended" (We don't lose ourselves, we finally gain our selves, our true selves) - His self-emptying in descending from heaven to earth, the cross and hell, and his glorification in rising from the dead and ascending to God's right hand - No one but Christ the Son (Word incarnate) can share (completely) in the Father's life and love. Thus, we are "saved" (redeemed, brought to completion and fulfillment) only insofar as we are united to Christ as "members" of His Body. This union with Christ does not abolish but rather perfects our human identity. - We (finally) get a real personality when we unite ourselves to Him and to His sacrifice. - See Lewis, "The New Man," final three pages. - See Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation: "The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God." - Pope John Paul II: As our Creator, God knows us better than we know ourselves. [Sometimes even your best friends who love you know you better than you know yourself.] Are we willing to listen? Are we willing to learn the truth about ourselves? The truth about human flourishing? Are willing to listen and learn wisdom? D) The Marvelous Exchange - He who was rich became poor for our sake so that we might become rich through his poverty. - "The Word of God, Jesus Christ our Lord ... because of his overflowing love, became what we are so that he may make us what he himself is." - God became man, so that man might become God. - Divinization as true humanization: We share in the divine nature: communion. The image of God is restored: self-less love and self-giving to others. E) Redemption as Victory and Deliverance - victory over the reign of sin and death - How did sin enter in? Disobedience. How is life restored? Obedience of faith and love. - Sin has necessary consequences. It alienates man from his own nature, deprives him of the freedom to change the direction of his life, results in the death of what brings true life. Because of its very nature sin implies a diminishing of freedom, man cannot free himself from it. F) Redemption as Sacrifice - God ordained these sacrifices as a sign of a true invisible sacrifice, the contrite and humble heart by which man returns to God and clings to him. The true sacrifice, then, is repentance, conversion, and love for God (and neighbor). [How hard is it to say, "I'm sorry." Or to reconcile with someone who has done you a wrong.] G) Redemption as Uniting All Creation to God - Does Redemption consist in liberation from the body and from the material universe? No. - The Church regards the body and the material world as God's creation and the object of God's redemption. - Man made the world "subject to futility." - All creation as a sacrament (incarnational). How do we subject the world to futility? (Selfishness, self-centeredness.) How can we "redeem the times"? "Redeem the world"? - See Merton, "Vision and Illusion" * Question: What does it mean to talk about "victory over death?" |