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Course 18 · Lesson 6.4

Salvation compared: forgiveness, submission, liberation and awakening

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Lessons in this course

Course 18 outline

Module 1: Studying Religions Fairly

  1. Describing a religion in its own terms
  2. Insider and outsider views, and the limits of comparison
  3. Pluralism, inclusivism and exclusivism: the basic terms
  4. The comparison grid: God, revelation, authority, humanity and salvation

Module 2: Judaism and Islam

  1. Judaism: Torah, covenant and the shape of Jewish life
  2. How Judaism understands Jesus, Messiah and the Christian claim
  3. Islam: the oneness of God, the Prophet and the Quran
  4. How Islam understands Jesus, the Trinity and the Christian claim

Module 3: Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism

  1. Hinduism: its diversity and central ideas
  2. Buddhism: the Four Noble Truths and the path
  3. Sikhism: the Gurus, the one God and the Guru Granth Sahib
  4. Karma, rebirth and liberation compared with Christian hope

Module 4: Deism, Atheism and Agnosticism

  1. Deism: history and beliefs
  2. Atheism: varieties and arguments
  3. Agnosticism and the question of burden of proof
  4. Meaning, morality and hope in nonreligious positions

Module 5: New Religious Movements

  1. What a new religious movement is, and why the term is debated
  2. Movements with Christian roots and their relation to historic Christianity
  3. Other modern movements and spiritualities

Module 6: Comparing the Great Questions

  1. Revelation compared: word, law, awakening and incarnation
  2. Divine nature compared: one God, the Trinity, the Absolute and no creator
  3. Human nature and the human problem compared
  4. Salvation compared: forgiveness, submission, liberation and awakening
  5. Scripture and authority compared

Module 7: Christian Approaches to Other Religions

  1. Exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism examined
  2. Catholic and Orthodox approaches to other religions
  3. Protestant approaches to other religions
  4. Witness, dialogue and respect

All courses

Program / Course 18: World Religions / Lesson 6.4

What you will learn

  • Describe what each tradition hopes for and how it holds that the hope is reached.
  • Distinguish salvation by grace, by obedience, by knowledge and by practice, and note where traditions combine them.
  • State the Christian doctrine of salvation and the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant differences.
  • Explain why the word salvation applies differently across traditions.

The big idea

Traditions that speak of rescue differ on what people are rescued from, what they are rescued for and who accomplishes it. Christianity teaches forgiveness and new life given by God’s grace through Christ. Judaism speaks of faithful life in the covenant and hope for the world to come. Islam teaches submission to God and trust in his mercy. Hindu paths seek liberation from rebirth, and Buddhism seeks awakening. Sikhism seeks union with God by grace. These differ enough that the single word salvation should be used with care.

Key terms

Salvation
In Christianity, rescue from sin, death and judgment into eternal life with God, accomplished by Christ.
Justification
In Christian teaching, God’s act of declaring or making a sinner righteous. Protestants emphasize that it is by faith alone. Catholics teach that it includes interior renewal.
Islam (submission) and iman
Islam means submission to God. Iman means faith. Muslims hold that paradise is gained by faith and good deeds through God’s mercy.
Moksha
Liberation from the cycle of rebirth in Hindu thought, reached by knowledge, devotion or action.
Nirvana
The end of craving, hatred and delusion in Buddhism, and release from rebirth.
Mukti
Liberation in Sikhism, understood as union with God by grace.
Olam ha-ba
The world to come, in Jewish thought, a hope for the righteous and the age of the Messiah.

Background

Salvation is a Christian word. It translates the Greek soteria, meaning rescue, healing and wholeness. In ordinary use it has become a name for the goal of any religion, and that use has value, since every religion offers some hope. It has danger too, since it can suggest that all traditions are answering the same question when they are not.

This lesson sets the hopes side by side. The final question of the comparison grid asks what the hope is and how it is reached. The answers follow from the diagnoses of the previous lesson, and from the views of God and revelation set out earlier.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Christian salvation

Christians teach that God, out of love, sent his Son to save the world (John 3:16). Christ’s death and resurrection deal with sin and death, and those who trust him receive forgiveness, the Holy Spirit and the hope of resurrection and eternal life in communion with God. Paul writes that salvation is by grace through faith, not of works (Ephesians 2:8-9), and James says faith without works is dead (James 2:26).

The churches differ on how these fit. Catholics teach that justification is by grace, received in baptism and growing through faith, hope and love expressed in works, with the sacraments as the means. Orthodox Christians speak of salvation as healing and theosis, the sharing in God’s life, through participation in the Church’s life. Protestants teach justification by faith alone, with works as its fruit. Each affirms that salvation is God’s gift and not a human achievement.

Step 2: Jewish and Muslim hope

Judaism emphasizes living faithfully in God’s covenant, and the hope for the messianic age and the world to come. The word salvation has a less central role than in Christianity, and much Jewish thought concerns this world: justice, repair and holiness. Repentance restores a person to God without any mediator. Rabbinic teaching holds that the righteous of all nations have a share in the world to come.

Islam teaches that every person will face judgment, and that faith and righteous deeds lead to paradise by God’s mercy. God forgives those who repent, and no one bears the sin of another. Muslims hold that no one enters paradise by deeds alone, but by God’s mercy, and the Prophet is said to have taught this. Christians see here a real resemblance to grace and a real difference: no divine rescuer, and no atonement.

Step 3: Hindu and Sikh paths

Hindu traditions offer several paths to moksha: the way of knowledge, the way of devotion, the way of action and the way of meditation. In Advaita, liberation is the knowledge that the self is Brahman. In devotional schools, liberation is entering the loving presence of God, often by his grace. Many devotional traditions teach that a person cannot reach God by effort alone, and that God’s grace is the decisive factor. This resembles Christian teaching more than the knowledge path does.

Sikhs teach that union with God is reached by grace, with remembrance of the Name, honest work and service, and that a person can be liberated while living. The Gurus condemn empty ritual and hold that the Guru’s word is the means of grace. Sikhs do not teach that God becomes man, so rescue comes through the Word and not through a savior who suffers.

Step 4: Buddhist awakening

In Theravada Buddhism, a person is liberated by following the path, with ethics, meditation and wisdom. The Buddha is the teacher who shows the way, and he does not save. Each person must walk it, though monks, nuns and lay supporters help one another. In Mahayana, the bodhisattva postpones final release to help all beings, and in Pure Land devotion, Amitabha’s vow brings rebirth in a realm where awakening is attained, and the believer trusts that vow.

Pure Land trust in another’s saving vow has been compared with Christian grace. Pure Land teachers such as Shinran stressed that even faith itself is the working of Amida’s compassion. The resemblance is real and limited: there is no creator, no judgment by a lawgiver and the goal is awakening and not communion with a personal God.

Step 5: What the comparison shows

Several points emerge. First, traditions differ on whether the problem is sin, ignorance or craving, and so on what rescue is. Second, they differ on whether the rescuer is God, a teacher or oneself. Third, they differ on the goal: communion with a personal God, a paradise of reward, merging with the Absolute, or the ending of craving. Fourth, grace appears in several traditions, but only the Christian says that God himself entered history to bear sin.

A Christian can note these differences without ranking people. Christian teaching also says that God wills all to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4), a topic for the last module. For now, the task is accuracy: to state what each tradition hopes for in its own terms and avoid reducing them all to a common hope.

  1. What is each tradition’s account of what a person needs to be saved from, or released from?
  2. In which traditions does grace play a central role, and how does it differ from Christian grace?
  3. What does it mean that God himself bears sin, and why do other traditions not teach this?
  4. How do faith and works relate in the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant understandings?
  5. Is it fair to say that all religions offer the same thing under different names?
  6. What would it mean for a hope to be reached by one’s own effort, and what would it mean for it to be given?

Examples

A Muslim and a Christian on mercy

A Muslim says that a believer hopes for God’s mercy on the day of judgment, since deeds alone are not enough. A Christian says that a believer trusts that Christ has borne sins and that forgiveness is by grace. Both place hope in divine mercy. They differ about whether a mediator has acted, and they can say so without ranking one another’s sincerity.

Pure Land and the cross

A Japanese Pure Land Buddhist recites Amida’s name, trusting the Buddha’s vow to bring rebirth in his realm, and a Christian trusts Christ’s death for forgiveness. Observers notice the parallel of trusting another’s saving act. The Buddhist describes the goal as awakening, and the Christian as eternal communion, so the similarity is partial.

Three ways to cross a river

A traveler can try to swim across, build a boat or be carried over by someone who has crossed before. Traditions that stress knowledge or effort resemble the first two, and those that stress grace resemble the third. Christianity teaches the third, with the carrier being God himself. The picture is an aid and has limits.

Different perspectives

Catholic

The Catholic Church teaches that salvation comes through Christ and is communicated through the Church and the sacraments, and that justification is by grace and includes interior renewal. It also teaches that those who through no fault of their own do not know Christ but seek God may be saved (Lumen Gentium 16, Catechism 1257 and 847).

Orthodox

Orthodox Christians understand salvation as healing and union with God, through participation in the life of the Church and the sacraments, in a continuing process of theosis. They do not use the legal language of justification as the main frame, and they stress that God is love, not a judge to be appeased.

Protestant

Protestants teach that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, with works as the fruit of faith. They differ on predestination and on whether a believer can lose salvation, as Reformed and Arminian traditions disagree. Many evangelical Protestants emphasize a personal conversion.

Jewish, Muslim and Eastern

Jewish thinkers stress covenant, repentance and repair. Muslim thinkers stress faith, right action and divine mercy. Hindu and Sikh thinkers speak of liberation by knowledge, devotion and grace, and Buddhists of awakening by the path. Each regards the Christian account of a divine redeemer as a different answer to a different question.

Scholarly

Scholars debate whether salvation can serve as a comparative category. Some, like John Hick, have argued that all religions aim at a transformation from self-centeredness to reality-centeredness. Others, such as S. Mark Heim, argue that the religions seek different ends and that treating them as one obscures the differences.

Why it matters

Hope is what each religion offers, and the Christian claim is that God has acted in Christ to rescue and renew. Seeing how other traditions describe their hope makes possible an honest and respectful account of what is shared and what is not, and prevents the careless claim that all religions teach the same.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: All religions are paths to the same salvation.

Correction: They describe different problems and goals: communion with a personal God, paradise, merging with Brahman, awakening. Some thinkers hold that these are aspects of one reality, but traditions themselves rarely say so.

Misunderstanding: Judaism and Islam teach salvation by works, and Christianity teaches grace.

Correction: All speak of God’s mercy. Judaism and Islam root obedience in a relation God has first offered, and Christianity teaches that faith produces works. The differences are real, but the contrast is too simple.

Misunderstanding: Buddhism teaches that nothing is saved because there is no self.

Correction: Buddhism teaches release from suffering and rebirth, and the path to it. How to speak of the one who is released has been much debated in Buddhism.

Misunderstanding: Christians agree on how salvation works.

Correction: Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians agree that it is God’s gift in Christ, and differ on justification, the sacraments, free will and assurance.

Knowledge check

What does the Christian tradition mean by salvation?

It means rescue from sin, death and judgment into forgiveness, new life and eternal communion with God, accomplished by Christ’s death and resurrection and received by faith. The churches differ on how grace, faith, works and the sacraments relate, but agree that salvation is God’s gift.

How do Hindu paths to liberation differ from Christian salvation?

Hindu paths seek moksha, release from the cycle of rebirth, through knowledge, devotion, action or meditation. The goal is described as realizing identity with Brahman or entering God’s presence. Christianity seeks forgiveness and resurrection life with God, and holds that God acted in history to accomplish it.

What resemblance and what difference exists between Pure Land Buddhism and Christian grace?

Both teach trust in another’s saving act and not in one’s own effort alone. The difference is that Pure Land has no creator God and no atonement for sin, and its goal is awakening in the Pure Land. Christianity teaches communion with a personal Creator and rescue from sin through Christ.

Why is salvation a difficult word to use of every religion?

It is a Christian term for rescue from sin and death through Christ. Other traditions identify different problems and goals, such as ignorance, craving, rebirth or disobedience, and they have different ideas of who acts. Using one word can hide these differences and imply an agreement that does not exist.

Think it through

  1. What does it mean to say that salvation is a gift?
  2. How would you explain the Christian understanding of grace to a Muslim friend who also trusts God’s mercy?
  3. What might Christians learn from the Buddhist emphasis on practice and from the Jewish emphasis on this world?
  4. Do you think it is possible to be saved without knowing that one has been?

Independent assignment

Hope in six traditions

In your notebook, complete the salvation row of your comparison grid for all six traditions in the tradition’s own words. Then write about 300 words on the sentence, grace appears in several traditions but only Christianity says that God himself bore sin, giving the strongest support and the strongest objection you can find. Use at least one primary source.

Further study