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Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Volume 9 Article 8

January 1996

Saved by the Word: The Christian Understanding of the Relationship Between Scripture and Salvation

Michael DeRoche

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Recommended Citation DeRoche, Michael (1996) "Saved by the Word: The Christian Understanding of the Relationship Between Scripture and Salvation," Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies: Vol. 9, Article 8. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1130

The Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies is a publication of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. The digital version is made available by Digital Commons @ Butler University. For questions about the Journal or the Society, please contact [email protected]. For more information about Digital Commons @ Butler University, please contact [email protected]. DeRoche: Saved by the Word: The Christian Understanding of the Relationship Between Scripture and Salvation

Saved by the Word: The Christian Understanding of the Relationship Between Scripture and Salvation

Michael DeRoche Department of Religious Studies Mem.orial University of Newfoundland

SCRIPTURE AND SALVATION - from problem of . The experience of salvation a Christian point of view, both are gifts is believed to remove the individual from the from God. Yet they are not of equal import. state or influence of sin and to place the For salvation is fundamental: it devotee firmly on the side of God. Salvation is the goal of life, indeed it is life eternal. implies the commitment of the individual to Scripture, on the other hand, is instrumental: God and the divine cause. No longer is the it leads one to salvation. As the Christian individual concerned with themselves, but scriptures themselves put it: " ... the with God. In some this commitment is so writings .:. are able to instruct you for strong that the devotee loses all sense of salvation through faith in " (2 their own individuality. Their individual Tim3:15b). identity is overwhelmed' by the divine For Christianity "salvation" is the term presence they feel within themselves. Such that describes the spiritual needs of is the experience of salvation that beings. According to Christianity, the speak of it as a new birth. Upon experienc­ human condition is characterized by sin. ing salvation, Christians traditionally under­ This sinful condition not only separates stand themselves as having acquired eternal human beings from God, it prevents any life which they believe will be spent in union betw~en them. As God is the source in the presence of God. This state is of life and represents the ultimate , this commonly understood as one of ultimate situation represents a considerable problem. bliss and represents for Christians the Those who exist in a state of sinfulness are ultimate good. thought to be without contact with the true Human beings, however, are unable to source of being. An individual in this acquire salvation by themselves. According condition is considered to fall short of the to Augustine, their sinful condition renders true potential of human existence. They are any effort on their part null and void. They often described as being in the dark or being have neither the strength, nor the integrity, lost. Traditionally Christianity considers nor the intelligence to negate the sin that such a condition to be and the sinner to prevents them from entering God's presence be under the influence of the forces of evil. and eternal life. Left to themselves, For Paul sin constitutes spiritual death (Rom are incapable of experiencing salvation. 6:16-17), and those who die in a state of Fortunately, God provides for human sinfulness are traditionally believed to spend salvation, and He does so, Christianity eternity suffering the torment of hell. maintains, through the person of Jesus Salvation constitutes the solution to the Christ. Although the debate amongst

Hindu-Christian Studies Bulletin 9 (1996) 21-26 Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 1996 1 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 9 [1996], Art. 8 22 Michael DeRoche

theologians over the processes by which resurrection. It is these events, Christianity Christ accomplishes salvation on behalf of believes, that make salvation possible. humanity seems endless, the faith Through his death on the cross, Paul nonetheless agrees that he is essential to its maintains, Christ atones for the sin that availability. 1 It is Christ who negates the inhibits humanity from becoming "God-like" sin that has proven such a monkey on the (Rom 3:23-25; 4:25). By his resurrection back of humanity. It is Christ who provides Christ provides hUmanity with the means to eternal life. As Paul puts it, "For the wages achieve eternal life and enter the Kingdom of sin is death, but the free gift of God is of God. As Paul wrote to the Christians in eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom Rome, 6:23). For if we have been united with him in In Christianity scripture is adjuvant to a death like his, we shall certainly be salvation. Its role, as the above citation from united with him in a resurrection like 2 Tim 3:15b indicates, is pedagogical: it his. We know that our old self was instructs about salvation with the hope of crucified with him so that the sinful leading its reader to salvation. It body might be destroyed .... But if we accomplishes this aim in a variety of ways. have died with Christ, we believe that First, it informs its readers about the person we shall also live with him. (Rom 6:5~ . of Jesus Christ. Importantly, what it 8) provides is not a biography of the man but, All that is required of anyone wanting to as : 1 puts it, "the of Jesus claim God's gift of salvation is faith in the Christ, the ". . . truth of these claims. 5 The word "gospel" means "good news" . Of course, not everything in the While the term has come to refer to the Christian appears to be about Jesus written accounts of the life and teachings of Christ. Only its second part, the New Jesus, original°ly it referred to the content of Testament, clearly has Christ as its subject. the Christian message about Jesus. The , a collection of sacred Christians preached the "gospel" long before Jewish texts older than, yet accepted as 2 it existed in a written form. Thus while scripture by Christianity, recounts events the written· may resemble that happened long before Jesus lived. Yet 3 biography, their interest is not in .the Christianity has always maintained that these details of Jesus's life, but in the significance writings .are in one way or another about or "good news" of that life. That is why so Christ and God's desire to offer humanity many of the details that would be of interest salvation. While the links between the two to the historian are not provided. The Testaments have not always been obvious, gospels are interested only in those details and Christianity had to d~velop a variety of that demonstrate the soteriological meaning' methods to "discover" Christ in the Old of the life and death of God's own Son. As Testament ,6 the Old Testament has John 21 :25 indicates, the author knows more generally been understood as anticipating the details about Jesus's life than he includes in New, and the acts recounted therein as his gospel. Being interested in salvation, he prefiguring or prophesying the soteriological only includes those that contribute to his aspects of the life of Christ. message. As he explains in 20:31 " ... these From a Christian perspective the Old are written that you may believe that Jesus Testament's most important prophetic role is the Christ, the Son of God, and that concerns the figure of the . The Old believing you may have life in his name". Testament contains a number of predictions From the perspective of the canonical that God will send a messiah or similar gospels,4 the climax of the life of Jesus is figure to save his people from their plight. the events surrounding his death and "Messiah" means the anointed one.

https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol9/iss1/8 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1130 2 DeRoche: Saved by the Word: The Christian Understanding of the Relationship Between Scripture and Salvation Saved by the Word 23

Originally it was a political tenn used for state of grace in which God had originally the kings of the ancient kingdoms of Israel created them. The divine-human relationship and Judah, and later for the kings and then is henceforth shattered, sin becomes the high priests of the second-century-B.c.E. defining trait of the human condition, and Hellenistic temple state of Judah. By salvation its most iinportant need. extension it came to refer to the hope of the The rest of the Old Testament's Jewish people that God would one day contribution to this story recounts God's restore a divinely led community of efforts to restore the damaged relationship. righteous believers. This spiritualized Most of the account that follows focuses on messiah would have direct knowledge of Israel and God's repeated efforts to save his God's will which would give him special people from one problem or another. From divine powers, including the abilities to keep a Christian perspective, however, the story God's enemies at bay, an acute sense of of Israel does' not represent God's total justice, and the power to restore health, effort to offer salvation to humanity since it even human life. 7 concerns only one people, Israel. For For Christians, of course, Jesus is the Christianity the climax of the history of Messiah. Indeed, "christ" is the Greek word God's saving activity comes with Jesus for "messiah". Although the Old Testament Christ, whose death and resurrection make does not mention Jesus by name, salvation available to all humanity. In Christianity traditionally interprets these atoning for every sin, including Adam and predictions as a reference to him because in Eve's , it is only with Jesus that its view he fulfils all messianic salvation becomes available to any and all expectations. 8 As son of David (Matt 1: 1) human beings. The Old Testament needs a and a member of the order of Melchizedek New in order that its project of salvation be (Heb 5:6), Jesus is the "king" and "priest" complete. who is assigned by God to lead the Together, then, the two Testaments community of in worship. Jesus can provide Christianity with a master-story. heaI the sick, feed the hungry, and make the This grand recit, or "great code", as lame walk. But most importantly, according Northrop Frye calls it, governs the way the to Christianity, Jesus Christ resurrected and faithful understand history and the place of in so doing defeated the greatest enemy of humanity in it. All of history, from its all, death. As Jesus claims in the gospel of beginnings at the time of creation to its end John, "I am the bread of life; he who comes as predicted in the , is to me shall not hunger, and he who believes understood as the drama of salvation,9 or in me shal(never thirst" (John 6:35). To put what some Christian theologians call it another way, Jesus is the messianic Heilsgeschichte. lO Wha( the text asks of its saviour offering eternal life to all who join readers is that they place their lives in the his body (double entendre intended) of context of this drama. As Clark Pinnock believers. recently put it, The Old Testament is also understood as We have access to the message of 1'1: a history of God's earlier efforts at offering I , salvation through the Scriptures that 1 ' salvation to humanity. The Genesis story of 1'4\ God has given to bear witness to Christ, r the expUlsion of Adam and Eve, the first and these words become alive and human couple, from the garden of Eden effective in us through the work of the accounts for the need for salvation. By Spirit. Thus the Bible is an instrument r, I disobeying God's command not to eat from or tool of the ~pirit to teach and shape the tree of the knowledge of , us.ll humanity becomes culpable. Their By placing the events of their lives within disobedience results in the corruption of the the context of the drama of salvation,

Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 1996 3 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 9 [1996], Art. 8 24 Michael DeRoche .

Christians identify with the divine cause and As the "word of God" - that is, the especially those events in which God's truth that he establishes, his utterances saving activity is most obvious. As the in the world, and also the scriptures - is recent statement on biblical authority issued related to the "Word of God" his Son, by the United of Canada states: so contact with the language of the gospel can lead vertiginously to the The Bible is foundational because it Ground of language. 16 recounts our foundational story. It provides a history of God's saving acts. The "Ground of language" for Edwards I It puts us in touch with our roots. The is itself. Edwards points to Gen.l I Bible tells our story as a where God creates the universe through a community. 12 series of speech acts. The logical implication of this account of creation, Edwards argues, . But the Christian experience of scripture is that language is prior to creation and thus IS more than pedagogical. In some sense for an aspect of the divine. "God not only has Christians the reading of the scrip~res language," Edwards writes, "he· is constitutes an encounter with God, indeed language. " 17 Referring to Christ as the with Christ. One of the expressions that Word is thereby an affirmation of the Christianity commonly uses to refer to its Christian conviction that he is "very God of scriptures is "Word of God" . In this context very God". Referring to the Bible as the the phrase conveys the Christian conviction Word not only confirms its divine status, it that the Bible is not ordinary production all affirms its ability to lead the faithful to an of human literary activity but one of divine encounter of that other divine Word, which activity.13 In a sense real to Christians the in some sense cannot be "other" at all. scriptures are understood to be authored by Yet as Paul Ricoeur notes, in God. 14 In reading them, the believer is Christianity there is a sense in which it is thereby thought to come into contact with illegitimate to speak of the Bible as sacred. God. It is not the scriptures themselves that are . What is particularly interesting about [mally sacred, "but the one about which it is thIS expression is that it also refers to Jesus spoken" . 18 The point can be made by Christ. At least since the time of the writing comparing the Christian and Muslim of the Gospel of John, Christians have called attitudes to their respective scriptures. In . !esus ~e "Word of God". The opening of Islam the Qur'an is understood to be an ItS oft-cited preface reads: "In the beginning accurate transcription of God's actual words. was the Word, and the Word was with God Since those words were spoken in Arabic, it and the Word was God". As biblicai is only in Arabic that God's words can be histor!ans have pointed out, the background fully experienced. To translate the Qur'an is of thIS expression is the Jewish notion to lose something of its meaning, and hence common in the first century, that God of the presence of God represented by the ~reated the universe through the original. 19 mteIT?ediary of ~ divine principle, usually For Christianity there is no such descnbed as WIsdom or Word. 15 Thus problem. Christianity understands its John's gospel continues, "He was in the scriptures as a human accounting of events beginning with God; all things were made in which God is perceived to be active. God through him, and without him was not may have inspired the writing of the anything made that was made". But if both scriptures, but it is only through human Christ and the Bible are the Word, to senses that the divine presence in events can experience one is in' some sense to be perceived,· and it is only through human experience the other. As Michael Edwards language that that perception can be comments in his exploration of God's expressed. Whether it be the King James's linguistic nature:

https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol9/iss1/8 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1130 4 DeRoche: Saved by the Word: The Christian Understanding of the Relationship Between Scripture and Salvation Saved by the Word 25

English, the 's , or the to cite . His quest for freedom 's Greek, the ability of the Bible from his personal sense of sin is proverbial. to represent God to the believing community He received his salvation and comfort only remains the same because it is independent upon reading Rom 1: 17. Luther writes: of the specific words and language used. Here I felt that I was altogether born The' Bible, it would seem, has both again and had entered paradise itself divine and human elements. As Luis Alonso through open gates. There a totally SchOkel put it in explaining his choice for other face of the entire Scripture the title of his book: "That is why we have showed itself to me. Thereupon I ran entitled our study, The Inspired Word, through the Scriptures from memory. I putting the accent on the concrete fact of the also found in other terms an analogy, Bible as a reality both divine and as, the work of God, that is, what God human" .20 Karl Barth's way of putting it does in us, the power. of God, with is more provocative. Employing the which he makes us strong, the wisdom terminology of the , Barth describes of God, with which he makes us wise, the scriptures as fully human and fully the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God. 23 divine. By putting it this way Barth not only acknowledges that the scriptures have both human and divine elements, but that the relationship between them is analogous to Notes the relationship between the divine and human elements in Christ: 1. For a convenient summary of the various formulations and the issues at stake in the As the Word of God in the sign of this debate see Alister McGrath, Christian prophetic-apostolic word of man Holy : An Introduction. Oxford: Scripture is like the unity of God and Blackwell, 1994, pp. 337-8. man in Jesus Christ. It is neither divine 2. For the first generation of Christians the only nor human only. Nor is it a story of Jesus was passed on orally. At that mixture of the two nor a tertium quid time the word " gospel" referred to the between them. But in' its own way and content of the preaching, based as it was on degree it is very God and very man, the conviction that Jesus was the· Saviour. i.e., a witness of revelation which itself The term was applied to a book only after belongs to revelation, and historically a the first written account of Jesus appeared very human literary document. 21 sometime after the 65 C.E. By applying christological language to the 3. There is a great deal of debate over the scriptures, Barth does not mean to identify question of the genre of the gospels and of the Bible with Christ. To confuse the two their relationship to the genre of biography. would be a form of or, as some For a convenient survey of current opinion might put it, "". Nonetheless, see W. S. Vorster, "Gospel Genre", Anchor from the perspective of this formulation, an Bible Dictionary. New York: Doubleday, 1992, 2.1077-9. encounter with the scriptures constitutes a 4. There are extra-canonical "gospels", the Christ-like experience in that by reading the Gospel of Thomas being the most well Bible one encounters the perfect union of the known example, that have a different form divine and the human. The (re)establishment and interest than the canonical four.

~ I of that union in each person is, according to However, since the groups that may have the Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky, considered them scripture no longer exist, the definition of saivationI22 they are outside' the purview of this article. In bringing this article to a close, I can 5. Of course there is a great deal of division think of no greater way to illustrate the amongst Christians on the precise meaning saving power of the Christian scriptures than of "faith", and on the way faith should manifest itself in the believer. For a

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convenient summary of the issues between 14. Although most Christians would agree with and Protestant forms of . this statement, there is a great deal of debate Christianity, see Alister McGrath, Christian over the mechanism and processes God used Theology: An Introduction. Oxford: to author/inspire the biblical books. For a . BIaclewell, 1994, pp. 381-94. recent discussion of the various ways in 6. See the discussion, for example, in J. L. which Christians understand the process, see Houlden, "Christian Interpretation of the Paul J. Achtemeier, The Inspiration of Old Testament", A Dictionary of Biblical Scripture: Problems and Proposals. Interpretation. London/Philadelphia: Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980. SCM/, 1990, 108-12. 15. The targums refer to this intermediary as the 7. For a full discussion of the history of the Memra, while Philo of Alexandria, like the idea of a messiah in , ·see the recent Gospel of John, prefers the Greek, . book by John J. Collins, The Scepter and 16. Michael Edwards, Towards a Christian the Star: The of the Dead Sea Poetics. Grand Rapids: Michigan, 1984, Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature. New p.218. York: Doubleday, 1995. 17. Michael Edwards, Towards a Christian 8. See, for example, Clark Pinnock, The Poetics. p. 217. Scripture Principle. San Francisco: Harper 18. Paul Ricoeur, "The 'Sacred' Text and the & Row, 1984, pp. 40-5. Community" , Figuring the Sacred: Religion, 9. Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible Narrative, and Imagination. Minneapolis: and Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace Fortress, 1995, p. 68. Jovanovich, 1982, pp. 169-98. 19. See, for example, W. C. Smith, What is 10. On the variety of ways in which theologians Scripture? A Comparative Approach. use this term with reference to the Bible's Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993, p. 70. view of history, see H. G. Reventlow, 20. L. Alonso SchOkel, The Inspired Word: "Theology (Biblical), History of," Anchor Scripture in the Light of Language and Bible Dictionary. New York: Doubleday, Literature. Montreal: Palm, 1965, p. 87. 1992, 6.497-8. 21. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics. Ed. G .. W. 11. Clark Pinnock, The Scripture Principle, p. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance; Edinburgh: 163. T. & T. Clark, 1956, 1/2, 501. 12. The Authority and Interpretation of 22. Vladimir Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Scripture: A Statement ofthe United Church Introduction. Crestwood: S1. Vladimir's of Canada. Toronto: The United Church Seminary Press, 1978, pp. 119-37. Publishing House, 1992, pp. 68-9. 23. These remarks are contained in the preface 13. This way of referring to the Bible is related to his Latin Works. I cite John Dillen­ to such terms as "inspired", "revelation", berger's version in Martin Luther: Selections and "canon". While these terms are not from His Writings. New York: Doubleday, synonymous, together they convey the sense 1962, 11. that the scriptures are in some sense of God.

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