Grace and Salvation in Christianity

chapter 1 Grace and Salvation in Christianity

The development of the concept of secular grace begins with examining the concept of grace in the religious context where it arose, and for that, a model of Christian grace and the salvation it entails will be presented. Prima facie, Christian grace offers a promising source of inspiration for secular grace: a picture of the God embodied in flesh to take on Himself the sins of man, the man-God who bears the tidings of love, who gives His suffering and life for the salvation of mankind, who is tortured on the Cross with all His power and vulnerability – that picture is not a part of the secular world, and nevertheless there is in it something so human and attractive to the heart. It is tempting to try to find a way to adopt that redeeming love into the bosom of secular humanism, in order to find a solution to the cultural-existential distress that I mentioned in the introduction. Indeed, the concept of grace also appears in other religions, such as Judaism and Buddhism; but in Christianity, this concept achieves a special emphasis and a deeper and more ramified theological development than in any other religion. The concept of grace is probably the most common, and yet perhaps the hardest to define, in the Christian vocabulary.1 Grace relates to the basis of Christian life and spirituality, but in the course of the development of Christi- anity it has acquired so many meanings and is interpreted in so many varied ways that it is almost impossible to say what its precise meaning is. In general, the various schools of Christianity saw grace as the divine love for Man, as a free giving which the latter (a sinner by nature) does not deserve to receive. The content of that gift is not defined: it can relate to the creation, to Christian- ity in itself and its Church, to specific acts of grace that God grants to a certain human being at a certain moment, or to everything revealed in the world and history. The climax of divine love is the revelation of Jesus, and mainly His death and resurrection. Even the results of the activity of grace are in dispute: it is common to describe grace as purification, exaltation, healing, but there

1 The word “grace” also comprises a system of meaningful and varied expressions such as: be- nevolence, kindness, favor, graciousness, charity, and gracefulness. Grace is parallel in Eng- lish to the Latin word gratia, a translation of the Greek charis, which also means gratitude. In the Septuagint translation of the Bible into Greek, charis serves to translate two Hebrew expressions: Hesed and Hen, which means giving for free (gratis), primarily from someone high to someone lower.

Grace And Salvation In Christianity 31 are many answers to the questions of what exactly those expressions mean and how grace leads to them. My interpretation of Christian grace does not profess to be its exhaustive definition (it’s very dubious if there can be one) nor to discuss questions of the source or validity of the gamut of understandings of grace and salvation. Nor is Christianity as an historical phenomenon – more precisely: the bloody history of Christianity and the great injustices done in its name to individuals and so- cieties – within the realm of my discussion; In this context, except for the gap between religious ideal and its application, there exists in Christianity another aspect that may explain that history: love of God and the Other is a (religious and ethical) duty in the Christian world, and hence it is easy – and perhaps even necessary – to justify harsh sanctions against anyone who doesn’t accept that imperative, sanctions imposed on him to save his soul (thus, for example, the Inquisition is justified). However, although love is understood as an imperative within the Christian context, in a secular one it will be shaped as an ideal that cannot be presented this way; and thus, I shall not deal here with the status of Christian love (as an imperative, with its implications), but only with the content theologians have cast into it. Christian grace can be characterized as a relation whose sides are God and Man, a dialogic relation between two personae. The relation of grace is a gift granted and received from free will. That relation has a subjective aspect of love in the broad sense of the term, which is expressed objectively by concrete acts of grace. Grace has a broad spectrum of possible results distinguished from one another by their content and intensity, and at their apogee is salvation in all its aspects. I shall discuss those characteristics in their order.

A Relation

Grace is first and foremost a relation between two: God and Man.2 The human side of this relation may be individual human beings, all humanity (children of Adam) or groups of human beings with a common uniqueness: the Nation of Israel (before Jesus) and the Christian church (after Jesus).What are the main characteristics of the sides to the relation of grace, God and Man? Four main characteristics are attributed to God in Christianity: first, God is an infinite,

2 Characterizing Grace as a relation is common to most Western theologians. Moreover, the formal nature of the concept of relation, which lacks concrete content, enables it to be used as a broad common denominator that suits different and varied understandings of grace.