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A Historical-Biblical Exploration of Salvation

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A Historical-Biblical Exploration of Salvation GORDON-CONWELL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, CHARLOTTE SALVATION BELONGS TO OUR GOD: A HISTORICAL-BIBLICAL EXPLORATION OF SALVATION SUBMITTED TO DR. DONALD FAIRBAIRN CH/TH 669: SOTERIOLOGY IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY BY AUSTIN PFEIFFER MAY 2nd, 2012 INTRODUCTION A historical study of soteriology is a fantastic way to see how words and ideas can spring from and pass through Orthodoxy, but still never fully capture the biblical truth. At the beginning of this reading, research, and reflection, I noted that most of my failures or blind spots are a result of poor language or an inability to define things I believe in fluent terms. I hope my exploration will broaden the periphery of my understanding of soteriology to outside my traditional biases built on the narrow explanation I have inherited. The development of Christian thought on soteriology through the early church, middle ages, up to the doorstep of the Reformation, proves the foundation of soteriology must rest on fully answering the question, “Who is the God who saves?” Without properly knowing the character, qualities, and nature of God, it is useless to propose a language for what the purpose of salvation is, how salvation is accomplished and why? In practice, this exercise honed my linguistic precision in theology. In thought, I have shed the desire to qualify my presupposition that I believe in salvation in Jesus Christ. In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “I find no salvation in my life history, but only in the history of Jesus Christ.”1 These thoughts will begin with the early church's understanding of who God is. The pre- Reformation writers enlisted are Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine of Hippo, John of Damascus, Anselm of Canterbury, and Thomas Aquinas. After moving through the other establishing contributions of the pre-Reformation thinkers, I will call on Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley, Fredriech Schleiermacher, J. Gresham Machen, and to a small extent Karl Barth. The third portion will appeal to 1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: HarperOne, 1954), 54. scripture, with the interpretive aid (either in collusion or in distinction) from these great minds, to develop an argument for what Christian salvation is and means. PRE-REFORMATION DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN SOTERIOLOGY Beginning with the “who” of salvation appears well established in the pre-Reformation writers. It does not seem the rest of the questions are as necessarily telescopic. Who the God of salvation is undergirds all questions of what salvation is for and from, as well as how it is accomplished and why. It is essential to start with “who” and logical to deal with the rest of soteriology following the outline given. Without dealing with each writer's perspective on each question, this approach will lead from “who” to “what” to “how” then “why” in salvation thinking, touching on notable agreements or diversions in these historical thoughts. Who It is fitting then, to start through the words and phrases on who God is. Cyril of Jerusalem says, “If your devotion is genuine, the Holy Spirit will descend on you too, and the Father’s voice will resound over you; but it will not say ‘This person is my Son’, but ‘This person has now become my son.’”2 Cyril recognizes the kindred relationships of the Trinity, which is precisely why it is so beautifully truthful when he goes on to note, “How inexplicable God’s love for mankind! They do not hope to be saved, and they are judged fit to receive the Holy Spirit.”3 In the First Millennium writers there is a strong sense of Trinity. Perhaps this was a result of the opposition voices with whom they were in conversation. Cyril of Jerusalem and Augustine were in the midst and on the downward slope respectively, of the Arian controversy. John of Damascus lived in the rise of Islam. Each of them was dealing with issues related either to the Incarnation or the Trinity, which seem in many ways inseparable issues. Cyril spends a great deal of time on answering questions of who God is. Perhaps 2 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses, ed. Edward Yarnold (New York: Routledge, 2000), 95. 3 Ibid. because of the mystical and cloudy nature of Gnosticism, he was fearless of accusations of polytheism and thereby emphatically clear on the relationships of the persons of God in the Trinity. It is very refreshing to see Cyril so plainly speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, without constantly qualifying these relationships through the lens of “essence” or even the justifiable language of “Godhead.” God is one, this truth is found in Deuteronomy 6:4 and throughout the Gospel of John. Comparing Cyril and Aquinas, it is clear that how one illustrates this truth can greatly effect the way one perceives God. Aquinas' language of Trinity is definitively referential. In other words, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the objects of four clinically described relations.4 The Trinity is described in terms of the operative connections between the persons, rather than persons connected by relationships.5 Aquinas is accurate in his descriptions, for the most part6, but if one begins by describing the persons of the Trinity as objects of Godhead conduits, how does that change our perception of Ephesians 1:3-5? When Cyril says we become sons, we see the loving embrace of our Father, but when Aquinas says we become sons, we see the judicial declaration of the sovereign judge. This will come out again in Aquinas' view of predestination and the Atonement. Cyril's language of relationship is not mutually exclusive to Aquinas' objectivity. However, it is easier to fit Aquinas' perspective into Cyril's, the loving Father, who is also the sovereign judge. It is much more difficult to embrace Cyril if you begin with Aquinas. Living, and for a period working, in a dominantly Muslim context, John of Damascus takes a hand-off from the Trinitarian emphases of Cyril and Augustine and deals exhaustively with the Incarnation. John of Damascus affirms what his predecessors say about the three persons in whose interrelationships we share and uses this truth as the foundation for his dealing with the Incarnation. In his treatise on the Trinity, John says, 4 Paul J. Glenn, A Tour of the Summa (London: B Herder Book Co., 1961) 29. 5 Ibid, 36-37. 6 It could be argued his treatment of the relationships as objects and not the persons is incorrect, especially when he seems to make God's essence primary and the persons of the Trinity seconardy. Glenn, Summa, 89. “we cannot say that the Father is of one essence and the Son of another: but both are of one and the same essence. And just as we say that fire has brightness through the light proceeding from it, and do not consider the light of the fire as an instrument ministering to the fire, but rather as its natural force: so we say that the Father creates all that He creates through His Only-begotten Son, not as though the Son were a mere instrument serving the Father’s ends, but as His natural and subsistential force.”7 Any analogy in these contexts is difficult, so John does not escape the fault of making the Trinity the attributes of God (fire and light = God and son). However, he is well-intentioned in highlighting that the relational foundation of the Trinity must be coupled with the equality of Christ to the Father, as God the Son, living as man. This outline on the Incarnation from John of Damascus, makes it possible for Anselm's breakthrough in understanding the Atonement. Before Anselm could deconstruct the Ransom Theory of the Atonement and propose the Satisfaction view, the Incarnation needed affirmation. Anselm contributes major clarity for how we understand the accomplishment of salvation, but this contribution owes roots in John's (and others) clarity on the who of the Incarnation. One cannot claim that only God can repay the debt the Atonement calls for, and that only man ought to repay, without first exhaustively substantiating that the God-man, who can repay the debt, existed in Jesus Christ.8 Aquinas does a great service to refuting Deism, Pantheism, and Dualism. He specifically addresses views of the state of creation as containing God. By refuting them, he then defines the specific identity of God.9 However, it must be asked, does emphasizing the “oneness” of the Creator, without dealing properly with the Trinity, come at the expense of a holistic definition of who God is? When always referring to God as the One creator, distinct from the created, and Trinitarian through objective relationships do we miss an essential posture of God? This is a great example of why any explanation of salvation must begin by fully answering who the God of salvation is, in person, nature, and character. 7 John of Damascus, “Exposition of the Orthodox Faith”, in Hilary of Poitiers, John of Damascus, ed. Philip Schaff, vol. 37 of A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series. (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library), 565-66. 8 Anselm of Canterbury, The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies and G.R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 314. 9 Glenn, Summa, 42. What The primary view of what salvation is comes through sporadically in a few of these writers, with the exception of Augustine, who emphasizes it greatly in his The Enchiridion. Augustine, in this late-in-life work, blossoms fully into the father of Protestant theology on predestination through God's election and Catholic theology's sanctification through human use of grace.
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