| DOCTRINES AND DOGMAS |
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3 MAJOR THEMES AND MOTIFS |
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Salvation is the deliverance or
redemption of man from such fundamentally negative or disabling conditions as
suffering, evil, finitude, and death. In some religious beliefs it also entails
the restoration or raising up of the natural world to a higher realm or state.
The idea of salvation is a characteristic religious notion related to an issue
of profound human concern. |
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It could be argued reasonably that the
primary purpose of all religions is to provide salvation for their adherents,
and the existence of many different religions indicates that there is a great
variety of opinion about what constitutes salvation and the means of achieving
it. That the term salvation can be meaningfully used in connection with so many
religions, however, shows that it distinguishes a notion common to men and women
of a wide range of cultural traditions. |
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The fundamental idea contained in the
English word salvation, and the Latin salvatio
and Greek soteria from which it
derives, is that of saving or delivering from some dire situation. The term soteriology
denotes beliefs and doctrines concerning salvation in any specific religion, as
well as the study of the subject. The idea of saving or delivering from some
dire situation logically implies that mankind, as a whole or in part, is in such
a situation. This premise, in turn, involves a series of related assumptions
about human nature and destiny. |
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The creation
myths of many religions express the beliefs that have been held
concerning the original state of mankind in the divine ordering of the universe.
Many of these myths envisage a kind of Golden Age at the beginning of the world,
when the first human beings lived, serene and happy, untouched by disease,
aging, or death and in harmony with a divine Creator. Myths of this kind usually
involve the shattering of the ideal state by some mischance, with wickedness,
disease, and death entering into the world as the result. The Adam
and Eve myth is particularly notable for tracing the origin of death, the
pain of childbirth, and the hard toil of agriculture, to man's disobedience of
his maker. It expresses the belief that sin is the cause of evil in the world,
and implies that salvation must come through man's repentance and God's
forgiveness and restoration. (see also paradise,
original sin, good
and evil) |
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In ancient Iran, a different cosmic
situation was contemplated, one in which the world was seen as a battleground of
two opposing forces: good and evil, light and darkness, life and death. In this
cosmic struggle, mankind was inevitably involved, and the quality of human life
was conditioned by this involvement. Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroastrianism,
called upon men to align themselves with the good, personified in the god Ahura
Mazda, because their ultimate salvation lay in the triumph of the cosmic
principle of good over evil, personified in Ahriman.
This salvation involved the restoration of all that had been corrupted or
injured by Ahriman at the time of his final defeat and destruction. Thus the
Zoroastrian concept of salvation was really a return to a Golden Age of the
primordial perfection of all things, including man. Some ancient Christian
theologians (e.g., Origen) also
conceived of a final "restoration" in which even devils, as well as
men, would be saved; this idea, called universalism, was condemned by the church
as heresy. (see also Iranian
religion, eschatology, Christianity) |
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In those religions that regard man as
essentially a psychophysical organism (e.g.,
Judaism, Christianity,
Zoroastrianism, Islam), salvation involves the restoration of both the
body and soul. Such religions
therefore teach doctrines of a resurrection
of the dead body and its reunion with the soul, preparatory to ultimate
salvation or damnation. In contrast, some religions have taught that the body is
a corrupting substance in which the soul is imprisoned (e.g.,
Orphism, an ancient Greek mystical cult; Hinduism; and Manichaeism, an
ancient dualistic religion of Iranian origin). In this dualistic view of human
nature, salvation has meant essentially the emancipation of the soul from its
physical prison or tomb and its return to its ethereal home. Such religions
generally explain the incarceration of the soul in the body in terms that imply
the intrinsic evil of physical matter.
Where such views of human nature were held, salvation therefore meant the
eternal beatitude of the disembodied soul. (see also human body, dualism) |
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Christian soteriology contains a very
complex eschatological program (regarding the final end of man and the world),
which includes the fate of both individual persons and the existing cosmic
order. The return of Christ
will be heralded by the destruction of the heaven and earth and the resurrection
of the dead. The Last Judgment,
which will then take place, will result in the eternal beatitude of the just,
whose souls have been purified in purgatory, and the everlasting damnation of
the wicked. The saved, reconstituted by the reunion of soul and body, will
forever enjoy the Beatific Vision; the damned, similarly reconstituted, will
suffer forever in hell, together with the devil and the fallen angels. Some
schemes of eschatological imagery, used by both Christians and Jews, envisage
the creation of a new heaven and earth, with a New Jerusalem at its centre. |
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The hope of salvation has naturally
involved ideas about how it might be achieved. These ideas have varied according
to the form of salvation envisaged; but the means employed can be divided into
three significant categories: (1) the most primitive is based on belief in the
efficacy of ritual magic--initiation ceremonies, such as those of the ancient
mystery religions, afford notable examples; (2) salvation by self-effort,
usually through the acquisition of esoteric knowledge, ascetic discipline, or
heroic death, has been variously promised in certain religions--Orphism,
Hinduism, Islam, for example; and (3) salvation by divine aid, which has
usually entailed the concept of a divine saviour who achieves what man cannot do
for himself--as in Christianity, Judaism, Islam. |
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Study of the relevant evidence shows the
menace of death as the basic
cause of soteriological concern and action. Salvation from disease or
misfortune, which also figures in religion, is of a comparatively lesser
significance, though it is often expressive of more immediate concerns. But the
menace of death is of another order, and it affects man more profoundly because
of personal awareness of the temporal categories of past,
present, and future.
This time-consciousness is possessed by no other species with such insistent
clarity. It enables man to draw upon past experience in the present and to plan
for future contingencies. This faculty, however, has another effect: it causes
man to be aware that he is subject to a process that brings change, aging,
decay, and ultimately death to all living things. Man, thus, knows what no other
animal apparently knows about itself, namely, that he is mortal. He can project
himself mentally into the future and anticipate his own decease. Man's burial
customs grimly attest to his preoccupation with death from the very dawn of
human culture in the Paleolithic Period. Significantly, the burial of the dead
is practiced by no other species. (see also death
rite) |
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The menace of death is thus inextricably
bound up with man's consciousness of time. In seeking salvation from death, man
has been led on to a deeper analysis of his situation, in which he has seen in
his subjection to time the true cause of the evil that besets him. The quest for
salvation from death, accordingly, becomes transformed into one for deliverance
from subjugation to the destructive flux of time. How such deliverance might be
effected has been conceived in varying ways, corresponding to the terms in which
the temporal process is imagined. The earliest known examples occur in ancient
Egyptian religious texts. In the so-called Pyramid
Texts (c. 2400 BC), the dead pharaoh seeks to fly up to heaven and join the
sun-god Re on his unceasing journey across the sky, incorporated, thus, in a
mode of existence beyond change and decay. A passage in the later Book
of the Dead (1200 BC) represents the deceased, who has been ritually
identified with Osiris, declaring that he comprehends the whole range of time in
himself, thus asserting his superiority to it. (see also Egyptian religion) |
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The recognition that mankind is subject
to the inexorable law of decay and death has produced other later attempts to
explain its domination by time and to offer release from it. Such attempts are
generally based on the idea that the temporal process is cyclical, not linear,
in its movement. Into this concept, a belief in metempsychosis (transmigration
of souls) can be conveniently fitted. For the idea that souls pass through a
series of incarnations becomes more intelligible if the process is seen as being
cyclical and in accordance with the pattern of time that apparently governs all
the forms of being in this world. The conception has been elaborated in various
ways in both Eastern and Western religions. In Hinduism
and Buddhism, elegantly
imaginative chronological systems have been worked out, comprising mahayugas,
or periods of 12,000 years, each year of which represented 360 human years.
In turn, 1,000 mahayugas made up one kalpa,
or one day in the life of Brahma, and spanned the duration of a world
from its creation to its destruction. After a period of quiescence, the world
would be re-created by Brahma for another kalpa.
The purpose of this immense chronological scheme was to emphasize how the
unenlightened soul was doomed to suffer an infinite series of incarnations, with
all of their attendant pain of successive births and deaths. In the Orphic
texts of ancient Greece, man's destiny to endure successive incarnations is
significantly described as "the sorrowful weary Wheel," from which the
Orphic initiate hoped to escape through the secret knowledge imparted to him.
(see also reincarnation) |
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As an alternative interpretation to this
view of man's fatal involvement with time, the tragedy of the human situation
has also been explained in terms of the soul's involvement with the physical
universe. In some systems of thought (e.g.,
Hinduism and Buddhism), the two interpretations are synthesized; and in such
systems it is taught that, by accepting the physical world as reality, the soul
becomes subject to the process of time. (see also nature, philosophy of) |
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Concentration on the soul's involvement
with matter as being the cause of the misery of human life has generally stemmed
from a dualistic view of human nature. The drawing of a sharp distinction
between spirit and matter has been invariably motivated by a value judgment:
namely, that spirit (or soul) is intrinsically good and of transcendent origin,
whereas matter is essentially evil and corrupting. Through his body, man is seen
to be part of the world of nature, sharing in its processes of generation,
growth, decay, and death. How his soul came to be incarcerated in his
corruptible body has been a problem that many myths seek to explain. Such
explanations usually involve some idea of the descent of the soul or its divine
progenitor from the highest heaven and their fatal infatuation with the physical
world. The phenomenon of sexual intercourse has often supplied the imagery used
to account for the involvement of the soul in matter and the origin of its
corruption. Salvation has thus been conceived in this context as emancipation
from both the body and the natural world. In Gnosticism
and Hermeticism--esoteric
theosophical and mystical movements in the Greco-Roman world--and the teaching
of St. Paul deliverance was
sought primarily from the planetary powers that were believed to control human
destiny in the sublunar world. |
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The idea that man is in some dire
situation, from which he seeks to be saved, necessarily involves explaining the
cause of his predicament. The explanations provided in the various religions
divide into two kinds: those that attribute the cause to some primordial
mischance and those that hold man to be himself responsible. Some explanations
that make man directly responsible represent him also as the victim of the
deceit of a malevolent deity or demon. |
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Because death has been universally
feared but rarely accepted as a natural necessity, the mythologies of many
peoples represent the primeval ancestors of mankind as having accidentally lost,
in some way, their original immortality. One Sumerian myth, however, accounts
for disease and old age as resulting from the sport of the gods when they
created mankind. In contrast, the Hebrew story of Adam and Eve finds the origin
of death in their act of disobedience in eating of the tree of knowledge of good
and evil, forbidden to them by their maker. This causal connection between sin
and death was elaborated by St. Paul in his soteriology, outlined in his letter
to the Romans, and formed the basis of the Christian doctrine of original
sin. According to this doctrine, through seminal identity with Adam,
every human being must partake of the guilt of Adam's sin, and even at birth, a
child is already deserving of God's wrath for its share in the original sin of
mankind and before it acquires the guilt of its own actual sin. Moreover,
because each individual inherits the nature of fallen humanity, he has an innate
predisposition to sin. This doctrine of man means that no person can, by his
volition and effort, save himself but depends absolutely upon the saving grace
of Christ. |
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Wherever a dualistic view of human
nature has been held, it has been necessary to explain how ethereal souls first
became imprisoned in physical bodies. Generally, the cause has been found in the
supposition of some primordial ignorance or error rather than in a sinful act of
disobedience or revolt--i.e., in an
intellectual rather than a moral defect. According to the Hindu philosophical
system known as Advaita Vedanta,
a primordial ignorance (avidya)
originally caused souls to mistake the empirical world for reality and so
become incarnated in it. By continuing in this illusion, they are subjected to
an unceasing process of death and rebirth (samsara) and all of its consequent suffering and degradation. Similarly, in
Buddhism, a primordial ignorance (avijja)
also started the "chain of causation" (paticcasamuppada)
that produces the infinite misery of unending rebirth in the empirical world. |
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The means by which salvation might be
achieved has been closely related to the manner in which salvation has been
conceived and to what has been deemed to be the cause of man's need of it. Thus
in ancient Egypt, where salvation was from the physical consequences of death, a
technique of ritual embalmment
was employed. Ritual magic has also been used in those religions that require
their devotees to be initiated by ceremonies of rebirth (e.g.,
Baptism in water in Christianity, in bull's blood in rites of Cybele) and by
symbolic communion with a deity through a ritual meal in the Eleusinian
Mysteries, Mithraism, and Christianity (communion). (see also embalming
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Religions that trace the ills of man's
present condition to some form of primordial error, or ignorance, offer
knowledge that will ensure salvation. Such knowledge is of an esoteric kind and
is usually presented as divine revelation
and imparted secretly to specially prepared candidates. In some instances (e.g.,
Buddhism and Yoga), the knowledge imparted includes instruction in mystical
techniques designed to achieve spiritual deliverance. (see also esotericism) |
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Whenever mankind has been deemed to need
divine aid for salvation, there has been an emphasis on a personal relationship
with the saviour-god concerned. Such relationship usually connotes faith in and
loving devotion and service toward the deity, and such service may involve moral
and social obligations. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the bhakti
cults of India afford notable examples. Christianity adds a further
requirement in this context: because human nature is basically corrupted by sin,
God's prevenient (antecedent, activating) grace is needed before man's will can
be disposed even to desire salvation. |
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The Pyramid
Texts of ancient Egypt provide the earliest evidence of man's quest for
salvation. They reveal that by about 2400 BC a complex soteriology connected
with the divine kingship of the pharaohs had been established in Egypt. This
soteriology was gradually developed in concept and ritual practice and was
popularized; i.e., the original royal
privilege was gradually extended to all of the classes of society, until by
about 1400 BC it had become an elaborate mortuary cult through which all who
could afford its cost could hope to partake of the salvation it offered. This
salvation concerned three aspects of postmortem existence, as imagined by the
ancient Egyptians, and, in the concept of Osiris,
it involved the earliest instance of a saviour-god. An elaborate ritual of
embalmment was designed to save the corpse from decomposition and restore its
faculties so that it could live in a well-equipped tomb. This ritual imitated
the acts that were believed to have been performed by the gods to preserve the
body of Osiris, with whom the deceased was ritually assimilated. The next
concern was to resurrect the embalmed body of the dead person, as Osiris had
been resurrected to a new life after death. Having thus been saved from the
consequences of death, the revivified dead had to undergo a judgment (presided
over by Osiris) on the moral quality of his life on earth. In this ordeal, the
deceased could be saved from an awful second death only by personal integrity.
If he safely passed the test, he was declared maa kheru ("true of voice") and was admitted to the
beatitude of the realm over which Osiris reigned. (see also Egyptian religion) |
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This Osirian mortuary cult, with its
promise of postmortem salvation, was practiced from about 2400 BC until its
suppression in the Christian Era. In some respects, it constitutes a prototype
of Christianity as a salvation religion. |
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Running through the great complex of
beliefs and ritual practices that constitute Hinduism is the conviction that the
soul or self (atman)
is subject to samsara--i.e., the transmigration through many forms of incarnation.
Held together with this belief is another, karmanthat the soul carries with it the burden of its past actions--which
conditions the forms of its future incarnations. As long as the soul mistakes
this phenomenal world for reality and clings to existence in it, it is doomed to
suffer endless births and deaths. The various Indian cults and philosophical
systems offer ways in which to attain moksaor mukti ("release";
"liberation") from the misery of subjection to the inexorable process
of cosmic time. Basically, this liberation consists in the soul's effective
apprehension of its essential unity with Brahman, the supreme Atman
or essence of reality, and its merging with it. Most of the ways by which
this goal may be attained require self-effort in mastering meditation techniques
and living an ascetic life. But, in the devotional (bhakti)
cults associated with Visnu (Vishnu) and Shiva (Shiva), an intense
personal devotion to the deity concerned is believed to earn divine aid to
salvation. |
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Buddhism accepts the principles of samsara
and karman (Pali: kamma),
but it differs in one important respect from the Hindu conception of man.
Instead of believing that an atman, or
soul, passes through endless series of incarnations, Buddhism teaches that there
is no such preexistent immortal soul that migrates from body to body. Each
individual consists of a number of physical and psychic elements (khandhas)
that combine to create the sense of personal individuality. But this combination
is only temporary and is irreparably shattered by death, leaving no element that
can be identified as the soul or self. By a subtle metaphysical argument,
however, it is maintained that the craving for personal existence generated by
the khandhas
causes the birth of another such personalized combination, which inherits
the karma of a sequence of previous combinations of khandhas. |
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The Enlightenment
won by Gautama Buddha was essentially about the cause of existence in the
phenomenal world, from which suffering inevitably stemmed. Buddhist teaching and
practice have, accordingly, been designed to acquaint men with their true nature
and situation and enable them to free themselves from craving for existence in
the space-time world and so achieve Nirvana.
Traditionally, this goal has been presented in negative terms--as the extinction
of desire, attachment, ignorance, or suffering--creating the impression that
Buddhist salvation means the complete obliteration of individual consciousness.
In one sense, this is so; but, in terms of Buddhist metaphysics, ultimate
reality transcends all the terms of reference relevant to existence in this
world. |
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Theoretically, the Buddhist initiate
should, by his own effort in seeking to eradicate desire for continued existence
in the empirical world, achieve his own salvation. But, as Buddhism developed
into a popular religion in its Mahayana
("Greater Vehicle") form, provision was made for the natural human
desire for assurance of divine aid. Consequently, belief in many saviours, known
as bodhisattvas
("Buddhas-to-be"), developed, together with elaborate
eschatologies concerning human destiny. According to these, before the ultimate
achievement of Nirvana, the faithful could expect to pass through series
of heavens or hells, according to their merits or demerits and the intensity of
their devotion to a bodhisattva. |
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Because Judaism is by origin and nature
an ethnic religion, salvation has been primarily conceived in terms of the
destiny of Israel as the elect people of Yahweh,
the God of Israel. It was not until the 2nd century BC that there arose a belief
in an afterlife, for which the
dead would be resurrected and undergo divine judgment. Before that time, the
individual had to be content that his posterity continued within the holy
nation. But, even after the emergence of belief in the resurrection of the dead,
the essentially ethnic character of Judaism still decisively influenced
soteriological thinking. The apocalyptic faith, which became so fervent as
Israel moved toward its fateful overthrow by the Romans in AD 70, conceived of
salvation as the miraculous intervention of Yahweh or his Messiah in world
affairs. This saving act would culminate in the Last Judgment delivered on the
nations that oppressed Israel and Israel's glorious vindication as the people of
God. From the end of the national state in the Holy Land in AD 70, Jewish
religion, despite the increasing recognition of personal significance, has
remained characterized by its essential ethnic concern. Thus, the Exodus from
Egypt has ever provided the typal imagery in terms of which divine salvation has
been conceived, its memory being impressively perpetuated each year by the
ritual of the Passover. The restoration of the holy nation, moreover, always has
been linked with its Holy Land; and Hebrew literature, both in biblical and
later forms, has lovingly described the establishment of a New Jerusalem and a
new Temple of Yahweh ("the Lord"), whether it be in this world or in
some new cosmic order. Into this new order, the rest of mankind, repentant and
purified, will be incorporated; for the original promise made to the patriarch
Abraham included all men within the divine blessing. In the Book
of Zechariah, the ultimate salvation of mankind is graphically envisaged:
the Gentiles, in company with the Jews, will return to serve God in an ideal
Jerusalem. (see also chosen
people) |
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Christianity has been described as the
salvation religion par excellence. Its
primary premise is that the incarnation and sacrificial death of its founder, Jesus
Christ, formed the climax of a divine plan for mankind's salvation. This
plan was conceived by God consequent on the Fall of Adam, the progenitor of the
human race, and it would be completed at the Last Judgment, when the Second
Coming of Christ would mark the catastrophic end of the world. This
soteriological evaluation of history finds expression in the Christian division
of time into two periods: before Christ (BC) and Anno Domini (AD)--i.e.,
the years of the Lord. |
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The evolution of the Christian doctrine
of salvation was a complicated process essentially linked with the gradual
definition of belief in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth. In Christian
theology, therefore, soteriology is an integral part of what is termed Christology.
Whereas the divinity of Jesus Christ has been the subject of careful
metaphysical definition in the creeds, the exact nature and mode of salvation
through Christ has not been so precisely defined. The church has been content to
state, in its creeds, that Christ was incarnated, crucified, died, and rose
again "for us men, and for our salvation." |
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The basic tenets of Christian
soteriology may be summarized as follows: man is deserving of damnation by God
for the original sin, which he inherits by descent from Adam, and for his own
actual sin. But, because sin is regarded as also putting man in the power of the
devil, Christ's work of salvation has been interpreted along two different
lines. Thus, his crucifixion may be evaluated as a vicarious sacrifice offered
to God as propitiation or atonement for human sin. Alternatively, it may be seen
as the price paid to redeem man from the devil. These two ways of interpreting
the death of Christ have provided the major themes of soteriological theory and
speculation in Christian theology. Despite this fluidity of interpretation,
belief in the saving power of Christ is fundamental to Christianity and finds
expression in every aspect of its faith and practice. |
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Muhammad
regarded himself as "a warner clear" and as the last and greatest of a
line of prophets whom Allah had sent to warn his people of impending
doom. Although the word najat (Arabic:
"salvation") is used only once in the Qur`an, the basic aim of
Islam is salvation in the sense of escaping future punishment, which will
be pronounced on sinners at the Last
Judgment. Muhammad did teach that Allah had predestined
some men to heaven and others to hell; but the whole logic of his message is
that submission to Allah is the means to salvation, for Allah is
merciful. Indeed, faithful submission is the quintessence of Islam, the
word Islam itself meaning submission. Although in his own estimation Muhammad
was the prophet of Allah, in later Muslim devotion he came to be
venerated as the mediator between God and man, whose intercession was decisive.
(see also predestination) |
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According to Zoroaster, a good and evil
force struggled for mastery in the universe. Man had to decide on which side to
align himself in this fateful contest. This dualism
was greatly elaborated in later Zoroastrianism and Parsiism,
which derived from it. Good, personified as the god Ormazd,
and evil, as the demonic Ahriman,
would contend for 12,000 years with varying fortune. At last Ormazd would
triumph, and Saoshyans, his
agent, would resurrect the dead for judgment. The righteous would pass to their
reward in heaven, and the wicked be cast into hell. But this situation was of
temporary duration. A meteor would later strike the earth, causing a flood of
molten metal. Through this flood all would have to pass as an ordeal of
purgation. The sensitivity of each to the anguish would be determined by the
degree of his guilt. After the ordeal, all men would become immortal, and all
that Ahriman had harmed or corrupted would be renewed. Salvation thus took the
form of deliverance from postmortem suffering; for ultimate restoration was
assured to all after suffering the degree of purgation that the nature of their
earthly lives entailed. (S.G.F.B.) |
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