1. The progressive & dynamic ascent of the divine Lestnitsa
“Salvation” and its synonyms possibly originate in the conceptual simplicity of the Hebrew yaša?, a root indicating broadening, enlarging, and ample spaciousness. While some scholars dispute this linguistic origin, its etymological possibility remains instructive when considering images evocative of an ascendant process of enlargement and broadening such as the Jesuit magis (the more), and the Benedictine dilatato corde (dilated heart). Representations of expansion are particularly effective metaphors for grounding understanding and practice of salvation in conceptions of an ongoing and continual process of conversion. Salvation, in this light, is deliverance from one’s former experience of a diminished less toward the presencing of an ever-expanding more.
Often mapped as an ordered and progressive spiritual ascent, understanding of salvation as a dynamic movement from one stage to the next—the “present-life grace with afterlife consequences” Dennis Hamm (2013) proposes as NT key—originated in the first centuries of Christian experience. Su
ch a concept remains solidly present as a metaphorical ladder of the soul’s journey to God first articulated in John Climacus’ 6th century, “The Ladder of Divine Ascent.” Artistically represented in the Lestnitsa [Russian, “ladder”], the iconographic image depicts what can be clearly interpreted as a step-by-step, ever closer journey toward the enlarged capacity of the soul as it nears the more fully manifest capacity for experience of divinity.
The familiar icon tells a story of cosmic latitude: several climbers ascend a central ladder amidst a rich imaginal narrative. Diverse individuals clamber toward a heavenly throne where Christ welcomes the successful, though wearied, climber. Surrounded by saints, angels, and seraphim, the ascender receives the victor’s crown, joining the holy throng in intercessory prayer for those yet on the way. Exemplars in the ascent, these become the sages and teachers of the ancient Way.
Once expanded beyond the literal, the icon becomes more a metaphorical inspirator of spiritual excellence, though few will grace the universalizing, even transpersonal ego-transcendence that can find “The Ladder to Heaven” holding simultaneous faith-filled devotion, rational truth, cultural beauty, and moral goodness inspiring here-and-now enactment of its wisdom through service in the world. For these individuals and their communities, the icon can inspire tangible action, the real-time work of courageous, prudent, temperate, and just compassion in the very-earthly city, no less invigorated by finding faith, hope, and love anchored in the spiritual ascent.
As an imaginal lesson in humanity’s developmental journey, the Lestnitsa endures as a perfect image of salvation, especially in semantic light of the term’s possible origin in the Hebrew term for broadening, yaša?. Illustrative not only of saving ascent, the icon also represents individuals’ significant interior expansion accompanying their transformational “climb.” Since each faith stage sublates all their preceding levels, a pastorally astute Christianity—like Climacus’ Lestnitsa—supports and upholds all its climbers by faithfully bearing their weight upon every developmental rung while yet urging them—like the climbers—to continually ascend.
Neville Ann Kelly <nevkel@gmail.com>
Mount Marty College, Yankton, SD 57078
2. From penal substitution to liberation for a new city
I am grateful for Fr. Dennis Hamm’s opening reflections concerning the biblical material. Let me begin with a few thoughts about the predominant images of salvation I encountered earlier in my life before commenting on the images I find most compelling.
Growing up as an evangelical (specifically a Baptist), the main image of salvation was drawn from penal substitutionary atonement: in short, Christ takes the place of sinners. Because of the popularity of this image with Reformed thinkers, it is not surprising that this theory was often accompanied by a courtroom scene (Calvin was, of course, trained as a lawyer). The first person of the Trinity judges humanity to be guilty, but Jesus, the defense attorney, agrees to serve the sentence. Jesus is taken away, and humanity is set free. Oftentimes, to accentuate the personal character of this substitution, sermons employing this image would replace humanity with an individual person. Certainly this image has captured the imaginations of many an evangelical Christian. In my current role teaching other evangelical undergraduates, I frequently hear them deploy this image with confidence in its explanatory power. Nonetheless, it is only one image, and it omits significant aspects of salvation that are prominently displayed in other images.
One of these alternative ways of discussing salvation is as theosis, or divinization. Several differences may be observed. First, salvation is more than a moment in time, encapsulating the warp and woof of human existence. Next, rather than locating all of the salvific force in Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection (as the courtroom image does), theosis emphasizes Christ’s incarnation and reshapes the goal of salvation. Instead of legal justification, following Athanasius’ words in De incarnatione, we find intimate union with God as the telos of Christ’s redeeming efforts: “[Christ], indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God” (54). We also find ample scriptural warrant for this since 2 Peter 1:4 speaks of becoming “participants of the divine nature” (NRSV). With participation as a key word, viewing the incarnation as central for salvation facilitates thinking of salvation as becoming fully human, reminding us of Gaudium et Spes 22: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.”
Among the numerous images for salvation that exist, liberation is another that I find to be helpful in both ecclesial and classroom settings. Certainly, we are reminded of this by the reflections of Gustavo Gutiérrez, but the Christian faith of former African slaves in the United States also points in this direction. Reading the Exodus story was not a tale of past occurrences; it opened up a new way of understanding God’s work in the world. God was understood to be a liberator, the one who redeemed a people (i.e., Israel) and set them free. Yet, this freedom that Christ has brought is not a mere negative form of freedom (a “freedom from”). Rather, it is a “freedom for,” a liberty that is to be used to pursue God’s kingdom on earth, or, in the words of Augustine, to seek the heavenly peace of the pilgrim city of God.
For this reason, I am deeply appreciative of Fr. Hamm’s discussion of citizenship in Paul’s epistle to the Philippians. One of the hazards of an emphasis on personal salvation is neglect of the formative community that shapes those who have been personally saved. Salvation as membership in an alternative polis, where one’s citizenship is not primarily bound to the nation-state, reshapes the heart of Christian salvation. Here, one remembers Ephesians 2:11-22, where Jews and Gentiles are united in one body by Christ’s peacemaking actions. Returning to theosis, salvation understood as participation in the divine life means that Christian believers become Christ’s body. This certainly has political implications for the church, yet it also highlights the bonds between Christian believers that begin in salvation and abide through space and time. Not surprisingly, then, whatever images of salvation are used, they should help us understand the intrinsic connection between salvation and participation in the church, the mystical body of Christ.
Derek C. Hatch <DHatch@hputx.edu>
Howard Payne University, Brownwood, TX 76801
3. A note on the penal subsitutionary model of salvation & the lynching tree
4. Salvation verifiable in Christians’ lives.
For an historical note on the application of the penal substitutionary model in regard to history of lynching and the death penalty, see: http://jsr.fsu.edu/mathews3.htm
It offers a critical image for understanding why people of faith support the death penalty in the U.S. today.
Alexander Mikulich <mikulich@loyno.edu>
Loyola University, New Orleans, LA 70118
The lynching tree and the cross
A rejoinder to Alexander
Many thanks for drawing attention to this article. While African-American southerners correctly made the connection between the lynching tree and the cross, and white southern notions of substitutionary atonement (so prevalent in the Protestant religion of my childhood in NC; and so eloquently explained in James Cone's recent book on the subject), less well known is the 19th century theological development within the white southern community of a polygenist theory of "Negro origins" that justified this as animal sacrifice.
One of my recently graduated PhD students, Hudson Davis, explored this in his dissertation, "The Negro a Beast." It is a study of Nachesh theology, that asserted (among other things) that those of African origins are sensient beasts of the field, and therefore any mixing of the genuses (interracial relations) was a crime against the created order. Anyone interested in Southern "sacrificial practices" against Black men would do well to have a look at Hudson's very fine research and findings. It has helped me understand my childhood better, and laid to rest many unsettling questions and raises many more ...
Kenneth Parker <kennethlparker@gmail.com>
Saint Louis University Saint Louis, MO 63108
Thanks to Dennis Hamm, S.J., for his reflection on “images of salvation.” Hamm does a good job showing that Christian tradition on salvation is rich and cannot be reduced to “a post-mortem state in which a person is safe with God rather than dammed,” even though for many this understanding may be dominant. Hamm shows that “for Paul, salvation language speaks of a present-life grace that has afterlife consequences.” I think this notion that salvation has to do with the present should play a stronger role in the lives of Christians but also in the liturgy, popular piety, and theology.
I almost want to say that it should be something empirically verifiable. If Christians claim that in Christ God has acted salvifically on behalf of the world and continues to do so in the Spirit, salvation should be a reality verifiable in the lives of those who understand themselves as Christ’s disciples. Salvation is not only a salvation from, but also a salvation for, and this for is not only eschatological. Christians should see themselves as being saved for the present. This salvation should produce a certain kind of life recognizable by others. I think that the concern for social justice among many Christians today is one concrete manifestation of what salvation in the present means.
Martin Madar <madarm@xavier.edu>
Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH 45207
5. Salvation as shalom to those in need
As a Catholic Christian and as a theology professor, I find myself drawn to the prophetic description of Jesus the Christ as prince of peace (Is 9:6), as the one who freely gives peace (Jn 14:27), and who expects His disciples to be peacemakers (Mt 5:9). In Mk 9:50, Christians are charged with ‘having salt’ and being at peace with one another. Such images are important in helping me to begin to understand salvation and my own faith life, as well as my teaching and writing.
Relatedly, I have recently been (re)reading of John Howard Yoder’s work. One of the powerful themes in his writing was a reflection on the Church as a diaspora community, or more properly, as a whole network of connected diaspora communities. Taken together, these ideas of having salt, of being at peace, and of being a diaspora community help me to contextualize one image of salvation as communal reconciliation of the Church by and with God; and with one another; and therefore communal reconciliation as a service to the world and a contribution to the ongoing work of salvation. Jesus brought a new covenant, restoring and perfecting the covenant of salt (Num 18:19). We are called to keep this covenant (cf. Mk 9:50) by acting as peacemakers in the Church and for the world. Our fallen nature has left us in the midst of ongoing discord. Yet the good news of salvation shows us a salvific way through discord to (a deeper) shalom. Our diaspora is not hopeless but has been blessed by God as a service to the world. We have been sent together to all the world to carry salt and to bring the divine gift of shalom and salvation to those in need. As Christians, we can look brokenness in the face (and in the mirror) and move to help bring about forgiveness, reconciliation and a restoration of order.
Marc Tumeinski <mtumeinski@annamaria.edu>
Anna Maria College, Paxton, MA 01612
6. Liberation, then, now, and always
I recall reading some of Paul when I was a high school student. The language of freedom, the freedom from law, and the law of grace, was a powerful and moving image. Perhaps it was a part of adolescence. That image of salvation, however, continues to remain powerful. The grace of God in Christ sets the believer free from the limitations of people's and institutions' external expectations. The image speaks of new and greater possibilities for life in this world - how we relate to one another. And this, in turn, leads to profound convictions about the need for liberation - in this world - from all forces of oppression. The salvation given with this freedom shapes not only convictions about social, economic, and political realities, but also how I see and encounter each and every person in the daily walk through life. These, at least, are some of my initial thoughts.
Frank Berna <berna@lasalle.edu>
La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA 1914
7. Two images: cultural and counter-cultural
When I read or hear the word “salvation” I have a mixture of feelings which I have come to realize are two sets; each set dependent upon an image. One set of feelings is that of excitement, expectant change, and anxiety over my past and future; another set is that of calmness, security, and loving hopefulness for my life.
The first image is that most easily identified as “salvation” because it is found everywhere: billboards, radio talk shows, movies, people knocking at my door, and athletes’ tattooed with bible quotes. In American culture it is shouted at me in the question “Are you saved?” and in the declaration “You are saved!” The dominant cultural image in the United States, I suggest, is a personal experience caused by God. It is individualistic, sudden, powerful and total - providing one with a sense of freedom, starting one’s life anew (born again), and having all the wrongs one has done in the past forgiven. You are saved from your past, your misdeeds, and a limited life. Good old American salvation doesn’t take a lot of time and energy. It just happens. And, of course, feels good. The dominance of this image in the U.S. is supported by the role of revival in U.S. history and of Evangelism in the American media. If one is to talk about salvation in the U.S. today it must be with this common image in mind
However my second image doesn’t affirm these cultural characteristics of salvation. Instead it offers a countercultural image of salvation as wholistic, relational, sustaining, dynamic, loving, transformative, paradoxical, and taking a lifetime to occur. This image of salvation is that of marriage till death. I choose the marriage till death image because it is universally understood - though not necessarily achieved and, of course, biblical in relationship to covenant. Therefore it can act as a basis for experience and reflection on salvation.
Central to this image of marriage is the permanency of a relationship enlivened by mutual love in the midst of slow mental, physical, social, and spiritual change. The change is transformational and comes about paradoxically through being both earned and freely given. Compared to salvation as born again it is boring, slow, and not as attractive to those immersed in a culture of fast change, quick resolution to difficult challenges, and expecting immediate experiential rewards indicative of success. Here is a brief sketch of what that image would look like as we look at an older couple in their early nineties.
They were truly an odd couple in the beginning. He was six-four, two hundred and seventy pounds. Bald and slightly overweight. She was five-ten and about one fifty and big boned with long black hair and obviously athletic. He was high school educated, rugged, uncouth, tattooed from head to foot, and a product of thirteen years of wandering the country working at manual labor jobs. She had a master’s degree in computer science and had gone to school most of her life. They met, dated, and two years after meeting got married. Looking back at their life from a distance of fifty years of marriage they have a hard time remembering themselves as that original odd couple. He now has a master’s degree; she a doctorate. They are parents of three children, one of whom died in her early teens; the other two are now adults. They have changed jobs with the changes in the economy. Now in their 90s they have a little savings, a modest home, and depend a great deal on social security. In the beginning he seldom laughed, had a deep feeling of inferiority, and easily broke out in rage toward those around him; now he is noted for his sense of humor, confidence and calm approach to volatile events. She was a typical nerd who enjoyed reading and tinkering with small engines. Now she is known for her outgoing, spontaneous, easy-to-know personality. Both have, from their individual perspective, been saved from their past selves. Or, as others might say, both have been transformed over the years to someone they never expected to be, nor necessarily wished to be. It happened as they worked out their love for each other and with those they were intimately involved.
You can fill in the rest. Hopefully, you get the idea – God is like that transforming love that sustains their lives. Their lives have been one of transformative change from the time and place of their first meeting until the cessation of that relationship through death -- A life without a coherent narrative, sustained by love, until the final period of death; as predictable as the alarm that wakes them for work and as unpredictable as the bullet falling from the sky to kill their daughter. A narrative formed by the paradox of hard work and the gift of a spontaneous kiss.
As an image of God’s salvation of us this marriage-image brings into play our understanding of God, providence, afterlife, and freewill – to name a few. Salvation here is not so much going away from something or person but rather a process of mutual purification and transfiguration into a unique reality that only can come to be through this relationship- - a relationship of body, mind, and spirit. Remember, as presented here, the image is the marriage not necessarily the individuals who are married. The image is like a picture which is seen as one while being composed of many items within its frame. To focus only on one person in the marriage is to miss the whole image.
Nathan R. Kollar nkollar@yahoo.com
John Fisher College, Rochester, NY 14618
8. To be saved from God and self
I can imagine that this conversation will have much overlap with the recent discussion of original sin. On that front, while I have never heard any Christian admit as much (they would likely claim just the opposite!), the unspoken interior logic of much popular talk about salvation in Christianity seems to entail that our neutral position on the “gear shift” of relationship with God is condemnation, and salvation means somehow cajoling or submitting enough to God to shift out of that baseline position. In effect, I suspect that the implicit motor of that kind of theology is that what we are “saved from” is GOD. Consider the massive amazement at Pope Francis’s recent announcements about the possibility of salvation for atheists; the Vatican damage control spokesperson quickly reminded everyone that “people who know the Catholic Church cannot be saved if they refuse to enter or remain in her.” Apart from the potential for ecclesiolatry in such a statement, the presupposition is that God’s baseline regarding salvation is condemnation unless you make the decisions that God wants you to make. Just today one of my students commented (pejoratively) that I seem like someone who thinks that people in other religions can be saved (!). Such a “Promethean” view of salvation – imagining a God who must be convinced not to condemn – has, of course, prompted objections from any number of religious and irreligious critics, but that narrative remains potent in religious conversation.
However, in line with Fitzmeyer’s multiple metaphors of salvation, Stephen Finlan notes, “Jesus does not say, ‘Your faith has saved you, contingent upon your accepting a soon-to-come interpretation of my death as a cosmic cleansing, a penal substitution, or a massive ransom payment.’” (Stephen Finlan, Problems with Atonement 111) – Paul was smart enough, Finlan argues, to know that those multiple images functioned kaleidoscopically rather than in some straightforward transactional way that has, nevertheless, become the hegemonic master-metaphor for so many Christians.
One of my favorite images of salvation comes from Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Revelation,” at the end of which the upright, uptight white protagonist Mrs. Turpin has a vision of people crossing a bridge over a lake of fire, and she is horrified to see that “even their virtues were being burned away.” Thomas Merton’s “true self/false self” anthropology suggests something similar, as when he claims that “the person must be rescued from the individual” – the need to construct an armor of security against either a punishing God or my own existential nakedness is itself a self-obsession in need of salvation/healing, like Belden Lane's quote, "Ultimately, we are saved by that which ignores us.
In that vein, it is too easy to stop with such highly individual and otherworldly visions of salvation – what happens to me, in particular when I die? Gutierrez notes the important angle on salvation that liberation theology has retrieved – there are plenty of realities from which we need to be saved, but God isn’t one of them. Additionally, the retrieval of resurrection as a non-dualistic, bodily, holistic model suggests the possibility of the transformation of the world, a healing of brokenness that does not just extend to rewarding or punishing behavior but actually overcoming suffering, has opened doors to thinking about ecological crises in soteriological terms rather than seeing salvation as a “fire escape,” so to speak, from the messiness of the world.
Even there, however, the anthropocentrism of Gutierrez’s assertion that “man” is the crown and center of the work of creation” must reckon with our actual place in the created order. In the ongoing conversation with history and science, how ought we imagine salvation? A modern vision of “progress” has given way to postmodern skepticism about history, and even visions of the holistic healing of the world (a la resurrection) may need to be thought anew in conversation with a narrative of the eventual heat death of the universe, the “winding down” of creation as opposed to its grand fulfillment.
Patrick Cousins <pcousin1@slu.edu>
Campus Ministry
Saint Louis University St. Louis, MO 63103
9. A rejoinder to Patrick
The death of Jesus is, in my thinking, essential and integral to what "to be saved" means. If we are not to be overtaken by a closed-world-system-consciousness, if we are not to write off death as "c'est la vie" – then we will inevitably face the incomprehensibility and nihilism of death. Death destroys all those goals, visions, and aims we hope for, strive for, live for. In death, despite endless "celebrations of life," meaninglessness overtakes meaning, futility overtakes hope.
Death is an inescapable consequence of birth. Human beings need to be saved from death, from meaninglessness, from the absurdity of trying. But nothing we can do will accomplish this. Jesus experienced the godlessness of life abandoned, as it were, by the Father in death.
Salvation from death has the ring of something that happens in the next world, but it is much “this worldly.” But if salvation means to be saved from death, it is made known to us in the life of Jesus and accessible through discipleship, throwing in our lot with his. Salvation requires discipleship, along with its pernicious doubt: Is it worth it, to lead a life that is as remarkably ambiguous as that proclaimed and lived by Jesus? While “salvation” is a promise of life in glory, it is an excruciatingly difficult decision about today.
I don't know what happened to Jesus after he was buried. I mean I don't have earthly evidence of anything that happened. I really don't have heavenly evidence either, since I don't know what resurrection from the dead looks like or what heaven might be in terms of human experience.
Salvation is about the faithful life, believing that whatever happened to Jesus will also happen to all who have lived their lives united with him. In daily life, salvation is the choice to share his life, and hope to share his destiny! Its image is discipleship; its vision is the Kingdom of God. It has less to do with forgiving the sins that might otherwise send us to hell eternally and more to do with how we use the little time we have on earth to let God’s kingdom in.
Richard Shields <richshields@sympatico.ca>
University of St. Michael's College , Toronto, ONTARIO
10. The many salvation images of my life
This is an important topic, for it is true, I think, that our lives are framed and expressed by images. In one sense it is easy to respond to. In another sense it is too deep a matter to explicate in an email letter.
The image of my childhood salvation was the stations of the cross prayed in St. Raymond's church and Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx. The stations cut me to the quick, far more deeply than the "ontological mark" on my soul made by ordination.
In young adulthood this was focused by the crucifix alone. This image had meant many things, including despair. It became at times the symbol of our abandonment by God.
In mid-life, when the crisis of the meaning of God became crucial and I took on the 19th annotation and found that God didn't speak to me as I wanted Him to, the silence on the other end of the celestial telephone summed up what I was going through. Simultaneously the images of the Mother and Child (OLPH or OLPS in icon form became the center of my Christian life). It has remained so. In fact the images above remain important to me.
I find myself as an old man still in love with the church, still clinging to the mother, still saved by the Son whom I like less and less as time goes on, and still comforted by the mother whom I really do love (Mary and the church). The Son seems far too demanding, far too distant, far too male – far too much like my father. I shall have to meet him eyeball to eyeball to get over this nagging problem.
William M. Shea wshea@holycross.edu
College of the Holy Cross
Worcester, MA 01610
11. Going beyond the otherworldly position: eating with sinners
I appreciate Fr. Hamm’s recall of Biblical images of salvation, as well as his summary of the common view, salvation “as a post-mortem state in which a person is safe with God.” So many of my students come in with this assumption, which leaves Christianity open to critique from Marxists and humanists of all stripes, as providing no benefits for life in this world. A major objective in my general theology and ecclesiology courses is to stretch students beyond this otherworldly default position, but final essays show that I don’t always succeed.
It’s hard to find one image that encapsulates my own ideas of salvation; one favorite is from Luke 15:2: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them!” (NRSV). The line echoes the eschatological banquet of Isaiah 26 (“a feast of rich food and choice wines”) even as it breaks open the guest list to include sinners, and by implication other riffraff. John Shea’s great poem “The Indiscriminate Host” in Stories of Faith spins out some of the saving implications: “His voice was the music of welcome/ in the ears of rejection;/ his presence a silver setting in the slums/ with linen napkins on the laps of lepers….”
For our spiritual nourishment, Jesus’ indiscriminate welcome of the lost and sinful is reenacted sacramentally in every Eucharist. “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them!” Thank God!
Jane E. Russell <JaneRussell@bac.edu>
Belmont Abbey College, Belmont, NC 28012