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October 27, 2016
trichotomy and holism.
“soul sleep”
Pensées
The basic, unifying Christian perspective on humanity, for example, includes the relatively simple (not simplistic) idea that all human beings are both unique and possessed of special dignity and value because they are created in the image of God and corrupted from birth by a spiritual disease that prevents them from being fulfilled apart from God’s saving grace.
Christianity is a religion of salvation. Just as “Christianity is Christ,” so also “Christianity is the gospel of Christ as Savior.”
When the early church fathers debated the doctrine of the person of Christ and sought to construct a unifying belief about his deity and humanity (incarnation) they were primarily concerned to protect the reality of salvation through Christ.
Christians have always believed that Jesus Christ is both Lord and Savior, and they have sought to keep the two titles inextricably tied together. Any Christology that undermines salvation through Christ was rejected; any view of salvation that does not do justice to Christ’s sole and unsurpassable mediatorship and leaves room for other saviors and lords or for salvation by some other means was rejected.
Salvation has been interpreted in relation to the fallen human condition of alienation from God as well as inward corruption of nature. Christianity says that Jesus Christ reversed this condition or provided for its reversal by his life, death and resurrection from the dead.
Atonement is an English word that means reconciliation.
Here we examine the Christian consensus about the second part—Jesus as Savior of the world. Unfortunately, here we cannot turn to a unifying creed setting forth as detailed a statement as that contained in the Chalcedonian Definition about Jesus’ humanity and divinity. No major unifying council of the undivided church (i.e., before the division between Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Catholicism) ever promulgated an official Christian belief about the atonement. All the major Christological creeds—from Nicea through Chalcedon through the so-called Athanasian Creed—say that Jesus Christ is
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Almost every book of the New Testament from Matthew to Revelation at least touches on Christ’s life and death as the sole basis for the salvation of humanity through the grace and mercy of God. As usual, the apostle Paul summarizes this earliest Christian perspective best:
Paul continues in the same epistle by emphasizing that Christ’s death was not only an objective reconciliation but also a transforming event in which we participate.
By faith in Jesus Christ and his cross we die with him to our own fallen, sinful natures. The first epistle of Peter offers
The second-century bishop and theologian Irenaeus, who was an important link between the late second-century Christians and the apostles because he had been taught by Polycarp, one of John’s disciples, emphasized the Christian consensus in his five books Against Heresies. In the first book the bishop of Lyons writes about the unifying tradition of Christian belief handed down by the apostles and includes in it the one faith (belief) in salvation through Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate “for our salvation.” He specifically mentions the major events of Jesus’ life, death
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“recapitulated”
“second Adam,”
Incarnation of the Word (De Incarnatione).
De Incarnatione, Athanasius emphasized the necessity of the incarnation for salvation and worked out further the idea of saving incarnation—that the unity of humanity and divinity in Christ actually transforms human existence by overcoming death.
Athanasius’s view of Christ’s atonement is not unique among the early church fathers; rather, it is representative of their consensus.
The great Augustine of North Africa taught the saving significance of Christ’s life and death and pinned any and all hope of salvation—both objective (reconciliation) and subjective (transformation) on Christ and his atoning work for humanity.
One of his major objections to Pelagius and his denial of original sin was that if Pelagius was correct Christ’s atonement and especially his death on the cross would n...
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The first main alternative to orthodox Christian belief in Christ’s atonement is the idea that Christ’s saving work is not necessary for everyone.
This heresy was taught by Pelagius in the early church, resurrected by Socinus and his followers (the Socinians) in the sixteenth century, promoted by certain Unitarian and liberal Protestant theologians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (such as Hastings Rashdall in The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology [1919]), and openly articulated by pluralists in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.
Unificationism teaches that Jesus Christ was supposed to be the savior of the world and he actually did accomplish a major aspect of salvation—the spiritual salvation of setting aside the guilt of the first ancestors’ sins and providing indemnity for the sins of all who repent and believe in him.
However, according to unification theology, Christ died before he was able to finish his mission, which included establishing a new humanity by marrying and having children purified of the Satanic nature implanted in humanity by the fall of Adam and Eve in the primeval garden. Thus, another savior is to appear—the Lord of the Second Advent—who will complete the work of Christ and establish the kingdom of God on earth.
While pluralism and moral-example thinking about Christ’s saving work are associated with secularization processes in culture and Christianity, teaching about and belief in the unfinished work of Christ yet to be completed by a new messiah (such as many be...
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The message of an incomplete atonement by Christ yet to be finished by another messiah is a gospel different from the Christian gospel. It is demeaning to Jesus Christ and it opens a Pandora’s box of frightening possibilities with regard to new christs, saviors, lords and messiahs.
True Christian belief about salvation affirms the gospel—the
The New Testament uses terms for various events and processes such as election, predestination, conversion, repentance, faith, justification, regeneration and sanctification.
In order to understand the diversity of Christian perspectives on the ordo salutis it is necessary to study four main Christian interpretations of salvation.
monergism and synergism.
Monergism is any belief that God is the sole sovereign agent in salvation and that even the task side of salvation is secretly and entirely the work of God in the person being saved.
Synergism is any belief that salvation is a cooperative project and process in which God is the superior partner and the human person being saved is the inferior but nevertheless crucial partner.
Synergism is often associated in people’s minds with Arminianism, but in fact it existed well before Jacob Arminius developed his Protestant version of synergism in Holland in the seventeenth century.
The Eastern Orthodox view is not very different from the Catholic order of salvation.
During the Protestant Reformation Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and the other Reformers sought to revive the true New Testament gospel of salvation by grace through faith alone. They and their Protestant followers emphasized justification—God’s declaration of a person as righteous on account of his or her faith in Jesus Christ—as the centerpiece of salvation.
The monergist Christian view of salvation, most commonly associated with the theology of John Calvin, came to special systematic theological expression in the Canons of Dort, which were promulgated by the Reformed divines (ministers and theologians) of the Protestant Synod of Dort that met in the Netherlands in 1618-1619.
Dort’s canons of Reformed doctrine were later summed up by the acronym TULIP, the letters of which stand for total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverence of the saints. Not all Christian monergists affirm all five of these points, and even those who do (so-called five-point Calvinists) debate
Monergists believe that God applies the grace of regeneration (new birth by God’s Spirit) to the elect so that they respond to God’s effectual call with repentance and faith.
The elect cannot resist God’s grace. Finally, of course, those unconditionally elected by God to be saved will persevere in grace and not fall from it.
Scripture passages used to support monergism include John 14—17, where Jesus refers several times to his disciples and those who come after them (the church) being chosen and given to him by the Father; Romans 9—11, where the apostle Paul promotes God’s sovereignty in choosing people to bless; and Ephesians 1, where Paul extols God’s election and choice of the church for special blessing. Most monergists do not rely solely on a few proof passages, however, but appeal to a synoptic vision of the whole of revelation and Scripture as well as to God’s greatness and human depravity.
The opposite of Christian monergism would be Pelagianism—a heresy rejected by all Christian churches.
Synergism is not the belief that humans save themselves; it is the belief that salvation is by grace alone but requires free reception and not resistance by human persons.
Reformed theologians are fond of treating Arminius’s theology—Arminianism—as Semi-Pelagian or even Pelagian. That is simply distortion and misrepresentation. Arminius opposed the monergistic teaching of his Dutch colleague Franciscus Gomarus at the University of Leiden and argued that election is not unconditional; predestination refers to God’s foreknowledge of who will freely accept his offer of salvation through Christ.
Whether they are monergists or synergists, all Protestants agree that salvation is an entirely free gift of God’s grace received by faith alone, whereas Catholics believe that salvation is a gift received by faith and works of love.
Protestant doctrine views it as complete at the moment of conversion to Christ. Sanctification is distinct from justification; the former is a process of growth in repentance and righteousness; the latter is its beginning. Justification has to do with one’s position vis-à-vis God—reconciliation and forgiveness. Sanctification has to do with one’s inward, spiritual condition. It is the process of being conformed inwardly to that righteousness received as a gift by faith alone at conversion. Luther
In early Christianity it was said, “the church is the ark [as in Noah’s ship] of salvation,” and “outside the church there is no salvation.”
North African bishop Cyprian went so far as to warn those who would divide or abandon the church, “he can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.”
What makes a group of people church?
The apostle Paul especially stresses that the church, though made up of many individuals, is essentially united (1 Cor 12), and he bases that unity on the foundation of the “apostles and prophets” as well as on the cornerstone which is Christ (Eph 2:20).
