Salvation

Dear Readers,

A topic of great interest and importance has taken me by force and refuses to let me go. Salvation is a central theme to Christianity and I am diving headfirst into the different concepts of salvation.

The thing that got me thinking, researching, and searching for the meaning of salvation was an accidental stumbling upon the concept of universal salvation. It was a new concept for me personally, as I had grown up being taught an exclusive viewpoint on salvation. So, I read all I could about it. Wading waste deep in the Church Father's treatise on the subject was a major feat, and I've yet to complete reading them all. Half-way through reading Origen's works I came to realize that I didn't truly know the subject of salvation and not knowing that I couldn't fully understand how it could be universal.

I've come a long way since then. Reading the New Testament again, with a special emphasis on salvation, I've come to realize too, that in this second part of the Bible, there is no consensus on how one becomes "saved". From my readings I've found out there is no less than 4 ways that the writers of the New Testament believed people could be saved:

1. Salvation by faith alone (sola fide)
2. Salvation by works and faith
3. Salvation by works alone
4. Salvation by faith only by love

Then there are the extra-biblical criteria for salvation found in the creeds and doctrines of different philosophies such as Catholicism (salvation by baptism) and Calvinism (predestination).

With all these possibilities, it concerns me, as would anyone who is fully aware of the non-consensus and leads me to the ultimate question: what if you choose the wrong one?

The New Testament's teachings can be divided into 4 parts:
The Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke)
The Maverick Gospel (John)
The Epistles
Miscellaneous Passages

In the synoptic gospels, Jesus is seen as giving two paths to salvation: One through good works and two by doing as the apostles did and living a simple life and following Jesus' example.

However the gospel of John, so unlike the other and earlier gospels, gives a more complex and mystical way to obtain salvation. There is no mention of works in John, just the belief that one must believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the Logos to be saved.

Paul on the other hand, developed a unique Christology and salvation-belief. As reflected in the Gospel of John, Paul describes Jesus as the Logos and the Son of God. From his epistles we get the modern belief of salvation, that is believing in the atonement of man via the execution of Jesus. Paul takes one step further than the Gospel of John and says not only do we must believe that Jesus is the Son of God/Logos, but we must have faith in his resurrection in order to be saved.

The other miscellaneous passages of the New Testament require that one must be baptised in order to receive salvation.

All however, agree on this: sin gets in the way of man being reunited with God. All methods of salvation tell us to repent of our sins ("Repent! For the Kingdom of God is at hand!" As John the Baptist exclaims to us from the pages)

It becomes more complicated when you choose one method over the other. One would logically follow the sayings Jesus as expressed in the Synoptic Gospels as they were written earlier than John's, but yet the authentic epistles of Paul were written even earlier. The only hindrance to taking Paul's formula and word for it, is that he never lived with, saw, or heard Jesus. We have the account of his conversion, but it is possibly a later added story, as it is not mentioned by Paul himself. It is all quite complicated.

I will continue our discussion of this topic in a following letter, but until then my brothers, meditate on things brought up in this one.

- Ιάσων