This is the first of six posts, in which I draw on an article by liberation theologian, Ignacio Ellacuria, to reflect on and seek to re-frame the connected themes of sin, Jesus' death, and salvation.
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“On July 12, 1957, at the age of four
and a half years, I, David Crump, accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as
my Savior and was saved.”
In my family and in the
evangelical-fundamentalist faith context in which I grew up, being
able to pinpoint the date and time of this rite of passage was
absolutely necessary and expected. As quoted above, it was even
written down for the record.
The process followed a predictable
pattern. Hearing and accepting the fact that one is a sinner and
that as such one is destined for the frightening fires of an eternal
hell, the invitation would be made – sometimes almost demanded -
to say a simple prayer: “Jesus, I recognize and confess that I am
a sinner destined for death and hell. I also recognize and believe
that you died for my sin. I ask you to forgive and cleanse me and
come into my life. Save me Lord! From this day forward I commit
myself to live for you.”
Anyone who openly gave voice to this
affirmation was deemed “saved.” In other words, they were no
longer bound for hell but were guaranteed a blissful and eternal life
with God in heaven. In the brand of evangelicalism in which I grew
up, this guarantee was irrevocable: “Once saved, always saved”
was the by-word. And so, in my fourth year, after hearing a sermon
and invitation at a church camp and having heard this message since
the time that I had suckled at my mother's breast, to my parents
delight I responded, made my confession, and was saved!
During my early college years, at a
Bible College, I would learn that within the Protestant and later
evangelical-fundamentalist traditions various understandings
developed to explain how this “salvation” works. All of these
approaches hold some basic themes in common. First is the view that
all human beings are irrevocably contaminated by sin. Secondly, is
the understanding that a holy God cannot tolerate sin and so sinful
human beings, although part of God's creation, cannot be accepted by
God without some kind of intervention. Finally, it is believed that
the intervention must be divine. Only God can fix this problem, and
that is where Jesus comes in. Jesus comes to earth as “God in
human form.” As such he can be the solution, and the solution
comes in his death.
This is where the various theological
viewpoints diverge. There are different understandings of how Jesus'
death functions as an intervention to overcome human sin
and thus bring about a re-alignment with God and the guarantee of
heaven, i.e. salvation. One view, drawing on the Jewish
understanding of sacrifice, holds that although all of us as human
beings deserve to die in our sinfulness and separation from God,
Jesus (like a sacrificial lamb) died in our place. Another view takes
a more economic perspective. It suggests that as sinners, human
beings although originally created by God, because of sin they no
longer belong to God. In order for them to be returned to their
rightful owner, a price must be paid and that price is the voluntary
death of God's Son, Jesus. Yet another view holds that because of
their sinfulness, human beings must be punished in order for God to forgive and accept them. According to this approach Jesus, in his
death, takes the punishment in the place of humankind and transfers
to humankind the resulting forgiveness and acceptance.
These approaches all share the belief that Jesus came to earth with the foreknowledge and primary purpose of dying, as the divinely demanded intervention on behalf of humankind. Also characteristic of the evangelical-fundamentalist faith in which I grew up was the insistence that human beings in some sense individually, personally, accept what has been done for them in Jesus' death in order to gain its benefits.
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In the next post we will explore how for me, this whole construction has become problematic.
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