From December 29 to January 9 the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches will meet in Bangkok for an international study conference. The theme of this ecumenical gathering, “Salvation Today,” was decided upon after the WCC General Assembly in Uppsala four years ago. As Peter Beyerhaus pointed out in the October 27 Current Religious Thought column, this theme raises questions that cannot be answered within the context of the pluralism of the ecumenical movement.
One need not be endowed with the gift of prophecy to predict that whatever the Bangkok pronouncements on “salvation today” look like, they will little resemble the message that is the central concept of the two biblical Testaments, and that has been the basis for the Church’s ministry to the non-Christian world since the days of the apostles. As a Norwegian churchman, the Reverend Gunnar Staalsett, said in evaluating the preparatory volume for Bangkok, “Salvation Today and Contemporary Experience”: “Compared with the biblical message of salvation, the term loses its historic and ecumenical meaning, and salvation becomes exclusively situational. It becomes rather a quest for the solution of tomorrow than an offer of salvation today.”
The ecumenical predicament cannot leave us untouched, but let it not fill us with sinful gloating. It should rather induce us to examine once again our own understanding of this greatest gift of God to his fallen creation. As the message of salvation is the heart of the Gospel, the cry for salvation expresses the central need of fallen man. All religions and ideologies are human attempts to respond to this cry for salvation. And whoever undertakes to save his fellow men will naturally be inclined to heed both their empirical demands and the solutions others have offered.
But if Christians yield to this temptation, they will end up with another form of man’s self-salvation, which is not only futile but also specifically condemned by the biblical Gospel. Therefore the first requirement for becoming God’s ambassadors in the world is to understand the biblical concept of salvation. Each Christian ambassador urgently needs to ascertain from time to time whether his concept of salvation is still in all its aspects the biblical one. Otherwise his service will be useless or even harmful, though on the surface it may appear effective and make him popular in the eyes of the world.
There are seven basic truths about biblical salvation by which we need to measure our ideas and activities again and again. We have to be sure of the author, purpose, plan, diagnosis, basis, means, and conditions of salvation.
1. The Bible assures us in both Testaments that the author of salvation is no one else but God himself. In his need, man is inclined to seek help from any possible source. But by doing this he will not only miss his real salvation but will also risk enslavement to powers that try to establish their dominion by exploiting his helplessness. These enslaving powers are idols, ideologies, and dictators. In bringing the offer of salvation, the Church cannot cooperate with other forces. It must be at the sole disposal of God, the source of eternal life and all temporal blessings.
2. God’s purpose in salvation is to redeem and complete his original design of creation. A perfect world should manifest his eternal glory, and man as God’s image bearer should articulate this glory in an unbroken fellowship of love, thankfulness, and obedient cooperation. Salvation is the redemption of the world and man from the antagonistic forces that disturbed God’s original design. Only this theocentric context will prevent us from taking a humanistic shortcut.
3. God works out his redemptive purpose gradually according to a divine master plan. This plan was conceived even before the foundation of the world. It is revealed to man in a chain of revelatory acts, which are described and interpreted in the inspired documents of the two Testaments. Salvation can be understood only within this total plan, which embodies God’s definite steps toward the infallible achievement of his goal. Any attempt to achieve a full “salvation” in this world is condemned in advance by God’s revelation of what salvation really involves. At the end, salvation will be total. But it comes gradually, in steps and by degrees, and therefore our hope must be paired with endurance.
4. Salvation presupposes a need that is to be supplied in order to establish a new, satisfactory form of life, a new order. Therefore an accurate diagnosis is fundamental to a proper concept of salvation. One reason why salvation in the biblical sense can never be replaced by other human attempts at salvation is the Bible’s unique diagnosis of man’s real disaster. That disaster does not primarily consist in man’s becoming the victim of the attacks of inner-worldly forces; it lies in the fact that his original sin has made him the object of God’s wrath. Thus man is cut off from the fountain of life and enslaved by the destructive forces of the devil, sin, and death.
This original disaster has affected the total structure of the present world and all its creatures, but the seriousness of this fact is fatally ignored in most contemporary views of salvation. The ecumenical concept of “salvation today” shortsightedly concentrates on the social, political, medical, and psychological symptoms of man’s disaster rather than on its primary cause.
5. The basis of salvation, as the Bible sees it, must be adequate if new life is to arise in a blighted world. Since man’s disaster consists in his having made himself the object of God’s wrath, the only appropriate remedy is an act of God himself, in which his righteous wrath against man is removed. It is the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, as a propitiation for man’s guilt, and his victory over the destructive forces by his glorious resurrection.
According to God’s plan of gradual salvation, the redemptive act of Christ is the beginning of a new world order. That order is not yet complete, but the problem of guilt as the cause of suffering has been resolved. The Church tackles the remaining problem of the influence of hostile forces by engaging in deeds of love and righteousness. But this problem will be resolved only at the final revelation of Christ’s victory, at his second coming.
6. Directly connected with this basis of salvation in the Christ event are the means by which salvation is applied to man and to the whole world. When Christ in his death and resurrection had accomplished reconciliation between God and man, he endowed his disciples with the gift of the Holy Spirit and entrusted them with the ministry of reconciliation. This ministry consists primarily in telling the good news, and it is accompanied by the visible demonstration of Christ’s love.
In the proclamation of the Gospel, Christ through his duly commissioned messengers invites fallen men to accept God’s offer of grace. If they do this and enter into life-giving fellowship with him in his Church, they will become a penetrating force of renewal in this present world. Christian mission in word and deed, therefore, is the way in which God’s saving act on the cross becomes an offer of “salvation today.”
7. God’s offer of salvation through Christ is a total one. It is sufficient to remove the misery of the whole world. But it becomes effective in individual man only on the condition of its acceptance by faith. Disbelief can lead to man’s eternal forfeiture of God’s offer of salvation. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
It is apparent that despite God’s saving intervention and its proclamation by the Church for twenty centuries, man’s oppression of man has not yet been ended. But this says nothing against the reality of salvation in Christ and the adequacy of the means designated by God. It must not induce us to resort to treating the symptoms by, for example, getting involved in revolution, as though we could thereby bring about “salvation today.”
The biblical answer to man’s quest for a real salvation in his needs today is: “Today, when you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” (Heb. 3:7).
