Ship of Fools: Salvation and atonement

Thread: Salvation and atonement Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Evangeline (# 7002) on :

I've been thinking about salvation which led me onto thinking about the word atonement which is bandied around in churches in my part of the world quite a lot. How closely linked are the two concepts? The words salvation and atonement seem different to me. Salvation implies being set free from some impending doom and atonement implies reconciliation or communion-I think.

Is salvation-from death a result of or linked to our reconciliation with God through Jesus-is that how the two concepts are connected or is it something different?

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

Evangeline, this seems more suited to Purgatory than Kerygmania.

Hold your hat!

Moo, Kerygmania host

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

This looks like it's going to lead to a Penal Substitutionary Atonement discussion, so I think everyone should hold their hats!

*runs for the door*

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
Is salvation-from death a result of or linked to our reconciliation with God through Jesus-is that how the two concepts are connected or is it something different?

Salvation is the result of being a good person. It gives you eternal life in heaven.

Redemption is what Jesus accomplished, setting humanity free from the power of hell. The result is that people can be saved if they are good.

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

quote:
Salvation implies being set free from some impending doom and atonement implies reconciliation or communion-I think.

That's the wrong way around. The Atonement is God's action to free humankind from sin. Salvation is the is new relationship with God offered in Jesus Christ through the sacraments.

At any rate, it's all the free gift of God.

[ 09. July 2012, 13:33: Message edited by: Zach82 ]

Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :

According to Luke, when the lawyer asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, the two commandments of love were drawn out as the answer, with the parable of the Good Samaritan given as an illustration of who the neighbour was.

Salvation from death for the lawyer therefore depended upon the attitudes and priorities necessary for relationship with God. Perhaps this relationship is what atonement means?

Did the death and resurrection of Jesus achieve the extension of the invitation to this relationship to everyone?

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
Salvation implies being set free from some impending doom and atonement implies reconciliation or communion-I think.

Yes. "Communion" in the sense of unity and one-ness, rather than "Holy Communion". The word "atonement" was made up in the Middle Ages or early modern times. Someone added the suffix "-ment" on to the ordinary English "at one" and we got the word. Seems to have been very rare before Tyndale used it in Bible translations, and theological writing, an English translation of words which we might put as "coming together" or "becoming one" or "reconciliation".

Usually I'd be the first to say that etymology is not meaning, but this is a recently made-up word deliberately designed to mean what it means, so here it does.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Freddy

quote:
Salvation is the result of being a good person. It gives you eternal life in heaven.

Bad news for the Prodigal son, I guess!

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

I'd once argued with Dark Knight that no such word as atonement existed until it was invented during Tyndale's time as an equivalent of Kippur/kophar, (Original Word: ֻפּ ִכּ, ghosts of keryg!), but apparently, such a word did exist then, signifying reparation.

However, both words seem to have passed their sell by date.

What we need today is for salvation to mean restoration/salvage, and atonement to convey expiation leading to propitiation.

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

Excuse the double post. This should have been part of the previous post.

Salvation is what happens when an instrument has been damaged or misused and it is reconditioned or salvaged back to it's original USE. Specifically, God's People, the means by which the world would be blessed (salvaged!), initially only Israel, and then the new man in Christ, both Jew and Gentile being restored to that role by Christ's work on the Cross.

Imagine a power drill acquired to install curtains. For those in the know, these tools have a motor which can be used to soup up radio controlled cars! So the drill is dismantled by the children in the family and (mis) used in a toy for amusement. Salvation happens when the original owner reclaims the parts, reassembles the tool and completes the curtain installation.

Atonement is what happens when the children do the salvaging! They salvage the drill and return it to it's rightful owner, thus propitiating (quietening, dulling) His anger. In the process, the lapse , both the cause and its destructive results are expiated, removed from the guilty, as the act is considered an adequate reparation for the lapse.

This is a simplified description/framework of the event. Things get complicated and blurry when identifying the players! Straight off, plenty of work required to differentiate the two terms which seem to be synonymous. Any ideas, peeps?

[ 09. July 2012, 19:49: Message edited by: footwasher ]

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

Opinions on this really vary. I think it's clear that atonement is "at-one-ment," but where it's used (in translation) in the Bible, it tends to mean reconciliation with God. Reconciliation with others follows from that, of course.

Salvation is a trickier matter, because some will define it in penal terms, others in terms of rescue from doom, others in terms of salvage, and still others in terms of reconciliation. Or combinations of these themes.

Personally, I think of salvation as "salvation-for" rather than "salvation-from" - IOW I think the decisive thing is salvation's goal: bringing us into communion with God and each other, and "restoring" us to God's intention for us - the image and likeness of God. If you must ask what we're saved from, then, I'd say from missing out on that communion and perfection - a.k.a. death.

I put "restoring" in quotes because IMO it's metaphorical. We didn't start out perfect and fall from perfection - something you can't believe literally if you also believe in evolution, IMO.

I don't read salvation in penal terms at all. Since I believe in evolution, I think sinful habits (in the sense of habitus, future-action-orientation) are something we learned not only as individuals before we were old enough to know right from wrong, but as a species before we evolved into moral agents. God's intervention was to become human in order to join creation to Godself so that creation wouldn't die away. As moral agents, we can choose to follow our animal nature with its sinful habitus, or we can choose to accept God's gift of grace to follow Christ and further God's work in creation. I think that's what it means that we were created in God's image and likeness (i.e., we're the image an emperor would place in far-off lands he ruled, or the idol of a god placed in a temple): we're meant to sacramentally localize God's presence and reign - God's salvation, if you will - here in creation. But we can't do that without God's grace and transformation, made possible through the joining of the human and divine natures in Christ.

A shorter answer to the OP might be that atonement is part of salvation.

Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :

Excellent post, churchgeek. [Overused]

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Agreed. Despite my being a creationist of course.

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Freddy
quote:
Salvation is the result of being a good person. It gives you eternal life in heaven.
Bad news for the Prodigal son, I guess!

Yeah, I guess.

He did repent, though. It's never too late!

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

As I see it, salvation is about being rescued from a fix and atonement is about a relationship between two sentient beings.

Posted by Evangeline (# 7002) on :

Thanks all for the interesting insights. I might have to look into this made up word atonement a bit more, I still find it difficult. ANy biblical scholars/linguists able to shed light on what the Hebrew word conveys/ed? I think somewhere in the back of my mind was the notion of atoning for sins, which makes me think of something that people are doing, rather than God. I think I have this idea from talking to a Jewish friend about their day of atonement (have no idea if her understanding is right).

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
Thanks all for the interesting insights. I might have to look into this made up word atonement a bit more, I still find it difficult.

I think that the good insight is that "atonement" doesn't receive the same emphasis as salvation and redemption in the Bible. As Footwasher noted, it is barely mentioned.

I would also love to see the idea of expiation leading to propitiation removed from the salvific formula. [Disappointed]

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
footwasher: Imagine a power drill acquired to install curtains. For those in the know, these tools have a motor which can be used to soup up radio controlled cars! So the drill is dismantled by the children in the family and (mis) used in a toy for amusement. Salvation happens when the original owner reclaims the parts, reassembles the tool and completes the curtain installation.

How boring. I prefer to imagine that God likes to soup up a radio car Himself sometimes!

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

Harrumph! Getting away from the puerile, back to the mature, to the sublime, even, the word ”atonement” actually meant reconcile, make of one mind, Tyndale coopting it to mean propitiate.

Shakespeare's use of it in “Richard the Second,” written in 1597, demonstrates it's original usage, when Richard, failing to reconcile the two feuding noblemen, the Duke of Hereford and the Duke of Norfolk, orders them to fight a duel:

”We were not born to sue, but to command:

Which since we cannot do to make you friends,

Be ready, as your lives shall answer it,

At Coventry, upon Saint Lambert’s day;

There shall your swords and lances arbitrate

The swelling difference of your settled hate:

Since we cannot atone you, we shall see

Justice design the victor’s chivalry. ”

My highlighting in bold.

One more example, here in “Richard the Third,” we find the Duke of Buckingham saying about Richard to the queen, “Ay, madam: he desires to make atonement between the Duke of Gloucester and your brothers.” What Buckingham is telling the queen is that Richard wishes to get her brothers and Gloucester to make up.

How did something meaning compromise turn into another word meaning appease ? Tyndale wanted to convey the identity of the appeaser. In Judaism, atonement is a one-sided affair: man appeasing God.

In Christianity, it is GOD performing the sacrifice, appeasing Torah, justice personified (Hooboy! Greg Boyd ain't got nothing on me in this thesis... I'm waiting for the right moment to introduce my modest opus!)

Tyndale translated the Hebrew Bible in the same decade as that in which he worked on the New Testament, he chose “day of atonement” to render the Hebrew ”yom ha-kippurim” in the book of Leviticus. In doing so, he departed twice from the wording of the Latin Bible, which translates ”yom ha-kippurim” as ”dies expiationum”. In the first place, whereas he could easily have retained the Latin ”expiatio” as the English word “expiation,” he preferred the new English word “atonement.” And secondly, whereas the Latin follows the Hebrew, which says ”yom ha-kippurim”, “the day of atonements,” rather than yom kippur, “day of atonement,” Tyndale did away with the plural form of “atonements” and used the singular, a choice in which he was followed several generations later by the King James Bible. This is why, to this day, we say in English “Day of Atonement” rather than “Day of Atonements.”

In other words atonement conveyed God's role better than expiate.

[ 10. July 2012, 13:20: Message edited by: footwasher ]

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
footwasher:Getting away from the puerile

Maybe it's puerile, but I like the idea that maybe God has a purpose for us, but it's not a very fixed one. It has some margin, some room for creativity. In my mind, I suspect that He actually likes it when we find different purposes for the things He's given us. So I'm afraid your power drill example is wasted on me.

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

What's to be flexible about? It's very clear that you're a tool and only a tool:

Genesis 26
4 I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, 5 because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws.”

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:

quote:
footwasher:Getting away from the puerile
Maybe it's puerile, but I like the idea that maybe God has a purpose for us, but it's not a very fixed one. It has some margin, some room for creativity. In my mind, I suspect that He actually likes it when we find different purposes for the things He's given us. So I'm afraid your power drill example is wasted on me.

Posted by Father Gregory (# 310) on :

Salvation is to have our humanity perfected by partaking of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). The conquest of death and the liberation from sin is integral to this ... but so is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. It is to become everything by grace that Christ is by nature. None of this would have been possible without the Incarnation.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Father Gregory

quote:
It is to become everything by grace that Christ is by nature. None of this would have been possible without the Incarnation.

Father Gregory, while sympathetic to your position, the thought does occur that if Christ is different from us by nature, what does this imply about the nature of human beings and the nature of the Incarnate Christ?

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
footwasher: What's to be flexible about? It's very clear that you're a tool and only a tool:

Genesis 26
4 I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, 5 because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws.”

Sorry, nothing about a tool there.

Posted by Josephine (# 3899) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Father Gregory
quote:
It is to become everything by grace that Christ is by nature. None of this would have been possible without the Incarnation.

Father Gregory, while sympathetic to your position, the thought does occur that if Christ is different from us by nature, what does this imply about the nature of human beings and the nature of the Incarnate Christ?

Jesus has two natures, divine and human. He isn't half-and-half, the two natures weren't mixed. He is Man, and he is God.

Because of the Incarnation, we can "put on Christ" or become "partakers of the Divine Nature." Or, as one of the Fathers put it, God became Man that men might be gods.

Not by nature -- we will always have only one nature, a human nature. He will always have two natures, human and divine. But, by grace, we can become as if we were also divine. We can truly be like God.

An analogy that is sometime used is fire and steel. God, in the analogy, is fire by nature, and we are steel by nature. But if you put the steel in the fire, and leave it there long enough, it becomes hot and bright. It isn't fire, and can't be fire, but it can share in the nature of fire, and become like fire, insofar as that is possible for steel. What Jesus did, the glorious impossibility of the Incarnation, is to have made himself true steel, while at the same time remaining true fire. In doing that, he pulled all steel into his fire.

And that is the mystery and the glory of the Incarnation.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

So, Josephine, what do you understand by human nature?

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:

quote:
footwasher: What's to be flexible about? It's very clear that you're a tool and only a tool:

Genesis 26
4 I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, 5 because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws.”
Sorry, nothing about a tool there.

Oops, that was the New International Version. Here's the Home Improvement Version:

Genesis 26 Tim Allen Version (Growff!)
4 I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and with their powertools all curtains in your house will finally be installed, 5 because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws.”

We're all tools, you and me both.

[Biased]

[ 11. July 2012, 15:53: Message edited by: footwasher ]

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

I have problems with the idea of salvation as being made perfect. While I consider myself a saint, I know I still sin. I am always struggling with this. I am like Paul, "Oh, retched man that I am, who will save me from myself." Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ.

I know this side of eternity I know I will never be perfect, but I don't have to be perfect. Jesus has already taken care of it. I am now free from my old self, but I am also free to do good works not because it will put me into a higher heaven, but because it is a thankful response to what has already been done.

I like the German concept of rectfertigen, which is a juridical concept in which the accused can only admit guilt and stands condemned. However the judge decrees things are made right through Jesus Christ.

Atonement is At-one-ment. It describes the new relationship I now have with God. A way it was explained to me many years ago is imagine you are in a circle facing away from the center. Facing away from the center you see nothing but emptiness there is not God, there is no meaningful relationship with anyone esle. However, because of the saving work of Jesus, your life has now been turned around. Now you can see the center--which is were God has always been--and you can also see others in the circle, your brothers and sisters. You have become one with God, you have become one with other believers. I would like to carry the analogy even further, you have now become one with creation as well. That oneness is something we celebrate in the Eucharist. That oneness is what we are encouraged to live out in our daily lives.

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

BTW--I have problems with moving this out of the Kerygma message board since it is obviously a question about proclamation which is what "kerygma" means.

Posted by Evangeline (# 7002) on :

Loving that circle analogy Gramps, brilliant! I shall steal that for future use.

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
Loving that circle analogy Gramps, brilliant! I shall steal that for future use.

Yaas, perfect positioning for a group hug.

Game, my fine Dutch pirate?

[Biased]

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
footwasher: Game, my fine Dutch pirate?

Arr! I liked your Home Improvement Bible. I suspect that the neighbour whose face we never see above the fence is one of the prophets?

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:

quote:
footwasher: Game, my fine Dutch pirate?

Arr! I liked your Home Improvement Bible. I suspect that the neighbour whose face we never see above the fence is one of the prophets?

Moses, himself, in the flesh:

2 Corinthians 3:12-13 NET
Therefore, since we have such a hope, we behave with great boldness, and not like Moses who used to put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from staring at the result of the glory that was made ineffective.

Just that he prefers incognito!

[Biased]

PS, I'm covered in sawdust,embroiled in hone improvement, explaining my present tack! Shiver me timbers...

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
footwasher: Moses, himself, in the flesh:

2 Corinthians 3:12-13 NET
Therefore, since we have such a hope, we behave with great boldness, and not like Moses who used to put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from staring at the result of the glory that was made ineffective.

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

[Biased]

Thanks for burying the hatchet.

Now we better get back to our usual antagonistic selves, or they'll be asking us to get a rooo...om!

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:

quote:
footwasher: Moses, himself, in the flesh:

2 Corinthians 3:12-13 NET
Therefore, since we have such a hope, we behave with great boldness, and not like Moses who used to put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from staring at the result of the glory that was made ineffective.

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