Where Salvation, Here
or There?
September 25, 2020
Christianity, it seems, has always
been about salvation. At Acts 16:31 we read, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and
you will be saved.” There has however always been a question in Christianity about
where we are blessed with salvation. The earliest Christians called their faith
“the Way” and saw it as being primarily about transformed life in this life. They
also had a conception of an afterlife, although it was one quite different from
what became Christianity’s norm. They imagined a physical raising of the dead
at the end time, where all would be judged by Christ as king. See for example
Matthew 25:31-46. For Paul we may be “justified” by faith through grace in this
life, but salvation comes after judgment in a next life in which at least
Christians if not everyone will be raised from the dead just as Jesus was.
Under the influence of Greek thought Christianity soon developed a different
conception to salvation. It came to believe that each person has an immortal
soul that survives death, is judged, and then either spends eternity in bliss
in heaven or an agonizing eternity in hell. Salvation came to be mostly about
something that can happen in the next life rather than in this one.
Christianity first developed within
Judaism, and its roots remain thoroughly Jewish. My Hebrew scripture professor
in seminary was fond of saying that Christianity is one way of being Jewish,
but it’s not the only way. He was pretty much right about that. Ancient Judaism
had a conception of an afterlife, but it was a very different afterlife than
Christianity came to anticipate. Ancient Judaism conceived of a place called
Sheol, sometimes called the Pit. Sheol was everyone’s fate after death. We see
what ancient Judaism thought that future existence (it wasn’t really life) was in
Psalm 88. That is, we see it there as long as we understand the Psalm’s string
of questions as rhetorical as they clearly were meant to be. The Psalm is of
course a prayer to God, so God is the “you” here. We read:
Do you work wonders for the dead?
Do the shades rise up to praise
you?
Is your steadfast love declared in
the
grave,
or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
Are your wonders known in the
darkness,
or your saving help in the land of
forgetfulness?
The intended answer to all of these questions is no. The
psalmist isn’t really asking here. He is praying to God using his faith
tradition’s established understanding of what happens to each person after
death.
What survives death in this
understanding is something called a “shade.” A shade isn’t really an immortal
soul in anything like the Christian sense of that concept. It is a sort of
shadow remainder of what once was a person. It isn’t exactly inanimate, but it
certainly isn’t alive either. To the ancient Hebrews Sheol was a place of
darkness, as Psalm 88 says. Psalm 88 calls Sheol “Abaddon,” a Hebrew word that
means “destruction” and that is another name for the abode of the dead.[1]
This Psalm calls it a place of forgetfulness. In Sheol the shades forget their
former being as humans on earth. They also forget God, or at least as Psalm 88
says they don’t praise God. They probably are incapable of it, but in any event
God is not present with them in Sheol. God’s “steadfast love” is a
characteristic of the divine often proclaimed and praised in the Psalms, but it
isn’t present in Sheol. God’s faithfulness, a synonym here for God’s steadfast
love, isn’t known there. God works no wonders there the way God does for those
alive on earth. Sheol is not a place of salvation, for the psalmist says that God’s
“saving help” is not present there.
For the ancient Israelites then
salvation is not something that happens after death. Yet the psalmist of Psalm
88 begins his prayer by saying, “O Lord,
God of my salvation….” Psalm 88:1a. Ancient Judaism had an understanding of
salvation as something its God brought to the Hebrew people. It just wasn’t
something God did for God’s people after death. It was something that God did
for God’s faithful ones during their lives on earth. God did it twice for the
entire Hebrew nation, once when he (ancient Israel’s God was always he, which
doesn’t mean God has to be or should be he for us) freed them from slavery in
Egypt and once when he used the Persians to get them home from the Babylonian
exile. Individual people sometimes received salvation in their personal lives
too. They often saw God’s salvation as deliverance from personal enemies for
example. In any event, for ancient Israel salvation was very much something
that happened in this life. They did believe in a next life of sorts, but it
was hardly something to look forward to. It wasn’t hell. It wasn’t a place of
torment, but it certainly wasn’t heaven either. Being there certainly did not
constitute salvation.
So where is salvation? Does God
save us only in this life as ancient Judaism believed or in a next life as most
of Christianity has believed for a very long time now? The answer I think has
to be both. It’s both at least if there is some kind of afterlife as
Christianity asserts. Why does it have to be both? Because God is love. 1 John
4:8. A God who is love is not going to withhold salvation from God’s people,
that is, all people, on any plane of existence. We’ve all heard stories of God
saving people in this life. Perhaps you’ve even experienced God saving you in
this life. The alcoholic gets sober. The drug addict gets clean. The victim of
abuse finds safety. One in despair finds hope. One who lives in fear finds
courage. One who grieves is comforted, a kind of salvation I have experienced
in my life. One whose life seems to be at a dead end finds new life in new work
or new relationships. I’ve experienced that kind of salvation too. Salvation in
this life really can and does happen.
If there is an afterlife it is not
an afterlife of torment and anguish for anyone. Pope Paul VI said that he
believed that there is such a place as hell but he’s not sure anyone’s in it. I
don’t even believe that there is such a place as hell. Why would a God who is
love create such a place? God wouldn’t. Yes, sometimes this life on earth can
be hell, but that’s our doing not God’s. I recently put a post on this blog in
which I tell of a couple of experiences of my late wife appearing to me after
her death. See the post “Is There Life After Death?” She was a good person who wouldn’t
be in hell in any event, but I know she’s not in such a horrible place in part
because of how she has appeared to me. Actually, no one is in such a horrible
place. If there is an afterlife it is at least a life of peace not a life of
suffering. With God who is love it cannot be otherwise.
There is however an important
question we still need to consider. I’ve given a few examples in this piece of
salvation here on earth, but just what is the nature of salvation on earth more
basically? It is God’s unfailing presence with us in this life. It is God’s
unfailing solidarity with us. God is always willing for us newness of life in
this life. It is God the Holy Spirit always with us offering us and calling us
to whatever spiritual gift we need—peace, hope, courage, and so many more great
gifts. It is God always with us as a place of refuge and comfort. All of that
is salvation, salvation here and now not there and then.
So where is salvation? Both here
and there. Both here and beyond. Both on earth and on some other plane of being
that we call heaven. Ancient Israel was right in a way. Salvation is something that
happens here. Christianity is right too. Salvation is something that happens
there as well. We can experience salvation here and now, and we can hope for
salvation hereafter. Thanks be to God!
[1]
See the note to Psalm 88:11 in The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Third
Edition, p. 852 hebrew bible.
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