On Justification and Salvation in the Theology of Saint Paul

 

On Justification and Salvation in the Theology of Saint Paul

June 26, 2021

 

The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

Yes. I know. Any adequate discussion of the topic stated in that title would require a lot of research and many pages of writing. I don’t intend to do either of those things here. I do want however to say a few words about that topic. I want to do that first of all to work through some of my own questions about Paul’s Ideas about justification and salvation. I want to do it as well because I believe that very few Christians understand those ideas of Paul’s and mostly read what he says about them to mean something quite different from what he actually meant by them. So here goes.

The concept salvation has been a central part of Christian theology from the very beginning. Starting very early in Christian history Christians have believed themselves to be saved from sin and its just consequences in and through Jesus Christ. For some Christians forgiveness of sin itself has been salvation. Much more commonly Christians have looked to what they have believed to be the consequences of God’s forgiveness of their sin as salvation. Over the first few centuries of the Christian era salvation came to mean the soul avoiding hell and gaining heaven after death. That, I believe, is what a substantial majority of Christians believe today. To this way of thinking about it salvation is about the fate of one’s soul after the death of the body.

In order to understand Paul however we need to understand that gaining a blissful eternity in heaven is not what salvation meant to the earliest Christians. To them salvation did have to do with life after death, but it wasn’t about rescuing the soul from hell after death. It was rather about a person’s eternal life in a resurrected body at the end times. Many early Christians called Christ “the firstborn of the dead.” He was the first to be resurrected, but at the end time, they thought, all would rise from the dead just as he did. Some would rise to blessings, and some would arise to judgement and punishment. How one lived this life and whether or not one accepted Jesus as the Christ were what determined each person’s fate. These early Christians did believe in a final judgment of each person, but if you passed that test what you got wasn’t a blissful life for your soul in heaven. It was a blessed endless life in a resurrected body like the one we see in the risen Christ. That’s what Paul believed. He definitely believed in an end time resurrection of the dead with judgment. Salvation consisted of passing that postmortem judgment. Salvation then was not something Christians already have. It was rather what those who passed the final judgment would receive at the end time.

It is clear enough in the authentic letters of Paul that that is what salvation was about for him. But. Yes, there is a but. But Paul complicates the picture by introducing a second, related concept into his theology of salvation. It gets translated into English as “justification.” Justification may be a sine qua non of salvation, but it isn’t the same thing as salvation. So just what does Paul mean by it, and what role does it play in the dynamics of salvation?

The first thing to understand about Paul’s concept justification is that, unlike salvation, justification is something we get during our lives on earth. Justification comes first. But justification is not itself salvation. The second thing is that justification not salvation is what we get through faith (although as I’ll discuss, Paul isn’t perfectly consistent on that point). One of Paul’s clearer expressions of justification is in chapter 5 of his letter to the Romans. There he says:

 

But God proved his love for us in that while we till were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. Romans 5:8-10.

 

Here Paul tells us that justification means reconciliation with God. Some of Paul’s best theology deals with reconciliation. In 2 Corinthians he writes:

 

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 2 Corinthians 5:17-18.

 

Paul here says that we are reconciled with God through Christ. He means the same thing when he says that we are justified through Christ.

Sadly, Paul is nothing if not inconsistent. In the passage from Romans quoted above he says that our justification is by Christ’s blood. He doesn’t say just how that works, but Christ’s death plays a major role in Paul’s theology. Here he says that it is Christ’s death that reconciles us with God. Unfortunately, at the beginning of chapter 5 we read: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith….” Romans 5:1a. Within just a few verses Paul says both that we are justified, that is, God has reconciled us to Godself, by Christ’s blood and by faith. Those two sources of justification are not the same thing. One difference between them is that justification by faith requires us to do something whereas justification by Christ’s death does not. Perhaps we can reconcile this difference by saying that we are justified by faith in the soteriological significance of Christ’s death. Or perhaps Paul just remains inconsistent here.

Whether we resolve that difference or not, here’s how Paul understands not justification but salvation. Salvation begins in this life not after this life. Through the Christ event, especially through his death, we are justified before God. That means that God has reconciled Godself to all of creation “not counting their trespasses against them.” Paul is inconsistent on the question of whether or not our justification before God requires us to do anything, requires us most especially to believe certain things. Paul’s notion that we are justified by faith does require something of us, namely, that we have the right kind of faith. To this way of thinking having the right faith is the work that gains us salvation. Paul’s notion that in Christ God reconciled Godself with the world requires nothing from us. I much prefer the second of these two visions of justification. It is universalist. When we see justification as God’s action in Christ everyone is justified before God, everyone is reconciled with God as far as God is concerned. This vision is far more consistent with a God of love than is the idea that some are justified and some are not because some have the right faith and some do not.

For Paul justification comes first, and it comes during our lives on earth. But justification is not salvation. Salvation, if it comes for any particular person at all, comes after death. Paul’s entire soteriology depends on there being a resurrection of the dead with judgment at the end time when Christ returns. Salvation is a blessed eternal life for those who pass judgment. Unlike justification (at least as Paul sometimes presents it), salvation is not universal. It is something those found worthy at the end time receive and the unworthy do not. It depends on the final judgment a person receives, and that judgment happens only upon the resurrection of the dead.

Which raises a significant question, significant to me at least. How does Paul’s scheme of salvation, entirely dependent as it is on a resurrection of the dead, work for people like me who do not believe that there will be a resurrection of the dead or at least think that because resurrection of the dead is so uncertain and at best is long delayed that it serves no purpose for anyone to base an entire soteriology on it? I can see only one way to make it work, but it is a way that gives us a soteriology very different from Paul’s. Paul’s scheme depends on  resurrection of the dead. Without a resurrection of the dead all we can do with Paul’s terminology for salvation is merge Paul’s two concepts into one. When we do that, justification becomes salvation. In Paul’s scheme final salvation is contingent and is never fully accomplished in this life. In my proposed revision of Paul’s scheme salvation is not contingent, and it is established in this life. In my proposed scheme salvation does not depend on a judgment because it is established in this life, and as nearly as we can discern judgment does not take place in this life. Therefore salvation is universal just as Paul said reconciliation, that is, justification, is when in 2 Corinthians he says that in Christ God was reconciling  Godself with the world and not counting the world’s trespasses against it. Eliminating a resurrection of the dead from the equation means that we have salvation in this life. We don’t have to wait for a next life. We can live this life in the knowledge that as far as God is concerned we are saved, we are reconciled. We then are free to become the people God created us to be and to live the kingdom life we learn from Jesus. Thanks be to God!