Resurrection and Justification Part 2
An excerpt from “Saved By His Life” - a new paper I am working on:
Understanding of Paul’s soteriology (doctrine of salvation) has usually focused exclusively or almost exclusively on the crucifixion. In the early church, this was understood primarily in terms of the Messiah’s victory over the powers of darkness, as in Colossians 2:15. In the medieval period, the cross was understood as the satisfaction of the demands of justice, which in the Protestant tradition became the satisfaction of divine wrath. This satisfaction-substitution understanding of soteriology, which continues to be very prevalent in Evangelical Christianity to the present day, creates a strong emphasis on rebellion as humanity’s primary problem and on the forensic and economic metaphors of justification.
When these aspects of Pauline soteriology are emphasized at the expense of the richly multifaceted metaphorical world Paul uses to describe the work of God in The Messiah, the system is unable to deal with many of the Pauline “anomalies” discussed previously. Rather than simply forensic and economic, we see that Paul’s soteriology is cosmic, dramatic, eschatological, apocalyptic, relational and participatory. Theological categorizations (dare we say segregations) of “justification” as being declared righteous and “regeneration” as being made new, have perhaps been advantageous in laying out theological concepts systematically, but not necessarily in understanding a symphonic thinker like Paul. Helpful towards this end is Jurgen Moltmann’s suggestion that justification is regeneration. Furthermore, he suggests that this doctrine of justification must be “eschatologically oriented.” It is often thought that participation in God’s future happens on the basis of our justification when perhaps it is the reverse that is true. Our declaration of righteousness in the present tense is given on the basis of our participation in the eschatological age of righteousness in Christ by the Spirit of him who raised Christ Jesus from the dead. Particularly in the Letter to the Romans, Paul sees justification as, not only the result of the death of Jesus, which affects the individual believer’s experience; but also the result of the resurrection of Jesus, which inaugurates the new age of cosmic redemption, in which individuals, via union with the Messiah, participate in the setting right and making new of all things.
Related posts
« Resurrection and Justification Part 1
