Guilt and Salvation

In my last few post I have explored three aspects of human existence and how the problems of Identity, Death and Meaning are overcome in Christian doctrine by the activity of the Holy Trinity. I will now try to say something about salvation by drawing on the ideas explored in these post.

Salvation is an eschatological concept, there is no doubt about that. But this eschatological salvation cannot be known by any other means than by the partial salvation we experience in this life. In this life, faith promises salvation from the forces that tries to destroy our identity, exploit our fears and rob our lives of meaning. In a culture in decline it is not difficult to identify these forces: They are the very same forces that are destroying the planet. What we need to be saved from is the system that turns humans into consumers and that does not value the things that are important to human beings: beauty, truth, relationships, nature, hope. By exploiting these values for commercial purposes they are all destroyed.

It is not possible for a human being to escape this system completely. This is something the ascetics of the early Church testify: When you go into the desert you bring the World with you. We are all part of this system, it exists both outside and inside of us. The salvation that the Christian faith promises is not an escape from the system, it is a way to become independent of it, so that it looses the power over us. This freedom is something we observe in the gospel's portraits of Jesus. He lived in a way that the powers in society could not manipulate him in any way. Not even by killing him.

When we do things that comply with the system we feel guilt. Guilt is the consequence of acts that go against our identity, acts that try to escape our fears (by ignoring them), acts that accept the superficial over the meaningful. The tradition in (western) Christianity to explain guilt in juridical terms is most unhelpful. But guilt understood as what we feel (and I don't mean feel in a superficial way, these are deep feelings) when we betray ourselves is a powerful concept. Understood this way, we can say that Christianity offers salvation from our guilt. Because it is this kind of guilt that the Church teaches that God is willing to forgive us. When you do wrong to you brother, it is you brother you need to ask forgiveness of. But when you betray yourself, you need God.

But salvation is not only the forgiveness of guilt in this sense. It is also the attainment of a new freedom, and for this forgiveness may be a prerequisite.

When talking about salvation in eschatological terms we may get away with abstract notions, but when we understand salvation as something we can experience something of here, we need to be very concrete. We need to address how a Christian person in a real way can be more free from the influences from the forces that control us. This is the purpose of the Church: to help humans in this world become free, because by such acts the Church points towards the future existence.