Library Learnings: Salvation: “eternal destiny” or a “seismic inner shift”?

“What is the Christian doctrine of salvation?”, gotquestions.org asks. And it answers: “[T]he deliverance, by the grace of God, from eternal punishment for sin that is granted to those who accept by faith God’s conditions of repentance, and [who have] faith in the Lord Jesus”; their “eternal destiny” is, thereby, guaranteed.

 

The entry continues: “What are we saved from? In the Christian doctrine of salvation, we are saved from ‘wrath,’ that is, from God’s judgment of sin. Our sin has separated us from God, and the consequence of sin is death. Biblical salvation refers to…the removal of sin. We are saved from both the power and penalty of sin.

 

“Who does the saving? Only God can remove sin, and deliver us from sin’s penalty. How does God save us? …it was Jesus’ death on the cross and subsequent resurrection that achieved our salvation. Scripture is clear that salvation is the gracious, undeserved gift of God, and is only available through faith in Jesus Christ.

 

“How do we receive salvation? We are saved by faith. First, we must hear the gospel—the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Then, we must believe….”

That may be the timeless, carved-in-stone understanding, but to progressive Christian pioneer Marcus Borg salvation means something else. Google his name, and the word “salvation,” and an AI overview reports his contention: salvation is “not a transaction to secure an afterlife, but a present-tense transformation of life. He [Borg] shifts the focus from an individualistic ‘life insurance policy’—going to heaven—to a relational, experiential, and communal transformation.” 

 

More specifically, “Borg argues that the core of Christianity is not about paying a penalty for sin—substitutionary atonement—to get us into heaven, but rather a ’seismic inner shift’—a transformation in this world. Salvation is described as entering a loving, transformative relationship with God, characterized by trust and intimacy, rather than fear and obedience. […] While it has future implications, for Borg salvation is primarily about living a ‘resurrection life’ now…. Authentic salvation involves participating in God’s dream for a world of justice and peace, shifting the focus from individual salvation to the common good.” 

 

In summation, “Borg redefines salvation as moving from a life of fear and self-centredness to a life of love and connection with God and community.”

 

In his many books, Borg himself expounded often on this matter [see notably the chapter on sin and salvation in his acclaimed The Heart of Christianity], maybe most succinctly in his opening chapter in an anthology of writings published in 2006 in Canada, The Emerging Christian Way [your church library has these, and many more by this author]: 

 

Conventional Christianity insists that it is “the only way of salvation. Salvation is seen as being primarily about the next world. ‘Are you saved?’ means, ‘Are you confident you will go to heaven when you die?’ […] For this vision, Christianity is a religion of requirements and rewards. This is true even though the language of grace is commonly emphasized. The reward, of course, is heaven. The requirement is what you need to believe and/or do to get there. […] [This] leads to an emphasis on sin, guilt, and forgiveness as the central dynamic of the Christian life. …This understanding of our predicament shapes its way of seeing the significance of Jesus: his primary purpose was to die for the sins of the world so that we can be forgiven.”

 

Progressive Christianity’s take “leads to a different understanding of salvation. Salvation is not about going to heaven, but is this process of transformation, a process that begins this side of death. To be saved is to be ‘in Christ,’ to be born again, to be a new creation, in the here and now—to be in the process of being transformed into the likeness of Christ. Emerging Christianity does not deny an afterlife…. Rather, it represents a shift in emphasis, and a willingness to leave the afterlife up to God. As Martin Luther is reported to have said, heaven is God’s business—I don’t have to worry about that.” 

 

It was in the fall of 2024 that friend Paul Eifert, a long-retired Lutheran Church-Canada minister, sent us a writing by Frederick Buechner, “Jesus Saves”—such a Lutheran dictum! That I spent maybe 70 years in this denomination may explain why, even after a decade away from Sunday-morning Lutheranism and hymns that have one being “washed in the blood of the lamb,” it had me think again about the need to be “saved”—even though being saved from what, for what, and by whom, were, and are, to me, unknowns. 

 

This helps to explain why I glommed on to something Brian McLaren wrote in the afterword of his book, Life After Doom [another book in your library’s holdings]. Actually, it’s not his notion, it’s that of his friend, Dr. James Finley, a clinical psychologist, a student of Thomas Merton, and a faculty member at the Center for Action and Contemplation. Finley tells a parable “in which the worst thing one can imagine becomes a portal to awakening.”

 

Think: you’re lost at sea, and rescue isn’t happening; you’re sure to perish. So, you’re floating “on the depths of the ocean, beneath the depths of the sky; you feel an unimagined depth open within you, and in that depth you feel a poignant awareness that whatever happens, you are alive right now, in this moment. You feel yourself embraced in an infinite generosity that will uphold you whether you live or die. Birth and death, beginning and ending, all are taken up into one unfathomable gift of being alive and grateful and aware in this moment, now. …[And] you know, on some deep level, that your life was really saved….”

 

What Finley describes sounds like one of those “thin places” which Marcus Borg liked to point up, “where the veil that blinds us to the reality of the sacred momentarily lifts, and we have a sense of the reality of God. […] A thin place is anywhere our hearts are opened.” 

 

They’re few and far between, such moments. This is the one that comes quickly to my mind: I’m alone—there’s no one else about—sitting on a giant boulder beside the still waters of Lake Magog watching the sun rise on towering Mt. Assiniboine, “the Matterhorn of the Canadian Rockies”. God. Grace. Salvation. At least in such a rare moment as this. 

 

No, wait. What if salvation is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder: something moves me, but not another. And that something might be a most mundane object or memory, an everyday experience. Maybe “salvation” isn’t a once-and-done happening. Maybe it’s going on all the time, and we, being human—often blind, deaf, and dumb—miss it. Maybe it doesn’t have to be a sunrise on an alp. Maybe we can find salvation—if only we can stop to take it in—in here-and-gone moments. Like these:

 

*  For several summer seasons, a jackrabbit not infrequently came up out of Mill Creek Ravine and chose to hunker down beside our patio. We felt privileged—it could have made its home-away-from-home elsewhere.

 

*  Once only, before old-age afflictions limited my mobility, a granddaughter, then a young teen, wanted to wander with me in the ravine one fall day, and for me to show her a thing or two about photography—how that pleased me.

 

*  A few autumns ago, we visited a beyond-the-city-limits natural area, where I stood stolidly for maybe half an hour, all the while with a smile on my face, watching chickadees flitting about a bench on which bread crumbs and birdseed had been scattered. It was blissful. 

 

*  Dusting the high places is one of my clean-the-condo assignments, so, every week I take a Swiffer to a plaque that hangs in our entranceway. It shows a couple, bundled up for winter, embracing. We’d bought it, when first we’d moved to Canada, for my parents—it was them, for they so loved one another, something I’m reminded of every time I dust. 

 

*  Several years ago our condo complex was renovated, and our share of the costs came to five figures, a shock I mentioned in a phone call to a friend-for-half-a-century back in Ontario. We hung off. Moments later, he called back—he and his wife had reflected on our news, and had decided to give us that sum of money. We were stunned; we declined; and took out a loan; but we’ll never forget their generous offer.

 

*  And it was when our condo complex was being noisily rehabilitated that Nancy Steeves gave over to us for a week her home beside a lake a half-hour’s drive out of town—she and her spouse, Dawn, would be away. It was, for us, such a relief to escape each day to the lake, to be at peace in a retreat centre all our own. [Surely, the mystic, Meister Eckhart, was right when he wrote, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ’Thank you,’ it will be enough.”]

 

Grace has been mine throughout my life. It abounds still—all I must do is be aware. And then, in a moment, for a fleeting moment, I’m “saved”. Happens all the time. 

 

Ken Fredrick