SALVATION AS COMMUNION: Partakers of the Divine Nature

Theology Today, Oct 2004 by Heim, S Mark

Christian theology has been thick with discussion about the stages of progress toward salvation and the place of various factors in contributing to it. Theologians have considered who may be saved and how, but the substance of salvation itself is often more assumed than described. Perhaps it would be better to say that salvation is often defined by inversion, as the state achieved when the evils and estrangements of human life are overcome. Salvation is viewed fundamentally as an absence-the absence of sin.

In traditional theological discussions, salvation is presumed to be: (1) a unitary reality (one is, or will be, saved or not-salvation does not admit of degrees), (2) a global or omnibus reality (the sum or integration of all true goods), and (3) an eternal destination (a life beyond the limits of death and time). These are positive, but extraordinarily formal descriptions, far removed from the vivid quality of corporate prayer and personal devotion or the specific shapes of human fantasies and desires. It is hard to know more concretely what they describe. Christian theology seems marked by specificity about the wrongs to be overcome and obscurity about the hope to be realized. A flood of popular literature (from The Lovely Bones to The Five People You Meet in Heaven) is intended to fill this gap, as perhaps it has always been filled throughout Christian history. John Bunyan and Dante Alighieri may be better guides in this respect than many professional theologians.

The questions this literature addresses are often very good ones. If salvation is a reality on the order of magnitude that we believe it to be, then it ought to strain the boundaries of our imaginations and the frontiers of our knowledge. It cannot be something-even a positive something-fully domesticated and somewhat antique. It is a serious theological question to ask what is interesting and attractive about heaven. Redemption appears, in many tellings, as a very static condition, and that seems less obviously an attribute of perfection to us than it may have appeared in other ages. Is there any place in salvation for dynamism and process? Is salvation one thing, or is it many? Does it allow for diversity, individual identity? On the other hand, is it only a collection of different destinies? We may hear and believe that salvation is justice, peace, forgiveness, moral renewal, eternal bliss, mystical union . . . the list could go on. But are these simply separate items on a combined list, any one of which counts as salvation? Does one item subsume the others, or are they all only preliminary stages that anticipate a single, less-defined final condition? The most important question is a practical one, a challenge to the positive theological imagination: Can we envision an image of ultimate fulfillment with as much positive, attractive force as the force that causes us to recoil from our images (and experiences) of evil and suffering? Is there hope for a good with the positive strength to charm, transfix, and transform us?

One benefit of our current cultural pluralism, and particularly religious pluralism, is that it gives us an opportunity to see Christian salvation not as a universal, culturally assumed good and aspiration for all people but instead as a particular hope with a distinct character. Instead of something all desire and none can define, we may begin to recognize Christian salvation as something with a unique shape that not all will choose.

A WORKING DEFINITION OF SALVATION AS COMMUNION

Here is a working definition. Salvation is a relation of communion with God and other creatures in Christ. In fact, this definition assumes communion as a recursive feature of Christian faith, a watermark in several of the separate elements in the definition itself. By "God," we mean the Trinity, three divine persons in communion. And, by "Christ," we mean a human person in whom there is complete communion of divine and human natures. Salvation, so described, accords with the ancient patristic saying that God became human in order that humans may become divine, sharers and participants by grace in the divine life that Christ enjoys by nature. This conviction once amazed and enthralled early Christians. In fresh form, it may do the same for us, reawakening our imaginations to wonder at the mystery and majesty of salvation.

Words like koinonia and communion have a musty odor that needs some fresh air. Perhaps the most direct path to that end is to explore some human analogies. Let us consider three dimensions of relation between persons. First, somewhat counterintuitively, persons have nonpersonal relations with each other. We have interactions that do not bring into play what we think of as distinctive personal qualities. A man falls off a roof and lands on someone below, an event that can be described basically in terms of mass and acceleration. The menstrual cycles of women living together synchronize. I receive a blood transfusion from someone I have never met. In the last case, the physiological and even molecular processes of our two organisms meet in a very fundamental way. Whether dignified with the language of relation or not, such a connection can be lifesaving.