SALVATION AS COMMUNION: Partakers of the Divine Nature

Theology Today, Oct 2004 by Heim, S Mark

The vision of social justice embodies a profound Christian imperative, since every wound to the social fabric of human relations is likewise a rupture in the raw material of salvation. Where there is oppression and alienation, communion is blocked. And wherever genuine communion arises with and among those who suffer, a powerful impetus for transformative change is born. Broken bonds of human solidarity violate God's commands, but they also cut the very circuits of mutuality that arc the nervous system of redeemed life. Only through genuine communion can the suffering and oppression of some become real to all. This vision of salvation does not replace the traditional (or modern) Christian focus on sin, evil, and death as the wrongs that salvation rights. And these must often come uppermost. But the Christian vision of salvation undergirds the focus on social justice with a deeper rationale and a positive vision for renewed human community both in history and beyond history. The solidarity of those who struggle together for human well-being in the face of evil, injustice, and disease is itself an instance of communion, and this communion is often the most immediate foretaste of redemption.

SHARERS IN THE DIVINE NATURE

If communion is the watermark of salvation, then the aspiration to become sharers in the divine nature, to become by grace what God is by nature, is realistic. If God's nature itself is communion, then we may hope to participate in it by means of communion. Rooted in incarnation and Trinity, this is a distinctive feature of the Christian hope. The quest for salvation in these terms is viewed as impossible and unwise, if not blasphemous, by most Jewish and Muslim observers, on the ground that it exaggerates the possibility for human relation to God, in the face of God's utter transcendence. The Christian hope is regarded as misguided by many Buddhists and Hindus because it has relational features at all. In short, salvation as communion succeeds in referring to something distinct enough to be distinguished from other options.

This distinct Christian view of salvation licenses our imaginations to explore its positive implications. We return to the kinds of "popular" question with which we began our discussion. It should be plain that Christian redemption is no static condition, no regression toward a mean (or a single ideal), no loss of the dynamic goods that we value so highly. Communion is a state not only open to the most extraordinary variety, but requiring it. Among the great joys of human experience are creation, learning, and discovery. We are individuated by our passions, whether for dance, math, engineering, history, or biology. If the fullest salvation is the greatest communion, then salvation requires an infinite field of such particularity. If each knew and experienced the same things in the same way, communion would have no point or reality.

We have, as yet, encountered the scope of a great painter, great athlete, or great psychologist only within the restrictions of a lifetime, captive to one historical period-just as we have experienced the reality of a good friend, lover, or family in the same way. But this is a faint reflection of what these particularities can become with such restrictions removed. The strong audience for novels and entertainment that traffic in science fiction, fantasy, and time travel reflects not only escapism but an awareness of this profound spiritual fact: We are made for more reality, not less. The stronger the complexity, the enormity, the weirdness of our universe, the greater the variety that can be made one by communion. Salvation is not an end to this dynamic-a perfection of stillness-but the fulfillment of its promise. Salvation is many things, many distinct things, in fact an ever-expanding whirl of harmonious particularity.