SALVATION

also called redemption in religion, the deliverance of mankind from such fundamentally negative or disabling conditions as suffering, evil, finitude, and death. In some religious beliefs it also entails the restoration or raising up of the natural world to a higher realm or state. The idea of salvation is a characteristic religious notion related to an issue of profound human concern. also called Redemption, in religion, the deliverance of mankind from fundamentally negative or disabling conditions, such as suffering, evil, finitude, and death; also, in some religions, the restoration or raising up of the natural world to a higher realm, or state. While salvation or redemption is a universal religious notion, the doctrine is perhaps most characteristic of Christianity, in which context it signifies the action of God within history whereby mankind is delivered from sin and death through the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Christian theology emphasis has been placed on the voluntary and loving character of Christ's sacrificial act, on the costliness of this deliverance, on the representative and substitutionary activity of Christ in doing for men what they could not do for themselves, and on the needed response of men in faith, worship, and newness of life to this initiative of God in Christ. In the Bible, redemption has a more limited context. According to the New Testament, In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace (Eph. 1:7). The biblical metaphor is that of buying back a parcel of land or of purchasing someone from slavery. In popular Christianity, it is the individual soul that is thus redeemedaccording to some, by virtue of voluntary faith, and according to others, on the basis of divine election. Judaism posits a collective salvation for the people of Israel. In the Old Testament, redemption is usually described as deliverance from material disasters, but in Ps. 130 it is promised that God will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. The restoration of the holy nation and the vindication of the Jews as God's chosen people in the Last Judgment are regarded as the salvatory culmination of history. Among other religions of Middle Eastern origin, the concept of salvation from future punishment by submission to Allah appears as the ultimate aim of the faithful in Islam. Zoroastrianism and Parsiism envision a universal salvation of mankind through the ultimate triumph of good over evil. While religions of the East tend to regard salvation or deliverance from the bondage of life and death as a matter of self-effort through practice and discipline, there have appeared in these contexts notions of intervening divine aid. In Mahayana Buddhism, the figure of Amitabha, or Amida, Buddha is an important example. Additional reading For recent and comprehensive studies of the subject, S.G.F. Brandon, Man and His Destiny in the Great Religions (1962), provides extensive documentation and bibliographies; important aspects of salvation are specially dealt with in his History, Time and Deity (1965) and The Judgment of the Dead (1967). S.G.F. Brandon (ed.), The Saviour God (1963), comprises 15 essays by specialists in the major religions. A valuable and well-documented study of the subject in Hebrew, Greco-Roman religions, and early Christianity may be found in T. Klauser (ed.), Reallexikon fr Antike und Christentum, vol. 5, col. 54219 (1964). Adolf von Harnack's monumental Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 3rd ed., 3 vol. (1893; Eng. trans., History of Dogma, 7 vol., 1900, reprinted 1961), traces the development of Christian soteriology. L.W. Grensted, A Short History of the Doctrine of the Atonement (1920, reprinted 1962), is a reliable concise guide. Aspects of salvation in the religions concerned are treated in the following books: R.C. Zaehner, Hinduism, 2nd ed. (1966) and The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism (1961); E.J. Thomas, The History of Buddhist Thought, 2nd ed. (1951); and A.J. Wensinck, The Muslim Creed (1932).