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From: amigo@iwlc6.UUCP (John Hobson)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Salvation (part 2)
Message-ID: <133@iwlc6.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Apr-84 14:17:37 EST
Article-I.D.: iwlc6.133
Posted: Mon Apr 16 14:17:37 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Apr-84 07:49:53 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 123

Let's go back, then, and try again.  Only, this trip, no quite so
recklessly: 

"When (from our point of view) God decided to become man," he chose
to become incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary.  This
time, we will avoid the pothole of assuming that the birth of Jesus
is the beginning of a new departure in the way God works in the
world.  Let us say instead that it was the culmination of a whole
series of transactions between God and Man--transactions by which
the one, unchanging Mystery works toward building the New
Jerusalem, the City of God.

That sounds better already.  It fits nicely with the history of the
covenant, and it obviates the necessity of seeing Jesus as the sole
transaction in which the Mystery is at work.  All the earlier
transactions, the covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses (if you
want me to write a short theological essay on the history of the
covenant, I will)--are true steps in the building of the City.  The
Incarnation is simply the supreme transaction.  The death and
resurrection of Jesus are the effective fulfillment of all that
went before.

Accordingly, we may now view the proclamation of the Gospel in a
different light.  In Jesus, God has made the ultimate transaction,
after which no other transaction will ever be needed.  God has, as
it were, perfected a saving product, and he now proceeds to
distribute it.  This is good, too.  It makes sense of the scandal
of particularity we see in the covenant with Abraham: God
particularizes salvation, first in Israel and finally in Jesus,
precisely in order that he may universalize it.  He cuts out
everyone, just so he can eventually draw them in.

We're holding the road fairly well.  But how does the result of the
final transaction fecome universal?  How is the perfected product
distributed to all?  Well, in the first instance, this is
accomplished by a fellowship of baptised people which is universal,
for all men--by the one, holy, catholic (note the small "c") and
apostolic Church, sent to proclaim everywhere the good news of
Jesus' full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and
satisfaction for all offered on the cross.

How, though, shall we deal with the problem which, last time
around, eventually caused the crash?  How do we get the perfected
product to those born too soon, or too far away from the Holy
Christian Chain Store?  Let us try it this way:  Let us say that,
while the church is the normal outlet for the fruits of the
transaction, it is obvious that the distributing operation of Jesus
is not limited to the church.  This has the virtue of having some
scriptural and creedal foundation:  After his death on the cross,
and before his resurrection, he descends into hell, into the place
of departed spirits.  He goes and he preaches to the spirits in
prison.  He offers them an opportunity to accpt the free gift he
has just perfected in the ultimate transaction.

Good enough.  That takes care of everyone who died before 29 AD--and
without a single jerry-built limbo, at that.  But what about the
Eskimo in 50 AD who didn't even have an Eskimo's chance of getting
preached to at all--who died in the frozen north while the church
was still basking in the Mediterranean sunshine?  What about all
those poor souls who were too late for the early show and too early
for the late one?  Well, perhaps we can hold that the descent into
hell was not meant to be taken as a single excursion, but as a
perpetual visit.  Maybe it should be taken to mean that Jesus is
always there, continually offering his salvation to all who die
without having heard it.  This can be extended to include those who
weere aware of the Church, but who were so repelled by the actions
of the individual Christians they came across that they refused to
consider it.  If you aren't able to pick up your free gift at one
of his franchised outlets during your lifetime, he will personally
distribute his product door to dor after death.

It's holding nicely.  No limbos.  Nobody left out.  But what of the
final question?  What does it mean when we say that the souls of
the departed will have a chance to accept or reject the free gift? 
The souls of the departed, if they exist in reality at all, are not
human beings.  A human being is body and soul; if you separate the
two, you get a corpse and a ghost.  Furthermore, in the tradition
in which this usage of soul was most common, the sould after death
was viewed as a poor, passive thing, incapable of doing or deciding
anything.  And worse yet, there is 2 Corinthians 5:10: "We must all
appear before the judgement seat of Christ; that every one may
receive the things done in the body, according to that which he has
done, whether it be good or bad."

Oh, oh.  Things are beginning to sound as if we've got a front
wheel out of balance.  The argument is up to speed, but it's
developing a shimmy.  Perhaps if we push it a little harder, we can
cure it.  Suppose we try saying that the descent into hell means,
not a standing order by which Jesus offers the benefits of his
saving transaction to the souls of the dead, but rather a
willingness on his part to take some of the "deeds done in the
body"--things done while the people were still alive and,
therefore, still people--as the equivalent of acceptance or
rejection of the gift.

That only makes it worse.  Apparently both front wheels are in bad
shape.  On the one hand, we are slipping from theology into
bookkeeping:  We are now obliged to work out a system for
converting purely natural earthly deeds into acceptance of Christ. 
On the other hand, that turns out to be a tricky proposition.  If
we're not careful, we will steer ourselves right back into the same
situation that caused the awful pileup on the last trip.  We are on
the verge of saying once again that it is morality, not mercy, is
the key to the City.

Of course, we might try to work up some way of saying that the
"good deeds done in the body" are to be taken, not as good deeds
which have power to earn salvation, but as evidence of a
willingness to accept mercy.  How about a system for converting the
coin of morality into the scrip of forgiveness? Of course, that
will involve a lot more bookkeeping.  As a matter of fact, it will
probably involve keeping two sets of books.

I think that we had better park this vehicle, since the shimmy is
getting worse rather than better.  Why don't we pull it into a
dealership and trade it in for a new model?

I will give the next part of this in a day or so.

				John Hobson
				AT&T Bell Labs--Naperville, IL
				ihnp4!iwlc6!amigo