What Is Salvation?

What Is the Question?

Salvation, in the Abrahamic religious and philosophical tradition, is the divine deliverance from sin, evil, and death, and the restoration of the human being to right relation with God. The word comes from the Latin salus, meaning "health" or "safety," and it carries the sense of a healing, a rescue, and a making whole. The concept is central to the Abrahamic religions, where it names the central work of God on behalf of humanity, and it has shaped the Western moral and spiritual imagination. The philosophical question is what salvation amounts to, how it is accomplished, and what it implies about the human condition, the freedom of the will, and the afterlife.

The SEP entry on philosophy of religion treats salvation as one of the central topics of the tradition, especially in the Christian theology of grace and the afterlife, but also in the Jewish and Islamic traditions, where the concept takes distinctive forms. The philosophical work is to articulate the concept, to distinguish its theological accounts, and to ask the philosophical questions it raises.

Historical Background

The concept of salvation has its roots in the Hebrew Bible, where it is framed as God's deliverance of the people from their enemies, from slavery in Egypt, and from exile in Babylon. The prophets, especially Isaiah and Jeremiah, deepened the concept, treating salvation as the divine forgiveness of sin and the restoration of the covenant, and they pointed to a future age of peace and justice, the messianic age, in which God would finally deliver the people. In the New Testament, the concept is centered on the person and work of Jesus, whose death and resurrection are treated as the divine act of salvation, the deliverance from sin and death.

Augustine, in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, gave the concept its classical philosophical form. Augustine held that salvation is the work of grace, the unmerited divine assistance that heals the disordered will, and that human beings cannot save themselves by their own powers. The Augustinian account was developed in his debates with Pelagius, who held that human beings can choose the good by their own powers, and who minimized the role of grace. Augustine's position was affirmed at the Council of Carthage in 418, and it became the dominant position in the Western church.

Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica, systematized the Augustinian account, distinguishing the grace that heals from the grace that elevates. The healing grace, on Aquinas's view, repairs the damage of original sin, restoring the proper ordering of the will to God. The elevating grace, on Aquinas's view, raises the human being to a share in the divine life, the grace of the beatific vision, in which the saved see God face to face. The Aquinan account locates salvation in the beatific vision, the final end of the human being, and it has shaped the Catholic theology of salvation ever since.

The Reformers, especially Calvin and Luther, developed the Augustinian account in the doctrine of justification by faith, the view that salvation is received by faith, not by works, and that the salvation is the work of God, not of the human being. The Reformation debate, especially between Catholics and Protestants, has shaped the modern theology of salvation, and it has produced a number of distinct accounts, including the Catholic account of salvation as the infusion of charity, the Protestant account of salvation as the imputation of Christ's righteousness, and the Wesleyan account of salvation as sanctification.

Augustine: Salvation as the Work of Grace

Augustine's account of salvation is the classical form of the doctrine, and it deserves a closer look. Augustine's central claim is that salvation is the work of grace, the unmerited divine assistance that heals the disordered will. The disordered will, on Augustine's view, is the inherited damage of original sin, the disorder of love that tends toward evil and that cannot be healed by human powers. The healing of the will requires grace, the divine action that reorders the love, and the grace is a gift, not a reward, since the sinner has merited nothing but punishment.

The Augustinian account raises deep philosophical questions. The first is whether the account is compatible with freedom, since if the will is disordered, and the healing is the work of grace, then the sinner is not free, and the question arises whether the sinner is responsible for the sin. Augustine's answer was that the sinner is responsible, because the disorder is the result of the original free choice of the first humans, and the inherited disorder is a just punishment for that choice. The second is whether the account is compatible with the justice of God, since if salvation is the work of grace, and the grace is given to some and not to others, then the question arises why God saves some and not others. Augustine's answer was that the question is not ours to answer, and that the grace is given as a gift, not as a reward, and the gift is not unjust because no one merits it.

Aquinas: Healing and Elevating Grace

Aquinas's distinction between healing and elevating grace is the heart of his contribution to the theology of salvation. The healing grace, on Aquinas's view, repairs the damage of original sin, restoring the proper ordering of the will to God. The elevating grace, on Aquinas's view, raises the human being to a share in the divine life, the grace of the beatific vision. The distinction is not a piece of technical theology but a serious philosophical claim, that salvation has two dimensions, the healing of the disorder and the elevation to the divine, and that both are the work of grace.

The beatific vision, on Aquinas's view, is the final end of the human being, the state in which the saved see God face to face, and in which the deepest human longings are fulfilled. The beatific vision is the afterlife, the state of the saved after death and resurrection, and it is the goal of the whole created order. The Aquinan account locates salvation in the beatific vision, and it raises the question whether salvation is possible without the afterlife, a question that has been central to the modern philosophical debate.

Hick: Salvation as Soul-Making

John Hick, in Evil and the God of Love (1966), developed a distinctive account of salvation as soul-making. Hick held that the world is a "soul-making" place, designed by God to produce moral and spiritual maturity in free creatures, and that the evils of the world, including the inherited disorder of the will, are part of the soul-making process. The salvation, on Hick's view, is the maturation of the soul, the process by which the human being grows into the likeness of God, and the process is the work of both the human being and God, in cooperation.

Hick's account has several distinctive features. The first is that it makes the afterlife a necessary condition of salvation, since the soul-making process, if it is to be completed, requires more than one lifetime. Hick held that the process extends beyond death, in a series of lives, until the soul is mature, and that the universal salvation of all souls is the goal of the process. The second is that it makes the evils of the world, including the inherited disorder of the will, not just the result of sin but part of the divine plan, the means by which the soul is made. The third is that it makes the salvation of all souls the goal, since the soul-making process, if it is to be just, must be available to all, and must be completed in all.

Hick's account has been influential in the modern theology of salvation, especially in the pluralist theology that holds that salvation is available in all the great religious traditions, not only in Christianity. The philosophical questions the account raises, about the compatibility of evil with divine goodness, about the necessity of the afterlife, and about the universal salvation of all souls, are central to the contemporary debate.

The Philosophical Questions

The doctrine of salvation raises several deep philosophical questions. The first is whether salvation requires the afterlife. The traditional account, in Augustine and Aquinas, locates salvation in the beatific vision, the state of the saved after death, and the implication is that salvation is not possible in this life alone. The modern debate has reopened the question, and some theologians, including Hick, have held that the afterlife is a necessary condition of salvation, while others have held that salvation is possible in this life, in the healing of the will and the restoration of the relation to God.

The second is whether salvation is compatible with freedom. If salvation is the work of grace, and the grace is given to some and not to others, then the question arises whether the saved are free, and whether the unsaved are responsible for their state. The Augustinian account, with its insistence on the priority of grace, has been criticized as making God the author of salvation and the unsaved the victims of the lack of grace. The defender of the Augustinian account can reply that the grace is given as a gift, and that the gift is not unjust because no one merits it, but the reply pushes the debate into the theology of divine election.

The third is whether non-Christians can be saved. The traditional account, in Augustine and Aquinas, held that salvation is through Christ, and that non-Christians cannot be saved, at least not without implicit faith in Christ. The modern debate, especially in the pluralist theology of Hick and others, has held that salvation is available in all the great religious traditions, and that the question of who is saved is not ours to answer. The debate is live, and it has produced a number of distinct accounts, including the exclusivist, the inclusivist, and the pluralist.

Contemporary Relevance

The doctrine of salvation remains a live topic, both in theology and in philosophy. The persistence of the human longing for deliverance, for healing, and for wholeness, and the recognition that the longing is not easily satisfied by the resources of the secular age, have kept the question of salvation on the philosophical agenda. The honest philosophical stance is to take the doctrine seriously, to engage with the modern critiques, and to ask what the doctrine names that the alternatives do not. The work of philosophy is not to dismiss the doctrine by procedural fiat, but to do the careful work of comparison and assessment that the question deserves.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Philosophy of Religion" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-religion/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Augustine" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Thomas Aquinas" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "The Problem of Evil" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/

Related Topics

• What Is Sin? — the problem salvation addresses.
• What Is Original Sin? — the inherited condition.
• What Is Grace? — the divine assistance.
• What Is the Problem of Evil? — the moral challenge.
• What Is Theodicy? — the defense of God's goodness.
• Philosophy of God — the wider domain.