Been searching scriptures for "salvation"

by jaffacake 22 Replies latest jw friends

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  Leolaia

  jaffacake....If your interested in reading more about the Christian concept of "salvation" in the context of early Judaism, I would recommend for you the book Ancient Judaism and Christian Origins by George Nickelsburg (c. 2003, Fortress Press). It has a chapter on salvation (Chapter 3, "God's Activity in Behalf of Humanity") which shows that there were different concepts of "salvation" with varying metaphors and circumstances, such as the OT concept of salvation as deliverance from evil and one's enemies (which had political connotations, especially among Zealots), salvation from sin, salvation from death, eschatological salvation from judgment, and salvation as revelation of knowledge. Many of these concepts overlap and different writings have different concepts of what constitutes salvation and what its scope is supposed to be.

  Where does it say that not all who say Lord, Lord will be saved (or something like that).

  The passage is from the Matthean Sermon on the Mount, which is clearly directed against a segment of the Christian church, as it refers to those who call on Jesus as "Lord, Lord" (cf. Romans 10:9, 13; 1 Corinthians 7:10, 12, 12:3) and who prophesy and perform works in his name (cf. Romans 12:6; 1 Corinthians 12:9, 28-30, 13:9, 14:5, 24, 31-39):

  "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will (i.e. works, not faith) of my Father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness (anomia)." (Matthew 7:21-23)

  There is an interesting parallel in 2 Clement: "Let us, therefore, not just call him Lord, for this will not save us. For he says, 'Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will be saved, but only the one who does what is right.' ... The Lord said, 'If you are gathered with me in my bosom, yet you do not keep my commandments, I will throw you out and will say to you: "Depart from me, you workers of iniquity (anomia)." ' " (2 Clement 4:1-5). Contrast with Romans 10:9:

  "If you confess with your mouth, ?Jesus is Lord,? and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:9).

  For a perspective on the Jewish-Christian Law-observant tradition and its attitudes towards the Law-free Pauline gospel, I would recommend the Pseudo-Clementines, which include second-century Ebionite works from a Petrine community close to that represented by Matthew, especially the Epistula Petri, the Kerygmata Petrou, the Itinerary of Peter, and the Ascents of James.
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  jaffacake

  Many thanks Leolaia,

  I may have to study some history. 2 Clement is unfamiliar, is this Gnostic Gospels? I may need an idiot's guide to some of this. Is it safe to conclude that on salvation, the aspect about eternal life as sons of God, there are real contradictions of doctrine between Paul, James, the author of Matthew etc. Is the Bible not inspired, but rather contradictory doctrines? That would certainly explain the lack of agreement in interpretations.
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  Leolaia

  2 Clement is a mid-second century anonymous homily that draws heavily on the gospel tradition. It is not gnostic in any real sense (it is likely a product of the mainstream Western church), tho it does draw on noncanonical sayings which parallel some material in the Gospel of Thomas. This probably reflects the fact that 2 Clement was written at a time prior to the formation of the four-gospel canon.

  As I pointed out earlier, early Judaism embraced many different ideas about salvation and thus it is only natural that early Christianity reflected this diversity as well. The Johannine emphasis on salvation as revelation (e.g. eternal life results from the faith facilitated by Jesus' revelation of the Father) differs from that of the Pauline emphasis on salvation from sin and death as facilitated by Jesus' death, but the two concepts are not fully contradictory for they overlap -- and thus they have been harmonized in orthodox Christianity. The role of the Law in eschatological salvation was critical in early Judaism; frequently in works such as 1 Enoch and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Law is held as the catalyst for Israel to return to true worship of God and the return of his blessings on the nation. The "Essenes" responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls also viewed their own community as exclusively following the Law correctly (thanks to the teachings of the Teacher of Righteousness), and the reference to early Christianity as the "Way" should be viewed in a similar light (as the "Way of Life," in contrast to the Way of Death in the Two Ways). Matthew and later Jewish-Christian works view Jesus' rabbinical role as fulfilling the Law and providing new halakha on its interpretation (e.g. salvation as revelation), replacing the erroneous halakha of the Pharisees, which he passes on to his disciples -- with rabbinical authority of "binding and loosing". Thus in the Pseudo-Clementines, Jesus was the True Prophet prophesied by Moses who is himself greater than Moses and his salvivic role was in explaining how to follow the Law. Paul took a very different point of view; he believed that Jesus liberated men from the Law and rejected the view that the Law had a role to play for Gentiles. Since Jews maintained ritual purity unless Gentiles became circumcised (thereby becoming Jews), strict Jewish Christians kept uncircumcised Gentiles at arm's length, whereas Paul conceived of a universal church composed of Jews, and Gentiles circumcised or uncircumcised. Because Paul was willing to toss aside the Law for the sake of Gentiles, many Jewish Christians viewed him as an "apostate" and a "wolf in sheep's clothing". In terms of the two ways in Matthew, Paul's easy Law-free Christianity would be the "broad and spacious path" many were taking to their destruction while less popular Law-observant Christianity was the "narrow and difficult path" leading to life. The Didache was a Jewish-Christian catechism for Gentiles, and it gives an option for Gentiles to just refrain from eating things sacrificed to idols, murder, and so forth (e.g. without becoming full Christians), and yet it warns that to become "perfect" (e.g. justified from sin) one should take the full "yoke" of the Law and when the eschatological tribulation comes, only those found perfect would be saved. The typical Gnostic concept of salvation, which stresses the liberation of the spirit from the evils of the material world, bears striking similarities with John (e.g. realized eschatology, salvation as revelation, the deity of the Revealer) and Paul (e.g. antinomianism), but is characteristic as well.