Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
167
(4) All wrong-doing to fellow humans is also wrong-doing done to God. For
‘Man’s dependence on God is so total that he owes it to him to live a good life.
Henc e when a man fails in any objec tive or subjec tive duty of his fellows, he also
fails in his dut y t owards God, his c reat or’ (124).
(5) We c an repent and apologize to God for our sins, but we c annot on our
own offer adequate atonement, i.e. reparation and penance. For, ‘Sinc e what needs
atonement to God is human sin, men living sec ond-rate lives when they have been
given such great opportunit ies by t heir c reat or, appropriat e reparat ions and
penance would be made by a perfect human life’ (157).
(6) That ‘perfec t human life’ is provide by Christ, who lived without sin and
voluntarily endured a death whic h he openly intended as a sac rific e that we,
ac c epting it from him, c an offer to God as atonement for our sins, both individual
and c orporat e. Christ’s death is thus ‘an offering made available to us men to offer
as our reparation and penanc e’. ‘There is no need,’ Swinburne add, ‘to suppose that
life and death [of Christ’s] to be the equivalent of what men owe to God (or that
plus appropriate penance), however that could be measured. It is simply a c ost ly
penanc e and reparation suffic ient for a merc iful God to let men off the rest’ (154).
(7) To be sanc t ified and t hus finally saved is only possible t o t hose who (as
well as repent ing and apologizing) part ic ipat e in t he Christ ian worship of God and
plead the atoning death of Christ, thereby throwing off their guilt. To be saved we
must thus be joined – either in this life or hereafter – to the Christian c hurc h, whic h
is the Body of Christ (173).
I think it must be granted that all this is possible; and indeed those of us who
were onc e fundamentalist Christians, ‘washed in the blood of the Lamb’, are likely
to feel an emotional tug towards this set of ideas. The question is not, however,
whet her suc h a sc hema is logic ally possible, but whet her it is religiously plausible;
and t o many of us t oday it is likely t o seem highly implausib le, even t hough also
with elements of truth within it. I shall c omment from this point of view on the
seven points listed above.
- That the idea of salvation revolves around the issues of guilt and atonement
is a c ent ral t heme of t he Lat in t heologic al t radit ion, launc hed above all by St
Augustine. The Greek tradition, on the other hand, stemming from the early
Hellenistic fathers of the c hurc h and preserved within Eastern Orthodoxy, thinks of
salvat ion as deific at ion or (perhaps bet t er) t ransformat ion. Forgiveness is , of
course, an element within this, but does not have the c entral plac e that the Latin
t radit ion, followed by Swinburne at t his point , gives to it. Swinburne prefers the
Greek to the Latin development on a number of issues; nevertheless, he does not
seem to have c onsidered t he radic al alt ernat ive whic h t he East ern t heologic al
projec t or offers. If one sees salvation/liberation as the transformation of human
existence from self-c entredness to a new orientation c entred in the ultimate divine
Reality, the transaction t heories of salvat ion t hen appear as implausib le answers t o
a mistaken question. - Swinburne’s analysis of guilt and rec onc iliation between human beings is
exc ellent ; t his is one of t he ‘element s of t rut h’, as it will seem t o more liberal
Christ ians, wit hin his t ot al t heory. - That God is another person, with unique attributes but subjec t to the same
moral requirements as ourselves, and thus with obligations and duties and