Theological Understanding of Salvation and its Significance in the Life of the Church

Abstract

All attempts at describing the mystery of salvation are only partial. The idea of salvation, although it is considered a little archaic today, deserves being examined closely again as one of the concepts that belong to absolutely key ones. It appears as a “structure of our construction and of our future”, so it refers to the essence of man and is sort of “prophecy of his existence”. Theology of salvation appears to every man as a promise – or a suggestion – that a man is not alone and that he builds himself, exceeding himself and accepting the fact that God is different. Salvation is always visible where a certain “possibility”, a potentiality emerges in front of ahuman person; that is, where a being is not completed and has a perspective of being positively different. Salvation is where there is a meaning. Who utters the word “salvation”, says that nothing in his life of in the history of the world is subject to fatalism, nothing is inexcusable, impossible to mend, incurable. This truth testifies that although God has not liberated us from evil yet, He has liberated us from the tyranny of evil. Christ’s salvation shows – and here it is exceptional again – what reality should be like for us and by us, and what it will be like through God’s faithfulness to His promises and through faithfulness of our response.