Soteriology: Exploring the Study of Salvation in the Bible

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

Soteriology is a term steeped in the rich tradition of Christian theology. It involves profound and often complex doctrines of salvation, particularly as they pertain to the significance of Jesus’ death and its implications for humanity's redemption from sin.

In this article, I’ll investigate the historical evolution of soteriology, explore various interpretations and theories that have emerged over the centuries, and examine how these perspectives have shaped the understanding of salvation and its significance within Christianity.

Soteriology Definition and Significance

The English word soteriology is derived from the Greek word sōtēria meaning “preservation or salvation.” Soteriology, then, is the study of salvation, another word for redemption, which, in Christianity, means the discussion of how Jesus’ death saves people from sin and its effects.

While this includes different theories of atonement, which I’ll discuss below, it also includes theories of how Christians should participate in their salvation. In the introduction to the edited volume Christian Theologies of Salvation: A Comparative Introduction, Justin Holcomb notes that soteriology also addresses several other questions:

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People have addressed these questions in different ways throughout Christian history, so let’s look at the history of soteriology, beginning with Christianity’s earliest years.

History of Soteriology: Paul and the Gospels

One of our earliest records of Christian soteriology comes from a letter written by Paul a mere 20 years after Jesus’ death. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, Paul says this: 

But what does it mean that Jesus “died for our sins”? Paul has apparently already explained this to the Corinthians so he doesn’t feel it necessary to explain this simple statement further. For modern readers, it’s a bit less clear.

Many Christians have interpreted Paul’s statement like this: someone had to die as a consequence of rampant sin in the world, and Jesus allowed himself to be a sacrifice so that the rest of humanity would escape those consequences (more on that theory later).

However, since at least the 1960s, scholars have questioned this conclusion, taking on a point of view that came to be known as the New Perspective on Paul. This perspective, which is no longer new, questions the older paradigm in which Paul was believed to have rejected Judaism in favor of a new religion called Christianity. Furthermore, this older paradigm asserted that Paul’s notion of salvation was about the relationship between God and the individual, based solely on faith in Jesus.

In a 1963 article, for instance, Krister Stendahl, one of the architects of the New Perspective, wrote that Paul was not concerned about how individuals could become right with God but rather how Gentiles could be included in the divine covenant God had made with Jews, thus effecting their salvation.

Furthermore, in Who Wrote the New Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth, Burton Mack writes that, when 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 says that “Christ died for our sins,” he means that  Gentiles who try to observe the precepts of the Torah, may not be completely capable of following all the commandments, such as circumcision. This makes them 'sinners' and, therefore,  disqualified from God's covenant. According to Mack, Paul believes that Jesus’ death on the cross eliminated this problem for faithful Gentiles, allowing them to participate in the covenant, as Paul says in Romans 3:21-26:

Another controversial aspect of Paul’s theology has been the translation of the Greek phrase pistis Christou. This phrase has often been translated in English as “faith in Jesus Christ,” which is one possibility. This form of the phrase has been a cornerstone of Protestant theology, the idea that the only requirement for salvation is faith in Christ.

However, in The Quest for Paul's Gospel: A Suggested Strategy, Douglas Campbell notes that the word pistis more often means “faithfulness.” If the phrase actually means “the faithfulness of Christ,” Paul may have been saying that we are saved because of Jesus’ own faithfulness to God, through his willing death on the cross.

Finally, in Paul: The Apostle's Life, Letters, and Thought, E.P. Sanders wrote that the basis for Paul’s soteriology was not the legal notion of Christ’s death atoning for our sins, but rather the idea of Christians dying and rising with Christ. Sanders thus says that for Paul, "those who are baptized into Christ are baptized into his death, and thus they escape the power of sin [...] he died so that the believers may die with him and consequently live with him."

Needless, to say, Paul’s theology is complicated and there is still no complete agreement, among scholars or laypeople, about what he meant in his writings.

The Gospels, which were written long after the letters of Paul, have their own perspective on soteriology. In Mark 10:45, for example, Jesus says “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” This theme of Jesus’ death as a ransom is repeated in Matthew 20:28.

A ransom is money paid for the release of a prisoner. The suggested meaning, then, is that human beings are prisoners of sin, and that Jesus’ death will be the payment to release them. However, this brings up another question: to whom is this payment made? As we’ll see later, there have been a couple of different answers to this question.

Later Theories of Atonement: Church Fathers and Beyond

Second-century church father Irenaeus of Lyons wrote about the ransom theory of atonement,  saying that by willingly dying, Christ was paying a ransom to Satan who had enslaved humanity through the power of sin. In fact, Irenaeus wrote that because of the sin of Adam and Eve, Satan had possessed legitimate rights to the lives of sinful human beings in the afterlife. Jesus’ sacrificial death paid Satan, thus freeing human beings from his control.

Origen of Alexandria, writing in the 3rd century, agreed with this view, noting, in addition, that Satan had been deceived by God into thinking that he could keep control over humans forever through sin.

However, Irenaeus had another theory that went hand-in-hand with the ransom theory. This theory is called the recapitulation theory of atonement. In this concept, Christ is seen as a new Adam since he undoes the sinful wrong that Adam did. Then, because of Christ’s union with humanity, he is able to guide human beings to moral perfection and eternal life.

In his book Against Heresies, Irenaeus sums this up by saying that Christ

In addition to this, Irenaeus says that Jesus “became what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.” Many other Eastern Christian writers, including Athanasius and Gregory Nazianzus in the 4th century, would reiterate this idea.

These two theories were generally replaced in the Western Church beginning in the 11th century by the satisfaction theory conceived by Anselm of Canterbury, an English monk and theologian.

Anselm disliked the notion of Christ paying a ransom to Satan, questioning how God could owe anything to the Devil. He suggested instead that human beings owe God since they had chosen to sin. Anselm asserted, therefore, that this human debt to God created an imbalance that God could not ignore. The only way to pay this massive debt was for the sinless Christ to suffer and die in our place in order to satisfy the harm humans had done to God’s honor.

In the 16th century, Protestants developed the satisfaction theory into a quasi-legal model known as the penal substitution theory. Since the legal system requires punishments for wrongdoing, Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin reasoned that God was justifiably furious at humanity for their violations of God’s laws and had no choice but to punish them accordingly.

However, Christ willingly took their punishment on himself, despite his sinlessness. In other words, while someone had to be punished for our moral failings, Jesus willingly accepted the punishment on our behalf.  Christians who believe this are, therefore, required to have faith in Christ and the efficacy of his sacrifice in order to receive forgiveness for their sins.

Another theory in the 11th and 12th centuries was developed by a French theologian named Peter Abelard. His theory, called the moral influence theory, was written to counter Anselm’s satisfaction theory of atonement. Abelard disagreed with Anselm’s portrait of God as angry and vengeful. In his book The Nonviolent Atonement, J. Denny Weaver notes that Anselm’s portrait of God did not agree with the loving God in which Abelard believed.

Instead, Weaver says that Abelard believed that "Jesus died as the demonstration of God's love." This demonstration was meant to save humanity by turning people’s hearts to goodness and love and, thus, away from sin. This theory was largely eclipsed in Protestantism, though, by the penal substitution theory. However, some prominent thinkers, including influential philosopher Immanuel Kant, would later embrace it.

Soteriology in Different Denominations

Irenaeus’ soteriology, a combination of a ransom paid to Satan while Christ repaired the damage done by Adam by taking on human form, was the dominant view of the atonement throughout the first millennium CE and remains the view of the Orthodox Church today.

Additionally, this recapitulation theory gradually developed further in the Orthodox Church into the notion of theosis, or deification, summed up in Irenaeus’ phrase that Christ “became what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.” It was stated even more plainly by the 4th-century Athanasius in his work On the Incarnation: “God became man so that man might become god.” Lest this seem like heresy, Orthodox priest Andrew Steven Damick writes that in theosis, 

The Catholic Church today espouses the satisfaction theory of atonement. In other words, the “ransom” from the Gospels was paid to God to restore his honor which was offended by human sinfulness. As it says in the Catechism of the Catholic Church

Finally,  penal substitution theory is still the most widely-held theory among contemporary Protestants, although it is not without its detractors. In their book Moral Transformation: The Original Christian Paradigm of Salvation, for instance, A.J. Wallace and R.D. Rusk note that based on the biblical evidence, “both the early Christians and the biblical authors never held penal substitution theory as their core teaching, if they ever held it at all.” In addition, contemporary theologian Richard Rohr criticizes the ethics of the theory, concluding that penal substitution is “based on retributive justice rather than the restorative justice that the prophets and Jesus taught."

Conclusion

Most Christians would probably agree that salvation, another word for redemption, is the point, the goal, of Christianity. Nevertheless, views about the meaning and methods of salvation differ widely. The theology of salvation is known as soteriology, derived from the Greek meaning “preserving or saving.”

In the history of Christian thought, Paul is the first thinker to whom we have access through his letters in the Bible. He wrote that “Christ died for our sins,” leaving future interpreters to figure out what he meant. While many interpreted it through the lens of later soteriological theories, some scholars have pointed out that Paul seemed to believe that Christ’s death provided a way for Gentiles to be included in God’s saving covenant with Jews.

The Gospels, written after Paul, say that Jesus gave “his life as a ransom for many,” leaving later readers to wonder to whom this ransom was paid. Early theories asserted that since Adam and Eve had sinned, Satan had been in control of humanity. Christ’s “ransom,” then, was paid to Satan to free us from his clutches. In addition, early Christian authors, such as Irenaeus, wrote that, by uniting the human and the divine in himself, Jesus had undone the sin of Adam, removing that burden from humanity.

However, later theories, such as the satisfaction theory and the penal substitution theory, decided that humanity’s sins had either offended God’s honor or demanded punishment as in a court of law. In the satisfaction theory, Christ’s death had satisfied the insult to God’s honor, whereas in the penal substitution theory, Christ had allowed himself to substitute for humanity and take all God’s furious punishment.

Finally, a medieval theologian named Peter Abelard based his theory of salvation not on God’s wrath or revenge but on God’s love. His moral influence theory said that Jesus gave himself for humanity as an act of love, the influence of which should change our hearts and make us more loving as well.

While there are many theories of salvation in Christianity, there has never been universal agreement about how Christ’s death and resurrection are salvific.