Most of us are familiar with the right-wing literalist narrative of Salvation. According to this axiom, God is a vindictive and petty legalist who holds a grudge against all of humanity because the first couple he created ate an apple he asked them not to. Due to this "original sin", we all are deserving of eternal punishment and torment. Now, to be fair to the less literal of the Evangelicals, some point out that the forbidden fruit eaten was the, "knowledge of good and evil", and that as such we all have, "God's Law", the understanding of what God considers as right and wrong, written in our hearts, and sin is when someone is unwilling or unable to comply, but that the rightful consequence is still death and eternal torture. And since it is apparently impossible to comply, "for all have sinned and fallen short", that's all of us.
However, the Evangelicals point out that there is "good news". God doesn't completely hate us. Although this all powerful God can not violate his own legal system where any departure from his law and will is deserving of death and torment, he has a legal loophole. Death and torture are still required, but it doesn't have to be the individual who committed the crime, there can be a substitute. This is where the most primitive superstition of the earliest of religious ideas comes in, the blood sacrifice. God apparently will allow animals to be tortured and killed in someone's place in order to make payment against their transgressions and defer punishment in this life. The more perfect and pure the animal being sacrificed, the better the payment. However, animal sacrifices are only pure enough to defer punishment to the next life and will not commute the sentence to Hell at death. For this, only the purest of sacrifices is sufficient, indeed, only God himself.
So, apparently, the really good part of this news is that God, in the form of his Son, Jesus, allowed himself to be tortured and killed in order to fulfill the requirements of his own legalism and take humanity's punishment on himself. But there's a catch. This sacrifice is not universal to all humanity, but only to a small portion who cash in on the offer by performing the right ritual. So, if you didn't know about the ritual, or chose not to perform it, or didn't perform it under the right conditions, it's still Hell fire for you.
The first condition is that you be convinced intellectually that there is a literal God, an all powerful sentient being that can read your mind and presides over an alternate reality that you experience after death. Secondly, you must be convinced that the legal system of this narrative is also factual and that you have transgressed against it and are deserving of punishment. And thirdly, you must be remorseful about this transgression and wish to be pardoned. At this point, the rite consists of asking for forgiveness in the "name of Jesus" and accept his sacrifice as having made payment on your behalf. It next involves, "asking Jesus into your heart", which to some literalists is along the line of a spirit possession similar to "The Exorcist" except Jesus doesn't take control of your body, just gives you instruction on your moral compass on God's law and acts as a shield against God's wrath.
Is this really the "good news" of the Gospel? Is this what the Gospel writers were referring to when they talk about salvation? As a young man, I was convinced of this. Although I grew up in the United Church, I was involved in Evangelical circles. I handed out tracts on this interpretation of Salvation in my High School and persuaded the school to allow a reformed and converted former bank robber and convict to share his testimony at a school assembly called exclusively for this purpose. But, as I grew older and studied the Gospels, I questioned whether this was the message they presented. So, what are the Gospels saying?
First of all, we need to put the Gospels in context. Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi and wisdom teacher who belonged to post-exilic second Temple Rabbinical Judaism. He and his early followers saw themselves as thoroughly part of that religion and tradition and were offering what they felt was the most faithful interpretation of it.
Secondly, one needs to be aware that an afterlife was not a theme in the Rabbinical Jewish tradition that Jesus and his followers belonged to. There are only two references in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures, that could be said to refer to an afterlife, Isaiah 26:19, and Daniel 12:2. These are both references to the Persian idea of a resurrection in some future time rather than an immediate transition to another conscious reality at the point of death. Outside of the Rabbinic Literature, there is a doctrine in Jewish eschatology of Resurrection that was popular in Jesus time, where in a future age the dead will rise from their graves to live again. This idea was closely associated with the doctrine of the Messiah and would be a ready store of allusions for the Gospel writers who cast Jesus in the Messiah role.
Judaism of the second Temple period thought of Salvation in more of a corporate than personal fashion. The concept of Salvation was tied to the restoration of the state of Israel and rescue from national enemies. This was especially relevant in Jesus' time with the conquest and occupation by Roman forces. The Jews of the first century expected to be rescued from foreign dominion. Looking to texts such Deuteronomy 4:32, Isaiah 40:1-2, and Jeremiah 31:27-40, many believed that this would only occur after they suffered a purification process for past breaches of their covenant with God. As such, they looked for an immediate earthly wrath and judgment by God on the people of Israel where, as John the Baptist put it, "every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire" (Luke 3:9). This was an earthly process for the living and had nothing to do with one's existence after death. In the Gospels, John the Baptist identifies Jesus as the awaited Messiah that would carry out this process on God's behalf.
"But one who is more powerful than I will come...His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Luke 3:15-18)
The people asked John what they should do (to be saved from this immediate earthly purification). His answer did not involve any of the Evangelical narrative above. He told them that, "Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same". To the tax collectors he instructed that they not, "collect any more than you are required to". To the soldiers he advised, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely".
I would like to draw particular attention to the 18th verse of this section on John the Baptist in the third chapter of Luke.
"And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them." (my emphasis added).
So, the, "good news", in this section of the Gospels, is that there is way for the people of Israel to escape the coming earthly judgment and purification necessary before their salvation from foreign domination and that the key to this is through practicing generosity, social equality, honesty and justice.
Jesus' first public act as reported in the Gospels after his baptism by John was his reading of a passage from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”...“Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:18-20) (my emphasis added).
Let's take a look at this statement. Evangelicals have a natural aversion to anything but a literal interpretation of Scripture, but, does that method hold up here given the story of Jesus' actions in the Gospels? If you literalize the miracle and great deeds stories of Jesus in the Gospels you could argue that he healed blind people and recovered their sight. However, you need to put these stories in context with the literature of the time. The accounts of almost all great figures of the time include miraculous great deed stories. Apollonius of Tyana was said to have healed people, to have exorcised demons, and to have raised a young girl from the dead. The emperor Vespasian was reported as curing the blind and lame. Hanina ben Dosa, a first century Galilean, was a famous healer and a master over the demonic powers. Even the philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras had tales of miracles associated with him that could compete with any of the supernatural events of the Gospels. Even resurrection from the dead was not unheard of in the literature of the times. So, either we had a plethora of people who could perform supernatural acts in the first century, or this was a common literary device and not to be taken as literal events.
What about the other points in the statement? There are no accounts of Jesus storming prisons and liberating the inhabitants. There are no stories of him enacting the Hebrew, "year of the Lord's favor" where land sold to someone outside of the tribe had to be returned. Given this, I would suggest that a more metaphorical interpretation of the statement is in order.
What things did Jesus do in the accounts given by the Gospels? Well, aside from the accounts of his miracles and his death and resurrection, accounts which I have suggested were more about validating his importance than the crux of his purpose and message, he taught a lot and told parables. But, it was what he taught that is key to his fulfilling of this promise claimed from Isaiah.
Jesus shared a vision and characterization of God as primarily loving, generous and forgiving. His parables encouraged people to look at the world, their culture and practices from this perspective. He asserted that we need to throw off the prejudices of our culture, society, and religion, and to look at reality from this perspective, "as a child", who has yet to be indoctrinated in, "the way the world works". This is being, "born again", moving from "darkness" to "light" and "salvation" from what oppresses us. Jesus' "Way" sets those who are imprisoned by their culture and religion free. It brings us "life" where there is "death" and wealth where there is poverty of spirit. It brings "sight" to the "blind" and wholeness to the "sick". I believe that this is what was being alluded to in the stories of Jesus' healing of the blind, lame and sick, and the resurrection of both Lazarus and himself from the dead. This, to me, is the actual Good News of Salvation in the Gospels.
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