What is Salvation?
In light of our unique paradigm for sin and the depth of exposition regarding the complexities of the soul, freedom from sin cannot simply be one-dimensionalized as a forgiveness of behavior; rather, just as 1 Peter 2:1-3 says it is, salvation is a holistic transformation of not just one’s behavior but of her or his values, identity, worldview, and affections. Let’s take a closer look at what salvation actually is:
Separated by Sin
In the 1970’s, The Navigators published a now overly popularized illustration of a Protestant Evangelical view of salvation called “The Bridge to Life.” This illustration looked similar to the figure here. This illustration of salvation leverages passages from Scripture like Isaiah 59:1-2 to identify an impossible separation between a holy God and an unholy humanity as a result of humanity’s sinful condition—a condition produced and imputed by Adam in the Garden of Eden. The work and role of Christ, as illustrated below, is that of a bridge, uniting what once was eternal separated: those who have faith in the work of Christ can now access a Holy God and, in turn, a Holy God can bless and be with a once unholy people.
Bridge to Life
While most Protestant Christian intersections of faith would accept if not advocate this illustration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Robert Thune and Will Walker convey their concern with what follows this initial encounter with the Good News: “Many Christians live with a truncated view of the gospel. We see the gospel as the “door,” the way in, the entrance point into God’s kingdom. But the gospel is so much more. It is not just the door, but the path we are to walk every day of the Christian life. It is not just the means of our salvation but the means of our transformation.”
In other words, if salvation simply means that Jesus provides an opportunity to move from one state of morality to another, then transformation will remain exclusively behavioral. There is no tilling of the soul and no freedom from the complexities of sin.
Gospel That Grows
In Colossians 1:6, the Apostle Paul teaches that the Gospel bears fruit and grows among those who have received it—that the work of Christ on the cross is not a historic point but a spiritual progress in the life of every Christian. As such, Thune and Walker expand on life after “The Bridge” illustration with this illustration.
With the progression of time, Thune and Walker suggest that a common trend amongst Christians is a growing reverence for God’s holiness juxtapose a growing awareness of one’s sinfulness; as the Christian attends a local church, reads the Bible, and learns more about the attributes of God along with new aspects regarding the self, a follower of Christ often grows increasingly conscious of how sinful, in fact, humanity is and, simultaneously, how holy God continues to be. The gap that was once perceived to separate sinful humanity and holy God does not get smaller, says Thune and Walker, but actually grows wider as the reality and extremities of both fallen humanity and holy divinity become increasingly manifest. Thune and Walker explain: “It is not that God is becoming more holy or that I am becoming more sinful. But my awareness of both is growing. I am increasingly seeing God as he actually is (Isa. 55:8-9) and myself as I actually am (Jer. 17:9-10).”
Addiction to Works
As a result, one of two responses occur: in most cases, the Christian may attempt to manufacture or fabricate a kind of moral perfectionism while keeping the initial role of Christ the same as it has been since one’s conversion. Recognizing that layers of sin motivate behaviors of sin, the Christian may compensate for the growing gap between God’s holiness and one’s sinfulness through a mastery of religiosity, producing meritorious works that only harm the Christian’s ultimate experience of Christ by limiting it. Paul Tillich provides a powerful explanation: “Moral self-discipline and habits will produce moral perfection although one remains aware that they cannot remove the imperfection which is implied in man’s existential situation, his estrangement from his true being… The moralistic self-defense of the neurotic makes him see guilt where there is no guilt or where one is guilty only in a very indirect way. Yet the awareness of real guilt and the self-condemnation which is identical with man’s existential self-estrangement are repressed, because the courage which could take them into itself is lacking.”
Instead of entering into the layers of sinfulness beneath behaviors sin, the Christian may become an addict to moral self-discipline (or “neurotic”), repressing the root causes of sin in order to avoid a Christ that is larger than the Christ who first introduced her or him to salvation at the point of conversion; like Adam and Eve, the Christian responds to the growing gap by hiding from God beneath acts of fabricated righteousness and manufactured merit, un-courageously facing the reality of one’s self and the reality of who Jesus truly is.
Devastation of Works
When this framework of salvation is adopted into a congregational or discipleship setting, the product is the very expressive individualism that has wreaked such great havoc to the souls of modern Christendom. When a person is given the opportunity to hide beneath and behind what is sold as good works and what is perceived as produced (versus imputed) righteousness, the consequences are detrimental. Timu Nisula summarizes Augustine’s view in this way:
“The human mind was created invisible and immaterial. Therefore, it assumed itself to “be of same nature as its Creator, thus cutting itself off by pride from Him to whom it ought to be united by love.” Pride is therefore an illusory wish to be divine, in the sense of absolute independency. Finally, man’s desire to be his own master and to become a self-sufficient person results in his disobedience to God and His laws. The more this desire is manifested, the deeper one is separated from the Divine Being… ‘Thus, the farther the mind departs from God, not in space but in fondness (affectione) and greed (cupiditate) for things inferior to Him, the more it is filled with foolishness and misery.’”
Augustine argues that the very affections that sprout sin through its layers is an extension of this perception of salvation. As such, despite the numerous churches that may be quantified as advocating for a salvation modeled by the previous model, the reality of the damage in doing so is, in effect, an evangelism and perpetuation of the very essence of sin itself, causing Christians to simply teeter in-between one type of soil and onto another, never truly experiencing a liberating tilling that confronts humanity’s natural addiction to works righteousness for fear of confession.
The Courage to Be
An alternative response to the Christian’s growing awareness of God’s holiness in contrast to her or his sinfulness, Thune and Walker illustrate a radically different way of experiencing salvation, free from fabricated works-righteousness and manufactured merit.
Thune and Walker argue that a soul that has been tilled, ripe with health and ready for flourishing growth, is one that responds to the growing gap between God’s holiness and humanity’s sinfulness with self-forgetfulness and Christ-exultation—that as much as Jesus was once needed at the point of conversion, the Christian needs Christ increasingly more, to do the very radical work of bridging gaps and saving sinners. In doing so, the Christian discovers more—increasingly so—about who Jesus is and who Jesus is shaping the Christian to be. Instead of hiding who she or he truly is beneath artificial manifestations of an addiction to works-righteousness, this figure displays a Christian who has discovered the courage to simply and joyfully be. Paul Tillich continues to explain:
“Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact nonbeing. It is the act of the individual self in taking the anxiety of nonbeing upon itself by affirming itself either as part of an embracing whole or in its individual selfhood. Courage always includes a risk, it is always threatened by nonbeing, whether the risk of losing oneself and becoming a thing within the whole of things or of losing one’s world in an empty self-relatedness [marked by works-righteousness].”
Good Soil
How does the Christian experience this kind of Christ-increasing and self-decreasing? SOIL answers this question by inviting participants into the fourth soil in Jesus’ parable:
“Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear… As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.” (Matthew 13:8, 23 ESV)
The good soil is free of conflict and concupiscence, characterized by incredible capacities for fruitfulness and flourishing—all because the soil is now deemed and even declared as “good.” The word “good” (καλός or “kalos”) in this text has a wide array of meanings ranging from “beautiful, worthy of recognition, excellent” to “pleasing, honest, and genuine.” In the context of soil, however, the word takes on a deeper definition as the Septuagint conveys God using this very word to describe His pre-fallen and flourishing Creation:
“24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good… 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” (Genesis 1:24-25, 31 ESV)
The good of the fourth soil in Jesus parable is not just good in its potential to produce fruitfulness—the good of the soil that bears fruit is, in fact, so very good because it illustrates a soil that once was, shaped into the very image of God, as God fully intended. This good soil was then breathed into, filled with a Spirit (πνεῦμα) that is of God’s own, ready to bear the very fruit of God Himself—that interwoven, multifaceted fruit that is indeed so satisfying to the one who bears it and all who delight in it.
If salvation is, therefore, much more than an act of faith in Christ’s work to convert the sinner but is, instead, the progress of Christ continually working in saving the sinner from sin, then the experience and encounter of that salvation would not only be epitomized by the fourth soil in Jesus’ parable but must become the ultimate destination for all discipleship. While the act of justification remains momentary, the progress and process of that act of grace must be massaged into the soul, as the soul is tilled of its manufactured merits and compromising concupiscence, for the sake of the Spirit’s fruitful flourishing. With this mission in mind, consider this new model of salvation and reframing of our understanding of what it means and looks like to be saved. This new model is called The Kalos Paradigm, centering salvation around the three key arenas of the soul:
| Arena | Head | Heart | Hands |
| Doctrine | Orthodoxy | Orthopathos | Orthopraxis |
| Definition | Right-Knowledge | Right-Affections | Right-Practices |
| Harmony | Reconciles the self and God | Reconciles the self and self | Reconciles the self and the world |
The arenas of the head, heart, and hands simplify three interrelated areas of theological and doctrinal study that have expanded over the course of time: orthodoxy, directly defined as “right-knowledge,” is not exclusive to one’s theological study (although, it includes such study) but summarizes one’s personal knowing of God (γνῶσις or “gnosis”); orthopathos, directly defined as “right-affections,” is not exclusive to one’s passion or zeal for God (although, it could include both) but summarizes one’s personal desire for God (ἐπιπίπτω or “to throw one’s self upon”); orthopraxis, directly defined as “right-practices,” summarizes the Christian’s persevering integration of the orthodoxy and orthopathos possessed (a kind of προσκαρτερέω, or “to continually persevere with or near a person or being”).
“Kalos” is the Christian’s experience of the good that has not only been returned to her or him by Christ but the good progressively being developed by the Spirit. This “goodness” is not gained or garnered but grown by grace through the tilling of the soul as it practices confession and exposits the self. This goodness begins with the Spirit’s work of building better orthodoxy, which motivates deeper orthopathos. These growing affections challenge and change daily practices and orthopraxis. In turn, these practices further the Spirit’s building of better orthodoxy as the cycle becomes a rhythm for life.
Reconnecting to the pre-Fall and divinely declared “good” in one’s soul necessitates right-knowledge of God that procures right-affections for God that, in turn, produce right-practices that solidify and capitalize on both—and all this in increasing perpetuity. A soul centered between the three experiences epitomizes what it truly means to be “good”—a position and place where the seed of God’s Word can healthily produce fruitfulness; a posture of true discipleship.
Dangers of Extremity
Without intentional boundaries, centering the soul into Spirit-grown and Christ-given “kalos” can fall into extremities. For this reason, it is not only vital for groups to increase in awareness of these extremes but to faithfully guard their groups from falling into any of them.
| Arenas | Head (Orthodoxy) | Heart (Orthopathos) | Hands (Orthopraxis) |
| Extremity | Intellectualism | Emotionalism | Legalism |
| Example(s) | My knowledge of God equates to my goodness; my sins are a matter of doctrine, not affection. | My passion for God equates to my goodness; God is more pleased with me when I am more passionate and vivacious for Him. | My works and sacrifices for God equate to my goodness; I know I am good in God’s eyes because of the service, volunteerism, and donations sacrificed on God’s behalf. |
In between these extremities lie three intersectional extremes that produce aspects of “kalos” without the holistic necessity of a missing arena. As such, like muscles in the body, the results are contractions that “flex” as a strength of a church when, in reality, they are merely a bravado of competence masking imbalance:
| Arenas | Head (Orthodoxy) and Heart (Orthopathos) | Heart (Orthopathos) and Hands (Orthopraxis) | Hands (Orthopraxis) and Head (Orthopathos) |
| Extremity | Isometrism | Eccentrism | Concentrism |
| Definition | A soul (or souls) whose intellectualism and emotionalism dismiss any activism. | A soul (or souls) whose emotionalism leads to radical legalism. | A soul (or souls) who justifies legalism with intellectualism. |
| Example(s) | Our church has a strong preaching and teaching ministry as well as a powerful worship ministry along with high small group participation—but no missions, evangelism, or cultural renewal. | I am so passionate about God that I feel like I must sell all of my possessions and move to a dangerous country I know nothing about. [or] If you are truly passionate about God, you would never wear provocative clothing. | Our denomination is one of the oldest in the world with roots in major movements in Christian History. We also claim several “saints” or respect scholars and, therefore, the services we provide are the only ways by which our churches serve. |
These paradigms are complemented with the following questions for personal or group reflection, beginning with these preliminary questions:
SOIL is a study of sin, self, and salvation. As a doctorate of ministry relic submitted at Candler School of Theology, this project is intended to scale in development as a distributable tool for faith congregations and recovery communities. For more information, please contact the author here. © 2022, Phillip Lee. All Rights Reserved.
