"Very Short Theology" Explores Angles on the Crucifixion

"Jesus saves," but, how? All the answers start with metaphors: Jesus is the sacrificial lamb, or a ransom paid to Satan for liberation of captives (us), or intercessor with a stern Judge. I've long been bothered by my inability to explain salvation the way I can explain the rationale of the Constitution, without metaphor.

For the Oxford University Press's series of "very short introductions," the director of Cambridge's inter-faith program David F. Ford has written Theology: A Very Short Introduction. He embraces metaphor and adds one of his own: the church's 2000 year "journey" with these images.

Salvation, from a word meaning "health," draws together threads from  Ford's survey of theological concepts. Previous chapters looked at the questions theologians have debated through centuries about the nature of God, ethics, evil, and Jesus.

For Ford, metaphors "intensify" the systematic intellectual exercise of theology. A metaphor can be "explored," and can arouse feeling, an energy that enables action. He surveys ways that the writers of the Christian scriptures imagined the saving efficacy of the Crucifixion:

It is as if the range of significance of the crucifixion was to be indicated by drawing on every sphere of reality to represent it. From nature there were the basic symbols of darkness and of seeds dying in the ground. From the religious cult there were sacrifice and the Temple. From history there were the Exodus and the Exile. From the law court there were judgment, punishment, and justification. From military life there were ransom, victory, and triumph. From ordinary life there were marketplace metaphors of purchases and exchanges, household images of union in marriage, obedience, parent - child relationships and the redemption of slaves, landlords whose sons are killed by tenants, medical images of healing and saving, and the picture of a friend laying down his life. Not all of those had equal weight, and some had far more capacity for becoming leading images around which others could be organized. (110)

He explores the major images, showing how they've enriched worship and action over centuries, and their drawbacks. For example, the military metaphors gave the Church "clarity of identified enemies," but also literal demonization of perceived enemies (112).

The metaphors clash, so selecting the best bits from each can't make sense. But, "If one sees [salvation] as a way of life rather than an intellectual exercise, then it seems that the heights and depths are only discovered by risking intense involvement in one of them" (113), and one can't journey on more than one road, and "one's intellectual outlook is, like all other aspects of life, shaped by the travelling." Theology, he says, provides a safe place along the journey where all the roads can meet.

After his glance at the Church's "journey" with these images, Ford identifies two more arisen in the past 100 years. There's the "Pentecostal" and "Charismatic" image for salvation, focused on Spirit, gifts, and community.

More interesting to this Episcopalian is Ford's identifying liturgy itself with the image of Jesus as bridegroom to the Church. Salvation in this sense is "union." As we participate in the liturgy, in prayers and readings and communal rituals, we are joining our lives with the life of Jesus, "married" in metaphor and indeed (114).