The world's religions hold varying positions on the way to attain salvation and on what it means.[1]
The theological study of salvation is called soteriology Soteriology is the study of religious doctrines of salvation, which are a feature of various religions. Salvation theory occupies a place of special significance and importance in some religions. It covers the means by which salvation is effected or achieved, and its results. Salvation may also be called "deliverance" or "redemption" from sin and its effects.
Some religions claim that salvation can be attained by using only inner human resources such as meditation, accumulation of wisdom, asceticism, rituals, or good deeds. Other religions teach that humans can be saved only through the grace granted by an external personal agent (God, a bodhisattva In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is either an enlightened (bodhi) existence (sattva) or an enlightenment-being or, given the variant Sanskrit spelling satva rather than sattva, "heroic-minded one (satva) for enlightenment (bodhi)." Another term is "wisdom-being." It is anyone who, motivated by great compassion, has generated, an avatar In Hinduism, Avatar or Avatāra refers to a deliberate descent of a deity (an incarnation of a god or deva) from heaven to earth, or a descent of the Supreme Being (i.e., Vishnu for Vaishnavites) and is mostly translated into English as "incarnation", but more accurately as "appearance" or "manifestation".; , etc.)
The pantheistic religions of the East regard salvation as an impersonal merging with the Absolute. In contrast, the three largest monotheistic religions of the world—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—associate salvation with freedom from the bondage of sin and the reestablishment of personal communication with the creator. There are some basic differences among those monotheistic religions on how sin is to be overcome by humans, on the identity of Jesus Christ and the role he plays in salvation, and what one's attitude toward him should be.[1]
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Etymology
The word "salvation" in the Christian A Christian (pronounced /ˈkrɪstʃən/ ) is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians believe is the Messiah (the Christ in Greek-derived terminology) prophesied in the Hebrew Bible, and the son of God. Most Christians believe in the doctrine of sense originates from O.Fr. salvaciun, from L.L. salvationem (nom. salvatio, a Church L. translation of Gk. soteria), noun of action from salvare "to save". In the general, non-religious sense, from c.1374.[2]
Old Testament
World religions scholar and author Ernest Valea provides a succinct summary of salvation according to the Old Testament.[1] In the Book of Genesis The Book of Genesis is the first book of the Hebrew Bible, and the first of five books of the Torah, called the Pentateuch in the Christian Old Testament, first book of the Old Testament, God called a man named Abraham Abraham is the founding patriarch of the Israelites, Ishmaelites, Edomites, and the Midianites and kindred peoples, according to the book of Genesis ("Abram" at the time) to leave his father's household in Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, as well as some parts of northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and southwestern Iran for an unknown land. God promised Abraham that he would become the ancestor of a blessed nation. Although the odds seemed strongly against Abraham, he trusted God completely. Because of his attitude called faith, God took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be." Abraham believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.[Gen 15:5-6] Israel is the nation born out of Abraham. Through Israel, God intended to make himself known in the world and correct wrong patterns in addressing him. Although all nations had priests, offerings and temples, God considered their ritualism to be wrong and in need of correction.[1]
The Book of Exodus Exodus or Shemot (Hebrew: שמות, literally "names") is the second book of the Hebrew Bible, and the second of five books of the Torah/Pentateuch, the second book in the Old Testament, tells how God regained Israel from Egyptian slavery (chapters 1-19), presented to them the law they should live by (chapters 20-24), and prescribed the way to deal with trespasses of the law (sin) through the office of the tabernacle (chapters 25-40) which later was replaced by the Temple in Jerusalem. God instituted the Mosaic Law as a covenant with his people after redeeming the nation from slavery. God expected the liberated Israelites to obey him and to live according to the demands of the law in order to have a right relationship with God.[19:5] It was of primary importance to God that the people obey his law. When the people sinned by trespassing of the law, God provided a means of atonement as a solution for repairing their failures in fulfilling God's demands. They were to bring sacrifices to the tabernacle, and later to the temple, to atone for their trespasses and as a reminder of their total dependence on God.
In the Old Testament, according to Valea, the condition for maintaining a proper relation with God was obeying and conforming to the standards he had revealed. Sacrifices were not necessary for God, but for the sake of sinful people as the solution for trespassing God's law. The Israelites learned that any trespasses of the Mosaic law is a sin, and any sin demands a sacrifice in order that God, the giver of the law, could forgive the sinner. The sacrificial system was added to the covenant with Israel (in Exodus 20-24), as a "further grace." The punishment for sin had to be borne by an innocent animal as a substitute for the sinner.
Valea says this way of dealing with sins is considered "absurd" in the Eastern religions. To them, nothing can act as a substitute sacrifice in the context where karma operates. Each sinner must pay for one's own sins either in this life or in further lives. But in the Old Testament, sins are forgiven only through the blood of the animal sacrificed in the ritual performed by the priest. The animal became the substitute for the individual sinner to fulfill God's justice.
Judaism
See also: Judaism Judaism is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people. Judaism, originating in the Hebrew Bible and explored in later texts such as the Talmud, is considered by Jews to be the expression of the covenantal relationship God developed with the Children of Israel. According to traditional Rabbinic Judaism, God revealedMany books of the prophets In religion, a prophet is an individual who believes they have been contacted by, or has encountered, the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other humans. The message that the prophet conveys is called a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible is a term referring to the books of the Jewish Bible (Tanakh) as originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew, with some Biblical Aramaic. It is also called the Hebrew Scriptures. The term closely corresponds to contents of the Jewish Tanakh and the Protestant Old Testament (see also Judeo-Christian) and does not include the, such as the Book of Isaiah The Book of Isaiah is a book of the Bible traditionally attributed to the Prophet Isaiah, who lived in the second half of the 8th century BC. In the first 39 chapters, Isaiah prophesies doom for a sinful Judah and for all the nations of the world that oppose God. The last 27 chapters prophesy the restoration of the nation of Israel. This section and Book of Jeremiah The Book of Jeremiah, or Jeremiah , is part of the Hebrew Bible, Judaism's Tanakh, and later became a part of Christianity's Old Testament. It was originally written in a complex and poetic Hebrew (apart from verse 10:11, curiously written in Biblical Aramaic), recording the words and events surrounding the life of the Jewish prophet Jeremiah who, spoke out against those Israelites who brought forth sacrifices but did not act in accord with the precepts of the Torah.
The Prophets disparaged sacrifices that were offered without a regeneration of the heart, i.e., a determined turning from sin and returning to God by striving after righteousness. "O Israel, return unto the Lord your God; for you have fallen by your iniquity. Take with you words, and return unto the Lord: say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and accept us graciously: so will we render as bullocks the offerings of our lips" (Hosea Hosea was the son of Beeri and a prophet in Israel in the 8th century BC. He is one of the Twelve Prophets of the Jewish Hebrew Bible, also known as the Minor Prophets of the Christian Old Testament. Hosea is often seen as a "prophet of doom", but underneath his message of destruction is a promise of restoration. The Talmud (Pesachim 87a) 14:1-2). "Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy, and repenteth him of the evil" (Joel 2:13).
Maimonides Moses Maimonides, also known as Rambam, was a preeminent medieval Jewish philosopher; one of the greatest Torah scholars of the Middle Ages. He was born in Córdoba, Spain on Passover Eve, 1135, and died in Egypt on 20th Tevet, December 12, 1204. He worked as a rabbi, physician and philosopher in Morocco and Egypt. With the contemporary Muslim, a medieval Jewish scholar, drew on the early critiques of the need for sacrifice, taking the view that God always held sacrifice inferior to prayer and philosophical meditation. However, God understood that the Israelites were used to the animal sacrifices that the surrounding pagan tribes used as the primary way to commune with their gods. As such, in Maimonides' view, it was only natural that Israelites would believe that sacrifice would be a necessary part of the relationship between God and man. Maimonides concludes that God's decision to allow sacrifices was a concession to human psychological limitations. It would have been too much to have expected the Israelites to leap from pagan worship to prayer and meditation in one step. In his Guide to the Perplexed he writes:
- "But the custom which was in those days general among men, and the general mode of worship in which the Israelites were brought up consisted in sacrificing animals... It was in accordance with the wisdom and plan of God...that God did not command us to give up and to discontinue all these manners of service. For to obey such a commandment would have been contrary to the nature of man, who generally cleaves to that to which he is used; it would in those days have made the same impression as a prophet would make at present [the 12th Century] if he called us to the service of God and told us in His name, that we should not pray to God nor fast, nor seek His help in time of trouble; that we should serve Him in thought, and not by any action." (Book III, Chapter 32. Translated by M. Friedlander, 1904, The Guide for the Perplexed, Dover Publications, 1956 edition.)
In contrast, many others such as Nachmanides Nahmanides, also known as Rabbi Moses ben Nachman Girondi, Bonastruc ça Porta and by his acronym Ramban, , was a leading medieval Jewish scholar, Catalan rabbi, philosopher, physician, kabbalist, and biblical commentator (in his Torah commentary on Leviticus 1:9) disagreed. Nachmanides cites the fact that the Torah The term Torah , also known as the Pentateuch (Greek: Πεντάτευχος from πεντα- penta- [five] and τεῦχος teuchos [tool, vessel, book]), refers to the Five Books of Moses—the entirety of Judaism's founding legal and ethical religious texts. A "Sefer Torah" (סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה, "book of Torah") or records the practices of animal and other sacrifices from the times of Abraham Abraham is the founding patriarch of the Israelites, Ishmaelites, Edomites, and the Midianites and kindred peoples, according to the book of Genesis, Isaac Isaac as described in the Hebrew Bible, was the only son Abraham had with his wife Sarah, and was the father of Jacob and Esau. Isaac is one of the three patriarchs of the Jewish people. According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born, and Sarah was beyond childbearing years, and Jacob Jacob , also later known as Israel (Hebrew: יִשְׂרָאֵל, Standard Yisraʾel, Tiberian Yiśrāʾēl; Septuagint Greek: Ἰσραήλ Israēl; Arabic: إِسْرَائِيل Isrāʾīl; "persevere with God"), as described in the Hebrew Bible, was the third patriarch of the Jewish people whom God made a covenant with, and and earlier. Indeed, the purpose of recounting the near sacrifice of Isaac The Binding of Isaac, in Genesis 22:1-24, is a story from the Hebrew Bible in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah, known in Judaism as "The Binding of Isaac" (Akeidat Yitzhak or the Akeidah) was to illustrate the sublime significance and need of animal sacrifices as supplanting the abomination of human sacrifices.
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