Mystery of Salvation: The Story of God's Gift, The

The Mystery of Salvation: The Story of God's Gift. By the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1996 (First Published 1995 for the General Synod of the Church of England by Church House Publishing) xiii. + 225 pp. $17.95 (paper).

There is a tendency in recent Church of England theological thinking, or at least in the thinking done by committee, to cover the Cross in velvet, or better, to soften the radicalizing voice of Christ's Cross within the market of ideas. This tendency to soften, or even mute the "word from the Cross" (I Corinthians 1:18) was apparent in the collection of Anglican essays entitled Atonement Today (London, 1995). This latter collection had great promise, as a symposium of addresses by Evangelicals in the Church, all seeking to grapple with one vital and unavoidable element within the Evangelical legacy, the substitutionary atonement.

On a broader canvas, The Mystery of Salvation, which is the third in a series of theological discussions put together by twenty teachers and thinkers commissioned by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, seems to have a similar effect of blunting the "sharp and two-edged sword" (Hebrews 4:12) which the Word from the Cross has often been in our tradition. When we think of the conversion of the Wesleys, and their subsequent preaching; when we read of the effect of George Whitefield's sermons; when we simply stand and contemplate the third verse of "Rock of Ages" or Cowper's supreme achievement, "There is a fountain," both hymns from within the Anglican tradition; then it is hard not to read the report of the Doctrine Commission as a performance that will date within a few decades. It will not become classic.

The report, on the "nerve-center of Christian faith" (p. x), reviews the Church's classic teaching on salvation while identifying three contextual factors from the present day that affect our theologizing. These factors are the challenge of feminism; pluralism in respect to non-Christian faiths; and the future of the universe, i.e., scientific cosmology thought through in Christian terms. These three contemporary factors are outlined clearly and reflectively in Chapter One, "Posing the Problem."

Chapter Two anchors the question of human salvation in the doctrine of God, and in particular the experience of God as Father. Salvation becomes a primarily relational concept. God in Christ restores relationships between the creature and Creator. The gift of salvation is the gift of God Himself (The authors of the document allow the traditional masculine pronoun for God, although they acknowledge the more contemporary `Godself." See pp. 46-49.). The Giver and the Gift are the same.

The negative implication of this is that salvation does not consist in a "quantity" or even a "quality," such as imputed righteousness, or expiation, or objective pardon as such. The emphasis is more a matter of peace between warring parties, peace achieved through diplomacy rather than by means of blood sacrifice or the transfer of guilt.

The authors proceed to review "salvation history." Rejecting the notion of salvation in history as diminishing the radical newness of salvation and rejecting also the notion of salvation from history as tending towards dualism, they wish to affirm the salvation of history. In this affirmation, the Cross becomes the completion of Israel's covenant history (p. 77). The "overarching story" (p. 82) becomes that of creation, cosmos, covenant and Christianity. A summary sentence is the following:

The Christian remains committed to the belief that Jesus Christ is the lord of the whole cosmos. This belief is non-negotiable; it looks the challenge of particularity in the face, and answers it by speaking first and foremost of the cross and resurrection, which role out arrogance or triumphalism by highlighting the vocation of the suffering servant on the one hand, and the renewal of creation on the other (p. 83).

A great deal is made of the continuity of Jesus' story with the salvation story of the Old Testament. This tallies with the present emphasis in almost all branches of theology on the Jewishness of Jesus. Biblical images of atonement are surveyed, with sacrifice in general terms being affirmed but atoning sacrifice toned down. Chapter Five speaks of substitutionary suffering, betrayal transformed, the metaphor of justification, the Christ who makes amends (The illustration given for this is a real "stretch" and weakens the point, which is half-hearted in any event); Christ as representative; and Christ the victim. The authors are reluctant to argue any one of the biblical images as having particular force. The effect is the effect of theology done by committee.

Chapter Six deals with sin. "Sin is constituted by all the wrong deeds and thoughts which make us fail to hit the mark of the kind people God intended us to be, the badness in us that alienates us from his goodness and holiness" (p. 123). This sounds a little like Beyond the Fringe! Here we could use a dose of William Golding, who is quoted, incidentally, to good effect in the first chapter (p. 5).