Hebrew Salvation

Sorry about the white-out today! My only guess is that I changed something and forgot to republish my blog. I’m not sure that would have created the apparent problem though. My other guess is that Patagonia was aggravated that I used some of their material without permission and thus contacted the U.S. government who then subsequently shut down my site.

I borrowed that penguin movie from the Dugan’s. It was pretty good. I also watched Elizabethtown this weekend. That was good too. Here’s one thing about my ability to review movies though. I can’t! I’m too generous. I like them all. I purchased Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions. I guess there have been a few movies that I would truly called terrible. I really didn’t care for Birth starring Nicole Kiddman. I didn’t really like History of Violence all that much. And for some reason Butterfly Effect rubbed me the wrong way. You’d think I like that one bein’ an open theist and all. I’ve heard Boyd use the Butterfly effect to argue some points in support of open theism.
Anyhow, I’ve thought of a number of things to post about the last several days, but today’s winner is the Psalmists conception of salvation. Sheol is a foggy concept at best in the Old Testament. It’s difficult to talk about the Hebrew conception of heaven and hell and the afterlife for that matter. We know that they viewed the self much more holistically than Platonists and thus the west have. The Nefesh can mean breath and quite often life. Ernest Lucas writes:

“the psychosomatic unity of the human person in Hebrew thought is evidence in the way that various parts of the human body are used to refer to aspects of the human personality. A literalistic translation of Psalm 26:2 is, ‘examine me, O Lord, and test me, judge my kidneys and my heart.’ The Good News Bible translation gives the right sense of the second line when it says, ‘judge my desires and thoughts’.”

Given this ambiguity of the afterlife and complexity of the human nature we get some interesting comments about death from the Psalmist. In elaborating on the “afterwards” of Psalm 73 and two other Psalm Lucas comments

“If these interpretations are correct, the thread that runs through all these three psalms is the psalmist’s sense that his relationship with Yahweh is so real and deep that not even death will be able to end it.”

I love this last line probably because I’m Lewisian in my soteriology. Harris pointed out to me last semester, that the only definition of eternal life comes from John and it means simply: To know God. I see something similar here. I love the idea that salvation is a journey and that it is most fundamentally about our relationship with God. This projection of salvation moves us beyond the simple “moment of salvation,” into an intense relationship with Jesus Christ. Certainly this calls for an ontological moment of being cleansed by Jesus blood, but it also pushes us into a continued friendship. You want saved from hell and thus yourself? Then get to know Him!

I suppose there is a bit of irony here too. For those of you who love Romans Road and the epistemological nature of the gospel, this understanding of salvation is draped in knowledge. It’s a different kind of knowledge though. Not just knowledge of the head, but rather knowledge with our entire being. It changes the way we understand knowing Jesus.