On the Theology of Salvation

I’d like to take another stab at clarifying the historical Moravian position on salvation. I need to ask everyone who reads this document to take a deep breath and read very carefully, making an effort to understand what is being said, rather than just having a knee-jerk reaction. A great deal of the heat of the current situation comes from distortions and misunderstandings. That said, I would also ask that any responses to this article use the “copy-and-paste” method of quoting rather than the “approximate quote” method, to avoid distorting the meaning of what was said.

In addition, I will try to explain in layperson’s terms some theological issues that have been knocking around the Church for hundreds of years, and that are showing up in the current crisis. In many cases, they are issues that most laypeople may not be educated about; but bear in mind that some clergy may react negatively to an overly simplistic statement because it crowds one of these issues.

In that context, I will also ask the inevitable cheap shots about “That’s theology, not the Bible” be withheld. The positions that are being discussed (even the ones I personally disagree with!) are carefully reasoned from Scriptural sources and represent strongly held but differing views in the Christian Church from the earliest days of the Reformation. Each one can be justified from extensive Scriptural resources. They are not merely vague human imaginings without any foundation. We must take them seriously enough to weigh the Scriptures to see which is justified clearly by the preponderance of Scripture and experience.

First, let me begin somewhere else, with a crucial issue that underlies the salvation issue and also contributes to misunderstanding. That is the question of whether we serve God out of fear of Hell or out of love for Him, because He loves us. Some traditions emphasize “hellfire-and-brimstone,” preaching that people, including children, will burn in Hell if we don’t reach them in a particular way. Certainly you can justify this with certain Scriptures. But there are many other Scriptures that enrich our understanding of the issue. You don’t find much hellfire in Zinzendorf’s sermons. Moravians have always emphasized the love of God and the mercy of God, which in the Gospels has far greater emphasis. We serve Him because we love Him, we evangelize because we love others and know that they need to know Him, as well. We do not attempt to convert through fear, but through love.

It reminds me of a time years ago when I was teaching a class on Christian parenting. As we discussed all sorts of methods of getting children to obey parental orders, one of the mothers said “I would like to think that my children would occasionally obey me because they love me, not because they are afraid of punishment.” I was very struck by this mother’s statement, a microcosm of our understanding of grace. Think if you will of all the times Jesus talked about God as a loving parent! We have a loving Savior, we rejoice in grace, we revel in His love. How could we not share that with others? How could we not obey Him, when He has shown us such love?

Moravian theology has always also focused on the love of God, His compassion for the world. Jesus taught quite clearly about the compassion and mercy of the Father. Calvinist theology, on the other hand, has often focused much more on the “hellfire” end of things, and holds that God grants salvation to the elect and has predestined others for Hell. This is not the God of love and compassion that we preach.

One of the tenets of strict Calvinism is predestination, which states that God offers salvation to some and withholds it from others. Nothing the individual does can change this. While many Calvinist traditions today have downplayed this idea, it is still present. Calvinism was quite prevalent in the early eighteenth century, and Moravians have always rejected this belief. The Southern Baptist Church is historically Calvinistic in its doctrine.

Moravians would be generally identified by an outside observer as Arminians. This is bound to be an unfamiliar term to most. Arminianism (named after the theologian Jacob Arminius) is the position that God offers grace freely to anyone who will accept it, "This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth."  (1 Timothy 2:3-4) Let me state clearly, lest anyone misunderstand, that this salvation comes from Jesus Christ and from His death on the Cross. It doesn’t come from Confucius or Buddha.

Now we arrive at a subtle point that I think has caused much misunderstanding: if salvation is available to all, how is it received? Many would say “Through belief in Christ.” Ah, there’s a rub! Mere belief in Christ is not sufficient. “Even the demons believe, and tremble.” (James 2:19) In fact, the statement “We are saved through believing in the Lord Jesus Christ” can be taken as the Manichean Heresy, which places the emphasis upon the belief of the individual rather than on the action of God. Remember the much-maligned PEC statement about belief as intellectual assent? Though awkwardly written, the statement was correct. Mere belief is not enough, and we do not know exactly how God will deal with the Jews, who do not believe in Jesus as we do, yet have an ancient covenant with God. The Scriptures are not entirely clear on this.

This was the source of the split between John Wesley and Count Zinzendorf. Wesley’s language of “earning salvation” through good works was regarded by Zinzendorf to be similar to the Manichean Heresy, an emphasis on the acts of the believer rather than on the action of God. To the Count, this was an insult to grace, demeaning the terrible sacrifice of Christ on the cross.

A similar but different error is to place emphasis on “right doctrine” rather than on the relationship with Savior. This also puts the emphasis in the wrong place.

Moravians have always believed that salvation comes through the action of God in the individuals’ life, the development of a personal relationship with the Savior that is initiated by the Savior himself Mere belief, mental willpower, or good works, don’t make a difference. Salvation flows from the Cross, and comes into individual lives by the action of the Holy Spirit. God gives use everything. I think of it like the gifts I get on Father’s Day: I give the kids the money to buy the gifts they give me, but I appreciate them deeply just the same. Now, obviously, the individual has free will and can refuse the gift. My children could use the money to buy toys for themselves and thumb their noses at me on Father’s Day. The response of the individual is important. But God, who loves perfectly, does not give up and walk away even when rejected – the Holy Spirit continues to pursue us, again, again, again. Praise God that He does, or some of us would have been lost!

Christian witness aids this process but does not cause it. This is another distinction that I think has caused misunderstanding. Even from the early Unity, and perhaps more so after Zinzendorf, we have emphasized and depended on the power of God to act in the world. We are working in concert with God as His servants, aiding the process. The process does not depend on us alone. When Zinzendorf sent the early missionaries out, he told them not to preach to just anyone. They were to be in prayer and seek guidance to identify the ones who were ready, whose hearts had been prepared by the Holy Spirit.

Now, having said all of this, let me propose a scenario that sadly is much more common that any of us would wish. Imagine a seeker in some remote region of China, who earnestly seeks after truth. We know that God is reaching out to this person, even if no one has sent a missionary and he has only heard the most garbled and distorted caricature of Christianity. If this person responds to the direct moving of the Holy Spirit, he may not have any of the language or even the proper beliefs. But he has responded to the Spirit of God in the best way he can.

So here’s the question: if this person responds positively to the moving of the true Spirit of God, will he necessarily burn in Hell for eternity because we failed to send a missionary to his village to teach him “right doctrine?”

Zinzendorf and Spangenberg would say that God in His mercy can extend grace wherever and whenever He wills. God would deal with such a person in the same manner he dealt with “righteous Gentiles” before the revelation of Christ. “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts.” (Romans 2:14-15)

While I can find statements from these august gentlemen asserting the above position, I cannot find anywhere that they speculated any further. So I will do so in an attempt to clarify the situation. That imaginary person in China may be extremely surprised, upon entering the Kingdom, to find that the force moving in his life, the spiritual deity he was responding to, was Jesus Christ. Our imaginary person may have worshipped using another name in ignorance, arising out of the context he was in. I don’t know of any Moravians that really believe that Buddhism or Santeria would take him there. I certainly do not know any Moravian pastors who believe that.

Would such a person be helped by the presence of a loving Christian community? No doubt at all, that is what God desires. This is the Great Commission. But can God color outside the lines we have drawn if He wills? Certainly, when mercy demands it. Ours is a merciful God, a God of love. Moravians have always resisted the stark, unbending litmus tests proposed on this issue not because we think Buddha is just as good as Jesus, but because we have deep faith in the mercy and love of the Father. We resist implications that God is mean-spirited, petty and cruel, since all our experience of Scripture and of His wonderful grace shows us otherwise.

Now: how many people in this world are seeking salvation but have only heard the most garbled version of the Gospel? People in Sudan? In the Himalayas? How about most of the people in our country? At our Intersynodal Conference, Dr. George Hunter suggested that the United States is the most unevangelized part of the Western Hemisphere.

We need to stop bickering over points of language, stop hurting other good Christians, respond to the Great Commission, and do what God has called us to do.

The Rev. John Jackman