A soteriological foundation for the christian concept of God

The paper suggests a new approach to the Christian concept of God on the basis of the soteriological arguments which played the decisive role in the history of the Christian theology. The traditional concept, also known as “classical theism,” describes God as the greatest conceivable being, the maximum of all perfections: knowledge, power, goodness etc. Moreover, this God is absolutely simple, timeless, immutable, impassible, and transcendent. The problem with this concept is that it is not clear how such a God can be able to create, love the creation, and respond to the suffering of creatures. Contemporary Christian philosophers struggle to minimize the incompatibility of classical theism with biblical God, producing reasonable but still not quite convincing solutions. They discard one ofthe classical attributes, e.g. simplicity, timelessness or the knowledge of the future. “Process theists” deny God’s absolute non-temporality, immutability and impassibility. All of these approaches operate within the logic of the maximally perfect being, while merely adjusting the list of perfections. Yet changing one or two attributes does not make a big difference as long as the ultimate principle of maximal perfection remains intact. Whereas the history of the crucial Christological debates shows that the most influential orthodox arguments were built on another principle: maximal salvation. Regardless of what exactly was understood by salvation, there was a common intuition to maximize it even at the expense of God’s perfection. Therefore it is not alien to Christian thinking to introduce a concept of God based on the soteriological principle, where God is rather the maximal savior than the maximally perfect being. It is not enough just to add salvation to the list of perfections; it should be treated as belonging to the definition of God himself. Since it is characteristic of God to save, salvation is his primary activity, i.e. he necessarily always saves. Therefore ‘to save’ should be understood in the same sense as ‘to create’: to make something from nothing, life from death, a saint from a sinner. Such creation-salvation is not contingent, but necessary for God, while human creativity, contrary to process theism, is different: it is contingent and not ex nihilo. As in classical theism, God remains radically different from the world, since only he is the one who creates and saves. But as in process theism, God is rather dynamic than static, always involved into the life of the world. Thus the suggested soteriological theism can serve as a middle ground between the traditional classical concept of God and the process concept.

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