Introduction by Kirk R. MacGregor - James Clarke and Co Ltd

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Introduction only makes sense within a soteriological context. When analyzing the relevant Pauline passages, Plasger discloses that, for believers, the Day of the Lord serves as the vehicle for deliverance from divine wrath and expands the reconciliation implemented through Jesus’ death and resurrection to the entire created order. Intriguingly, Plasger finds in Ephesians 5:6 and Colossians 3:6 an admonition against believers placing salvific confidence in their own act of belief rather than perceiving that belief is simply the means for appropriating salvation, a helpful corrective of new religious movements which teach people to “have faith in their faith.” According to Plasger, Paul views divine wrath as separation or alienation from God; however, God, in obedience to his covenant, takes such alienation upon himself in the person of Christ to forever set believing sinners free, a model best approximated by the thought of Barth. Chapter twelve bridges anthropology with philosophy of history, as James W. Bryant illuminates the uniqueness of the Hebraic view of human nature within the spectrum of ancient and modern views and then unfolds the significance of its time-space implementation. Unlike metaphysical dualisms between a good soul and evil body or vice versa, the Hebraic model was notable for its unitary quality, predicated upon the spiritual value of the material world. Since the Hebrews perceived God alone as infinite, humans were taken as finite and therefore mortal in and of themselves; however, everlasting human life followed from the divine attributes of justice and relationality. Employing empirico-logical thought and intuition, the Hebrews surmised that justice demanded the ultimate vindication of righteousness and ultimate retribution against wickedness, which is typically not accomplished during the pre-mortem state. Moreover, they sensed the intrinsic constancy of relationship with God and its character as a link or channel supplying finite beings with the supernatural vitality that could permanently sustain them. Like Holmyard, Bryant finds anticipations of the general resurrection model of the afterlife sprinkled throughout the Hebrew Bible and not simply in later books such as Ezekiel and Daniel. Through his miracle-working ministry consummated at the resurrection, Jesus both validated the reality of, and proved his control over, the general resurrection, marking a new center of history as the start of the transfigured creation to be continually renewed by a Spirit-empowered church until the Day of the Lord. Bryant delineates how the resurrection stands as the pinnacle of a long line of disclosure situations, or historical revelations of God’s superintendence over history, SAMPLE xxx © 2011 James Clarke and Co Ltd
Introduction which harked back to God’s defeat of the Egyptians in the Exodus and gave rise to Israel’s linear conception of time. Finally, Bryant postulates an inextricable relationship between Jesus’ resurrection and eternal security grounded in the notion of promise. Considering the resurrection as the divine imprimatur of the new covenant, the one overarching vow made between Jesus and believers embodying many component promises, Bryant reasons deductively that God’s raising Jesus from the dead vindicates Jesus’ promise to forever preserve the covenantal beneficiaries. Chapter thirteen rounds out the collection with Donna Bowman’s inventive perspective, namely, a constructive account of the doctrinal content and usefulness of eternal security within process theology. Bowman begins by outlining the basic tenets of process theology as pertaining to theology proper and divine foreknowledge, a framework within which salvation may be conceived negatively and positively. Negatively, salvation means deliverance from the structures of human life which constrain human becoming or the actualization of human potentialities. Positively, salvation spells the eternal effectiveness of our lives, choices, and endeavors within the perpetual time-space stream which God and humans coinhere. Consequently, the Process mechanism of salvation consists of three interrelated steps. First, God presents each person with a spectrum of prearranged and prevalued possibilities for daily decision-making. Second, God invites each person to share in the creation of the future through creative reordering and adaptive revaluing of those possibilities, an enterprise that God infuses with the value and purpose without which all human endeavors would be doomed to futility. Third, God forever conserves in, and continually presents to, the world each person’s valueladen accomplishments, which, in contradistinction to the traditional notion of perpetuity of personal consciousness, forms the Process notion of eternal life. In this system, eternal security amounts to the twofold affirmation that God always upholds the divine promises and that salvation constitutes God’s work rather than ours. Bowman points out that such an affirmation exhibits tremendous pedagogical value in conveying the permanent and unswerving divine purpose to cultivate beauty and intensity of feeling through partnership with free creatures, a purpose which God always does everything in God’s power to fulfill. Moreover, it reminds us that, although meaningless in and of themselves, our lives are sewn by the divine Weaver as integral threads into the fabric of the world’s glorious restoration. SAMPLE xxxi © 2011 James Clarke and Co Ltd
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Introduction by Kirk R. MacGregor - James Clarke and Co Ltd

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