•  
  •  
 

Abstract

A striking aspect of Vedantic Hindu and Christian devotional universes is the theme of the humanity of God. Jesus and Viṣṇu or Kṛṣṇa, the transcendental source of worldly reality, are also intensely human figures – they live with and amidst human beings, and they (seem to) suffer and, most intriguingly, even (seem to) undergo death. However, as one plumbs the doctrinal depths of these universes, various theological divergences begin to emerge, relating to the nature of the divine, the relation of the divine to the world, and the soteriological dynamics of the spiritual transformation of human beings. From a Christian perspective, somewhere near the heart of this constellation of metaphysical-theological themes lies the doctrine of the atonement, which tries to make sense of how some events, between 1 CE–34 CE, associated with a Jewish man called Jesus crucially configured the shape of salvation. A survey of various theological attempts to explicate the dynamics of salvation indicates a wide range of ‘models’, such as the ransom, the moral exemplar, and the substitutionary. Thus, unlike the Nicene Creed (about the divinity of Christ) or the Chalcedonian Creed (about the incarnation of Christ), there is no dogmatic ecumenical creed about the redemptive work of Christ.

Download

Share

COinS