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I am asked a lot by our readers to define "salvation" as related in the Christian Bibles we have inherited in the New Testament. This might see difficult at first but there are two different "salvation messages" in the New Testament. If you have never seen this then let me direct you to these conflicting messages; one given by the "Jewish Christ" and one by the "Romanized Paul". Besides that there are also two conflicting ways to obtain "Eternal Life" as taught in the New Testament; again, one from the "Jewish Christ" and one from the "Romanized Paul". Hidden behind this Paul of Rome's making is the Gnostic Paul who agrees with the "Jewish Christ" but in order to understand and discern the difference in these Pauls the reader much be competent in understanding the different manifestations of Gnosticism and its unique relationship to Natural Law and the Jewish Torah. That is a study well worth the effort.
I believe everyone will understand and agree that we, living in the Western Hemisphere, have inherited a "Judeo-Christian" faith and this is the very foundation of our nation. Mixed in this "Judeo-Christian" faith is a mixture of both "truth" and "falsehood"; again the goal is discerning the difference and such is not possible without effort on part of the reader and student to understand the theological differences between Judaism and Gentile Christianity as it developed apart from its mother's faith.
There are many substantial and vital distinctions between Judaism and Christianity. Of course, there are many similarities as well, primarily because Christianity emerged from Judaism. However, the emergence was not a direct line. Christianity broke from Judaism, forming a new religion, so it is misleading, however comfortable the thought might be, to believe that the two religions are essentially the same, or to see Christianity as the natural continuation of Judaism. No greater example can be seen that in contrasting the very heart of these two contrasted religions; by that I mean the opposing teachers concerning "salvation" as taught by this great faith of Judaism and her separated daughter, Christianity. The differences between the two religions will be explored in this article concerning only the message of salvation.
As a preface, it is useful to repeat Judaism's central belief that the people of all religions are children of God, and therefore equal before God. All people have God's love, mercy, and help. In particular, Judaism does not require that a person convert to Judaism in order to achieve salvation. The only requirement for that, as understood by Jews, is to be ethical and this is accomplished by following a "pattern" for the soul which regulates the behavior of the animal we call "mankind". While Judaism accepts the worth of all people regardless of religion, it also allows people who are not Jewish but who voluntarily wish to join the Jewish people to do so. It is not really possible to summarize either Judaism or Christianity fairly in this one article therefore your personal study is encouraged.
However, the Divine Book we have inherited, by that I mean the Christian Bible, does not present a clear picture or message regarding what "Eternal Life" actually consists let alone how to inherit it and "be saved". Over these last twenty years I have discovered that almost every nation that has ever existed has had its own Divine and Unique understanding of this Creator and "His Christ" and this original message from the Divine concerning "salvation". From Ancient Egypt on down through the hallways of recorded history we find nation after nation having received this same Divine Revelation from the Creator mediated to them by God's mediator, or Christ or "Karast". Having done these studies we find that each of these Divine Revelations are unique to each nation and interpreted through the eyes and history of each of these succeeding nations. What is amazing when you see this when studying comparative religions is is that although these Divine Revelations and "Salvation Messages" are uniquely interpreted by each of these nations as separate and a distinct people they all possess overriding "common themes" and this is what is important. Judaism, like Ancient Egypt, has common Divine Ideas and "theologies" that amazes the students of these religions once they are recognized and compared. It is not a stretch to say that Judaism is but a later "reflection" of the Divine Wisdom of Egypt. Having said that it is important to note that our "Judeo-Christian" nation has inherited this same "Salvation Message" as mediated through the "Jewish Christ" of which we read in our Christian Bibles. But there is a problem. The problem is that with the emergence of Rome and their antisemitic "theology" in the 2nd through the 5th centuries then this long standing "Salvation Message" is corrupted and "blurred" almost beyond recognition and it takes one well versed in such detailed New Testament and Jewish studies to sort it all out correctly once again. We at Bet Emet Ministries has done this in our websites. Thus, being asked about "salvation" so often by my readers I thought I would set out in specific terms what the Jewish understanding of "salvation" both "was" and "is" today. Having come to this understanding then all the more do the contrasts and contradictions from the later Gentile Roman viewpoint become apparent and stand apart from this earlier Divine Revelation recognized by antiquity by almost all.
Jews and Christians share a common hope for the redemption of humankind. Both acknowledge that personal salvation can be achieved in the here and now and that full redemption for the world is yet to come. Both await the messianic fulfillment the end of time, whether conceived of in terms of a personal messiah or a messianic age. However, despite these similarities, there are fundamental differences in Jewish and Christian concepts of salvation. Although the same terminology is often used, Christians and Jews have different frameworks into which this language fits.
For Judaism, salvation is available to Jews in this life through their faithful observance of Torah. Jews prefer to use the phrase "have a share in the world to come" rasher than "salvation". Redemption, defined as a share in the world to come, is available through the quality of Torah-living and not through belief in a particular saviour-figure. What most Christians fail to understand in light of what most hear preached erroneously from the pulpits Judaism NEVER taught that "salvation" for the Jew or the "non-Jew" was obtained by fulfilling the "Law" correctly never once breaking one Commandment or Law. Judaism never taught that in reality one is expected by the Creator to live one's live never falling short in fulfilling the Law at times; in reality this happens to all since we all fail at times. But Judaism DOES TEACH that this Law is a "training manual" to develop the Soul and humankind; it, when followed as a "pattern" for life, elevates man over time to a point of Spiritual maturation and attainment before God.The Torah is the training manual for life and only through repentance and renewed obedience can man lift himself up and make himself acceptable to God and this is attained through a life-time of continued conformity to God's Laws and Torah. This is God's "true salvation" of mankind; both in this physical life and this physical plane and the "world to come".
Contrary to popular Christian stereotypes, faith not works, is the key to personal redemption in Judaism. But "faith" plays a huge part in Judaism but faith does not stand apart from "works" and "acts of obedience to the Laws of God" in Judaism as it does in Christianity. Good deeds are important as a means to verify and substantiate "saving faith" but they are not a substitute for it. Judaism requires "both" where as Christianity does not. Christianity teaches salvation "by faith alone". In Christianity redemption is not the reward "merited" or "earned" through the quantity of good deeds as it is in Judaism but through faithfulness to God "alone"; in reality this "faithfulness to God" is defined in Christianity as a set of orthodox "religious dogmas" or some "creed" connected someway to the supposed historical life of the Christian Christ. In Judaism the Commandments and Laws of God, incorrectly called the "Law" when in Hebrew it is rightfully called "instruction" or "teaching" as in "the Torah" which is the instrument by which Jews are taught to express their faith in God and they do it through obedience to concrete "positive" actions approved by God and refraining from "negative" actions not sanctioned as "acceptable" by God. These are the "Positive" and "Negative" Mitzvot in the Torah and they number 613 for the Jew (the Laws of Moses) and 66 for the "non-Jew" (the Laws of Noah). In terms of other faiths, Judaism recognizes that the righteous of all nations "have a share in the world to come" or the possibility of salvation through ethical conduct and behavior. Redemption is available outside the Jewish faith by faithfulness to God through a person's particular religious tradition when it coincides with "the ethical teachings" of the Torah. As we will see shortly Judaism stipulates that for Gentiles to become "the righteous of the nations" there are seven laws, or better understood as the 7 Categories of the Laws of Noah, which are incumbent upon the "non-Jews" in order to be included in "the world to come". These are often called the Noahide Laws. These laws provide the minimum requirement by which non-Jews can share in the world to come. While redemption is a future, undisclosed hope for Christianity I found that Judaism stresses that salvation is a gift immediately accessible in the present. Through Jewish teaching and religious instruction, through the living of such teaching out by following the Divine pattern in one's life as found in the Torah, a Jew becomes a part of the Olam Haba (the world to come, i.e., member of those worthy of salvation). Thus the Torah is the means to salvation, illuminated pathway to achieving such a desired end. In reality the Torah is the measure of a person's worth before God. Basically this teaches that it is not the quantity but the quality of Torah living that is reckoned by God as meriting "Eternal Life".
For Christianity, however and traditionally, salvation is only possible through the Christian Christ whom they define as the "Jesus" of the New Testament and faith in events in his life as connected by Christian theology as affecting one's redemption. The Church believes that Jesus' death on the cross was the once-for-all sacrifice that, in some mysterious sense, atoned for the sin of humanity. Traditionally, personal salvation is attained through one's personal and conscious acceptance of Christ as his "saviour and Lord"; therefore those without such faith in this Christian Jesus as "the Christian Christ" and the life-events in his supposed historical life interpreted as bringing "saving grace" to one's life then all face eternal damnation. This is technically called a exclusivist approach to salvation. Today, however, two alternative Christian approaches to other faiths have emerged. These are the inclusivist and pluralist positions. Instead of seeing other religions demonic, some Christians want to affirm them. There are nuances within inclusivism and pluralism, but in general it would be fair to say that inclusivists argue that the creator God is working through every religion. Christ is saving the adherents of other religions without them realizing. When Christians encounter a person from another faith, we are to assume that God is working anonymously through God's Christ their lives (whether they know it or not). This is the official position of the Catholic Church. On other hand the pluralist theologian would affirm that salvation is available apart from belief in Christ and normative Christian dogmas. Each religious tradition can offer salvation for its adherents if they turn from self-centredness to God-centredness. Although many Christians are sympathetic to such religious pluralism, the the official position of most Christian churches is the exclusivist approach mentioned above where "only Christians" who have accepted the Christian Jesus "are saved" and this is only because they have and maintain a faith in the "creeds" and "theological dogmas and doctrines" of organized Christianity.
It is important for Christians to understand the role of the Law in Salvation. The Jew does not draw down either salvation or redemption from some Heaven, but Jewish deeds are understood as the preparation for the righteousness of God to give mankind "salvation" and "redemption". Such preparation for "salvation" and "redemption" come from opportunities during one's life whereby he can conform himself to the Divine Behavior as defined in each of God's Laws and Commandments. Over time, over one' life, the Torah has a Spiritual way to transform and conform one's life to a higher ethic than the animal nature that lays at the heart of each human being. The Yetzer Ra, the evil nature in mankind, is not a desire to do evil in the way we normally think of it in Western society: a desire to cause senseless harm. Rather, it is usually conceived as the selfish nature, the desire to satisfy personal needs (food, shelter, sex, etc.) without regard for the moral consequences of fulfilling those desires. The Yetzer Tov is the moral conscience, the inner voice that reminds you of God's law when you consider doing something that is forbidden. The Torah sharpens one's Divine Nature and allows it to master in one's live and exert control over the Yetzer Ra or the evil and selfish nature in mankind. Mankind, over time, is trained by living as best he can these Torah precepts and Laws to master this baser nature that exists in him and submit it to the higher Divine Self, the Yetzer Ra. Thus the Torah prepares an individual to turn in faith to God; the turning of individuals to God prepares the way for God's gracious act of redemption which comes as a result of man reaching out for Divine perfection in this human plane and again this "perfection" is defined by each of the Laws and Commandments in the Torah which define for man what "God approves" and what "God disapproves". The rest is up to man to "choose life" and "be ye holy for God is holy". Thus, we imitate God in our lives the more we conform and allow ourselves to be transformed by the Torah and mimic these actions as defined by each Law and Commandment that we incorporate in our lives. The stress in Judaism is on discoveringopportunities in personal life for the response of faith and opportunities in political life for God's reaching out of redemptive power is the key that brings God's salvation and redemption nearer to us in the life we live long before we die. At death, we inherit the fullness of God's salvation and in our lives we inherit and merit the grace according to our obedience to these Laws and Commandments.
Christians in dialogue with Jews often confuse this emphasis on the need for concrete opportunities in which personal salvation and national redemption can take place with a humanistic arrogance. True ecumenical sharing can begin only when the spiritual element of the Jewish hope for salvation and redemption is clearly understood. Christians need to realize that Judaism stresses deeds as a means to faith, not as substitutes for it. Salvation is made possible because God graciously gave a Torah in which opportunities for a faithful turning to God are numerous. The grace of God should be seen in His giving mankind in the first place the "blueprint", if you will, and laying out clearly these Laws and Commandments to mankind in order to show man what is acceptable and not acceptable with the Divine Creator and then the gift of repentance and forgiveness when man falls short of the Divine Pattern in his life. The goal is that at the end of man's life he will have grown in "Torah obedience" to a greater degree than when young and then God can judge and reward him with good and not bad. Coupled with this is when older, when mankind's lusts selfishness ebbs to a new low with advanced age, then man can again be judged by God at death for good and not bad. Such should be seen in God's grace working in mankind to help mitigate the judgment when mankind falls short of the desires of God. So then, if you follow what I have said, then the Jew, as well as the "non-Jew", does not actually earn salvation by multiplying large quantities of sterile actions but rather "merits" it through a life-time of practice of the Torah hopefully becoming more Torah obedient the longer he lives before God. Only one action, faithfully performed, is sufficient. God's grace, however, has made the faithful turning possible through the instrument of Torah and this, as I said, is coupled with the gift of repentance and forgiveness when man turns from violating these Laws and turns again to God in Torah obedience.
A final point needs to be made. Torah presents the Jew with opportunities for turning in salvific faith. All human beings, however, are graced with opportunities of their own (whether they know it or not). Every day the Creator allows for opportunities in each of our lives to live out the Torah. As you can see it helps to not only know these Laws but the every nuances in these Laws in order to live a life pleasing to God. At the very least the seven divine instructions given to Noah provide non-Jews with such opportunities for turning in salvific faith. Of course, it goes without saying, Christianity is an antisemitic and an antinomian ("anti-Law") faith and seldom do we encounter Christians with a comprehensive understanding of these Laws of Noah let alone the many nuances contained within them. Seldom have we ever heard preached from Christian pulpits the elucidation of these Laws of Moses and or Noah.
Answer for yourself: What is the tragic consequence of such lack of knowledge regarding these Laws? Simply said, a Christian has no way of knowing if his "conducts and behaviors", let alone "religious beliefs" in this Christian influenced Western hemisphere are in violation of these Divine Laws. A typical Christian usually assumes that they are not; after years of study of the Judeo-Christian roots of Christianity I had shed so many tears because my life as a typical Christian was so often opposed to what is taught in these Divine Laws. I would learn a hard lesson, a lesson that will eventually culminate in my resignation as a Christian Pastor, namely, that a huge amount of Christian religious instruction and dogma had rendered me a violator of these Divine Laws in the Torah and I stood as a Divine Law-Breaker before God but yet I considered myself a "good Christian". Tears flowed during those years when my true standing before God became apparent to me as a Christian pastor who had taught so many "untruths" thinking I was "right" before I finally came to study out the origins of my Christian faith and the fruit of such repentance on my part is this article and ministry which God allows to exist today which endeavors to reach out to Christians with the truths they were deprived of by an antisemitic Rome which changed everything in the 3rd century.
A couple of more things need be said.
Judaism does not accept the notion of original sin, the idea that people are bad from birth and cannot remove sin by themselves but need an act of grace provided by the sacrificial death of Jesus as atonement for all of humanity's sins. For Christians, there are no other forms of salvation other than through Jesus. In contrast, the Jewish view is that humans are not born naturally good or naturally bad. They have both a good and a bad inclination in them, but they have the free moral will to choose the good and this free moral will can be more powerful than the evil inclination. Indeed, Jewish ethics requires the idea that humans decide for themselves how to act. This is so because temptation, and with it the possibility of sin, allows people to choose good and thus have moral merit. The Jewish view is not that humans are helpless in the face of moral error. Christianity has the opposite view and stresses that "grace" is "unconditional favor". The next time you hear that from the pulpit or from some pastor's mouth open a Hebrew Lexicon and ask him to explain why the Hebrew word for "grace" is CONDITIONAL (as in "conditional" to attempted obedience to God's Laws that falls short at times but renews itself in repentance as one picks himself up once again and embarks upon the path to righteousness once again by attempting to live by these Divine Laws and Commandments once again).
In general, Jewish thinkers have focused on the ways to lead a good life on Earth and improve this world, leaving concerns about death and beyond until the appropriate time. Judaism has stressed the natural fact of death and its role in giving life meaning. Of course, issues of death are inevitably important. The fear of death, concern about the fate of our own Soul and those of our loved ones, ethical concerns that some people die unfairly, all these and many other issues are discussed in Jewish literature. Since God is seen as ultimately just, the seeming injustice on Earth has propelled many traditional Jewish thinkers into seeing the afterlife as a way to reflect the ultimate justice of human existence. Traditional thinkers considered how individuals would be rewarded or punished after their deaths. There are a few rare descriptions of life after death. Traditionalists gave the name Gehenna to the place where souls were punished. Many Jewish thinkers noted that since, essentially, God is filled with mercy and love, punishment is not to be considered to be eternal. There are, similarly, many varying conceptions of paradise, such as that paradise is the place where we finally understand the true concept of God. It is also possible that there is no separate Heaven and Hell, only lesser or greater distance from God after death. In addition, punishment might be self-determined on the basis of suffering in kind the suffering the person brought about. That is, Judaism doesn't have a clear sense of Heaven and Hell, with different places in Hell for different punishments. Rather, the idea is that God uses the afterlife to provide ultimate justice and for the wicked to seek some sort of final redemption. Judaism does not believe people who are Gentiles will automatically go to Hell or that Jews will automatically go to Heaven on their basis of their belonging to the faith. Rather, individual ethical behavior is what is most important. Many traditional Jews believe that Judaism provides the best guide to leading such an ethical life, and that again because they have always cherished the Torah and given their lives to preserve it while early Roman Christianity discarded it and in so doing gave license to Rome to what whatever they wished without impunity. They call this period of Christian History "the Dark Ages".
In closing, a basic Jewish presupposition is that the righteous from all nations inherit the world to come (cf. TB Sanhedrin 105a). While redemption may be national and particular, salvation, because it is individual and personal, is universal. The Jew denies salvation to no human being; only Christianity and its exclusive theology does that in our world today. Religious traditions may vary, but salvation is possible for the non-Jew no less than for the Jew.