Dear Theophilus, 

In your last letter you mention some puzzlement about the concept of salvation and you rightly point out that if a person does not understand what this term means then it makes everything else difficult to understand. Maybe in this letter we can take a closer look at this term and maybe make a little bit more sense out of it.

The path that I propose to take will seem a bit strange to you but bear with me and maybe it will prove fruitful. My starting point is Shakespeare's statement that 'all the world's a stage'. Theater and the Liturgy are not quite as far apart as we sometimes surmise and I think it will repay both of us if we explore this relationship a little more.

The New Testament presents us with a form of literature that is quite unique and that is the Gospels. The Gospel, originally, was presented publicly, orally and in this sense it was drama because it involved the listeners. It is about salvation and throughout history, there have been two discernable models of salvation. One we could call the reward of virtue model whereby we behave in a certain manner and we are rewarded for this. The other is more a monastic model where salvation is something that God does. The reality is that both are useful in talking about salvation.

The notion of salvation has often been connected closely to death. Our ideas about death have undergone some important changes. One of these is that in the past, one wanted to prepare for death so that one went to the other world properly cleansed. In our time, what is sought is a speedy death, hopefully catching us unawares and bringing with it as little pain as possible. Dying with dignity has become a catch phrase and this has come to mean dying with speed so as to inconvenience the survivors as little as possible.

Much religious ritual involves dramatic gestures and techniques and therefore, drama provides us with an apt portrait of salvation. For all of Christendom, the best expositor of the term salvation is St. Paul who was well suited to the task having been brought up a fervent Jew but living in, and in contact with the cosmopolitan outlook of Rome. Sometimes, the much maligned Paul, is obscure but the reasons for this are quite simple: he was trying to express something that no one else had ever done, a fact that we easily forget because of our overfamiliarity with his writings which tends to sometimes blur the originality and power of his ideas and views. His panorama of human history can be seen as encompassing two broad possibilities: the life of sin, as contrasted to the life in Christ. With the mention of sin, we run into our first problem because there is a general misunderstanding of this term. We tend to think of sin as bad actions or some kind of transgression of laws. Similarly, we think of eternal life as a reward for meritorious effort on our part. For St. Paul, sin and salvation are complete states of man. Salvation is the coming into being of what God intended man to be and not something added to man because man has somehow blundered. Sin is fundamentally a position of autonomy from God where we declare that we can do without Him, and this results in a life which is lived in the flesh (sarx). This term flesh, is probably the most misunderstood term in all of Paul's writings because we have come to see it signifying materiality, physical existence and sexuality. This is as far away from Paul's intentions as we could get. By flesh, Paul means the limitations of our life here on Earth where we have come to the point of relying on our own resources and this, Paul says, leads to making us incomplete. This incompleteness leads to many of our pains and much of our suffering as we try to dull the pain through alcohol or drugs or through multiple relationships. We deserve to die, but we live on because although we are "dead in sin", God does not desert us but strives to save us, to make us whole.

What is this man of flesh? He is a man whose main motive force is fear - everything he does has an underlying current of fear. He exhibits envy, sexual irresponsibility and tries to drown his many other failings in drunkenness which numbs the pain that is in him. Man still has much power but this power becomes misdirected. Just think of all the ingenuity that goes into inventing and devising new weapons. And all this internal turmoil and fear and pain also exhibits itself in the physical body through pain, illness and eventual death. Is this how people behave when they are happy? I would hardly think so.

Man lives in sin and what this means is that no matter what choice he makes, he still commits what is wrong. His choice is not between the good and the evil; his choice is between a lesser and greater evil. This is the underside of all moral questions because they are not crystal clear for us and involve difficult choices. This is the state of the world brought about by man who is suffering a self-inflicted punishment. Instead of acknowledging the state of affairs, man rebels even more trying to become more and more autonomous from God.

But we are not autonomous from God (total autonomy from God would mean our total annihilation), but are caught up in a drama as history unfolds. God is the author and director of a play and this play is about salvation which is the escape from the life in sin, the life in the flesh. History is not meaningless when viewed in a broad perspective but it is God's effort to save man. The play starts with two main actors on the stage - God and Israel and from the beginning, it is obvious that this is a love story. Holiness is demanded of man but this holiness does not consist in virtuous behavior but means being set apart and this is what Israel does. It culminates in the Passover which is highlighted by the struggle between Moses and Pharaoh. The story after this does not move very smoothly but is beset by many setbacks and moves forward fitfully to the point where it becomes clearer and clearer that the drama is not limited to one nation but is cosmic - it involves the whole universe, but at the same time, is intensely personal. You do not get lost in the hugeness of the enterprise - you are of infinite value as Jesus' parable of the lost sheep illustrates.

If you have been to Vespers and to the Liturgy you may have noticed that Church services, in a deep and profound sense, are dramas. Vespers opens with creation and man's expulsion from paradise and the story of salvation, the freeing of man not just on the national or political scale, but on a deeper level, the freeing of man from the deadness of sin, is then conveyed through the Liturgy. Drama is not just a metaphor of salvation but it is the actual way it is transmitted. Much of the drama is vague and not explicit but parts of it are very clear and condensed, such as, for example, the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. Very often we deal with the Bible in a dramatic fashion without even being aware of this. Thus, Theodoret, writing in the seventh century, infers from Christ's low birth not bad luck but intention and purpose. Being born low he does not enjoy advantages that come with high birth and in this fashion he is closer to us.

Any drama requires actors and an audience and we are called to play both roles. In the Israelite part of the drama, the high priest represents the people before God but, not God before the people. There was a lack in this role and Christ completes it - He also represents God to the people. The role of drama is the capacity to sum up everyday common conditions and ascribe significance to them. That's why a play can be seen over and over - there is always something new in it and this is why the Church services are in the form of drama - there is always something significant and fresh to be gleaned by us. The other aspect of drama is that it is not private and faith and religion cannot be private, although they have been relegated to that position by the society that we live in. Those who say they do not need to go to Church or to participate in communal worship are fooling themselves. But coming to simply listen and be moved are not sufficient reasons. One in a sense, must cease being merely in the audience and must become an actor and the emotions that arise in you, must become catalysts for action or these emotions will become mere substitutes. You are called on to imitate Christ, but within your own historical perspective, and to learn about the tremendous inheritance that is there for all men who have become orphaned by isolating themselves from God.

In the above paragraph, I have said that you are to become an actor and this is a call that has been out there from the very beginning. This is a very significant point and there is still much to be told. Maybe what I will do, is continue this in my next letter.

Yours truly,

Bar-Abbas

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