Salvation/Liberation as Human Transformation

Abstract

The great post-axial traditions, as we have seen, exhibit in their different ways a soteriological structure which identifies the misery, unreality, triviality and perversity of ordinary human life, affirms an ultimate unity of reality and value in which or in relation to which a limitlessly better quality of existence is possible, and shows the way to realise that radically better possibility. This may be by self-committing faith in Christ as one’s lord and saviour; or by the total submission to God which is islam; or by faithful obedience to the Torah; or by transcendence of the ego, with its self-centred desires and cravings, to attain moksa or Nirvana. As I shall now try to show, these are variations within different conceptual schemes on a single fundamental theme: the sudden or gradual change of the individual from an absorbing self-concern to a new centring in the supposed unity-of-reality-and value that is thought of as God, Brahman, the Dharma, Sunyata or the Tao. Thus the generic concept of salvation/liberation, which takes a different specific form in each of the great traditions, is that of the transformation of human existence from self-centredness to Reality-centredness.³