ABSTRACT
Salvation in Christianity concerns the ultimate nature and destiny of humanity in relation to God as flawed human nature is transformed by God as spelled out in Creeds, theologies and liturgies. The key point lies in the relational element between God and humanity, whether in the covenant and law motifs or, even more germane for Christianity, in the doctrine of the Incarnation. The closeness of lover and beloved engenders a language of unity, just as, in the Christian confession that Christ lives in and through the life of the believer, a sense of ‘indwelling’ renders reciprocal models redundant. In Christianity the priority of grace underpins Paul’s influential theology of salvation, exemplified in the biblical Epistle to the Romans, where human achievement is worthless before the totally elective love of God. In general terms, gifts are contrasted with necessary payments, as in the case of wages, and such is the form of argument that Paul follows in Romans.
