ABSTRACT
This chapter asks how the human sense of meaning becomes a sense of salvation. It resolves this key question by combining the notion of ‘super-plausibility’ derived from the sociology of knowledge with that of ‘conceptual mystery’ eluded. In evaluative terms salvation describes a quality of identity. It involves a moral ‘charge’ of meaning added to and becoming part of, ordinary identity, so that salvation emerges as a form of super-identity. ‘Power’ is the fundamental existential theme implicated in salvation. When John Beattie writes anthropologically about sacrifice, for example, he thinks it ‘correct to say that almost always sacrifice is seen as being, mostly about power, or powers’. The theological picture emerging sees power as an increase in self-worth on the part of an individual within a community, guided by an ethic of humility. Conversion is no simple act of mind, but an embodied process rooted in ritual, with Bloch’s rebounding conquest motif being one valuable way of interpreting it.
