What does Salvation mean?

All research or scholarship questions
Darrick Evenson

What does Salvation mean?

Postby Darrick Evenson » Thu Apr 27, 2006 9:40 pm

1) What does Salvation mean?

2) What are we saved from?

3) Are Baha'is saved?

4) How are Baha'is saved?

CJ

Postby CJ » Thu Apr 27, 2006 10:15 pm

1) 'What does Salvation mean?'

I think this is a Christian term. This is a Baha'i forum :)

CJ

Postby CJ » Thu Apr 27, 2006 10:20 pm

sal·va·tion ( P ) Pronunciation Key (sl-vshn)
n.

1 a Preservation or deliverance from destruction, difficulty, or evil.
b A source, means, or cause of such preservation or deliverance.

2 Christianity.
a Deliverance from the power or penalty of sin; redemption.
b The agent or means that brings about such deliverance.

majnun
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to detective Darick

Postby majnun » Fri Apr 28, 2006 12:06 am

Could you replace the word "saved" by "protected" ?
The mouth that ask many questions will find the answers,
if he seeks for it with an effort to find them.

Sometimes the word saved and salvation are used often
in translations of the writings of the Bab, but I have
to see the manuscripti text in persian. Many persian and arabic terms may
have been translated in english (and else) with the vocabulary
of the bible, at the beginning of 1900's.

However, i dont remember
seeing "saved" and "salvation" used very often in translations done
by Shogi Effendi, neither in provisional translations from Mr. Cole and
from other modern translators.

Philosophically speaking we could extrapolate a long time
on "what" we are saved from, but does not all this turn around
being fully shielded against "an inner fire", "pains, sorrows" "negation", or any disagreable state of mind each of us know how not funny it is ?

Is it not like, only when we get out of the prison we were trapped in, do we see clearly "what" that mental prison was made of ?

I just suggest here.


Majnun.

Zazaban
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Postby Zazaban » Fri Jul 21, 2006 1:51 pm

A common misconception is that the protestant christian version of salvation is universal. This is not true. I think protestants are the only people who follow this teaching of "being saved".
Justice and equity are twin Guardians that watch over men. From them are revealed such blessed and perspicuous words as are the cause of the well-being of the world and the protection of the nations.
~ Bahá'u'lláh

Baha'i Warrior
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Re: What does Salvation mean?

Postby Baha'i Warrior » Fri Aug 04, 2006 1:42 pm

Darrick Evenson wrote:1) What does Salvation mean?


Being liberated from our animal natures and recognizing (and turning to) our True (spiritual) selves.

Darrick Evenson wrote:2) What are we saved from?


See answer to Q#1

Darrick Evenson wrote:3) Are Baha'is saved?


I sure hope so 8)... Well I guess it depends on the individual person. Just calling yourself a Baha'i isn't good enough. You have to live the Baha'i life and transform yourself through observing Baha'u'llah's laws/exhortations.

Darrick Evenson wrote:4) How are Baha'is saved?


Through recognizing that Baha'u'llah is the Manifestation of God (or Prophet) for this day and age—the Prophet that all the peoples of the world have been awaiting (Zoroastrians, Hindus , Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc.)—and through following His laws and ordinances, and as steadfast Baha'is offering this gem (the message of the Baha'i Faith) to others. Exhorting others to turn to the Messenger that God has sent to humanity. Or, to borrow a Koranic saying, to "enjoin stedfastness on each other" (18:16).

Zazaban
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Postby Zazaban » Fri Aug 04, 2006 6:21 pm

labahai wrote:No, most christians I know, including Baptists, Evangelicals, Catholics, and that Speaking-in-tongues crowd, all believe in 'salvation", though some might believe heaven has "levels" as well, clouding the issue.
Baptists, Evangelists and the like are protestant. I'm not really from a christian background, but I do study religions. :?
Justice and equity are twin Guardians that watch over men. From them are revealed such blessed and perspicuous words as are the cause of the well-being of the world and the protection of the nations.

~ Bahá'u'lláh

Sean H.
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Joined: Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:25 pm

slavery, freedom, & redemption/salvation

Postby Sean H. » Thu Aug 31, 2006 12:15 am

re: slavery, freedom, & redemption/salvation

"Salvation" defined in comparative-religion terms:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvation

The definition under the "Calvinism" section in the above article is probably what most americans and/or protestants would think of, so please note the existence of other definitions, including the "Universalist" definition.

Dr. Orlando Patterson (Sociology, Harvard) wrote a book about how the concept of "salvation" in western (christian) civilization was tied into the greek concept of freedom (from slavery).

http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1095

In Baha'i terms, slavery is (in the context of this topic) being enslaved to evil, self, sin, ignorance, etc.

Generally speaking, "salvation" = "redemption".

Patterson's theory departs in some very interesting (and probably controversial) ways from the conventional approach in Christianity.

excerpt:


. . .
Jesus did not emphasize freedom -- spiritual freedom -- he emphasized the need for righteousness, for repentance -- preparedness for the coming end, and the need for fellowship with each other and a new vision of people's relationship with God, a much more intimate one. And those were the things which he emphasized. If anything -- if you want to extract from his teaching a social value, a non-religious value, it was more of an emphasis on equality, and as I indicated, there's a clear suspicion of the wealthy and of the elite, especially the urban elites. This was very much a movement of country hicks, which we say today. He was from a very rustic part. They were not the poorest group, but they were mainly artisans -- country artisans, really.

LAMB: Where Jesus was from?

PATTERSON: Yes, his group. His father was a carpenter -- his father would have been from this group. I mean, poor rural folk don't -- not necessarily the poorest, but very much a sort of rural semi-literate group. This was a very Jewish movement, because it emerged at a time when Palestine was in ferment and it was a colony of Rome. And there's a lot of -- well, today we'd call it nationalist movement, so to speak, and decolonization movements. Some of them -- those are just purely political. Some of them were purely religious in the sense that they say, "Well, you know, let's forget about politics. I mean, what you really need to do is to prepare yourself for the end of the world in which the whole thing will come to an end. And so what you really need to prepare yourself for is just to see that your your spiritual state is in order, not your physical state." But in the process of proclaiming, there is definitely a pass towards the poor, homeless. Just look at the people he associated with. Publicans were condemned, the prostitutes and beggars and so on. And so implicit in his teaching was more an egalitarianism and the emphasis on fellowship insofar as it had a social content, as what it was -- which was not one which emphasized freedom.

LAMB: When you research Jesus, are you surprised at all at how Christianity's developed over the years?

PATTERSON: I was surprised to discover the extent to which there is such a drastic shift. Now professional historians of religion have known this before. As I compile [audio loss] I go to the specialists, I read the textbook. I depend heavily on the specialists. And so the insiders -- let us put it that way -- would have known this before. But it still struck me as quite extraordinary, the extent to which Paul and the early Church, the group that triumphed, really turned the early ideas around, in the sense that the focus really shifted towards this idea of spiritual liberation, and using very powerfully this idea of -- the slavery into freedom metaphor.

And that's the significance of -- and that's my part -- that's my special contribution to this, because my argument was Jesus did not grow up and preach in a slave society. Palestine -- there were a few slaves, but it wasn't a large-scale slave society. Whereas the Church, which made Jesus its object, emerged in a large-scale slave society. And I think that's the significant factor, explaining why the focus shifted from the early more millenarian emphasis on fellowship, equality, preparedness for the just life and for the life to come, and intimacy, both with each other and with God -- shifted from that towards an emphasis upon the idea of freedom -- spiritual freedom, and the idea of slavery -- sin as a kind of slavery. God never -- Jesus never used that metaphor.

He did once -- there's a famous reference to a slave in one of the parables, but it's significant that he just merely took slavery for granted that way in which he said, you know, "You should serve God, not expecting any return, but as a good slave would." And that's his only reference to it. But the idea of emphasizing slavery as a great evil which becomes symbolic of one's spiritual condition, in which you're a slave to sin, to carnal desires, to all the wickednesses of the flesh, and that what happens inside is the equivalent of an emancipation in that the person who bought you out of that condition of spiritual slavery was Jesus with his death -- a life for a life, so to speak, a sort of physical life for the social death that is slavery, and spiritual death that is sin. And that metaphor -- that preoccupation emerged in Rome and it was completely different from Jesus' preoccupation.
. . .

---end excerpt---


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