View Of Salvation Research Articles

Comparison Analysis of Baptist and Lutheran Christian Teachings on Salvation Based on the Study of the Text of Mark 16:16

Baptist and Lutheran are Christian teachings that have developed to date. Mark 16:16 is one of the Bible verses that is often used to understand the fandango of salvation in Christianity. In this research, a comparison and analysis of Baptist and Lutheran Christian interpretations of this chapter are carried out, and how this influences their view of salvation. This research will discuss how Baptist and Lutheran Christian teachings integrate Mark 16:16 into their teachings about salvation by discussing Baptist Christian teachings of understanding salvation through sanctification and Lutheran teachings of understanding salvation through faith. This study also discusses how these teachings influence the views of each teaching about sin, repentance, and the hope of salvation. By using qualitative methods with objective analysis and legitimate sources, the implications of the differences between Baptist and Lutheran Christian teachings are identified for society. This study discusses the differences in these teachings that affect relations between religions and tolerance for differences. The purpose of this research is to help readers understand the differences between Baptist and Lutheran Christian teachings and how this affects their views of salvation. It is hoped that this research can help readers understand differences in teachings and promote understanding and tolerance among Christian theologies. Therefore, this research contributes to the development of Christian theology and inter-religious discussion

Karl Barth and Catholic Theology: Does Barth Undo the Deep Grammar of Nicene Faith?

This article explores Bruce Marshall's objections to Barth's doctrine of God and his view of salvation. Whereas Marshall's key objection to Barth's doctrine of God centers on his view that “Barth equates who God is with what God does” and that this assertion, when carried out consistently, “undoes the deep grammar of the Nicene faith—the Catholic faith,” I demonstrate that Marshall has misread Barth by assuming that he has collapsed the immanent Trinity into the economic Trinity. Marshall thinks that for Barth, “God simply has no being other than his being for us.” I explain that Barth always made a key distinction between the eternal self-sufficient being and act of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and his free and loving actions toward us in the economy.

Theosis in die Oosters-Ortodokse en Westers-Protestantse teologiese debat

Theosis in the Eastern-Orthodox and Western-Protestant theological debate: All major religions agree on one theme, namely they strive to provide an answer regarding the relation with their God. A good relation to God is the way of salvation, because the question about God is an acknowledgement that a human being needs to be in union with God. Some questions and answers are only possible in the relation between God and humankind. The well-known saying from the letter to the Romans (1:17), is typical of such a relation formulated in the Western Protestant debate in forensic style. From the Eastern orthodox theological debate, theosis is used in accordance to what the church father Irenaeus meant: ‘God became human that we might become divine’. This article gives a definition of theosis, sketch the historic background of the concept, discuss salvation in the Western theological tradition, and pays attention to a theosis scriptural basis. Furthermore, attention is also given to Martin Luther and theosis as an indication that his view of salvation was much closer to theosis as was readily accepted in the Western theological debate since the Reformation of the 16th century.

Keselamatan Dalam Konsep Rasul Paulus

Salvation in the concept of the Apostle Paul is very worthy to be studied considering the Apostle Paul wrote the most books in the New Testament. In addition, the concept of salvation is a primary doctrine that becomes a dogmatic grip for the church of God. The author conducted a literature study from several relevant sources to discuss this topic. The author examines the view of salvation in general from the letter of the Apostle Paul and then ends more specifically according to Romans. The general letters written by Paul and especially the Romans indicate the Apostle Paul's concept of salvation is theomorphistic, departing from God, by God and for God. The concept is also in harmony with the contents of the Gospels and other books throughout the Bible

Mission awakening in the Dutch Reformed Church: The possibility of a fifth wave?

The Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) had a strong missionary DNA since the planting of the church. This missionary focus and fervour, however, ebbed and flowed during the history of the church. Saayman described that the mission upsurges in the DRC in four waves or ‘periods of extraordinary mission endeavour’. The current research aimed to develop this theory through a literature study on the sociopolitical context and the developments in the ecclesiology and missiology of the DRC since the planting of the church up to 2013. The research found strong evidence to define a fifth wave. The fifth wave was influenced by contextual changes (e.g. a secularising, a more integrated multicultural society and the realisation of the needs of the poor) and loss of influence and money by the DRC. Furthermore, the growth in the church’s missional identity can be seen in the following aspects: the influence of theologians like Lesslie Newbigin and David Bosch; a belief that mission is not something the church does but something the church is; a shift from a Christocentric theology to a Trinitarian theology; a holistic view of salvation; a commitment to the local context of the congregation and a focus on bringing healing to their local communities; and lastly, the success of the Gestuurde Gemeentes network and, more recently, the Mission Shaped Ministry training.

Translating the Christian Moral Message: Reading Liang Fa's Good Words to Admonish the Age in the Tradition of Morality Books

This paper seeks to interpret Good Words to Admonish the Age, the most important writing of the first Chinese Protestant pastor, Liang Fa (1789–1855), in its complex relations with the tradition of morality books (shan shu). By doing so, the paper attempts to show Liang's subversive adoption of an existing social and religious genre that enjoyed widespread acceptance at the time. While Liang affirms the significance of moral values, he also distinguishes those practices held by morality books as meritorious from actual moral uprightness. In contrast, moral good for Liang is a result of divine intervention (that is, salvation) and a Christian duty, thus transcending the conventional purpose of earthly reward or securing one's own fate for blessings. In crafting his Good Words, the morality-book tradition forms an essential point of contact that Liang appropriated and adapted for delivering his Christian message – a message that is also in competition with the conventional moral view of salvation. For Liang, these moral tenets, which he still holds dear after his conversion, now culminate in a theological knowledge of God and his salvation plan.

Using the Master's Tools to Dismantle the Master's House:The FountainheadReadsDoctor Faustus

AbstractLargely by the use of allegory, Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead repurposes and reinterprets the religious morality of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus to espouse an Objectivist, rather than theist, view of salvation and damnation. The Faustian narrative no longer belongs to Faustus alone, but is read against itself in order to theorize that giving up one's ego and independence, rather than giving up one's membership to the societal collective, is the straightest road to perdition.

The Old Man in Purgatory: The Indian Part in Yeats's Vision of Salvation

This essay examines Yeats's Purgatory via A Vision, in an attempt to understand his view of salvation in particular relation to Indian philosophy. Read from a Christian perspective, Purgatory may be a work far from purgation, as T. S. Eliot once complained. I wish to show in this essay that Purgatory indeed places emphasis on purgation by a negative example, if in a different way from the Catholic one. Yeats denies the linear eschatology of Christian theology as well as its doctrine of salvation in eternal heaven. In A Vision, Yeats explains his view of the afterlife of the soul, which involves purgation through ‘the Dreaming Back’. The special treatment of the Old Man renders Purgatory a meta-purgatorial play that mirrors the Dreaming Back of his mother's spirit in the Old Man's, intensifying the theme of purgation. Purgatory effectively dramatizes the inability to forgive and cast out remorse: the impossibility of nishikam karma, or selfless action, to borrow Sanskrit terms, which is essential for Yeatsian salvation. Finally, I would also emphasize Yeats's deviation from the Hindu wisdom, which makes Yeats's vision uniquely his own.

A Study on the Process of Salvation in The Pilgrim’s Progress

존 버니언은『천로역정』에서 주인공인 ‘크리스천’이 성경을 읽고 자신의 죄를 깨달은 뒤 구원을 받기 위한 여정을 떠나서 온갖 역경과 시험을 겪은 후에 결국 ‘천성’에 들어가는 내용을 통해 인간 영혼의 구원과정을 알레고리 기법으로 표현하고 있다. 『천로역정』은 성경을 바탕으로 예수 그리스도를 통한 인간 구원의 길을 제시하고 있다. 본 논문의 목적은 ‘크리스천’의 구원 추구 과정을 탐색 하고 그 속에서 작가 버니언이 보여주는 구원의 의미를 고찰하는 데 있다. 『천 로역정』은 ‘크리스천’이 죄를 깨닫고 구원 받은 뒤에 ‘멸망의 도시’를 떠나 자신의 영원한 거주지인 천국에 이르기까지의 순례의 길을 다룬다. ‘크리스천’은 구원을 받았지만 구원의 완성 단계인 ‘성화’에 도달한 것은 아니다. 존 버니언은 구원과 ‘성화’를 구별하지 않고 성화가 구원의 당연한 결과로 생각했다. 버니언은 ‘크리스천’이 죄에서 벗어나 예수 그리스도의 십자가에서 의로움을 받고 새로운 삶을 살아 궁극적으로 천국에 들어가는 것이 진정한 구원에 이르는 것으로 생각하고 이를 우화적인 방법으로 표현한 것이다. ‘크리스천’은 영혼불멸을 향한 구원의 길에서 신앙의 안내자인 ‘전도자’의 가르침에 따른 길을 가게 된다. 길을 가는 도중 통과하는 갖가지 시험이나 구원으로 나아가는 길을 가로막는 방해자들을 극복하고 마침내 ‘천성’에 이른다. ‘크리스천’은 순례를 통해 얻은 경험으로 인간은 율법이나 선행에 의해 구원을 받을 수 없고 오직 믿음과 은혜에 의해서 구원을 받는다는 사실을 보여준다. ‘크리스천’의 여행은 성화를 향해 나아가는 인간영혼의 구원 과정을 보편적으로 제시하고 있다.This paper aims to explore John Bunyan’s view of salvation in The Pilgrim’s Progress. He depicts the progress of the pilgrim, Christian, from a life of sin, through his resolve to attain the eternal life, to his victories over various kinds of temptations and then to his final triumph marked by his arrival in the Celestial City. The Pilgrim’s Progress deals with Christian’s pilgrimage to his eternal abode after he is saved. Salvation happens at the beginning of the journey. Afterwards he is saved but has not reached his goal, that is, already but not yet: he is saved but still is not in heaven. Bunyan considers the Gospel as the essence of initial salvation and the ground of resultant sanctification. He holds the inseparable relationship between salvation and sanctification. He describes allegorically the way of salvation as justification, new life, and heaven. The protagonist Christian needs to follow the correct path to salvation for the immortality of the soul. Christian moulds his journey according to the principles set out by their religious guide, the Evangelist. Christian follows his righteous path during his pilgrimage, and his religious faith in God accompanies him throughout the pilgrimage, allowing him to ultimately reach the locus of the spiritual enlightenment. The Pilgrim’s Progress has a definitive ending, as the protagonist achieves salvation. His pilgrimage is the symbol of the process of salvation of human spirit.

Introducing the Astley–Francis Theology of Religions Index: construct validity among 13- to 15-year-old students

The ‘theology of religions’ is concerned with the interpretation and evaluation of the divergent truth-claims and views of salvation that are asserted or implied by different religious traditions. This study proposes a new multi-choice index that distinguishes between six current positions within the theology of religions, characterised as Atheism, Agnosticism, Exclusionism, Inclusivism, Pluralism, and Interreligious perspective, with a further subdivision between two expressions of the pluralism perspective. The construct validity of this new measure is supported by the performance of the instrument in respect of a network of theories (regarding how these different positions may relate to the factors of sex, age, personal religiosity and attitude toward religious diversity) among a sample of 10,754 13- to 15-year-old students from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

What Does It Mean to Be Saved? An African Reading of Ephesians 2

Scholars have examined the vocabulary, theology, and social framework of Ephesians 2 in great detail. This article re-examines the import of its salvific message with two foci: (1) From what are people saved and (2) to what end? It examines the Greek text from an African perspective to show how certain parallel concepts, worldview, and customs in African cultures may aid our understanding of a text produced in the collectivist Greco-Roman context of the early Christians. The portrait of the pre-Christian past, the radical intervention by God, and the purpose of the salvific work of Christ becomes clear but contrary to how it was previously understood. It argues that salvation, as expressed in our text of inquiry, has both horizontal and vertical dimensions: that sin has personal, social, and spiritual dimensions, and salvation is meant to restore a broken relationship with God as well as relationships with fellow members in the multi-ethnic household of God simultaneously. Thus the division of 2.1–10 and 2.11–22 in English translations misconstrue the import of the text and engenders a view of salvation informed by the individualistic cultures of the post-enlightenment West, a view foreign to the Early Christians.

Getting a “Handle” on Holistic Christian Mission: The Contribution of Isaiah 61 as a Discrete Old Testament Voice

This study of Isaiah attempts to show that Isaiah 61 reflects a number of ideas indicative of a holistic view of salvation in the eschatological age—an age inaugurated by Jesus. The development of “righteousness” and the “servants of the Servant” themes serve to show that the individual of Isaiah 61 fulfills the high standard on both accounts. Moreover, the mission of the servant in Isaiah 61 is inherently holistic, as had been established early on in the book. This involves the covenant expectation to fulfill a range of righteous actions indicative of the good news of salvation. To argue that Isaiah 61 serves as a paradigm for Christian mission is, on one level, self-evident from Jesus' own reference to the text in Luke 4. However, this essay has a larger hermeneutical point. A Christian reading of Isaiah 61 in its own context complements what we learn from the New Testament's employment of the text. Isaiah 61 reveals a call placed upon all Christians, not just Jesus. This standard for mission is not only achievable by the Spirit of God (Isa 61:1) but is also to be emulated by all servants of the Servant as the progression of the book implies. As Christians pursue holistic, and distinctively Christian mission, the fundamental idea must be recalled—as servants of the Servant Jesus Christ, righteous action, in terms outlined in Isaiah 61 and its context, is a covenant obligation.

Salvation, theology and organizational practices across the centuries

Humankind has a long history of seeking to be saved from suffering, although the understanding of just how to achieve this salvation has changed over time. Regardless of how it has been understood, throughout history the dominant understanding of salvation has been associated with how social structures and systems are organized. This article provides an historical review of the relationship between salvation and organizational practices, paying particular attention to various views of salvation within the Western Christian tradition over the past two millennia. Using a three dimensional analytical framework—the modality of salvation, the instantiation of salvation and the locus of ethical activity—we describe key changes in the meaning of salvation over time, and describe hallmark organizational practices associated with each meaning. We conclude by discussing implications of our analysis for examining relationships between organizational practices and salvation in other religious traditions, for developing a more nuanced understanding of emancipation, for developing counter-cultural approaches to management and for strengthening a ‘theological turn’ in organization and management theory.

Heaven's Purge: Purgatory in Late Antiquity. By ISABEL MOREIRA.

Isabel Moreira's account of the changing face of purgatory in late antiquity and into the early Middle Ages explores both the historical development of purification after death and the social practices which influenced the ways in which discussions of such purification were perceived and received. A work such as this cannot help but respond to Jacques Le Goff's La Naissance du Purgatoire (Paris, 1981), but Moreira carefully repositions the question, arguing that ‘we come closest to understanding purgatory's success and longevity when we ask, not when did purgatory achieve doctrinal status, but when did purgatory achieve theological viability’ (p. 211). By following this line of enquiry her answers are in many cases far more useful for late antiquity and the early Middle Ages than Le Goff's rigid insistence that until purgatory had a name, it had no existence. One of Moreira's key contentions is that some of the most significant developments in Christian thinking about purgatory were made in response to concern over Origen's ideas about universal salvation and their continued echoes in canons and other texts throughout late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. She also explores in some detail the missionary context of purgatory (ch. 7) and the considerable difficulties that some missionaries may have faced in asking would-be Christians to distance themselves from their non-Christian pasts, arguing that ‘the importance of cultivating “softer” views of salvation in conjunction with missionary work is underscored by reference to the past’, and that the situations in which missionaries found themselves meant that they required ‘inclusive ideas of salvation’ (p. 189). Her discussion of scholarship which has sought to link purgatory with ‘barbarians’ and their law-codes or with a clash of Mediterranean and barbarian/northern/Irish cultures is also helpful: she concludes that ‘the later Christian barbarian kingdoms contributed very little to visions of purgatory’ (p. 205), and emphasizes that in many cases it is more sensible to consider texts as ‘early medieval’ than as ‘Germanic’ or ‘Irish’ (p. 199). Her careful analysis of the seventh-century vision of Fursey and its eighth-century reworking by Bede in his Historia Ecclesiastica is likewise enlightening as she repositions the vision away from its perceived ‘Irishness’ and emphasizes instead the much broader context—Frankish and East Anglian as well as Irish—in which this vision should be interpreted (ch. 5).

Trinitarian Cosmology in God’s Liberating Movement: Exploring some Signature Tunes in the Opera of Ecologic Salvation

Reflections about liberation are embedded in contexts of suffering, both among human and other creatures. Opposite to the cynical postmodern who regards and dismantles every postulate about liberation as an ideological attempt to rule over others, salvation matters because there are those who are in the need of it. The essay presents, to begin with, two conceptual tools—the three-step-scheme of soteriology, and Gustaf Aulen’s view of salvation as a drama. These flow into an exploration of the classical Eastern Trinitarian view of creation’s liberation and a discussion about what this means for a contemporary ecumenical approach to an ecological theology of liberation in late modernity. Trinitarian soteriology understands the space of creation within time from the perspective of a movement from the old to the new creation. The drama of salvation takes place as a transfigurating drama of space and place and also of and within time. An ecologic re-reading of Gregory of Nazianz helps us to understand the liberation of creation such that nature, instead of moving from itself toward God, moves together with God in the Spirit toward its consummation in time. In Trinitarian terms: the triune God— Spirit, Son, and Father—moves in qualitatively different but integrated and complementary ways in, through , and with creation. An ecological pneumatology of liberation thus focuses on God’s movement within creation as expressed in the formula In the Spirit through the Son to the Father at the place where creatures are set free . Through the lens of soteriology the synergy of God and his/her creation appears as a plastic process in space and time, which involves space and time in itself as a subject of the Spirit’s versatile synergy in order to set Creation free.

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ. By J. TODD BILLINGS.

While working as a community developer in Uganda, Todd Billings experienced gifts as patronizing responses to poverty. The search for a genuine gift led him to consider recent philosophical and theological discussions of ‘the Gift’. Yet it was not this literature, but the writings of one of its common foils, John Calvin, that provided him with the most satisfying framework for conceiving gift-giving and receiving, both human and divine. This book, a revision of his doctoral thesis at Harvard University under Sarah Coakley and winner in 2009 of the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise, is his attempt to correct misinterpretations of Calvin by Gift theologians, to demonstrate that their dismissal of him has been too cavalier, and to commend Calvin to the conversation. The opening chapter identifies the relevant criticisms of Calvin by Stephen Webb, Kathryn Tanner, John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward, and Simon Oliver and then likens them to perennial complaints against Calvin’s theology, most notably that it annihilates human agency. Billings sets as his goal the vindication of Calvin’s theology of participation against suggestions that it is underdeveloped, contradicted by a view of salvation as imputation, nominalist, ignorant of the Church Fathers’ achievement, and the worst of theories of ‘unilateral gift’ in which human response and receptivity are immaterial.

The Co-redemptive Role of Mary in Gonzalo de Berceo's El duelo de la Virgen

Much has been done to debunk the perception of Gonzalo Berceo as a folksy or rustic poet so admired by the Generation of 1890. (1) James Marchand and Brian Dutton, (2) among others, have shown Berceo to be a learned man whose sources were varied and rich. Marchand states that Berceo... may seem at first glance to be a primitive, but there is a thread of learned theological symbolism throughout work (Berceo the Learned..., 293). And, in another article, this critic challenges us to take note of the intertextuality inherent in Berceo's writings, i.e., his use of learning and theological lore (Putting the Bite on Hell..., 93) and reminds us that, for the Riojan poet, the path to salvation was more nuanced than heretofore recognized: Like most people in the Middle Ages, Berceo believed in a scheme of salvation which was simple in its conception, but complicated in its working out... (93). One of the complicated facets of Berceo's view of salvation is found in El duelo la Virgen. In this treatise Berceo offers particular take on the theme of the mater dolorosa and the role(s) of the Virgin in redemption. The origins of El duelo can be traced ultimately to the Byzantine poetry of the Lamenting Virgin which, in turn, owed its theme and structure to the classical threnody, or funeral song, of the lamenting woman (Pelikan 128-29). In some texts, especially the Tractatus beati Bernhardi planctu beate Marie virginis, attributed, as its title indicates, to Saint Bernard, the Virgin speaks about her suffering with Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. This version is very close to that of Berceo's as is a provencal version published by Muschacke in 1890 but, in the latter, Mary speaks with Saint Augustine, rather than Saint Bernard, the saint who appears in the Spanish El duelo (Dutton 7). (3) But even if Berceo's is derivative to some extent, it also contains some significant variations such as the extensive use of Saint Matthew's gospel. Berceo in other Marian treatises, Los Milagros Nuestra Senora and the Loores Nuestra Senora, also deals with Mary's role in the scheme of redemption but in El duelo he comes the closest to assigning her a near-equal status with Her divine Son. For example, in Los Milagros, Berceo emphasizes Mary's perpetual virginity: virgin verdat, / illesa, incorrupta en su entegredat (565, vv. 20cd) [she truly was a virgin, illesa, incorrupta in her integrity) (15). (4) He also gives a litany of epithets often applied to Mary: estrella los mares (569, v. 32b) [Star of the Seas] (17); tiemplo Jesu Christo (569, v. 33b) [Temple of Jesus Christ] (17); de los (569, v. 33a) [She is Queen of Heaven] (17); es nuestra talaya, nestra defension (569, 37b) [she is our watchtower, our defense] (17), etc. Although lavish in praise and admiration for the Virgin, in Los Milagros he falls short of equating Her part in salvation with that of Christ. Similary, in the Loores Berceo emphasizes Mary's role as Mother of Christ, essential for salvation but not actually the redeemer, a role reserved for Jesus. The Loores is a lengthy exegesis on Old Testament prefigurations of Mary and a detailed recount of the life of Christ. In the latter section, Jesus takes center stage. In the final stanzas of the Loores, Berceo reiterates many qualities of the Virgin he also identified in Los Milagros. She is estrella la mar (921, v. 197a) [Star of the Sea] (180); por ond' la salut vino, Tu nos fuisti carrera (921, v. 198b) [you were the path that led to our salvation] (180); fuente piadat (921, v. 199a) [Fountain of Mercy] (180); reliquiario pleno sanctidat (921, v. 199b) [reliquary filled with holiness] (180); and reina los cielos (927, v. 223c) [Queen of Heaven] (183).5 But, throughout the Loores, Mary is called Mother of Christ as She is in Los Milagros--a necessary agent but not ultimately responsible for the salvation of mankind. …

Jean Calvin, Calvinism, and population health: impressions from Switzerland

Is religion still important for population health? As John-Paul Vader noted in his recent editorial in this journal, which accompanied the annual European Public Health Association meeting in Montreux, this is an under-researched question.1 And in an increasingly secularized continent like Europe the answer is certainly far from obvious. After the Montreux meeting I therefore decided to go to Geneva, the great city of the Reformation. I went to see the new ‘Musee International de la Reformation’, as well as the ‘Mur de la Reformation’ which was erected in 1909 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Calvin, the greatest of the Geneva Reformers. Jean Calvin (1509–1564) was a French exile and follower of Martin Luther, who developed a specific doctrine which spread to parts of Germany, the Netherlands, and Scotland, and crossed the Atlantic to North America where many early settlers were Calvinists. The central issue of Calvinist theology is its view of salvation. By nature, no man is capable of …

Takagami Kakusyo's View of Salvation

Takagami Kakusyo's View of Salvation

Christus Nesciens? Was Christ Ignorant of the Day of Judgment? Arian and Orthodox Interpretation of Mark 13:32 in the Ancient Latin West

As is now widely recognized, the Scriptures and their interpretation did not serve as mere embroidery upon a larger theological dispute during the “Arian controversy.”All dates in this essay are C.E. In the past two decades, scholars have identified many difficulties with the term “Arian Controversy”; thus the quotation marks. In 1988, R. P. C. Hanson (The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988] xvii) stigmatized the term as a “serious misnomer.” Michael H. Barnes and Daniel H. Williams (Arianism after Arius: Essays on the Development of the Fourth Century Trinitarian Conflicts [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993] xiv) have nicely summarized the findings of recent scholarship: “Perhaps the most central finding in the last fifteen years … has been to show how peripheral the person of Arius was to the actual debates which occupied the Church for most of the [fourth] century.” I use the terms “Arian” and “Arianism” in this study, in the absence of a better term, as a shorthand way of referring to the Latin theological opponents of the Nicene party. In fact, the relationship between theological discourse and the Scriptures is rather the reverse of the one often assumed. The Scriptures were themselves the source of the dispute, and not fodder for the proof-texting of predetermined theological positions. Theological discourse was, in fact, the fruit of reflection and argument over key scriptural passages. It may well be true that the controversy stemmed from dispute over the meaning of only a dozen or so such texts. Alois Grillmeier is on the mark when he observes, “However much the whole of scripture continued to be read, theological polemics, precisely in trinitarian and christological discussion, restricted themselves to a certain number of important or disputed scriptural texts.”Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965) 7. But this is very different from suggesting that the Scriptures functioned merely as proof-texts to what was central—namely, philosophically informed theological argument. These scriptural texts were the initial and abiding source of the dispute. As Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh have observed, “the picture of Arius as a logician and dialectician” has been so “firmly entrenched in all our minds that it has been easy to overlook the degree to which appeal to the Scriptures was fundamental for Arius” and, it might be added, the later Arians.Early Arianism: A View of Salvation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981) 3. Following Athanasius too closely, some modern scholars have argued that it was only the Arian side that so interpreted the Scriptures. See T. E. Pollard, “The Exegesis of Scripture and the Arian Controversy,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 41/2 (1959) 414–29, at 416: “That the Arians were extreme literalists is borne out by Athanasius's criticism of them. He criticizes them, however, not because they interpret the Scriptures literally, but because they isolate carefully selected texts from their context and interpret them literally without any regard for their context of for the general teaching of Scripture.” But the pro-Nicenes were no less capable than their counterparts of reading the text of Scripture in this decontextualized fashion. Indeed, it could be argued that the Arians were generally on much stronger ground when exegeting the Bible. Hanson, too, is on the mark when he states that “the dispute was about the interpretation of the Bible” and that the philosophical language used by Athanasius was “all devoted to what was ultimately a Scriptural argument.”Search, 8, 422. Examining both unmediated, genuine Arian sources as well as hostile orthodox testimony, I will analyze in this essay the extensive dispute in the “Arian controversy” over Mark 13:32, where Jesus appears to acknowledge unambiguously his ignorance of the time of the day of judgment. While both sides agreed that this text was central to the controversy, they disagreed radically on its meaning. Their differences in interpretation, I argue, are rooted in quite different theories of salvation.