to gain eternal freedom. There are also specific emphases in each religion on whether salvation is something that occurs after death or whether it is something that can be attained in life (Smart: p. 418).
Smith (1986) finds that Christianity is primarily a historical religion, which means that it is not founded mainly in universal principles but in events that were actual historical happenings. Christianity is the most widespread of all religions and also has the largest number of followers. It has seen much diversity over its two thousand years of history, but there are three major divisions--Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism (pp. 409-410). The concept of salvation differs somewhat in these three divisions, but there are some basic elements that are the same.
Salvation in the Christian conception refers to something that occurs after death. Other terms are also used to identify salvation in the Christian conception--redemption and justification. Justification is the term used by the apostle Paul and has come to refer to the subjective side of the process of redemption. It has indeed become the all-embracing central concept associated with redemption. Salvation comes to the human being, as creature and as sinner, only through the free, unearned grace of God--through that which cannot be humanly laid claim to, the free self-opening of God in Jesus Christ. The relationship of human beings to God is what constitutes their salvation, and this cannot be established or maintained by the human being himself. It rather originates as the sovereign act of God: "There are no 'works' by which the human being can first make himself favorable to God out of human power and goodness, no initiative that would have a human beginning. All the human work of salvation has only a responsive character, and even this response. . . is still enabled by God" (Rahner and Dar
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