What is salvation history?

[TheAdvocate]

I couldn’t think of where to put this post, but since Revelation itself unfolds in the Scriptures, I put it here.

How do you define salvation history, and how does it differ from all other history?

This one almost could have been put on the Philosophy section–it’s for great thinkers and articulaters. But I know many would be up to the challenge.

 

[ryanoneil]

Perhaps “all other history” is everything that doesn’t have to do with God’s saving action.

 

[jmcrae]

I couldn’t think of where to put this post, but since Revelation itself unfolds in the Scriptures, I put it here.

How do you define salvation history, and how does it differ from all other history?

This one almost could have been put on the Philosophy section–it’s for great thinkers and articulaters. But I know many would be up to the challenge.

“Salvation history” is simply the history of God’s relationship with the human race. It’s a love story that began in the Garden of Eden, and has had some pretty wild ups and downs ever since.

 

[archistrage]

Think of it this way. The Bible is a story. It’s like the biggest parable in the world. But just because it’s a parable, a story, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Can you prove that the parable of the Prodigal Son never happened at some point in history?

But like a story, like a parable, it teaches us a lesson. It not only tells us how God interacted with people in the past, but how he interacts with people in general. The Bible is the story of the salvation of mankind’s as a whole. It tells how we as a species, as a civilization have grown up over the centuries. In Sacred Scripture, we learn what it means to be a Human Being, and why we should not just stick with being homo sapiens.

Hope that answers it,
Archistrage

 

[Hunho]

I couldn’t think of where to put this post, but since Revelation itself unfolds in the Scriptures, I put it here.

How do you define salvation history, and how does it differ from all other history?

This one almost could have been put on the Philosophy section–it’s for great thinkers and articulaters. But I know many would be up to the challenge.

Father John A. Hardon defines salvation history in the Workbook for his Basic Catholic Catechism Course: “The history of the salvation of the human race, beginning with God’s promise of a Redeemer (Genesis 3) and continuing to the end of the apostolic age, or the death of the Apostle St. John.” John A. Hardon, Basic Catholic Catechism Course: Workbook (Bardstown, KY: Eternal Life, 1987, 1998), p. 4. In introducing the lesson on salvation history, he stresses the point that it is not simply a theoretical idea but history that is grounded in real times, places, events and people. Fr. Hardon focuses his brief summary as being especially about four persons: Abraham, Moses and David in the Old Testament and Jesus Christ in the New Testament.

Another source you might consult is a sermon Fr. Joseph Ratzinger preached in the Cathedral at Münster, Germany in December 1964. The sermon is printed in Fr. Ratzinger’s book What It Means to Be a Christian (San Francisco, California: Ignatius Press, 2006).