|
|
the role of the Holy Spirit to that of Christ, and (3) a formulaic approach to spiritual formation and discipleship. In place of these legal and moral overtones, Edwards and Coffey give Evangelicals a trinitarian foundation to support their understanding of salvation as a personal and life-transforming relationship with God. Salvation is personal; to be saved is to be drawn into fellowship with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Thus, Christian redemption is essentially a personal union with the divine persons who constitute the trinitarian God.
Chapter 6 proposes an evangelical theology of religions based on Edwards’s and Coffey’s trinitarian vision of redemption. The theology of religions that is put forward here affirms not only the possibility of salvation for people who are members of non-Christian religions but also the possibility of the religions being authentic expressions and mediations of the Spirit and redemption. The latter claim is possible through the integration of Edwards’s and Coffey’s notion of the Spirit as grace and the transformation the Spirit’s presence brings. Religions can be products of the Spirit’s redemptive presence and thereby points of contact between the human person and the Spirit because that presence is always active to transform human beings. Moreover, religious practice and thought can be the concrete manifestations of that redemptive transformation. Thus, together, Edwards and Coffey provide the theological categories to take a hopeful attitude not only toward the salvation of genuine seekers in alternative religious traditions but also toward the religions as possible avenues of the grace of the Spirit.