We now turn our attention to the overarching theme of soteriology, or the study of salvation. We will journey through this topic by taking a few critical stops along the way to look at some key ideas and themes. Again, I am just a student and not a professor or an expert. I do not have all the answers or even a majority. I am thinking about this and struggling with some of the ideas associated with soteriology like many have done in the past (see all the various denominations with various differing thoughts on salvation) and continue to do today. These are some of the ideas and thoughts that I am thinking about and wrestling with.
We start this journey by looking at salvation in the Old Testament, in particular two questions:
- Did individuals in the Old Testament period need to know about Jesus to be saved?
- If not, why do so many Christians today say one must have explicit faith in Jesus to be saved?
How one reads and interprets this question can cause a different response. The question itself is not the clearest because it can depend on how deep or theological one wants to go. The answers to these two questions will be provided in two posts. First, a cursory overview post that will lead into the next post which gives more background and detail. However, the point of answering these two questions is not to write a book on it or even a lengthy paper, but it is to answer them in a short and succinct manner. There are numerous books out there that dissect this at length if you want to know more information but we just want to keep it high level for this exercise.
I believe this is a very interesting and intriguing reflective question. After doing some research, I could definitely see different sides of the argument and how interpreting the question differently could cause some confusion or different answers.
The answer to the question is “no” they did not need to know about Jesus because it was impossible for them to know about Him since Jesus had not been revealed or accomplished His work. However, if the question is “was the promised Messiah a part of their faith?” then I think the answer is yes. From the protoevangelium of Gen 3:15 to the sacrificial system pointing to an ultimate sacrifice to the prophecies in books like Isaiah and Micah, there is a progressive revelation about the coming Messiah. Their faith was not specifically in Jesus since that is impossible and He was not yet revealed, but their faith would include the coming of God’s promised Messiah. This latter way is the way I interpreted the question and wrote my response.