On salvation

The process of having safety

In an embrace of comfort and relief, the abstract becomes human: atonement meets forgiveness, creating the safe conference that is salvation, courtesy of Nano Banana.

Introduction

Salvation is typically framed as a religious reward—a final state of grace reserved for the faithful. But what if salvation is not an endpoint, but the fundamental process by which existence maintains itself? From Christian atonement theology to Buddhist liberation from dukkha, salvation concepts permeate human thought, yet remain mired in metaphysical dualism, dividing the saved from the unsaved, and transactional logic, where it is earned through belief or works. This article argues that salvation, as discussed in the author's book: the Gospel of Being, is neither transactional nor eschatological.^[1] It is, instead, the ontological process of having safety, achieved through the dynamic harmony of two core actions: atonement: the 'action to be at one', and forgiveness: the 'measure of giving away' to that action. This reframing liberates the concept from distant heavens and final judgments, placing it at the very heart of how reality sustains itself.

Classical positions on salvation

The human quest to articulate salvation began in the ancient world, where the primary problem was Cosmic disorder (storms, famine, disease) where survival was interpreted to depend upon keeping invisible, powerful forces happy. Pre-Axial Age cultures, from the Vedic to the Greco-Roman, answered this with ritual. Salvation was the restoration of cosmic order through sacrificial transaction—an external bargain with divine forces where atonement meant appeasement. The burning question was how to keep a precarious world in balance.^[2]

Then came a profound shift, often termed the Axial Age, though scholars rightly note its regional variations and gradual unfolding. Here, salvation turned inward. The Upanishadic sages sought moksha, liberation through knowledge of the non-dual Self, answering the problem of ignorant bondage.^[3] The Buddha diagnosed universal dukkha, unease, and prescribed the Noble Eightfold Path toward its extinguishing: nirvana. Plato envisioned salvation as anamnesis, the soul’s recollection of pre-existent knowledge, solving the puzzle of our fallen state. The common thread was the interiorization and universalization of the salvific goal.

While other worldviews sought salvation through knowledge or moral perfection, the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—framed it differently. For them, the core problem was how a perfect God could be in a relationship with an imperfect humanity. Their shared answer was the covenant: a solemn, binding pact where God promises salvation in return for humanity's loyalty, maintained through acts of atonement when that loyalty is broken.

While all three faiths share this bedrock idea of a covenantal relationship, early Christian theologians built upon it by dramatically reframing salvation itself. They argued humanity wasn't just out of sync with God; it was held captive in a universe ruled by sin and death. Salvation, therefore, wasn't just about mending a broken treaty—it had to be a cosmic jailbreak. Christianity speaks of this as a 'New Covenant' sealed by Christ, accomplishing this liberation. These traditions did not emerge in a vacuum but in complex dialogue with the sacrificial, legal, and wisdom traditions surrounding them.

Alongside these traditions, a radically different kind of answer emerged, starting from a different diagnosis of the human problem. For Shankara's Advaita Vedanta and the Zen masters of Tang China, the question of salvation wasn't answered by a covenant with God or cosmic jailbreak; but in escaping the aching sense of being a separate, lonely self—the unbridgeable chasm of 'I am in here separate from the world out there'. This feeling of fundamental separation, these traditions argued, was the root of all other suffering—the fear, the craving, the conflict.

The Enlightenment brought another turn, confronting the problem of a seemingly irrational, faith-based world. Thinkers like Kant secularized salvation as moral perfection achievable through human reason, while Hegel and Marx re-envisioned it as historical progress—for Hegel, the unfolding of Spirit, and for Marx, the revolutionary outcome of material forces.^[4] Crucially, these ideas did not replace religious soteriologies but often hybridized with them, creating new, tense syntheses of reason and faith.

The 19th and 20th centuries internalized the quest further. The problem became existential alienation and psychological fragmentation. Kierkegaard framed salvation as authenticity before God; ^[5] Nietzsche reframed it as a 'new way of life, not a new faith';^[6] Jung declaring psychological salvation where 'the self [...] is a God-image'.^[7] These models continued to cross-pollinate with, and exist alongside, traditional religious paths.

Today, we live in an era of conscious syncretism. The pressing problems are ecological collapse, social fragmentation, and mental distress. Contemporary answers thus frame salvation as eco-spiritual interconnection, mindfulness-based well-being, or social liberation—explicitly blending Eastern non-duality, Western psychology, and progressive social thought into new holistic visions. This is the storied landscape from which a new, ontological understanding of salvation can emerge.

Current flashpoints in soteriological thought

These ancient ideas about salvation aren't settled. They live on as fierce, unresolved debates that define modern spiritual struggle.

The first is the question of who gets saved. Is it only for followers of one true path? Or is it a universal possibility open to all people? This clash between exclusive and universal salvation reshapes how religions view each other and themselves.

Next is the question of scale. Is salvation a private matter—my soul going to heaven, my mind finding peace—or is it about the healing of communities, societies, or the entire planet? Modern calls for social and ecological justice have made this a pressing issue, challenging purely individualistic visions.

Then, when does it happen? Is salvation a future reward after death, or is it a state of freedom and wholeness available right now, in this life? Many contemporary movements argue powerfully for the here-and-now, rejecting the idea that we must wait.

The oldest engine of debate is how it's earned. Is salvation a pure gift, or is it something we must achieve through our own effort, morality, or good karma? Every tradition wrestles with this balance between divine help and human work.

Modern critics also ask a tougher question: are some stories of salvation harmful? They argue that if salvation requires a violent sacrifice to appease an angry God, it sanctifies abuse and damages our sense of justice and worth. This has forced a major rethink of traditional metaphors.

In an increasingly secular world, a more basic question arises: can 'salvation' even mean anything without God? Many now say yes, translating it into the language of mental health, social activism, or environmental balance. Whether this works is an open question.

How the Gospel of Being sees salvation

The Gospel of Being proposes a fundamental reorientation: salvation isn't a ticket to a future paradise; it's the way existence functions to ensure safety. The Gospel of Being defines salvation via its morphology, as the 'process of having safety'. This safety is not found in the escape from the world or a heavenly realm, if only for the fact that there is only existence from which there is no escape.^[8] Thus salvation as a 'process of having safety', is secured through the secure functioning of the conference of difference itself. It emerges from the harmony of two testaments one of atonement, the 'action to be at one', and the other: forgiveness, the 'measure of giving away'. Think of it not as a destination, but as the integral dynamic inherent to the conference of difference in everything.

In this model, Koan 90.2 declares atonement the 'action to be at one' as the generative cause to conference: the 'condition of bearing together'. It is not guilt-driven penance but the active, creative movement toward relational unity—the necessary impulse that makes any conference of difference possible. Atonement is ontological before it is moral. The book-end to atonement is forgiveness: that 'measure of giving away' to that which differs: 'bears apart'.

This is not mere clemency or pardon, but the ontological release that allows differences to bear together in co-petition not competition.^[9] It is the ‘giving away’ that makes the 'bearing apart' sustainable and productive. Neither alone suffices; for as Koan 90.4 declares, they are reciprocally necessary. Without atonement, forgiveness has nothing toward which to give way; without forgiveness, atonement’s movement toward unity becomes a crushing imposition.

This is salvation realized within the conference of difference. It is the experience of ease within the inherent tension of differences in relation, where, as Koan 90.6 declares dukkha: 'unease' is minimized not by eliminating those differences but by a measure of giving away to them.^[10] The model makes a bold claim in Koan 90.7 of universal accessibility: all existence experiences salvation through the harmony of atonement and forgiveness. This is not a doctrinal assertion but an ontological fact. Every being, by virtue of participating in the conference of difference (relational existence), partakes in this harmony in order to accumulate power: 'ability'.

Consequently, this vision is resolutely non-transactional and non-violent. It rejects the logic of sacrificial debt-payment to a divine creditor. Instead, atonement is reframed as the courageous movement toward the other and forgiveness as the graceful giving away to the difference that brings. It is a non-violent, reciprocal rhythm intrinsic to reality itself. Most importantly, it is present and participatory. Salvation is not deferred to a future reward but is realized moment-to-moment through our active participation in the conference of difference. It is the lived rhythm of mutual approach and release that manifests salvation in existence.

Convergence and divergence with classical views

This ontological model of salvation does not emerge in a vacuum. It resonates with deep currents in classical thought while diverging sharply from others, creating a new synthesis. The convergences are revealing. With covenant theology, it affirms salvation as relational fidelity, though it reconceives the covenant itself as the ontological conference of difference, the fundamental pact of existence. With the Buddhist diagnosis of dukkha and its cessation, it aligns perfectly on salvation as the minimization of unease, but it locates this ease within a dynamic relational harmony rather than the cessation of craving and individuation.

There is a significant convergence with Eastern non-duality on the goal of overcoming the sense of separation. However, the Gospel of Being achieves this through the dynamic relation that is the conference of difference, not through the dissolution of all distinction. It also resonates strongly with modern psychological integration, sharing the vision of salvation as wholeness, but it grounds this wholeness in ontological relationality rather than solely in intrapsychic dynamics.

The divergences, however, are where the model’s radical reframing becomes most clear. It rejects transactional models outright, diverging completely from sacrificial, satisfaction, and penal substitutionary atonement theories. Here, salvation is an harmonic process, not a cosmic debt settlement. It rejects exclusivity on principle. Contra particularist soteriologies, salvation is presented as universally operational within existence itself, not contingent on specific belief or affiliation.

It opposes eschatological deferral. Salvation is immanent and continuous, a present-tense process, not a future reward parceled out after death or at the end of time. It rejects the individualism of many salvific schemes. In this view, salvation is irreducibly relational and collective; it occurs within the conference of difference throughout existence, not within an isolated, self-contained soul. Finally and perhaps most fundamentally, it rejects supernaturalism as a necessary component. This is a fully ontological model requiring no supernatural agents or realms; salvation is simply the inherent ‘safety’ found in well-functioning relationality. This is the essence of the shift: from a metaphysical anomaly to an ontological foundation.

Take-away

So, what does this ontological reframing of salvation ultimately offer? Philosophically, it relocates salvation from the realm of metaphysical anomaly to the foundational process by which existence maintains relational equilibrium. It declares that salvation is ontology, not eschatology—a fact about how things are, not a promise about how they might one day be.

Theologically, it liberates salvation concepts from transactional, violent, and exclusive frameworks. It offers a non-sacrificial, universal model grounded in the simple, profound rhythm of relational harmony: moving toward and giving way.

Ethically, this is not abstract. Salvation as the process of having safety provides a potent framework for conflict transformation, restorative justice and reconciliation. It gives us a language for the practical, gritty work of atonement—the courageous movement toward the other—and forgiveness—the graceful release that allows new relation to begin.

On a personal level, it democratizes the quest. It invites participation not through subscribing to a dogma, but through relational practice: the daily courage to atone, to move toward others in their difference, and the daily grace to give way to those differences in order that we might transform ourselves.

Ecologically, the model finds profound expression. Salvation is the health of an ecosystem, the dynamic balance of a community, achieved through the reciprocal adaptation and release of its countless constituent parts. It is the safety of the whole, emergent from the harmonious conference of all its differences.

Ultimately, the Gospel of Being makes salvation utterly common and yet endlessly profound. It is not a prize for the theologically correct or the spiritually elite, but the lived rhythm of all existence. This rhythm extends even to our understanding of legacy and identity, suggesting a soul not as a private substance but as a 'shared knowing' maintained within the conference of the living—a vision for another discussion. To be is to participate in the salvific conference of difference. Our safety, our salvation, is found not in isolation, purity, or final victory, but in the courageous, graceful, and eternal dance of bearing together despite our bearing apart. This is the Gospel: 'God spell', good news written into the fabric of being itself.^[11]

The Gospel of Being

by John Mackay

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