How Faith “Saves”: Faith in God Grounded in Filial Love

Abstract

Jesus, the apostle Paul, and the authors of John's Gospel and 1 John share a distinctive approach to the relation between divine love and human knowing and trusting (believing in) God. This article identifies the widely neglected importance of their approach, by attending to what God wants from human knowing and trusting God: personal relating by self-entrustment, and eventual belonging, to God in a filial manner with suitable motives, particularly love toward God. The motivational role for love from God and for God in faith is neglected by many theologians, including Martin Buber, Rudolf Bultmann, Ernst Käsemann, and recently Ben F. Meyer and Teresa Morgan, with corresponding neglect of how faith “saves” people. Filial knowing and trusting God, contrary to a dominant approach, are agapeic in having the loving motives of a cooperative child of God. In participating and partnering in divine love by faith in God, a person is saved from final death by sharing in a relationship of divine agapeic power that survives death.