Theology in the Scientific Era: Is Christian Soteriology Still Valid?
Authors:   The Society of Theology and Thought, Song Yongmin 
Published: January 2025

Humans are not free from the physical dangers and psychological anxiety that cannot be avoided in the physical world, the despair and wounds that come from the breakdown of relationships, and the death and fear that come from anxiety about unknown times and an unpredictable future. Salvation is a religious language of hope for liberation and freedom, peace and happiness, healing and victory from the ‘limitation experiences’ based on human’s finite nature. Christianity, the religion of revelation, is based on the trust that human salvation is a transcendent event that cannot be achieved by humans on their own, and that it comes from God the Creator, the owner of truth and life.
Today, traditional beliefs and religious convictions about salvation are being shaken. This is because of the idol of scientific atheism created by scientific omnipotence, which shakes the foundation of human religiosity and replaces religion as a ‘world without God’ or the unique realm of human salvation. In addition, the reductionism that forms the basis of scientific atheism, that is, human mental phenomena that have been considered the exclusive property of religion, and inner human values such as love, soul, and meaning, are no longer revealed to Go; that is, transcendence, based on research results in brain science. This is because of the challenge of ‘water disease reductionism’, which claims that it comes from ‘material’ rather than God.
The absolutization of scientific thinking poses a great challenge to modern people's experience of salvation as advocated by Christianity. Christianity has used the word ‘salvation’ to express its religious belief in overcoming humanity’s miserable experience of reality, that is, the human experience of guilt and pain, and the recognition of the inevitable reality of death. This is because this salvation is not accepted as a reality of overcoming reality through human self-power, but as a supernatural reality, that is, a reality of grace given through the revelation of God confessed as God.
Is the salvation which Christians seek still valid in the scientific era of the 21st century? Amidst the calls for science to denigrate religious beliefs and explain faith through the logic of science, is there still room for the Christian experience of the ‘salvation event of Christ’ to request self-justification? Is there a new language of salvation in which Christianity can harmonize with the language of science? The language of science and the language of theology, which are at the center of recognition of the anthropological reality surrounding 'salvation', are hermeneutical starting points that can communicate with each other beyond opposition.
They exist. First, God's creation is connected to the saving act of God's self-limitation toward creation. This can be interpreted as an act of love that appears by limiting oneself, as the principle of uncertainty revealed by science and the autonomy given to creatures are revealed in the mystery of God's incarnation and the Incarnation.
Second, the hope for transcendence that can overcome human sin and death is found in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. To put it in the language of science, sin and death are seen as the result of the autonomy given by God to creation, revealed as fate in the process of evolution of humans and the universe. Christian salvation explains the important theological starting point in which the salvation of all humanity and the universe is proclaimed through one Being, Jesus, who accepted the limitations of creation.
Third, the sighs of creation in our time are revealed as the work of the Holy Spirit toward the overall salvation of the universe, overcoming the dualism of the human soul and body, including the crisis of the Earth's ecosystem.