Models of Salvation: Religion, Eschatology and Hope

The Oxford theologian, Alistair McGrath, has observed that definitions of religion show a marked tendency to depend on the particular purposes and prejudices of individual scholars.1 However, whilst no universally accepted definition has emerged, McGrath suggests that that there is at least now some measure of agreement that religion involves belief and behaviour linked with a supernatural realm of divine or spiritual beings. This is consistent with the useful definition of religion offered by the sociologist, Steve Bruce, which I am going to follow here. Bruce defines religion as ‘beliefs, actions and institutions predicated on the existence of entities with powers of agency (that is, gods) or impersonal powers possessed of moral purposes (the Hindu notion of Karma, for example), which can set the conditions of, or intervene in, human affairs’.2