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National Salvation
The Ethnē in Biblical Soteriology and Eschatology.
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All humans will be judged and ultimately saved, not as isolated individuals, nor as an abstract universal collective, but as nations.
This, I contend, is the consistent teaching of Scripture, and of our Christian forefathers.
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As it currently stands in the modern day, there is a nearly ubiquitous tendency—one that is almost entirely novel and out of step with the Biblical worldview—to flatten out all anthropological distinctions by presuming that the only categories of any meaningful significance are “humanity” in the generic universal sense, and “human beings” in the atomized individual sense. But this is simply untrue, especially from a Scriptural standpoint, in nearly every respect. For instance…
As it pertains to divine judgement:
As it pertains to discipleship and the preaching of the gospel:
And as it pertains to the efficacious accomplishment and application of salvation:
Notice that these passages do not speak merely of individual persons ‘from’ or ‘out of’ various nations, nor of some ambiguous concept of ‘diverse humanity’ as a universal collective. Rather, a natural reading recognizes that the Bible here repeatedly refers to “nations” as such, being judged, and evangelized, and saved as nations. In all these facets of God’s unfolding redemptive-historical work, we see a consistent pattern of intra-human group-level identity involved inextricably alongside the universal and individual human level. This cannot be conjured away through hermeneutical obfuscation.
Many New Testament scholars assume that any and all references to “the nations” or “all nations” in the New Testament must simply mean “the Gentiles” generally, as opposed to the Hebrews/Israelites alone. But such is a reductionist and misleading oversimplification. In reality, the term also has a particular denotation beyond merely the vague category of “non-Jews.” “Nations” (“ethnē” in Biblical Greek) is most often used in the specific sense of people-groups: ethno-racial entities defined by shared ancestry and identity, with the shared culture, language, dwelling, and political organization that typically accompanies this. And “all nations” thus denotes all of these people-groups as such.
As the Apostle Paul reminds us,
This Pauline interpretation of the will of God for humanity as revealed at Babel, explains why he does not hesitate to expresses a superlative love for his own “kinsmen according to the flesh” (Rom. 9:3), before arriving at the glorious conclusion that the entirety of his nation (i.e., his “ethnos”) will eventually be saved altogether (Rom. 11:26).
It is undoubtedly true that there is also a sense in which salvation is a matter of individual repentance and faith, and simultaneously a matter of humanity as a universal entity. Yet it is crucial that we cease to overlook this additional theme of the repentance and salvation of the nations as nations. Were we to be more thoroughly immersed in the world of Biblical and historical Christianity in its original context (rather than our own postmodern, liberal milieu), we would better grasp and appreciate this aspect of Scripture’s soteriological and eschatological emphasis.
May God grant us the wisdom and balance to properly see these meaningful distinctions, rather than mindlessly neglecting or foolishly rejecting them.
Soli Deo Gloria.
1 Matthew 25:31-32; Revelation 19:15.
2 Matthew 28:18-20; Revelation 14:6.
3 Romans 11:25; Revelation 15:4; 21:24, 26; 22:2.
4 Acts 17:26.
