Thirty-First Day of Lent: Questions of Salvation

For a summary of Passus XII, see Eleventh Day of Lent.

Scripture, who had rebuked Will in Passus XI, appears again in the fevered and distorted dream-within-a-dream of Passus XII, now preaching a sermon on the parable of the wedding feast (Matthew 22:1-14).  Her sermon, however, interprets the parable as a story about predestination, focusing on the last verse (“many are called, but few are chosen”) and teaching that God chooses to save a select few and leaves the great mass of humanity to wait and wander hopelessly.  Will is deeply disturbed by her preaching:

            “All for torment of her text my heart began to tremble,

            And I fell into turmoil, debating with myself

            Whether I were chosen or not chosen; I thought of Holy Church

            Who received me at the font for one of God’s elect.

            For Christ called us all to come if we would,

            Saracens and schismatics, and also he called the Jews,

            And bid them suck at his breast a salve for sin

            And drink medicine for sorrow, whoever might desire it:

            Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.

            Then may all Christians come,” I said, “and claim what’s theirs

            By that blood he bought us with and baptism, as he taught:

            He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.”

Will is of course right to react so strongly to his dream’s distortion of Scripture and the strange theology she preaches.  He knows enough of the story of Jesus to know it can’t be the case that God makes a big show of inviting everyone but only ever intends to accept a few he decided on beforehand.  Simply put, that would make God a deceiver, a liar.  Yet nonetheless, the thought that this distorted version of Scripture might be right brings Will to the deepest moment of doubt and anxiety he experiences in the poem, one familiar to anyone who has allowed extreme doctrines of predestination to get into their bones.  The absoluteness and the hiddenness of it all can lead to a real despair of the soul.

In this moment of darkness Will turns to what Holy Church had told him back in his first dream and remembers the promise of his baptism, that through that washing of water and the Spirit he now belongs to God.  To have received baptism, Will reasons, is to have answered that universal call of God, and thus, to be saved.  It is not some secret predestination of God’s, but the very open and visible act of baptism that is the mechanism of salvation.

As we often do, however, when confronted with something powerfully wrong, Will has gone too far in the other direction.  In trying to escape the terror of a hidden and arbitrary predestination, he has replaced it with an equally arbitrary but visible symbol.  All he says about baptism here is that it grants Christians a sort of “right” to eternal life, like some cosmic contract signed with God whereby we can get into heaven.  Although he’s trying to counter it, this idea of salvation is not that different from a radical concept of predestination, because in both of them there is no transformation of those being saved, only some sort of legal acceptance, whether by contract or by fiat.

The truth about salvation is a thought Will moves toward but does not (at this point in the poem) complete:  salvation means “sucking salve for sin at the breast of Christ.”  Salvation is about being healed by Christ and this healing is as concrete in our spirits as the strength and sustenance a baby receives nursing at its mother’s breast.  A baby will not grow into a son or daughter just because the mother has “chosen” them for her child or just because she gives it a name as part of her family.  To grow into a son or daughter, the baby must be nourished by its mother.  And in the same way we cannot become sons and daughters of God if we are not nourished at the breast of our mother Jesus Christ in the sacraments of baptism and communion, in the reading of scripture, the practice of prayer, the preaching of the word, the love of our neighbor, caring for the poor, and all the other means of grace.  And the nourishment we receive, the “salve for sin,” is the Holy Spirit, who is all love and always works within our willing hearts to make us all love as well.  Being healed of our infirmities and growing up into true children of the God of love, this, and neither secret divine decrees nor magical water, is our salvation.

“Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her,
    all you who love her;
rejoice with her in joy,
    all you who mourn over her—
that you may nurse and be satisfied
    from her consoling breast;
that you may drink deeply with delight
    from her glorious bosom.

For thus says the Lord:
I will extend prosperity to her like a river,
    and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream;
and you shall nurse and be carried on her arm,
    and dandled on her knees.
As a mother comforts her child,
    so I will comfort you;
    you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.”  (Isaiah 66:10-13)