Abstract:
This article was prompted by my fervour to find out how modern and ancient
cultures influence Christian conception and the practice of salvation. To address
this issue, I decided to do a comparative study of salvation in modern time, with
first century practice of the same. On the one hand, I focused on exploring
salvation as reflected in the Gospel of Matthew 5.17–20, because most scholars
believe that this Gospel addresses a multi-cultural community composed of
Gentiles and Judeans. On the other hand, to observe modern practices of
salvation, I interviewed a focus group through a questionnaire and telephone
calls in 2011 and 2019, respectively, to briefly explore the case of St James
Anglican Parish at Kajire Village in Taita-Taveta County, Kenya. The overall
goal of the article is to explore how, in pursuit of practising their salvation, the
community of Matthew in Antioch had to contest the Roman Empire,
accommodate Diaspora Judaism, and identify with the emerging Jesus
Movement. Consequently, employing literary analysis and what I call “social
identity political theory” (SIPT), I have argued that a culturally conditioned
practice of salvation is prone to the promotion of group dominance. To address
this problem, Matthew advances an inclusive view of salvation that entails the
construction of a superordinate Christian identity, which has the potential to
support a Christocentric perspective of salvation.
