from the time of Jesus to the present and, as shown in Table 2, we identify four basic historical eras—demarcated by junctures (Mills, 2010)—that are helpful for our study: 1) biblical and early church; 2) post-Constantine and Middle Ages; 3) Reformation, and 4) contemporary Faith at Work movement. The exemplars we draw upon to develop four ideal-type eras include: (a) the biblical writings of Luke, whose biblical gospel is considered the one that places the most emphasis on salvation (e.g., Fitzmyer, 1970: 223; Ehrman, 2008; e.g., Luke refers to salvation more than any other gospel); (b) nine theologians (Irenaeus, Origen, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Anselm, Abelard, Luther and Calvin) known for their exemplary contribution to the meaning of salvation up to and including the Reformation (identified and summarized by Haight, 1994), and (c) a description of the past century of the Faith at Work movement in the United States (especially Miller, 2007). After describing the beliefs about salvation characterizing each era, we also provide a description and ideal-type examples of how these beliefs are operationalized in organizational practices in each era. Of course, following Weber, we do not purport to suggest that the four ideal-types subsumed in the four eras always hold, nor that they fully represent the views of even the exemplars we highlight. Rather we offer them as coherent conceptual configurations to help grasp basic differences in the understanding of salvation over time in Christianity. Put differently, we fully recognize that there will be important exceptions to these categories, that the exemplars may not match the categories exactly in all of their teachings, and that the shifts across the three Weberian dimensions of salvation are not changes from one to the other but rather as “extreme” shifts in relative emphasis. We now describe each era in turn. ERA 1: Biblical times and early church
from the time of Jesus to the present and, as shown in Table 2, we identify four basic historical eras—demarcated by junctures (Mills, 2010)—that are helpful for our study: 1) biblical and early church; 2) post-Constantine and Middle Ages; 3) Reformation, and 4) contemporary Faith at Work movement. The exemplars we draw upon to develop four ideal-type eras include: (a) the biblical writings of Luke, whose biblical gospel is considered the one that places the most emphasis on salvation (e.g., Fitzmyer, 1970: 223; Ehrman, 2008; e.g., Luke refers to salvation more than any other gospel); (b) nine theologians (Irenaeus, Origen, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Anselm, Abelard, Luther and Calvin) known for their exemplary contribution to the meaning of salvation up to and including the Reformation (identified and summarized by Haight, 1994), and (c) a description of the past century of the Faith at Work movement in the United States (especially Miller, 2007). After describing the beliefs about salvation characterizing each era, we also provide a description and ideal-type examples of how these beliefs are operationalized in organizational practices in each era. Of course, following Weber, we do not purport to suggest that the four ideal-types subsumed in the four eras always hold, nor that they fully represent the views of even the exemplars we highlight. Rather we offer them as coherent conceptual configurations to help grasp basic differences in the understanding of salvation over time in Christianity. Put differently, we fully recognize that there will be important exceptions to these categories, that the exemplars may not match the categories exactly in all of their teachings, and that the shifts across the three Weberian dimensions of salvation are not changes from one “extreme” to the other but rather as shifts in relative emphasis. We now describe each era in turn. ERA 1: Biblical times and early church
bdsalvdec2011_penult--bd--ew.docx