Peter Dellas Ph D

The Redemption of Creation Peter Dellas Ph D

What is salvation? When Christians talk about "being saved" it doesn't mean joining a church or simply becoming part of a group. This book explains salvation starting from Genesis and ending in Revelation. It goes through all the essential ideas that are part of the Biblical understanding of who man is and why he needs Jesus. But, furthermore, this book deals with the extent of Jesus' work. Jesus came to save man, but He came to do much more than that. In the end, Jesus came to redeem the entire Creation. This world is not the way it is supposed to be. Every dead animal in the road, every dead tree, every blighted forest--all of these also cry out for redemption. Jesus also fulfills the promises of a restoration of the earth to its pristine condition before the fall of mankind. Questions that are addressed in this book include: 1) Did Jesus die for everyone? 2) Why is the world is such a sad state? 3) Why do Luke and Matthew show different bloodlines for Jesus? 4) What is a saint? What is a brother? 5) What is predestination? Election? Adoption? 6) Why are there so many competing views? From a more technical perspective, what distinguishes this soteriology from other works of theology is the author's insistence on the plenary verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. That is, the Bible is taken to say what it means and to mean what it says, and any attempt to allegorize Scripture passages outside of obvious metaphoric language in order to harmonize them with some preconceived systematic theological view in mind does damage to the Word and necessarily leads to error. The church has, since the NT days, fought off efforts to "Gnosticize" its teaching with neo-Platonic ideas. Yet, much Gnosticism has still crept in--even in mainstream thought--and this has been detrimental to the church through history!