Rethinking Christian Salvation in the Light of Ghandi\u27s Satyagraha

The life and thought of Mohandas Gandhi are an inspiration. In a world of violence, with humanity seemingly powerless to pull back from self-destruction, Gandhi\u27s example and the history of nonviolent action since Gandhi\u27s death-nonviolent liberation of almost half the world in the late 1980\u27s, early 1990\u27s, from Poland to South Africa to the Philippines-----offer some hope for the world. Gandhi was greatly influenced by the Sermon on the Mount and the example of Jesus Christ\u27s death on the cross. He believed that Jesus was a great practitioner of assertive nonviolent resistance. The driving question of the research for the dissertation has been whether or not Gandhi\u27s reading of the New Testament is an accurate one. If it is, then some of the basics of Christian theology will need to be rethought, recast and renewed-none more than the way Christian salvation has been formulated and preached. As we will see in the Introduction to the Dissertation, many authors recently have linked the satisfaction and penal substitution models of salvation to some very negative consequences in human history. The dissertation will explore whether or not nonviolent action (satyagraha) can serve as the root metaphor for a new understanding of Christian salvation