I'll try to say something about >my< notion of redemption.
First, I am a Catholic Christian, so that you know where I'm coming from. I'll also try to keep preaching to a minimum, and just describe to avoid offending anyone. I'm pretty passionate on the subject thought, so please forgive me in advance for any offense I might give.
I'm also not speaking as a professional theologian and I'm not trying to present anything in a systematic way. All the themes discussed here currently constitute separate branches of theology, each with huge literatures.
*Wishing that I remembered all the theology I've read over the years*
Ok, *deep breath* the phrase "as I see it" should be understood through this post.
The basic problem for Christianity is evil and death. Humanity is fragile, mortal, subject to all the evils that scour the world, many of them perpetrated by humans themselves. A basic notion is that creation has been held in bondage to sin, and that the result of sin is death. In Paul, sin is conceived as much as a cosmic power as one into which individual humans fall.
This raises for me a critical distinction between notions of sin which are basically juridical and those which are medical. Both are operative in the Judeo-Christian tradition, both are important, and closely coupled. The first is easy enough: we do bad things. God marks it down on a rap sheet. That is the common juridical notion of sin, one on which priests and preachers often rely. The second is also common. For example, in one pericope which occurs in the triple tradition (that is in the Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke) Jesus is eating with the usual group of wastrels he liked to hang with. The Scribes and Pharisees (his favorite enemies, let the contemporary clergy beware!) complain that he is eating with sinners. He replies: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." (Matt 9;12-13)
This is interesting because it seems to accept the Pharisees' juridical notion of sin while subverting it with a medical image. It also implies that no one is righteous. (What 'righteous' means is a topic for a library of books and several religious wars.) Sacrifice and ritual are important, but so is the understanding and welcoming of the human human heart. There is an invitation here to the Pharisees to look deeply at the persons before then and at themselves and to judge as God does. Not the deeds, but the heart which gives rise to the deeds. "It is not that which goes into a mouth which defiles a person, but that which comes out of his mouth." Here he is referring to the rules of ritual impurity and saying that they really don't apply to human reality.
External acts are symptoms of the deadly malady that is sin. Humans are defiled by what is inside them. It is this that needs to be cleansed. External acts come from within. It's what's inside that's the problem.
So what's a sinner to do? Humanity is tightly bound by sin. Our hearts (souls? essences? I tend to think in terms of hearts) fear our fragility, mortality, they crave power to protect themselves, to appropriate life for themselves.
It can't escape of its own power.
Enter the person of Jesus in the Christian story.
Note: The Definition of Chalcedon, issued by the Council of the same name in 451, states that Jesus the Christ, is fully God and fully human. this definition was issued to settle disputes about the person of Jesus, and his relation to God and humanity. This establishes officially what is called for shorthand the Two Natures of Christ, something which all mainstream Christians accept. (This statement should be nuanced, but I don't think it's critical to do so here.) This identity is critical to the understanding of both Western and Orthodox theologies. For Christians, the person of Jesus is a complete revelation of God to human beings and a complete fidelity to God on the part of humanity. Karl Rahner puts it this way: Jesus is a perfect expression of God existing in space and time.
Here's a quick schema: Trinity=Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Son=Jesus. Jesus sends Holy Spirit. If you're into History of Religions here. There's a whole exitus-reditus (exit and return) theme going on. The Son goes out of God into humanity and as the Christ returns to God bring humanity with him.
Ok, so what does all this have to do with redemption? I feel like I'm dropping the ball on this. Sorry.
Jesus make the journey through humanity. Doesn't leave anything out. From embryo (think Annunciation), through birth (Christmas)-- all those nativity scenes and Madonnas distract our attention from diapers (or the contemporary equivalent) poop, feeding, late nights-- socialization (think of the finding in the temple) to the Passion and Death.
The Passion is Jesus' total embracing of human fragility before the reality of evil. It's a going with willing intention into the 'heart of darkness,' if you will. A person cruelly stripped of all dignity, all things that humans recognize as defining humanity and what is precious in humanity, left metaphorically and literally naked before extinction. The Death is that extinction. The Nicene Creed, touchstone of Christian dogma emphasises this. Jesus was dead, went to the abode of the dead. Humans die. This was part of the journey. This is what theologians call the Recapitulation of Humanity in Christ, unless, I'm brain dead and more confused than normal tonight.
At this point, God's journey through through our side of humanity is complete. The journey as a whole is not however. Jesus Rises. This is seen in the tradition as the completion of the uniting of God to human nature. It is this action which opens to way out of our dilemma. (I see the Descent of the Holy Spirit as Pentacost as part of this. Sorry to all looking for nuance here.)
A few quick comments on Christian images relating to this process:
It is well worth noting that the body of the Risen Christ still bears the wounds of the crucifixion. Think of the Doubting Thomas story in John. The Resurrection is not a wiping away of the fragility or vulnerability of humanity. Jesus continues to bear it and by continuing to bear it, makes it a place where the evil arising from this fragility is conquered. Understanding how is the quest of a lifetime. Put very crudely, Life flows from the crucifixion and the wounds of the body of Christ. Maybe a way of thinking of this would be that in the Crucified Jesus, God weaves the effects of evil into creation in a way which transforms its it, subverts it and makes it a source of blessing and wisdom.
I'm going to skip over notions of Eucharist (Communion) which are critically important to the spiritualities of the Anglo-Roman and Orthodox traditions. I eventually would like to try to see what of this notion of redemption might be applies to BV and we're already pretty far afield.
I've tried here to give something along the lines of the Catholic Christian Backstory of Redemption.