Poetic Revelation In Salvation Theory

This thesis is a case study of the relationship between literature and religion, which illustrates the representation of the Christian spirit in literature and the poetic revelation in theology, through analyzing, comparing and interpreting the correlation between Augustine's Confessions and related themes in western literature.Confessions praises the power of divine grace in human salvation and its central theological concern is the theory of salvation. Since salvation involves the human predicament and the way out, it bears various similarities with literature, which is deeply rooted in human's survival activities. Setting out from Augustine's Confessions, the main body of this thesis divides into three parts in the frame of Augustine's salvation theory.Chapter One points out that although Christianity regards "sin" as the universal condition of all humans, it doesn't consider "punishment" but "salvation" as its follow-up. This part reveals the representation of the "sin-salvation" logic in western literature and compares it with the "sin-punishment" logic in Chinese literature.Chapter Two asserts that God's grace plays an absolutely authoritative role in the salvation of humans, whose finitude and weakness have made self-salvation impossible. Accordingly, the discussion of this part is in fact a discussion of the human predicament and the way out revealed in the grace theory, especially focusing on "free will". The analysis of the works such as those by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky etc. enriches and adds insight to this discussion.Chapter Three argues that human response towards God's grace lies first in their humility, and that Augustine considers pride as the root of all evil and humility the mother of all virtue, which is essential to interpreting the confession character of Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.Finally, the thesis concludes with the author's viewpoint on the relationship between literature and religion based on the close study above.