Christianity and Islam on Salvation: A Comparative Analysis of Sacred Texts on Atonement in Christianity and Intercession in Islam

The present paper attempts to compare the Christian and Islamic viewpoint on the doctrine of salvation. In both religions, human beings need to receive God’s help to obtain salvation. For, sin (in Christianity) and ignorance (in Islam) are of humans’ intrinsic attributes. In Christianity, God’s help is studied in the atonement doctrine, and in Islamic texts, intercession has been introduced as one of the ways of receiving God’s help. There are, however, some logical challenges in atonement and intercession doctrines that require clarifying explanations. In this paper, we have considered four systematized explanations for Christian atonement: “ransom” explanation, “the moral exemplar” explanation, “the satisfaction or debt cancelation” explanation, and “the generating divine mercy” explanation. Similar to each of them, an explanation for intercessioncould be extracted from Islamic texts. The most similarity between atonement and intercession doctrines occurs in the explanations in which both God’s grace and human beings’ willing and act are emphasized. Moreover, the first three explanations, with some modifications, can be merged to constitute a more general explanation for both atonement and intercession.

Keywords: Christianity, Islam, Salvation, Atonement, Intercession.