Johannine Soteriology and Aristotelian Philosophy 419 John 3,16, to;n uiJo;n to;n monogenh' and the efficient cause is once more represented as a description, in verb form, of the divine initiative, namely the act of sending (ajpevstalken). Arguably, here as well as in John 3,16 (there the verb is e[dwken), the efficient cause is most difficult to identify. The verbs e[dwken and ajpevstalken must be understood as God’s giving or sending by virtue of his dynamic grace. In other words, it is only by the initiative of God’s grace, described with various verbs, that salvation can be effectuated. 5. The Means of Salvation The above brief exegesis of John 3,16 and 1 John 4,9 provides a possible hermeneutical lens with respect to the question of the cause of salvation. As I have suggested, the key to that question lies in the fact that there is not merely one term or one notion that constitutes a cause; salvation is not constituted by something that can be made effective and hence linguistically described, as it were, by one cause or with one term. As we noted above in Philo’s interpretation of the biblical account of creation, the cause of creation is not either God or divine goodness or the Logos or the elements, but as Philo himself makes abundantly clear, the one cause of creation must be understood as four causes conjointly. In other words, for Philo there is only one cause of creation, a cause, nonetheless, that is constituted by the four Aristotelian causes. For our purposes of clarifying Johannine soteriology, we shall similarly characterize the one cause as the means of salvation. The means of salvation is thus the totality of causes understood as the formal, material, efficient and final causes, notwithstanding the fact that the author of the Johannine literature does not employ the prepositional scheme in a technical sense. It is crucial to recognize, however, that the author – like Philo – uses language that necessarily relies on a distinction of causes. For our author, the singular “means” is thus the nexus of the four Aristotelian causes, namely: God’s (formal cause) giving/sending (efficient cause) of the Son (material cause) because of his love (final cause). Hence, as in Philo’s explanation of the cause of creation, so likewise is the cause of salvation in John not either God or love or the giving of the Son, but all of these conjointly constitute one single cause. This single cause may also be called the means of salvation. In this scheme, we are now able to give a precise answer to the question of how Jesus may be understood as a cause for salvation. In short, Jesus is the material cause of salvation, that is to say, the cause “from which” in the most concrete way (namely in the life, death and resurrection) the purpose of the overall cause of salvation was achieved. In other words, Jesus is one of the four causes that together constitute the one cause or means of salvation. The question that we still need to discuss is the precise meaning of the mode of salvation. 6. The Mode of Salvation In order to give the distinction between the means and mode of salvation greater precision, let us briefly discuss the mode of salvation. In short, the mode of salvation is faith. That the cause of salvation is distinct from the mode of salvation is evident from the second part of our two Johannine