9 Metaphors of Hope: Saving the Damned and the Devilish

Megan Crane has asserted that she and her fellow romance authors “see very few limits to the things they can make right with the power of love.” They may therefore be moved to express the extent of this faith in love by placing their protagonists in extreme spiritual/emotional peril, from which they will require salvation. There are “three main aspects or dimensions” to most Christian “theological discourses on salvation”:

1. a description of the state from which it is understood salvation is necessary;

2. the process by which salvation is realized and the extent of human participation [...] in making salvation possible;

3. an articulation of what the final end state of salvation will be like. (Morris 37)

These aspects provide the structure for this chapter.