Soteria, defined as “ultimate meaningful existence”, is intended as a general term referring to whatever is the supremely positive psychic state according to different religious and philosophic systems. Hence, soteria can be employed to refer to “salvation” in Rabbinic Judaism; Maimonides’ “fourth state of perfection” or “the intellectual worship of God”; Spinoza’s “beatitude”; Buber”s “real living” that arises in the I-Thou relation; the “authentic existence” of the existentialists, and the eudaemonia of Aristotle.
In religious and philosophic systems that understand human finity to produce angst that annihilates the meaningfulness of human existence, and which offer a process to overcome or eliminate angst, the state of ultimate meaningful existence that ensues in successfully pursuing this process in referred to as soteria.