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creedal outline of salvation reclaiming God’s creation through the Son’s incarnation and atonement, with the Holy Spirit mediating union with Christ through the church. People enter into new life (“regeneration”) at baptism, appropriate renewing grace through the sacraments (especially the Eucharist), and will enjoy its completion in a form of theosis.

      Although Orthodoxy rejects the Pelagian idea that humans can grow toward righteousness apart from redeeming grace, the Augustinian concept of original sin is different from the Eastern one. Classically, Catholic theology has Adam’s sin being not just necessarily imitated by humans (through corrupted desire stemming from cursed mortality) but imputed to them through real biological connection or another form of representation. Medieval Catholicism also made humanity’s soteriological end somewhat more specific, construing theosis in terms of the beatific vision (“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” [Matt. 5:8]). While transcending cognition, this beatific vision involves the mind’s eye, as it were. In between original sin and the beatific vision, medieval Catholicism applied an intricate legal and ontological construal of soteriological merit, along with a sacramental system for receiving grace.

      Medieval Catholic soteriology’s more technical terms resulted in less communal and cosmic focus than earlier creedal consensus might have supported (and Orthodox liturgies might claim). Modern Catholic soteriology is more amenable to those broader soteriological aspects, consistent with the doctrines of creation and churchly catholicity. Meanwhile, both Catholicism and Orthodoxy emphasize human dignity and freedom to pursue renewal in the divine likeness, reflecting more positive anthropologies than many Protestant soteriologies.

      Lutheran: Justification by Faith Alone

      Protestant soteriologies initially were and often remain critical of perceived errors of Catholic belief and practice. Yet Martin Luther, remaining as Catholic as possible, retained baptismal regeneration, the real sacramental presence of Christ, and Augustinian tendencies regarding original sin and divine predestination. Reemphasizing gracious divine initiative and the bondage of the human will, Luther believed that justification by faith alone was a biblically necessary break with the Roman Church—the article by which the church stands or falls.^[3] Justification is preeminently an initial declaration of God’s forgiveness and the believer’s imputed righteousness in Christ, not an ongoing process of infusing Christ’s righteousness into the believer—who must always cling to Christ, rather than cooperate with sacramental grace, for assurance. A cluster of changes followed this one, including “affirmation of ordinary life” as spiritually equal to the monasticism that Luther eventually rejected.^[4]

      Accordingly, the Lutheran account of sanctification champions freedom and gratitude. Freed from concern over personal righteousness, believers gratefully love God and serve their neighbors as they truly need. Works of love emerge from faith but are never the basis for justification or Christian assurance. Law and gospel do not really contrast the Old and New Testaments; instead, they are contrasting aspects involved in encountering any biblical Word. A first use of the law preserves earthly society by restraining human wickedness in the temporal kingdom; a second use confronts sinners with their need for God’s grace in Christ. The gospel focuses on making this offer of forgiveness, inviting people to enter God’s eternal kingdom.

      Calvinist: Election unto Union with Christ

      While John Calvin shared Luther’s commitment to justification by faith alone, he was more inclined to think centrally from union with Christ. Luther certainly depended on that union: justification by faith alone is not a “legal fiction,” as often alleged, because believers in covenantal union with Christ enjoy a glorious exchange—his benefits for their sin—as with joint marital property. Some recent scholarship also suggests that Luther’s soteriology was more ontological than previously thought.^[5] Yet Calvin, less inclined to start with Catholic commitments altered only when necessary, instead sought a wholesale, ordered biblical theology for catechesis. His soteriology placed union with Christ in the overarching position, within which justification and sanctification became double graces.

      As Luther’s and Calvin’s successors battled Catholics, Radical Reformers, and each other, they developed confessions, catechisms, and elaborate scholastic systems. Such Calvinism became known for predestinarian and covenantal or federal emphases: eternally the Triune God predestined the salvation of the elect—the Father willing to send the Son, the Son agreeing to become incarnate and atone for their sin, and the Spirit agreeing to unite the elect with Christ. According to the five points of Calvinism under the acronym TULIP, all humans after the fall become (1) totally depraved (not absolutely depraved, but sinful in every aspect), which is addressed by (2) unconditional divine election (God does not merely foresee but rather determines who will be saved), (3) limited atonement (Christ dies specifically for the elect), (4) irresistible grace (the Spirit regenerates the elect, effectually calling them to faith), and (5) perseverance of the saints (regeneration preserves the elect in faith throughout their pilgrimage). Salvation’s blessings are for those elected to have Christ (rather than Adam, due to imputation of original sin) as their federal head—representing them before God.

      Calvinism emphasizes God’s redemptive rule over the entire cosmos more than other Protestant traditions.^[6] Correspondingly, Calvinists often pursue more cultural transformation. Such implications of redemption, however, do not displace personal salvation from its classical centrality. Calvinism adds a third use of the law to direct believers’ pursuit of sanctification. But God’s present work of cultural transformation outside the church remains common, not specifically redemptive, grace.

      Anabaptist: Radical, Communal Discipleship

      The third Reformation-era Protestant tradition involves the more radical and “Anabaptist” Reformers. Because they rejected infant baptism and believed that only confessing believers’ baptism was biblical, they were labeled “rebaptizers”—for requiring that believers once baptized as infants be baptized again to become church members.

      Radical Reformers were less wedded to justification by faith alone than magisterial Protestants; in some cases they opposed it. Like Lutheran Pietists soon after the Reformation, Puritans later, and others since, they placed justification in a larger context with different emphases. They emphasized pursuit of personal discipleship in small Christian communities. These communities would be alternative societies, typically modeling the nonviolent practice of Jesus while waiting eagerly for God’s kingdom to come in fullness. Radical soteriologies were more biblicist, less formal, and correspondingly less consistent. Yet, separatistic tendencies and periodic aberrations aside, their core commitments have become widely influential in recent decades.^[7]

      Arminian: Freedom for Faith

      Within Reformed circles, seventeenth-century Dutch thinkers such as Jacobus Arminius retained broadly Protestant soteriology while rejecting Augustinian/Lutheran accounts of the will’s bondage and Calvinist accounts of divine sovereignty. Classic Calvinism became formally defined by the Synod of Dort and its rejection of the Arminian alternative. Arminianism then appeared within various traditions, offering no sharply defined and comprehensive system. In general, Arminian soteriologies emphasize human freedom (often labeled “libertarian”) to accept or reject the gospel, with divine election being conditional (God foreseeing who will fulfill the condition of believing) or corporate (God deciding to form a servant community in the world rather than deciding the eternal destiny of particular persons). In some Arminian accounts human freedom seems to be a natural function of creation, but in others it is a universal redemptive blessing of prevenient grace—grace that comes before the possibility of human faith, as a result of Christ’s work on the cross or the Spirit’s convicting work in the heart.

      Wesleyan/Holiness: The Second Blessing unto Perfect Love

      A distinctive Arminian family is the Wesleyan/Holiness tradition, in which the possibility of human freedom for faith clearly stems from prevenient grace. If Lutherans and Calvinists are stereotypically monergistic, emphasizing that salvation is due to

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