Justificatio sola fide, meaning justification by faith alone, is a soteriological doctrine in Christian theology commonly held to distinguish the Lutheran and Reformed traditions of Protestantism, among others, from the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian and Anabaptist churches. The doctrine asserts that it is on the basis of faith that believers are made right of their transgressions of divine law rather than on the basis of what Paul the Apostle calls "works of the law", sometimes called good works. This forgiveness is known as "justification". In classical Lutheran and Reformed theologies, works are seen as crucial evidence of faith, but the works themselves do not determine salvation. In contrast, Methodist doctrine affirms a belief in justification by faith that offers God's forgiveness, but holds that holy living with the goal of Christian perfection (sanctification) is essential for salvation. Anabaptist theology categorically rejects the Lutheran and Reformed doctrine of sola fide, and instead emphasizes a "faith that works"; Anabaptists teach that "justification begun a dynamic process by which the believer partook of the nature of Christ and was so enabled to live increasingly like Jesus."
In Western Christian theology, grace is created by God who gives it as help to one because God desires one to have it, not necessarily because of anything one has done to earn it. It is understood by Western Christians to be a spontaneous gift from God to people – "generous, free and totally unexpected and undeserved" – that takes the form of divine favor, love, clemency, and a share in the divine life of God. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, grace is the uncreated Energies of God. Among Eastern Christians generally, grace is considered to be the partaking of the Divine Nature described in 2 Peter 1:4 and grace is the working of God himself, not a created substance of any kind that can be treated like a commodity.
The Westminster Confession of Faith, or simply the Westminster Confession, is a Reformed confession of faith. Drawn up by the 1646 Westminster Assembly as part of the Westminster Standards to be a confession of the Church of England, it became and remains the "subordinate standard" of doctrine in the Church of Scotland and has been influential within Presbyterian churches worldwide.
In Christianity, salvation is the saving of human beings from sin and its consequences—which include death and separation from God—by Christ's death and resurrection, and the justification entailed by this salvation.
In Christian theology, justification is the event or process by which sinners are made or declared to be righteous in the sight of God.
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) is a confessional Presbyterian denomination located primarily in the United States, with additional congregations in Canada, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. It was founded by conservative members of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA), who objected to the rise of Liberal and Modernist theology in the 1930s. The OPC is considered to have had an influence on evangelicalism far beyond its size.
Sanctification literally means "to set apart for special use or purpose", that is, to make holy or sacred. Therefore, sanctification refers to the state or process of being set apart, i.e. "made holy", as a vessel, full of the Holy Spirit of God. The concept of sanctification is widespread among religions, including Judaism and especially Christianity. The term can be used to refer to objects which are set apart for special purposes, but the most common use within Christian theology is in reference to the change brought about by God in a believer, begun at the point of salvation and continuing throughout the life of the believer. Many forms of Christianity believe that this process will only be completed in Heaven, but some believe that complete holiness is possible in this life.
Covenant theology is a conceptual overview and interpretive framework for understanding the overall structure of the Bible. It uses the theological concept of a covenant as an organizing principle for Christian theology. The standard form of covenant theology views the history of God's dealings with mankind, from Creation to Fall to Redemption to Consummation, under the framework of three overarching theological covenants: those of redemption, of works, and of grace.
Imparted righteousness, in Methodist theology, is that gracious gift of God given at the moment of the new birth which enables a Christian disciple to strive for holiness and sanctification. John Wesley believed that imparted righteousness worked in tandem with imputed righteousness. Imputed righteousness is the righteousness of Jesus credited to the Christian, enabling the Christian to be justified; imparted righteousness is what God does in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit after justification, working in the Christian to enable and empower the process of sanctification.
Imputed righteousness is a concept in Christian theology proposing that the "righteousness of Christ...is imputed to [believers]—that is, treated as if it were theirs through faith." It is on the basis of Jesus' righteousness that God accepts humans. This acceptance is also referred to as justification.
The attributes of God are specific characteristics of God discussed in Christian theology.
In Protestant Christianity, the relationship between Law and Gospel—God's Law and the Gospel of Jesus Christ—is a major topic in Lutheran and Reformed theology. In these religious traditions, the distinction between the doctrines of Law, which demands obedience to God's ethical will, and Gospel, which promises the forgiveness of sins in light of the person and work of Jesus Christ, is critical. Ministers use it as a hermeneutical principle of biblical interpretation and as a guiding principle in homiletics and pastoral care. It involves the supersession of the Old Covenant by the New Covenant and Christian theology.
Herman Hoeksema was a Dutch Reformed theologian. Hoeksema served as a long time pastor of the First Protestant Reformed Church in Grand Rapids. In 1924 he refused to accept the three points of common grace as formulated which had then been declared official church dogma of the Christian Reformed Church, as an addition to its adopted creeds and confessions. The result of this controversy was that Hoeksema, and ministers George Ophoff, and Henry Danhof, were deposed by their respective classes before leaving the CRC with their congregations. These men then established the Protestant Reformed Churches. He also was professor of theology at the Protestant Reformed Theological Seminary in Grandville, Michigan for 40 years.
The theology of Martin Luther was instrumental in influencing the Protestant Reformation, specifically topics dealing with justification by faith, the relationship between the Law and Gospel, and various other theological ideas. Although Luther never wrote a systematic theology or a "summa" in the style of St. Thomas Aquinas, many of his ideas were systematized in the Lutheran Confessions.
The Federal Vision is a Reformed evangelical theological conversation that focuses on covenant theology, Trinitarian thinking, the sacraments of baptism and communion, biblical theology and typology, justification, and postmillennialism. A controversy arose in Reformed and Presbyterian circles in response to views expressed at a 2002 conference entitled The Federal Vision: An Examination of Reformed Covenantalism. The ongoing controversy involves several Reformed denominations including the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), the United Reformed Churches in North America (URCNA), and the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States (RPCUS), and the Protestant Reformed Churches in America (PRCA).
The 1888 Minneapolis General Conference Session was a meeting of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in October 1888. It is regarded as a landmark event in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Key participants were Alonzo T. Jones and Ellet J. Waggoner, who presented a message on justification supported by Ellen G. White, but resisted by leaders such as G. I. Butler, Uriah Smith and others. The session discussed crucial theological issues such as the meaning of "righteousness by faith", the nature of the Godhead, the relationship between law and grace, and Justification and its relationship to Sanctification.
In Christian theology, good works, or simply works, are a person's (exterior) actions or deeds, in contrast to inner qualities such as grace or faith.
In its widest sense, the phrase union with Christ refers to the relationship between the believer and Jesus Christ. In this sense, John Murray says, union with Christ is "the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation." The expression "in Christ" occurs 216 times in the Pauline letters and 26 times in the Johannine literature. Hence, according to Albert Schweitzer, "This 'being-in-Christ' is the prime enigma of the Pauline teaching: once grasped it gives the clue to the whole." Given the large number of occurrences and the wide range of contexts, the phrase embodies a breadth of meaning.
New Covenant theology is a Christian theological position teaching that the person and work of Jesus Christ is the central focus of the Bible. One distinctive assertion of this school of thought is that Old Testament Laws have been abrogated or cancelled with Jesus' crucifixion, and replaced with the Law of Christ of the New Covenant. It shares similarities with, and yet is distinct from, dispensationalism and Covenant theology.
The two kinds of righteousness is a Lutheran paradigm. It attempts to define man's identity in relation to God and to the rest of creation. The two kinds of righteousness is explicitly mentioned in Luther's 1518 sermon entitled "Two Kinds of Righteousness", in Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), in his On the Bondage of the Will, Melanchthon's Apology of the Augsburg Confession, and in the third article of the Formula of Concord. It is also the implicit presupposition governing Luther's On the Freedom of a Christian as well as other works.
