soteriology focus on official dogma, catechetical material, historical eras, or geographical regions, let alone variety among priests, theologians, and the laity? For Protestant soteriologies, similarly, if their welter of systematic theologies reduces formal, printed variety to a somewhat manageable set of traditions and tendencies, then various denominations and popular trends quickly make such moments of apparent consensus less manageable. The following overview attempts to address both the gospel that is formally proclaimed and on occasion, however complex, what is apparently implied or actually practiced.
Traditions
The preceding qualifications notwithstanding, this overview of Western soteriologies begins with the major traditions they encompass. For all their variety, each somehow prioritizes salvation from sin and its consequences. Plus all of them ultimately focus on salvation’s personal dimensions.[1] Yet each helpfully contributes an animating principle from which to learn.
Orthodox: Theosis beyond Mortal Corruption The Orthodox tradition has its focus and limits tied to early creedal consensus. Neither the informal rule of faith nor its later creedal formulations canonized a particular atonement theory or soteriology.[2] The first article of the Nicene Creed (“one God . . . maker of heaven and earth . . .”) implies that salvation involves the Creator’s establishing full and final lordship over the entire cosmos. Its second article (“one Lord . . . who for us and for our salvation . . .”) focuses on the Son’s incarnation for us and our salvation, rehearsing his divine identity and earthly pilgrimage. The “descent into hell” from the Apostles’ Creed only adds soteriological implications depending on debated interpretations. The second article’s closing reminder of divine judgment (“he will come again to judge the quick and the dead . . .”) and an eternal kingdom highlights the respective ends that soteriology puts at stake. The third article on the Holy Spirit, then, insists on baptism as the key soteriological entry point (“one baptism for the remission of sins . . .”) and implies a set of key end points: forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
Orthodox theologies emphasize this soteriological entry point of baptism, consistent with liturgical Tradition. They emphasize the end point of theosis, consistent with the focus on resurrection: such “deification,” or “divinization,” does not make a human into God himself, but it does involve the saved human “participating in the divine nature” in a creaturely way. Broadly speaking, this soteriology centrally addresses mortal corruption. Each human imitates Adam’s sin after having inherited his fallen mortality, with fleshly desires misdirected and disproportionate due to fear of scarcity. Christians experience God’s forgiveness through the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Salvation remakes humanity in union with the resurrected Christ by the Holy Spirit. Ultimately people transcend mortal corruption and become full (albeit still human) “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) in resurrected bodies. In the meantime, the church’s liturgy mediates union with the incarnate Christ so that once again humans can grow in virtue. Ascetic figures and groups underscore Orthodoxy’s emphasis on efforts to undergo such transformation of mortal desire.
Catholic: Sacramental Renewal unto the Beatific Vision The Catholic tradition shares the 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
