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 God’s grace alone, then Wesleyans are synergistic, emphasizing that salvation involves human cooperation in a sense—exploring how divine grace works.[8]
John Wesley embraced justification by faith alone; indeed his “conversion” involved the strange warming of his heart when hearing Luther’s treatment of Romans.[9] But Wesley did not want this objective aspect of Christian assurance to prevent believers from vigorously pursuing perfect holiness or subjectively receiving assurance in light of their growth in grace. He insisted that biblical commands regarding holiness, even perfection, implied the possibility of graced obedience, enjoying this end of salvation here and now. Wesley’s focus was the heart, so perfection would not involve loss of finite weakness or error, or legally blameless lack of inadvertent sin, but complete love of God and neighbor. If Calvinists and Lutherans championed Romans, with the latter marginalizing James, then Wesleyans renewed interest in 1 John.
Realizing Christian perfection would involve ongoing growth in grace, putting sin to death and putting on Christ. But sanctification would involve more than slow, sometimes steady, progress. Christian perfection would involve seeking a special work of grace after conversion, generally labeled a “second blessing.” Such holiness meant a primarily personal focus concerning salvation, yet Holiness groups were frequent pioneers in nineteenth-century evangelical social reform: they were more typically involved in abolitionist, temperance, and women’s suffrage causes than others. Meanwhile, populist commitments enabled Wesleyans to transform the Anglo-American landscape of church life. Such alternative movements as the Keswick Convention reflect broad Holiness outlines despite altered details: pursuit of a higher plane of sanctification through repeated crises of post-conversion filling with the Holy Spirit that punctuate ordinary life. Such approaches have had widespread evangelical influence.
Pentecostal: The Baptism and Gifts of the Holy Spirit
Emerging from the Holiness tradition is the family of Pentecostal movements originating near the turn of the twentieth century. Just as an Arminian stance cuts across church traditions—with Baptists, for example, being either Arminian, Calvinist, or an amalgam—so Pentecostal beliefs and practices, or openness to them anyway, cuts across other ecclesiastical and soteriological traditions.
Classic Pentecostalism emphasized not merely holiness but empowerment for bold ministry and joyful living. The second, or post-conversion, blessing was baptism with the Holy Spirit, with its initial evidence being glossolalia, or speaking in tongues. Most classic Pentecostals did not say that a person is unsaved without such an experience, but such an experience was to be normatively sought. Various Pentecostal denominations promoted this experience and the distinctively supernatural gifts of the Spirit.
The charismatic movement arose in the middle of the twentieth century across a range of churches, celebrating charismata and promoting Spirit baptism, albeit with less emphasis on the “initial evidence” of tongues. The Vineyard movement arose in the late twentieth century to continue celebrating charismatic and missional empowerment, often adopting a more Reformed account of progressive (less episodic or crisis-oriented) sanctification. Today “Pentecostal” is a broad adjective globally, having lost theological specificity concerning the classic Spirit baptism evidenced by tongues-speaking. Pentecostal soteriologies generally see themselves remedying more classical—not just Protestant but also Catholic and even Orthodox—deficiencies, bringing the Holy Spirit’s work out from under the shadow of excessive Christ-centeredness.
Trends
Accordingly, one of the significant soteriological trends across various traditions is greater emphasis on the Holy Spirit’s work. Western Christians and churches are increasingly aware of God’s empowering presence within Global South Christianity. Simultaneously, traditional atonement-oriented accounts of salvation, tending toward anthropological pessimism and soteriological exclusivism, are increasingly unpopular in the West. Yet these do not exhaust recent soteriological trends, the rest of which loosely correspond to a traditional dogmatic outline.
Christ’s Accomplishment: Atonement and Justification
Christ’s work of atonement has frequently been reinterpreted in nonviolent or victorious terms, while justification by faith has been subject to both ecumenical dialogue and extensive debate in Pauline scholarship.
Justification
