Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07027 Salvation is described in the New Testament through a range of images, each of which captures a different dimension of what God has done for those who trust in Christ. Justification addresses legal standing. Redemption addresses bondage and purchase. Reconciliation addresses a broken relationship. Adoption addresses identity and belonging. It answers a question…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07028 Before anyone can be reconciled, there must have been a separation. The New Testament does not soften what that separation looks like: human beings, by nature and by choice, are at enmity with God. Not merely distant from Him, not simply ignorant of Him, but opposed to Him. Reconciliation is the doctrine that…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07025 This question sits at the very heart of the Protestant Reformation, and it is not merely a historical or academic debate. How a person answers it shapes how they understand the gospel, how they relate to God, and what they think Christian discipleship actually involves. The apparent tension in the New Testament between…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07026 Imputation is a theological term that may sound abstract but describes one of the most personally significant realities in the whole of Scripture. It answers the question of how a guilty person can stand before a holy God without condemnation, and it does so by pointing to a transaction that took place at…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07020 The question of whether a believer can lose their salvation is one of the most personally significant doctrinal questions a Christian can face. It touches the very nerve of assurance, and how it is answered shapes the whole tenor of the Christian life. Is the believer’s relationship with God genuinely permanent, or is…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07036 The debate between Calvinism and Arminianism is one of the most enduring in Protestant theology, and it touches on questions that cannot be avoided by anyone who takes Scripture seriously: Is salvation ultimately God’s choice or the human’s? Does God’s rule over all things override human freedom, or do they coexist? Can a…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07038 Irresistible grace — sometimes called effectual grace or efficacious grace — is the fourth point of the Calvinist TULIP system. It is the doctrine that God’s saving work in the elect cannot fail and cannot be resisted: when God determines to bring a person to salvation, He works in them in such a…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07108 Arminianism is the theological tradition named after Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609), a Dutch Reformed theologian who challenged certain aspects of the Calvinist system from within the Reformed tradition itself. It is often presented as the opposite of Calvinism, but this oversimplifies both traditions. Understanding what Arminius actually taught, where his followers developed his ideas,…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07096 Calvinism is one of the most influential theological systems in the history of Protestant Christianity. Named after the sixteenth-century Reformer John Calvin, though its roots extend further back into Augustine’s theology, it offers a comprehensive account of God’s dealings with humanity that centres on divine determination and unconditional election. Understanding what Calvinism teaches,…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07087 The Five Solas are the foundational principles of the Protestant Reformation, expressed in five Latin phrases that summarise what the Reformers recovered from Scripture in their challenge to the teaching and practice of the Roman Catholic Church. They are not five separate doctrines so much as five facets of one great truth: salvation…