Systematic Theology V: Soteriology

How a sinner is saved: the doctrine of salvation, following directly on the doctrine of sin (ST4) and presupposing the person and work of Christ (ST2).

The course opens by naming salvation biblically, tracing the history of the doctrine from the Pelagian controversy through the Reformation and the Synod of Dort to Wesley and the present, and laying out the competing shapes of the ordo salutis across the Reformed, Arminian, Lutheran, and Catholic traditions. It then works through the call and new birth (general and effectual calling, the Reformed/Arminian/Catholic dispute over prevenient grace, and the mechanics of regeneration), conversion and union with Christ (the structure of repentance and faith, the grounds and abuse of assurance, and mystical union), justification and adoption (the forensic character of justification, the imputation of Christ's righteousness, the New Perspective on Paul, and the harmony of Paul and James), and sanctification and perseverance (definitive and progressive sanctification, divine sovereignty and human effort, the perseverance of the saints, and the church's hardest warning passages). It closes with salvation in contemporary and global perspective: religious pluralism and the fate of the unevangelized, the therapeutic reduction of salvation in secular culture, the individual and social dimensions of salvation, the ecumenical convergence and remaining difference over justification, and how the doctrine shapes preaching and evangelism.

Six chapters plus an introduction, thirty-one lectures. Scripture is quoted from the World English Bible. Reformed, Arminian, Wesleyan, Catholic, and Orthodox positions are each named with their strongest advocates wherever they genuinely differ, because the readers of this course hold all of them, and few doctrines carry more pastoral weight than this one.