Topic

Salvation

How a person is reconciled to God: what grace does, what the human will contributes, and whether being saved means being declared righteous, made righteous, or united with God.

The positions here split along two old fault lines. The first is grace and free will, fought out between Augustine and Pelagius in the early 400s. The second, in the Reformation, is whether justification is a legal declaration or an inner transformation.