What it means here
our wording, so the faiths below can be compared — never any tradition's own definitionTrust, not accomplishment, is what saves; works follow faith rather than earn it.
Every passage on this page is one faith's own phrasing. Sharing an idea is not agreement: Christianity and The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) are both here because each says something this word covers, and what they say may flatly contradict each other. The idea is the place they can be set side by side.
ShelfHow truth arrives
Travels across1 of 52 families in the tree
Oldest holderChristianity · 30 CE
Newest holderThe Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church · 1889 CE
Turns up as5 tenets · 1 figure
Where it turns up
every faith that holds it, by founding date — time is half real and half rank order, because a straight axis crushes three millennia against the left wall. Hover a dot for the faith.Across the faiths
one family at a time, and every family speaks before any family speaks twice — 5 of 171 faithsJudaism
— 5 faiths of this family hold it
Salvation is grace, not wage.
Rescue is received, not earned — how faith and works relate is exactly where the branches divide.
⚖ contested within
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P
Paul — the turned persecutor.
Knocked down on the Damascus road and got up someone else: his letters carried the faith across the empire and still set its arguments.
Meet them — context & 1 source →
Justification is by faith alone.
Received, not earned — the article on which the church stands or falls.
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Law and gospel must not be confused.
The law diagnoses; the gospel saves. Mixing them ruins both.
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No prayers to the saints, and none for the dead.
Abraham Malpan cut the invocation of saints, prayers for the departed and the offering of the Qurbana for the dead out of the liturgy, on the ground that scripture does not authorise them. Everything else in the service he left standing. It remains the sharpest doctrinal difference between this church and the Malankara churches it came from.
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The only test is the good confession.
Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God? That question and an affirmative answer is the entire doctrinal requirement for membership. There is no creed to subscribe and no examination, and there never has been.
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Where it is argued
passages a tradition marks as contested inside itself — the disagreement is theirs, not ours
Salvation is grace, not wage.
Rescue is received, not earned — how faith and works relate is exactly where the branches divide.
Go deeper — context & 1 source →