Key Moral Principles

• Salvation

  Being saved (and therefore going to Heaven)
• Salvation - cause and implications

  • The Catholic Church teaches there is a need for salvation as a result of The Fall, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden.
  • All of humanity is implicated in their Original Sin – we are all born with a predisposition to sin, and there is disharmony between heaven and earth. St Paul: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
  • There is therefore a need for salvation – we need to be saved from sin, in order to be reconciled with God and have eternal life in heaven after death.
• Justification

  To be counted as righteous before God.

  The word ‘justify’ is the translation of a Greek word that had legal

  connotations.

  In the thinking of St Paul and Luther, to be ‘justified’ means to be counted by God as righteous and so able to have a relationship with God.

  It is an eschatological term, which means it is concerned with the ultimate fate of humanity (it refers to events at the end of time).
• Different understandings of justification

  • Justification by Faith
  • Justification by Works
  • Justification by Faith and Works
• Grace

  Grace refers to the generous and freely given love of God to the sinful

  (undeserving) humanity.

  Seen through God’s sacrifice of his Son in order to save humanity.
• Teaching that prove God's grace

  ‘For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only son’ (John 3:16).
• Grace linked to scholars

  Augustine and Calvin link this to the Atonement (Jesus’ death on the cross).

  Pelagius linked it to God’s gift of free will.
• Predestination

  Belief that all events – including the destination of humans after death - have already been decided and decreed by God.
• Single predestination

  God has already decided who is going to Heaven (‘the

  elect’).
• Double predestination

  God has already decided who is going to Heaven and

  who is going to Hell.
• Calvin on predestination

  John Calvin: “All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation” (Institutes).