IB World Religions 1.6.4. How Do We Get There? Trinity, Christ as Saviour, Teachings and Sacraments Notes

1.6.4. How Do We Get There? Trinity, Christ as Saviour, Teachings and Sacraments

Father, Son and Holy Spirit

1. Christians answer this question by saying first who they hold God to be. They confess one God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and call that belief the Trinity.
2. The doctrine is presented as monotheism rather than as an exception to it. Christians insist that they worship one God, and describe the three as distinct persons sharing one being.
3. The word Trinity does not appear in the Bible. It was worked out over the first four centuries to hold together texts that speak of the Father as God, of Jesus as sharing that identity, and of the Spirit as God at work.
4. The Nicene Creed is the agreed statement. It calls the Son of one being with the Father, and the Spirit the giver of life who is worshipped and glorified with them.
5. Christians hold that the Trinity is why salvation is God's own act at every stage. The Father sends, the Son becomes human, and the Spirit brings the result into people's lives.
6. The doctrine shapes ordinary practice. Christians are baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and many make the sign of the cross with the same words.

Christ as Saviour

1. Christians hold that human beings cannot repair their separation from God by themselves. Salvation is therefore described as God's work, offered to people in Jesus.
2. The Incarnation is the claim that God became human in Jesus without ceasing to be God. Christians call him the Logos, the Word of God made flesh.
3. His death is read as atonement, the reconciling of God and humanity. Christians call Jesus Redeemer because they hold that his death on the cross releases people from the power of sin.
4. They explain how it does so in more than one way. Some stress that Christ bears the penalty in place of sinners, others that he defeats sin and death, and Orthodox teaching that God became human so that humans might share God's life.
5. The resurrection is not an appendix to the death. Christians hold that Christ's rising begins the new creation and guarantees the resurrection they expect for themselves.
6. The response asked for is faith together with repentance, which Christians define as recognising the need to be saved and turning back to God.

Grace, faith and works

1. Grace is the word Christians use for God's love given freely and not earned. Every major denomination teaches that salvation begins with it.
2. They divide over what follows. The Reformation slogan was sola fide, by faith alone, meaning that a person is put right with God by trusting Christ rather than by accumulating merit.
3. Martin Luther reached that position while reading Paul's letter to the Romans. Protestant churches have taught since that good works follow from salvation rather than earning it.
4. Roman Catholic teaching holds that grace is genuinely received and must then be lived out, so that faith working through love, in good works and the sacraments, belongs to salvation rather than merely following it.
5. Eastern Orthodox teaching frames the whole process as theosis, being made like God, and describes human effort as cooperation with grace rather than a claim upon it.
6. Calvinist churches add predestination, the teaching that God chooses those who are saved, while Methodist and Orthodox teaching stresses that grace can be resisted.

Sacraments across the denominations

1. A sacrament is defined by Christians as an outward visible sign of an inward invisible grace. Denominations differ over how many there are and over what they do.
2. Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches recognise seven: baptism, confirmation or chrismation, the Eucharist, reconciliation, marriage, holy orders and the anointing of the sick.
3. Most Protestant churches recognise two as commanded by Jesus, baptism and the Lord's Supper, and treat the rest as valued rites rather than sacraments.
4. Baptism is the entry rite everywhere, though its timing differs. Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran churches baptise infants, while Baptist and Pentecostal churches baptise those old enough to profess faith.
5. The Eucharist, also called the Mass, Holy Communion or the Lord's Supper, re-enacts Jesus's last meal with bread and wine. Catholic teaching holds that the bread and wine become Christ's body and blood, a change called transubstantiation, while most Protestant churches speak of a spiritual presence or of a memorial.
6. Some Christians keep no sacraments at all. Quakers and the Salvation Army hold that the whole of life is sacramental and use no outward rites.

Living by Jesus's teachings

1. Christians hold that salvation shows itself in a changed life. They take Jesus's two great commandments, to love God and to love your neighbour as yourself, as the summary of what that life involves.
2. The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel, which opens with the Beatitudes, is treated as its fullest statement, with demands of mercy, peacemaking and love of enemies.
3. The Ten Commandments, inherited from Judaism, remain the moral floor in most Christian teaching.
4. Prayer is the daily form of the relationship. Christians pray alone and together, and the Lord's Prayer, which they hold Jesus taught his disciples, is used in every denomination.
5. Christians call love of neighbour agape, love that does not depend on being returned. Churches express it in hospitals, schools, food banks and relief agencies.
6. The denominations therefore differ over the route and converge on the shape. Christians answer this question by pointing to what God has done in Christ, received by faith and lived out within the Church.