"alone";[1] occasionally Anglicized to five solas) of the Protestant Reformation are a foundational set of Christian theological principles held by theologians and clergy to be central to the doctrines of justification and salvation as taught by the Lutheranism, Reformed and Evangelical branches of Protestantism, as well as in some branches of Baptist and Pentecostalism.
[7][non-primary source needed] In most of the earliest articulations of the solae, three were typically specified: scripture over tradition, faith over works, and grace over merit.
Bible Translators Theologians Christianity • Protestantism Sola fide is summarized in the Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican church, specifically Article XI "Of the Justification of Man": We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings.
However, for the vast majority of human beings good works are necessary for continuance in faith because those persons have both the time and opportunity for them.
Ephesians 2:8-9Protestant Arminians, such as Methodists, are synergists but may also claim the doctrine of sola gratia, though they understand it quite differently than Lutherans and Calvinists do.
Arminians therefore do not reject the conception of sola gratia expounded by Lutheran and Reformed theologians, although their interpretation of it is quite different.
This principle rejects sacerdotalism, the belief that there are no sacraments in the church without the services of priests ordained by apostolic succession.
[21] This principle does not deny the office of the holy ministry to which is committed the public proclamation of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments.
In this way, Luther in his Small Catechism could speak of the role of "a confessor" to confer sacramental absolution on a penitent; the section in this catechism known as "The Office of the Keys" (not written by Luther but added with his approval) identifies the "called ministers of Christ" as being the ones who exercise the binding and loosing of absolution and excommunication through Law and Gospel ministry.
[citation needed] This binding and loosing is laid out in the Lutheran formula of holy absolution: the "called and ordained servant of the Word" forgives penitents' sins (speaks Christ's words of forgiveness: "I forgive you all your sins") without any addition of penances or satisfactions and not as an interceding or mediating "priest", but "by virtue of [his] office as a called and ordained servant of the Word" and "in the stead and by the command of [his] Lord Jesus Christ".
Soli Deo gloria, or "glory to God alone", stands in opposition to the veneration perceived by many to be present in the Roman Catholic Church of Mary the mother of Jesus, the saints, or angels.
[citation needed] Some Reformers[weasel words] believed that human beings – even saints canonized by the Roman Catholic Church, the popes, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy – are not worthy of the glory that was accorded them; that is, one should not exalt such humans for their good works, but rather praise and give glory to God.
[24] At the other end of the spectrum, emerging from the Imiaslavie and Primitive Catholicism streams, some Christians now affirm the sōlum nōmen position that the holy “name alone” is all-sufficient, based upon the insight Jesus is “the one name that contains everything”.