This chapter concerns the place of predestination in Andrewes’ own style of divinity. On the one hand, because of the organising role of predestinarian error in Andrewes’ sense of puritanism and of the importance of puritanism as the defining other against which Andrewes constructed his own position, predestination was in some sense central to Andrewes’ thought. But on the other, since presumption was precisely what was wrong with the puritan attitude to predestination, a topic which the puritans thought they could subjugate to their own rationalist cross-questioning, this was an area in which Andrewes affected an extreme reticence. Nevertheless, what looks like an explicitly Arminian account of theology of grace can be teased out of his sermons and assigned a central role in his overall theology, which stressed the collaboration between the grace of God and human effort, the will of God and that of fallen humanity, enabled by Christ’s sacrifice and the ameliorating effects of sacramental grace to help people collaborate actively in their own salvation.

The Laudians attempted to strike a balance between human free will and divine grace, as opposed to what they presented as the brutal determinism of the Calvinists and puritans. Their position stressed the role of human effort, whilst attempting to leave no room for any ‘popish’ notions of merit. This chapter describes how some Laudian authors did just that, by concentrating on repentance, amendment and works of penitence. The question of reprobation, and in particular of when even hardened sinners like Judas and Pharaoh could be said to have become reprobate, that is, doomed to damnation, is addressed through the treatment of the former by Edward Kellett, and of the latter by Thomas Jackson. The chapter charts a distinctively Laudian/Arminian route to assurance through works of charity, piety and penance. It concludes with a re-evaluation of the relationship between Arminianism and Laudianism, as the latter has emerged in and through the argument of this book.

Chapter 3 describes the emergence of merit as a store of value. For professionals, merit was first earned and demonstrated in educational contexts, then ‘cashed in’ for access to professional pathways. There, further merit was accumulated doing virtuous work, and rapidly reinvested in advancement upwards. Each step on the career ladder was ‘earned’ by demonstrating one’s increasing merit, and directly translated into material and social benefits. Merit was built from conceptions of virtue that were already deeply gendered and which were becoming entangled with emerging ideas about race. As merit became the currency with which the professional class purchased and managed their influence, this systematized multiple, intersecting forms of inequality. As they structured career ladders, the professional class also built a ladder through society, so that each person’s class and financial status, from the rich and powerful to the poorest and most marginalized, seemed to be earned. This opened the opportunity for the professional class to extract moral and financial value from women, people of colour, and the working class, bolstering their own status and class identity.

The Council of Trent addressed the topics of original sin and justification in two decrees, developed in succession. The Decree on Original Sin reaffirms a broadly Augustinian understanding of original sin, its effects, and its remedy in baptism. What remains after baptism is not sin in the strict sense. The Decree on Justification lays out the path from sin to grace to glory. Emphasis lies on both the constant and decisive role of grace and on the way grace engages rather than nullifies the agency of the justified. The Decree on Justification in particular not only rejected errors, but expounded Catholic teaching.

Theravada Buddhism is the dominant tradition in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Thai monasteries in the “forest tradition” are the setting for Tim Ward’s What the Buddha Never Taught and Phra Peter Pannapadipo’s Phra Farang: An English Monk in Thailand. These authors describe how the rules and regulations of the monastic code challenged them and prompted insights into the self’s relentless craving. Ward and Pannapadipo (now Peter Robinson) finally affirm an enduring self with abiding values and commitments, even as they appreciate Buddhist ideas about no-self. Rudolph Wurlitzer’s Hard Travel to Sacred Places and Stephen Asma’s The Gods Drink Whiskey recount travels in the dense urban centers of Cambodia and Thailand. Wurlitzer’s weary and disillusioned memoir rejects the possibility of enlightenment and says he was unchanged by travel. Yet, by taking this stance, he renounces the desire to exploit Asia or engineer his spiritual destiny. Stephen Asma’s account of a year teaching in Cambodia explores ideas about no-self, karma, and other ideas that conflict with Western assumptions and elicit a new orientation to life that he calls “transcendental everydayness.”

Chapter 25 considers the 1547 Tridentine Decree on Justification. This document is widely regarded as one of the most significant statements on the doctrine of justification. It set out a full exposition of the Catholic position, rather than simply rejecting opinions regarded as unacceptable. The Council saw its task as ‘expounding to all the faithful of Christ the true and sound doctrine relating to justification’, not simply identifying what they considered to be the errors of Protestantism. This chapter consists of four sections. The first considers the Decree’s teaching on the first stage of justification, which includes a strongly transformist concept of justification, and a rejection of any idea that justification can be said to be merited. It also firmly links justification with the sacrament of baptism. The second considers its teaching on the second stage of justification, dealing with the way in which believers increase in righteousness. The third deals with the restoration of justification through the sacrament of penance. Finally, the canons of the decree, dealing with views that the Council regarded as unacceptable, are noted and their significance assessed.

The concept of merit plays an important role in the medieval discussion of justification. Although it was widely considered to be unacceptable to allow that human beings could be said to earn or deserve their justification, in the strict sense of the terms, the concept of merit was developed extensively to allow a strict concept of merit (usually referred to as ‘condign merit’) to be distinguished from a weaker sense of merit (usually referred to as ‘congruous merit’). The chapter opens by considering how Augustine’s concept of merit was complexified during the Middle Ages, and the reason for this process. Particularly within Franciscan schools of theology, there was a widespread recognition of a gradation of forms of merit, including the notion of merit as a self-imposed divine obligation. This chapter explores these divergences, and notes the growing tendency on the part of writers such as Duns Scotus and William of Ockham to adopt voluntarist rather that intellectualist approaches to merit, locating the ground of merit in God’s decision to accept certain actions as meritorious. The chapter concludes by noting the continuity between these later medieval lines of thought and those associated with the Reformation – such as John Calvin’s understanding of the grounds of the merit of Christ, on which human salvation was held to be contingent.

A remuneration system typically comprises three main elements: base pay, benefits and performance-related pay. In designing any remuneration system careful attention should be paid to three key considerations: first, the relative role that each of these three components will play in total remuneration; second, the practices that will be drawn on to configure each component; and third, the target level of total remuneration for each position. Any discussion of remuneration practice must consider what, for most employees, is the primary component of their total remuneration, namely base pay.

The practice of recognising and rewarding the individual performance of employees is not only becoming more common but also more varied in form. It ranges from the traditional merit-based pay increments to a suite of non-cash reward programs that claim to provide a cheaper and more effective means of rewarding desirable performance and fostering employee satisfaction and engagement. This chapter provides an overview of these practices, starting with merit pay. Merit pay is the most widely applied of the individual performance pay plans, and takes two main forms: merit increments and merit bonuses. We then consider some of the oldest and most enduring of all performance pay plans, results-based individual incentives. Also known as individual ‘payment-by-results’ plans, these include piece rates, task-and-time bonus plans (where employees are rewarded for completing a specified volume of work or a task in less than a ‘standard’ time), sales commissions and bonus payments to individuals for achievement of goals.

If there is a theological locus that the popular mind associates with John Calvin, it is the doctrine of predestination, and in particular the notion of “double predestination.” This association is not limited to the popular mind, to be sure; even scholars have attempted to make predestination the “center” of Calvin’s theology. I do not here plan to tackle the issue of the place of predestination in Calvin’s theological framework. My goal instead is to demonstrate the lack of originality of Calvin’s teaching on predestination when placed against the backdrop of both medieval debates surrounding predestination and the theology of Calvin’s fellow reformers.

In the third section of the book, a range of topics from doctrinal or systematic theology are considered, building on the survey of the first part of the book, which had dealt mainly with the doctrines of God and of creation. This chapter turns to Christology: to the doctrine of the Person of Christ and of the Incarnation, where participatory language and thinking have also been important. This is worked through in terms of a number of central contentions in traditional Christology. It also brings some less-often-considered aspects of the doctrine of Christ to the surface, such as Christ's participation in God through growth in virtues. A participatory account of Christology can bear witness to the full revelation and presence of God in, and as, Christ. This is contrasted with kenotic Christology.

This second chapter on redemption, salvation, or union with God looks at the consequences for the redeemed creature, principally in terms of justification, sanctification, and merit. Alongside consideration of patristic and mediaeval sources, it considers Reformation perspectives on these questions. We look at Aquinas on the effectiveness of grace, and at how notions of participation can help us to navigate themes in the doctrine of redemption. These include awareness of the dangers inherent in paradigms that compare creatures directly with God, and attention to how the formal or exemplary note explored in Chapter 4 aligns with recent scholarship on the meaning of 'the righteousness of God' as what justifies sinners in the thought of Paul. The chapter closes by thinking more broadly about how approaches to participation align and link up across what has hitherto often been siloed between 'creation' and 'redemption'.