Theological Credence Catalog

Conservative Christian; Scripture wholly true in the original writings and substantively preserved in faithful copies/translations.

Present degree of belief in a proposition.

Range expressing uncertainty about one's exact credence; not a frequentist confidence interval.


Final doctrinal authority

Question: What is the final norm by which binding Christian doctrine is identified and corrected?

- **Question:** What is the final norm by which binding Christian doctrine is identified and corrected?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `sola_scriptura_final_infallible_norm`; `prima_scriptura_with_authoritative_tradition`; `scripture_and_apostolic_tradition_authoritatively_interpreted_by_church`; `underdetermined_hybrid`.
- **Text clusters:** 2 Timothy 3:14–17 and Psalm 19/119; Mark 7:5–13; Acts 17:10–12; 1 Corinthians 11:2 and 15:1–3; 2 Thessalonians 2:15 and 3:6; 1 Timothy 3:15; Acts 15:1–29; John 16:12–15; Jude 3.
- **Decision logic:** Ask whether Scripture’s sufficiency for equipping entails that it is the only infallible rule; whether “traditions” in Paul are recoverable only where inscripturated or also through a protected ecclesial transmission; and whether Acts 15 models a permanently authoritative teaching office or an unrepeatable apostolic council. Distinguish apostolic tradition from later customs.
- **Dependencies:** `AUTH-01=sola_scriptura -> AUTH-02=protestant_66 (raises, moderate)`; `AUTH-01=scripture_and_tradition -> ECC-06=apostolic_succession (raises, strong)`; `AUTH-01=scripture_and_tradition -> MARY-02/03 and SAC-01=seven_sacraments (raises, strong)`. This node changes the evidential weight of historical reception across almost the entire catalog.
- **Identity links:** Protestant, evangelical, Lutheran, Reformed, Baptist, Anglican, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox.


Old Testament canon

Question: Which books belong to the Old Testament canon?

- **Question:** Which books belong to the Old Testament canon?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `protestant_39_book_ot`; `roman_catholic_deuterocanon`; `eastern_orthodox_broader_canons`; `open_or_underdetermined_at_edges`.
- **Text clusters:** Luke 24:27, 44; Romans 3:2; Matthew 23:35/Luke 11:51; Hebrews 11; Jude 9, 14–15; New Testament uses of the Greek Old Testament; disputed books’ own contents. No biblical passage supplies a complete table of contents.
- **Decision logic:** Biblical data can test coherence and show use or allusion, but recognition of the exact list necessarily depends on manuscript history and reception. A quotation or allusion does not by itself confer canonicity; neither does lack of a New Testament quotation exclude a book.
- **Dependencies:** `AUTH-01=sola_scriptura -> AUTH-02` creates a bootstrapping question that must be answered with providence and historical reception; `AUTH-02=broader_canon -> ESC-INT-02.PURG and ESC-INT-02.MYSTERY-PRAYER` (`raises` separately, moderate/strong, especially via 2 Maccabees 12).
- **Identity links:** Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox.


Location of interpretive authority

Question: When competent Christians disagree, where is the church’s most trustworthy interpretive judgment located?

- **Question:** When competent Christians disagree, where is the church’s most trustworthy interpretive judgment located?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `individual_conscience_under_scripture`; `local_congregation`; `confessional_communion`; `bishops_in_apostolic_succession`; `universal_magisterium_or_council`; `distributed_hybrid`.
- **Text clusters:** Acts 15:1–29; Matthew 16:17–19 and 18:15–20; John 16:13; Acts 17:11; 1 Corinthians 14:29–33; 1 Timothy 3:15; Ephesians 4:11–16; 2 Peter 3:15–16.
- **Decision logic:** Determine whether promises of guidance attach uniquely to apostles, to their successors, to the whole church, or to ordinary Spirit-enabled discernment; and whether the Bereans model private judgment or responsible testing within the covenant community. Second Peter 1:20–21 concerns prophecy’s divine origin rather than directly choosing between private and magisterial interpretation.
- **Dependencies:** `AUTH-03=bishops_or_magisterium -> GOV-01=episcopal and ECC-06=apostolic_succession (raises, strong)`; `AUTH-03=congregation -> GOV-01=congregational (raises, moderate)`; `AUTH-03=confessional_communion -> AUTH-05=subscriptional (raises, strong)`.
- **Identity links:** congregationalist, Presbyterian, Anglican, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, restorationist.


Perspicuity of Scripture

Question: How clear is Scripture on matters necessary for salvation and on secondary doctrine?

- **Question:** How clear is Scripture on matters necessary for salvation and on secondary doctrine?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `clear_on_essentials_not_equally_all_topics`; `broadly_clear_to_diligent_believers`; `requires_authoritative_ecclesial_tradition_for_reliable_doctrine`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Deuteronomy 30:11–14; Psalm 19:7; Psalm 119:105, 130; Luke 24:25–27, 45; Acts 8:30–35; 2 Peter 3:15–16; Ephesians 4:11–14.
- **Decision logic:** Weigh texts describing Scripture as accessible and illuminating against texts acknowledging difficulty and the need for teachers. Do not turn “some things are hard” into “nothing is clear,” or “the gospel is clear” into “every disputed inference is obvious.”
- **Dependencies:** Higher perspicuity lowers the prior for a necessary infallible teaching office but does not determine polity. Low secondary-doctrine perspicuity should widen credence ranges across the catalog.
- **Identity links:** evangelical, confessional Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox.


Role of creeds and confessions

Question: How binding should post-biblical doctrinal summaries be?

- **Question:** How binding should post-biblical doctrinal summaries be?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `no_creed_but_bible_or_minimal_statement`; `ministerial_confession_correctable_by_scripture`; `robust_subscription_with_allowed_exceptions`; `authoritative_ecumenical_dogma`; `hybrid`.
- **Text clusters:** Deuteronomy 6:4; 1 Corinthians 15:3–7; Philippians 2:5–11; 1 Timothy 3:16; 2 Timothy 1:13–14; Jude 3; Acts 15.
- **Decision logic:** Early formulae support faithful summaries, but the dispute is whether later creeds merely witness to Scripture, bind officers as church contracts, or express protected conciliar judgments.
- **Dependencies:** `AUTH-05=authoritative_ecumenical_dogma -> AUTH-03=episcopal_or_council (raises)`; `AUTH-05=robust_subscription -> denominational prototype confidence (raises)`; individual doctrinal credence must not be replaced by subscription alone.
- **Identity links:** restorationist, non-denominational, Baptist, Reformed, Lutheran, Anglican, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox.


Preferred New Testament textual tradition

Question: Which manuscript/text-critical model most probably preserves the original New Testament wording at disputed places?

- **Question:** Which manuscript/text-critical model most probably preserves the original New Testament wording at disputed places?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `eclectic_critical_text`; `byzantine_priority`; `textus_receptus_priority`; `confessional_preservation_model`; `passage_by_passage_hybrid`.
- **Text clusters:** Matthew 5:18; John 10:35; 1 Peter 1:24–25; major variants Mark 16:9–20, John 7:53–8:11, Acts 8:37, 1 John 5:7–8. The primary evidence is manuscript, versional, and patristic rather than an inspired statement naming a later edition.
- **Decision logic:** Separate confidence in providential preservation from confidence in one printed text; distinguish “a passage is ancient/canonical” from “this wording is original”; do not derive a textual method solely from verses promising endurance of God’s word.
- **Dependencies:** Usually weak for core doctrine because major teachings rest on multiple undisputed texts. `TEXT-01=TR_priority -> ID=fundamentalist_or_KJV_tradition (raises, sometimes strong)` is sociological, not logical.
- **Identity links:** KJV-only, confessional bibliology, Byzantine-priority, mainstream evangelical scholarship.


Covenant continuity across the Testaments

Question: How much continuity should be presumed between the Abrahamic/Mosaic people of God and the new-covenant church?

- **Question:** How much continuity should be presumed between the Abrahamic/Mosaic people of God and the new-covenant church?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `strong_continuity_one_covenant_people`; `promissory_continuity_with_new_covenant_transformation`; `strong_discontinuity_distinct_stewardships`; `multiple_covenant_or_progressive_hybrid`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 12:1–3; 15; 17; Exodus 19:4–6; Jeremiah 31:31–34; Ezekiel 36:22–28; Matthew 5:17–20; Acts 2:38–39; Romans 4; 9–11; Galatians 3–4; Ephesians 2:11–22; Hebrews 7–10; 1 Peter 2:9–10.
- **Decision logic:** Ask whether the new covenant renews and expands earlier covenant structures or makes a categorically new, regenerate community; whether Abraham’s seed is defined christologically without remainder; and which Mosaic elements expire, transform, or continue.
- **Dependencies:** Strong shared latent node for baptism subjects, law/Sabbath, Israel/church, land promises, church membership, and eschatology. `HERM-01=strong_continuity -> BAP-01=infant_household_subjects (raises, strong)`; `HERM-01=strong_discontinuity -> ESC-FRM-01=dispensational (raises, moderate/strong)`.
- **Identity links:** covenant theology, progressive covenantalism, dispensationalism, Lutheran law/gospel, New Covenant Theology.


Typology and fulfillment of Old Testament promises

Question: When the New Testament applies an Old Testament promise to Christ or the church, does that exhaust, expand, or coexist with its earlier national/territorial sense?

- **Question:** When the New Testament applies an Old Testament promise to Christ or the church, does that exhaust, expand, or coexist with its earlier national/territorial sense?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `christological_ecclesial_fulfillment_normally_exhaustive`; `already_not_yet_expansion_including_ethnic_israel`; `parallel_or_future_literal_national_fulfillment`; `text_specific_hybrid`.
- **Text clusters:** Matthew 2:15; 5:17; John 2:19–22; Acts 2:16–21 and 15:13–18; Romans 4:13 and 9–11; 1 Corinthians 10:1–11; Galatians 3:16, 26–29; Hebrews 8–12; 1 Peter 2:4–10; Revelation 21–22.
- **Decision logic:** Determine whether New Testament reuse redefines the referent, adds a climactic referent while retaining the earlier one, or guarantees multiple fulfillments. Avoid making “literal” synonymous with “non-typological”; biblical typology claims real fulfillment.
- **Dependencies:** `HERM-02=exhaustive_christological -> ESC-ISR-01=church_as_eschatological_israel and ESC-MIL-01=amil_or_postmil (raises)`; `HERM-02=future_literal_national -> ESC-ISR-01=distinct_future and ESC-MIL-01=dispensational_premil (raises, strong)`.
- **Identity links:** Reformed, progressive covenantal, dispensational, premillennial, amillennial.


Apocalyptic-symbolic default

Question: What default level of symbolism should govern Daniel, Zechariah, Revelation, and apocalyptic portions of the Gospels?

- **Question:** What default level of symbolism should govern Daniel, Zechariah, Revelation, and apocalyptic portions of the Gospels?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `symbolic_recapitulation_default`; `symbolic_with_linear_historical_sequence`; `referentially_literal_futurist_default`; `passage_specific_hybrid`.
- **Text clusters:** Daniel 2, 7–12; Zechariah 1–6, 12–14; Matthew 24; Revelation 1:1, 12–20; 5; 7; 12–14; 17; 20–22; Old Testament sources echoed by Revelation.
- **Decision logic:** Decide how Revelation’s own decoded symbols set the default, whether repeated endings indicate recapitulation, whether numbers are schematic or arithmetical, and whether Old Testament imagery is transformed or predicts corresponding physical objects.
- **Dependencies:** Major upstream node for Revelation chronology, millennium, tribulation, temple, Israel, and judgments. It should not be counted again as independent evidence at every downstream record.
- **Identity links:** idealist, preterist, historicist, futurist, dispensational, amillennial.


Prophetic horizon

Question: Do biblical prophecies characteristically have one historical referent, typological escalation, or multiple fulfillments?

- **Question:** Do biblical prophecies characteristically have one historical referent, typological escalation, or multiple fulfillments?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `single_primary_fulfillment_with_applications`; `type_and_antitype_escalation`; `dual_or_multiple_fulfillment`; `prophetic_pattern_or_recursion`; `text_specific_hybrid`.
- **Text clusters:** Isaiah 7:14 with Matthew 1:22–23; Hosea 11:1 with Matthew 2:15; Joel 2 with Acts 2:16–21; Daniel 9:24–27; Matthew 24; 2 Samuel 7 with Luke 1:32–33 and Acts 2:29–36.
- **Decision logic:** Ask whether New Testament fulfillment language identifies the sole intended referent, a climactic sensus plenior, or one realization in a recurring pattern. Do not use “double fulfillment” as an unfalsifiable rescue for every prediction.
- **Dependencies:** Strongly coupled to `HERM-02`, `ESC-OLIV-01`, `ESC-REV-02`, and `ESC-ISR-01`.
- **Identity links:** preterist, futurist, typological/covenantal, dispensational.


Narrative normativity in Acts

Question: Which apostolic-era events are intended as repeatable norms for churches?

- **Question:** Which apostolic-era events are intended as repeatable norms for churches?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `explicit_epistolary_command_required`; `apostolic_pattern_normative_unless_repealed`; `salvation_historical_transition_model`; `discerned_case_by_case`.
- **Text clusters:** Acts 2:1–47; 4:32–37; 6:1–6; 8:4–25; 10:44–48; 15; 19:1–7; 20:7; 1 Corinthians 11–14; pastoral epistles.
- **Decision logic:** Determine whether repeated events establish a pattern, whether unique Jew/Samaritan/Gentile transitions explain variations, and how later didactic texts control narrative inference.
- **Dependencies:** Major upstream node for Spirit baptism, tongues as evidence, communal property, deacons, weekly communion, healing, and church decision-making.
- **Identity links:** Pentecostal, charismatic, restorationist, cessationist, episcopal/presbyterian/congregational.


Old Testament law in Christian ethics

Question: How does Mosaic law norm new-covenant believers?

- **Question:** How does Mosaic law norm new-covenant believers?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `threefold_law_with_moral_law_continuing`; `law_gospel_with_enduring_divine_commands`; `law_of_christ_new_covenant_republication`; `theonomic_general_equity_including_civil_norms`; `dispensational_or_case_by_case_discontinuity`.
- **Text clusters:** Matthew 5:17–48; 15:1–20; 22:34–40; Acts 15; Romans 3:31; 6:14; 7:1–6; 8:1–4; 13:8–10; 1 Corinthians 9:8–21; Galatians 3–6; Colossians 2:13–23; Hebrews 7–10; James 2:8–12.
- **Decision logic:** Ask what “fulfill” and “not under law” mean, whether the New Testament republishes the moral law, whether the civil/ceremonial/moral division is exegetical or systematic, and how apostolic use of Mosaic commands models continuity.
- **Dependencies:** Upstream for Sabbath, tithing, food laws, civil government, sexual ethics, and covenant models. `HERM-06=theonomic -> PUBLIC-01=Christian_magistracy (raises)`; `HERM-06=new_covenant_law -> SAB-01=nonbinding (raises)`.
- **Identity links:** Reformed, Lutheran, New Covenant Theology, dispensational, theonomic.


Classical immutability and impassibility

Question: How should divine constancy be reconciled with texts in which God grieves, relents, responds, or becomes angry?

II. Theology proper, Christology, and Mariology

- **Question:** How should divine constancy be reconciled with texts in which God grieves, relents, responds, or becomes angry?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `classical_immutable_impassible_with_analogical_affection_language`; `immutable_character_with_real_relational_mutability`; `theistic_mutualism_or_passibility`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Exodus 3:14; Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:11, 29, 35; Psalm 102:25–27; Malachi 3:6; James 1:17; Genesis 6:5–7; Exodus 32:7–14; Hosea 11:8–9; Jonah 3:10; John 1:14; Hebrews 13:8.
- **Decision logic:** Decide whether change-language is anthropomorphic/analogical, describes changes in creaturely relations to an unchanging God, or reveals responsive changes in God’s experience. Distinguish immutability of being, character, knowledge, will, and relations.
- **Dependencies:** `GOD-01=classical -> GOD-02=simplicity (raises, strong)` and `GOD-03=exhaustive_definite_foreknowledge (raises)`; incarnation requires distinguishing change in the assumed human nature from change in divine nature.
- **Identity links:** classical theist, Thomist, Reformed scholastic, Lutheran scholastic, theistic mutualist, open theist.
- **Guardrail:** A God who is unreliable in character or ceases to be God conflicts with pervasive biblical claims; not every passibilist view entails that.


Divine simplicity

Question: Are God’s attributes and essence really identical, or are divine attributes distinct features perfectly united in God?

II. Theology proper, Christology, and Mariology

- **Question:** Are God’s attributes and essence really identical, or are divine attributes distinct features perfectly united in God?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `strong_classical_simplicity`; `moderate_or_qualified_simplicity`; `property_or_social_model_rejecting_strong_simplicity`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Exodus 3:14; Deuteronomy 6:4; Psalm 86:10; Isaiah 44:6; John 4:24; 1 John 1:5 and 4:8; Romans 11:33–36; 1 Timothy 6:15–16. Much of the dispute is a metaphysical synthesis rather than the exegesis of one explicit proposition.
- **Decision logic:** Ask whether “God is love/light” identifies essence or predicates an attribute, whether divine aseity excludes composition, and whether strong simplicity can preserve real Trinitarian distinctions and contingent acts.
- **Dependencies:** Strongly coupled to `GOD-01` and models of divine freedom; only weakly connected to most denominational practices.
- **Identity links:** Thomist, classical Protestant, Eastern Orthodox essence/energies tradition, analytic theist.


Divine knowledge of future contingents

Question: What grounds God’s knowledge of future contingent acts?

II. Theology proper, Christology, and Mariology

- **Question:** What grounds God’s knowledge of future contingent acts?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `exhaustive_foreknowledge_grounded_in_divine_decree_or_causal_knowledge`; `simple_foreknowledge_of_libertarian_acts`; `middle_knowledge_molinism`; `dynamic_omniscience_open_future`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Psalm 139:1–16; Isaiah 41:21–29 and 46:9–11; Jeremiah 1:5; Matthew 11:20–24; 26:34; John 13:19; Acts 2:23; Romans 8:29–30; 1 Samuel 23:10–13; Genesis 22:12; Jeremiah 18:7–10; Mark 13:32.
- **Decision logic:** All of the first three options affirm exhaustive definite foreknowledge; they differ over its modal ground. Determine whether conditional counterfactuals reveal middle knowledge, whether libertarian future acts can be infallibly foreknown without being decreed, whether “now I know” is accommodated/relational speech, and whether prophecy requires an exhaustively settled future or divine ability to determine select outcomes.
- **Dependencies:** `GOD-03=decree_grounded -> PROV-002=exhaustive_definite_decree and ELEC-002=unconditional (raises)`; `GOD-03=middle_knowledge -> PROV-002=Molinist_actualization (raises, strong)`; `GOD-03=open_future -> PROV-002=meticulous_exhaustive_decree (hard conflict as ordinarily defined)`.
- **Identity links:** Calvinist, Molinist, Arminian, open theist.
- **Guardrail:** Open theism is accepted by some self-described evangelicals and rejected by many conservative confessions; the tool should mark this contested boundary rather than silently remove it.


Scope and mode of providence

Question: Does God specifically ordain all events, permit libertarian creaturely choices within his plan, or govern chiefly through responsive sovereignty?

II. Theology proper, Christology, and Mariology

- **Question:** Does God specifically ordain all events, permit libertarian creaturely choices within his plan, or govern chiefly through responsive sovereignty?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `meticulous_compatibilist_decree`; `molinist_concurrence`; `general_concurrence_with_libertarian_freedom`; `responsive_or_risk_model`; `mystery_or_hybrid`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 50:20; Job 1–2; Proverbs 16:9, 33 and 21:1; Isaiah 10:5–19; Lamentations 3:37–38; Matthew 10:29–31; Acts 2:23 and 4:27–28; Romans 8:28–30; Ephesians 1:11; James 1:13–17.
- **Decision logic:** Ask whether the same event can be intended by God for good and by creatures for evil without making God morally blameworthy; distinguish decree, permission, concurrence, foreknowledge, and coercion.
- **Dependencies:** Major upstream node for election, prayer, evil, assurance, and spiritual gifts. `GOD-04=meticulous -> ELEC-002=unconditional_individual (raises, strong)` but does not logically entail it.
- **Identity links:** Reformed/Calvinist, Lutheran, Molinist, Arminian, open theist.


Procession of the Holy Spirit (filioque)

Question: Does the Spirit eternally proceed from the Father alone, or from the Father and the Son?

II. Theology proper, Christology, and Mariology

- **Question:** Does the Spirit eternally proceed from the Father alone, or from the Father and the Son?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `from_father_alone`; `from_father_and_son`; `from_father_through_son`; `formulae_compatible_when_qualified`.
- **Text clusters:** John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7, 13–15; Romans 8:9; Galatians 4:6; Revelation 22:1. Historical language and the distinction between eternal procession and temporal mission are decisive.
- **Decision logic:** Determine whether the Son’s sending of the Spirit in history reveals eternal origin, whether “proceeds from the Father” is exclusive, and whether “through the Son” reconciles East and West.
- **Dependencies:** Strong identity link but few downstream evangelical practices.
- **Identity links:** Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Western creedal Protestant, Anglican.


Eternal generation of the Son

Question: Does Scripture teach that the Son is eternally begotten/generated from the Father while fully equal and uncreated?

II. Theology proper, Christology, and Mariology

- **Question:** Does Scripture teach that the Son is eternally begotten/generated from the Father while fully equal and uncreated?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `eternal_generation`; `eternal_sonship_without_generation_language`; `incarnational_or_resurrection_begetting_only`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Psalm 2:7 with Acts 13:33 and Hebrews 1:5; John 1:1–18; 5:26; 17:5; Colossians 1:15–17; Hebrews 1:1–3; Micah 5:2.
- **Decision logic:** Weigh the textual/lexical history of *monogenēs*, the Father granting life “in himself” to the Son, and New Testament applications of Psalm 2. Distinguish eternal relation of origin from creation or temporal beginning.
- **Dependencies:** `TRIN-02=eternal_generation -> Nicene_identity (raises, strong)`; do not infer ontological inferiority.
- **Identity links:** Nicene, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, confessional Reformed/Lutheran/Anglican, some modern evangelical revisions.
- **Guardrail:** Any view making the Son created or less than fully divine lies outside the catalog’s creedal center.


Eternal relations of authority and submission

Question: Is the Son’s submission to the Father solely economic/incarnational, or an eternal personal relation?

II. Theology proper, Christology, and Mariology

- **Question:** Is the Son’s submission to the Father solely economic/incarnational, or an eternal personal relation?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `economic_submission_only`; `eternal_filial_order_without_authority_hierarchy`; `eternal_functional_subordination_or_authority_submission`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** John 5:18–30; 10:30; 14:28; 17:1–5; 1 Corinthians 11:3; 15:24–28; Philippians 2:5–11; Hebrews 5:7–9.
- **Decision logic:** Decide whether mission reveals eternal relation, whether “greater” and final subjection refer to incarnate messianic office, and whether authority/submission language can be eternal without dividing will or nature.
- **Dependencies:** Often correlated with complementarianism, but `TRIN-03 <-> GEN-01` is a debated analogy, not an entailment; do not let one count as independent textual evidence for the other.
- **Identity links:** classical Nicene, evangelical complementarian, social Trinitarian.


Christ’s impeccability

Question: Was the incarnate Son capable of sinning, even though he certainly did not sin?

II. Theology proper, Christology, and Mariology

- **Question:** Was the incarnate Son capable of sinning, even though he certainly did not sin?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `impeccable_not_able_to_sin`; `peccable_able_but_perfectly_faithful`; `mystery_due_two_natures`.
- **Text clusters:** Matthew 4:1–11; Hebrews 2:17–18 and 4:15; James 1:13; John 5:19, 30; 8:29, 46; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:22.
- **Decision logic:** Ask whether genuine temptation requires metaphysical ability to yield, whether the divine person can sin, and how a real human will operates in inseparable union with the divine nature.
- **Dependencies:** Depends heavily on Chalcedonian two-natures Christology; few denominational consequences.
- **Identity links:** classical Christology, some evangelical analytic debates.
- **Guardrail:** Christ’s actual sinlessness is part of the shared conservative/creedal boundary.


Meaning of Christ’s kenosis

Question: In what sense did the Son “empty himself” in the incarnation?

II. Theology proper, Christology, and Mariology

- **Question:** In what sense did the Son “empty himself” in the incarnation?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `addition_of_servant_form_without_surrender_of_attributes`; `refraining_from_independent_use_of_prerogatives`; `functional_limitation_by_spirit_dependent_human_life`; `ontological_kenosis_or_attribute_relinquishment`; `hybrid`.
- **Text clusters:** Philippians 2:5–11; John 1:14; 5:19; 17:5; Mark 13:32; Luke 2:40, 52; Hebrews 2:9–18; Colossians 1:15–20 and 2:9.
- **Decision logic:** Grammar favors emptying “by taking” servant form, but Jesus’ growth and limited human knowledge require a model of lived human consciousness. Distinguish nonuse, veiling, human limitation, and surrender of deity.
- **Dependencies:** Interacts with miracles-by-Spirit, impeccability, and models of the hypostatic union.
- **Identity links:** classical two-natures Christology, Spirit Christology, kenotic Christology.
- **Guardrail:** A model in which the Son ceases to be fully divine conflicts with the stated creedal boundary.


Perpetual virginity

Question: Did Mary remain a virgin after Jesus’ birth?

II. Theology proper, Christology, and Mariology

- **Question:** Did Mary remain a virgin after Jesus’ birth?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `perpetual_virginity`; `ordinary_marital_relations_and_later_children`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Matthew 1:18–25; 13:55–56; Mark 6:3; Luke 1:34; John 7:3–5; 19:25–27; Acts 1:14; uses of “brother” for kin; Old Testament background sometimes applied to Ezekiel 44:1–3.
- **Decision logic:** Determine whether “until” implies a later change, whether Jesus’ brothers are Mary’s children, Joseph’s earlier children, or cousins/kin, and whether entrusting Mary to John implies no surviving sons.
- **Dependencies:** `AUTH-01=authoritative_tradition -> MARY-01=perpetual (raises, strong)`; this question by itself does not determine Marian intercession or sinlessness.
- **Identity links:** Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, traditional Anglican/Lutheran, most Baptist/non-denominational traditions.


Marian sinlessness and immaculate conception

Question: Was Mary preserved from original sin and/or personally sinless by a unique grace?

II. Theology proper, Christology, and Mariology

- **Question:** Was Mary preserved from original sin and/or personally sinless by a unique grace?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `immaculate_conception_and_personal_sinlessness`; `personal_holiness_without_immaculate_conception`; `faithful_but_fallen_and_in_need_of_redemption`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 3:15; Luke 1:28, 35, 46–49; Romans 3:23 and 5:12–19; Hebrews 4:15; Revelation 12. The strongest case for the first option also invokes church tradition and theological fittingness.
- **Decision logic:** Ask whether “favored/graced one” entails preservation from sin, whether universal sin-language admits a unique exception, and whether Mary’s “Savior” excludes or can include preservative redemption.
- **Dependencies:** `AUTH-01=scripture_and_tradition -> MARY-02=immaculate (raises, strong)`; `ANT-004=inherited_guilt` (with `ANT-003` Adamic solidarity) creates the theological problem the immaculate conception is formulated to solve.
- **Identity links:** Roman Catholic (immaculate conception), Eastern Orthodox (high holiness but different ancestral-sin framework), Protestant.


Invocation of Mary and the saints

Question: May Christians ask glorified saints to intercede for them?

II. Theology proper, Christology, and Mariology

- **Question:** May Christians ask glorified saints to intercede for them?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `permissible_and_fitting_invocation`; `possible_but_not_scripturally_warranted`; `prayer_should_be_addressed_to_God_alone`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** 1 Timothy 2:1–5; Hebrews 12:1, 22–24; Revelation 5:8 and 8:3–4; Luke 15:7, 10; Deuteronomy 18:9–14; Isaiah 8:19; ordinary requests for living believers’ prayers.
- **Decision logic:** Determine whether heavenly presentation of prayers implies awareness and intercession, whether asking differs from necromancy or worship, and whether Christ’s unique mediation permits subordinate intercession as it does among living believers.
- **Dependencies:** `AUTH-01=authoritative_tradition` and `ESC-INT-01=conscious_intermediate_state` raise this option; soul sleep lowers it strongly.
- **Identity links:** Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, high-church Anglican, Protestant.


Genre and chronology of Genesis 1

Question: What temporal/genre claim do the six creation days make?

- **Question:** What temporal/genre claim do the six creation days make?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `ordinary_consecutive_solar_days`; `day_age_or_long_epochs`; `framework_literary_structure`; `analogical_workdays`; `gap_or_restoration_reading`; `underdetermined_hybrid`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 1:1–2:3; Exodus 20:8–11 and 31:12–17; Psalm 104; Proverbs 8:22–31; Hebrews 4:1–11; the sequence and literary parallels within Genesis 1.
- **Decision logic:** Evaluate *yom* with numbered evenings/mornings, the force of the Sabbath analogy, the relation between days 1–3 and 4–6, and whether divine work/rest is analogical. Keep the age of the earth and common ancestry as related but separate questions.
- **Dependencies:** `CREA-01=ordinary_days -> CREA-02=young_earth (raises, strong but not strict)`; `CREA-01=framework_or_analogical -> old_earth (permits, not entails)`.
- **Identity links:** young-earth creationist, old-earth creationist, framework interpretation, evolutionary creation.


Age of the earth and genealogical chronology

Question: Does Scripture require a creation only thousands of years ago?

- **Question:** Does Scripture require a creation only thousands of years ago?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `young_earth_chronology`; `old_earth_compatible_with_scripture`; `biblically_underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 5 and 11; Exodus 20:11; 1 Chronicles 1; Luke 3:23–38; apparent genealogical telescoping in biblical genealogies; 2 Peter 3:8 is theological context, not a direct conversion formula for Genesis days.
- **Decision logic:** Ask whether “fathered” genealogies are complete chronological chains, whether creation-week interpretation fixes age, and which claims come from natural evidence rather than direct exegesis.
- **Dependencies:** Coupled to `CREA-01`, `CREA-04=death_before_fall`, and flood geology, but should receive independent scientific/historical evidence in a separate channel.
- **Identity links:** young-earth creationist, old-earth creationist, intelligent design, evolutionary creation.


Common ancestry and providential evolution

Question: Did God create present life through common ancestry and evolutionary processes?

- **Question:** Did God create present life through common ancestry and evolutionary processes?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `independent_special_creation_of_major_kinds`; `guided_or_providential_common_ancestry_except_humans`; `universal_common_ancestry_with_special_human_calling`; `evolutionary_creation`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 1:11–27 and 2:7, 21–23; Psalm 104; Matthew 19:4–6; Acts 17:24–29; 1 Corinthians 15:38–49. Natural evidence is a distinct and substantial input.
- **Decision logic:** Determine what “according to kinds” asserts, whether dust/rib language specifies immediate material mechanism, and whether divine creation is compatible with secondary causes.
- **Dependencies:** `CREA-03=universal_common_ancestry -> CREA-04=historical_Adam_models` requires careful reconciliation but does not logically exclude a historical couple; `GOD-04=secondary_cause_concurrence` raises compatibility.
- **Identity links:** special creationist, old-earth creationist, intelligent design, evolutionary creation.


Historical Adam and Eve

Question: What historical claim does Scripture make about Adam and Eve as the first humans and covenant heads?

- **Question:** What historical claim does Scripture make about Adam and Eve as the first humans and covenant heads?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `sole_biological_progenitors_of_all_humans`; `historical_pair_among_or_ancestral_to_larger_population`; `genealogical_universal_ancestors`; `archetypal_or_literary_figures_without_unique_historical_pair`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 2–5; 1 Chronicles 1:1; Hosea 6:7; Matthew 19:4–6; Luke 3:38; Acts 17:26; Romans 5:12–21; 1 Corinthians 11:8–12 and 15:21–49; 1 Timothy 2:13–14; Jude 14.
- **Decision logic:** Ask whether Paul’s Adam/Christ parallel requires a unique historical individual and federal act, whether Genesis genealogies place Adam in ordinary history, and whether universal descent must be exclusively genetic.
- **Dependencies:** `CREA-04=nonhistorical -> ANT-003=Adam_as_federal_historical_head (lowers, strong)`; impacts original sin, death before fall, and sometimes marriage/ordination arguments.
- **Identity links:** young-earth and old-earth creationism, evolutionary creation, conservative evangelical boundary debates.
- **Guardrail:** Many conservative confessions require a historical first pair; the nonhistorical option should be marked as pressing against, though not uniformly excluded from, the user’s framework.


Human and animal death before the fall

Question: Did any creaturely death occur before human sin?

- **Question:** Did any creaturely death occur before human sin?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `no_animal_or_human_death`; `animal_death_but_no_human_death`; `ordinary_biological_death_with_spiritual_and_covenantal_death_from_fall`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 1:29–31; 2:17; 3:14–24; Isaiah 11:6–9 and 65:17–25; Romans 5:12–21 and 8:18–23; 1 Corinthians 15:21–26, 42–49.
- **Decision logic:** Determine whether Romans 5’s “death through sin” is human-specific, whether animal predation is excluded by “very good,” and whether Isaiah depicts restored creation literally, symbolically, or eschatologically.
- **Dependencies:** `CREA-05=no_death -> young_earth_and_global_fall_cosmology (raises)`; `CREA-03=common_ancestry -> ordinary_animal_death (raises, strong)`.
- **Identity links:** young-earth creationist, old-earth creationist, evolutionary creation.


Extent and character of Noah’s flood

Question: Was the flood geographically global, anthropologically universal but regional, or a large local judgment?

- **Question:** Was the flood geographically global, anthropologically universal but regional, or a large local judgment?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `global_geological_and_human_flood`; `regional_geography_with_all_target_humans`; `large_local_judgment`; `literary_theological_account_with_historical_core`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 6–9; Genesis 10–11; Psalm 104:5–9; Isaiah 54:9; Matthew 24:37–39; Luke 17:26–27; 1 Peter 3:18–22; 2 Peter 2:5 and 3:5–7.
- **Decision logic:** Assess the universal language in its ancient narrative context, ark purpose and dimensions, covenant with creatures, later apostolic use, and whether “all the earth” can denote the known/inhabited land elsewhere.
- **Dependencies:** Strongly correlated with young-earth flood geology but not logically identical; scientific/geographical evidence must be a separate channel.
- **Identity links:** young-earth creationist, old-earth creationist, evangelical accommodation models.


Meaning of the image of God

Question: What principally constitutes the image of God in humanity?

- **Question:** What principally constitutes the image of God in humanity?
- **Type:** multi_select
- **Options:** `substantive_rational_moral_capacity`; `relational_communion`; `functional_royal_vocation_and_dominion`; `embodied_representation`; `Christological_destiny`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 1:26–28; 5:1–3; 9:6; Psalm 8; 1 Corinthians 11:7; 2 Corinthians 3:18 and 4:4; Colossians 1:15 and 3:10; James 3:9.
- **Decision logic:** The text can support multiple complementary dimensions. A tool should score emphases independently and ask which dimension grounds universal dignity after the fall.
- **Dependencies:** Affects anthropology, disability theology, vocation, gender arguments, and sanctification, but does not by itself settle any of them.
- **Identity links:** rarely denominational; important across Catholic, Orthodox, Reformed, and evangelical anthropology.


Human constitution

Question: How are body, soul, and spirit related?

- **Question:** How are body, soul, and spirit related?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `substance_dualism_body_and_soul_spirit_synonymous`; `trichotomy_body_soul_spirit`; `holistic_or_monist_anthropology_with_postmortem_continuity`; `emergent_or_hylomorphic_unity`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 2:7; Ecclesiastes 12:7; Matthew 10:28; Luke 23:43; 1 Corinthians 2:14–3:4 and 15; 2 Corinthians 5:1–10; 1 Thessalonians 5:23; Hebrews 4:12; James 2:26.
- **Decision logic:** Decide whether “soul” and “spirit” name separable components or overlapping aspects, whether Hebrews 4 uses rhetorical parallelism, and what survives bodily death.
- **Dependencies:** Strongly connected to intermediate state, soul sleep, sanctification models, and sometimes deliverance teaching.
- **Identity links:** dichotomist Reformed/Lutheran, trichotomist Pentecostal/Keswick streams, hylomorphic Catholic/Orthodox, holistic biblical anthropology.


Origin of each human soul

Question: How does each person’s immaterial life originate?

- **Question:** How does each person’s immaterial life originate?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `creationism_God_creates_each_soul`; `traducianism_soul_propagated_with_body`; `hylomorphic_generation_of_whole_person`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 2:7; 5:3; Numbers 16:22; Psalm 51:5; 139:13–16; Ecclesiastes 12:7; Zechariah 12:1; Hebrews 7:9–10 and 12:9.
- **Decision logic:** Ask whether God as “Father of spirits” implies special creation, whether Levi’s presence “in” Abraham implies propagation, and which model best explains inherited corruption without making God author of sin.
- **Dependencies:** Coupled to original sin transmission and anthropology; little direct denominational identity.
- **Identity links:** some Reformed traducianism, Catholic/most scholastic creationism, hylomorphism.


Divorce exceptions

Question: Under what conditions may a Christian initiate or recognize divorce?

- **Question:** Under what conditions may a Christian initiate or recognize divorce?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `no_divorce_as_morally_permitted_though_separation_possible`; `sexual_immorality_exception`; `sexual_immorality_and_unbelieving_abandonment`; `broader_covenant-breaking_or_abuse_application`; `case_specific_underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 2:18–24; Deuteronomy 24:1–4; Malachi 2:13–16; Matthew 5:31–32 and 19:3–12; Mark 10:2–12; Luke 16:18; 1 Corinthians 7:10–16.
- **Decision logic:** Determine the scope of *porneia*, why Mark/Luke omit Matthew’s exception, whether Paul’s “not enslaved” permits divorce, and whether severe abuse is a form of abandonment or a separate inference from protection/justice texts.
- **Dependencies:** `ETH-01` must be separated from `ETH-02` remarriage; high views of ecclesial annulment authority change application.
- **Identity links:** Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, conservative Protestant, Anabaptist.


Remarriage after divorce

Question: When, if ever, may a divorced person marry another while the former spouse lives?

- **Question:** When, if ever, may a divorced person marry another while the former spouse lives?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `never_while_former_spouse_lives_unless_union_invalid`; `permitted_for_innocent_party_after_biblical_divorce`; `permitted_after_abandonment_or_irremediable_covenant_end`; `penitential_case_by_case`.
- **Text clusters:** Deuteronomy 24:1–4; Matthew 5:31–32; 19:3–12; Mark 10:11–12; Luke 16:18; Romans 7:1–3; 1 Corinthians 7:8–16, 39.
- **Decision logic:** Decide whether the exception modifies divorce only or also remarriage, whether “not enslaved” frees to remarry, and whether Jesus describes every subsequent union as ongoing adultery or its inception as adulterous.
- **Dependencies:** `ETH-01` strongly constrains this record; sacramental/annulment models create different option definitions.
- **Identity links:** Roman Catholic annulment practice, Eastern Orthodox economy, conservative Protestant traditions.


Headship and mutual submission in marriage

Question: Does Christian marriage include an enduring asymmetry of governing responsibility, or a fully mutual partnership without sex-based authority?

- **Question:** Does Christian marriage include an enduring asymmetry of governing responsibility, or a fully mutual partnership without sex-based authority?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `mutual_submission_without_unilateral_spousal_authority`; `husband_servant_headship_with_asymmetrical_final_responsibility`; `head_as_source_or_covenant_unity_without_governing_authority`; `broad_patriarchal_household_governance`; `underdetermined_or_mixed`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 1:26–28; 2:18–25; 3:16–19; Proverbs 31:10–31; 1 Corinthians 7:1–5 and 11:3, 8–12; Galatians 3:28; Ephesians 5:21–33; Colossians 3:18–19; 1 Peter 3:1–7.
- **Decision logic:** Determine whether Ephesians 5:21 grammatically governs every following household relation, what *kephalē* (“head”) contributes, whether creation order establishes authority or interdependence, and whether the husband’s Christlike self-giving includes a final governing responsibility. Distinguish descriptive ancient household form from the enduring marital ethic.
- **Dependencies:** `MARR-01=asymmetrical_headship -> GEN-01=male_eldership` (`raises`, moderate) but neither entails the other; `TRIN-03` analogies are disputed and must not be double-counted as textual evidence.
- **Identity links:** complementarian, patriarchal, egalitarian, traditional Catholic/Orthodox/Protestant marriage.


Same-sex sexual relationships

Question: Can a covenantal same-sex sexual union be morally faithful within biblical sexual ethics?

- **Question:** Can a covenantal same-sex sexual union be morally faithful within biblical sexual ethics?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `all_same_sex_sexual_acts_outside_biblical_marriage`; `texts_condemn_exploitative_idolatrous_or_excessive_forms_not_covenantal_unions`; `affirming_covenantal_same_sex_marriage`; `traditional_ethic_with_disputed_pastoral_categories`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 1:26–28 and 2:18–24; Genesis 19 with Ezekiel 16:49–50 and Jude 7; Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13; Matthew 19:4–6; Romans 1:18–32; 1 Corinthians 6:9–11; 1 Timothy 1:8–11.
- **Decision logic:** Determine the lexical scope of *malakoi* and *arsenokoitai*, whether Romans 1 addresses all same-sex relations or lust/idolatry/excess, how creation-order reasoning functions, and whether covenantal forms unknown or unaddressed in the ancient world change the moral category.
- **Dependencies:** `HERM-06=continuing_creation_and_moral_norms -> traditional (raises, strong)`; `AUTH-01` and theological anthropology also matter. Orientation, temptation, identity, civil law, pastoral inclusion, and sexual acts must remain distinct questions.
- **Identity links:** traditionalist, Side B/celibate gay Christian, affirming, mainline, evangelical.
- **Guardrail:** The affirming reading is rejected by most historical conservative confessions; include it for explicit comparison without implying equal support within the stated framework.


Embodied sex, gender identity, and intersex conditions

Question: How should embodied sex, social gender, internal gender identity, dysphoria, and atypical sexual development relate in Christian anthropology?

- **Question:** How should embodied sex, social gender, internal gender identity, dysphoria, and atypical sexual development relate in Christian anthropology?
- **Type:** multi_select
- **Options:** `male_and_female_are_created_embodied_sex_categories`; `rare_intersex_or_DSD_conditions_are_variations_requiring_case_specific_discernment`; `many_gendered_customs_and_nonmoral_roles_are_culturally_variable`; `internal_gender_identity_can_govern_social_recognition_despite_embodied_sex`; `medical_transition_can_be_morally_permissible`; `dysphoria_calls_for_compassion_without_reclassifying_embodied_sex`; `Scripture_leaves_some_modern_clinical_questions_underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 1:26–28 and 2:18–25; Deuteronomy 22:5; Isaiah 56:3–5; Matthew 19:4–12; Acts 8:26–39; Romans 8:18–25; 1 Corinthians 6:12–20 and 11:2–16; Galatians 3:28; Philippians 3:20–21.
- **Decision logic:** Ask whether “male and female” describes an exhaustive created bodily pattern, which clothing and role markers are cultural, and whether bodily integrity or internal identity should govern social-recognition or medical decisions. Biblical eunuch texts provide at most analogical evidence about altered, nonprocreative, or socially atypical status; they do not directly classify eunuchs as intersex/DSD cases. Keep medical diagnosis, names/pronouns, social roles, puberty suppression, hormones, and surgery as separate applications.
- **Dependencies:** Related to `ANTH-01` image of God, `MARR-01`, `GEN-01/03`, and `ETH-03`, but none supplies an automatic answer. Natural science and clinical evidence require distinct source channels.
- **Identity links:** traditional embodied-sex anthropology, gender-critical, affirming, pastoral-accommodation models.
- **Guardrail:** The override/transition option is rejected by most traditional conservative confessions; include it explicitly for comparison without treating pastoral compassion as agreement on ontology.


Contraception and procreative openness

Question: Must every marital sexual act remain open to procreation?

- **Question:** Must every marital sexual act remain open to procreation?
- **Type:** multi_select
- **Options:** `each_marital_act_must_remain_procreatively_open`; `nonabortifacient_contraception_can_be_permissible_with_responsible_motives`; `periodic_abstinence_or_natural_family_planning_can_be_permissible`; `procreative_openness_applies_to_marriage_as_a_whole_not_each_act`; `method_and_motive_require_case_specific_judgment`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 1:28; 2:24; 38:8–10; Psalm 127:3–5; Malachi 2:15; 1 Corinthians 7:2–5; 1 Timothy 5:8. No passage directly classifies modern contraceptive methods.
- **Decision logic:** Ask whether Onan is judged for contraception as such or refusal of levirate duty, whether procreation is an end of every act or of marriage generally, and how stewardship and mutual consent apply.
- **Dependencies:** Embryo-status questions constrain methods that may act after fertilization; `AUTH-01=tradition_authoritative` raises traditional natural-law conclusions.
- **Identity links:** Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox pastoral economy, Protestant.


Alcohol

Question: Does biblical wisdom require abstinence from beverage alcohol or permit moderate use?

- **Question:** Does biblical wisdom require abstinence from beverage alcohol or permit moderate use?
- **Type:** multi_select
- **Options:** `universal_total_abstinence_norm`; `moderate_use_morally_permitted_while_drunkenness_forbidden`; `contextual_abstinence_required_by_love_conscience_or_vocation`.
- **Text clusters:** Psalm 104:14–15; Proverbs 20:1 and 23:29–35; Isaiah 5:11; John 2:1–11; Romans 14:13–23; Ephesians 5:18; 1 Timothy 3:3, 8 and 5:23; Titus 2:3.
- **Decision logic:** Distinguish use from drunkenness, ask whether biblical “wine” was inherently nonalcoholic, and allow conscience/neighbor-love restrictions without universalizing them. The alcohol strength and ordinary dilution of ancient wine are evidence modifiers, not doctrinal options.
- **Dependencies:** Mostly practice and holiness traditions, not core doctrinal nodes.
- **Identity links:** temperance/Wesleyan/Baptist streams, sacramental traditions, Christian liberty.


War, force, and enemy love

Question: May Christians participate in lethal military or police force?

- **Question:** May Christians participate in lethal military or police force?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `Christian_pacifism_nonresistance`; `just_war_and_strictly_limited_force_permitted`; `policing_permitted_but_warfare_rejected`; `case_specific_or_just_peacemaking_hybrid`.
- **Text clusters:** Exodus 20:13; Matthew 5:38–48 and 26:51–54; Luke 3:14 and 22:35–38; John 18:36; Acts 10; Romans 12:14–21 and 13:1–7; 1 Peter 2:13–23; Revelation 13:10.
- **Decision logic:** Determine whether enemy-love commands prohibit all lethal force or govern personal retaliation, whether Romans 13 authorizes Christian participation or merely describes the state, and how soldiers’ conversions without recorded resignation function.
- **Dependencies:** `PUBLIC-01=two_kingdoms -> just_force (raises)`; `HERM-06` affects use of Old Testament warfare.
- **Identity links:** Anabaptist/Mennonite, Quaker, just-war Catholic/Reformed/Anglican, Lutheran two kingdoms.


Capital punishment

Question: Does civil government retain authority to execute murderers or other offenders?

- **Question:** Does civil government retain authority to execute murderers or other offenders?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `retained_and_sometimes_required_for_murder`; `permitted_in_principle_but_never_mandated_and_prudentially_abolishable`; `superseded_or_incompatible_with_new_covenant_ethic`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 9:5–6; Exodus 21; John 8:1–11 with textual-status caution; Romans 13:1–7; Acts 25:11; Matthew 5:38–48.
- **Decision logic:** Ask whether Genesis 9 is a universal creation covenant, what “sword” denotes in Romans 13, and whether mercy/turn-the-other-cheek governs state punishment.
- **Dependencies:** Coupled to public theology, law continuity, and pacifism but not entailed by any one.
- **Identity links:** Anabaptist, Catholic developments, Reformed/evangelical just-war traditions.


Tithing

Question: Are new-covenant Christians obligated to give ten percent?

- **Question:** Are new-covenant Christians obligated to give ten percent?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `binding_ten_percent_minimum`; `wisdom_baseline_not_legal_requirement`; `free_proportionate_generous_giving`; `church_or_clergy_tithe_model`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 14:18–20 and 28:20–22; Leviticus 27:30–33; Deuteronomy 14:22–29; Malachi 3:8–10; Matthew 23:23; 1 Corinthians 9:6–14 and 16:1–2; 2 Corinthians 8–9.
- **Decision logic:** Determine whether pre-Mosaic tithes establish creation norms, whether Jesus’ words address people under Mosaic law, and how apostolic proportionate/cheerful giving relates to a fixed percentage.
- **Dependencies:** `HERM-06=continuing_moral_law_or_theonomy -> binding_tithe (raises)`; church funding model affects application.
- **Identity links:** many evangelical/Pentecostal churches, free-church stewardship, sacramental parish systems.


Head coverings in gathered worship

Question: Does 1 Corinthians 11 require a physical head covering for women in worship today?

- **Question:** Does 1 Corinthians 11 require a physical head covering for women in worship today?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `universal_physical_covering`; `culturally_variable_symbol_of_enduring_sex_distinction`; `hair_itself_is_covering`; `passage_specific_underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** 1 Corinthians 11:2–16; Genesis 1–2; Numbers 5:18; possible Greco-Roman and Jewish background.
- **Decision logic:** Decide whether Paul grounds the practice in creation/angels or decorum, whether the final hair argument identifies or analogizes the covering, and what “custom” in verse 16 rejects.
- **Dependencies:** Correlated with complementarianism and plain-reading traditions but not entailed by them.
- **Identity links:** Anabaptist, Brethren, some Reformed/Pentecostal traditions, mainstream evangelical.


Beginning of individual human life and abortion

Question: At what point should the developing human be treated as a human neighbor with the ordinary protection owed to innocent life?

- **Question:** At what point should the developing human be treated as a human neighbor with the ordinary protection owed to innocent life?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `from_fertilization`; `from_implantation`; `from_formation_quickening_or_brain_development`; `from_viability_or_birth`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 1:26–27 and 9:6; Exodus 21:22–25; Job 3:3 and 10:8–12; Psalm 51:5 and 139:13–16; Jeremiah 1:5; Luke 1:15, 41–44; Galatians 1:15. Embryology is a separate evidence channel.
- **Decision logic:** Determine the grammar and injury referent of Exodus 21, whether prenatal personal pronouns and divine calling imply full moral status, and whether biblical texts distinguish biological life, ensoulment, and legal personhood. Uncertainty can itself support a precautionary conclusion.
- **Dependencies:** `ANTH-03=special_soul_creation` raises a timing question but does not answer it; contraception and reproductive-technology judgments depend on this node.
- **Identity links:** pro-life evangelical/Catholic/Orthodox, consistent-life ethic, abortion-permissive Christian ethics.


Euthanasia, assisted death, and refusing treatment

Question: May a Christian intentionally cause death to end suffering, and how does that differ from declining disproportionate treatment?

- **Question:** May a Christian intentionally cause death to end suffering, and how does that differ from declining disproportionate treatment?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `intentional_killing_never_permitted_but_burdensome_treatment_may_be_refused`; `physician_assistance_permitted_in_extreme_cases`; `aggressive_preservation_required_unless_death_immediate`; `case_specific_hybrid`.
- **Text clusters:** Exodus 20:13; 1 Samuel 31:1–6 and 2 Samuel 1:1–16; Job 1:20–22; Psalm 31:15; Proverbs 31:6–9; Matthew 27:34; Romans 14:7–9; Philippians 1:20–26. Medical proportionality is an ethical inference rather than an explicit biblical rule.
- **Decision logic:** Distinguish intending death from accepting death, analgesia with foreseen side effects from lethal intent, suicide from martyrdom, and ordinary care from extraordinary treatment.
- **Dependencies:** Human dignity, providence, suffering, and resurrection shape the prior; no single eschatological position entails a medical answer.
- **Identity links:** Catholic/Orthodox natural-law ethics, evangelical bioethics, some progressive Christian ethics.


Oaths and sworn testimony

Question: Do Jesus and James prohibit all oaths or only manipulative/casual swearing?

- **Question:** Do Jesus and James prohibit all oaths or only manipulative/casual swearing?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `all_formal_oaths_prohibited`; `solemn_truthful_public_oaths_permitted`; `oaths_permitted_only_under_authority_or_necessity`; `underdetermined`.
- **Text clusters:** Leviticus 19:12; Deuteronomy 6:13; Matthew 5:33–37 and 23:16–22; Matthew 26:63–64; 2 Corinthians 1:23; Hebrews 6:13–18; James 5:12; Revelation 10:5–6.
- **Decision logic:** Decide whether “do not swear at all” is absolute, hyperbolic intensification against evasive vows, or a rule for ordinary speech; weigh divine and apostolic oath-like appeals.
- **Dependencies:** `ETH-06=Anabaptist_nonresistance` often correlates with total oath refusal through a shared Sermon-on-the-Mount hermeneutic.
- **Identity links:** Anabaptist/Mennonite, Quaker, Reformed/Anglican/Lutheran permission.


Wealth, poverty, and prosperity teaching

Question: What material expectations and obligations ordinarily accompany faithful discipleship?

- **Question:** What material expectations and obligations ordinarily accompany faithful discipleship?
- **Type:** multi_select
- **Options:** `prosperity_as_normative_covenant_blessing`; `contentment_and_generosity_with_variable_providence`; `preferential_solidarity_and_voluntary_simplicity`; `communal_sharing_as_church_norm`; `ascetic_vocation_for_some`.
- **Text clusters:** Deuteronomy 8 and 28; Proverbs 3:9–10; Malachi 3:8–12; Matthew 6:19–34; 19:16–30; Luke 4:16–21; 6:20–26; 12:13–34; Acts 2:42–47 and 4:32–5:11; 2 Corinthians 8–9; Philippians 4:10–20; 1 Timothy 6:3–19; James 2 and 5.
- **Decision logic:** Ask which old-covenant material promises transfer directly, whether Acts describes required common ownership or radical voluntary generosity, and whether “hundredfold” promises are present material guarantees or kingdom/community blessings amid persecution.
- **Dependencies:** `HERM-01/HERM-06=strong_direct_continuity` can raise prosperity readings if typology and suffering texts are underweighted; `PUBLIC-02=integral_mission` raises corporate economic concern.
- **Identity links:** prosperity gospel, Pentecostal/charismatic (not synonymous), Anabaptist simplicity, monastic/ascetic, mainstream evangelical stewardship.
- **Guardrail:** A transactional guarantee that faithful giving secures wealth or healing conflicts with substantial New Testament counterevidence and should be given a low default within this framework.


Slavery texts and the scope of biblical abolition

Question: Do Scripture’s slavery regulations and household codes tolerate a temporary institution, regulate a permissible form, or contain principles that require abolition?

- **Question:** Do Scripture’s slavery regulations and household codes tolerate a temporary institution, regulate a permissible form, or contain principles that require abolition?
- **Type:** multi_select
- **Options:** `redemptive_trajectory_requires_abolition`; `some_ancient_servitude_was_temporarily_permitted_but_severely_bounded`; `ancient_forms_must_be_distinguished_from_modern_race_chattel_slavery`; `household_codes_are_pastoral_accommodation_not_timeless_ideal`; `kidnapping_race_chattel_and_person_ownership_are_intrinsically_condemned`.
- **Text clusters:** Exodus 21; Leviticus 25:39–55; Deuteronomy 15 and 23:15–16; Matthew 7:12; 20:25–28; 1 Corinthians 7:20–24; Galatians 3:28; Ephesians 6:5–9; Colossians 3:22–4:1; 1 Timothy 1:10 and 6:1–2; Philemon; Revelation 18:11–13.
- **Decision logic:** Distinguish Israelite debt service, foreign permanent slavery, Roman slavery, kidnapping, and modern race chattel slavery; ask whether apostolic nonrevolutionary instructions imply moral endorsement or seed a status-dissolving trajectory in union and brotherhood.
- **Dependencies:** This record is an important calibration test for hermeneutics later used in gender and sexuality debates; shared method should be modeled, but outcomes must not be forced to match.
- **Identity links:** abolitionist evangelical, proslavery historical readings, redemptive-movement hermeneutics, liberation theology.


Church and civil order

Question: What positive role should civil government have in relation to true religion and the church?

- **Question:** What positive role should civil government have in relation to true religion and the church?
- **Type:** multi_select
- **Options:** `institutional_church_state_separation`; `equal_religious_liberty_and_noncoercion`; `two_kingdoms_distinct_vocations`; `Christian_magistrate_support_without_ecclesial_control`; `confessional_establishment_or_theonomic_civil_norms`; `Anabaptist_contrast_society`; `public_law_may_draw_on_natural_law_or_creation_norms`.
- **Text clusters:** Psalm 2; Isaiah 2:2–4 and 49:23; Daniel 2 and 7; Matthew 22:15–22 and 28:18–20; John 18:36; Acts 5:29; Romans 13:1–7; 1 Timothy 2:1–4; 1 Peter 2:9–17; Revelation 13 and 17–18.
- **Decision logic:** Determine whether Old Testament kingship supplies a new-covenant civil model, what “not from this world” says about source versus scope, and whether nations as nations are discipled or people from nations are.
- **Dependencies:** `HERM-06=theonomic` and `ESCH=postmil` often raise confessional-state models; `ETH-06=pacifism` raises contrast-society models. These are correlations, not deductions.
- **Identity links:** Baptist religious liberty, Lutheran/Reformed two kingdoms, Christian nationalism, theonomy, Anabaptism, Catholic integralism.


Mission of the institutional church

Question: Is the church’s corporate mission narrowly Word/sacrament/discipleship, or does it include social transformation as a coordinate mandate?

- **Question:** Is the church’s corporate mission narrowly Word/sacrament/discipleship, or does it include social transformation as a coordinate mandate?
- **Type:** exclusive_with_hybrid
- **Options:** `great_commission_word_and_sacrament_priority`; `integral_mission_evangelism_and_justice`; `kingdom_transformation_or_cultural_mandate`; `institutional_church_narrow_individual_Christian_broad`; `hybrid`.
- **Text clusters:** Genesis 1:26–28; Isaiah 58 and 61; Micah 6:8; Matthew 5:13–16; 25:31–46; 28:18–20; Luke 4:16–21; Acts 2:42–47 and 6:1–7; Galatians 2:10 and 6:10; Ephesians 2:8–10; James 1:27.
- **Decision logic:** Distinguish what the church as institution must do from what Christians in their vocations must do; ask whether Jesus’ kingdom signs define the church’s continuing mandate and whether mercy ministry is constitutive or consequent.
- **Dependencies:** Public theology and eschatology shift emphases; do not infer political program directly from “kingdom.”
- **Identity links:** missional, integral mission, two kingdoms, social gospel (guardrail varies), evangelical.


Human constitution at death and resurrection

Question: Is a human person constituted by two distinguishable aspects, three distinguishable aspects, or an integrated psychosomatic unity whose biblical terms substantially overlap?

V. Salvation, grace, justification, and sanctification

**Type:** `untyped_do_not_normalize` pending an explicit exclusivity/multi-select curation pass.

- **Question:** Is a human person constituted by two distinguishable aspects, three distinguishable aspects, or an integrated psychosomatic unity whose biblical terms substantially overlap?
- **Option ANT-001.A — Dichotomy:** body and immaterial soul/spirit; “soul” and “spirit” substantially overlap.
- **Option ANT-001.B — Trichotomy:** body, soul, and spirit are meaningfully distinct constituents.
- **Option ANT-001.C — Holistic/conditional distinction:** Scripture can distinguish bodily and immaterial existence, but ordinarily speaks of the person as an integrated whole; component language should not become a precise metaphysical map.
- **Key texts:** Genesis 2:7; Ecclesiastes 12:7; Matthew 10:28; Luke 23:43,46; 1 Corinthians 15:35–54; 2 Corinthians 5:1–10; Philippians 1:21–24; 1 Thessalonians 5:23; Hebrews 4:12; Revelation 6:9–11.
- **Interpretive fork:** If 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews 4:12 enumerate ontologically distinct parts, raise B. If their lists are rhetorical descriptions of the whole person and “soul/spirit” overlap elsewhere, raise A or C. If the intermediate-state texts require conscious disembodied personal existence, reduce strongly materialist versions of C, but they do not by themselves distinguish A from B.
- **Upstream:** lexical semantics of `nephesh`, `ruach`, `psychē`, and `pneuma`; interpretation of the intermediate state.
- **Downstream:** accounts of regeneration, sanctification, death, and the image of God.
- **Entailments/incompatibilities:** Strict materialism conflicts with a reading of Luke 23:43 and Philippians 1:23 that locates conscious personal presence with Christ before resurrection. Dichotomy does not entail Platonism or contempt for the body.
- **Common correlations, not entailments:** Trichotomy correlates with some Pentecostal, Keswick, and dispensational writers; dichotomy with much Reformed theology; holistic language with many contemporary biblical theologians across traditions.
- **Boolean-like descriptors to soften:** “dichotomist,” “trichotomist,” “holist.”


Origin of each human soul

Question: Does God create each soul immediately, or do parents generate the whole human person under providence?

V. Salvation, grace, justification, and sanctification

**Type:** `untyped_do_not_normalize` pending an explicit exclusivity/multi-select curation pass.

- **Question:** Does God create each soul immediately, or do parents generate the whole human person under providence?
- **Option ANT-002.A — Creationism:** God directly creates each soul, which is united to the body.
- **Option ANT-002.B — Traducianism:** the immaterial as well as bodily life is propagated through parents.
- **Option ANT-002.C — Agnostic/whole-person generation:** Scripture affirms divine formation and human descent without specifying a mechanism.
- **Key texts:** Genesis 2:7; 5:3; Psalm 51:5; 139:13–16; Ecclesiastes 12:7; Isaiah 42:5; Zechariah 12:1; Acts 17:25–26; Hebrews 12:9.
- **Interpretive fork:** If “Father of spirits” and God “forms the spirit” describe immediate creation, raise A. If Adam’s descendants are generated in his likeness and sinful humanity is propagated as a whole, raise B. If both are ordinary providential descriptions rather than metaphysical mechanisms, raise C.
- **Upstream:** ANT-001; doctrine of providential concurrence.
- **Downstream:** ANT-003 and ANT-004 explanations of inherited corruption/guilt.
- **Entailments/incompatibilities:** Neither A nor B entails a particular theory of original guilt. A needs an explanation of corruption without God creating a sinful soul; B needs an account that preserves God as creator and avoids materializing the soul.
- **Common correlations, not entailments:** Creationism is common in Reformed scholastic and Roman Catholic accounts; traducianism in some Lutheran and evangelical accounts.
- **Boolean-like descriptors to soften:** “creationist” here must be disambiguated from creation-age debates; “traducian.”


Adamic headship and solidarity

Question: Why does Adam’s sin affect his descendants?

V. Salvation, grace, justification, and sanctification

**Type:** `untyped_do_not_normalize` pending an explicit exclusivity/multi-select curation pass.

- **Question:** Why does Adam’s sin affect his descendants?
- **Option ANT-003.A — Federal/representative headship:** Adam acted as covenant representative; his trespass is judicially counted to those he represented.
- **Option ANT-003.B — Natural/seminal headship:** humanity participated in Adam through organic descent.
- **Option ANT-003.C — Corporate solidarity:** Adam is the fountain and representative pattern of humanity, without a separately specified imputation mechanism.
- **Option ANT-003.D — Primarily imitation plus inherited mortality/corruption:** Adam introduces a ruined condition which every person ratifies by personal sin.
- **Key texts:** Genesis 2:15–17; 3:1–24; 5:1–3; Romans 5:12–21; 1 Corinthians 15:21–22,45–49; Hebrews 7:9–10; Hosea 6:7 (translation disputed).
- **Interpretive fork:** In Romans 5, decide what `because all sinned` means: each personally sinned, all sinned in Adam, or all sin because death/corruption spread. Then decide whether the Adam–Christ parallel is chiefly forensic representation, causal solidarity, or both. A tight symmetrical imputation reading raises A; a genealogical-participation reading raises B; deliberate under-specification raises C.
- **Upstream:** ANT-001, ANT-002; covenant-of-works judgment at LAW-002.
- **Downstream:** ANT-004, ANT-005, ATN-006, JUS-002.
- **Entailments/incompatibilities:** A and B can be combined. D becomes incompatible with A only if D denies any representative counting of Adam’s act.
- **Common correlations, not entailments:** Federal headship correlates with covenantal Reformed theology; natural headship with some Augustinian and Lutheran accounts; corporate-solidarity language spans evangelical traditions.
- **Boolean-like descriptors to soften:** “federalist,” “realist,” “Augustinian,” “Pelagian” (the last should not be inferred merely from rejecting inherited guilt).


Inherited guilt

Question: Are Adam’s descendants born judicially guilty of Adam’s first sin, or born corrupted and mortal but guilty only upon personal sin?

V. Salvation, grace, justification, and sanctification

**Type:** `untyped_do_not_normalize` pending an explicit exclusivity/multi-select curation pass.

- **Question:** Are Adam’s descendants born judicially guilty of Adam’s first sin, or born corrupted and mortal but guilty only upon personal sin?
- **Option ANT-004.A — Immediate imputed guilt:** Adam’s guilt is directly counted to every natural descendant.
- **Option ANT-004.B — Mediate imputation:** guilt attaches through the inherited corrupt nature.
- **Option ANT-004.C — Ancestral corruption/mortality without inherited personal culpability:** all inherit death and a sinful condition; culpability attaches to personal sin.
- **Option ANT-004.D — Accountability-qualified inherited condition:** all need Christ from conception, while Scripture leaves the precise culpability of those incapable of moral response unresolved.
- **Key texts:** Psalm 51:5; 58:3; Romans 5:12–19; 1 Corinthians 15:22; Ephesians 2:1–3; Deuteronomy 24:16; Ezekiel 18:1–23; Jeremiah 31:29–30.
- **Interpretive fork:** If Romans 5:18–19 describes condemnation through Adam’s one act in the same representational sense that Christ’s obedience grounds justification, raise A. If condemnation presupposes participation through an inherited corrupt nature, raise B. If Ezekiel 18 controls the definition of personal guilt and Romans 5 concerns mortality/corruption and universal personal sin, raise C. D separates universal need for atonement from confident claims about infant culpability.
- **Upstream:** ANT-003; grammatical reading of Romans 5:12; LAW-002.
- **Downstream:** ANT-005, ANT-008, BAP-002, ATN-004.
- **Entailments/incompatibilities:** A and C are contradictory if “guilt” is held constant. Universal corruption does not entail immediate imputed guilt. Infant salvation does not settle this node.
- **Common correlations, not entailments:** A with confessional Reformed and many Baptists; versions of B with Augustinian traditions; C with Eastern Orthodox, some Anabaptist, and some Wesleyan accounts.
- **Boolean-like descriptors to soften:** “original sin,” “Augustinian,” “ancestral sin,” “Pelagian.” These terms frequently conflate guilt, corruption, mortality, and inability.


Extent of corruption and moral inability

Question: What can fallen persons do toward saving faith apart from special divine grace?

V. Salvation, grace, justification, and sanctification

**Type:** `untyped_do_not_normalize` pending an explicit exclusivity/multi-select curation pass.

- **Question:** What can fallen persons do toward saving faith apart from special divine grace?
- **Option ANT-005.A — Total moral inability:** every faculty is corrupted; no one can make the morally good turn to Christ without effectual renewing grace.
- **Option ANT-005.B — Total inability answered by universally enabling grace:** no one can respond unaided, but prevenient grace restores a real capacity to accept or resist.
- **Option ANT-005.C — Severe corruption without total inability:** sinners need initiating/assisting grace but retain some native capacity to cooperate.
- **Option ANT-005.D — Natural ability with moral culpability:** sinners possess the relevant faculties but invariably refuse apart from grace; “cannot” describes settled moral unwillingness rather than missing capacity.
- **Key texts:** Genesis 6:5; 8:21; Deuteronomy 30:11–20; Jeremiah 13:23; 17:9; John 3:19–21; 6:44,65; 8:34–36; Romans 3:9–18; 8:5–8; 1 Corinthians 2:14; Ephesians 2:1–5; Acts 7:51.
- **Interpretive fork:** If death, slavery, inability to submit, and inability to come entail incapacity to produce faith, raise A or B. Then ask whether Scripture teaches a universal enabling grace (ANT-007). If commands imply only responsibility, not ability, they do not lower A. If commands and resisted invitations imply restored or retained alternative possibility, raise B/C/D.
- **Upstream:** ANT-004; ANT-006 definition of freedom; ANT-007.
- **Downstream:** CONV-001, CONV-002, ELEC-002, CALL-001, CALL-002.
- **Entailments/incompatibilities:** B entails both total unaided inability and some universal enabling grace. A alone does not entail unconditional election; Lutheran monergism is a counterexample to a full Calvinist package.
- **Common correlations, not entailments:** A with Reformed and Lutheran monergism; B with Wesleyan-Arminianism; C with many synergistic sacramental traditions.
- **Boolean-like descriptors to soften:** “total depravity,” “semi-Pelagian,” “free will.” Total depravity concerns extent, not maximum intensity of wickedness.


Human freedom in salvation

Question: What kind of freedom is required for responsibility and a genuine response to grace?

V. Salvation, grace, justification, and sanctification

**Type:** `untyped_do_not_normalize` pending an explicit exclusivity/multi-select curation pass.

- **Question:** What kind of freedom is required for responsibility and a genuine response to grace?
- **Option ANT-006.A — Compatibilist freedom:** a person acts freely when acting according to desires/reasons without external coercion, even if the action is certainly ordered within God’s decree.
- **Option ANT-006.B — Libertarian freedom:** for at least some choices, with all prior conditions fixed, the agent genuinely could choose otherwise and is the decisive creaturely source.
- **Option ANT-006.C — Source/incompatibilist freedom without simple contrary choice:** responsibility rests in agent causation or ownership; “could have done otherwise” is not the sole criterion.
- **Option ANT-006.D — Mystery/dual affirmation:** Scripture affirms exhaustive sovereignty and meaningful responsibility without furnishing a full metaphysical model.
- **Key texts:** Genesis 50:20; Deuteronomy 30:19; Joshua 24:15; Proverbs 16:1,9,33; Isaiah 10:5–15; Matthew 23:37; John 6:37,44; Acts 2:23; 4:27–28; Romans 8:7–8; 9:14–24; Philippians 2:12–13; James 1:13–17.
- **Interpretive fork:** If one event can be intentionally ordered by God and voluntarily intended by humans (Genesis 50; Acts 2/4), raise A or D. If invitations, laments, and blame presuppose categorical alternative possibility, raise B/C. Decide whether biblical “choice” language specifies a metaphysic or simply identifies responsible agency.
- **Upstream:** PROV-001, PROV-002; definition of causation and moral responsibility.
- **Downstream:** ANT-005, ELEC-002, CALL-002, CONV-001.
- **Entailments/incompatibilities:** Strict exhaustive determinism is incompatible with B as defined. Compatibilism does not entail that God is morally blameworthy for evil; that depends on PROV-003.
- **Common correlations, not entailments:** A with much Reformed theology; B with Arminian, Wesleyan, Molinist, and many Baptist thinkers; D with confessional Lutherans and many non-systematic evangelicals.
- **Boolean-like descriptors to soften:** “free-will Christian,” “determinist,” “compatibilist,” “libertarian.”


Prevenient and universally enabling grace

Question: Does God grant every hearer or every human enough prior grace to make a genuinely resistible saving response possible?

V. Salvation, grace, justification, and sanctification

**Type:** `untyped_do_not_normalize` pending an explicit exclusivity/multi-select curation pass.

- **Question:** Does God grant every hearer or every human enough prior grace to make a genuinely resistible saving response possible?
- **Option ANT-007.A — Universal prevenient grace:** Christ’s work and/or the Spirit restores response-ability broadly to all.
- **Option ANT-007.B — Hearer-focused enabling grace:** sufficient enabling accompanies the gospel call, without a claim that every person at every time has equal opportunity.
- **Option ANT-007.C — Common grace but not restored saving ability:** God restrains sin, gives gifts, and renders people accountable, but saving ability comes only with effectual calling.
- **Option ANT-007.D — Sacramental/Word-mediated sufficient grace:** God objectively offers enabling grace through appointed means which can be resisted.
- **Key texts:** Genesis 6:3; John 1:9; 6:44; 12:32; 16:8–11; Acts 7:51; 17:26–30; Romans 1:18–32; 2:4; Titus 2:11; 1 Timothy 2:4–6; 2 Peter 3:9.
- **Interpretive fork:** Determine whether “draw all,” “grace ... to all,” and universal divine saving desire describe every individual, all peoples, or gospel expansion. Then ask whether drawing merely invites/convicts or restores libertarian capacity. Resisted Spirit texts raise B/D only if they concern saving grace in the same sense as effectual call.
- **Upstream:** ANT-005, ANT-006; ATN-004; CALL-001.
- **Downstream:** ELEC-002, CALL-002, CONV-001, CONV-002.
- **Entailments/incompatibilities:** A/B are incompatible with C only on the narrow proposition “grace restores a saving ability universally/to every hearer.” Universal atonement does not entail universal prevenient grace.
- **Common correlations, not entailments:** A with Wesleyan-Arminianism; B with some classical Arminians and provisionist Baptists; C with Reformed theology; D with confessional Lutheran monergism operating through resistible means of grace and with some other sacramental accounts. Lutheran resistance is not a positive co-cause of faith.
- **Boolean-like descriptors to soften:** “Arminian,” “provisionist,” “monergist,” “prevenient grace.”


Infants, diminished capacity, and moral accountability

Question: On what basis may there be hope for the salvation of infants and people never capable of ordinary profession?

V. Salvation, grace, justification, and sanctification

**Type:** `untyped_do_not_normalize` pending an explicit exclusivity/multi-select curation pass.

- **Question:** On what basis may there be hope for the salvation of infants and people never capable of ordinary profession?
- **Option ANT-008.A — Elect-infants agnosticism:** God certainly saves those infants whom he elects, while Scripture does not disclose the extent.
- **Option ANT-008.B — Universal infant salvation through Christ:** all who die without moral capacity are graciously saved by Christ.
- **Option ANT-008.C — Covenant-child presumption:** children of believers have a distinctive covenant promise/status; claims about others remain more guarded.
- **Option ANT-008.D — Baptismal incorporation with extraordinary divine freedom:** ordinarily God grants new birth through baptism, yet is not bound by the sacrament.
- **Option ANT-008.E — Age/state of accountability:** inherited effects are real, but personal condemnation attaches when a person becomes morally accountable and sins knowingly.
- **Key texts:** Genesis 17:7; Deuteronomy 1:39; 2 Samuel 12:22–23; Isaiah 7:15–16; Jonah 4:11; Matthew 18:1–14; 19:13–15; Mark 10:13–16; Romans 5:12–21; 7:9; 1 Corinthians 7:14; Acts 2:39.
- **Interpretive fork:** Decide whether kingdom-reception texts concern exemplary humility, actual salvific belonging, or both. Decide whether David’s “I shall go to him” expresses reunion or merely death. Determine whether covenant-child holiness in 1 Corinthians 7 is salvific, ecclesial, or relational. Combine with the meaning of inherited guilt rather than treating one tender passage as an independent proof.
- **Upstream:** ANT-004, ELEC-001/002, BAP-001/002, NCV-001.
- **Downstream:** pastoral assurance, baptism practice, disability theology.
- **Entailments/incompatibilities:** B conflicts with any claim that some infants are finally condemned. Paedobaptism neither entails D nor guarantees universal salvation of baptized infants.
- **Common correlations, not entailments:** A with Westminster/Reformed caution; B with many modern Baptists and evangelicals; C with covenantal paedobaptists; D with Lutheran, Catholic, and Orthodox sacramental accounts; E with Wesleyan, Anabaptist, and many Baptist traditions.
- **Boolean-like descriptors to soften:** “age of accountability,” “covenant child,” “infant salvation.”


Divine foreknowledge and counterfactual knowledge

Question: What is the logical basis and scope of God’s knowledge of future free acts?

V. Salvation, grace, justification, and sanctification

**Type:** `untyped_do_not_normalize` pending an explicit exclusivity/multi-select curation pass.

- **Question:** What is the logical basis and scope of God’s knowledge of future free acts?
- **Option PROV-001.A — Classical exhaustive foreknowledge grounded in decree/simple knowledge:** God infallibly knows all actual future events; his knowing is not passive learning from creation.
- **Option PROV-001.B — Simple foreknowledge of libertarian acts:** God infallibly knows the actual future, including undetermined creaturely choices, without that knowledge determining them.
- **Option PROV-001.C — Middle knowledge/Molinism:** before decreeing a world, God knows what every possible free creature would do in every feasible circumstance.
- **Option PROV-001.D — Open future:** God knows all possibilities exhaustively, but some future libertarian acts do not yet exist as definite truths to be known.
- **Key texts:** 1 Samuel 23:10–13; Psalm 139:1–16; Isaiah 40–48, especially 46:9–11; Jeremiah 18:1–11; Matthew 11:20–24; 24:36; Acts 2:23; Romans 8:29; 1 Peter 1:1–2,20; passages where God “regrets” or tests (Genesis 6:6; 22:12; Exodus 32:7–14).
- **Interpretive fork:** If predictive prophecy and God’s declared end from the beginning require a single exhaustively definite future, reduce D. If counterfactual statements (1 Samuel 23; Matthew 11) report truths about undetermined creaturely choices prior to decree, raise C. If regret/testing texts are accommodated or anthropomorphic, retain A–C; if they disclose genuine acquisition of knowledge, raise D.
- **Upstream:** doctrine of divine eternity, simplicity, immutability; hermeneutics of anthropomorphic language.
- **Downstream:** PROV-002, ANT-006, ELEC-002, prayer/providence models.
- **Entailments/incompatibilities:** D is incompatible with exhaustive definite foreknowledge of every future choice. C entails creaturely counterfactual truths logically prior to God’s creative decree, not that creatures exist before it.
- **Common correlations, not entailments:** A with Reformed and much classical theology; B with classical Arminianism; C with Molinists across Catholic and Protestant settings; D with open theism and is a confessional boundary issue in many conservative denominations.
- **Boolean-like descriptors to soften:** “Calvinist,” “Arminian,” “Molinist,” “open theist,” “classical theist.”


Scope of divine determination

Question: Does God’s eternal purpose render every event certain, or does it establish a world containing some non-determined creaturely outcomes?

V. Salvation, grace, justification, and sanctification

**Type:** `untyped_do_not_normalize` pending an explicit exclusivity/multi-select curation pass.

- **Question:** Does God’s eternal purpose render every event certain, or does it establish a world containing some non-determined creaturely outcomes?
- **Option PROV-002.A — Exhaustive definite decree:** whatsoever occurs is included in God’s providential decree, with primary/secondary causes distinguished.
- **Option PROV-002.B — Meticulous providence through middle knowledge:** God selects a feasible world whose libertarian acts he does not cause but whose complete history he knowingly actualizes.
- **Option PROV-002.C — Sovereign permission with some open creaturely determination:** God fixes his redemptive ends and many means while creatures settle some outcomes.
- **Option PROV-002.D — Scriptural dual affirmation without mechanism:** all events fall under providence and humans act responsibly; Scripture does not reveal the modal relation.
- **Key texts:** Genesis 45:5–8; 50:20; Job 1–2; Proverbs 16:1,9,33; 19:21; 21:1; Isaiah 10:5–19; 46:9–11; Lamentations 3:37–38; Amos 3:6; Ephesians 1:11; Acts 2:23; 4:27–28; James 4:13–16.
- **Interpretive fork:** If “works all things according to the counsel of his will” and the cross texts specify an exhaustive determining counsel, raise A. If they establish comprehensive governance but leave causal modality open, B or D remain. If conditional prophecy and frustrated intentions describe genuinely unsettled outcomes, raise C.
- **Upstream:** PROV-001, ANT-006.
- **Downstream:** PROV-003, ELEC-002, CALL-002, prayer and suffering.
- **Entailments/incompatibilities:** A and C conflict only if C explicitly denies that every event was rendered certain by decree. A does not entail divine moral agency identical to creaturely agency.
- **Common correlations, not entailments:** A with Reformed confessions; B with Molinism; C with many Arminian and open models; D with Lutherans and many evangelicals wary of speculation.
- **Boolean-like descriptors to soften:** “meticulous providence,” “determinism,” “risk,” “permission.”


God’s relation to sinful acts

Question: How can the same event be within God’s purpose and still be creaturely evil?

V. Salvation, grace, justification, and sanctification

**Type:** `untyped_do_not_normalize` pending an explicit exclusivity/multi-select curation pass.

- **Question:** How can the same event be within God’s purpose and still be creaturely evil?
- **Option PROV-003.A — Asymmetric concurrence:** God ordains/sustains the event as a righteous first cause while creatures produce its sinful defect from corrupt intentions.
- **Option PROV-003.B — Permission plus governance:** God permits rather than positively determines the sinful choice, then limits and redirects it.
- **Option PROV-003.C — Middle-knowledge permission:** God actualizes a world knowing the free evil that would occur and incorporates it into providence.
- **Option PROV-003.D — Greater-good/dual-intention description without causal resolution:** Scripture reveals opposed intentions in one event but not the metaphysical mechanism.
- **Key texts:** Genesis 50:20; Job 1:6–22; 2 Samuel 24:1 with 1 Chronicles 21:1; Isaiah 10:5–19; Habakkuk 1–2; Acts 2:23; 4:27–28; Romans 9:14–24; James 1:13–17.
- **Interpretive fork:** If Genesis 50 and the cross assign intentional divine purpose and evil human purpose to the numerically same act, reject models that make the event wholly outside providence. Decide whether “ordain” describes causal concurrence, permission, world-selection, or outcome-governance. James 1 blocks any account in which God tempts from evil desire.
- **Upstream:** PROV-001, PROV-002, ANT-006.
- **Downstream:** theodicy, assurance, prayer, ELEC-004.
- **Entailments/incompatibilities:** All options must distinguish divine holiness from sinful creaturely intention within this framework. B and C may overlap. A is incompatible with a definition of permission as complete absence of divine ordination, but not with “permission” as an asymmetric mode of ordaining.
- **Common correlations, not entailments:** A with Augustinian/Reformed accounts; B with Arminian and many Baptist accounts; C with Molinism; D across traditions.
- **Boolean-like descriptors to soften:** “author of sin,” “permission,” “ordination,” “determinist.”


Referent of election “in Christ”

Question: Is saving election primarily God’s choice of particular persons, his choice of Christ and the covenant people as a corporate body, or both at different levels?

V. Salvation, grace, justification, and sanctification

**Type:** `untyped_do_not_normalize` pending an explicit exclusivity/multi-select curation pass.

- **Question:** Is saving election primarily God’s choice of particular persons, his choice of Christ and the covenant people as a corporate body, or both at different levels?
- **Option ELEC-001.A — Individual election:** before creation God chose particular persons to be united to Christ and saved.
- **Option ELEC-001.B — Corporate election with conditional personal participation:** Christ is the chosen One and the church is chosen in him; individuals share election through faith-union.
- **Option ELEC-001.C — Corporate election that includes divinely selected members:** the people is a corporate object, yet God also chooses which individuals come to belong.
- **Option ELEC-001.D — Primarily vocational/historical election in disputed texts:** some election passages concern service, covenant role, or historical privilege rather than final salvation.
- **Key texts:** Genesis 12:1–3; Exodus 19:4–6; Deuteronomy 7:6–8; Isaiah 42:1; Matthew 22:14; John 6:37–45; 15:16; Acts 13:48; Romans 8:28–30; 9–11; 1 Corinthians 1:26–31; Ephesians 1:3–14; 2 Thessalonians 2:13–14; 1 Peter 1:1–2; 2:4–10.
- **Interpretive fork:** In Ephesians 1, decide whether “us” identifies previously selected persons placed into Christ, or the corporate people whose status is determined in the Chosen One. In Romans 8 and Acts 13, decide whether the sequence and appointment refer to specific persons. In Romans 9–11, separate election to historical vocation from election to mercy before exporting conclusions to every passage.
- **Upstream:** covenant/union hermeneutic at CONV-005; Israel/church relation at LAW-007.
- **Downstream:** ELEC-002/003/004, CALL-001, PER-001.
- **Entailments/incompatibilities:** B conflicts with A only if B denies any divine selection of individuals for membership. C can absorb much of the evidence claimed by both. Corporate language does not entail conditional election.
- **Common correlations, not entailments:** A with Reformed, Lutheran, and some Baptist theology; B with corporate-election Arminians; C with many mediating evangelical accounts.
- **Boolean-like descriptors to soften:** “elect,” “chosen,” “corporate election,” “Calvinist.”


Basis and conditionality of saving election

Question: Is God’s choice unto salvation conditioned on foreseen faith/perseverance, or is faith a result of an unconditional choice?

V. Salvation, grace, justification, and sanctification

**Type:** `untyped_do_not_normalize` pending an explicit exclusivity/multi-select curation pass.

- **Question:** Is God’s choice unto salvation conditioned on foreseen faith/perseverance, or is faith a result of an unconditional choice?
- **Option ELEC-002.A — Unconditional election:** God chooses particular sinners from mercy, not because he foresees their faith, works, or superior response.
- **Option ELEC-002.B — Conditional individual election:** God chooses those whom he foreknows will freely respond to grace and/or persevere in faith.
- **Option ELEC-002.C — Conditional corporate participation:** God unconditionally chooses Christ and the saving community; an individual’s elected status is conditioned on union with Christ by faith.
- **Option ELEC-002.D — Middle-knowledge election:** God chooses a world and redemptive order in which he knows which persons would freely respond under the graces/circumstances supplied.
- **Key texts:** Deuteronomy 7:6–8; Matthew 11:25–27; John 6:37–45,65; Acts 13:48; Romans 8:28–30; 9:6–24; 11:5–7; Ephesians 1:3–14; 2:8–10; 2 Timothy 1:9; 2 Thessalonians 2:13–14; 1 Peter 1:1–2.
- **Interpretive fork:** Decide whether “foreknow” means fore-love/relational choice, foresight of response, or knowledge of persons without specifying causal order. In Romans 9, decide whether the decisive contrast concerns individual salvation, historical covenant vocation, or both. In 2 Thessalonians 2:13, decide whether “through sanctification and belief” states the means/effect or the foreseen condition of choosing.
- **Upstream:** PROV-001/002, ANT-005/006/007, ELEC-001.
- **Downstream:** CALL-001/002, CONV-001/002, PER-001, ATN-004.
- **Entailments/incompatibilities:** A and B are contradictory on the stipulated basis of election. A does not entail equal ultimacy of election and reprobation. B does not entail that faith merits salvation.
- **Common correlations, not entailments:** A with Reformed, Lutheran, and some Baptist traditions; B with classical Arminianism; C with corporate-election Arminianism; D with Molinism.
- **Boolean-like descriptors to soften:** “unconditional election,” “foreseen faith,” “Arminian,” “Calvinist.”


Election to salvation, service, or covenant privilege

Question: When a passage says “chosen,” what is the object or purpose of the choice?

V. Salvation, grace, justification, and sanctification

**Type:** `untyped_do_not_normalize` pending an explicit exclusivity/multi-select curation pass.

- **Question:** When a passage says “chosen,” what is the object or purpose of the choice?
- **Option ELEC-003.A — Final-salvation election:** choice unto effectual calling, justification, holiness, perseverance, and glory.
- **Option ELEC-003.B — Vocation/service election:** choice for a role in redemptive history, which may include people not finally saved.
- **Option ELEC-003.C — Corporate covenant privilege:** choice into an externally administered people that contains both faithful and unfaithful members.
- **Option ELEC-003.D — Layered election:** the same passage or canonical pattern may include historical, corporate, and saving purposes without collapsing them.
- **Key texts:** Genesis 12:1–3; Deuteronomy 7:6–11; Isaiah 41:8–9; 44:1–2; 45:1–7; Matthew 22:14; John 6:70–71; 13:18; 15:16; Romans 9–11; 1 Corinthians 1:26–31; Ephesians 1:4–5; 1 Peter 2:9–10.
- **Interpretive fork:** Ask whether the chosen group/person is promised final salvation, assigned an office, granted covenant privileges, or called to holiness. Judas and unbelieving Israel show that some biblical election is not itself final-salvation election; Romans 8:29–30 shows a form tightly connected to glory.
- **Upstream:** lexical/contextual analysis; ELEC-001; LAW-007.
- **Downstream:** ELEC-002/004, PER-002, NCV-001.
- **Entailments/incompatibilities:** A–C are not globally exclusive; they are passage-level classifications. It is invalid to infer from one vocational-election text that no text teaches saving election, or vice versa.
- **Common correlations, not entailments:** Reformed readings often distinguish common covenant election from saving election; Arminian readings more often foreground corporate/vocational categories in Romans 9.
- **Boolean-like descriptors to soften:** “chosen people,” “elect nation,” “elect individual.”


Reprobation and the decree concerning the lost

Question: Is the non-election/condemnation of the lost symmetrical with election, asymmetrical, conditional on foreseen unbelief, or left largely unrevealed?

V. Salvation, grace, justification, and sanctification

**Type:** `untyped_do_not_normalize` pending an explicit exclusivity/multi-select curation pass.

- **Question:** Is the non-election/condemnation of the lost symmetrical with election, asymmetrical, conditional on foreseen unbelief, or left largely unrevealed?
- **Option ELEC-004.A — Asymmetrical single predestination:** God positively chooses and supplies grace to the elect; he passes over others and condemns them for their sins.
- **Option ELEC-004.B — Symmetrical double predestination:** God positively decrees both election to life and reprobation to condemnation, while creaturely guilt remains real.
- **Option ELEC-004.C — Conditional reprobation:** condemnation is decreed/foreknown for those who persist freely in unbelief; no one is passed over without genuinely sufficient grace.
- **Option ELEC-004.D — Corporate/historical hardening:** primary “vessels” texts concern corporate roles or judicial hardening in history, not an antecedent decree of individual damnation.
- **Option ELEC-004.E — Restrained agnosticism:** affirm election and just condemnation but avoid a detailed hidden-decree account.
- **Key texts:** Exodus 4–14; Proverbs 16:4; Matthew 11:25–27; 25:41; John 12:37–41; Romans 9:17–24; 11:7–32; 1 Peter 2:8; Jude 4; Ezekiel 18:23; 33:11; 1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9.
- **Interpretive fork:** Determine whether “prepared for destruction” is passive/reflexive or a divine action contrasted with God’s active preparation for glory. Ask whether Pharaoh’s hardening is unconditional, judicial after self-hardening, or a corporate-historical instrument. Universal saving-desire texts influence whether non-election is lack of intended provision or resisted mercy.
- **Upstream:** PROV-003, ELEC-001/002, CALL-002, ANT-006.
- **Downstream:** doctrines of divine goodness, assurance, evangelism.
- **Entailments/incompatibilities:** B and C conflict on an unconditional positive decree of reprobation. A is not identical to B. Belief in final punishment does not entail any one option here.
- **Common correlations, not entailments:** A with mainstream confessional Reformed accounts; stronger B with some high Calvinist accounts; C with Arminian/Wesleyan and many Lutheran formulations; D with corporate-election readings.
- **Boolean-like descriptors to soften:** “double predestinarian,” “reprobate,” “high Calvinist.”