ABSTRACT
Marian Catholics and Protestants claimed Christ and his redemption exclusively as the centre of their theology and spirituality. Marian Catholic christology not only emphasized the redemptive significance of Christ's death, a commonplace of Protestant doctrines, but also of his incarnation and risen life, a feature shared with their medieval precursors and continental contemporaries. Soteriology, or the doctrine of how Christ saves or justifies humanity, was the central controversy for the magisterial reformers and one of the first dealt with by the Council of Trent. Along with the nature of Christ's eucharistic presence, the debate on how Christians were united with Christ in this mortal life and eternally in the next caused enormous shifts in how Christians in England perceived their relationship with God. Marian theologians continually insisted upon human freedom, in contrast to Protestant theologians, who reduced human freedom to underline God's freedom in the gift of grace to sinful humanity.
