Word.ws English Dictionary

ergism

ergism noun: the belief that good works are necessary for salvation.

Noun

ergism (uncountable)

  1. The belief that good works are necessary for salvation.
    • Faith without works is dogma-righteousness, orthodoxism. Works without the foundation of faith are work-righteousness, ergism.1867, Johann Peter Lange, Philip Schaff, A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures
    • Both enthusiasm and “ergism" are sheer illusion. Neither one is found in pure Christianity.1900, The American Journal of Theology - Volume 4, Issue 1, page 146

Origin of ergism

From ergo- (“work”) + -ism.

Questions about ergism

What does ergism mean?
Ergism means the belief that good works are necessary for salvation.
What part of speech is ergism?
Ergism is a noun.

Words near ergism in the dictionary

  1. erged
  2. ergh
  3. Ergilian
  4. ergine
  5. erging
  6. ergism
  7. Ergle
  8. Ergles
  9. ergmeter
  10. ergmeters
  11. ergo

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ergism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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