Of the Father of Spirits

All sixteen families. "Teaches it" means a church of the family makes the claim in its own adopted text (C4(a)(i)) and none officially teaches otherwise. "No common position" means no church in the family has adopted a text either way, or its texts speak of something other than what the teaching means. "Being confirmed" means a candidate text's adoption or wording is not yet shown; it is not counted.

Disclosures on particular cells:

• Anglican (B2(f)): the deciding text is a line of the Episcopal Church's authorised burial rite. It is confirmed in a second edition (Wikisource). If that edition were refused as independent, the cell would be "being confirmed" and the count would be six.
• Methodist: the deciding text is John Wesley's Sermons, which the Methodist churches adopted as a doctrinal standard (United Methodist Church, Plan of Union, ¶104). A sermon standard is the Methodist form of an adopted text.
• Jehovah's Witnesses: no common position, read in their own usage (AOID2-SOUL-SPIRIT-REFERENT). The reading rests on Governing Body–approved publications from a single publisher (B4), under the interim footing (AOID2-JW-FOOTING).
• Adventist: no common position, borderline. Fundamental Belief 7, read with its voted proofs, speaks of dependence on God for life and breath, not of the spirit's origin (C4(a)(i)).
• Cells still being confirmed, none able to bring the total to thirteen: Eastern Orthodox (Q-A2-F1-EO: a current standard of a named Orthodox church, such as a catechism approved by its synod or an official teaching statement, on God as the source of the human spirit; AOID2-FOS-EO-MOGILA-CURRENCY, 11 Oct 2026); Anabaptist (Q-A2-F1-AN: the English text of Riedemann, 1999 edition, and a ruling on the Hutterite adoption footing and on whether a statement about "man" generally makes the claim); Oriental Orthodox (Q-A2-F1-OO: the Ge'ez text or a second edition of the Ethiopian Anaphora of the Three Hundred, or a burial-rite text); Church of the East (Q-A2-F1-CE: an act of the Holy Synod or the Patriarch approving the 2006 or 2020 Catechism, or a burial-order or Qurbana line confirmed in a second edition or in Syriac). Left for Stage 2.

Sources for the table: WoP_AOID2_Stage1_A02_Scoring_Report_20261002.md (CODE-AOID2-06), WoP_AOID2_Stage1_A02_Settlement_Report_20261003.md (CODE-AOID2-07) and WoP_AOID2_Stage1_A02_Closeout_Report_20261003.md (CODE-AOID2-08, section 5.1, the final table), all in wop-scratch. The rows reflect the rulings of 2 and 3 Oct 2026 (AOID2-FLOOR-SUBSTANCE as amended by AOID2-SILENCE-NOT-DISAGREEMENT; AOID2-LITURGY-EDITION; AOID2-A2F1-FLOOR), not the first report's provisional verdicts. Adherent figures are carried from the Sexual Holiness disclosure and are not re-verified.

Method notes:

• The standard: C4. A teaching is near-universal only when more than 80 per cent of the sixteen measured traditions, each counted as a family (at least thirteen), teach it in adopted texts (C4, as refined by AOID2-DENOMINATOR-EAST and AOID2-HOLINESS-FAMILY).

• What counts as a position: a church's position is any text its competent body has adopted (F.2, AOID2-F2-GENRES). The text must itself make the claim, in the church's own words; a broader or neighbouring claim does not count (C4(a)(i), codex v0.16). A liturgy line counts only when its wording is confirmed in a second independent edition or the original language (B2(f)).

• Who decides a family's place (C4(a)(iv)). Where not every church in a family has adopted a text on the point, the churches named in its row decide its place; the family's other churches were silent on the point or were not read.

• Soul and spirit (C4(a)(i)). Where a tradition's adopted text uses "soul" or "spirit" for the personal, immaterial self, and that meaning is clear from the text itself or the texts adopted with it, the two words are read as equivalent when measuring a floor about human nature. Where that context gives the word another meaning (the spirit as an impersonal life-force, the only spirit as God's indwelling Spirit, or the soul as spirit and body together, after D&C 88:15), the text is read in that meaning and is not counted on the strength of the shared word (AOID2-SOUL-SPIRIT-REFERENT, 11 Oct 2026).

• "God who gave it" (C4(a)(i)). The Lutheran, Reformed and Baptist cells rest on texts that say the soul or spirit returns "to God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes 12:7), set against the body's return to the dust. Read with the Scripture they adopt, these texts make the contrast Hebrews 12:9 draws between the Father of spirits and the fathers of our flesh; how that fatherhood is understood is left to each tradition.

• Silence is not disagreement: every count is reported as taught, contradicted and no position; silence is never described as dispute or division (C4(a)(ii), codex v0.16).

• What the floor claims: only what Hebrews 12:9 confesses, God as the "Father of spirits" set against the "fathers of our flesh". The manner of that fatherhood is left to each tradition (A4). The floor is kept at the Article's words and not widened (AOID2-A2F1-FLOOR).

• A note on the Jehovah's Witnesses. As in the Sexual Holiness disclosure: their teaching is set in publications approved by their Governing Body, counted as the family's adopted teaching for now, while the rule for traditions without creeds is still being settled. Their cell is scored as no common position: the spirit their publications say returns to God is the life-force, not a personal self (AOID2-SOUL-SPIRIT-REFERENT, 11 Oct 2026).

• What the sixteen cover. The Living Tree of Christ-Believing Traditions is a devotional map, not an institutional genealogy. Its rows group traditions by historical setting, theological affinity, cultural relationship, revival influence or restorationist self-understanding. A row is a grouping for the eye, not a measured family. Each family measured is a church, or group of churches, whose adopted texts can be read.

  Tree row	Measured as families	Not measured
  Old-World Christian Traditions	Eastern Orthodox; Catholic (including the Eastern Catholic churches); Oriental Orthodox; Church of the East	—
  Western & Reformation Traditions	Lutheran; Reformed; Anglican; Anabaptist; Baptist; Methodist	—
  Revival & Renewal Traditions	Pentecostal; Holiness	Evangelical (a movement, counted within families; see below); Charismatic (independent charismatic churches counted with Pentecostal, charismatic renewal inside another family with that family); Non-denominational (see below)
  Restorationist & Adventist Traditions	Stone-Campbell; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Adventist; Jehovah's Witnesses	Dispensationalism (a movement, counted within families; see below)
  Global & Independent Expressions	—	Messianic Jews; African Initiated Churches; Chinese House Churches; Independent New Religious Movements; Local & Regional Expressions
  Total	4 + 6 + 2 + 4 + 0 = 16

  Notes on the table:

  • Evangelical and Dispensationalism are movements, not traditions of their own. Each is a way of believing that runs across many churches rather than a church in itself. Evangelical Christians are found among Baptists, Reformed, Anglicans, Methodists, Pentecostals and non-denominational congregations; Dispensationalism, a way of reading biblical prophecy and history, is held chiefly in Baptist, Bible and independent churches and taught through schools and study Bibles. Neither has a governing body of its own that adopts doctrine binding on its churches. Associations such as the National Association of Evangelicals and the World Evangelical Alliance publish statements of faith, but they are fellowships that churches join; each member church's teaching is still set by its own governing body. These Articles therefore count Evangelical and Dispensationalist believers where their own churches stand. On this teaching, their voices are in the count among those who teach it through the Presbyterian Church in America and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which hold the Westminster Confession; through the Confessional Baptist Association, the Association of Confessional Baptist Churches (UK) and the Southern California Association of Reformed Baptist Churches, which hold the Second London Confession of 1689; and through the Global Methodist Church, which holds Wesley's Sermons as a doctrinal standard. Where their churches have adopted no text on the point, as with the Assemblies of God and the other Pentecostal bodies read, they stand with their family as holding no common position. That is silence, not dissent.
  • Non-denominational churches are not heard as a family, and that is a real gap. Each congregation governs itself, with no body above it that adopts teaching, so a method built on adopted texts cannot read them at family scale. They are many, tens of millions in the United States alone, and their absence from the count is disclosed here rather than explained away.
  • Holiness is measured as a family of its own (AOID2-HOLINESS-FAMILY, 1 Oct 2026). The Holiness churches descend from Methodism and share Wesley's teaching on sanctification, but the Living Tree shows them as their own branch, and they govern themselves. The Free Methodist Church is counted with Holiness. Churches that are both Holiness and Pentecostal, such as the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), the Church of God in Christ and the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, are counted with Pentecostal. Two churches sometimes listed with Holiness are counted elsewhere: the Christian and Missionary Alliance calls itself an evangelical denomination and its teaching on sanctification is not Wesleyan, so it is counted as part of the Evangelical movement; the Brethren in Christ describe themselves as shaped by Anabaptist and Pietist roots and are counted with the Anabaptists.
  • The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints means that Church alone. Churches that separated from it, including Community of Christ, are distinct bodies and are not counted with it, as Catholic and Eastern Orthodox are not counted together.
  • Eastern Orthodox is scored on its own adopted texts, which speak for the Eastern churches only. The Oriental Orthodox churches and the Church of the East, separate since the fifth century, are not represented by them; they are measured as families of their own (AOID2-DENOMINATOR-EAST, 1 Oct 2026).

  Ruled 1 Oct 2026: the Oriental Orthodox churches and the Church of the East are added as families 14 and 15 (AOID2-DENOMINATOR-EAST), and the Holiness churches as family 16 (AOID2-HOLINESS-FAMILY). The other unmeasured branches stay outside, disclosed here, because they have no adopted texts the method can read.

• Translation: KJV throughout. Every quotation above was verified on 4 Oct 2026 by two instruments (WebFetch, and a browser read of the page text) on two publishers (churchofjesuschrist.org and ebible.org), and all readings were identical. D&C, Moses and Alma were checked on the canonizing publisher only, by both instruments, as accepted for the Sexual Holiness disclosure. 1 Corinthians 12:3 and 1 John 4:2 are cited, not quoted, and were verified for the Sexual Holiness disclosure.