Perseverance of the saints


Perseverance of the saints is a Christian teaching that asserts that once a person is truly "born of God" or "regenerated" by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, nothing in heaven or earth "shall be able to separate from the love of God" resulting in a reversal of the converted condition.
Sometimes this position is held in conjunction with Reformed Christian confessions of faith in traditional Calvinist doctrine which argues that all men are "dead in trespasses and sins" and so apart from being resurrected from spiritual death to spiritual life, no one chooses salvation alone. However, it must be distinguished from Arminianism which also teaches that all men are "dead in trespasses and sins" and could not respond to the gospel if God did not enable individuals to do so by His prevenient grace.
Calvinists maintain that God selected certain individuals before the world began and then draws them to faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. They believe that when Jesus said, "No man can come unto Me except the Father which hath sent Me draw him", Jesus was saying that men had to be drawn to Him by God before they would believe and that He only draws those to Him whom He had chosen. Calvinists have long taught that when the apostle Paul wrote, "God hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world", he was indicating that God actually chose believers in Christ before the world was founded, not based on foreseen faith, but based upon His sovereign decision to save whomever He pleased to save. According to Calvinism, God begins a good work in only those He chooses and then continues it. They use the text from the book of Philippians where the apostle Paul writes, "He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ".
There are also many non-Calvinists who maintain that a person who is saved can never lose his or her salvation. This free grace or non-traditional Calvinist doctrine is found predominantly in "free will" Baptist theology, but also in other Protestant churches of the evangelical tradition, particularly within independent fundamental baptism.
The doctrine of Perseverance of the Saints is distinct from the doctrine of Assurance, which describes how a person may first be sure that they have obtained salvation and an inheritance in the promises of the Bible including eternal life. The Westminster Confession of Faith teaches on Perseverance of the Saints in its Chapter 17 and on Assurance of Grace and Salvation in its Chapter 18.

History

taught that some of those whom God chooses to save by regeneration through water baptism are given, in addition to the gift of faith, a gift of perseverance which enables them to continue to believe, and precludes the possibility of falling away. He developed this doctrine in De correptione et gratia ca.426–427 CE explaining why some regenerated infants persevere in faith and good works while others fall away from the faith.
The traditional Calvinist doctrine is one of the five points of Calvinism that were defined at the Synod of Dort during the Quinquarticular Controversy with the Arminian Remonstrants, who objected to the general predestinarian scheme of Calvinism. Arminianism teaches that salvation is conditioned on faith, therefore perseverance of the saints is also conditioned.
The traditional Calvinist doctrine of perseverance is articulated in the Canons of Dort, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, and may also be found in other Reformed Confessions. Nonetheless, the doctrine is most often mentioned in connection with other salvific schemes and is not a major focus of Reformed systematic theology. It is, however, seen by many as the necessary consequence of Calvinism and of trusting in the promises of God.
Traditional Calvinism voiced its opposition to carnal Christianity and the non-traditional Calvinist doctrine in the recent controversy over Lordship salvation.

Reformed doctrine

The Reformed tradition has consistently seen the doctrine of perseverance as a natural consequence to predestination. According to Calvinists, since God has drawn the elect to faith in Christ by regenerating their hearts and convincing them of their sins, and thus saving their souls by His own work and power, it naturally follows that they will be kept by the same power to the end. Since God has made satisfaction for the sins of the elect, they can no longer be condemned for them, and through the help of the Holy Spirit, they must necessarily persevere as Christians and in the end be saved. Calvinists believe this is what Peter is teaching in 1st Peter 1, verse 5 when he says, that true believers are "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation". Outside Calvinist denominations this doctrine is widely considered to be flawed.
Calvinists also believe that all who are born again and justified before God necessarily and inexorably proceed to sanctification. Failure to proceed to sanctification in their view is considered by some as evidence that the person in question was never truly saved to begin with. Proponents of this doctrine distinguish between an action and the consequences of an action, and suggest that after God has regenerated someone, the person's will has been changed, that "old things pass away" and "all things are become new", as it is written in the Bible, and he or she will as a consequence persevere in the faith.
The Westminster Confession of Faith has defined perseverance as follows:
This definition does not deny the possibility of failings in one's Christian experience, because the Confession also says:
Theologian Charles Hodge summarizes the thrust of the Calvinist doctrine:
On a practical level, Calvinists do not claim to know who is elect and who is not, and the only guide they have is the verbal testimony and good works of each individual. "Pastors do not know infallibly who of his listeners are the good soil and who are the bad."
Any who "fall away" is assumed not to have been truly converted to begin with, though Calvinists do not claim to know with certainty who did and who did not persevere.
Essentially, Reformed doctrine believes that the same God whose power justified the Christian believer is also at work in the continued sanctification of that believer. As says, "It is God who is at work in you, both to will and work for His good pleasure."
Thus, all who are truly born again are kept by God the Father for Jesus Christ, and can neither totally nor finally fall from the state of grace, but will persevere in their faith to the end, and be eternally saved. While Reformed theologians acknowledge that true believers at times will fall into sin, they maintain that a real believer in Jesus Christ cannot abandon one's own personal faith to the dominion of sin. They base their understanding on key scriptural passages such as Christ's words, "By their fruit you will know them" and "He that endures to the end will be saved." Similarly, a passage in 1 John says, "This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God." The person who has truly been made righteous in Jesus Christ did not simply have faith at some point in life, but continues to live in that faith ("the righteous will live by faith." This view understands that the security of believers is inseparable from their perseverance in the faith.

Free Grace doctrine

The Free Grace or non-traditional Calvinist doctrine has been espoused by Charles Stanley, Norman Geisler, Zane C. Hodges, Bill Bright, and others. This view, like the traditional Calvinist view, emphasizes that people are saved purely by an act of divine grace that does not depend at all on the deeds of the individual, and for that reason, advocates insist that nothing the person can do can affect his or her salvation.
The Free Grace doctrine views the person's character and life after receiving the gift of salvation as independent from the gift itself, which is the main point of differentiation from the traditional Calvinist view, or, in other words, it asserts that justification does not necessarily result in sanctification. Charles Stanley, pastor of Atlanta's megachurch First Baptist and a television evangelist, has written that the doctrine of eternal security of the believer persuaded him years ago to leave his familial Pentecostalism and become a Southern Baptist. He sums up his deep conviction that salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone when he claims, "Even if a believer for all practical purposes becomes an unbeliever, his salvation is not in jeopardy… believers who lose or abandon their faith will retain their salvation." For example, Stanley writes:
In a chapter entitled "For Those Who Stop Believing", he says, "The Bible clearly teaches that God's love for His people is of such magnitude that even those who walk away from the faith have not the slightest chance of slipping from His hand." A little later, Stanley also writes: "You and I are not saved because we have an enduring faith. We are saved because at a moment in time we expressed faith in our enduring Lord".
The doctrine sees the work of salvation as wholly monergistic, which is to say that God alone performs it and man has no part in the process beyond receiving it, and therefore, proponents argue that man cannot undo what they believe God has done. By comparison, in traditional Calvinism, people, who are otherwise unable to follow God, are enabled by regeneration to cooperate with him, and so the Reformed tradition sees itself as mediating between the total monergism of the non-traditional Calvinist view and the synergism of the Wesleyan, Arminian, and Roman Catholic views in which even unregenerate man can choose to cooperate with God in salvation.
The traditional Calvinist doctrine teaches that a person is secure in salvation because he or she was predestined by God, whereas in the Free Grace or non-traditional Calvinist views, a person is secure because at some point in time he or she has believed the Gospel message.

Evangelical criticism

Both traditional Calvinism and traditional Arminianism have rejected Free Grace theology. The former believes Free Grace to be a distorted form of Calvinism which maintains the permanency of salvation while radically divorcing the ongoing work of sanctification from that justification. Reformed theology has uniformly asserted that "no man is a Christian who does not feel some special love for righteousness", and therefore sees Free Grace theology, which allows for the concept of a "carnal Christian" or even an "unbelieving Christian", as a form of radical antinomianism. Arminianism, which has always believed true believers can give themselves completely over to sin, has also rejected the Free Grace view for the opposite reason of Calvinism: namely, that the view denies the classical Arminian doctrine that true Christians can lose their salvation by denouncing their faith. Free Grace theology struggles to maintain a middle ground, hoping to grasp the permancy of salvation with one hand, while maintaining a true believer can still give up faith and choose to live a life of sin and unbelief. Both Calvinists and Arminians appeal to Biblical passages such as , , , and .

Biblical evidence

In addition to fitting neatly in the overarching Calvinist soteriology, Reformed and Free Grace advocates alike find specific support for the doctrine in various passages from the Bible:

Calvinist interpretations

Some Calvinists admit that their interpretation is not without difficulties. One apparent consequence is that not all who "have shared in the Holy Spirit" are necessarily regenerate. This is a consequence Calvinists are willing to accept since the Bible also says that King Saul had the "Spirit of God" in some sense and even prophesied by it, but was not a follower of God. Calvin says,
Some challenge the Calvinist doctrine based on their interpretation of the admonishments in the book of Hebrews, including several passages in the Book of Hebrews, but especially and. The former passage says of those "who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come" that, when they "fall away", they cannot be "restored to repentance." The latter passage says that if one continues in sin, "no sacrifice for sins" remains for that person but "only a fearful expectation of judgment." The author of Hebrews predicts grave punishment for one who "has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace."
The debate over these passages centers around the identity of the persons in question. While opponents of perseverance identify the persons as Christian believers, Calvinists suggest several other options:
Some other passages put forth against the Calvinist doctrine include:
In general, proponents of the doctrine of perseverance interpret such passages, which urge the church community to persevere in the faith but seem to indicate that some members of the community might fall away, as encouragement to persevere rather than divine warnings. That is, they view the prophets and apostles as writing "from the human perspective", in which the members of the elect are unknowable and all should "work out own salvation" and "make calling and election sure," rather than "from the divine perspective", in which those who will persevere, according to Calvinism, are well known. The primary objection to this Calvinist approach is that it might equally be said that these difficult passages are intended to be divine warnings to believers who do not persevere, rather than a revealing of God's perpetual grace towards believers.

Other interpretations of Hebrews 6:4-6

is said by some to be one of the Bible's most difficult passages to interpret, and may present the most difficulty for proponents of the Eternal Security of the Believer. The passage is understood by some to mean that "falling away" from an active commitment to Christ may cause one to lose their salvation, after they have attained salvation either according to the Reformed or Free Grace theology. However, numerous conservative Bible scholars do not believe the passage refers to a Christian losing genuinely attained salvation.
The primary objection lodged against the doctrine is that such teaching will lead to license. That is, objectors contend that if people know they can never lose their salvation they will feel free to sin without fear of eternal consequences.
Traditional Calvinists see this charge as being justly leveled against the Free Grace doctrine, which doesn't see sanctification as a necessary component of salvation, and in the controversy over Lordship salvation, traditional Calvinists argued against the proponents of the Free Grace doctrine. Traditional Calvinists, and many other non-Calvinist evangelicals, posit that a truly converted heart will necessarily follow after God and live in accordance with his precepts, though perfection is not achievable, struggles with sin will continue, and some temporary "backsliding" may occur.

Arminian view

The central tenet of the Arminian view is that although believers are preserved from all external forces that might attempt to separate them from God, they have the free will to separate themselves from God. Although God will not change His mind about a believer's salvation, a believer can willingly repudiate faith. In this manner, salvation is conditional, not unconditional as Calvinism teaches.
Traditional Calvinists do not dispute that salvation requires faithfulness. However, Calvinists contend that God is sovereign and cannot permit a true believer to depart from faith. Arminians argue that God is sufficiently sovereign and omnipotent to embed free will into humanity so that true Christians may exercise free will and fall away from the saving grace they once possessed. R.C. Sproul, an influential Calvinist, disagrees, expressing God's sovereignty over salvation as follows: "If God has decided our destinies from all eternity, that strongly suggests that our free choices are but charades, empty exercises in predetermined playacting. It is as though God wrote the script for us in concrete and we are merely carrying out his scenario.

Roman Catholic view

The twenty-second Canon of the Decree Concerning Justification of the Council of Trent has this to say regarding perseverance: "If anyone says that the one justified either can without the special help of God persevere in the justice received, or that with that help he cannot, let him be anathema." In this canon, the Council reaffirmed that perseverance absolutely requires divine help—a divine help that cannot fail.
Respecting these parameters, Catholics can have a variety of views as regards final perseverance. On questions of predestination, Catholic scholars may be broadly characterized as either Molinists or Thomists. The views of the latter are similar to those of Calvinists, in that they understand final perseverance to be a gift applied by God to the regenerated that will assuredly lead them to ultimate salvation. They differ from Calvinists in but one respect: whether God permits men to "fall away" after regeneration. Thomists affirm that God can permit men to come to regeneration without giving them the special gift of divine perseverance, so that they do fall away. Calvinists, by contrast, deny that an individual can fall away if they are truly regenerate.

Lutheran view

Like both Calvinist camps, confessional Lutherans view the work of salvation as monergistic in that "the natural powers of man cannot do anything or help towards salvation", and Lutherans go further along the same lines as the Free Grace advocates to say that the recipient of saving grace need not cooperate with it. Hence, Lutherans believe that a true Christian can lose his or her salvation, "ut the cause is not as though God were unwilling to grant grace for perseverance to those in whom He has begun the good work… wilfully turn away…"

Comparison among Protestants

This table summarizes the views of three different Protestant beliefs.
CalvinismLutheranismArminianism
Perseverance of the saints: the eternally elect in Christ will certainly persevere in faith.Falling away is possible, but God gives assurance of perseverance.Preservation is conditional upon continued faith in Christ; with the possibility of a final apostasy.