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Perseverance of the saints, as well as the corollary—though distinct—doctrine known as "Once Saved, Always Saved", is a Calvinist teaching that once persons are truly saved they can never lose their salvation.
Sometimes this position is held in conjunction with Reformed Christian confessions of faith in traditional Calvinist doctrine which argues that although individuals are free and responsible, they cannot choose salvation of their own accord. Rather, God selected certain individuals before the world began to whom he would draw to faith. According to Calvinism, since faith is not something they choose to do, but rather a work that God performs in them, it cannot be walked away from.
There also are many non-Calvinists who also maintain that once a person is saved they can never be lost. This Free Grace or non-traditional Calvinist doctrine is found predominantly in Baptist theology, but also other Protestant churches of the evangelical tradition.
In a sense, both can describe Christian believers as "once saved, always saved", but the two forms attach a different meaning to the word saved—namely, whether or not it necessarily involves sanctification, the process of becoming holy by rejecting sin and obeying God's commands. Because of this difference, traditional Calvinists tend to prefer the historical term "perseverance of the saints", which is one of the five points of Calvinism, and advocates of the Free Grace doctrine usually prefer the less technical terms "eternal security", "unconditional assurance", and "once saved, always saved" to characterize their teaching.
The two views are similar and sometimes confused, and though they reach the same final conclusion (namely, eternal security in salvation), they reach it by different paths. Free Grace advocates seek to moderate the perceived harshness of Calvinism as it is found in the Reformed confessions and to emphasize that salvation is not conditioned on performing good works. Traditional Calvinists maintain that the Free Grace doctrine ignores certain key Bible passages and would be rejected by Calvin and the Reformed churches, which have both firmly advocated the necessity of good works and with which Free Grace has sought to align itself historically to some degree. Other denominations such as Catholics and Orthodox reject both versions of the doctrine.
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 gracious 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.
Doctrines of apostasy and "falling away" are common in the Holiness Movement within Evangelicalism and are contrary to doctrines of "perseverance of the saints", "eternal security" and "once saved, always saved".
Contents |
| The Five Points of Calvinism |
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| Total depravity |
| Unconditional election |
| Limited atonement |
| Irresistible grace |
| Perseverance of the saints |
The Reformed tradition has consistently seen the doctrine of perseverance as a natural consequence to its general scheme of predestination in which God has chosen some men and women unto salvation and has cleared them of their guilty status by atoning for their sins through Jesus' sacrifice. According to these Calvinists, God has irresistibly drawn the elect to put their faith in himself for salvation by regenerating their hearts and convincing them of their need. Therefore, they continue, 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 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.[1] 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 cannot reverse its course. It is argued that God has changed that person in ways that are outside of his or her own ability to alter fundamentally, and he or she will therefore persevere in the faith.
The Westminster Confession of Faith has defined perseverance as follows:
They whom God hath accepted in His Beloved, effectually called and sanctified by his Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace; but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved. ─Westminster Confession of Faith (chap. 17, sec. 1).[2]
This definition does not deny the possibility of failings in one's Christian experience, because the Confession also says:
Nevertheless [believers] may, through the temptations of Satan and of the world, the prevalency of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of the means of their preservation, fall into grievous sins; and for a time continue therein; whereby they incur God's displeasure, and grieve his Holy Spirit: come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts; have their hearts hardened, and their consciences wounded; hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves (sec. 3).[2]
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 (or "fruit") of each individual. Any who "fall away" (that is, do not persevere in the Christian faith until death) 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 Philippians 2:13 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"[Mt 7:16,20] and "He that endures to the end will be saved."[Mt 24:13] 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."[1Jn 3:7-9] 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."[Rom 1:17] This view understands that the security of believers is inseparable from their perseverance in the faith.[4]
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 (that is, being declared righteous before God on account of Christ) does not necessarily result in sanctification (that is, a progressively more righteous life). 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."[5] For example, Stanley writes:
Look at that verse [John 3:18] and answer this question: According to Jesus, what must a person do to keep from being judged for sin? Must he stop doing something? Must he promise to stop doing something? Must he have never done something? The answer is so simple that many stumble all over it without ever seeing it. All Jesus requires is that the individual "believe in" Him.
— Charles Stanley[5] (p. 67).
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 (p. 74)." 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" (p. 80).
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 (Dave Hunt, What Love is This, p. 481).
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 (or properly speaking, justification) 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" (Institutes),[6] 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 (see conditional preservation of the saints). Free Grace theology struggles to maintain a middle ground, hoping to grasp the permancy of salvation (Calvinism) with one hand, while maintaining a true believer can still give up faith and choose to live a life of sin and unbelief (Arminianism). Both Calvinists and Arminians appeal to Biblical passages such as 1 Cor. 15:2 ("By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain"), Hebrews 3:14 ("We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first"), James 2:21-22 ("faith without works is dead"), and 2 Tim. 2:12 ("If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us").
Perseverance of Sanctification is one view of eternal security from an Arminian viewpoint. This view teaches that God allows a person to choose or reject their salvation but, once the process of sanctification begins, the Holy Spirit will transform them into a new creation that does not habitually sin or renounce his 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. Wesleyanism agrees with Arminianism that true Christians can fall away, but they disagree over whether or not such fallen Christians can return again to salvation (Wesleyans believe they can, and Arminians deny that they can).
The traditional Calvinist doctrine of perseverance is articulated in the Canons of Dort (chapter 5), the Westminster Confession of Faith (Chapter XVII), the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith (Chapter 17), 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 locus of Reformed systematic theology (for instance, it does not even get a subheading in the three volume Systematic Theology by Hodge). 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.
In addition to fitting neatly in the over-arching Calvinist soteriology, Reformed and Free Grace advocates alike find specific support for the doctrine in various passages from the Bible:
Some Calvinists admit that their interpretation is not without difficulties. One apparent consequence is that not all who "have shared in the Holy Spirit"[Acts 10:44-48] 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,[1Sam 19:23-24] [11:6] 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,[8] but especially Hebrews 6:4-12 and Heb 10:26-39. 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."[6:4-12] 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."[10:26b-27a] 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."[10:29]
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 hortatory rather than objective in character. 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 [their] own salvation"[Phil 2:12] and "make [their] calling and election sure,"[2Pet 1:10] rather than "from the divine perspective", in which those who will persevere, according to Calvinism, are well known. The primary objection to this approach is that it might equally be said that these difficult passages bear the objective meaning while the passages urged to support this doctrine of perseverance are hortatory in a positive sense, revealing God's perpetual grace towards believers.
Hebrews 6:4-6 is said by some[9] 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.
For it is impossible, in the case 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, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.
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.
The central tenet of the Arminian view is that believers are preserved from all external forces that might attempt to separate them from God, and further that God will not change His mind about their salvation, but that these same believers can themselves willingly repudiate their faith (either by a statement to that effect, or by continued sinful activity combined with an unwillingness to repent). Thus, their salvation is conditional on remaining faithful.
Traditional Calvinists do not dispute that salvation requires faithfulness, and the point of difference between these Calvinists and Arminians is over whether God allows true Christians to fall away. Free Grace advocates agree with traditional Calvinists that salvation cannot be lost but with the Arminians that true Christians can backslide or fall away. However, the Free Grace advocates and the Arminians do not define repudiation in the same way: the former sees backslidden believers as merely "carnal", hindering their sanctification process, whereas the latter sees them as having fallen from the saving grace they once possessed.
The twenty-second Canon of the Decree Concerning Justification of the Council of Trent (Sixth Session, 13 January 1547) 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.
Like both Calvinist camps, confessional Lutherans view the work of salvation as monergistic in that "the natural [that is, corrupted and divinely unrenewed] powers of man cannot do anything or help towards salvation",[12] 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 (that is, a genuine recipient of saving grace) can lose his or her salvation, "[b]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… [but that these persons] wilfully turn away…"[13]
This table summarizes the classical views of three different Protestant beliefs.[14]
| Topic | Lutheranism | Calvinism | Arminianism |
| Preservation and apostasy | Falling away is possible, but God gives assurance of preservation. | Perseverance of the saints, once saved, always saved | Preservation upon the condition of persevering faith with the possibility of a total and final apostasy. |