Featured Perseverance of the Saints v Eternal Security

Would you agree or disagree with the following (?): "We do not attain to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus automatically. Perseverance means the engagement of our persons in the most intense and concentrated devotion to those means which God has ordained for the achievement of his saving purpose."

 

I see you were successful at getting this moved to the "Calvinism & Arminianism Debate" forum. I find this strange, since there is nothing about the topic that offers any debate with Arminians. Oh well...

 

John Murray is definitely confused about the truth, but he is not confused about Calvinist doctrine. It is the Calvinist doctrine of POS that is confused, and Murray explicates that doctrine very well, as he does with all things Calvinist. So your agreement with me on his error is, in my view, an acknowledgement that there is a more accurate doctrine, held by many Baptists, which is eternal security.

 

It is not enough to say that you do not see any difference. The question in this discussion is, what will you do with the differences presented in the opening posts? Do you acknowledges that they are differences (in which case you now see a difference), or do you deny that they are in fact differences (or perhaps, significant differences)?

 

Calvinism does not claim that no response is necessary. The response is inevitable, but still necessary. And if any of the elect, in the Calvinist system, says that they no longer believe, then they have shown themselves to not be elect and they have not persevered.

POS and Eternal Security do not say the same thing, and that was established in the opening posts. Did you read them? Those who hold to Eternal Security see our salvation as fully and completely accomplished when we come to a genuine, repentant faith and are reborn into Christ; while those who hold to Perseverance of the Saints seem to see perseverance (by the grace and power of God) as necessary to the accomplishment of our final salvation. In other words, they see a temporal contingency of apostasy to be avoided or overcome by persevering (by the grace and power of God). Baptists who hold to Eternal Security do not see any temporal contingency of apostasy to be overcome by persevering. And that difference is so fundamental as to make POS and Eternal Security two different doctrines.

 

Considering the differences I explained in the opening posts, would you agree that many Baptists who think they hold to POS would fundamentally disagree with it if they understood it?

 

Look at the quotes of Murray in opening posts and you will see a substantive engagement of the issue. Read my critique of Murray and you will find a substantive engagement of Murray's view. Then look at the replies from you and the others up to the point where you claim, "Well, yes we have," and all you find is assertions and conclusions. It's easy to state an assertion or disagree with my conclusion. But my conclusion did not stand on hot air alone. I also presented a detailed argument establishing the basis for that conclusion. Any disagreement with that conclusion that does not also present, at least to some reasonable degree, a substantive engagement of the points which I argued is a conclusion based on hot air alone. Such is not a substantive engagement.

You say that I'm wrong in positing that Eternal Security is different from Perseverance. But I did not merely make the claim. I established the differences. So then, either refute the points that I have made or concede by default in the eyes of any reasonable readers. (I'm not concerned with unreasonable readers).

I have no idea what you mean or to whom you're referring.

Did you post in the wrong thread? I do not see rationalism but excessive rationalism as an enemy. (If I was unclear about that, I apologize). And I do not find most Baptists to be excessively rationalistic. On the contrary, I have found most Baptists to be Centrists, "compatibilists" and Antinomists. Nevertheless, I will admit my own penchant for excessive rationalism, as it is an area of personal growth for me that is ongoing. While in general, I'm becoming less and less interested in rationally arguing with Calvinists and Arminians (my participation is only a fraction of what it was ten years ago), I am drawn into it occasionally, in an effort to engage the excessive rationalists on their own ground, and possibly shed some light.

 

No, the two are fundamentally different. In fact, Perseverance has more in common with the Arminian doctrine of Losable Salvation than it does with Eternal Security. Both Perseverance and Losable Salvation agree on the temporal contingency of apostasy to be avoided. The only difference is that in POS, one loses salvation retroactively, showing by their failure to persevere that they were not elect. Eternal Security sees salvation as irrevocably accomplished and finished at the point of genuine faith.

Eternal Security is not taking for granted one's salvation or antinomianism. Eternal Security, as taught in most Baptist churches, does not say, "No matter what I do afterward, I am assured of salvation;" but rather, it says, "Transformational fruit will accompany genuine salvation, and the more that I fall into grievous sin, the less likely that the faith by which I came to Christ was a genuine faith." In other words, if in the end, I do not make it to heaven, it will not be because God threw me out His kingdom and revoked His salvation, but it will only be because I was never really saved in the first place. Such a doctrine provides no license for presumptuous sin or antinomianism.

 

Finally, some substance. Thank you!