First of all, I have never encountered even one scholar of the doctrine of conditional security who bases his belief in the doctrine on what the Ante-Nicene Church Fathers “actually wrote,” or even what they did not write, which is by far a more compelling argument, but rather they all base their belief in the doctrine of conditional security on the Old and New Testaments in the Bible. They points out the many scriptures that explicitly teach conditional security and hundreds of scriptures that, although not explicit, nonetheless support that doctrine.
But you do, Craig, as you have repeatedly used the beliefs of the Anti-Nicene fathers to support your statement, if not, then why mention them at all? I would say that you are interpreting the NT to suit yourself, proabably because you have an extremely high anthropology and an accompanying feeling of disallusionment. You believe in conditional security largely for the same reasons that the Anti-Nicene fathers seemed to: because of the antinominaism so prevalent in society at large and the church in particular today. There's no shame in admitting it. This theme is pervasive to anybody that has read the Anti-Nicene Father's writings. Many Primitive Catholics and Anglicans repudiate conditional security because of this influence in the Anti-Nicene Fathers' writings, and their entire movement is based on a return to the theology of the Anti-Nicene Period.
Assuming that the Anti-Nicene Fathers did not all affirm OSAS, why would they write as they did? What made them tick? What was their world like?
These are men who lived during times of moral decadence and also intense persecution. Their primary concern was the defense of the legitmacy of Christianity, in other words, the survival of the church. They also lived in the wake of the Judaizer heresy and the rise of Gnosticism and other heresies. On the one hand were the dangers of antinominianism and licentiousness and on the other the defense of the faith in the face of accusations of cannibalism and atheism, culminating in creeds regarding the nature of the Trinity, the canon's formulation, and the nature of Christ himself. We must assume that what they wrote was shaped by these forces. It is no wonder then that they would not understand OSAS as we understand it today. They may well have, but the influences of the day led them to warn against doing things displeasing to God, because by saying one could fall from grace and lose salvation altogether, this would be a very good way to discourage the repudiation of the gospel in the wake of persecution and to keep the morality of the church more or less intact. It did not matter if it was biblical any more than the rise of the Catholic view on the sacrament of confession/penance was biblical. To ignore these factors is to ignore the context of the writings upon which one would base one's belief system. It is simply not surprising that they would affirm conditional security. Ironically, these are the same reasons that underlie the the repudiation of perseverance of the saints/eternal security in the modern era. There's no shame in admitting that. In short, this is an important consideration if you're going to cite the Anti-Nicene's at all as support for your beliefs. Personally, I think you're just using them (repeatedly) to bolster your argument. That is, of course, just an appeal to tradition, a fallacy of logic on your part, but, hey, you're the one that keeps repeating the mantra, so just decided to find out what they actually said.
I can not reply in detail to this paragraph because you have not supplied the quote from Tertullian, but I do not recall Tertullian as having written that the gift is taken away from us.
Okay, Craig, here's the exact quote for you: "Some people act as though God were under an obligation to bestow even on the unworthy His intended gift. They turn His liberality into slavery.... For do not many afterwards fall out of grace? Is not this gift taken away from many?" (Tertullian On Repentance chap. 6.) There you have it; the gift is taken away, according to Tertullian, it isn't simply forfeited or repudiated by the believer. This isn't what you have written here. You've written that the loss of salvation is not due to any act of God, it is solely the act of the human being.
I see that you are in this paragraph equating the doctrine of eternal security with the theory of the perseverance of the saints. That is like equating a washing machine with one of the washing machine hoses! But much worse, you seem to be trying to put words in Cyprian’s mouth, words that express concepts that were entirely foreign to him, that is, that God CAUSES the saints to persevere. I know a few people who call arguments of this kind “intellectual dishonesty.”
No, Craig, that's a straw man and an ad hom. So far, that's let's see, appeal to tradition, division, appeal to popular, straw man, and ad hom, all in two posts!
First, the statement I quoted is a direct quote from Unity of the Church . I have put no words in his mouth. I wrote that the statement could be used by persons in both camps. You said that the doctrine of OSAS, which is a form of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, was "completely unknown" to the Anti-Nicene Fathers. The point I'm making is that Cyprian made the comment and it is open to debate. He very specifically says what he says and the comment is vague enough to be open to interpretation. This is a very far cry from what you allege about this period of church history. There's also a small sect of Christianity that's been active in Germany since well before 1000 A.D., from which the Moravians trace a small portion of their own heritage, and they have always affirmed perseverance of the saints/eternal security. The evangelical Moravian pastors that are in this part of the nation, which, for the record, is one of the first settled by the Moravians in the New World, so I know my stuff about Moravians, all affirm perseverance/eternal security. My degree is actually in European history (studied in Europe too), but I can't remember their exact name; but, since I live in a town populated by Moravians, if I can round up one of their church historians I'll ask him. Again, that's a far cry from what you allege about the history of this doctrine.
Moreover, Clement of Alexandria writes, "190 AD Clement of Alexandria "It follows that there is one unchangeable gift of salvation given by one God, through one Lord, benefiting in many ways." (Clement Miscellanies bk. 6, chap. 13) Here it seems there may be some acknowledgement of the unchangeable nature of the gift of salvation. I would call this some recognition of one of the underlying priniciples of perseverance/eternal security. If the gift is unchangeable and from God, then it it would be inherently contradictory to believe in conditional security as you present it, because something about the gift, by definition, is changeable.
Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the historical, Biblical doctrine of conditional security would never posit such a thing. That is ridiculously absurd! There is absolutely no correlation between legalism and the doctrine of conditional security. Only a heretic of the worst magnitude would argue that a Christian can lose his salvation by failing to keep the Law.
A straw man argument plus the fallacy of false alternatives! Bravo, Craig, your use of logical fallacies continues to astound us. What I wrote was that the emphasis on circumcision was lost, but the underlying principle was the same, a dependence on works and not salvation by grace alone via faith alone. If I wasn't clear, then I apologize. You have said here that a person must somehow quit believing. (I assume you mean repudiate the gospel). Iraneus specifically wrote that salvation was lost if one did things displeasing to God (exact words). "Christ will not die again on behalf of those who now commit sin because death shall no more have dominion over Him.... Therefore we should not be puffed up.... But we should beware lest somehow, after [we have come to] the knowledge of Christ, if we do things displeasing to God, we obtain no further forgiveness of sins but rather be shut out from His kingdom" (Heb. 6:46)." (Irenaeus, Against Heresies bk. 4, chap. 27, sec. 2)
Which is it, sins or not believing? Both? No conditionalists can seem to agree on this, nor can they seem to answer the question as to exactly what point an individual would be considered "lost." That's the biggest inconsistency with the position. It supposes a symmetrical state of freedom to choose or not choose (libertine will) and accepts the teaching on how to be saved, but it can't come up with a corresponding teaching on how to become unsaved. You'd think it would be serious enough if possible that the teaching on how to become unsaved and to know the unsaved would be as clear as the corresponding positive teaching. In short, it's asymmetrical relative to the message content, but symmetrical in effect. Strange.
The definition of "apostasy" includes all three of the following: a gradual moral decay (sometimes expressed as antinominaism), a fall from evangelical doctrine, and a repudiation of the gospel. All three of these must be present in order for a person to be consider "apostate." This is the agreed upon definition of the term by both conditionaists and unconditionalists. I can find no others. Now, I ask you, not the writers, Craig, since you are the one attempting to articulate the postion, exactly what must one do to lose one's salvation. How can it be that one's sins once atoned for are no longer atoned for? This necessitates a potential, not an actual atonement, regardles of the scope of the atonement. This means Jesus died in vain. Are a person's sins atoned for during the time before they apostacized then recredited to them when they apostacize or just the sins that they commit from the moment they lose their salvation onward? None of your writers can seem to answer those questions, and you'd think Scripture would do so, since the warnings are so great. It raises more questions that it answers to say that the apostate was saved and lost his salvation. It is more logical that he was not saved from the start, which is the position of those contrary to you take on the issue.
As to your last section of quotes: As you have said to the rest of us, those texts do not present a problem to those that affirm perseverance of the saints/eternal security, and they do nothing to bolster your argument.
