Perhaps I am a slow learner, but it just occurred to me recently that the Calvinistic doctrine of eternal security, while germane to Calvinism, is not limited to a Calvinistic theology. Even an Arminian could hold to the doctrine of eternal security (once saved always saved) while disagreeing with the Calvinists on the question of how people become saved. Arminians could hold that it is impossible for someone whose spirit has been regenerated by the Spirit to fall away without accepting the Calvinist notion that God alone determines who will be regenerated. The question of how we are saved (monergism or synergism) is separate from the question of the permanence of salvation. It could be true that humans have to freely respond to God’s offer of grace before God saves them (synergism), and that once saved, a person will always persevere to the end. There is no logical incompatibility between these two positions.
July 25, 2012
Even Arminians Can Believe in Eternal Security
Posted by Jason Dulle under Calvinism v Arminianism, Theology[11] Comments
Thinking to Believe 
July 25, 2012 at 2:37 pm
This is true, but the Calvinist doctrine was always a meaningless tautology (“If you will be saved, then you will be saved”) in the first place. That’s because Calvinism makes no claim that you can know, right now, that you are actually saved in the “final” sense to which they refer when they talk about security.
It’s like calling the phrase “If you have a parachute inside that parachute bag, then you’ll survive the drop” a kind of “security,” under such conditions that you’re unable to check inside the parachute bag to confirm whether it’s a parachute or just laundry.
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July 25, 2012 at 3:25 pm
How is Calvinism a tautology? What’s tautologous about saying that if God regenerates your spirit, you will believe, and that faith will persevere until the end? How one knows whether or not they are part of the elect is another matter, but even then, it’s not a tautology. According to Calvinism, you can know that you are elect because your works will demonstrate it. in the same way dead people don’t do jumping jacks, spiritually dead people don’t walk in righteousness. So if you are walking in righteousness in faith, then you can know you are part of the elect.
Jason
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July 25, 2012 at 4:14 pm
In Hebrews Ch. 6 the writer speaks of those who were 1. Enlightened 2. Partakers of the Holy Ghost, and 3. Tasted of the good word of God and the powers of the world to come. The writer then leaves open the possibility of “falling away”, which seem to be rejecting Christ and returning to Judaism. I do not think we can say he was never truly regenerated; the writer’s choice of words does not logically lead to that conclusion. Is he still saved anyway, even though he has not “continued in the way”, which is a prerequisite Jesus gave to being saved?
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July 25, 2012 at 5:03 pm
James,
I agree that Hebrews 6, along with many other passages, seem to clearly teach that it is possible to lose one’s salvation. I am just pointing out that belief in eternal security is not logically inconsistent with other aspects of Arminian theology. What truly divides Calvinism from Arminianism is the monergism vs. synergism debate.
Jason
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July 25, 2012 at 6:57 pm
how one is saved is not the entirety of calvinism-its most ardently argued point today is that once a forgiveness from sin & acceptance of christ relationship with the Lord is established- it is unrevokable -arminians do not believe that said relationship can under no circumstances be revoked
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July 25, 2012 at 7:08 pm
i agree however with your title which makes a different point than the text- it is possible by continuing in the word-continuing to believe(the disciples believed in jn 2 at the outset of christs ministry-but later had to believe the resurrection to continue being saved)& continuing to have the Lord & not the returned old life as their master-THEN they can rest absolutely sure in their security
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July 26, 2012 at 12:30 pm
Sonny,
I agree that there is no real historical connection between the doctrines of synergism and perseverence of the saints, since Arminians tend to affirm the former and deny the latter, while Calvinists deny the former and affirm the latter. My point is that there is no logical contradiction between the two, such that a person who is Arminian in their view of how one comes to be saved could also believe that once a person is saved they will persevere to the end.
The Arminian could reason like this: While man must freely accept God’s salvation in order to be saved, once saved, it is impossible to fall away given the nature of salvation. In the same way a human baby can never become “unborn” once born, a person can never become spiritually “unborn” once they have been born again. Regeneration seems irreversible. How could sin reverse it? What did Jesus shed His blood for? Sins. If Jesus’ blood cancels out our sins, how can our sin cancel out His blood? Either His blood covers our sins or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t cover our sins then we’re not saved. If it does cover our sins, how can sinning uncover His blood?
Whether anyone agrees with the reasoning or not, or disagrees that either synergism or perseverence is taught in Scripture, I think it goes to show that the doctrines are compatible, and one could be a “Calminian” of sorts.
Jason
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August 7, 2012 at 5:01 am
Jason,
I thought it was the reversal – that if one is not a believer at the end, you are not saved and so Calvanists say that you were never saved whereas Arminians claim that you lost your salvation. The key is that whichever is held true, perseverence is required.
For an example, there are people who believed, prayed & healed people in the name of Christ yet have now walked away denying Christ. Are they saved? No, since they do not believe and deny Christ.
Either way, both doctrines are incorrect in there extremetis, and a healthy view is to hold them in tension.
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August 15, 2013 at 2:46 pm
1 John 3 seems to plainly say that a person who doesn’t persevere “has neither seen God or know God”, and “is not born of God”. The Spirit can be rejected as He draws people to Christ, but once regeneration occurs, a believer “cannot go on sinning, because God’s seed remains in him.” Just some food for thought. You can be a Calvinist or an Arminian and believe this.
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November 6, 2014 at 8:05 pm
Here is my story: I grew up fundamentalist Baptist. I repented of all my sins and accepted Jesus Christ into my heart to be my Lord and Savior at age nine…and again in my early teens…just to be sure. In my early 20’s my family moved to another state where we attended a non-denominational, evangelical mega-church (which taught Baptist doctrine) for several years. In my mid to late 20’s I stopped going to church because I didn’t “feel” God inside me and he didn’t seem to listen when I prayed.
I remained unchurched until I was married in my forties. I started attending liberal churches. When we had children, I started looking again at more conservative/fundamentalist churches, something closer to what I had believed as a child and teenager. We joined a conservative, orthodox Lutheran church. I became very involved in the church. I was happy and content in my orthodox Christian belief system. I read the Bible and prayed regularly.
One day I was surfing the internet and came across an atheist’s website. He was a former fundamentalist Baptist/evangelical pastor! I was shocked! I started to engage him in conversation, and also tried to bring him back to the Faith, to belief in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.
However, this man pointed out to me some very big assumptions in my Christian belief system which I had never thought of, such as:
1. Just because there is evidence for a Creator does not mean that the Creator is the Christian God, Yahweh.
2. Our current Bibles contain thousands of scribe alterations, most of them inconsequential, but a couple of them are shocking. Why did God allow scribes copying the original Scriptures to change, delete, add, or alter his inerrant, Holy, Word?
3. How do we know that the books of the New Testament are the Word of God? Is there a verse that tells us? Did Jesus give us a list? Did Paul?
4. Do we really have any verifiable eyewitness testimony for the Resurrection or is it all hearsay and legend?
5. Modern archaeology proves that the Captivity in Egypt, the Exodus, the forty years in the Sinai, the Conquest of Canaan, and the great kingdoms of David and Solomon are only ancient Hebrew fables.
At first I fought him tooth and nail. I fought him for four months. At the very end I had to admit that there are no verifiable eyewitness accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus in the Bible or anywhere else. All we have are four anonymous first century texts full of discrepancies and contradictions. The only thing I had left to attach my faith to was the testimony of the Apostle Paul: why would a devout Jewish rabbi convert to a religion he so hated unless he really saw a resurrected dead man on the Damascus Road?
But after studying the five Bible passages that discuss Paul’s conversion, I had to admit that Paul never says he saw a resurrected body. All Paul says is that he saw a light…and that this event occurred in a “heavenly vision”. Visions are not reality…not in the 21st century nor in the 1st.
And as for the improbability that a Jewish rabbi would convert to a hated religion, there is a Muslim cleric in Israel today who not too many years ago was an ardent Zionist Jewish settler and rabbi, intent on ridding the Muslims from Jewish land.
Strange conversions occur. They do not prove that the new religion is true and inerrant.
I was broken-hearted, but I saw my Christian Faith was nothing more than an ancient superstition that had been modified in the first century by Jesus, a good man, but a dead man. There is zero evidence that this first century Jew is alive and the Ruler of the Universe.
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May 11, 2019 at 11:49 am
May I save this article to my hard drive?
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