Having jumped on the Calvinists on the issue of the Early Church Fathers and history, I thought it would be only fair to mount a small defense of Calvinists on one issue. Calvinists are regularly accused of agreeing with the phrase that is so often heard in the South, “once saved, always saved.” It is also sometimes spoken of as “eternal security.” But, that is not actually the classical Calvinist viewpoint. Rather, that is a later development in doctrine, particularly found in the USA among many believers.
The classical Calvinist doctrine is the much more nuanced theology summarized under the acronym T.U.L.I.P. and enshrined in the Canons of Dort.
- T = Total Depravity
- U = Unconditional Election
- L = Limited Atonement
- I = Irresistible Grace
- P = Perseverance of the Saints
I simply want to quickly give a quote about the last point, Perseverance of the Saints:
Calvinists also believe that all who are born again and justified before God necessarily and inexorably proceed to sanctification. Indeed, failure to proceed to sanctification in their view is evidence that the person in question was not truly saved to begin with (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 788). 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.
In other words, works are the necessary outcome of election. If there are no works, then the person was never saved. Mind you, there is not the slightest idea, in this type of Calvinist thought, that those works in any way earn your salvation. Salvation is not only a free gift, it is an irresistible gift. But, the result of that salvation is an irreversible change in your inner being, a change that will mean that you will begin to behave more and more as someone created in the image and likeness of God. So, your election actually plays out from justification through sanctification to glorification.
As you can see, this viewpoint is very far away from “once saved always saved,” which is the viewpoint that your behavior after your conversion cannot affect your salvation and need not demonstrate that you are saved. The cartoon above shows the logical consequence of that type of thinking (if carried too far) [For you philosophy geeks, the cartoon above is a reductio ad absurdum.] The classical Calvinists would be horrified. They also would agree that your behavior after your conversion cannot affect your salvation but they would then say that it would–and needs to–demonstrate that you are saved.
So, for you geeky theology types, this wonky discussion shows that classical Calvinists cannot be accused of a “southern” way of preaching a doctrine of “once saved, always saved.” 🙂
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