The Once Saved Always Saved Catch-22

How once-saved-always-saved destroys the 

“assurance of salvation”

 

Gary Hoge

There’s no doubt about it, the Calvinist doctrine of Once-Saved-Always-Saved, with its “assurance of salvation,” is a very attractive doctrine. As Presbyterian theologian D. James Kennedy wrote, those who believe this doctrine can say, “I know that I am on my way to heaven!”¹ Who wouldn’t want that kind of certainty? Who wouldn’t want to have an unconditional assurance of salvation?

Calvinists say they have just such an assurance. According to them, the “elect,” that is, all who receive the gift of eternal life, are guaranteed to remain in the faith and go to heaven. It is impossible, say Calvinists, for anyone to forfeit his salvation.

The problem with this theory is that it doesn’t fit the Bible very well. True, there are a few verses that seem to support it (e.g. John 6:37-40; John 10:27-29; and Romans 8:38-39), but there are literally dozens of other places in the Scriptures where God warns us about the very thing that Calvinists say cannot happen. And it is those passages, or rather, the Calvinist interpretation of those passages, that undermines the assurance they think they have. How does it do that? Well, in order to explain these verses, Calvinists say that the verses are not referring to “true” Christians, but to superficial believers who never really had a “saving faith,” all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.

Unfortunately, though, these “superficial” Christians have all the attributes of real Christians. They are said to have believed (Luke 8:13); been chosen by Jesus (John 6:70); been a branch attached to the vine (John 15:2); received the gospel and stood firm in it (1 Corinthians 15:1); been reconciled through Christ’s body (Colossians 1:22); been enlightened; tasted of the heavenly gift; been made partakers of the Holy Spirit (Hebrews 6:5); been sanctified by the blood of the covenant (Hebrews 10:29); been bought by Jesus (2 Pet. 2:1); and escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 2:20). Yet these people did not persevere. Calvinists say that the people described in these verses were therefore obviously never true Christians.

For example, in the discussion of Hebrews 6:5-8 in the International Bible Commentary, Gerald Hawthorne writes, “[The author of Hebrews], in composing such a list as this, may have intended to describe one who has all the ear-marks of Christianity and who yet is not a real Christian. The one proof of genuineness is a continuing loyalty which keeps faith to the very end.”² So according to this reasoning, the only way the individual Calvinist can tell whether he is a “genuine” Christian is if he perseveres until the end, which of course, he cannot know until, well, the end. If he eventually turns away from God, as the Bible many times warns can happen, his Calvinist friends will say, “I guess he never really had a saving faith.”

How can a Calvinist distinguish between a real Christian and a superficial one? Obviously, he can’t. The superficial believer has “all the ear-marks of Christianity.” Therefore, there is simply no way for the individual Calvinist to know for sure that his own conversion was genuine, and that he is a real Christian. Despite all his talk of “assurance,” he simply cannot be certain that he’s not merely a superficial believer who will eventually fall away.

Ultimately, then, the Calvinist has no way of knowing for sure that he is really in the faith until the end of his life. On the other hand, those who reject the Once-Saved-Always-Saved doctrine can be confident that they are indeed in the faith, because their present status cannot be invalidated by their future performance. They know that it is theoretically possible that they may one day harden their hearts, turn away from God, and forfeit what they have, but at least they can be sure that it’s theirs to lose. They also know that perseverance depends on God, and they have the assurance that he will give them the grace to persevere, if they will only receive it. Thus, they can have a moral certainty that they will in fact persevere.

The only “assurance” Calvinists really have is that the “elect” will persevere. But whether the individual Calvinist is actually among the elect, he cannot know for sure. His status as a “real Christian” is contingent upon his having a “continuing loyalty which keeps faith to the very end,” and, obviously, he will not know whether he has such a faith until “the very end.” It’s easy to see, then, that this doctrine doesn’t really give its adherents much of an assurance, it merely shifts the basis of uncertainty from whether they will persevere in the faith, to whether they are even in the faith to begin with.