I have addressed and refuted eternal security/perseverance of the Saints
many times on this blog, including some of the common "proof-texts"
used to support this doctrine:
Does
1 John 5:13 teach Eternal Security? (cf. Latter-day
Saints and the Assurance of Salvation and The
Insecurity of the Believer in Reformed Theology)
Catholic
apologist, Jimmy Akin, has a very good article on his Website:
One rather
appreciated how he did a good job at refuting the claim that, unless you
believe in eternal security (and often Calvinists will throw in monergism into
this, too), you hold to a man-centered theology that robs God of any glory.
While the entire article should be read, I will quote those sections:
God-Centered or Man-Centered?
Prejudicial
language also occurs when advocates of eternal security characterize their
position as offering a “God-centered gospel” and conditional salvation as
offering a “man-centered gospel.”
The idea is that,
if God prevents the believer from losing his salvation, that puts the emphasis
on God, but if we can lose our salvation through our actions, that puts
emphasis on man.
Making it sound
like you are God-centered and those who disagree with you are man-centered is
rhetorically slick, but it’s just more prejudicial language.
Ironically, the
name “perseverance of the saints” is man-centered. It describes what the saints
must do: persevere. That’s why some Calvinists prefer the name “preservation of
the saints,” since it focuses on God’s preserving action.
However, both eternal and
conditional security acknowledge that both God and man have a role in
salvation. God gives us his grace, and man responds, at least by making an act
of saving faith. Eternal security advocates thus don’t reject man’s role. They
simply ignore it for rhetorical purposes when making the “God-centered vs.
man-centered” claim.
Further, since all acknowledge that God’s grace is
indispensible and must precede man’s response, both positions
are fundamentally God-centered.
What happens after initial salvation, and whether
it can be lost, must be decided by looking at the biblical evidence, not simply
by which position sounds like it’s attributing more to God.
The prejudicial
nature of the “God-centered” language can be seen by applying it in a different
context—say, to the problem of evil. One could say it would be more
“God-centered” to attribute evil directly to God, so that he would be the
author of all evil, even moral evil. By contrast, it could sound “man-centered”
to attribute moral evil not to God’s divine choices but to man’s creaturely
choices.
On the rhetorical
level this might sound like it’s glorifying God, but it would be charging the
all-holy God with moral evil—with sin! Thus the fact something may superficially
sound like it’s more glorifying to God is not a test of which position is true.
And, as before, the language is reversible. One
could argue that if God can create free will in man, such that man may freely
accept or reject salvation, then this brings more glory to God than the view
God can’t create such free will. Conditional security thus can
be framed as more God-glorifying because of what it says about God’s creative
power.
God Glorifying Himself
Advocates of
eternal security often argue that God saves people to bring himself glory and
say a person losing salvation would not bring him glory. It would represent
divine failure.
But what about the case of those who are never saved—people
who lived and died without responding to God’s initiative of grace? If one too
closely identifies the salvation of souls with God’s glory then those never
saved would represent cases of divine failure as well.
The logical
alternative is to say that the never-saved also bring glory to God, not by
being examples of his mercy upon the repentant but of his justice upon the
unrepentant.
However, if this is the case then it means God
brings himself glory even in the case of someone who is not saved, and if
that’s true then God also could bring himself glory through
someone who is initially saved and who then loses
salvation.
Such a case would serve to illustrate both God’s
mercy and his justice—as well as his creative power by giving
that person free will.
Ultimately, all of
God’s actions bring him glory, and he seems to have chosen to glorify himself
by creating and permitting a wide variety of things in the world. He thus may
choose to glorify himself by saving some, by allowing some never to be saved,
and by allowing some to switch between these states.
Divine Failure?
Sometimes advocates
of eternal security argue that if God is the perfect savior, if he is
omnipotent, then he should be able to save those he chooses. He cannot fail.
This begs the
question of whether God intends to bring everyone who experiences initial salvation
to final salvation.
If God intends to
allow people who experience initial salvation to freely choose to change their
mind, to return to sin, and to fall from grace then such people do not
represent divine failure.
It is only if you
presuppose that God intends to cause all believers to persevere to the end that
their failure to do so would represent divine failure—but that is assuming the
thing that needs to be proved.
I have
addressed these and other presuppositions underlying Reformed theology at length,
including my article:
Akin’s
colleague at Catholic Answers, Trent Horn, debated James White back in January
2017 at the G3 Conference on this doctrine. In my view, Horn won the debate,
6-4 if not 7-3. While I strongly disagree with Horn on the topic of “Mormonism,”
he is a very skilled Catholic apologist (one should read his The Case for Catholicism [Ignatius
Press, 2017] to understand how informed Catholics defend their theology [and LDS will appreciate somethings in the book, including his very sound discussion of baptismal regeneration]) and he
is simply brilliant in the realm of pro-life issues:
On James White and eternal security, I wrote an article refuting White's (and John Owen's) incredibly eisegetical and lame approach to Heb 10:29 which he has used for many years now, and even trotted out in this debate (which Horn destroyed him on):
