Tuesday, May 26, 2020

James Petigru Boyce on the Necessity of the Believer's Self-Purification as a Means of their Final Salvation


Some critics of Latter-day Saint soteriology argue that we are legalists due to teaching we must purify ourselves to be saved. Jeff Lindsay does a good job at answering this and clarifying what LDS theology teaches on this point (i.e., the concept is "analogous to repenting from sins and allowing the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ to make us clean"; cf. Jas 4:8; 1 Pet 1:18-22) at


Interestingly, it is not just Latter-day Saints or “synergists” who teach this. Commenting on the final perseverance of saints (“final salvation” or “eschatological salvation), James P. Boyce (1827-1888), at the time, professor of Systematic Theology, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, himself Reformed (therefore, a proponent of monergism), wrote:

This salvation is, however, secured only through the co-operation of the believer. It is not one bestowed upon him in his sins; but through deliverance from his sins. IT is not merely perseverance of the believer, in faith and holiness unto the end . . .This is secured by various means . . . Self-purification from sin is another of the means.

We find Paul urging his brethren at Rome “Neither present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God,” Rom. 6:13. So, also, in view of their adoption by God, he exhorts the Corinthians, “Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement o flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God,” 2 Cor. 7:1. “They that are of Christ,” are said to “have crucified the flesh with the passions and the lusts thereof,” Gal. 5:24. The Apostle John declares that “every one that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, even as he (Christ) is pure,” 1 John 3:3. (James Petigru Boyce, Abstract of Systematic Theology [1887], 431-32)