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Can a believer forfeit his or her salvation? If so, should one be afraid that he or she will do this someday? There are typically two views offered to answer these questions- conditional or unconditional security. Within the camp that affirms unconditional security, there are two prominent positions. The first is called “Perseverance of the Saints” (POS). Such a view essentially says that it is impossible to lose one’s salvation (hence the term unconditional), and therefore anyone who claims to be a Christian, and ultimately leaves the faith by denying Christ (does not persevere) was never truly a Christian to begin with. The second position is called “Once Saved Always Saved” (OSAS). The OSAS position would say that when someone sincerely places their faith in Christ at any point in their lives, they are forever secure from that moment on, whether they deny Christ later or not. Opposing these views, are those who affirm conditional security (CS), claiming that a true believer can forfeit their salvation if they leave the faith, denying Christ.
I must confess that at various times in my life, I have held to all of these views. Much ink has been spilled debating it over the centuries, and it remains to this day a hotly debated issue among evangelicals, so I am in good company. From early childhood through my teenage years, my pastor taught the OSAS view, and so I believed it without much question. When I became a true born-again Christian in college, I became convinced of the “Perseverance of the Saints.” Not long after that, my girlfriend at the time (who is now my wife), challenged me to consider conditional security, the view she was taught from childhood. When I saw for the first time the overwhelming number of texts in support of it, I quickly adopted that view without giving it much more thought. It just seemed obvious based on what I was reading that a born-again Christian could lose their salvation, a proposition the other views denied. Having held and understood the major arguments from all sides though has helped me gain perspective on the topic. For the past three years I felt settled on the issue. However, due to recent circumstances I was challenged to reconsider my view on conditional security.
As I reopened the topic, I began looking at what Dr. William Lane Craig (a top philosopher and Christian apologist) had to say about perseverance. He espoused a fourth view, an alternative that I had never considered before based on Molinism (a view that seeks to reconcile divine sovereignty with libertarian free will). Though I had already accepted Molinism a few years prior, it never crossed my mind how it could be applied to the topic of eternal security. So I re-approached this topic with new eyes. When I read Eric Minton’s blog series on this the security of a believer from a Molinist perspective, it was like having an epiphany. He had based his view off of the work of Dr. Craig, and Dr. Kenneth Keathely, another Molinist. He called his model the “can/won’t model.” I could not stop reading his articles because it was the first time that I felt the tension in the text being resolved. After seeing the framework that Eric Minton outlined, I wanted to go back and check Dr. Craig’s work and Dr. Kenneth Keathley’s work for accuracy and more details. It was solid. I then decided to try to make the case more robust, by compiling a lengthy list of the major verses on each side of this debate, as well as how all sides would respond to one another. I read the works of popular advocates of unconditional security, as well as those of conditional security. I consulted academic commentaries and so forth. This paper is a byproduct of that research. My conclusion is that Molinism holds the key to this topic. But don’t just take my word for it. I ask that you explore this topic with me and see where we end up by the end.
My major contention in this blog series is that each of the traditional views (POS, OSAS, CS) have weaknesses based on the biblical data, but the one view that best explains all of the scripture’s teaching on the security of the believer is Molinism. I will argue in the following posts that a true believer can forfeit his or her salvation, but he or she never will. Therefore if, one has assurance that they are a true believer, they can have confidence that they will never fall away, while affirming that it is possible to do so. If you are thinking, “that is a contradiction” just save your judgment until the end.