The Perseverance of the Saints

“A true believer cannot lose their salvation.”  I can think of two different ways this suggestion could go:  (a) Given the nature of true faith, it guarantees that one cannot abandon it (b) A true believe is among the elect, and election cannot be revoked.

I think (a) is the more interesting claim.  Just by having the right type of belief in Christianity, I’m assured that I cannot defect from it.  But it seems that (a) is vulnerable to counterexamples; people who claim to have had strong belief who nevertheless defected. (We can of course always ask whether they did in fact have the "right type of belief.")  Jesus even seems to affirm that such people exist with his parable of the sower, people who had the right type of belief who nevertheless abandoned it.

But if we just affirm (b), then the doctrine of assurance may be in trouble.  For despite our strongly held commitment to Christianity that satisfies (a), we may not count among the elect. But maybe it's okay for the doctrine of assurance to be in trouble, for we should be worried - as the doctrine of assurance seems to struggle to make sense of the warning passages to believers (Hebrews 6).

I think the two following cases and their corresponding answers will help illuminate the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. 

The objective case:
    1. God elects, and all of those that he elects will attain salvation
    2. God elects, but only some of those that he elects will attain salvation
The personal case:
    3. A person can come to a true faith only as a result of election
    4. A person can come to a true faith apart from election

It seems that (2) is false on Scriptural grounds - “he who began a good work in you will complete it,” and “no one will snatch them out of my hand.”  So all of the elect will attain salvation. So (1) obtains.

What about the personal case?  It seems that (4) is false, especially if we accept Amyraldianism.  For if Amyraldianism is true, then God would elect any who initially had faith in the first place.  There’s also more general Scriptural grounds to reject the possibility of faith apart from some type of election.  So (3) obtains.  

So we have it that if a person is elected, they will, having genuine faith, be saved and that a person cannot have genuine faith apart from being elected.  

So it seems to be true that it is indeed impossible to lose one’s salvation, both on account of (a) as well as (b).  So we can ask the question from both directions; whether it’s possible to apostatize given the nature of one’s faith or given the nature of election, and the answer seems to be “no” in both cases.  So (a) was right after all - given the nature of genuine personal faith, one cannot defect from it.  The answer is the same in both the objective and personal cases.

Still, it doesn’t follow that this discussion is relevant to practical applications of this doctrine to individual purported apostates.  They can have some lesser form of non-saving “faith” from which they could have apostatized, and still count as “believers” in that broader sense.  Or they could have had faith in something other than genuine Christianity.  Or they may not have really left the faith, in the deepest sense, and will eventually return.  So the practical applications of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints are far more complex than it may at first seem.

This discussion heightens the problematic nature of Hebrews 6 - for the passage seems to describe true believers that nevertheless walk away from the faith.  But if a true believer is a person who has persevering faith, then how can they walk away?  

The best solution to this is to hold that the author of Hebrews is describing an impossible conditional, ala Schreiner. 

Genuinely persevering means that you’re elected.  Being elected means that you will genuinely persevere.  A false profession will never just be lacking in election - for, on the Amyraldian scheme, God elects people to faith only on the presumption that none will come to faith apart from election.  So there are no genuine cases of faith that occur outside of the sphere of election.