Perseverance of the saints
Calvinism
John Calvin
Calvinism portal
Perseverance of the saints is a controver-
sial Protestant Christian teaching that none
who are truly saved can be condemned for
their sins or finally fall away from the faith.
The doctrine appears in two different forms:
(1) the traditional Calvinist doctrine found in
the Reformed Christian confessions of faith,
and (2) the Free Grace or non-traditional
Calvinist doctrine found in some Baptist and
other evangelical churches. In a sense, both
can describe Christian believers as "once
saved, always saved", but the two forms at-
tach a different meaning to the word saved —
namely, whether or not it necessarily in-
volves sanctification, the process of becom-
ing holy by rejecting sin and obeying God’s
commands. Because of this difference, tradi-
tional Calvinist Christians tend to prefer the
historical term "perseverance of the saints",
which is one of the five points of Calvinism,
and advocates of the Free Grace doctrine
usually prefer the less technical terms "etern-
al security", "unconditional assurance", and
"once saved, always saved" to characterize
their teaching.
The two views are similar and sometimes
confused, and though they reach the same
end (namely, eternal security in salvation),
they reach it by different paths. Free Grace
advocates seek to moderate the perceived
harshness of Calvinism as it is found in the
Reformed confessions and to emphasize that
salvation is not conditioned on performing
good works. Traditional Calvinists maintain
that the Free Grace doctrine ignores certain
key Bible passages and would be rejected by
Calvin and the Reformed churches, which
have both firmly advocated the necessity of
good works and with which Free Grace has
sought to align itself historically to some de-
gree. Other Christians such as Catholics and
Orthodox reject both versions of the doctrine.
Reformed doctrine
The Reformed tradition has consistently seen
the doctrine of perseverance as a natural
consequence to its general scheme of predes-
tinat