Reflections on Christian Assurance
I. Introduction
So far as I know, there has been no English-language, full-scale treatment of the biblical theology of Christian assurance for more than fifty years. There have been numerous dictionary articles and the like, along with occasional discussions in journals. There have also been sophisticated studies of assurance as found in the theology of some notable Christian thinker or period, such as the book by Yates that examines assurance with special reference to John Wesley, or the discussion of assurance that pervades Kendall’s treatment of the move from Calvin to English Calvinism, or the dissertation by Beeke that studies personal assurance from Westminster to Alexander Comrie. There have been countless studies of related biblical themes: perseverance, apostasy, the nature of covenant, the nature of faith, justification, and much more - too many to itemize; and there have been numerous popular treatments of Christian assurance. But although at one time assurance was not only a question of pressing pastoral importance but in certain respects a test of theological systems, in recent decades it has not received the attention it deserves.
This paper makes no pretensions of redressing the balance. My aim is far more modest. First, I shall identify a number of tendencies in contemporary literature that bear on Christian assurance. Then I shall offer a number of biblical and theological reflections - really not much more than pump-priming - designed to set out the contours in which a biblical theology of Christian assurance might be constructed.
II. Some Contemporary Tendencies
By "Christian assurance," I refer to a Christian believer’s confidence that he or she is already in a right standing with God, and that this will issue in ultimate salvation. This definition of assurance maintains the future orientation that has dominated much of the discussion in past centuries, but there are two entailments: (1) This is a far narrower definition than might have been deployed. For instance, the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of the boldness Christians enjoy in coming before God, now that their high priest has entered into the heavenly tabernacle to intercede on their behalf. John writes of the confidence believers enjoy when they approach God in prayer. These, too, are dimensions of Christian assurance, important dimensions-but not the assurance that is the focal point of this study. (2) It should be immediately obvious that there is no single word that gives us access to the theme. Some studies have begun by analyzing pivsti" or parrhsiva or some other word, but questions about Christian assurance rise from the pages of the NT wherever believers are promised consummated salvation, or warned of apostasy, or are assured of eternal life conditional on some factor; and so we must probe, however superficially, a representative number of such themes and passages. Ideally, we should begin with inductive study of each corpus; pragmatically, the limitations of this study dictate that we attempt no more than brief explorations.
Before embarking on such explorations, however, it is important to grasp the dominant parameters of the discussion today. What, then, are some of the more important tendencies in contemporary biblical and theological literature that bear on the subject? I begin with the most narrowly academic tendencies, and work down to the most popular.
A. Not only is there a tendency to stress the diverse emphases in many biblical texts, there are even more diverse interpretations of them. Certainly the question of Christian assurance is raised by what appear to be tensions within the biblical documents themselves. On the one hand, Paul insists that all those who are foreknown, predestined, called and justified will one day be glorified (Rom 8:30); on the other, he tells the Corinthians to examine themselves to see if they are in the faith (2 Cor 13:5). On the one hand, Christians are given "very great and precious promises" (2 Pet 1:4), but on the other, such promises properly function to enable them to make their calling and election sure (1:10). If the Fourth Gospel repeatedly assures us that Jesus, and then the Father himself, preserve all those the Father has given to the Son (e.g., John 6:37-40; 17:6-17), Jesus’ interlocutors nevertheless are told that only those who hold to his teaching are truly his disciples (8:31). On the face of it, passages such as Hebrews 6:4-6 envisage the possibility of apostasy from which there is no reprieve. If so, how can believers be finally certain that they will not fall into such abysmal loss? John writes his first epistle in order that those who believe in the name of the Son of God might know that they have eternal life: this certainly sounds as if it is possible to believe in the name of the Son of God without knowing that one has eternal life.
Many scholars attempt no synthesis; indeed, they judge any attempt at synthesis to be illegitimate. But even amongst less skeptical scholars, these and many more passages are variously interpreted. One need only read, say, the published form of I. Howard Marshall’s dissertation, and the recent dissertation by Judith Volf, to appreciate how differently many of the same texts can be read. Meanwhile, the voluminous writings of E. P. Sanders, and the growing number of responses to them, have shifted the center of discussion on Paul from justification and freedom from law to "covenantal nomism," thereby giving rise to notions of "getting in" and "staying in" that are quite different from those historically assumed by much of Protestantism, especially Lutheran Protestantism. At the risk of simplification, "getting in" turns on God’s grace; "staying in" turns on the believer’s obedience. The texts that can be lined up to defend this reading of Paul are substantial. If accepted without qualification, the implications for Christian assurance are stunning: Christian assurance becomes entirely hostage to Christian obedience, and is not established as a constituent element of saving faith itself.
Or again, one need only compare Protestant and Catholic commentaries on 1 John to observe a chasm between their approaches. With but rare exceptions, the former treat 1 John as a treatise that provides criteria or tests (understood and arranged rather differently from commentator to commentator) to foster assurance amongst believers; the latter largely bypass the theme of assurance, and see in this book a depiction of proper Christian communal life.
B. A major reexamination of relevant Reformation arguments is currently underway. Although some pre-Reformation Christian thinkers had treated the possibility of Christian assurance (e.g., Augustine, Duns Scotus), the consensus in the period leading up to the Reformation treated such assurance as conjectural, since knowledge of God’s saving grace depended on good works and penance that "tied forgiveness to ecclesiastical authority."7 Not only did the Reformation, by emphasizing Scripture, reduce the intermediary authority of the Church, and therefore its role in binding and loosing the Christian conscience - its virulent emphasis on sola fide led Luther to see assurance as an element of saving faith. If one truly trusts Christ for the forgiveness of sins and full justification, so far also is one assured of his forgiveness. The same connection can be found in Calvin (Inst. 3.2.7); ultimately, he grounds assurance on Christ himself (Inst. 3.24.5). It is disputed just what place Calvin allows for works in Christian assurance; certainly in his thought they do not enjoy more than a subsidiary role. By contrast, the English Puritans, greatly dependent on the transitional figure of William Perkins,8 himself deeply indebted to Beza and others, placed much more emphasis on the role of a transformed life in lending assurance to the Christian mind and conscience.
Most scholars, I think, would not demur from this potted history. Debate has become heated, however, owing to the work of Kendall and those who have rushed to support him or to detract from his argument that English Calvinism owes far less to Calvin and far more to Beza than is commonly recognized, and to the work of Bell, who argues that
whereas Calvin taught that faith is fundamentally passive in nature, is centred in the mind or understanding, is primarily to be viewed in terms of certain knowledge, such that assurance of salvation is of the essence of faith, and is grounded extra nos, that is, outside ourselves in the person and work of Jesus Christ, Scottish theology, on the other hand, gradually came to teach that faith is primarily active, centred within the will or heart, and that assurance is not of the essence of faith, but is a fruit of faith, and is to be gathered through self-examination and syllogistic deduction, thereby placing the grounds of assurance intra nos, within ourselves.10
For Kendall, the challenge is not merely one of naming the right heroes, but of returning to the pristine Calvinism of Calvin, over against what he judges to be the scholastic Calvinism of many of his successors. There are important (and disputed) entailments in Kendall’s study for the doctrine of definite atonement -- and for understanding Christian assurance. Positions are sufficiently entrenched, and the topic sufficiently current, that in the second volume of the biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, recently appeared, Iain Murray devotes six pages to refuting Kendall. Murray concludes that if Kendall is right and "full assurance" inheres in saving faith, there are "devastating practical consequences":
If it were true then it would follow: (1) that anyone lacking “full assurance” has to be treated as not being a Christian at all; (2) that all converts can be told that their assurance is complete, contrary to the New Testament directions to converts to press on to fuller assurance (Hebrews 6:11; 2 Peter 1:5-10; 1 John 1:4); and (3)that if faith means full assurance then the many warnings of Scripture on the need to observe that true faith is always accompanied by holiness of life become needless.12
Of course, Kendall might well reply that Murray makes assurance dependent not on justification but on sanctification (understanding the latter term in its use in Reformed dogmatics, not in its more flexible use in the Pauline corpus), and ultimately fosters an unhealthy introspection that functions not unlike Arminianism or semi-Pelagianism. For his part, Beeke in his doctoral dissertation13 argues that the differences between Calvin and the (later) Calvinists on the relations between faith and assurance are largely quantitative, not qualitative. Faced with changing pastoral contexts, Beeke argues, Calvinists allotted greater sensitivity to the degree of assurance that a Christian might experience, but nevertheless in their "meticulous argumentation" adhered to the fundamental principles of the early Reformation. It was within this framework that they could argue that assurance of faith has more complex grounds than a simple resting on God’s objective promises. On the whole, Beeke is correct for the notable figures he treats. Unfortunately, he writes history as if the "Annales" school of historiography had never developed, and makes no attempt either to limit his conclusions to those he studies or to probe how faith and assurance were handled in the lives of ordinary Christians in both English Puritanism and the Calvinist infiltration of the Dutch Reformation.
Certainly both sides of this essentially historical debate have full arsenals by which to take on the other’s positions. For our purposes, however, it is worth observing that both sides recognize that the debate is not merely a historical one-viz., What did Calvin (or Beza, or Perkins, or Comrie) actually teach?-but a doctrinal one with substantial theological and pastoral implications. We may range from the experience of many Scottish highlanders who habitually refuse to receive the communion elements on the ground that they lack personal assurance (and this lack stems from their own estimate of unsatisfactory evidences of grace in their lives), to the wretched "easy believism" of many in the Western world who, having professed faith, feel no pull toward holiness and no shame when they take the elements. A thousand variations of experience dot the landscape between these two extremes.
C. In America, the basis of Christian assurance has erupted as the distinguishing banner of a small but vociferous segment of evangelicalism. The movement is strong enough to have formed its own organization, the Grace Evangelical Society, complete with its own journal. All of the publications that have emerged so far are at the popular or semi-popular level; but that ensures wider circulation, not less. Doubtless the most influential of these writings is a book by Zane Hodges, The Gospel under Siege. The popular preacher John F. MacArthur, Jr., has responded at about the same level, but with so large a number of unguarded statements or overstatements that his work has spawned more controversy than healing.
The concern of Hodges and his colleagues is to make Christian assurance absolutely certain. To accomplish this, they tie assurance exclusively to saving faith, and divorce it from any support in a transformed life. The countless passages that tie genuine discipleship to obedience are handled by making a disjunction between "discipleship" passages and those that promise eternal life. Eternal life turns on faith in the saving Son of God; discipleship turns on obedience; and Christian assurance is tied only to the former. To link assurance in any way to the latter, it is argued, is to corrupt a salvation of free grace and turn it into a salvation partly dependent on works. If my salvation depends only on free grace, then the basis of my assurance is as steadfast as the freedom of that grace. But if my assurance depends on observing certain changes in conduct in my life, themselves the fruit of obedience, then implicitly I am saying that, since I cannot be assured of salvation without seeing obedience, salvation itself depends on some mixture of faith plus obedience-and free grace is thereby destroyed. Hence the name of this new evangelical society. Its members are persuaded that the purity of the gospel of grace is at stake.
There are numerous entailments to this analysis. Those who disagree with them are dismissed as supporters of "Lordship salvation," understood to mean that these opponents insist that part of the requirement for becoming a Christian, for receiving salvation, is the confession of Jesus as Lord. In the view of Hodges and his colleagues, trusting Jesus as Savior is all that is required for salvation. "Repentance," in their view, must be understood in a narrowly etymological sense: it is the mental "change of mind" that accepts Jesus as the Savior, but entails no necessary sorrow over sin or turning away from it. That is the fruit of confessing Jesus as Lord; it is the fruit of obedience, and properly emerges from the confidence of knowing that one’s sins are already forgiven. In some of the writings of this camp, this analysis is justified by referring to 1 Corinthians 3 and Paul’s division of the race into the natural man, the carnal man, and the spiritual man. The natural man is unredeemed; the carnal man enjoys salvation, but lives like the world, and is finally saved "only as one escaping through the flames" (3:15), while his works are burned up. The spiritual man knows Jesus as Lord and is walking in growing obedience. Hodges would feel offended to have his view branded as "easy believism" or "cheap grace" or "greasy grace" or the like. He insists that Christians who do not constantly commit themselves to obedience pay high prices for their rebellion. But the price, he says, is never loss of salvation, nor (assuming the initial trust was genuine) a post facto discovery that the initial trust was not genuine, for that would tie assurance, and therefore salvation itself, to works.
D. Apart from these movements, there is a tendency to say very little about Christian assurance in most of our churches. Indeed, one might reasonably argue that a major reason why so many aberrant views are being so widely circulated is that there is a vacuum that cries out to be filled. I have not conducted a scientific poll to establish changing patterns over the last few decades. My impression, however, is that in many churches Christian assurance is not a major topic for sermons or discussion groups, largely because popular eschatology has become so realized that there is very little futurist element left, except at the merely creedal level. If we do not long for the consummation of our salvation in the new heaven and the new earth, for the visio Dei that is the believer’s inheritance, then there is little point in talking about our assurance of gaining it.
In what follows, I shall sometimes engage one or more of these tendencies directly; but my principal aim is to offer some biblical and theological observations that may help us to cut a swathe through the debates and refocus them a little. For instance, whatever the rights and wrongs of the historical arguments over the influence of Calvin, it is arguable that some of the lines of the debate are seriously askew because they too quickly press toward atemporal dogmatic questions without pausing adequately to reflect on redemptive-historical matters lodged in Scripture itself. I shall also argue that there is one major biblical-theological motif that has largely been overlooked in these debates, a motif that has the potential for orienting the discussions, both academic and popular, in fresh directions.
III. Biblical and Theological Reflections
A. The New Testament writers admit no qualitative, absolute disjunction between genuine believers who display obedience to Jesus in their lives, and genuine believers who do not.
Limitations of time and space require that I restrict my comments to one passage and one theme:
(1) 1 Corinthians 3. All of 1 Cor 1:10-4:20 is devoted to Paul’s handling of the divisiveness of the Corinthians (cf. esp. 1:10-11; 3:5-6, 21-23; 4:6ff.), itself tied to their conviction that they were preeminently wise and spiritual (cf. 1:18ff.; 2:6ff.; 3:18ff.). Meanwhile, their thinking and their conduct are so spiritually immature-they are "mere infants in Christ" (3:1)-that Paul could not address them as "spiritual" (pneumatikov"), as they thought themselves to be, but as "worldly" (NIV). This last word is perhaps better rendered more literally as "fleshly" (savrkino"), i.e., made of flesh. The charge has extra bite, since the Corinthians think themselves so "spiritual" that they are not even sure there is a resurrection body still to be gained (1 Corinthians 15). They were certainly "fleshly," "made of flesh," when Paul was among them (v. 1); the tragedy is that they are still "fleshly" (v. 3): here Paul changes to sarkikov" (in the best reading), i.e., having the characteristics of flesh, clearly with ethical overtones. They are "acting like mere men" (a[nqrwpoi, v.3). The evidence for this is found in their "jealousy and quarreling," in their determination to lionize this or that human leader.
The crucial question, then, is whether Paul is introducing a new ontological level of Christian existence. He does not place the Corinthians amongst all whom he dismisses as yucikoiv (2:14), those who are "natural" and therefore without the Spirit. Not only has he already noted their spiritual endowments (1:4-9), Paul elsewhere repeatedly insists that one cannot be utterly devoid of the Spirit and be a Christian (Rom 8:9; Gal 3:2-3; Titus 3:5-7). Yet by saying that the Corinthians are acting and thinking not like "spiritual" but "fleshly" people, like "mere men," he is charging them with the thoughts and conduct of those who do not have the Spirit. The tension is palpable, and the result is centuries of debate and misunderstanding. But the most obvious way to take Paul’s words is that he is using strong language to force his readers to face up to the inherent inconsistency of their position. They have the Spirit, but at this junction they are neither thinking nor acting as if they do.
This is a more believable approach than those which suppose Paul himself is introducing an ontological distinction in the congregation. That is surely intrinsically unlikely, given the concern of the first four chapters to establish unity. Others try to find a shift in meaning in pneumatikov" from chap. 2 to chap. 3, or base a massive tripartite division of humankind (natural / carnal [KJV] / spiritual) on these verses. But apart from the fact that the same division cannot be found clearly drawn out elsewhere in Paul, such a reading flies in the face of one of the principal emphases in Pauline ethics, viz., the appeal "to be what you are."
Thus, when Paul says that he could not address them as "spiritual," there is a sense in which he is admitting that there are "unspiritual" believers. He does not mean the Corinthian believers do not have the Spirit-there are no "unspiritual" believers in that sense-but that they are displaying a great deal of "unspiritual" behavior, which must stop. Three observations must be entered: (1) If this is a fair reading of the passage, there is nothing here that introduces an absolute, qualitative disjunction between those who are "fleshly" ("carnal" if you prefer) and those who are spiritual. All apart from perfectionists will admit that at the level of behavior, all Christians, insofar as they too participate in jealousy and quarreling, are sometimes "carnal." There is no attempt to tie the distinctions here to a theoretical disjunction between those who accept Jesus as Savior and those who accept him as Lord. (2) The sins in view are not of the sort that make us think the Corinthians are distancing themselves from their baptismal vows. This is not the case of someone who made a profession of faith at an evangelistic rally, followed the way of Christ for a few months, and then lived in a manner indistinguishable from that of any pagan for the next fifteen years, despite conscientious pastoral interest. Nor is it the case of a person who indulges in gross sexual immorality and who will not repent, like the man described in 1 Corinthians 5, of whose spiritual state not even the apostle seems to be sure, let alone confident. This is not to minimize the sins of jealousy and quarreling; it is to place them within the context of Christians who at many levels do display the presence and power of the Spirit (1:3-8), even though in this regard they are thinking and acting in ways that are out of step with the Spirit. (3) Above all, there is nothing in this chapter to connect these "carnal" Christians to the person described in vv. 14-15. To justify this point, we must press on to the contribution of the next two paragraphs in the text.
Because the Corinthians’ carnality is displayed in their propensity to form parties attached to particular leaders, Paul finds it necessary to explain the limited contribution such leaders have made. He develops two extended metaphors. The first is agricultural (3:5-9): Paul planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God alone made it grow. Both the sower and the one who waters the seed have one purpose. Each "will be rewarded according to his own labor" (3:8). In this metaphor, the Corinthians do not figure as laborers. Paul and Apollos are "God’s fellow workers"; the Corinthians are "God’s field" (v. 9).
Then the metaphor changes, but with the same distinctions firmly in place. The Corinthians are "God’s building" (v. 9); Paul is the contractor who has laid the foundation, Jesus Christ himself, with others building on the foundation that he laid. Within the constraints of this metaphor, it is the builder whose work will be shown up for what it is on the last day; the fire will test the quality of each builder’s work. "If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames" (3:14-15; emphasis mine). It is slightly misfocused to conclude, with Conzelmann and many other commentators, that "unsatisfactory works performed by the Christian as a Christian do not cause his damnation."21 Doubtless there is some sense in which that is true, but Paul’s concern in this context is not to make application to the ordinary Christian, and certainly not to those whom he thinks are still "mere infants" (3:1), but to raise a standard that holds Christian leaders to account. In short, we are not here dealing with perennial backsliding or utter moral indifference, but shoddy workmanship amongst those who are accounted the leaders of the Christian church.
Only in vv. 16-17 is there a hint of a broader application, and it is no more than a hint. Maintaining the metaphor drawn from the building industry, Paul specifies, more closely, that the Corinthians are not merely a building, but God’s temple, his dwelling. If "anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple." It is possible to read these verses as nothing more than a forceful reiteration of the lesson drawn in vv. 10-15. Nevertheless, because Paul now speaks of "anyone" and not simply the builders, it suggests, in the context of the first four chapters, that those given to division, jealousy, and quarreling in the church are also in danger of doing damage to the church, God’s temple. Since they are that temple, they are simultaneously doing damage to themselves and courting God’s judgment.
It appears, then, that in this chapter Paul acknowledges that Christians do not always live up to what they are called to be, that every such failure is a serious breech, that those who do damage to the church are particularly threatened by God’s judgment, and that some who are viewed as leaders in the church, though they will themselves be saved on the day of judgment, will have nothing to show for their labor. It does not encourage us to think that it is possible to accept Jesus as Savior, and thus be promoted from the "natural" to the "carnal" level, in transit, as it were, to the "spiritual" stage, at which point one has accepted Jesus as Lord. Still less does it encourage us to think of the "carnal" Christian as someone who once made a profession of faith and who now lives in every respect like the surrounding pagan world.
(2) The new covenant. New covenant language is fairly pervasive in the NN, its themes far more so. Both Luke (Luke 22:20) and Paul (1 Cor 11:25) report that Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took such language on his own lips and tied the theme to his impending death. If Matthew and Mark omit "new," the implication is present anyway, since it is difficult to discover any sense in which Jesus’ impending death signalled or ratified the old covenant. Hebrews 8 and 10 specifically tie the prophecy of Jer 31:31ff. to the substance of Christian faith; 2 Corinthians 3 and Galatians 4 are no less insistent on setting forth the significance of the (new) covenant. Beyond such explicit language lies a large array of NT themes that presuppose the OT promises of the new covenant (e.g., Jer 31:29ff.; 32:36-41; Ezek 36:25-27; Mal 3:1), not least the "new birth" language of John 3.22
The point to be observed is that these OT promises foresee a time when God’s law is written on the heart of his people. Teachers will no longer say, "Know the Lord," for they will all know him (Jer 31): the outlook is not of a time when there will be no teachers, but no mediating teachers, no mediators, whose very office ensures them that they have an endowment not enjoyed by others. The new covenant will not be like the tribal covenant associated with Moses’ name, when the fathers ate sour grapes and their children’s teeth were set on edge. Rather, it is characterized by the removal of the heart of stone amongst all of God’s covenantal people. To use the language of Ezekiel 36, the new covenant will be characterized by cleansing (sprinkling with water) and spiritual renewal (a new heart and a new spirit).
Add to this the many OT passages that anticipate the time when God’s Spirit is poured out on his people (e.g., Isa 44:3-5; Ezek 11:19-20; 36:25-27; Joel 2:28-32), along with the fulfillment of these passages in the NT, and another important part of what is characteristic of the new covenant age is dropped into place. The Spirit is bequeathed by the glorified Christ (John’s Gospel), the Spirit is given as the ajrrabwvn of the ultimate inheritance (Paul), the Spirit vivifies, empowers, and directs the church (Acts). The period between Pentecost and Christ’s return is supremely the age of the Spirit, the powerful Spirit who renews, convicts, cleanses, empowers. Doubtless we "groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Rom 8:23), but meanwhile God has sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful man, "in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit" (Rom 8:4; emphasis mine).
It appears that a great deal of the debate over assurance has been controlled by forensic categories associated with justification and faith, but has largely ignored the categories of power and transformation associated with the Spirit and new covenant. A fundamental component of such themes is that the people of the new covenant are by definition granted a new heart and empowered by the Spirit to walk in holiness, to love righteousness, to prove pleasing to the Lord. This means that, insofar as the writers of the NT thought of themselves as new covenant heirs, they could not think of themselves as other than Spirit-endowed, regenerate, transformed. The NT does not preserve the old covenant distinction between the locus of the covenant community and the locus of the remnant, or between the locus of the covenant community and the locus of the leaders on whom special endowment had fallen. It is of the essence of the new covenant that those who are in it have been given a new heart, have been cleansed, have received the Holy Spirit. Moreover, this theme cannot rightly be divorced from the entailments of justification and of salvation through faith. The gift of the Spirit is tied to justification (Romans 5-8); salvation by grace through faith (Eph 2:8), "not by works so that no one can boast" (Eph 2:9), is tied to the fact that we are "God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" (Eph 2:10).
One must not conclude from this line of reasoning that new covenant believers are anywhere promised moral and spiritual perfection this side of the new heaven and the new earth. Nevertheless, both the OT prophecies regarding the new covenant and the age of the Spirit, and the NT claims regarding their fulfillment, lead us to expect transformed lives. Indeed, it is precisely this unequivocal expectation that authorizes Paul to set up the tension we have already noted: the exhortations to live up to what we are in Christ are predicated on the assumption that what we are in Christ necessarily brings transformation, so that moral failure is theologically shocking, however pragmatically realistic it may be. Indeed, it might be argued that this accounts for some of the tension in 1 John. The setting that calls forth that epistle I shall briefly discuss a little farther on. For the moment, it is worth recalling John’s insistence that believers do sin, and people who claim they do not are liars, self-deluded, and guilty of charging God with falsehood (1 John 1:6ff.). At the same time, he repeatedly insists that sinning is not done amongst Christians. Various explanations have been advanced, but the most obvious is still the best: although both our experience and our location between the "already" and the "not yet" teach us that we do sin and we will sin, yet every single instance of sin is shocking, inexcusable, forbidden, appalling, out of line with what we are as Christians.24
It would take too much space to treat all the passages that are adduced to justify the counterclaim, or to demonstrate the methodological flaws inherent in Hodges’ treatment of repentance. But even on the basis of the brief probings here, especially into the nature of the new covenant, it appears justified to claim that the NT writers nowhere admit an absolute, qualitative disjunction between genuine believers who in their conduct display obedience to the Lord Jesus, and genuine believers who do not. This at least raises the possibility that some forms of Christian assurance might be validly based on observably transformed conduct, without in anyway suggesting that such conduct wins or earns or gains salvation. How that might be related to other themes-the grounding of Christian assurance in the object of faith, Jesus Christ himself-is still to be explored. But ignoring the covenantal aspects of Christianity in favor of narrowly forensic categories has been one of the chief reasons for confusion in this area.
B. Several NT writers recognize the existence of spurious or transitory faith, and this recognition must be factored into any responsible doctrine of Christian assurance.
This subject is exceedingly complex, for it is tied to the nature of apostasy and to protracted debates over the security of the believer in the NT. For the sake of clarity, I shall proceed in seven steps.
(1) Discussion of a figure like Judas Iscariot is extremely problematic. Frequently comparisons and contrasts are drawn between his "defection" and that of Peter (I use "defection" in an attempt to find a word that can reasonably refer to the actions of both men). But quite apart from the intrinsic value of the exercise, it is doubtful if the apostasy of Judas is to be construed as apostasy from full-blown Christian faith. To put the matter another way, the experiences of "coming-to-faith" of men and women in the four Gospels is in certain respects unique, unrepeatable in any generation after the resurrection and Pentecost. Their coming-to-faith required the lapse of time until the One they came to confess as Messiah was crucified and rose again. Doubtless they struggled with doubts and sins and selfishness, and therefore in certain respects they may serve as paradigms for our own spiritual pilgrimages. Nevertheless, none of us today, in our own coming-to-faith, had to wait for the next major redemptive-historical appointment, the death and resurrection of God’s Son, before our fledgling faith could become fully Christian. Nor did we have to tarry in Jerusalem until the day of Pentecost had fully come. But if the first disciples’ coming-to-faith was not exactly like ours, then Judas Iscariot’s apostasy from whatever level he had attained before the crucifixion was not exactly like apostasy in, say, Hebrews 6 or 10. This is not to minimize his sin in the slightest; it is to argue that no substantial view of what apostasy might mean under the new covenant can begin with Iscariot, still less with, say, Korah.
(2) Little help on the nature of apostasy is to be gained by simple word studies. The word ajpostasiva, for instance, occurs only twice in the NT, once to refer to turning away from Moses on the part of Jews (Acts 21:21), the other to refer to the great rebellion that takes place when the man of lawlessness is revealed (2 Thess 2:3).
We may perhaps adopt a working definition of "apostasy", independent of any Greek word, along such lines as these: it is the decisive turning away from a religious position and stance once firmly held. It differs from ordinary unbelief in that it involves turning away from a position of belief; it differs from backsliding in that it is calculated, decisive, and irrevocable; it differs from merely changing one’s mind over some relatively minor theological point in that it involves the rejection of an entire position and stance.
(3) It is disputed how many passages in the NT describe or refer to such apostasy. Was Demas an apostate (2 Tim 4:10)? Did the immoral man of 1 Cor 5:1ff. die an apostate? But however many or few, some passages cannot easily be circumvented. It must be strenuously insisted that attempts to reduce the shock and power of severe warnings like those in Heb 6:4-6 and 2 Cor 13:5, by arguing that the warnings are merely hypothetical, or that the turning aside of those described in Heb 6:4-6 and 1 John 2:19 is from useful service but not from salvation, are desperate expedients that responsible exegesis will happily avoid.
(4) The real question is whether, with Marshall26 and others who follow him, we shall say that in these instances genuine believers have fallen away, or that although they were believers in some sense they were not genuine believers at all. There are genuine difficulties both ways.
One of the most competent treatments of some of the issues is the study by Volf, which examines the theme of perseverance in the seven Pauline Epistles over which there is least dispute as to their authenticity. In the first section, she describes what it is like to "stay in." "A continuity in the divine work of salvation emerges in which a particular aspect of salvation is seen to imply the succeeding ones."28 Paul repeatedly draws attention to the "eternal divine initiatives in salvation: divine election, foreknowledge and predestination"29 (cf. Rom 8:23, 29-30; 2 Cor 1:22; 5:5; Phil 1:6; 1 Thess 5:9; 2 Thess 2:13-14). On the other hand, for Paul "the process of consummating the work of salvation is more like an obstacle course than a downhill ride to the finishline"30 (cf. Rom 5:1-11; 8:28, 31-39; 1 Cor 1:8-9; 10:13; 1 Thess 5:23-24; 2 Thess 3:3). God’s faithfulness is manifested in strengthening and protecting and preserving his people.
Paul gives clear and ample evidence of his view that Christians’ salvation is certain to reach completion. This thought is integral to his understanding of individual salvation. Though threats to the consummation of Christians’ salvation may and will appear, they cannot successfully challenge it. God’s faithfulness and love make divine triumph the unquestionable outcome. For Paul, certainty of final salvation rests on God’s continued intervention to that end.31
In the second section of her book, Volf examines an array of passages (Rom 14:1-23; 1 Cor 5:1-5; 6:9-11; 8:7-13; 10:12; 11:27-34; Gal 5:9-11) to argue that for Paul "continuity in salvation does not make Christian conduct irrelevant."32 Against E. P. Sanders, Volf argues that although morality and integrity and obedience matter enormously to Paul, and although Paul envisages punishment falling on some believers who disobey, "Paul does not make Christians’ final salvation dependent on their repentance from post-conversion sins."33 Then she makes what is in my judgment one of the few false steps in her book: she argues that it is possible to lose one’s membership in the "in-group" by "falsifying one’s Christian profession by one’s behavior.... But when this happens, continuity in actual salvation is not interrupted."34 In other words, at this point she agrees with Sanders that staying in the "in-group" is conditional on good behavior, but she qualifies Sanders by arguing that this is not the same as remaining in salvation. In my judgment, her exegesis is to be questioned at a number of points, and, above all, she has not adequately come to grips with the significance of what belonging to the new covenant community entails; for as we have seen, the nature of the new covenant drives us to the conclusion that there is a certain sense in which extra ecclesiam nulla salus [outside the church there is no salvation].
In part three, Volf examines Romans 9-11; 2 Cor 13:5; Gal 5:1-4 in order to discover what unbelief signifies amongst those who profess to be Christians. In 2 Cor 13:5, for instance, she argues that Paul cannot be warning against loss of salvation, since the context "shows that ajdovkimo" can only mean rejection as a non-convert, and that the exhortation to self-testing has the main purpose of pointing out Paul’s own provenness as an apostle and possibly the subordinate purpose of exposing some Corinthians to be falsely professing Christians."35 She holds that the election of Israel does not entail automatic participation in salvation "apart from faith in Christ"36 (emphasis hers). She might have done a little more work on the diverse ways Paul thinks of "election"; but that is perhaps a picky point. In her final section, Volf examines Paul’s reflections on the final outcome of his own apostolic mission (1 Cor 9:23-27; 15:2; 2 Cor 6:1; Gal 2:2; 4:11; 1 Thess 3:5; Phil 2:16). If he fears that his labor might prove to be "in vain" (Phil 2:16; 1 Thess 3:5; Gal 2:2; 4:11), it can only be because he fears that some of "his seeming converts would have no salvation. Whether failure in the eschatological test should be traced to his converts’ false profession or their apostasy from salvation is a question not answered by Paul in these texts."37 But Volf notes that Paul, while distrusting his own success, seems to give way to confidence "when he views the situation from the perspective of God’s faithfulness to professing Christians in whom he sees the divine work of salvation taking place."38 I shall shortly argue that this is an extremely important observation.
(5) Apart from points of exegetical detail, the methodological difference between those who hold that genuine believers fall away and those who hold that those who fall away are not genuine believers seems to turn on two issues.
(a) How strong are the passages that seem to affirm the ultimate preservation and perseverance of God’s people? This is something that Marshall, for instance, does not directly address. He fairly expounds some of the passages that affirm that God’s people continue in salvation to the end, but then diminishes their weight by setting over against them those passages that emphasize human responsibility to persevere, or those passages that refer to apostasy (however defined). The resulting formulation always makes the preservation of God’s people unto consummated salvation absolutely contingent: God is the one who faithfully preserves his people, provided they do not defect. But what warrants such diminution of the apparent weight of the perseverance passages?
For example, John refers to the elect as all that the Father gives Jesus (John 6:37a), and by a litotes insists that Jesus will keep in or preserve all of these people (i.e., he will not drive them away, 6:37b), on the ground that the Son came to do his Father’s will, which is none other than that he should preserve all those whom the Father has given him (6:38-40). It is exceedingly difficult to diminish the finality of this statement without implying that Jesus proves unwilling to preserve or incapable of preserving all those the Father has given him. Most Christians would be aghast to use texts that affirm or assume Jesus’ humanity to diminish those that affirm his deity, and vice versa. We have come to accept some mystery in our Christological formulations; we seek interpretations that allow complementary texts to have their full vigor without permitting diminution of their most obvious meaning by some form of mutual annihilation. Can a case be mounted that in this area, too, there is a definable mystery that should not be allowed to be diminished by such mutual annihilation? I shall shortly argue that there is. But meanwhile, it seems to me that the strong NT emphases on the security of the believer should not be qualified by mere subtraction, unless there is the strongest exegetical warrant for doing so.
(b) More positively, is there warrant for thinking the NT writers have categories for transitory faith, spurious faith-in short, for faith that seems like saving faith, but which proves to be spurious? If there is, then the passages that speak of falling away do not force us to conclude that the defection is from genuine faith. In fact, in every major NT corpus, there are numerous warnings against or descriptions of spurious faith. For instance, in Matthew Jesus envisages that some who have addressed him as "Lord, Lord," and who have prophesied in his name and driven out demons in his name and performed many miracles in his name, will be excluded from the kingdom of heaven: "I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’" (Matt 7:21-23). The one who enters the kingdom is "he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven" (7:21). John (2:23-25) testifies that when Jesus attended the first Passover Feast of his ministry, "many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name,"40 but Jesus would not entrust himself to them: he knew what was in their heart. A little later (John 8:31), to "the Jews who had believed him,"41 Jesus gives a criterion that establishes who are genuine disciples: "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples." The same stance is reflected in 1 John 2:19. Those who have seceded from the church are described in telling terms: "They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us." In other words, genuine faith, by definition, perseveres; where there is no perseverance, by definition the faith cannot be genuine. Again, "anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son" (2 John 9). Paul says as much: he informs the Colossians that God has reconciled them by Christ’s physical body through death, to present them holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation-"if," he writes, "if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel" (Col 1:22-23). In short, genuine faith is tied to perseverance; transitory faith is spurious. We find similar emphases in 2 Peter 1:10-11. Before we come across the "apostasy" passages in the Epistle to the Hebrews, we read (in Heb 3:14), "We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first" (cf. also 3:6; 4:14; 6:11; etc.).
The range and diversity of these sorts of passages (I have, after all, cited only a small percentage of them) utterly preclude the possibility that they all refer to persevering in discipleship that goes beyond "mere" salvation. Whereas a few of these passages, taken alone, might simply suggest that continuing in salvation to the end depends absolutely on our own efforts at perseverance, responsible biblical theology must seek to integrate them with the promises of God’s preserving initiative, not less rich in each major NT corpus, and with the passages in this list that make perseverance a criterion of genuine faith. For example, those who had seceded in 1 John 2:19 had once belonged to the church; otherwise John could not say that "they went out from us."42 To all observers, for all practical purposes, the seceders were once baptized members of the church, fully accepted as Christians. Nevertheless, John insists, they were never really "of us," for if they had been "they would have remained with us" (emphasis mine). In other words, John presupposes that spurious faith is possible, but that genuine faith, by definition, perseveres.
In short, the methodological point of division between the two principal interpretations-the one that argues genuine believers can fall away, and the one that argues that those who fall away are necessarily spurious or transitory believers-turns on the two issues I have just defined.
(6) If the tack I have taken is largely correct, the doctrinal area where we must become a little more sophisticated is in the theology of conversion. The question could be put several ways, but perhaps this will do: Is there NT warrant for thinking that there is some third alternative to being clearly "in" or "out"? To simplify the discussion, let us grant that God knows precisely who is "in" or "out." The question then becomes, Is there NT warrant for thinking that, as far as Christian observers are concerned, some people are not clearly either "in" or "out," that the step of conversion is not always luminously clear?
Implicitly, of course, we have already answered this question by listing a few of the NT passages where apparent conversions proved spurious (e.g., 1 John 2:19), or where the genuineness of the profession is irrefragably tied to perseverance (thereby implying that transitory faith is under a cloud). The parable of the sower - or, better, of the soils (Mark 4 par.) - illustrates the same point. In addition to the receptive soil that enables the seed to produce fruit in varying measure, there are three other kinds. The hard pathway stops the seed from embedding itself in dirt, and the birds of the air eat it: the picture is of people who hear the word of God, but from whom it is snatched away by Satan before it can germinate. The seed that falls "on rocky places" lodges in a thin layer of topsoil that covers limestone bedrock. Because it is so shallow, this topsoil heats up quickly, encourages the seed to germinate, and therefore initially produces what seems to be the most promising crop. Unfortunately, as the sun burns throughout the long, hot summer, these plants are scorched: their roots search for moisture, but come up against the bedrock, and the plant dies. The explanation tells us that this pictures those who receive the word with joy. Sadly, because they have no root, "they last only a short time" (emphasis added). When trouble or persecution comes, they fall away. And finally, some seed falls on thorny ground. Here, too, the seed germinates and sends up tendrils, but the competition exerted by the more robust thorns chokes the young plants, so that they bear no grain. Here we are to think of those who hear the word, but whose hearing faces the competition of worries, the deceitfulness of wealth, and desires for other things. These distractions "choke the word, making it unfruitful."
The important thing to observe, for the purpose of this paper, is that two of the three fruitless soils sprout life, but do not bear fruit. This is not bleeding the parable for more than it is worth: recall that in the case of the seed that falls on rocky soil, the interpretation of the parable provided in the text itself describes the reality pictured by the parable as people who "hear the word and at once receive it with joy," but who "last only a short time." To all observers save God himself, this seed promises the best harvest, but this spiritual life proves transitory.
Several popular interpreters associated with the Grace Evangelical Society find this so uncomfortable that they reinterpret the parable. They say that instead of having three soils that are viewed negatively and one that is viewed positively, the alignment should go another way: there are two soils that are viewed negatively (the pathway and the thorns), and two that produce life (the rocky soil and the good soil), one of which also produces fruit. This will not do: the seed scattered on thorny soil also produces plants, but these plants never bear grain (Mark 4:7): the thorns choke the plants, not the ungerminated seeds. I suppose they could respond by suggesting that there is only one soil treated negatively (the pathway), and three treated positively, only one of which bears fruit. But: (a) the narrative parable simply does not read that way: such an interpretation is being imported from an alien theological structure; (b) it would be strange in the context of a Gospel tradition that repeatedly insists people are known by their fruit, not by their life without fruit; and (c) in its context the parable of the soils, especially in Mark and Matthew, joins other parables in elucidating the nature of the kingdom that has already dawned but is not yet consummated. Its purpose is to show that the kingdom is not now dawning with apocalyptic suddenness and clarity, but in the lives of those who hear the gospel of the kingdom and produce fruit. To argue that it is also introducing a category for spiritual life that is nevertheless fruitless is simply alien to the concerns of the chapter, and contrary to one of the driving motifs of all three Synoptic Gospels.
Ideally, it would be helpful at this point to offer a detailed exegesis of Heb 6:4-6, and of similar passages in the NT, but we must here limit ourselves to some focal observations. Too often the challenge raised by Hebrews 6 is cast in a simple alternative: Are those who are so warned Christians or not? If one argues for the "not," one is hard-pressed to explain the string of descriptions: "those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age." If one argues they are Christians, the dominant alternatives in the commentaries are (a) that the warning is merely hypothetical-which is utterly at odds with the driving repetition of the theme in the book, and the seriousness with which it is presented; (b) that the falling away is not from salvation-which simply will not square with 6:6 and especially with 10:26ff.; or (c) that genuine believers may lose their salvation-which resurrects the problems of reconciling this view with the many passages that urge us to trust the certain, preserving work of the grace of God, not least in this epistle, where God offers comfort and incentive to his people by promising, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you" (13:5).
But there is a better alternative, once we have recognized that our theology of conversion is too simplistic. We have already seen that three chapters earlier Hebrews virtually defines true believers as those who hold firmly to the end the confidence they had at first (3:6, 14). In other words, like other NT books the Epistle to the Hebrews allows for a kind of transitory faith, a form of conversion which, like the seed sown on rocky soil, has all the signs of life, but which does not persevere. The Spirit brings initial enlightenment; the person enjoys the word of God (like the one in Mark 4 who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy), and tastes something of the power of the coming age: perhaps old habits fall away, and a new love for holiness and for God and his reign emerge. But according to the description of genuine Christianity already provided by the book, none of this is enough: there must also be perseverance.
Against the background of the theology of the epistle, the reasons for such warnings are clear enough. The incarnate Son of God is God’s last word to humankind (1:1-4). Therefore those who neglect the great salvation that only he brings cannot escape (2:1ff.). The sacrifice the Son offered was "once for all." There is therefore no more offering for sin (10:18, 26), still less no repetition of this one sacrifice (9:25-28). This one sacrifice, offered once for all, is forever entirely sufficient for all of God’s people (10:10-14). Therefore any who taste of its fruit, recognize its origin, ally themselves with its significance, and then deliberately reject this gospel, have no place left to turn: there is no more forgiveness of sins. This is apostasy: it is turning away from a religious position and stance once firmly held. But that is still shy of saying that the faith so exercised was necessarily saving faith in some ultimate sense, if part of the definition of saving faith includes the criterion of perseverance.
(7) What is the essence of the difference, then, so far as assurance is concerned, between (a) the person who holds that all genuine believers will be preserved to the end, and that those who fall away from apparent faith only enjoy spurious, transitory faith, and (b) the person who holds that genuine believers
may fall away? Marshall’s analysis, using "Calvinist" and "non-Calvinist" to denote the two groups respectively, runs like this:
If a person is in the former group, he has still to heed the warning: only by so doing can he show that he is one of the elect. In other words, the Calvinist ‘believer’ cannot fall away from ‘true’ faith, but he can ‘fall away’ from what proves in the end to be only seeming faith. The possibility of falling away remains. But in neither case does the person know for certain whether he is a true or a seeming disciple. All that he knows is that Christ alone can save and that he must trust in Christ, and that he sees signs in his life which may give him some assurance that he is a true disciple. But these signs may be misleading.
It comes down to a question of assurance. Whoever said, ‘The Calvinist knows that he cannot fall from salvation but does not know whether he has got it’, had it summed up nicely. But this can be counterfeit and misleading. The non-Calvinist knows that he has salvation-because he trusts in the promises of God-but is aware that, left to himself, he could lose it. So he holds to Christ. It seems to me the practical effect is the same.
At a merely mechanistic level, I think this analysis is largely correct. But three caveats must be added. (a) Even if at certain levels the practical effect is the same, that does not mean the underlying structures are the same. One must still decide which approach is most faithful to most texts. In my view, Marshall does not adequately handle the numerous passages and themes that do promise the security of the believer. (b) Psychologically, the focus is not the same. Historically, of course, it is a commonplace that some branches of Calvinism have developed their own forms of introversion, believers constantly examining themselves to see if they were displaying sufficient fruit to justify their conclusion that they were amongst the elect-thus strangely mirroring their Arminian counterparts who sometimes gave themselves to worrying if they were truly holding on to the promises of God. Thus at their worst, the two approaches meet in strange and sad ways. But at their best, the focus of the two systems is nonetheless quite different. Despite Marshall’s salutary emphasis on the promises of God, at the end of the day the security of the believer finally rests with the believer. For those from the opposite camp, the security of the believer finally rests with God-and that, I suggest, rightly taught and applied, draws the believer back to God himself, to trust in God, to renewed faith that is of a piece with trusting him in the first place. (c) In any case, this analysis entirely neglects to wrestle with the way we are to think of God’s sovereign preservation of his people, and our responsibility to persevere.
[for continuation, see HolwickID #16814]
