The Calvinist doctrine of perseverance.
Consistent Calvinism teaches the unloseability of faith. It asserts very firmly that faith, once it has come into being, is not lost even through peccata enormia. Not faith itself, but only the exercise of
430) Chemnitz acts De perseverantia under De iustificatione (Loci 1599 II, 709) and De bonis operibus (1. c. III, 48 sqq.). Likewise Gerhard (L. de iustif., § 83 sqq.; L. de bonis operibus, § 134 sqq.). In both places we have already spoken of perseverance, because it was to be shown that justifying faith, with the forgiveness of sins, is also certain of salvation (II, 485 f.), and that the preservation of salvation, or rather of faith, is not to be ascribed to good works (III, p. 22 ff.). Also after the doctrine of the means of grace and the church is a fitting place for the doctrine of perseverance. Next, in the doctrine of eternal election, De perseverantia must again be dealt with. Here we emphasize the points about perseverance in the faith that are to be held against Calvinism and Synergism.
431) Luther IX, 1807 [on Matt. 24:13].
432) Matt. 10:22. The same words are repeated by Christ Matt. 24:13.
433) Fritzsche on the passage: Magna vi post ό δέ infertur οντος.
108 > Perseverance to salvation. [ed. ~ 90]
faith (exercitium fidei) ceases in the case of gross sins.434) This doctrine of perseverance is invented in order to eliminate the uncertainty that necessarily arises for the inquirer about grace because of the Calvinist denial of gratia universalis. Luther and the Lutheran Confession, as is well known, very firmly reject the doctrine of the infallibility of faith.435) They are right to do so. It is an error that either drives to despair those who have actually lost faith and again ask for grace, or tempts them to believe in their former faith instead of in the grace of God in Christ. Cromwell's example has passed into church history. Strong says: "Cromwell on his death-bed questioned his chaplain as to the doctrine of final perseverance, and, on being assured that it was a certain truth, said: 'Then I am happy, for I am sure that I was once in a state of grace.'" Strong adds the criticism: "But reliance upon a past experience is like trusting in the value of life insurance upon which several years' premiums have been unpaid. If the policy has not lapsed, it is because of extreme grace." Strong would have treated a case such as Cromwell's thus: "The only conclusive evidence of perseverance is a present experience of Christ's presence and indwelling, corroborated by active service and purity of life." But Strong would also have been an evil advisor to Cromwell with this instruction. Cromwell would have answered him that he lacked just the present experience of Christ's indwelling and the confirmation of it by a holy life. Christ treated the thief on the cross, whose case was similar to Cromwell's, differently. He did not refer the inquirer about grace to "the present experience of the indwelling of Christ" and the confirmation of it by a holy life, but let him hear the objective word of grace. All analogous cases are to be treated in this way. There is, God be
434) The evidence from the Canones Synodi Dordreclitanae and the Confession of Faith is printed II, note 1304. Calvin also denies the losability of faith, Inst. III. 2. 12: Tenendum est, quantumvis exigua sit ac debilis in electis fides, quia tamen Spiritus Dei certa illis arrha est ac sigillum suae adoptionis, nunquam ex eorum cordibus deleri posse eius sculpturam. [Google] Likewise Heidegger, loc. 24, De constantia foederis gratiae, in Baumgarten II, 636 sq.
435) Smalc. Art., p. 319 [Trigl. 491, Part III, Art. III, 42 -44 🔗]; Augsb. Conf. art. XII [Trigl 49, Art. XII 🔗]. Cf. II, note 1305.
109 > Perseverance to salvation. [ [English ed. ~ 90-91]
thanked, an objective, general and perfect grace of God. This grace is not based on the indwelling of Christ and on its confirmation by a holy life, but is present in God's heart for all men through Christ's substitutionary satisfaction, and is promised by God in the Word of the gospel to all whose ears the gospel comes to, so that it may be believed by all. This objectively existing grace, presented through the objective means of grace, not the "Christ in us" and holy life, is the saving grace, ή χάρις τον ϑεοϋ ή σωτήριος. [“the grace of God that bringeth salvation”]436) This grace, because it has appeared to all men (επεφάνη γαρ … πάσιν άνϑρώποις), is therefore to be witnessed also to the Cromwells and to all the secreters. Thus alone can faith, where it was lost, be produced again, for ή πίστις εξ ακοής [“faith cometh by hearing”].437) Consistent Calvinism is incapable of this correct treatment of real (and supposed438) ) apostates because of its denial of common grace. And the deficit cannot be covered by the Calvinist doctrine of perseverance, that is, by the doctrine of an unlosable faith. Rather, as said, this doctrine drives either to despair or to false confidence in former faith or one's own renewal and holy life. The situation in all cases is this: Without the general objective reconciliation effected by Christ and offered through the objective means of grace, one cannot rightly teach either of the origin of faith or of perseverance in faith, resp. of the return of apostates. Fortunately, many Calvinists, both pastors and hearers, forget gratia particularis in practice.439)