The Dynamics of Perseverance

https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/preserved-god

Leaving aside the misguided (though not unexpected) use of a Winston Churchill quote, the problem with Parsons' argument is that he doesn't define what saving faith is. And interestingly if you get a half-dozen Confessional theologians into a room and ask this question, you'll likely end up with a heated debate and a lack of consensus.

The article caught my eye because actually (I would say) that it is in the sphere of Calvinism that one is most likely to find a practical deism at work – all the more in the fervour of political activity and struggle. There is an evident practical reality that most committed to the Dominionist cause (and all the more with the radical fringe) do not actually believe in God's sovereign rule over the affairs of the Earth – that the powers that be are ordained by God. Faith for them is often an intellectual category which motivates a set of ideologies – many of which are syncretistic in the modern Evangelical and Confessional sphere. Lacking trust (which is essential to saving faith), they act as if God's plan is being thwarted and the future depends wholly on their actions and success.

While New Testament faith certainly requires intellectual apprehension and assent, it is inseparable from a persevering trust and obedience and this implies a dynamic which necessarily involves an ongoing renewal of belief and repentance. The obedience is not meritorious but testifies to the new birth, the renewed mind, and the presence of the Spirit. There is a necessary spiritual vitality to the Christian that knows no apathy, that is filled with joy, even though sorrow is always present – alongside a yearning to be in Heaven and free from the burden and weight of sin and this present evil age. The persevering trust and living hope of the New Testament has all too often been replaced by a presumption that produces apathy and a shallow faith all too at home with the world – little more than the faith of demons that James speaks of. It seeks to testify to the glory of God's grace but treats it as trite and cheap and frankly ignores or explains away the myriad warnings and exhortations found within the New Testament – sometimes in the name of grace and in other cases in the name of theological coherence.

God is working in us and gets all the glory but at the same the New Testament is replete with calls to persevere and stark warnings for those who do not. The misnamed Free Grace theology so dominant in the Evangelical sphere has developed a series of tortured hermeneutical exercises in order to explain these passages away and relegate the warnings to categories of reward, temporal danger, or mere hyperbole. The Calvinist sphere is more likely to employ tools from the philosophical-theological arsenal and argue on the basis of systematics, deduction, and thus coherence but the end result is often the same.

Parsons is (I'm sure) a little more nuanced in his thinking than the typical advocates of 'Once Saved Always Saved' but from my perspective this is just a question of degree. That school of thought can create a functional deism in that the New Testament dynamic of interaction, wrestling with God, with the repeated calls to run the race and struggle – and yet in all things trusting in Him, is effectively shut down and eliminated. You are saved, end of story. We see the extreme results of this in the ethical outworkings (so painful to behold) in today's worldly and compromised Evangelicalism. Cheap Grace produces cheap faith and cheap (indeed counterfeit) fruit. To borrow from deistic imagery, your clock was been wound so to speak and you're good to go. Nothing can stop it. And because the outworking of this false doctrine is pretty troubling in real life – the theologians of this school long ago turned to innovation, creating categories of Christian (and thus gospel) that are nowhere found in the New Covenant text. They're like criminals committing new crimes to cover up their previous transgressions.

For some Calvinists this road is entered by a different means – by wedding one's election status to one's conversion. At that point, you're saved and the decree is pointed to as a surety. Election is true of course as the Scriptures clearly teach it, but it is not presented in the context of a philosophical system with all its inferences and deductions, nor is it applied to individuals in this fashion. That's not how it's taught, nor is its use limited to questions of the decree vis-à-vis individuals, as the concept is employed at times in a corporate or generalised context, where apostasy remains a distinct possibility – one's name after all can be blotted out of the Book of Life for failing to hold fast. Election is a comfort to the believer and teaches us something about God and the mystery of his ways, but it is never presented as the dominant Centraldogma that dominates soteriology with an effective result of downplaying the importance and necessity of perseverance and making sanctification as something secondary or as is all too often the case in the Evangelical sphere – optional.

The Scriptures present a dynamic in which election and predestination can exist alongside a real call for perseverance and the threat of apostasy. The various means God has ordained such as prayer, worship, and sacraments play an effective role in this perseverance and we find similar if mysterious and paradoxical dynamics at work in the various facets of soteriology itself. This is not Catholicism with its bogus innovations, traditions, and superstitions – this is New Testament, even if it's not wholly in line with the Magisterial Reformation's flawed and often less than unified dogmatic stances on this issue.

I find Parson's statements a little puzzling, as apart from the Wesleyan and Charismatic sphere, the overwhelming teaching in Evangelicalism is Once Saved Always Saved – which as I said produces a functional deism. I do not encounter people who believe God leaves us to our own devices and sits back awaiting our failure. I find instead a theology that cannot even accommodate such a category. And again both the Arminian and Calvinist spheres can fall prey to this tendency.

Speaking for Ligonier and hence the legacy of RC Sproul, the problem I would think for Parsons is how to rationalise the warnings and exhortations of Scripture with their understanding of Sola Fide and the doctrine of election. Sproul was something of an Aristotelian rationalist and hostile to paradox and mystery, and yet the dynamic in Perseverance involves just such a tension – one that we in fact cannot resolve, one that echoes the very dynamics and mysteries we see in the Heaven and Earth and the Divine and Human interchange and interaction present in the Holy Incarnation of Christ.

I can agree with Parsons as far as he goes but I think there are underlying assumptions and motivations that I do not agree with and I think he's largely interacting with a straw man.