ANNOUNCER: Do Southern Baptist believe that assurance is of the essence of saving faith? Is assurance ever absolute? What about perseverance of the saints? Welcome, friend. This is Grace in Focus. Glad you’re with us today. We are a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society and our website is www.faithalone.org. There you can get information about our seminary, Grace Evangelical Theological Seminary, where full scholarships are available for students maintaining good academic standing. Now, this of course is possible through our generous donors, and right now we are in the window for application and registration for our fall semester. So think about studying with us in the fall, get the information you need to apply at faithalone.org/seminary. 

Now with today’s question and answer discussion, here are Bob Wilkin and Sam Marr. 

SAM: All right, everybody. We are wrapping up our short series on this book, Whosoever Will and our critique of Calvinism. 

BOB: Their critique of Calvinism. 

SAM: Their critique of Calvinism. And our critique of their critique of Calvinism. But we’re going to conclude our discussion with a short discussion on perseverance and assurance of the saints, which is very relevant to the discussion of Calvinism. But what I found interesting is reading a section on here. He has a section called “The Reformers: Assurance is of the Essence of Faith,” which stuck out to me because I’ve only ever heard that phrase used in discussion of what Zane Hodges talked about when he discussed you can’t really have saving faith without assurance because you have to be certain of the fact that you have everlasting life. So I wanted to know what does John Calvin mean when he says that. What is the reform position? 

And then we’re also going to look at Keathley’s view and him as a representative of the Southern Baptist view on assurance. I think he kind of takes a little bit of what Hodges says and a little bit of what Calvin and the Reformers say, mixes them together a little bit and sands the edges off. So we’re going to go through all three of them. 

BOB: And the third one would be our view. 

SAM: The third would be ours and it’s specifically the focused free grace view on assurance. 

BOB: Because there are other people who call themselves free grace, who we call flexible free grace, who specifically deny the assurances of the essence of saving faith. That’s a hallmark of their position is that it’s vitally important to recognize that people are born again, they would say most often born again, before they believe that they’re secure because in their view, that’s a sanctification issue. 

By the way, if you want to go to faithalone.org, you can check out an article we ran in our journal by Ken Keathley. Just look up assurance and Ken Keathley. It’s under our journal. [See here.] 

BOB: Okay. So he’s got some good quotes here, but I want to read this one. It’s from John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Philadelphia, Westminster, 1960 from page 551. He says Calvin defined faith as quote, a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit. So he’s got some flowery language in there that I don’t, but the freely given promise in Christ. And then Keathley goes on to say the nature of conversion and regeneration ensures that a believer will know when he has believed. And to me, that sounds great because that’s very similar to what Hodges is saying. You can’t have someone who believes in Christ for everlasting life, but doesn’t know that they have everlasting life. They’re one and the same. 

BOB: Let me say that I am not a Calvin scholar. I love Zane Hodges, but I feel he probably was going a bit too far to suggest that both Calvin and Luther consistently agreed with us on the idea that assurance is of the essence of saving faith. Calvin at one point in his writings and thinking did believe assurance was of the essence of saving faith. And that’s a good quote there. And he may have carried that all the way to the end of his life. 

I don’t think Luther ever said that. I’ve never seen a quote by Luther to that. I did study Luther in seminary some and he used to use the illustration of a ship. And he said, there’s a ship that’s like an ocean liner and as long as you’re on the ship, this is the ship of salvation. You stay on the ship. It doesn’t matter what the quality of your lifestyle is. As long as you’re on the ship, you’re saved. But if you were to fall off the ship, you’d no longer have salvation. Now, that doesn’t sound like assurance is of the essence of saving faith, but maybe there is a point at which Luther said that. I think Keathley says both reformers said that. I don’t think you can see it in Luther. 

And in Calvin, I’m not sure. I think the first version of the Institute only had like six chapters. The final version had 72. So it’s over 500 pages at the end. And that was because Calvin kept responding to people who criticized him. For example, I don’t think the original Institutes had anything to do with temporary faith. But later on, he added something about temporary faith. 

So I would say, yes, Calvin probably did believe that assurance was of the essence of saving faith, maybe his whole life. But I don’t think Luther did, that’s not to say Luther didn’t at some point believe that. But I don’t think it was in his writing. 

SAM: And so as it relates to our discussion, where Keathley goes with this in his chapter, he goes on to say, anyone can know whether he has believed in Jesus Christ and all who believe in him are saved, therefore assurance is of the essence of saving faith. And that one, he footnotes with Hebrews 11:1, but then a discussion of Zane Hodges. But then he goes on to say, having certain knowledge at the time of conversion does not exclude the possibility that a believer may have doubts after his salvation. 

BOB: We have no problem there.

SAM: Right, agree with that. But then he says, nor does it mean that only those with absolute certainty are saved. 

BOB: That’s s a problem. 

SAM: It gets confusing because he just said the nature of conversion and regeneration ensures not encourages or implies or, he says it ensures that the believer will know when he has believed. There’s no doubt there. So the only thing he can be saying here, someone can have believed. They know they believed. It’s ensured that they believed, but they didn’t believe that they had everlasting life. They believed something about Christ or something about everlasting life. But at the moment they believed he’s saying they didn’t have assurance. 

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BOB: There really aren’t degrees of certainty. You either believe the two plus two is four or you don’t. You either believe George Washington was the first president of the United States or you don’t. You either believe that Jesus rose from the dead or you don’t. So I think this is an area where Keathley was a little bit misleading. So let’s go to the four points that Keathley makes at the end. He has what he calls what a modest proposal. Yeah, modest proposal, a variation of the evidence of genuineness position. So what are his four points? I think I agree with three of his four points, but one of them I’ve got a real problem with. 

SAM: All right, his four tenets of a modified evidence of genuineness view are one, the only basis for assurance is the objective work of Christ. 

BOB: Okay. Now I change that to promise of Christ because you remember earlier when he quotes Calvin, he’s quoting Calvin and Calvin used specifically the word promise. So it’s not just the it is based on the work of Christ, but we only get assurance from the objective promise of Christ, like John 3:16. So point one, I agree with, I would just change the word work to promise. 

SAM: Yep. Two, assurance is the essence of saving faith. 

BOB: So I agree with two. And that is, that at the moment of faith, a person believes, and assurance is another word for believe, assurance believes what Jesus promises. I’ll never hunger, I’ll never thirst,  I’ll never die, I’ll never perish, I’ll never be cast out. I have everlasting life, I’m going to be with Jesus forever. They may not know all those expressions, but they do know that they have a secure relationship with Jesus. They know they’re going to be with him forever. It doesn’t mean they can’t lose it a minute later, but it does mean at the moment of faith. So what’s his third point? 

I’ll Do you want me to, that’s the disagree. Do you want me to skip it or… 

BOB: Alright, let’s go to the fourth. 

SAM: All right, his fourth one, which you agree with is rewards subsequent to salvation are for the believer to win or lose. 

BOB: Absolutely. And the doctrine of rewards only makes sense if assurances of the essence of saving faith. Now, the point I disagree with is his third point. 

SAM: Yep, point three, saving faith perseveres, or remains, until the day when it gives way to sight. 

BOB: Yeah. And the problem with that is he’s saying, okay, at the moment of faith, the person knows they’re saved forever. They believe that they have everlasting life, they can never be lost, I agree with him. But he’s saying that can never go away. You can never stop believing that. And he doesn’t actually draw the corollary to that. But the corollary to that is if you meet a person who no longer believes that by faith in Jesus, they’re saved forever, then Keathley would have to say that person was never born again, right? 

SAM: Right. And that’s where it gets confusing with what he said before of it’s okay to have doubt or uncertainty, because then where do you draw the line there? If you meet someone who says, well, I believe in Jesus, I believe in the cross. I just don’t believe that I have everlasting life or I don’t believe in His promise. I just believe everything else the Bible says, then have they departed too much, have they proven they don’t have, because they don’t have assurance of their everlasting life, do they now not believe anymore? Because generally people talk about this as someone just gives up on the faith entirely. I’m not a Christian anymore. I’m an atheist. I’m a Muslim, because that’s a cut and dry thing. But what about someone that just loses their assurance of everlasting life? 

BOB: And that happens a lot, Sam. Lots of people going to lordship salvation, and they become Catholics, they become a Orthodox, right? And my answer would be, it depends, did they ever believe that by faith in Jesus, that they were secure, that they had everlasting life? If they did, then no matter what they later believe, they can’t lose it.

SAM: Yeah, from our perspective, they were once saved, they are always saved. There’s no question. 

BOB: Now, he agrees with that, the difference is, he would say, they weren’t once saved if they commit apostasy. And that’s where I would disagree with Keathley, but I don’t think, by the way, that W.O. Vaught would have held that position. And I think there are many Southern Baptist that would say, not only are we not guaranteed to persevere in good works, we’re not even guaranteed to persevere in faith. 

But then there are a lot of other Southern Baptist that would say, no, we really are guaranteed we’ll persevere in faith. And there are even many Southern Baptist that would say, we’re guaranteed that we’re going to persevere in good works. And if we don’t persevere in good works, we either prove we weren’t saved in the first place, or we lose our salvation, or we fail to win final salvation. So we shouldn’t think that Southern Baptists are some monolithic group, and they all are in lockstep on what they believe about eternal life. 

But I would recommend this book, Whosoever Will. I think it’s a good book, I think it’s worth reading. But don’t expect when you’re reading this, that you’re going to be reading something like Absolutely Free by Zane Hodges. 

SAM: Well, thanks for sticking with us this series, and hopefully it helps us all keep grace in focus. 

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On our next episode: what part does experience play in interpreting the Bible? Come back and join us in In the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus.