This is Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Salvation, Part 18.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

We've been working our way through the doctrine of salvation.

And so far, we've talked about such doctrines as God's

election, regeneration, and justification. Today we come to the subject of perseverance.

This is often called, in popular piety, eternal security, and perhaps you've heard of this doctrine

under that label rather than as perseverance of the saints. The question we confront here is

whether or not a person who has been genuinely regenerated by the Holy Spirit, declared righteous by God,

forgiven of his sins, can lose his salvation and fall away and wind up damned, having his lot

with the unbelievers and the non-elect.

So the question is, if you become a Christian,

will you inevitably persevere in the faith until your death

so that you will be saved?

Or is it possible that you, having once become a Christian, could fall away so that, in fact,

you lose the salvation that you once had?

Well, as with the other issues that we've previously discussed under the doctrine of salvation,

there are at least two broad

perspectives on this question. One would be the perspective of Calvinism or Reformed theology,

which would be represented, for example, in the Reformed Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Anglican Church, and so on.

The other perspective would be the Armenian perspective,

which would characterize groups like the United Methodist denomination.

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