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

Today, the Doctrine of Salvation, Part 19.

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

We've been talking about the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. The question that we're asking is this,

can a genuinely regenerate Christian lose his salvation? Or is it impossible for a person who has

been saved to lose his salvation.

Last time, we looked at the Calvinistic perspective or the reformed perspective on this question.

We saw that according to Calvinism, a person cannot lose his salvation.

Once a person has been regenerated and declared righteous by God,

that person can never fall away, and he is therefore eternally secure. If you do see someone who, despite having been an ostensibly authentic Christian, someone who was active in

the Christian church, even in ministry, who falls away from the faith, the Calvinist will say

that that person was really only a nominal Christian. He is and always has been an unbeliever, an unregenerate person.

He only appeared to be a Christian believer, and therefore has not really lost his salvation.

He never had it to begin with. Today, we're going to look at a quite different

perspective, which can be characterized as the Armenian perspective after Jacob Arminius.

The Armenian maintains that it is possible for a person who is a born-again Christian

to lose his salvation and go to perdition.

What the Armenian will typically say is that the elect of God are corporately secure. You'll remember when we talked about the doctrine of election

that the Armenian construes election primarily in corporate terms and only secondarily in individual

terms. That is to say, the primary object of God's election is a corporate

body, a people, a church. It is that corporate group which is destined for sanctification,

conformity to the image of Christ, and ultimately glorification and heaven.

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