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

Part 21. For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

Last time, we looked at an Armenian perspective on the doctrine of perseverance of the saints.

We saw that in Armenian theology, election is regarded as primarily corporate and only secondarily individual,

insofar as the individual chooses to align himself with that elect corporate body.

Accordingly, the elect corporately are secure. God's church will be brought to sanctification,

glorification, and eternal life. But individually, salvation,

sanctification, and glorification is not guaranteed. That depends upon the individual believers

maintaining his faith in Christ and continuing to be part of that elect body. Should the believer

apostatize or reject Christ or cease to believe, he falls away from grace and accordingly

forfeits salvation and is no longer a part of that elect body, which is secure through faith.

Today, I'd like to come to some assessment of the competing views that we've looked at,

namely Calvinism and Armenianism, with respect to the doctrine of the

perseverance of the saints. We've seen that there is an apparent conflict between various texts

in the New Testament on this subject. There are certainly texts that speak of the security of the individual believer,

that he will persevere to the end and that he cannot fall away from salvation.

On the other hand, we have these equally clear texts that warn seriously about the dangers

of apostasy and falling from grace and forfeiting salvation. So the question is, how do you best

integrate these two streams of biblical teaching.

Well, one could just say that the biblical authors disagreed about the subject,

that John, for example, who often writes about the eternal security of the believer in Christ,

disagreed with or would disagree with if he could speak with him, the author of the book of Hebrews, who clearly thought that Christians could apostatize and fall away from grace

...