I recently saw a Catholic claim that no Christian believed in eternal security before the Reformation. Supposedly, only Gnostics believed in it during that timeframe. See the comments section of the thread here. And Trent Horn repeatedly denied that there was any pre-Reformation support for eternal security in his debate with Ryan Hemelaar (of NeedGod.net). Go here to watch Trent say that no "notable" Christian held to eternal security before the Reformation. He goes on to refer to how the concept is "absent" before the Reformation. And here he refers to how "nobody" held the view during that timeframe. Later he asks Ryan to name "any individual" from the second to the fifteenth centuries. Near the end of the debate, Trent comments that even "named heretics" didn't hold to eternal security, and he refers to it as a "radical, novel" concept.
There are some occasions when Trent frames the discussion around whether people during the pre-Reformation era believed in eternal security "as you [Ryan] believe". But there are other occasions when Trent seems to be referring to belief in eternal security in general (the topic of the debate), not just Ryan's view in particular, such as when he cites scholars commenting on the subject. Furthermore, Trent objected to Ryan's bringing up the details of Catholic soteriology in particular, wanting to focus on the rejection of eternal security more broadly, not just the Catholic form of rejecting it. So, if Trent doesn't want the debate narrowed to all of the details of his view in particular, it wouldn't seem to make sense for him to want to narrow Ryan's side of the debate to all of the details of his view in particular. It seems, then, that Trent's denials of any belief in eternal security before the Reformation are meant to cover more than just Ryan's position. And many other Catholics have expressed such sentiments, as the Twitter thread I linked at the start of this post illustrates, and the comments section below Trent's video illustrates it. Some of the commenters there made remarks similar to the ones I've cited from Trent above.
See here for a discussion of many pre-Reformation sources who advocated some form of eternal security. The posts linked there include citations of Catholic scholars acknowledging the doctrine's existence among Christians before the Reformation, including named individuals, church fathers, etc.
And notice that the Catholic I cited in a Twitter thread above claims that only Gnostics believed in eternal security before the Reformation, whereas Trent repeatedly says that "nobody" believed in it, no "named heretics" believed in it, etc. That's another apparent contradiction among the Catholics who have discussed this topic.
Trent also seems to be contradicting himself. Go here to watch him acknowledging, in a video a couple of years ago, that some pre-Reformation Christians believed in eternal security. He underestimates the support for the doctrine in that video, but he acknowledges that there was some support for it. He cites some unnamed figures Augustine refers to and cites a named individual, Jovinian, who apparently would be a heretic by Trent's standards. He tells us that he doesn't know of any "prominent" individuals who believed in eternal security before the Reformation. That may be why he includes some qualifiers in his more recent debate with Ryan, such as referring to "notable" Christians and "named" heretics. Yet, at other points in the debate, he uses language that goes beyond such qualifiers. I don't know if he was wavering, choosing his words poorly, or whatever else, but there are at least some portions of his debate with Ryan that contradict what Trent said in the earlier video. In that earlier video, he acknowledged that he may have misrepresented the history of belief in eternal security in the past by saying that nobody held the view before the Reformation. It's commendable that Trent offered that correction, and I initially planned to only cite those comments from him in this post. I later saw his debate with Ryan, though, and decided that more needed to be said.
And what's the significance of the qualifiers Trent has brought up (in his earlier video and in the more recent debate), such as referring to "notable" Christians and "named" heretics? As I mentioned in a recent post on the perpetual virginity of Mary, Catholics frequently appeal to anonymous, apocryphal, schismatic, heretical, and non-prominent sources when arguing for their beliefs. The Bible does the same, as Ryan pointed out with the example of the 7000 Elijah needed to be informed about who didn't bow the knee to Baal.
It should also be pointed out that there are many disagreements among those who reject eternal security, including among Catholics, concerning the theology involved, not just concerning church history. See here regarding how much the opponents of eternal security have disagreed with each other about matters like what would cause the loss of justification and what would need done to regain it.
It could be objected that Protestants also disagree among themselves about such issues. But Protestants make different claims, so they have a different burden of proof. Catholics claim that they're so much more knowledgeable about church history, that the church fathers were part of their church that was handing down all apostolic teaching in unbroken succession throughout church history, that they have so much unity with each other, that it's so advantageous for them to have an infallible church to settle their disagreements, etc.
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