Matthew 7 And Eternal Security

During his recent debate with Ryan Hemelaar, Trent Horn commented:

"Jesus even warns people who claim they will be saved because they call on his name or trusted him, but engaged in grave sin. He says in Matthew 7:21, 'Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.'"

And when advocates of eternal security put forward the idea that an alleged believer who commits apostasy may have never been a believer, that view is often dismissed as absurd, desperate, and so forth.

While Trent ended his citation of Matthew 7 at verse 21, we should go on to verses 22-23. As I noted in a post (not about eternal security) several years ago, "People often associate the thinking behind 1 John 2:19 with the fourth gospel, but some of the same concepts are found in Matthew 7:21-23." In addition to the agreement between such diverse sources as the gospel of Matthew and 1 John, there's also the fact that Judas was involved in so much apostolic work while being "a devil" (John 6:70).

I'm not citing such examples to argue that believers never commit sins that some people consider mortal or never go through lengthy periods of unrepentant sin. They do sometimes (e.g., David).

My point is that the first scenario I referred to not only isn't absurd, desperate, and such, but is even explicitly advocated by multiple Biblical authors in multiple contexts. The Judas material is about one individual, but the other two passages I've cited use the plural. Matthew 7:22 even uses the term "many". So, it isn't just some extremely rare scenario. Furthermore, the Matthew 7 passage has a significant number, variety, and quality of nominally Christian works being done, presumably over a long period of time. Yet, Jesus says he never knew the individuals involved. And 1 John 2:19 puts forward "they would have remained with us" as the normal scenario. John is putting forward perseverance as the norm (as he does elsewhere, in 1 John 5:18, etc.).

Trent refers to "people who claim they will be saved because they call on his name or trusted him". Who claims that you can just "call on his name" in the sense of saying "Lord, Lord" to Jesus and be saved by doing so? And where does Matthew 7:21 say that the individuals involved trusted him in a relevant sense? It doesn't. One of the biggest themes of the gospels is Jesus' commenting on the lack of faith of the people around him, even how small the faith of his closest disciples was at times. We shouldn't be starting with a default assumption that people have genuine faith or even faith of any type, and nothing in Matthew 7:21 justifies the conclusion that people who said "Lord, Lord" without doing the will of God had faith.

Raising Hypotheticals Against Eternal Security

A post I wrote last week addressed some problems with the claims Trent Horn has made about the history of belief in eternal security. Not only were there individuals who believed in some form of eternal security before the Reformation, but there were movements involving such beliefs spanning multiple regions of the world over multiple generations. Not only was there a mercyist movement that Augustine responded to in his day (see here and here), but he also thought that such beliefs were held as far back as the time of the apostles, even though he disagreed with the mercyists, and he acknowledged that some of them were Christians. Or, to cite an example from the medieval era, think of Gottschalk and his allies and the people who held similar views around the same time. These and other examples illustrate that Trent and others (e.g., his supporters in the comments section below his video) have highly inaccurate views of the historical theology on this subject.

Catholics Contradicting Each Other About Eternal Security

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.

So Quickly Drifting To A Different Gospel

Paul told the Galatians, "I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel" (Galatians 1:6). He expressed a similar sentiment to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 11:4).

If churches as early as these Pauline ones were in such danger and sometimes erred while under Paul's supervision, there's even more potential in some ways for later individuals and churches to err in that manner. My post earlier this week provides many examples of how that sort of thing happened a lot in later church history, regardless of which side of those later disputes you take. The disputes happened, and both sides (or more than two in some contexts) couldn't be right, given the nature of their claims.

I'm not suggesting that every or almost every post-apostolic source before the Reformation wasn't a Christian or anything like that. As I've argued in many previous posts and elsewhere, there was far more belief in justification through faith alone among the pre-Reformation sources than people often suggest. And I allow for the salvation of people who hold false soteriological views. People are often inconsistent, as we see with Peter and the Galatians, for example. In some ways, later individuals and groups who have contradicted Paul's soteriology have been better than the Judaizers. They've accepted the authority of the apostles, have often read documents like Paul's letters in their church services, etc. So, when Cyprian sees two sacraments (baptism and the laying on of hands) as a means of justification in John 3:5 or a medieval Roman Catholic believes that you have to obey the Pope in order to be saved, for example, I allow for the possibility or probability of their salvation. I make a judgment based on the totality of the evidence, including their access to the gospel and their affirmations of it in some places, even if they were inconsistent with it at times.

My main point here, though, is that departing from the gospel isn't as difficult as some people make it out to be. It was a prominent concern in Paul's day, and it sometimes happened even with people under the apostles' supervision. People often underestimate the soteriological inconsistencies we see in post-apostolic church history. Supposedly, none or few of the soteriological contradictions we see among the church fathers, medieval theologians, and other sources rise to the level of a false gospel. But it makes more sense to acknowledge that the soteriological errors are more significant than that and allow for the salvation of the individuals involved, despite their false soteriology.

The Practicality Of Theology And Justification In Particular

It's often suggested that matters like theology and apologetics don't have much practical value. What significance do they have in everyday life? They aren't pragmatic enough to deserve much time or attention. And the doctrine of justification is often singled out for that sort of commentary. Supposedly, arguments about justification, between Protestants and Catholics and in other contexts, don't matter much, are a waste of time, and so on.

Notice how the soteriological issues I addressed in my last post provide evidence to the contrary. For example, whether you're forgiven by God and have peace with him immediately (2 Corinthians 6:2), as soon as you come to faith, or when you're baptized six months later is significant. Similarly, the issue of the efficacy of deathbed repentance is of major importance. Much the same can be said of other soteriological issues.

Ironically, the sort of pragmatism advocated by the people I referred to in my opening paragraph is very unpragmatic. It causes a lot of significant problems in people's lives.

More Soteriological Disagreement Before The Reformation

In the context of discussing baptismal regeneration, I've mentioned that there was widespread disagreement among the extrabiblical sources before the Reformation regarding initiatory rites. Things like regeneration, the forgiveness of sins, and the reception of the Holy Spirit would sometimes be placed at the time of baptism, but often would be placed in some other context instead (faith prior to baptism, prebaptismal anointing with oil, postbaptismal laying on of hands, etc.). The extrabiblical sources before the Reformation widely disagreed about baptismal efficacy, despite how popular it is to falsely claim that everybody before the Reformation believed in baptismal regeneration, that almost everybody did, or some such thing. What modern advocates of baptismal regeneration attribute to baptism was often attributed to prebaptismal faith, anointing with oil, foot washing, or something else by many pre-Reformation sources. For a discussion of some patristic examples, see here. On medieval sources, see here. And I've provided other examples in other posts.

The Importance Of Galatians 3:2

It's a highly significant passage in the context of justification. It's often neglected, though. I recommend committing the passage reference (Galatians 3:2) and at least a portion of its text to memory.

The verse begins with a reference to "the only thing" Paul wants to know, which reflects the verse's significance in the context of Galatians and, therefore, in the context of justification. And he goes on to refer to "hearing with faith", an important phrase that expresses two vital components of the gospel: the context in which justification occurs (hearing) and the means by which it's received (faith, not faith combined with baptism or faith combined with anything else). For a further discussion of the verse and its surrounding context (including the false claim that verse 27 supports baptismal regeneration), see here.

Was Ignatius of Antioch Roman Catholic?

He's been discussed a lot lately by various Catholics. See this recent video by Cameron Bertuzzi, for example. And Ignatius has often been cited in support of Catholicism and against Protestantism for many years. It's not just a recent development. It's been popular for a long time in Catholic circles to cite Ignatius as a major problem for Protestants, because of comments he makes about issues like the monarchical episcopate and how the eucharist is the flesh and blood of Christ.

But some Protestants believe in the monarchical episcopate and a bodily presence of Christ in the eucharist. And the sort of language Ignatius uses about the eucharist is also used by him in other contexts that aren't interpreted by anybody the way advocates of a bodily presence of Christ in the eucharist are interpreting his eucharistic comments. See my discussion here. And here are some other examples not discussed in that thread I just linked:

Evidence That The Thief On The Cross Is Normal, Not An Exception To The Rule

One of the subjects that sometimes comes up in the context of Good Friday is the thief on the cross. Advocates of baptismal regeneration and other forms of justification through works often dismiss the thief as a soteriological exception to the rule.

He Will Never Fail To Succor His People

Writing of the Garden of Gethsemane, Matthew tells us that Jesus took some of his disciples with him, but "went a little beyond them, and fell on his face" (Matthew 26:39). That's a useful metaphor of how we can share in Jesus' suffering in some ways, but not fully, how there are significant differences between our suffering and his.

Is baptismal regeneration a significant problem only if baptism is a work?

Baptism is a work, for reasons I've discussed elsewhere, like here. But even if it weren't a work, there would still be many reasons to consider baptismal regeneration problematic and in more than a minor way. See here for an overview of a double-digit number of problems with viewing baptism as a means of justification. Here and here are a couple of posts in which I discuss some of the bad fruit of baptismal regeneration, bad fruit that I think is significant and doesn't require viewing baptism as a work.

People often frame things in terms of whether including baptism with faith as a means of justification constitutes a false gospel. (It does, but that's not what I'm addressing here.) They'll often cite Galatians 1:8-9 in particular. But this isn't an all-or-nothing situation. Baptismal regeneration wouldn't have to be maximally bad in order to be bad or to be bad to more than a small extent. We recognize that in other contexts. If a church leader has some moral problems in his life, we don't dismiss those problems as insignificant just because they aren't maximally bad. It's remarkable how many people will acknowledge that baptismal regeneration is false, yet will act as though it should be of little concern if it doesn't rise to the level of Galatians 1. There's a large gray area between something being of little concern and something rising to the level of the anathema of Galatians.

How unusual is Galatians' approach toward the gospel?

Critics of how Evangelicals use Galatians could raise objections to the effect that Galatians is just one document, it's such a short letter, the approach Paul takes there isn't found much or at all elsewhere, etc. On the more liberal side, Galatians could be dismissed as an occasion when Paul lost his temper, a reflection of a bad aspect of Paul's character that we shouldn't emulate, or whatever. From a more conservative or traditional Christian perspective, it could be argued that we should be agnostic about or not base much on certain aspects of Galatians, since it's such a short letter, we don't know much about the context, the themes in question there aren't found much or at all elsewhere, etc.

But even if something Paul said in Galatians were only found there, it ought to be accepted as part of apostolic teaching, what's taught by scripture, and so on. That point could be conceded, yet the alleged rarity of what Galatians says could be appealed to in order to argue that the themes shouldn't be as prominent in our thinking as they are among many Evangelicals. Though I think Galatians expresses views like the foundational nature of sola fide more forcefully than any other source, that sort of material in Galatians is corroborated elsewhere more than people typically suggest.

Is the gospel larger than sola fide?

Many Evangelicals have cited Galatians and other parts of scripture against Roman Catholicism and other groups they think hold a false gospel. A common response has been to cite passages in the Bible that refer to the gospel without defining it the way those Evangelicals are defining it (Mark 1:1, 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, etc.).

The Diversity Of Baptismal Beliefs And Practices In The Medieval Era

It's often claimed that every Christian before the Reformation believed in baptismal regeneration, that only heretics opposed it, that only an extremely small number of Christians did, or some such thing. That kind of claim simultaneously makes the concept of justification apart from baptism look weaker and baptismal regeneration look stronger.

But many people believed in justification apart from baptism prior to the Reformation, as I've documented elsewhere. And among those who assigned some type of soteriological efficacy to baptism, there was widespread disagreement about the sort of efficacy involved, and soteriological efficacy was also attributed to other rituals (or sacraments, ceremonies, or whatever you want to call them): the laying on of hands, foot washing, etc. See here for a discussion of many examples from the patristic era. So, justification apart from baptism was more widely held before the Reformation than is typically suggested, and there wasn't the sort of unified alternative to it that we're told there was. Rather, there was a wide diversity of alternatives.

Advocates Of Baptismal Regeneration Rely On Implicit Arguments

In a post last year, I discussed several implicit lines of evidence for belief in justification apart from baptism among the early extrabiblical sources. As I mentioned there, all of us rely on implicit reasoning across many contexts in life, including when making judgments about Biblical and patristic issues. You wouldn't be able to function for a single day in your life without relying on implicit reasoning at some point. I gave some examples of how advocates of baptismal regeneration use some implicit arguments to support their own position. Yet, people often reject implicit arguments because of their implicit rather than explicit nature, or they assign implicit arguments less significance than those arguments actually have. Even many opponents of baptismal regeneration seem to get taken in by that sort of bad reasoning, to the point that they won't cite any extrabiblical sources who seem to support their view in an implicit way, since the evidence isn't explicit. Whether that's due to peer pressure, confusing a preference for explicit evidence with a need for it, or whatever else, it's a mistake.

More Pre-Reformation Support For Reformation Beliefs Among The Lollards

I've discussed their support for Reformation views in other posts, like here and here. And here's one about a book on Lollard heresy trials in the first half of the fifteenth century.

Implicit Exclusions Of Baptismal Regeneration In Early Christian Literature

As I discussed in another post, we find baptismal regeneration contradicted in a large number and variety of ways in the extrabiblical sources before the Reformation. Sometimes an exclusion of baptism as a means of justification is implicit rather than explicit.

And people will often object to the use of implicit evidence. But we all rely on it. For example, we depend on implicit evidence when deciding how to translate a word in a document, basing our conclusion on what the surrounding context seems to imply. Christians have often said, rightly, that it's unreasonable for a Muslim to ask us for a passage in the gospels in which Jesus says "I am God. Worship me." or some equivalent. A term like "Trinity" doesn't have to appear in the Bible for Trinitarianism to be Biblical. Roman Catholics often use arguments from typology that aren't explicit. And so on. Advocates of baptismal regeneration rely on implicit argumentation in the context of supporting that doctrine. The appeal to alleged references to baptism in terms like "water" in John 3:5 and "washing" in Titus 3:5 relies on implicit argumentation, so does their reasoning that baptismal regeneration has been in effect during certain circumstances and not in others (e.g., not being applicable during the Old Testament era and some portion or all of Jesus' public ministry), etc. Since proponents of baptismal regeneration rely on implicit argumentation in their reasoning about the subject, they're not in a position to object to their opponents' use of implicit argumentation. The fact that we prefer explicit evidence doesn't mean that implicit evidence has no value. Something can be less valuable, yet still have value to some extent. The nature of life is such that evidence comes in both implicit and explicit forms, with people sometimes disagreeing about whether something is implicit or explicit, and we have to take all of the evidence into account.

More About Maximus Of Turin And Eternal Security

I've written some posts over the years about belief in eternal security before the Reformation. Contrary to what's often asserted by critics of eternal security, the concept was held in various forms by some extrabiblical sources before the Reformation, as my series linked above argues.

In one of those posts, I cited some comments the Roman Catholic scholar Brian Daley made about Maximus of Turin. Since then, I've read a collection of Maximus' sermons, and I think Daley's comments should be supplemented. While there is some material in Maximus that seems to support eternal security, there's also some that seems to go against it if taken in isolation. I think more should be said than what Daley provides, so you can scroll to the bottom of that post just linked for an update I just added.

Interpretations Of Interpretations

We're often told that disagreements over how to interpret scripture suggest that we should look to extrabiblical sources to interpret scripture for us. There's some validity to that notion, as long as due weight is being assigned to the evidence scripture itself provides and the extrabiblical sources are being handled appropriately. But when you get to the extrabiblical sources, such as the church fathers, you find that they sometimes seem unclear, inconsistent, or problematic in some other way. Even where there isn't a problem, or much of a problem, with those extrabiblical sources, different people interpret them differently. It's similar to the situation with scripture. And if you look to other sources, such as scholarship, to clarify the extrabiblical sources in question, you find that there sometimes are ambiguities, disagreements, etc. among those sources as well.

Circumstances like these range across a spectrum. There's less disagreement on some issues than others. But the need for going to extrabiblical sources and how much help they provide are often overestimated.

Elsewhere, I've cited G.W.H. Lampe's comments on the many ambiguities, inconsistencies, and other problems among the patristic sources concerning baptism, the laying on of hands, and other rites. Here are some of Lampe's comments on problems in later sources commenting on the fathers:

"Many modern writers have adopted the unhappy course of trying to pick out from the vast mass of patristic literature on Baptism such texts as favour their own theories. Such methods ignore the confusion to which we have just referred. The Fathers did not try to resolve this confusion as long as the rite of initiation remained one whole, comprising both Baptism and Confirmation, for so long as that state of affairs was maintained the theological difficulties remained latent. It is not therefore surprising to find that, for example, Mason and Umberg were able to discover plenty of authority for the view that the gift of the indwelling Spirit is bestowed by means of the laying on of hands, and not by water-baptism, Wirgman was no less easily able to show that the Fathers taught that the indwelling presence of the Spirit was conferred by water-baptism and that an increase of grace was given for spiritual progress by the laying on of hands, while Thornton finds it equally possible to demonstrate that in the teaching of the Fathers the indwelling of the Spirit is regarded as being withheld until Confirmation, which he associates particularly with anointing. It is also unfortunate that some important books were written on this subject before the date and authorship of some of the relevant documents had been fairly established, and that, as a result, the picture which they present of the historical development of the doctrine of Baptism and Confirmation is distorted." (The Seal Of The Spirit [Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2004], 194-95)

How Baptism Of Blood And Baptism Of Desire Work Against Baptismal Regeneration

Advocates of baptismal regeneration frequently allow for many exceptions to the rule of baptismal regeneration: people were justified differently during the Old Testament era, people were justified differently during part or all of Jesus' time on earth, Cornelius and those with him who were justified before baptism were exceptions to the rule, and so on. Two of the exceptions they make involve supposed other forms of baptism, such as being baptized by blood if you die as a martyr before being water baptized or being baptized by desire if you intended to get water baptized, but died before the water baptism was carried out. Much can be said about the problems with such views. John 3:5, probably the passage most prominently cited in arguments for baptismal regeneration, appeals to Nicodemus' knowledge of the Old Testament scriptures, which makes less sense if Jesus was referring to a means of justification different than that of the Old Testament era, and the passage says nothing about blood or desire. And see my post here about how unknown and contradicted baptism of blood and baptism of desire were among pre-Reformation sources. Baptism of blood was popular, but not universally accepted. Baptism of desire seems to have been initially absent, then became a minority view, then reached majority status hundreds of years into church history. That doesn't sit well with what many advocates of baptismal regeneration say about how their church is the church of the earliest centuries of Christianity, how they passed down all apostolic teaching in unbroken succession throughout church history, how the alleged early unpopularity of justification apart from baptism supposedly is such strong evidence against that view of justification (compare that to the early unpopularity of baptism of desire), etc.

How do we best explain what happens with the unbaptized martyr or the catechumen who dies before being baptized, for example? Instead of proposing a baptism of blood or a baptism of desire, it makes more sense to conclude that they were justified through faith without baptism. The martyr gave his life for Christ because he was already regenerated. He had no need for being regenerated in a future baptism of water or blood. Similarly, the catechumen was going through the catechetical process because he was already regenerate. Both the martyr's behavior and the catechumen's make more sense if regeneration had already occurred. As I've said before, people like Abraham, the tax collector in Luke 18, and Cornelius aren't exceptions to the rule. They are the rule. That's why Paul cites Abraham as if he's normative, Jesus speaks in Luke 18 as if what he's describing is normative, Acts 11 and 15 refer back to the events of chapter 10 as if they involve the normal means of justification, etc. Similarly, the martyrs and catechumens under consideration aren't exceptions as far as their regeneration and justification are concerned. They're further evidence for the rule. The rule is justification apart from baptism. It's the regeneration, faith, and justification the person already has that motivate the person to get baptized.

Part of what's involved here is the principle of simplicity. We prefer the simplest explanation, all other things being equal. Dividing up history as advocates of baptismal regeneration do, with different means of justification during different periods, and proposing other forms of baptism (blood, desire) not suggested by Jesus and the apostles, among other complications introduced by advocates of baptismal regeneration, doesn't provide the simplest explanation of the evidence.