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.

What I want to focus on in this post is Trent's use of hypothetical scenarios to argue against eternal security in his debate with Ryan Hemelaar. It's often an effective tactic, especially in a context like the cross examination section of a debate, with a timer running and the questioner steering the discussion. That sort of context creates a certain atmosphere, certain expectations, impressions, and emotions. And it can be, and often is, misleading. There's especially potential for it to be misleading in a culture that's as immature in religious and moral contexts as ours is. And people who are inordinately dependent on sources like YouTube for their information, with all of the shallowness, emotionalism, laziness, and other problems that go along with that, are particularly likely to reach false conclusions.

When people haven't thought much about matters like theology and ethics, they're more liable to overlook or underestimate certain factors involved in evaluating something. One person is aware of and has given a lot of thought to five different reasons for avoiding a particular sin, and he's given a lot of consideration to the theological issues involved and the problems with making good behavior a means of justification. By contrast, somebody else hasn't given much attention to any factor other than his fear of losing his salvation if he commits that sin and his dependence on that fear to keep motivating him if he's to avoid the sin under consideration. The latter individual and his position are less mature, but he and his position will often be mistaken for being more mature. He allegedly takes the sin under consideration more seriously, his position supposedly is more likely to benefit society by giving people more motivation to avoid the sin in question, etc. Many of the factors involved - like a higher degree of love, joy, peace, security, and willingness to risk on the part of the first individual - will get overlooked or underestimated while people evaluate the situation in a lopsided manner that gives too much attention to certain things and too little to others.

Hypotheticals like Trent's can focus on one issue while excluding or distorting another. The hypothetical can assume the existence of one or more things that we have reason to believe wouldn't exist. They're hypotheticals of Trent's choosing, which Ryan has to respond to off the top of his head on short notice and without much time, knowing that an audience is watching and will likely be evaluating him and his position based on a wide variety of factors, including many that shouldn't be getting so much attention, if any (his facial expressions, his tone of voice, etc.).

Life is large and complicated. Any belief system worth taking seriously can have difficult questions asked of it or questions asked of it that seem difficult under certain circumstances (if the audience is making some false assumptions, for example). So, questions similar to what Trent posed to Ryan could be asked of Trent. Ask him about borderline cases regarding the distinction between venial and mortal sins. Ask him about somebody who keeps committing venial sins, especially ones that people often think are close to being mortal or that some people think are mortal, but others don't. Ask him how he supposedly knows that anybody who commits what he considers a mortal sin is walking away from Christ, whereas people who commit a large number of venial sins, even the worst of venial sins, allegedly aren't. Ask him a series of hypotheticals about deathbed conversions and ask him if they involve "cheap grace", a phrase he used in the debate. Ask him about how to judge hypothetical disputed claims regarding apostolic succession, whether certain individuals were a Pope or an antipope, whether a baptism or penance was performed validly, etc. In some contexts, issues like those are relevant to whether you possess salvation, what you would need to do to regain salvation if you lost it, and other matters that could be brought up in a way similar to how Trent questioned Ryan's position. And Trent could be asked all sorts of historical questions (e.g., the Biblical passages that seem to refer to people as saved while in a state of mortal sin; the widespread disagreements among pre-Reformation sources about issues pertaining to eternal security; why people like Trent have systems of penance so different than those of earlier figures, like Basil of Caesarea; what he makes of modern Catholic ecumenism as it relates to soteriology, not just ecumenism toward Protestants and other professing Christians, but also ecumenism toward followers of non-Christian religions and atheists, for example). Since Catholicism involves a larger means of justification, there are more such questions that could be asked of somebody like Trent than of somebody like Ryan.