Pshun (Paul),
I'm happy to discuss and explore this with you and others. I will admit that I do not know, myself, how to perfectly reconcile the two poles of "take heed lest you fall" and "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." I think all attempts to perfectly reconcile these ideas fall into trouble somewhere, because each answer we give raises other questions somewhere else. At times theology feels a bit like the classic "Whack-a-mole" game. Whack a mole here, and another one pops up somewhere else
How we answer the question seems to end up driven by what our assumptions are (of course), and what paradigm we use to approach the question in the first place.
"Once saved always saved" is not in the Bible, but eternal salvation for those truly born of Him IS (eternal never ends)...what I had in mind however were apostates who profess Jesus (some are even Priests and ministers) but in their continuous unrepentant sinfulness reveal they were never really of not of God (regardless of mere words or even following some set of standards) but of their father (Belial)...even religiosity is not the measure of the Holy Spirit. You shall know them by their fruits.
There are those who have attempted to further themselves by feigning belief in Christ. They learn the words, do the motions, but never actually have faith. In fact they may be worse than disinterested in real faith, they may be infiltrators or impostors. Yes, it happens. I've met people who admitted that they joined churches long ago, when it was the "respectable" thing to do, just so that people wouldn't hassle them and would think more highly of them. They left again as the culture shifted and nobody really cared what they did on Sunday anymore.
But this would be something like a man who marries a woman simply because her dad is CEO of the company he wants to get into. Or because she's rich and has a huge family. He learns the motions and puts up with her because he selfishly desires more on the other side.
What I think people really disagree over with respect to fallen away believers, are those people who
really do desire to be saved (from death, from nothingness, from wrath, from whatever). Who really do feel love and warmth in their hearts toward God, toward Christ, toward the saints. I have met these people too. They don't have stories of just wanting to "be respectable." They have stories of having endured all sorts of sadness and brokenness, of feeling that God abandoned
them. Over time they became skeptical and then numb, beginning to wonder "If God is real, if God loves me, why doesn't he just show himself? Where is my sign? Where's my miracle?" Some lose interest. Some become agnostic. Some turn hostile toward Christianity altogether.
Denying that such a person ever had faith in God and love for Christ, would be something like denying that a person who's fallen out of love with a spouse after many years, ever actually loved that person at all.
But in God's case...considering the examples and language of the OT...God will never turn away from his bride, but his bride can turn away from him. In the NT the bride is the Church...and the Church is also the Body of Christ...the Church is
humanity...and as such,
humanity is already saved and united forever to God. The falling away of individuals does not equal the falling away of the Church. How to specifically link the promises of Christ never to forsake the Church, with specific individuals, I'm not entirely sure.
Satan and his minions definitely believe in Jesus, they KNOW He is the Son of God, the Holy One of Israel, but they certainly are not saved (and they tremble). John says if they went out from us, they were never really of us. This makes perfect sense to me. I was born physically of my mother. Can I ever truly believe she was a fairy tale without being delusional or schizophrenic? If such a one were really God's child (born of Him) they could continue to practice disobedience, but they could never deny they were still His child, and never ever believe now that He was only make believe. How can one deny what they KNOW unquestionably is real? Unbelief is condemnation.
I very much see your point here. It might be something like the prodigal son, right? The father never stopped loving the son, and never cast out the son, but the son cast himself out. For a time...but what if he'd never "come to himself?" He
could have died in that far-off country, surrounded by swine. The father would still have loved him as a son, and the son...even if he denied the father's existence...would still be a son in fact though not in deed. Still, however, had that son died in his self-chosen exile, we would not say that he'd shown himself never to have been a son at all.
No offense taken I welcome your question. As I just demonstrated...because a person says they are saved or took a bath does not guarantee their salvation. It is said that Simon Magi "believed and was baptized" and yet he was not saved...his heart was wrong before God. The scriptures tell us that when one is "Sealed with the Holy Spirit", they are sealed until the day of redemption (again redemption is a now, during, and yet then process) so those who are so sealed are promised and He who promised cannot lie. So I guess that is where we may differ as I indicated but I am open to be proven incorrect but as the fathers say the proof of it would have to be confirmed by the word (and I am not trying to derail into this debate). IMO as described above, those who can apostatize were never really regenerated to begin with.
I guess the disconnect between the analogies of husband/wife and parent/child, is that in regeneration one is made anew. One is spiritually reborn. One cannot be un-born, but one can die. How, exactly, do we handle this? I think Peter's warning about a dog returning to its own vomit or a pig returning to the mire
can be taken as descriptive of one who really did convert and commune with God, only to walk off again. (Interesting, too, that both "dog" and "pig" were associated with uncleanness and gentiles...perhaps he had in mind gentile converts who returned to their unchurched ways???).
A son of a cow cannot stop and choose to be the son of a pig, the son of a human cannot stop and choose to be a son of a fish, and a son of God cannot stop and choose to be a an unbeliever (or else they knew not God but believed some abstract thought of who God is). So it is possible someone believed to be a child of God can not actually be one (darnel wheat or tares look exactly like the real thing for a while, but eventually it becomes apparent they were not real wheat)...
Again I see your point, but it's hard for me to reconcile this with humanity, for this reason: a cow is not a pig, and a human is not a fish. But an unbeliever and a believer are both human. Both share the same nature. I believe the correct use of the patristic terminology (although even the fathers were not always consistent in that regard) is that one does NOT receive a new
nature in baptism, but rather receives a renewed and reborn and regenerated
heart. To fall away from this, back into unbelief, is not to become something other than human (like a cow becoming a chicken, as cool as that might be!), but to become a human with a dead heart toward God. As Peter said, the last state is worse than the first!
So to recap, here's where I stand:
1. I really can't claim to have much knowledge of what specific fathers taught in this regard. Proponents of both views can dig up isolated quotes from fathers that seem to say both things. However, the prevailing view in Orthodoxy absolutely is that, as a person is free to choose God (as a bride chooses to marry a husband), that person is free to walk away also. They do not claim that the person never was united to Christ. That person was baptized, received sacraments, was in the actual presence of Christ in worship. That was all real. So I accept this view because I can understand why it's held, I see it's consistent with the rest of Orthodoxy, and I submit to the teaching of the church in this regard.
2. While I believe Scripture does teach that one can be joined to Christ, and then fall away, I do not believe a person can go into and out of union. Flipping from unsaved to saved to unsaved to saved, ad nauseum, doesn't seem to be in view. "It is impossible to restore him to repentance." I really do believe, that if I'm right in believing a Christian can fall away, that falling away is
final. And in this regard the last state really is worse than the first!!! Before, the possibility existed of coming to Christ. After, the heart is truly hardened and that person will be given over to exactly what he's chosen for himself.
3. In the end this is very speculative and actually doesn't matter that much to my thinking anymore. It may sound crass, but I realized long ago that whether one does or doesn't hold to a doctrine of perseverance, the existential assurance of salvation is the same. Believing that God in the abstract will never let a true believer fall away, doesn't assure me that my belief is actually true.
In the end I trust in God never to walk away from me. I must take heed not to walk away from God.
Back at ya
