Eternal security without perseverance
Serious error
The teaching that anyone who has once believed is saved forever, even if they later stop believing or live with no evidence of new life.
What it means
This teaching agrees that salvation cannot be lost, but it separates that security from any continuing faith or holiness. On this view a person who sincerely believed at one moment is eternally secure, even if they later renounce Christ or live as an unbeliever for the rest of their life. Such a person may lose rewards in heaven, but not heaven itself.
It is closely tied to free grace theology. It is sometimes summed up as "once saved, always saved," though many who use that phrase mean the historic doctrine of perseverance instead, so the phrase alone does not tell you which view a church holds.
The Westminster and 1689 confessions teach that true believers are kept secure, and that they are kept by being kept in faith. Security and perseverance belong together, because the God who saves also sanctifies.
What Scripture says
Believers will be presented holy if they continue in the faith, not shifting from the hope of the gospel.
We share in Christ if we hold our original confidence firm to the end.
Those who departed showed that they never truly belonged.
Some receive the word with joy but fall away when trouble comes, showing they had no root.
Those born of God do not go on sinning; this distinguishes God's children.
What is wrong with it
Scripture ties assurance to continuing faith. The promises of security are made to those who believe, a present and continuing trust, and the warnings call professing believers to hold fast to the end. Scripture explains those who fall away not as saved people who quit, but as people who never truly belonged, whose faith had no root.
The God who justifies also regenerates and sanctifies. A salvation that leaves a person permanently unchanged, or permanently unbelieving, is not the salvation the New Testament describes.
How it undermines the truth
It undermines the doctrine of regeneration, by allowing a saved person who was never made new. It undermines perseverance, which the confessions present as God's gift to all true believers. And it empties the Bible's warnings and calls to self-examination of their force.
How it can harm a church
It can give false comfort to people who made a decision long ago but show no love for Christ now, so that they never hear the call to repent while there is time. Families and churches may stop urging wandering members to return, believing the matter settled.
It can also cheapen the Christian life for everyone, treating holiness as optional extra credit rather than the fruit of a living faith.
This page describes a teaching, not the faith of any person who holds it.
Where it comes up
Confessions: WCF 17.1; WCF 18.1; LBCF 1689 17.1; LBCF 1689 18.1
On this site: Holiness & assurance
Related terms
Perseverance of the saintsHistoric orthodoxy
The teaching that all whom God has truly saved will be kept by his power and will continue in faith and holiness to the end.
Free grace theologySerious error
The teaching that saving faith is simply believing Jesus' promise of eternal life, without any necessary turning from sin or submission to him as Lord.
Lordship salvationHistoric orthodoxy
The teaching that the faith which saves receives Jesus as both Savior and Lord, and necessarily brings repentance and a changed life.
Loss of salvationA view held among orthodox Christians
The Arminian and Wesleyan teaching that a true believer can, by persistent unbelief or apostasy, fall away and be finally lost.