Maybe you can state it better, but I don’t find your explanation to be any more helpful. You seem to be saying that I can be justified but not saved. How’s that?

I am beginning to sense that by tinkering with doctrines like assuance, justification etc., FV is not only undermining confidence in Reformed theology — oh, what a minute, the Reformed churches have always taught you could lose your salvation — but also in the mercy of God and his promise in Jesus Christ.

Rom 8:35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So is what is being suggested here that when Paul says “…anything in all creation…” that he actually means, “…anything in all creation except our sinful, unfaithful hearts”?

Doesn’t assurance come from faith in God’s character because of our inability to “keep covenant” with Him?

Nor am I talking about our being saved by merits accumulated by our faithfulness, even if such faithfulness is spirit-wrought.

Nor am I talking about our justification; I was careful to talk about our salvation which begins with that initial union where what is Christ’s is imputed to me - I have his righteousness, no doubt. Now, salvation is about more than initial union with Christ or justification, and it is plain jane vanilla Reformed theology to say that perseverance is necessary for salvation. Of course, God preserves the elect. And what does his preservation look like? It looks like perseverance.

As Sinclair Ferguson put it, “good works are non-contributory means of salvation” - I think that’s a clever way to put it.

God is Van Til’s “all conditioner” - that’s my point - and he ordains the means of salvation and the means of damnation, but that doesn’t negate the necessity of those means nor does it risk the temptation to think that I’m justified by anything other than Christ’s righteousness. The point of this particular thread was apostasy and perseverance - and a sense of assurance is not bolstered by Calvinistic soteriology nor is it hindered by an Arminian one, even if we know the Calvinistic one to be true.

Why doesn’t this sound reassuring? The point of the doctrine of justification by faith was — at least one point — is that I won’t have to wonder if I were being faithful enough. Rome also teaches that human faithfulness is all of God’s grace and it also talks a lot about the conditional nature of using the means of grace. But Geneva, Wittenburg and Canterbury taught that my salvation does not depend on my believing hard enough or attending the means of grace sincerely enough, or worshiping intensely enough. That is why as I’ve understood it Heidelberg talks about being right with God only by true faith. “Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously sinned against all God’s commandments . . . nevertheless, without my deserving it at all, out of sheer grace, God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ, as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner, as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me.” (Can you say active obedience of Christ? Sure you can.)

That is truly good news. My faithfulness is not.

The Reformed tradition has the promotional claim that its theology of perseverance is assurance-granting, but this cannot be. No theology is assurance granting except for universalism and atheism.

What is assurance granting are forms of piety - a learning to live with and trust God day by day. Arminians and Calvinists both learn assurance granting forms of piety. The fact that apostasy is a possibility for Arminians should be no more confidence-wrecking than the fact that being deceived about one’s election should be confidence-wrecking for Calvinists.

Now, back to the theology of the matter, compare salvation to marriage. None of us knows whether we will remain faithful to our wives, but we do not deny that a marriage currently exists. Sure, if we leave our wives, or if they leave us there will be a sense in which all of the photos of “the happy years” will be reinterpreted. But we would never claim that marriage never existed.

In salvation, we want to make a very clean distinction between true salvation and temporary faith or common operations of the spirit. Mainly this is because of the doctrine of perseverance of the saints (and perhaps because of limited atonement). And yes, it is true that with regards to those whom God purposes to save, God will not be deterred. But at the same time, there are those in whom God works for a time via these “common operations.” And for a time they have a real relationship with God, however qualitatively different it may be from the kind of relationship the elect have with God. The fact that this happens should not shake the faith of the true believer. Knowing we’re elect is no more possible than knowing the future is. All we can know is what God asks of us now, to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with him. We believers believe he gave us a gift of faith and a conditional promise of salvation - and we will either persevere in the means of grace, or we will sidetrack and partake of the means of damnation - doubting God, being prideful, losing faith. In retrospect - sure, our perseverance can only be chalked up to God’s working in us, but that is not and cannot be a part of our piety since we cannot always distinguish between temporary faith and the faith that God sustains in us.

The point is this - God’s promises are true and sure. In baptism he makes a conditional promise and if we fall short, it will be because we leave God and despise his covenant. And if we are faithful it will be because we are faithful to God and remain humble in his covenant. Sure, the explanation for our faithfulness is wholly God’s grace. But that doesn’t negate the integrity of second causes. God uses means of salvation that we can see. He also uses means of damnation. We aren’t saved in our sleep and we aren’t damned in our sleep either. Damnation is via unfaithfulness, just as salvation is via faith.

As for whether Christ died for *me* - this is a question about Christ’s intentions, which is a question about his plan, which is a question I have no data to answer. The only thing we have is the observation of the application of Christ’s redemption to us, and that application takes place by means of grace as described above.

I don’t deny mystery here. Perhaps someone else could put it better.

I can say that Jesus died “for” everyone alive in the world at present, for He is the Hilasterion, the Ark-Cover, which is the Firmament between heaven and earth. He is the New Sky. God sees all the world through Him and His blood/death. I can freely say to any person, “God loves you and Jesus died for you.” That’s 100% true. It’s clearly taught in Lev. 16, for anyone acquainted with the Levitical imagery (which I freely admit takes some time to learn; at least it’s taken me many years!). And it’s in Romans 3. Of course, if a person dies without faith, then he moves out from this world, out from under the New Sky, and is lost. But as long as he’s here, he benefits from Jesus’ death, which took place up in the air between heaven and earth and put blood on the four corners of the earth, covering it.

I trust that, so Jesus died for ME.

“You” (the Chellis who asks, not necessarily the Chellis who exists) want to know if Jesus died in the (very true) “particular redemption” sense for me as an elect person. But that’s known only to God. To seek to know that is, I submit, to seek to operate by sight. I must operate by faith.

I believe that the framers of our confessions knew this. They knew that in their decretal theology they were operating apophatically, doing negative theology, preserving the Godness of God against the Arminians. All 100% necessary, and a great advance in our corporate Churchly understanding. But they also knew that no “verses” in the Bible expressly deal with this matter (except, I would say, Gen. 1:1). It is a matter of arguing by eminence, analogy, and negation. When God says in Ephesians 1 that He has sovranly elected people from the foundation of the world to be baptized into His church, this by way of eminence also means that He has elected people to be found at the end.

They did NOT want to submit prooftexts. But what has happened is that the WCF has wrongly been made into an hermeneutical guide for reading the Bible. Passages footnoted (at the demand of Parliament) as EVIDENCE for a given teaching have been taken as MEANING that doctrine. But Eph. 1 is not about election for eternity, but about election into the historical community. Similarly, the doctrine of particular redemption arises from (by way of eminence and analogy) from many things in the Bible, but it is not a “comfort” teaching since I cannot know it. I can only know “that” it is true. What I “know,” as the Vrijgemaacht realized so well, is the promises of God.

And believe me, “FV” is pretty much “Liberated” all the way; well, most of the way.

I am just going by what you are telling me.