Catholic apologist Joe Heschmeyer joins Thomas Graf to help a caller navigate tough conversations with Calvinists about salvation. Do Catholics believe in predestination? Can you lose your salvation?
Transcript:
Caller: I’d like to ask what would be the best scriptures to go to and church fathers to reference. Whenever I’m getting in discussions with some Calvinist denominations, typically with non-denominational people that I have discussions with, they’re more easier to come to understanding. But some of my Calvinist friends are pretty hard-headed, pretty similar to me.
Joe: Yes. So when you talk about this, are you looking specifically at predestination? I mean, there’s technically a lot of things that you might be in a debate about, but usually when people talk about Calvinism specifically, it’s typically the two.
Caller: The biggest things I think that I find myself discussing are predestination, eternal security, and baptism. Those are like the things that I’m always trying to navigate through.
Joe: Sure. So the first thing to know is that there is a sense in which we want to affirm predestination, that when anyone is saved, they’re saved because God has taken the initiative in their salvation. It isn’t just that he’s left the door open and waited to see who comes in; he’s gone out and he’s pulled people in. And so we want to affirm some common ground there.
And I think that’s worth saying partly because sometimes Calvinists think that we take the polar opposite view, something more like Pelagianism, and that’s not correct. So we want to say anyone who’s saved is saved because God has saved them. But nevertheless, anyone who isn’t saved is not saved because they have rejected God.
And so I think one of the points to stress here is this theme of what’s called limited atonement. And so the question would be, for whom did God die? Did he die just for us, or did he die for our sins only, but for the whole world?
And so First John chapter two would be one of the places I would go. In First John 2, John writes, “My little children, I’m writing this to you that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.” And here’s a critical line: “And he is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”
He goes out of his way to make sure that you’re not going to think that Jesus only died for us. Now, there are plenty of places where it emphasizes that Jesus died for us. That doesn’t mean he only died for us. Paul says that Jesus died for him. That doesn’t mean Jesus only died for him, thank God.
And so anyone who is ultimately unsaved is not unsaved because Jesus didn’t die for them. They’re not unsaved because Jesus didn’t want them to go to heaven. And so you can look at all the other passages that talk about that, about how God takes no delight in the death of the wicked, about Jesus mourning over Jerusalem, not repenting. None of that makes any sense if he doesn’t want them to repent and has given them no means to repent and has actually closed the door to make it impossible for them to repent.
So I would stress those passages that you want to affirm, on the one hand, that everyone who’s saved is saved because God has taken the initiative, and on the other hand, that there really is this ability to resist and reject these tremendous gifts that God has given us. You know, if you’ve got a lifeguard, maybe you push yourself away from the lifeguard and you drown. That doesn’t mean that if you don’t do that, you’ve saved yourself. Of course not. The lifeguard saves you, or you kill yourself. And that’s how salvation works.
So that’s how I would kind of focus on that. There’s much, much more, obviously, that could be said on this, on the notion of eternal security, that if you’re saved, you’re never going to lose your salvation. That’s a really fun idea, but it’s just so obviously against Scripture.
I’ll give you a few passages. Second Peter 2. The entire chapter is about those who’ve been ransomed by Christ and then have denied him, and have brought upon themselves swift destruction. The chapter goes on to compare them to the angels who were saved and then lost their salvation. You may remember that.
And then, Second Peter 2, verse 20 says, “If after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first, for it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.”
“It has happened to them according to the true proverb: the dog returns to his own vomit, and the sow is washed only to wallow in the mire.”
Now, you can try to explain that away with whatever backflips you want, but that passage is quite clearly about people who come to know Christ, are ransomed by him, are washed, and are brought into knowledge of the truth. They are, in other words, saved. And then they end up worse than before they ever got saved because they’ve rejected salvation.
And that’s not alone. Acts 8 gives you the example we can point to specifically: Simon in Samaria, Simon the magician. He believes and is baptized. That is the formula for salvation in Mark 16:16. And then afterwards, he tries to buy the spiritual gifts. He commits a sin that’s now named after him, the sin of simony. And he’s told that his money will perish with him. And he begs Peter to pray that he might be forgiven.
So he is saved and then is now in a place where he knows his salvation is imperiled. And Peter says he has at that point no company with them. We don’t know what ultimately happens to him, but it’s very clear that he enters right relationship with God and then exits it very quickly.
Hebrews 6 talks about how it’s impossible to restore to repentance. This is verse four: “Those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then commit apostasy, since they crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold him up to contempt.”
This is again dealing with those people who’ve come to know Christ, they’ve been saved, and then they reject their salvation. Now, to be clear, Hebrews 6 is insane. It’s literally impossible for them to be saved. With God, all things are possible, but it’s talking about how they are, as Second Peter 2 says, they’re now in a worse spot than if they just never heard of the Gospel because now they’ve heard of it and chosen to reject it after having experienced it.
So all of those passages speak to this, I think quite clearly.
The last thing, because you asked for early Christian evidence as well. The passage that I would give you is from St. Justin Martyr in his work *The First Apology*, beginning in chapter 43.
At the time, pagans believed similar things to what Calvinists believe. They believed that there was fate and everyone was just fated. And so you have these famous works like *Oedipus*, where the more you try to resist the Fates, the more you just fall into their snares.
In response to that, the Christian response is that, no, we actually have free will and thus accountability. And in Justin’s words, he says, “We have learned from the prophets and we hold it to be true that punishments and chastisements and good rewards are rendered according to the merit of each man’s actions. Since if it be not so, but all things happen by fate, neither is anything at all in our power.”
Excuse me, if it… yeah. Since if it be not so, in other words, it would be unjust for God to reward or punish anyone’s works, anyone’s behavior, if it weren’t for such a thing as free will. And so you can’t just chalk everything up to fate or predestination or some force that gets rid of man’s will completely.
And so it’s important to note he’s saying this in the mid-1100s; the earliest, say, 300 years of Christians are very clear on the fact that they don’t believe anything like a Calvinist idea of predestination. In fact, Calvinists who’ve gone looking for this have come up short with this.
I could give some examples on that as well. I’ll just give one. Sean Wright of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, he wrote a piece called *Calvinist Before Calvin*, and he couldn’t find anyone amongst the earliest Christians. He points out Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Athanasius, figures like this. They write about these themes and clearly don’t agree with Calvin on predestination.
So either the earliest Christians didn’t understand this important doctrine of grace, as they call it, or Calvin’s just misinterpreting this stuff a millennium and a half later.
Thomas: Prentice, thank you so much for that question. That takes us to our third break now.