Episode 325: Canons Of Dort, Fifth Head Of Doctrine, Rejection Of Errors, Paragraphs 1 -5

Pointing to Scripture, the Synod rejects the errors of those teaching: that God gives you grace to persevere, yet it remains up to you, or you can only have assurance of faith if visited by an angel. Rejection of the Errors Concerning the Teaching of the Perseverance of the Saints. Having set forth the orthodox teaching, the Synod rejects the errors of those: 1 Who teach that the perseverance of true believers is not an effect of election or a gift of God produced by Christ’s death, but a condition of the new ­covenant which people, before what they call their “peremptory” election and justification, must fulfill by their free will. For Holy Scripture testifies that perseverance follows from election and is granted to the chosen by virtue of Christ’s death, resurrection, and intercession: “The chosen obtained it; the others were hardened” (Rom. 11:7); likewise, “He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not, along with him, grant us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? It is Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised—who also sits at the right hand of God, and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom. 8:32-35). 2 Who teach that God does provide believers with sufficient strength to persevere and is ready to preserve this strength in them if they perform their duty, but that even with all those things in place which are necessary to persevere in faith and which God is pleased to use to preserve faith, it still always depends on the choice of human will whether or not to persevere. For this view is obviously Pelagian; and though it intends to make people free it makes them sacrilegious. It is against the enduring consensus of evangelical teaching which takes from humanity all cause for boasting and ascribes the praise for this benefit only to God’s grace. It is also against the testimony of the apostle: “It is God who keeps us strong to the end, so that we will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:8). 3 Who teach that those who truly believe and have been born again not only can forfeit justifying faith as well as grace and salvation totally and to the end, but also in actual fact do often forfeit them and are lost forever. For this opinion nullifies the very grace of justification and regeneration as well as the continual preservation by Christ, contrary to the plain wor