Run to Win the Prize - Schreiner

Tom Schreiner has a new book coming out with IVP called Run to Win the Prize: Perserverance in the New Testament. This book is a kinda shorter and simplified version of the fine volume he co-wrote with Ardel Caneday The Race Set Before Us. Over at the American IVP webpage, there is an excellent excerpt from the book which gives a couple of good examples of people who fall away and backslide. It show that every pastor and Christian needs to have a doctrine of perseverance worked out (in some form), so that they can make sense of how people fall away and backslide. I include them below:

Let me begin with two stories to illustrate the concerns of this book. Years ago, a young woman and her husband came to a Bible study I was leading. Two days after the Bible study they visited our house for dinner, and she expressed a keen desire to become a Christian. I was hesitant because she knew so little about the Christian faith. Nevertheless, I concluded that I might be resisting the Holy Spirit, and one thing led to another and she confessed Jesus as her Saviour that night in our living room. I assured her after her confession of faith that she was securely saved forever: that nothing she did could remove her from the eternal life that was hers. Her husband shortly thereafter followed her in the same faith. They both grew rapidly in the faith during the next year, and we were regularly involved in Bible studies with them. But a year after her confession of faith, she changed dramatically. She decided to divorce her husband, quit attending church, and ceased going to Bible studies. I pleaded with her to at least go into counselling, but to no avail. All of this happened many years ago, and I have since lost all contact with her, though I know there was no change of mind or repentance in the next fifteen years.

The other story also relates to a friend who prayed with me to become a believer. I saw the radiance and joy in her life. She began to grow in remarkable ways. And yet, in a year or two the early bloom of her faith began to fade. She began to get drunk on a fairly regular basis. She ended up living with a person who was an adherent of Buddhism. On one occasion I said to her, ‘By this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments’ (1 John 2:3). A number of years passed. She broke off the relationship with the first man and ended up getting married to another. Still no desire for the things of God and Jesus Christ manifested itself. And yet, after a few years of marriage, a change began to take place. Her desire to follow the Lord resurfaced, and she began to read Scripture, pray and take seriously her church involvement. Once again she began to talk to me about spiritual matters. She gave every indication that she belonged to Jesus Christ and that she loved him. A significant period of time had intervened between her first confession of faith and the return to her first love. Was her first experience a sham, so that she was truly saved the second time? Or did she lose her salvation and regain it later? Or was she a believer the entire time, with a temporary lapse in her faith and obedience?

Sounds like a good read that can help Christians how to biblically interpret and pastorally respond to very sensitive (and often sad) situations.

F.F. Bruce on the Warning Passage

F.F. Bruce's NICNT commentary on Hebrews says the following on Heb. 6.4-6:

The reason why there is no point in laying the foundation over again is now stated: apostasy is irremediable. Once more our author emphasizes that continuance is the test of reality. In these verses he is not questioning the perseverance of the saints; we might say that rather he is insisting that those who persevere are the true saints. But in fact he is stating a practical truth that has verified itself repeatedly in the experience of the church. Those who have shared the covenant privileges of the people of God, and then deliberately renounce them, are the most difficult persons of all to reclaim for the faith. It is indeed impossible to reclaim them, says our author. We know, of course, that nothing of this sort is ultimately impossible for the grace of God, but as a matter of human experience the reclamation of such people is, practically speaking, impossible. People are frequently immunized against a disease with a mild form of it, or with a related but milder disease. And in the spiritual realm experience suggests that it is possible to be "immunized" against Christianity by being innoculated with something which, for the time being, looks so like the real thing that it is generally mistaken for it. This is not a question of those who are attached in a formal way to the profession of true religion without having experienced its power; it is blessedly possible for such people to have an experience of God's grace which changes what was once a matter of formal attachment into a matter of inward reality. It is a question of people who see clearly where the truth lies, and perhaps for a period to conform to it, but then, for one reason or another, renounce it (p. 144).

Lectures by Thomas Schreiner on Perseverance

Tom Schreiner's lectures at Oak Hill are available. What I found particularly enjoyable was his lecture on, "Persevering in Faith is not Works-Righteousness". Main points were:

1. Schreiner confesses that he cannot tell the difference beteween an English accent and an Australian accent. I could say so many derogatory things about Americans here, but I shall restrain myself out of my respect for Tom.

2. Schreiner says that there is no eschatological salvation without obedience.

3. He gives a good examination of Romans 2 as referring to Gentile Christians (esp. vv. 25-29).

4. He regards obedience not as the basis of salvation, but obedience is the necessary evidence of salvation.

5. Works and Faith are distinguishable, but inseparable.

6. Schreiner is emphatic about embracing the perspective and paradigm of the cross for Christian faith.

7. Apostasy in Hebrews and Galatians is not retreating to libertinism but works-righteousness.

8. Schreiner provides some interesting reflection on what it means to "deny Christ".

9. He offers some good thoughts on assurance too.

Paul and Perseverance

Today in my Pauline Theology class we had a lecture on Paul and Perseverance. I opened the lecture with a discussion about whether or not the bumper-sticker-theology phrase "once saved, always saved" is an appropriate representation of Paul's conception of perseverance. Views were expectedly diverse on the topic but mostly in favour of it. I set out to show that things are a little more complex than that. We then worked through the Pauline materials and had a bit of an intro to the view of Judith Gundry-Volf. After that I then asked the students to come up with a new bumper-sticker-theology phrase that more adequately describes Paul's perspective on perseverance while I went and made myself a drink. When I came back they had come up with this phrase:

Salvation! Work out what God has worked in!

Well done to Paul, Ian, Anne, George, and Dan.