Calvinism and the Assurance of Salvation, part 1

Keith D. Stanglin

*Part 2 of this post is available here.

Assurance of salvation was a central and motivating concern of the Protestant Reformation.  Martin Luther sought assurance in the sacrament of penance, but to no avail.  He found it finally in his discovery of justification by grace alone through faith alone.  This concern for assurance continued among the Reformed (Calvinists).  To pick one example among many, notice the presence of assurance in the opening Question and Answer of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563): “What is your only comfort in life and death?  That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ” (emphasis added).

Most Reformed (Calvinist) believers assume that, since Arminians and other non-Calvinists think that it is possible to fall away from grace and forfeit salvation, then Arminians must not have the same degree of comfort and assurance as the Reformed have.  Actually, the opposite is the case: Arminians can have greater assurance of salvation. 

In his own life and ministry, Jacob Arminius (1559–1609) saw the reason for this.  During his fifteen years of ministry at the Old Church in Amsterdam, Arminius witnessed two separate problems when it comes to assurance—despair and security—both of which he saw as the fair implications of the Reformed doctrine of predestination. 

DESPAIR

First, Arminius noticed what he called despair.  (He used the Latin word “desperatio,” which means hopelessness.)  He recalled multiple examples when he ministered to people on their deathbeds who had no assurance of their own salvation.  The problem was that, in these instances, these were exemplary believers who ought to have assurance.  Yet, at this crucial moment when they needed assurance most, they lacked it.

How could Reformed Christians, who were saved not by their own goodness but by Christ’s imputed righteousness, ever fall victim to despair?  How did they get to this point?  Why was the doubt that plagued the late medieval Roman Church not resolved in the Reformed Church?  When one surveys the writings of Arminius, one can see how despair is the result of three Reformed doctrines.

For Arminius, the problem lies first with the Reformed conviction that saving faith includes not only knowledge and assent, but also fiducia, or confident assurance.  Assurance (fiducia) was sometimes used synonymously with faith (fides).  Under this Reformed assumption, if a person has belief in Christ as Savior, and believes that Christ’s righteousness may be imputed to him by faith, and the person desires this salvation, but only lacks certainty of that salvation, then the person may begin to question his faith altogether, and wonder whether he is one of the elect.  This was the problem of the two dying Christians in Amsterdam—they took their lack of assurance to indicate necessarily a lack of faith.  Arminius distinguished assurance (fiducia) from faith (fides), declaring that assurance follows as the ordinary result of saving faith, but is not necessarily simultaneous with faith.

The Reformed acknowledge that faith can be weak in this life, and since assurance (fiducia) is part of faith, then it is no surprise that assurance can be weak as well.  This response provides little consolation, however, because of a second doctrine—the doctrine of temporary faith, as taught by John Calvin and other Reformed theologians.  How can one tell the difference between the weak faith of the elect and the temporary faith of the reprobate?  In short, you can’t really.  Calvin asserted that a person could seem to others to have faith, indeed could think oneself to possess saving faith, when it was really only a faith temporarily granted by God that was not meant to persevere but instead would be withdrawn by God. The common biblical example is Simon Magus (Acts 8), who is described as having believed, and genuinely thought himself to be a true believer, but whose belief was soon shown to be false (Calvin, Institutes III.ii.10).  That is, Simon himself was not aware of his status until his faith failed.  The reprobate may be self-deceived, and, despite all present appearances to the contrary, lack genuine faith. If even the reprobate can have a temporary faith that resembles that of the elect both externally and internally, then it matters not how weak or strong one’s faith and assurance seem to be at present.

Of course, true faith may sometimes fail.  It is when combined with a third doctrine—the doctrine of unconditional reprobation—that this undermining of assurance can be devastating. The Reformed doctrine of unconditional election claims that God chooses whom God wills to save, based not on their good works, their foreseen faith, or even their willing assent. The necessary corollary to this election is that God unconditionally reprobates, or perhaps “passes over,” the remainder of humanity, the result of which is condemnation. The only way to escape condemnation is to be chosen by God. But, as Arminius observes, since that election is (apart from God’s absolute and sovereign will) unconditional, there is nothing that the reprobate can do to be in a saved relationship with a God who has not chosen them.  Reformed predestination, says Arminius, “produces within people a despair both of performing that which their duty requires and of obtaining that towards which their desires are directed” (Verklaring, p. 87).

This is what I call the doctrine of “unavailable grace.”  If you think you might possibly be reprobate, there is nothing that you can do about it, since election is unconditional.  “Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.”

What did Arminius identify as the second—and more dangerous—risk to godly assurance?

Watch for part 2 of this post next week!

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