On his website, Arminian Perspectives, Ben Henshaw has a questions page at which he answers questions about Arminianism and Calvinism that visitors to his site pose in the comment section of the page. Here is a question submitted by a man named John followed by an answer drawn and adapted from comments from Ben and a commenter with the screen name JPC:
Question:
Now, I have a question concerning Matt. 7:24-27. I was trying to think over Scriptures that would provide good grounds to not hold to “once saved, always saved,” in the context of a believer who willingly walks away from the faith. That scripture came to mind.
In my reading of the text, it seems to tie in with Jesus’ previous point concerning true and false disciples, those that “know him” and subsequently do his will, and those that “don’t know him” and do not do his will. The word “therefore” in vs. 24 connects the two “anecdotes,” and the wise builder then becomes a type for the true disciple and the foolish builder becomes a type for the false believer. Since Jesus compared the false disciples to “evildoers” and ordered them to depart from him, than this would be similarly applied to the foolish believer, who is “not putting to practice” the words he has heard, an action unrelated to Christ’s work within him as a believer.
Would you say this is a correct interpretation of the scripture? And furthermore, what, if any, would be the Calvinist response to such a claim? And if a claim, rebuttals?
Answer:
I do not see Matt 7:24-27 as a proof text for a believer that walks away from the faith. If you start at verse 13 and read through verse 27, I would say that Jesus is referring to those “false prophets”, “wolves in sheep’s clothing” and most importantly those that he never knew. He is not speaking about those he once knew and departed.
The idea here of never knowing Jesus (along with 1 John 2:19) are some of the main proof texts that Calvinists use to show that those that “fall away” were never really saved to begin with. The rebuttal to that would be that even if some passages of Scripture speak of those that profess faith and yet “never knew him” and were never saved to begin with, the Scripture also speaks of those that he “does not know” (see Matt. 25:1-13) and repeatedly warns believers against falling away (see 1 John 2:24 among many others). It also has examples of believers that actually do fall away (such as King Solomon, Hymaneus, Alexander, and some of the Galatians (Gal 5:2-4) among others). Also, do not forget to ask Calvinists about the purpose of the warning passages in the New Testament, and it is unbelievable how they try to get around passages such as 1 Cor 10, Romans 11, Hebrews 3, 6, and 10, and Rev. 2 and 3 among many others.
If you haven’t already, you should check out Ben’s 13 part series on the subject. Here is the first post. At the end of each post is a hyperlink that will take you to the next one:
https://arminianperspectives.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/perseverance-of-the-saints-part-1-definitions/
Regarding 1 John 2:19, he deals with that text here: https://arminianperspectives.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/perseverance-of-the-saints-part-12-examining-passages-commonly-appealed-to-by-the-advocates-of-unconditional-eternal-security/. Just scroll down that post until you see the section on that verse.
Also, you can click on the category for apostasy (on the left side bar) and find a lot of posts and articles there as well.
