The X-Calvinist Corner is a page on this website that shares the stories of people who were once Calvinist but have left Calvinism for a more Arminian theology. This series (The X-Calvinist Corner Files) highlights one of the testimonies from the X-Calvinist Corner in each installment.
Today’s testimony is from Jessica Joiner:
I read the first part of your series on Perseverance of the Saints, the one where you defined the different views, and while I know it was a very old post, but I just wanted to comment as someone who has moved from the Independent Baptist/”1-Point Calvinist” position to Arminianism.
Assurance of my salvation was a sticking point in my teen and young adult years. Because the “1-point Calvinist” position doesn’t believe either in predestination, or that one can lose their salvation for any cause, there is often a heavy emphasis on making sure your “moment in time” salvation experience was unnaturally perfect. Didn’t believe with your whole heart? Lost. Didn’t repent. Lost. Didn’t experience an immediate emotional moment? Probably lost. Still sinning? Eh. Carnal Christians are still on their way to heaven, no matter how unchanged and vile they are. Unless you’re lost. Better do it again to be safe. And even if you have assurance now, it could be false, because every week you get to hear a testimony of someone who “thought” they were saved, until they realized they were deceived. So you get saved again, just to be safe. There was NO EARTHLY way, outside of perfection to be confident in your salvation. As a teen, I got to a point where I thought I was losing my mind, because if I couldn’t be sure of my salvation, how could I be sure of ANYTHING?
I managed to get it settled in college, more as an act of will to stop obsessing over it more than anything else. With a little bit of “I’ve done this every possible way by now, one of them had to be good enough” thrown in for good measure.
Then I heard a testimony of a man who had a massive TBI in a motorcycle accident. He had no memory of anything that happened before the accident, and a permanent rolling long term memory of about three months. His testimony of assurance changed my life. He said that, since there was no possible way for him to look back at his salvation experience for assurance, he was resting every morning in the assurance that he was currently IN Christ, and that was assurance enough for today. I didn’t realize at the time that was the heart of assurance for the Arminian belief system, but from that moment on I was done with the brand of eternal security you can never actually be assured you have.
It wasn’t far from there to embracing the full teachings of Arminianism, because if a future apostate could be assured of his salvation today, but not truly be saved, then I was right back where I started. The negative testimony of a professor who went from Independent Baptist to one of the foremost scholars on church history teaching others to deny Christ’s deity sealed it. My church would teach that if he made a profession as a teen he was either still saved (ridiculous, since he actively teaches others not to believe), or deceived in his earlier profession. Since it was clear that he is apostate, and I had already rejected the concept that one could be capable of being deceived about your salvation, the only remaining option was Arminianism.
