No Man's Land

It's been coming for a while, but I think I'm officially living in a doctrinal "no man's land". I am beholden to the SBC death-tight grip on the Word as the authority for faith and practice. I am deeply interested in and being influenced by the cultural understanding of the Faith by Messianic Jews and the depth of many things from Eastern Orthodox. As my father put it, I'm going to have to go home and start the first Orthodox Messianic Baptist "thing".

One area we've been trying to explain to our classmates and roomies is how we've drifted away from "once saved, always saved". When you find out that only a tiny sliver of Christianity believes in this doctrine. It's especially interesting when you realize that SBCers, for example, love the Arminian idea of free will, but want to keep the Calvinist doctrine of perseverance of the saints. The SBC is blending two ideas from two diametrically opposed theological systems. Non-evangelicals regard this as a bizarre mess of blending "oil and water".

This is all really messed up when you realize that none of this has been really held by the Church entire during its entire existence. Calvinism and Arminianism are Reformation era doctrinal developments. So, we're in the 1500's. In the past 500 years, we've moved into blending theologies, looking at salvation as a one time event, and adding to that the near hysteria from fear that the Rapture will happen at any moment, so now we arrive at current southern Evangelical doctrinal system. So, to "get saved" all you need to do is pray a prayer, and BANG! You are eternally saved, even if you turn away in 6 weeks or less and say, "Poop on the church and God." At least you're in, right?

We don't buy that anymore. We don't believe that you can "lose your salvation" if you swear or commit a sin, since people do that constantly. We look at salvation loss as a long term process of arriving at total rejection of God. And to be logical, if you believe in the free will of man to accept Christ, you must continue to believe that he has the free will to reject Him as well. Without writing a dissertation or book, there are too many passages w/n the NT alone that discuss "enduring to the end and being saved" and "running the race so that I won't be disqualified". If I'm once saved, always saved, why even run the race? I've done all that is necessary.

So, where are we? In no man's land. We agree with the old concept of "I am saved, I am being saved, I will be saved". But, w/n that context, salvation is that total package. If you fudge on one, the whole thing falls apart. So, if I have been saved, and continue to walk w/Him in order to continue "being saved", then I'm not losing my salvation. I'm gaining it.

I guess we're just mulling around and trying to avoid the "heretic" label. We will probably fail.

KJ