Jonathan Edwards on Perseverance & eternal security
No — the genuinely saved will certainly persevere
That they who once truly believe in Christ, never fall away finally and perish, is evident, because they that now believe not, and are in a state of condemnation, are spoken of as those that never have believed.
THE POSITION
The genuinely saved cannot finally fall away. He argues it from the way Scripture describes the condemned — as those who never believed, and whom Christ never knew — rather than from the decree, and he handles Ezekiel 18 as teaching a certain connexion between antecedent and consequent rather than a live possibility. He also holds that God deliberately did not leave perseverance in the redeemed person's own hands, since a covenant that suspends eternal life on the fruit of a man's own strength is a covenant of works.
18 Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
15 OTHERS HOLD THIS
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
New England pastor, revival theologian and philosopher of the First Great Awakening, dismissed from his Northampton pulpit in 1750 over who may come to the Lord's Table. This entry rests on Freedom of the Will (1754), Original Sin (1758), Religious Affections (1746), An Humble Inquiry (1749), Distinguishing Marks (1741), Some Thoughts on the Revival (1742), An Humble Attempt (1747) and A History of the Work of Redemption, read in the Hickman edition.
Cite this page
"Jonathan Edwards on Perseverance & eternal security", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/edwards/perseverance (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/edwards/perseverance).