Philip Melanchthon on Perseverance & eternal security

Yes — real apostasy is possible

THE POSITION

Real apostasy is possible. Augsburg XII condemns, by name, the position that the once-justified cannot lose the Holy Spirit — and the German text of the same article is blunter still. The article's positive teaching follows from this: those who fall after baptism may be forgiven whenever they come to repentance, and the church is bound to absolve them.

4 OTHERS HOLD THIS

ABOUT THIS FIGURE

Luther's colleague at Wittenberg and the Reformation's systematizer. He wrote the first Protestant systematic theology (Loci Communes, 1521), drafted the Augsburg Confession (1530) and its Apology (1531), and then revised his own work far enough that the Formula of Concord condemned the later version seventeen years after his death. This entry rests on the Augsburg Confession read in Latin and English — Part I less Articles VI-VIII and XIV-XVI, plus Part II Articles XXII-XXIV and XXVIII — on the opening articles of the Apology in English, and on the successive editions of the Loci through Latin sentences preserved by Schaff and Bente; no edition of the Loci itself was read.