On the Loss of Salvation According to Hebrews 6

"For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt." -Hebrews 6:4-6 ESV

One thing that is doggedly defended by Arminians is the idea that a Christian can lose (or, if you prefer, reject) their salvation after it has been granted.  Having previously accepted Arminianism for the greater part of my life, I understand first-hand the furor with which this point is defended.  Regardless, I think you will find yourself very hard-pressed to find a believer who accepts Arminianism and who also accepts the above verse at face-value and will admit that a person who “backslides”, that is, one who falls from grace after having received it, is incapable of returning to Christ in repentance and once more receiving salvation.  Indeed, my experience growing up with Arminianism is that churches are filled with stories of backsliders who return to Christ.  Unfortunately, the above passage doesn’t seem to allow for this at all.

As a former Arminian turned Calvinist, I have no problem with the above passage.  Although on the surface it does refer to the loss of salvation, there are two ways of understanding it.  One (which I do not accept, but will lay out anyway just to be thorough) states that those who have “tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit” were never believers to begin with, but only had a direct and undeniable understanding of the truth and then rejected it.  To me this seems to be stretching the text in order to avoid the idea that it deals with a true “falling away” from grace.  Indeed, how else does one deal with the statement regarding the impossibility of restoring them again to repentance?  How can they be turned again to repent if they had not already truly repented before God already?  The language in the verse is strong, and I can only conclude that it refers to someone who truly shares in the grace of God, not someone who only understands it.  This brings us to the second possible interpretation: that the passage does indeed refer to a true believer rejecting the salvation given, turning from the Holy Spirit who indwells him.  This I accept entirely, as it seems an obvious interpretation of the statements given.

Now as to doctrine, the verse is not a pronouncement that people will turn from God, but is in fact a hypothetical situation intended to make a point.  In the verses prior to this passage, the writer of Hebrews states that the believers should mature in Christ, and not be continually re-laying the foundational doctrine of repentance and salvation; in effect, he’s saying “you know this much, you understand, you’ve accepted and are saved, now let’s study and learn more of God instead of continuously re-hashing the point where you started; after all, if a believer should reject the salvation given, it is impossible for them to turn and repent again, so now that you have been saved let us move deeper into the things of God.”  By no means does this mean that rejecting salvation after receiving it is possible, but it is a hypothetical statement; if it were possible, and someone did reject their salvation, there’s no hope left for them, so in either case, as believers, move on in your walk with God and seek to learn more than just the fundamental doctrine of salvation, which you already know, accept, and walk in.

Indeed, the difficulty this passage presents is not a difficulty for the Calvinist, who regards the idea of rejecting salvation as a peculiar, illogical notion (how can the new creation become old again?), but it is a difficulty for the Arminian, who must come to terms with the finality of the verse’s pronouncement: if a believer should reject their salvation, then it is impossible, according to the Scripture, for them to be brought back to repentance again.  This means that for one who has truly backslidden, they have, in effect, committed the “unforgivable sin” and the doors of grace are no longer open to them.  What does one do with this?

Of course, any given supporter of Arminianism may come up to me and say that they do in fact believe that if someone rejects their salvation, it is absolutely final.  I have simply never met the believer who rejected eternal security and yet accepted this idea that eternal damnation necessarily follows the “loss” of salvation.  But if we choose to soften the argument, to say that one may fall into sin (indeed, we all sin at various times, and are all still prone to weakness), but that this does not mean that salvation is therefore lost to us, I say bravo, and agree.  The Spirit of God draws His children back to Himself, urging them to repent, and will discipline them in order to restore them to a right relationship with Him.  This is absolutely true.  But at no point in that process do those children cease to be children because of this.  This is not a case of rejecting salvation at all, and so that argument has no bearing on Hebrews 6.

As past defender of Arminianism, my own response to this verse was to pretend that this pronouncement of the impossibility of restoring such a person to repentance (without which there is no salvation) was to ignore it.  It was a fearful prospect, and so I simply hoped that there was something else here that I was missing.  Certainly I couldn’t live under this assumption, especially since my own father was a professed Christian who turned from his faith shortly after marrying my mom.  The idea that he could never be saved was a frightening thought that I simply could not accept.  In the end, my father did return to Christ, and has been following Him now for years.  What do I make of this?  Well, as a Calvinist, I can only conclude that either his professed faith before was never truly within his heart, or else that he never truly lost that salvation but was simply living as a disobedient child for some time.  If the former, then at some point in his life (as many others have openly testified of their own lives) the truth of the Gospel suddenly became real, whereas before it had only been an intellectual acknowledgement or a ritual they had been trained to march in.  If the latter, then his life simply shows the incredible patience of God with His children, whom He by no means rejects but will always restore back to Himself without fail.  But if for any moment I accept that his prior salvation was genuine and his falling away equally genuine, then his restoration would have been impossible according to Hebrews 6.  I thank God that this is not the case.

Indeed, I thank God for the promise of His salvation that was not granted on the basis of my actions, nor can be sustained by them.  If I do good, it is not through myself, but because the same God who turned my heart to Him is also at work in me, “both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13, ESV).  To will, that is, to desire to follow Him, and to do, that is, to perform the actions that please Him.  Remember that Galatians 5:22-23 details what the fruit of the Spirit is, not what the fruit of our own efforts are.  It is the Spirit who bears the fruit of good works and virtues within us, so that those who are saved will necessarily show the grace of God in their actions as He works within them.  It is not our own effort that produces good within us, but the good that our lives produce is a direct result of the eternal salvation He secured for us, a salvation that was given when we were altogether lost so that we might never be lost again.