Whether or not a person could know with certainty that he or she was saved from divine judgment and divine wrath has been a controversial issue in the history of the church.
The New Testament writers assume that it is part and parcel of the normal Christian experience (see, for example, 1 John 3:14). During the Middle Ages, however, Thomas Aquinas bracketed this experience as extraordinary, and argued that only a special revelation from God could give assurance.
At the time of the 16th-century Reformation, Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, and John Calvin sought to return to the position of the New Testament. They maintained that assurance is a blessed dimension and privilege of authentic Christian experience. But they soon found themselves immersed in controversy with theologians who adhered to the view of Aquinas.
Calvin, for example, knew of the reality of doubt but was convinced that true faith is aware of its status. This awareness was the work of the Holy Spirit, who unites the believer with Christ. Thus, for him, union with Christ was the solid ground of the believer’s assurance.
The Puritans and assurance
It has been argued that some of the Reformers’ heirs, particularly the Puritans, moved away from this robust conviction about assurance. Some have traced this discontinuity between the Reformers and the Puritans about assurance to the Puritan emphasis on predestination or on particular redemption. The issue, though, is more complex than has been allowed.
The Reformers were responding to the lack of assurance in medieval thought and their theological formulations also reshaped the pastoral landscape, thereby introducing new issues. The Puritans, on the other hand, were ministering in a context where all who were members of the English state theoretically belonged to the Protestant Church of England. So they were concerned about the dangers of nominal Christianity. The growing cultural impact of what we now call modernity in the 17th century with its great stress on the individual also played a part in the differing emphases of the Reformers and their heirs.
Assurance and antinomianism
It is noteworthy that the Roman Catholic Council of Trent was adamant in its anathematisation of the doctrine of assurance. The ferocity of their reaction to the Reformers was, in part, due to the loss of ecclesial privilege the Church of Rome suffered during the European Reformation. It was also based, however, on the fear that the assurance being promoted by the Reformers would erode the incentive to live a holy live and would issue in genuine antinomianism.
This anathematisation raised a question that is still a vital issue in Christian spirituality. Does assurance, by intensifying confidence and gratitude, help to foster a more mature Christian spirituality or does it actually facilitate a relative indifference to spiritual formation?
While this should be an ever-present concern, a careful reading of the New Testament compels a stance similar to that of the Reformers: assurance of salvation is indeed normative for the Christian life.
