NO CONDEMNATION
A Theology of Assurance of Salvation
By Michael.A. Eaton. Piquant Editions. 401 pages. £18.00
ISBN 978 1 903 689 721
The problem: many evangelicals suffer from a lack of assurance of salvation.
The causes. For the ‘Reformed’ (’developed’ or ‘scholastic’ Calvinists, as Michael calls them), they are: firstly, the tendency to live as if still under the Old Covenant, thus a tendency towards legalism; secondly, belief in limited atonement or particular redemption leading to doubts and morbid introspection about election; thirdly, for those of the ‘New Perspective’, a reductionist view of justification; and, finally, misunderstanding the warnings in the New Testament about ‘falling away’. For the ‘Arminian’ evangelical, the causes would be an inadequate view of eternal security and a tendency towards legalism.
