ome Christians object to the claim that our good works play a causal role in our salvation. They also reject the idea and that it’s possible to lose our salvation, subscribing instead to a doctrine called eternal security. They’re concerned that on the Catholic view, we are somehow excluding God from our salvation, making him helpless, like an onlooker who must watch and see what happens as opposed to being involved to bring about the desired result.
A Protestant Apologist on Eternal Security
Protestant apologist James White expressed this concern in his 2017 debateon eternal security with Trent Horn. Consider, for example, his take on Matthew 10:22. When commenting on the prescriptive reading of the text, he states (emphasis added),
“He who endures to the end shall be saved”—and so by your enduring to the end, you bring about your salvation.
He then comments on what he takes to be a descriptive reading (emphasis added):
“He who endures to the end shall be saved.” Amen, I agree a thousand percent, but it is not my enduring to the end that brings about my salvation, and God is not helpless unless I somehow work up an enduring faith.
For White, on the view that a Christian doesn’t end up being saved, God is “helpless,” and the final perseverance of a Christian is due solely to him “working up an enduring faith.”
But this charge sticks only for some Christian presentations of this belief. Some Christian presentations of this belief do entail the view of God as merely an onlooker, one who gives Christians the equipment needed to be saved but simply watches to see how Christians use it.
A Doctor of the Church on Eternal Security
There are other Christian presentations of this belief that do not entail the above view of God. Take, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas. He did not believe that God merely gives human beings the capacity to do good. Rather, he believed that God moves the human being from potency to act, applying the power to do good to actually doing good. And Aquinas believed that God does this on both the natural level, through natural motions, and on the supernatural level, through grace.
Aquinas teaches this throughout the corpus of his writings. There are simply too many examples to cite here. But here is one, taken from his Summa Contra Gentiles. He writes,
God not only gives powers to things but, beyond that, no thing can act by its own power unless it acts through his power, as we showed above. So, man cannot use the power of will that has been given him except in so far as he acts through the power of God. Now, the being through whose power the agent acts is the cause not only of the power, but also of the act. This is apparent in the case of an artist through whose power an instrument works, even though it does not get its own form from this artist, but is merely applied to action by this man. Therefore, God is for us the cause not only of our will, but also of our act of willing (3.89).
Now, for Aquinas, God’s causality of the will to act doesn’t do violence to it because the will is not excluded from being a principle of the action. Rather, God makes it a principle of the action. On this view, the act is a product of both the person’s free choice and God. Aquinas talks about this in his Summa Theologiae (I:83).
Keep in mind that only God can cause the will as such, given that only he is the Creator. As Aquinas puts it, “God alone can move the will in the fashion of an agent . . . and incline our will to something” (SCG 3.88.3-4). And this “something” can be only a good, not sin. Aquinas’s metaphysics doesn’t allow for God to will someone to sin.
So, for Aquinas, the idea that our works play a causal role in our salvation doesn’t leave God out, since without God’s causality, there can be no works that contribute to our salvation.
Concerning the possibility to lose salvation, God is not helpless, either. On Aquinas’s view, sin would not come about unless God permitted the human to defect and misuse his freedom. Such divine permission is a sine qua non (“that without which”) for sin. And God knows this from all eternity.
So, from all eternity, God knows whom he will permit to fall into sin and die in such a state, and he knows whose wills he will move supernaturally to believe and love until death, and thus be finally saved.
And Finally, St. Paul
As we can see, this idea that God is somehow helpless on the view that it’s possible for a Christian lose his salvation is not a problem for a thinker like St. Thomas Aquinas. It’s also not a problem for St. Paul.
Check out what Paul writes in the Philippians 2:13: “God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
For Paul, God is not merely an onlooker, seeing how we’re going to act. God is the cause of the act. And if there is a lack of good act, or sin, God is not causing, but permitting. And such permission is known from all eternity.
The bottom line is that on views like that of Aquinas and Paul, there is no need to fear that God’s sovereignty is undermined with the belief that works have a causal role to play in our final salvation and that it’s possible a Christian lose his salvation.
***This article was originally published by Catholic Answers Magazine Online on March 12, 2025.