Once Saved Always Saved?

One of the good things about being an agnostic is that I do not have to give you a final answer about everything. When a question cannot be answered (usually because the terms cannot be defined), I can just say so.

One question that has surfaced, in various forms, for centuries in Christian theology is, if you are once saved, do you remain saved forever, no matter what happens? On the face of it, this seems unfair; if you sacrifice a lot in order to be saved, such as giving up sinful but lucrative or enjoyable sins, should you not be penalized if you go back to those sins? Is Jesus’ salvation a technicality that will let you off the hook for anything? But certainly the Bible makes it sound like your salvation is Jesus’ initiative, not yours, and you can’t stop Him once you have handed Him the keys to your volition.

I don’t think this question can be answered, because nobody really knows what happens when you are saved, assuming that anything happens at all. The Bible implies that you receive a new nature; indeed, the Holy Spirit Himself dwells in you. At the same time, the old nature remains in you also. So whenever you feel attracted to sin, it is the old nature, and when you rejoice in righteousness, it is the Holy Spirit.

This explanation never satisfied me. Before I was “saved,” that is, accepted the fundamentalist doctrine of what I had to believe in order to be saved, I still felt inspired by God’s creation (especially Nature). Of course, I continued to feel this inspiration after I was “saved.” But how much of my inspiration, of my desire for goodness, was mine, and how much was the Holy Spirit, which supposedly did not enter into me until I was baptized?

And now that my increase of knowledge and experience (including with the Bible) has led me to reject almost all doctrines as at least unprovable, and many of them wrong, am I still saved? I still feel inspiration, and the desire to do good. This is hard to explain if the goodness within me is due entirely to the Spirit, whose presence I cannot discern. Unless the Spirit never leaves. Once He’s got you, you’re got.

An acquaintance in graduate school once accused me, only half seriously, of having an “ineradicable streak of decency.” Was he right?