The History of Once Saved, Always Saved 「一次得救，永远得救」的历史

Tracing the doctrine from a fifth-century controversy in North Africa, through the Reformation, to the modern church. 从五世纪北非的一场争论，到宗教改革，再到现代教会，追溯这一教义的发展脉络。

For the first three centuries after the death of the Apostle John, predestination, the total depravity of man, and the impossibility of losing one’s salvation were taught primarily by Gnostic groups outside the Church. The Church itself taught differently on all three points. Today, those same ideas occupy a central place in much of evangelical theology, a shift worth tracing. 在使徒约翰去世之后的头三个世纪里，预定论、人的全然败坏，以及救恩永不失落这三种教导，主要见于教会以外的诺斯底群体。教会本身在这三点上有不同的教导。而今天，这些观念在许多福音派神学中已占据核心地位，这一转变值得追溯。

The pattern is plain in the second-century church fathers’ writings against the Gnostics. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, writing around 180 AD against the Valentinian school, describes their view in his own words: 这一格局在二世纪教父反诺斯底的著作中清晰可见。里昂主教爱任纽（约公元180年）这样描述瓦伦提努派诺斯底主义者的观点：

A generation later, in Alexandria, Origen reached the same diagnosis from a different angle, the way the Gnostic doctrine of fixed natures eliminated any real freedom of the will: 下一代之后，亚历山大的俄利根从另一角度作出同样的诊断，诺斯底「固定本性」的教导，如何抹去人意志的真实自由：

Two of the most respected church fathers, Irenaeus in the West around 180, Origen in Egypt a generation later, identified the same package: a class of people spiritual by nature, unable to be lost, and free on that basis to live as they please. Both wrote against this view, because it was not the Church’s own. 两位最受尊敬的早期教父，爱任纽（约公元180年于西方）与下一代的俄利根（在埃及），指出同样的格局：一群被认为本性属灵、不会失落、并因此可任意而行的人。他们二人都撰文反对这种观点，正是因为它并不属于教会自身。

How did this shift happen? Several threads run through the story: a North African bishop named Augustine; a British monk named Pelagius; a Latin translation of Romans 5; the sack of Rome in 410; a Roman emperor; and, more than a thousand years later, the work of John Calvin. 这一转变是怎么发生的？故事中有几条主线：一位名叫奥古斯丁的北非主教；一位名叫伯拉纠的不列颠修士；《罗马书》第五章的一处拉丁译文；公元410年罗马的陷落；一位罗马皇帝；以及一千多年后约翰·加尔文的工作。

A Convert with Gnostic Roots 一位带着诺斯底背景的归信者

Augustine’s own background is part of the story. Raised by a Christian mother, he initially rejected Christianity and at age twenty embraced Manichaeism, a Gnostic religion he followed for nine years.¹ Like most Gnostic groups, the Manichaeans taught predestination and held a pessimistic view of the created world and human nature. 奥古斯丁本人的背景是故事的一部分。他虽由一位基督徒母亲带大，但年轻时却拒绝了基督教，二十岁时归入摩尼教，一种诺斯底宗教，并在其中度过九年。¹如同大多数诺斯底群体，摩尼教也教导预定论，对受造世界与人性持悲观的看法。

Whether his earlier Manichaean training shaped how he later reasoned about grace and human nature is a question readers can weigh for themselves; the parallels between the two systems are striking. 他早年所受的摩尼教思想训练，是否影响了他后来对恩典与人性的思考，读者可自行判断；但两套体系之间的相似之处确实引人注目。

An Earlier Augustine: Defender of Free Will 早期的奥古斯丁：自由意志的捍卫者

Yet the path from Manichee to predestinarian was anything but direct. For more than a decade after his conversion in 386, Augustine wrote against predestination, specifically against the Manichaean version of it he had once embraced. The positions he is famous for today are not what he held for most of his Christian life; the picture of Augustine as a single, settled theologian belongs to his old age, not his early years. 然而，从摩尼教徒到预定论者，这条路绝非一蹴而就。归信之后的十多年间（自公元386年起），奥古斯丁一直撰文反对预定论，尤其是反对他曾一度信奉的摩尼教式的预定论。他今天广为人知的那些立场，并非他基督徒生涯大部分时间所持的观点；那位「立场始终如一」的奥古斯丁，属于他的晚年，而不是他的早期。

His major early work, On Free Choice of the Will (De libero arbitrio, c. 388–395), defended human responsibility and the will’s genuine power to choose between good and evil. Evil, he argued, does not come from God’s decree but from the misuse of a real freedom God had created. “An evil will is the cause of all evils,” he wrote, the standard Christian position of his day. Decades later, Pelagius would quote this very treatise approvingly against the older Augustine.^1b 他的重要早期著作《论自由意志》（De libero arbitrio，约公元388–395年）捍卫了人的责任，也捍卫了意志在善恶之间作出真实抉择的能力。奥古斯丁主张：恶不源自神的预旨，而源自人对神所造之真实自由的误用。他写道：「邪恶的意志是一切恶的根源」 这正是他那个时代基督徒的共识。几十年后，伯拉纠便赞同地援引这本书，用以反驳晚年的奥古斯丁。^1b

The turn came around 396, in a letter-treatise To Simplician. Asked about Romans 9, where Paul writes of God hardening Pharaoh, Augustine reversed course. Grace itself, even the first willingness to receive it, was now God’s gift, given only to those He had chosen. Over the next two decades the position hardened. By the time Pelagius confronted him in the 410s, Augustine was teaching nearly the opposite of what he had defended in his earlier work; the polemical pressure of the controversy drove him further still. 转折发生于公元396年前后，见于他的书信论稿《致辛普利西安》（Ad Simplicianum）。当被问及《罗马书》第九章，保罗谈及神使法老的心刚硬，奥古斯丁反转了立场。从此他认为：恩典本身，连同人最初愿意接受恩典的意愿，都是神的礼物，且只赐予神所拣选的人。其后二十年间，这一立场不断强化。等到410年代伯拉纠与他对峙时，奥古斯丁所教导的，几乎与他早年所捍卫的相反；而论争的压力，又把他推得更远。

Whether the later Augustine was simply working out the implications of his earlier thought, or whether his Manichaean reflexes resurfaced under the stress of debate, has been argued ever since. What is uncontested is that his mature predestinarianism was a development, a position he arrived at, not one he inherited from the church that came before him. 晚年的奥古斯丁究竟是在顺着自己早期思想推演下去，还是在辩论的压力下重拾摩尼教的旧日本能，至今争论不休。但毫无疑问的是：他成熟时期的预定论是一种发展，是他自己后来得出的立场，而非他之前的教会所传给他的。

Three Innovations 三项神学创新

Augustine’s theological novelties came down to three claims: (1) humans inherit the guilt of Adam’s sin; (2) all humans are therefore born utterly depraved, morally helpless, unable to believe or obey; and (3) God has already predestined every person to eternal life or damnation, before they were born. 奥古斯丁的神学创新可归为三点：（一）人承受亚当之罪的罪咎；（二）因此一切人生来都全然败坏，道德上无能为力，既不能信，也不能顺服；（三）神在每个人尚未出生之前，就已预定了他们或得永生，或入永刑。

These three were not, on their own, “once saved, always saved.” But together, they prepared the ground for it. If salvation is wholly God’s act upon a passive person, and if the recipient was chosen before the world began, then losing it becomes unthinkable. 这三点本身并不等于「一次得救，永远得救」。但合在一起，它们为这一教义铺平了道路。如果救恩完全是神在一个被动之人身上的作为，并且接受者在创世以前就已被拣选，那么失去救恩便成了无法想象的事。

No surviving Christian writing before Augustine teaches eternal security in the modern sense. 在奥古斯丁以前现存的基督教著作中，找不到现代意义上的「永恒得救保障」这一教导。

The Pelagian Affair 伯拉纠事件

In the early fifth century, a British monk named Pelagius, traveling on a missionary tour through Italy and the Middle East, was appalled at the spiritual laxity he found in the churches. Like nearly every Christian of his era, he believed in genuine free will and in the human capacity, by grace, to cooperate with God in living a godly life. 五世纪初，一位名叫伯拉纠的不列颠修士在意大利和中东巡回布道时，对各处教会中的属灵松懈深感震惊。如同当时几乎所有的基督徒，他相信人有真正的自由意志，相信人凭着恩典可以与神同工，过敬虔的生活。

Pelagius took issue with a line from Augustine’s Confessions, “Grant what You command, and command what You desire”², arguing that it made obedience appear to come entirely from God, leaving no genuine role for the believer. The earlier consensus of the church, Pelagius held, had assumed real human cooperation with grace. 伯拉纠对奥古斯丁《忏悔录》中的一句话提出异议，「求祢赐下祢所命令的，并命令祢所愿意的」²，他认为这句话使顺服看似完全出于神，信徒在其中没有真正的位置。伯拉纠认为，教会先前的共识是承认人能与恩典真正合作。

Augustine, for his part, was not a man easily challenged in public debate. 而奥古斯丁本人，并不是一个在公开辩论中容易被挑战的对手。

An Escalation 立场的强化

Rather than qualifying his earlier statement, Augustine sharpened it. He now argued that man contributes nothing to his own salvation: initial faith, obedience, and perseverance are all supplied by God, and only to those whom God has predestined before creation. Readers can decide for themselves how this compares with what came before. 奥古斯丁并未对自己先前的说法作出修正，反而进一步强化。他主张：人对自己的救恩毫无贡献，最初的信心、顺服、坚忍到底，都全然出于神，并且只赐给祂在创世以前所预定的人。这一立场与此前的教导有何异同，读者可自行判断。

Why the West Did Not Push Back 为何西方教会未作抵抗

Several factors made it difficult for Augustine’s newer formulations to be tested against the wider Christian tradition. Four are worth noting: 几个因素使奥古斯丁较新的论述很难被放在更广阔的基督教传统中加以衡量。其中有四点值得留意：

One: Augustine wrote in Latin, and the Greek-speaking Eastern church largely did not read him; it never adopted this theology. Two: Few Western Christians read Greek, so they had limited access to the early Christian writings. Three: The Latin Bible they did read mistranslated a single phrase in Romans 5:12, a phrase on which Augustine’s doctrine of inherited guilt would come to rest (see below).³ Four: Rome had just been sacked by Alaric in 410.⁴ With the empire under stress, a theological dispute between a bishop and a monk was, for most people, not a pressing concern. 一：奥古斯丁以拉丁文写作，而说希腊语的东方教会基本上没有读过他，也从未接受这套神学。二：西方基督徒中懂希腊语的人很少，因此他们较难接触到早期基督徒的著作。三：他们所读的拉丁文圣经，在《罗马书》5:12 中误译了一个关键短语，而奥古斯丁「原罪罪咎」的教义正是建立在这一短语之上（详见下文）。³四：公元410年，罗马刚被亚拉里克攻陷。⁴帝国正面临巨大的压力，对大多数人来说，一位主教与一位修士之间的神学之争并不是当务之急。

A Translation That Reshaped the West 一处翻译，重塑了西方

The third factor deserves a closer look. Paul’s Greek in Romans 5:12 reads naturally as: 第三点值得仔细审视。保罗在《罗马书》5:12 中的希腊原文，最自然的读法如下：

Jerome’s Latin Vulgate rendered the Greek phrase eph’ hō as in quo, “in whom.” A single word, but it changes the entire meaning. The Latin verse now reads as referring back to Adam: 耶柔米的拉丁文武加大译本，将希腊文 eph’ hō 译作 in quo，「在他里面」。仅一词之差，整节经文的意义便随之改变；拉丁译文似乎在指向亚当：

The difference is the whole argument. The Greek says death spreads to everyone because each person sins for themselves, sin is universal because human action is universal. The Latin says all sinned in Adam, so every human inherits not just Adam’s mortality, but his guilt. From this single mistranslated phrase, Augustine drew the doctrine of inherited original guilt: humanity is condemned not first for personal sin, but for being “in Adam” when he fell. The Eastern church, still reading Paul in Greek, never made this move, and to this day Eastern Orthodoxy rejects inherited guilt while accepting that we inherit a corrupted nature and mortality. 这一字之差，关乎整套论证的根基。希腊原文说，死之所以临到众人，是因为每个人都自己犯了罪，罪的普遍，是因为人的行为普遍。拉丁译文却说众人都在亚当里犯了罪，于是每个人不仅承受亚当的死，更承受他的罪咎。奥古斯丁正是从这一处误译中，推导出「原罪罪咎」的教义：人受咒诅，首先并不是因为自己所犯的罪，而是因为在亚当堕落之时，自己也「在亚当里」。东方教会一直读希腊原文，从未走上这条路；直到今日，东正教仍拒绝接受「原罪罪咎」的教义，虽然他们承认我们承受了败坏的本性与必死的命运。

Modern Romans commentators, including most Catholic and Protestant scholars, now agree the Greek eph’ hō is causal (“because,” “inasmuch as”), not relative (“in whom”).³ But by the time the West recovered the Greek text in the Renaissance, more than a thousand years of theology (original guilt, total depravity, and the predestinarian system that grew from them) had already been built on the Latin reading. 今天的《罗马书》注释家，包括大多数天主教与基督新教的学者，已普遍认同希腊文 eph’ hō 是表原因的（「因为」、「以此」），而非表关系的（「在他里面」）。³然而当文艺复兴时期西方重新接触希腊文圣经时，建立在那个误译之上的神学（原罪罪咎、全然败坏，以及由此而生的预定论体系），已经在西方教会中扎根千年之久。

The Council and the Appeal 会议与上诉

In 416 and 418 Augustine convened councils in Carthage, where the local bishops were closely aligned with him; the councils condemned Pelagius.⁵ Pelagius appealed to the pope, who read his written defense and heard him in person, and concluded that the African bishops had acted too quickly.⁶ The pope noted that the precise interaction of grace and free will lies beyond human understanding, and cautioned against turning into dogma what Scripture had not clearly revealed. 公元 416 年和 418 年，奥古斯丁在迦太基召开会议，当地的主教与他立场一致，会议定伯拉纠为异端。⁵伯拉纠上诉至教宗。教宗读了他的书面辩护，又亲自听取他的陈述，认为非洲主教行事过快。⁶教宗指出：恩典与自由意志之间精微的互动超越人的理解，他告诫不要将圣经未明白启示的事变为教条。

Augustine and his colleagues then appealed directly to the Western Roman emperor Honorius, who issued edicts against Pelagius and pressed the pope to reverse course.⁷ Pelagius was excommunicated, exiled to Egypt, and died there. 奥古斯丁与同道随后直接向西罗马皇帝霍诺留上诉。皇帝颁布敕令反对伯拉纠，并施压让教宗改变立场。⁷最终伯拉纠被逐出教会，流放至埃及，并在那里去世。

Augustine’s Own View of Assurance 奥古斯丁本人对「确据」的看法

It is worth noting that, although Augustine laid the foundations on which later eternal-security teaching would build, he himself did not teach it in the modern form. He held that no one can know in this life whether they are among the elect. 值得留意的是，虽然奥古斯丁为后来的「永恒得救保障」教义铺设了基础，他自己并未以现代的形式教导这一点。他认为：没有人能在今生确知自己是否属于被拣选者。

In his late anti-Pelagian treatises, On the Predestination of the Saints and its companion On the Gift of Perseverance, Augustine wrote that perseverance to the end is a gift of God, but “in this period of life there is always the peril of falling,” so “it is uncertain whether anyone has received this gift so long as he is still alive.”⁸ A believer of one year who dies faithful has had perseverance; a believer of many years who falls away shortly before death has not. 奥古斯丁在晚年反伯拉纠主义的论著中，《圣徒的预定》以及与之配套的《坚忍之恩》，写道：坚忍到底乃是神所赐的恩赐，但「在今生之中，跌倒的危险始终存在」，所以「只要一个人还活着，他是否已领受这一恩赐就仍是未定的」。⁸一位信主仅一年却忠心至死的人，已得着这坚忍的恩赐；而一位多年信主、却在临终前不久离弃信仰的人，则没有。

In Augustine’s own framework, then, eternal security in the modern sense was not on offer: a person could not be certain of their election until the day of their death. 因此，在奥古斯丁本人的体系中，并不存在今日所讲的「永恒得救保障」 一个人直到临终之日，都无法确知自己是否属于被拣选者。

From Augustine to Calvin to the Altar Call 从奥古斯丁到加尔文，再到决志祷告

Augustine’s view of original sin, total depravity, and grace dominated Roman Catholic theology through the entire Middle Ages and beyond. But Rome never fully embraced his predestinarianism, and since Augustine himself never taught modern eternal security, neither did the medieval church. 奥古斯丁关于原罪、全然败坏与恩典的观点，主导了罗马天主教神学贯穿整个中世纪以及之后。但罗马教会始终未完全接受他的预定论；而既然奥古斯丁本人也未教导今天意义上的「永恒得救保障」，整个中世纪教会自然也没有。

Luther, building on Augustine, retained the same caution: in his writing on David’s adultery, Luther insists that even saints can fall into manifest sin and that “faith and the Holy Ghost have departed from them.” Believers, in other words, could shipwreck their faith. 路德承接奥古斯丁，仍保有同样的警戒。在论及大卫犯奸淫一事时，路德坚称，连圣徒也可能陷入显而易见的罪中，并且「信心和圣灵已经离开他们」。换言之，信徒可能让自己的信仰沉船。

It is in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (first edition 1536; final 1559) that the modern doctrine begins to take shape.⁹ Calvin keeps Augustine’s predestination but adds what Augustine refused: confidence. There are, he says, indications in this life by which the elect can be reasonably sure they are elect. Salvation is still a story written before the foundation of the world, but now the believer can read his name in it. 现代教义真正的雏形出现在加尔文的《基督教要义》（初版1536年；最终版1559年）。⁹加尔文保留了奥古斯丁的预定论，却加上了奥古斯丁所拒绝的，确信。他认为今生有诸多迹象，可让被拣选者「相当确定」自己是被拣选的。救恩仍是一部在创世以前写就的故事，但现在信徒可以在其中读到自己的名字。

The last step came with George Whitefield and the Great Awakening of the 1700s. Whitefield was a Calvinist, but he introduced something new: the idea that becoming a Christian was a single, datable, born-again experience, not a long wrestling.¹⁰ If you had that experience at one of his revivals, you were of the elect; and if the elect could not lose their salvation, then you, having had the experience, could not lose yours either. The modern shape was set. 最后一步来自十八世纪怀特菲尔德与大觉醒运动。怀特菲尔德是加尔文主义者，但他引入了一种新观念：成为基督徒乃是一次可指明日期的、瞬间的「重生经历」 而非长期的挣扎。¹⁰倘若你在他的奋兴会上有了这样的经历，你便是被拣选的；既然被拣选者不能失去救恩，那么有过此经历的你也不能失去。现代教义的轮廓由此定型。

One footnote is worth adding here: Whitefield himself rejected easy-believism. If a person failed to live a holy life after professing conversion, he and his followers dismissed the experience as not real. The slide from Whitefield’s revival to today’s “I prayed a prayer when I was eight” is a later development still. 值得补一个脚注：怀特菲尔德本人坚决反对廉价信仰。若一个人在「归信」之后没有活出圣洁的生命，他与他的追随者就会断定那段经历是假的。从怀特菲尔德的奋兴到今天那种「我八岁那年做过一个决志祷告」式的轻描淡写，又是更晚的演变。

A Question of Continuity 连续性的问题

Beyond the specifics of predestination, the history raises a question of continuity. If “once saved, always saved” is treated as essential Christianity, it implies that the church for several centuries did not understand what the apostles had handed down, and that believers in the first three centuries, including the martyrs, would not, by today’s standards, have qualified. Each reader can decide how much weight that consideration should carry. 超出预定论的具体问题之外，这段历史引出了一个关于「连续性」的问题。若「一次得救，永远得救」被视为基督教的核心信仰，那便意味着：教会有好几个世纪都未能明白使徒所传下来的信仰；而头三个世纪的信徒，包括殉道者，按今日的标准也不合格。这一考量分量有多重，每位读者可自行衡量。

Whatever one finally concludes about predestination or perseverance, a few habits seem worthwhile: read the early church alongside the later church; weigh Augustine in the context of the centuries that preceded him; note that the Eastern church never received his synthesis; and consider what was held in common across the earliest Christian communities before drawing firm conclusions. 无论最终如何看待预定论或坚忍的问题，有几种习惯似乎值得养成：将早期教会与后期教会并置阅读；将奥古斯丁置于他之前几个世纪的脉络中加以衡量；留意东方教会从未接受他的体系；在下定论之前，先看看最早的基督徒群体之间所共同持守的是什么。

❦   ❦   ❦