Kevan:
My background is OSAS.It’s like physical birth. You cannot stop being a child of your father. If you disobey, you are chastened and trained, but the relationship is irrevocable.
To pass from death unto life. It’s an event, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in the soul, sins are forgiven, and you get a new heart.Yes, but a person with a new heart is unlikely to also be a murderer, so it’s problematical as a hypothetical question. OSAS folks like to refer to King David, who repented because he was one of God’s own.OSAS folks are very big on confession and forgiveness, but they consider that to be necessary for fellowship with the Father, just like in a human relationship. A wayward child is still a child, but he can wander out of fellowship with his father through disobedience.
There have been half a hundred threads on this topic here and the arguments against OSAS are massive. As a Protestant, I encourage Catholics to distinguish sharply between OSAS and sola fide. Many, perhaps most, evangelicals do not believe in OSAS, which shows that the doctrine is not an intrinsic part of the Protestant/evangelical/Fundamentalist view of salvation and sola fide.
Back to the original topic.
The form of OSAS that I was taught was essentially as Kevan states it. He is not describing the type of OSAS in which a person can commit horrific sins and still be saved. Kevan is saying that once a person is saved then he or she will undergo a miraculous change of the heart brought on my the holy spirit.
When I was a protestant the logic of this belief bothered me. I was told that a person who falls away from Christianity is not considered to have ever truly believed in the first place. This bothered me. Even on this board, there was a poster who stated that a person who fell away had probably only converted because his/her friends did and couldn’t have had any real faith to begin with. Yet if you talk to former Christians you will discover that many did have strong internal feelings at the time of their conversion and did try to follow God. They had that same type of salvation experience that Protestants look for. To not believe them is to sit judgment over their hearts and is something that we, as Christians, aren’t allowed to do.
Another thing that bothered me is that OSAS puts limits on God. The Holy Spirit will change me enough that I don’t want to commit big sins and fall away but I will still have the smaller sins to fight against. This made no sense to me. Why wouldn’t God simply perfect me completely when he changed my heart?
Some forms of OSAS can lead to a fanatical form of fundamentalism. This is because the only way that you can see if you are a Christian is by the way that your life changes. Therefore, members of
some congregations, look at their members outer behavior to judge if they are a Christian. Such a person is put under a lot of stress to attend church every service, follow the pastor’s interpretation of the bible, dress like everyone else and believe the same as their church members. To do otherwise is to open yourself up to doubts from your fellow church members and your own self, that your salvation wasn’t true.
Sometimes we come across these people o this board. They are the Protestants-
again not all OSAS believers are like this-who ask how Catholics can drink, dance, play cards,(insert favorite sin here) and still be Christian. They are coming from the view that a person who is really Christian will not wish to do the things that their particular church has deemed a sin. This thought process makes such people extremly judgemental and controlling, which is sad because many do have a strong desire to follow God.
and make a few comments 
Most of them actually believe the “Chick Tracts” to be the Gospel! :bigyikes:
