If grace is resistible and election is conditional, as Arminians claim, then there remains no basis for positing perseverance of the saints.
Calvinists can claim perseverance because it logically proceeds from unconditional election and irresistible grace. An apparent apostate would, in fact, be one who wasn't actually elect and therefore never saved in the first place. Though an Arminian would rightly oppose the Calvinist position on the matter, some Arminians claim something theologically similar to perseverance but founded, it seems to me, upon regeneration rather than election and irresistible grace.
To maintain such a view, a "once saved, always saved" Arminian has to posit a transition in God's governance of the believer along the lines that God initiated salvation according to Arminian principles (freedom and grace), but after rebirth continued salvation according to Calvinistic principles (determinism). Though a biblical mechanism for such a shift could be postulated on the basis of texts like Philippians 1:6, or John 6:39, there is no way to harmonize such a conception with the book of Hebrews or other passages warning that all is lost if one ceases to persevere in faith.
From God's perspective (either looking back from the end or seeing all at once), there is no issue. Of everyone who is finally and eternally saved it will be the case that they will have made it because of God's efforts to preserve them. For everyone who made a turn toward God, or even came to know him intimately, but ceased to believe in Christ and repudiated him, it will be the case that they fell irretrievably because of their own freedom to believe or not believe. If Adam was free and could fall from a state of perfection in relationship with God, anyone can fall from a similar state.
From God's perspective (either looking back from the end or seeing all at once), there is no issue. Of everyone who is finally and eternally saved it will be the case that they will have made it because of God's efforts to preserve them. For everyone who made a turn toward God, or even came to know him intimately, but ceased to believe in Christ and repudiated him, it will be the case that they fell irretrievably because of their own freedom to believe or not believe. If Adam was free and could fall from a state of perfection in relationship with God, anyone can fall from a similar state.
That God loses none of those he foreknew does not mean he will not lose some of those he knew along the way.
If it is intrinsic to God's will that mankind be free (as any Arminian would attest), then on what basis would a shift to Calvinistic precepts for the saved be justified? It seems to me, any such basis would have to be established by ignoring some scripture on its face in order to emphasize other passages of scripture. What would drive that? Emotion? Comfort? Make no mistake, any such effort thoroughly undermines the Arminian conceptions of soteriology in the first place. If one knows that God's grace is resistible, then one cannot posit a perseverance that isn't.
If it is intrinsic to God's will that mankind be free (as any Arminian would attest), then on what basis would a shift to Calvinistic precepts for the saved be justified? It seems to me, any such basis would have to be established by ignoring some scripture on its face in order to emphasize other passages of scripture. What would drive that? Emotion? Comfort? Make no mistake, any such effort thoroughly undermines the Arminian conceptions of soteriology in the first place. If one knows that God's grace is resistible, then one cannot posit a perseverance that isn't.
