The Fallacy of Syllogistic Assurance

Over the last few days I have been reading the manuscript of John MacArthur’s sermon Reasons People Lack Assurance and a book titled In the Land of Believers by Gina Welch. The latter requires an introduction: The subtitle of the book, An Outsider’s Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church, describes it well. Gina Welch, an atheist and liberal, in an effort to challenge her own stereotypes of evangelicals and write a bestseller in the process, decided to attend Thomas Road Baptist Church (pastored by Jerry Falwell until his death in 2007), fake a conversion, get baptized, and become a member of the church–all undercover. Once inside, Welch integrated herself into the community and sought to learn as much as she could about evangelical Christians, the result of which became the material for her book.

Surprisingly enough, I found a connection between MacArthur’s sermon and Welch’s book. Both discuss the idea of syllogistic assurance of salvation (though only MacArthur’s sermon identifies it as such). By taking both MacArthur’s and Welch’s very different perspectives on the matter, and placing them side by side, we can begin to understand why syllogistic assurance is theologically unsound and how it is hurting the church.

What is a syllogism?

Syllogism is defined by Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary as “a deductive scheme of a formal argument consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion.” If you’ve ever taken a standardized test than you may have encountered syllogisms before. Here’s a visual example of a syllogism I made up:

Basically, a syllogism takes two related facts and draws a conclusion from them. In the case of salvation, the major premise of syllogistic assurance says, “In order to be saved you have to pray the sinner’s prayer.” The minor premise says, “I have prayed the sinner’s prayer.” The conclusion from these two facts is, “Therefore, I am saved.” Of course syllogisms are not always correct…

Why is syllogistic assurance theologically unsound?

The “syllogism of salvation,” as I have dubbed it, is widely used in modern evangelism. Many Christians believe that if someone prays the sinner’s prayer they will be saved, no ifs ands or buts. Unfortunately, this is faulty reasoning based on a misinterpretation of Scripture and has absolutely no basis in reality. To understand this more thoroughly, let’s take a look at some of the key verses in the Bible which discuss salvation.

But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God… {John 1:12}

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. {John 3:16}

…by Him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses. {Acts 13:39}

…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. {Romans 10:9}

In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit… {Ephesians 1:13}

If you examine each of these verses closely, you will notice a common theme: Not one of them mentions prayer, but all of them contain the word “believe.” They do not say, “who prayed in His name,” or “whoever prays to Him,” or “who prays is freed,” or “pray in your heart.” They all say, “who believed in His name,” “whoever believes in Him,” “everyone who believes is freed,” “believe in your heart,” and “believed in Him.”

Obviously prayer is an integral part of salvation. If you come to believe in Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, you’ll want to pray and tell Him so, open up that first line of communication with God. But prayer alone will not save you. You can pray the sinner’s prayer a thousand times and still not mean it in your heart. You can pray in Jesus’ name and still not believe it holds any power. You can pray and pray and pray, but prayer alone doesn’t save anybody–faith does. Believing does. Knowing in the very marrow of your bones that Christ died and rose again and sits at the right hand of the Father–that is what saves. Thus, the simplistic syllogism of salvation is proved a fallacy.

How is this false doctrine hurting the church?

You may be thinking, “Evangelicals don’t believe that all you have to do to be saved is pray a prayer, whether you mean it or not. They do believe it is necessary to sincerely believe the gospel.” You’re right. Mainstream Evangelicalism believes that you need both prayer and belief in order to be saved. But we often fail to preach what we believe. This is attested to in Gina Welch’s book, In the Land of Believers, in which she recounts her experiences in Alaska, where a small group from Thomas Road Baptist Church traveled on a mission trip intended to “save one hundred souls.”

Welch documents how the band of evangelical missionaries counted the number of souls they led to Christ in this excerpt:

…he [the pastor of their group] invited those who hadn’t yet recieved Jesus as their personal savior to repeat the sinner’s prayer in their minds as Ray said it. ‘Heavenly father, we love you. Thank you for loving us…’ One woman said the prayer aloud. Later, Ray told us that when he asked those who had prayed the prayer to lift their hands he had counted twenty-three. {In the Land of Believers p. 222}

This kind of evangelism is deceptive for two reasons. First, it sends a message to those being witnessed to that by simply praying this prayer, they will be saved. There is no mention of the indisputably vital element of believing that Jesus is the Son of God, died on the cross, and rose again as the ultimate covering for our sins. The emphasis is instead put on praying some magical prayer that will automatically transport your soul into the realm of the saved. John MacArthur addresses the absurdity of this logic in his sermon on assurance of salvation:

Some lack assurance because they don’t know the exact time of their salvation… They can’t remember when they believed. They can’t remember the moment of their salvation. And because they don’t remember when it was, they don’t know whether it was. Which is like saying, because I can’t remember my birthday, I’m not sure I’m alive. I see. Or because I can’t remember when my plane landed, I don’t know if I’m here. We have made such a fetish out of decisionism, we have so isolated and identified this little formula and this little prayer that you pray at some point as being the moment of salvation that if you don’t have that little moment that you signed a card or raised your hand or walked an aisle or prayed your prayer or did your little formula thing, you can’t identify when it happened, so maybe it never happened. {Reasons People Lack Assurance, Part 2}

The second reason this kind of evangelism is deceptive is because it inflates the number of people who have been saved. Let me just say that I don’t agree with “counting souls” at all, but many Evangelical churches do keep track of the number of people saved on missions trips and such. I won’t get into why I disagree with this practice, but I would like to address how it becomes dishonest when combined with syllogistic evangelism.

When people pray the sinner’s prayer, they can mean it with all their heart, or they can just say it because they have been lead to think it will gain them an easy pass into heaven. It is truly impossible to accurately determine how many people have truly been saved unless you follow up with them. Just “counting hands” and leaving it at that, as exhibited in Welch’s book, is a thoroughly unreliable way to accurately determine how many people have gained everlasting salvation. This inaccuracy discredits the church and makes it practically fraudulent. Welch demonstrates this in a later chapter:

Several months later, back on my crepe myrtle-sheltered front porch in Virginia, on the phone with my mother in California, I told her about how we’d gone about keeping track of the people we saved in Alaska. She asked me the question my stepfather had asked her. How can you know if you’ve saved someone if there’s never a progress report? How can you be sure the person hasn’t instantly reverted to his old ways? In other words, aren’t you simply counting the people who prayed the prayer in that instant rather than counting new Christians?

‘Well,’ I replied, ‘if you’re a Christian
you believe all it takes is that instant, as long as you’re sincere. Once you’ve prayed the sinner’s prayer, you’re good to go. God is supposed to abide in you and guide you, but really your ‘ways’ don’t matter. Your name is written forever in the Lamb’s Book of Life.’

The noise on the phone was like the bristled air on a tape recording of silence. ‘Uh-huh,’ she said.

I knew what was behind that dismissal: to her, it seemed evident that Evangelicals were padding their rosters. {In the Land of Believers p. 254}

I think that Evangelicals need to more carefully consider how we communicate the gospel message. While we don’t ever want to falsely portray it as legalistic or difficult, we should equally avoid promoting it as a simple little prayer you pray that has little or no impact on your life. We should discontinue the “pray and be saved” rhetoric, exchanging it for the truth–believe and be saved.