Apostasy

Concept

Apostasy (Greek apostasia, "a standing away from") denotes a deliberate falling away from the faith — a turning from God after having known him. In the OT, Israel's repeated abandonment of the LORD for foreign gods constitutes national apostasy, threatened with covenant curses (Deut. 28–30) and eventually fulfilled in exile. The prophets describe it in terms of marital unfaithfulness (Hos. 2; Jer. 3) and the forsaking of the fountain of living waters for broken cisterns (Jer. 2:13).

In the NT, Paul warns of a coming apostasy before the day of the Lord (2 Thess. 2:3) and describes those who have "made shipwreck of their faith" (1 Tim. 1:19). Hebrews contains the most severe warnings: those who "have tasted the heavenly gift" and then "fall away" crucify the Son of God again and cannot be restored to repentance (Heb. 6:4–6); and those who "shrink back" are distinguished from those who "have faith and preserve their souls" (Heb. 10:39). The question of whether true believers can apostatize in a final, irrecoverable sense is one of the major disputed points of NT soteriology.