Can a Chrisitan lose his/her salvation?

[Huggy Bear]

The doctrine of "eternal security" is the question at hand here.  Like the Rapture, this idea is completely new on the Christian radar screen, having descended out of John Calvin's idea of "double predestination".  Whereas Calvin taught that some (infants included) were predestined for Heaven ("the Elect") he also taught that some (infants included) where predestined for Hell ("the reprobate").  Eternal security retains some of Calvin's ideas, in that the doctrine states, "Once saved, always saved", that upon praying the "Jesus, please forgive me..." prayer a believer is, hence-after, eternally secure and can never forfeit his/her salvation.  Many, of course, will claim that apostates (such as me) were never truly saved to begin with...

Contrast this with Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Coptic Christianity and the Protestant Armenian school of thought that says that a person can sin to the point that he/she forfeits eternal life.

This thread is principally for believers only, but as one of the resident apostate atheists here, I shall be defending the traditional position that one, can, indeed, forfeit eternal life, even though I do not believe in any such notion of the survival of one's consciousness after the death of one's brain.

The simple answer to your question of "Can a Chrisitan lose his/her salvation?" is both yes and no.