road signs on this way of salvation should be only: “tension!” and “existential seriousness of decision!” Here, then, is the heart of the perseverance problem. This doctrine appeared too static, too bourgeois, too unexistential, too foreign to the real life of faith that must again and again make new decisions. And we can pose this problem in the sharpest way by asking whether the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints does not really disregard all the earnest admonitions of the Holy Scriptures,