Objection 19

From Sovereign Grace and the Scope of Election: A Comparative Examination of Attainment Theology and Grace Theology, with Particular Attention to the Question of Whether God's Elect Are Found Among All Nations and Religions

2 Peter 2:20-22, the washed sow returns to the mire.

Peter chooses his animals with precision: a dog and a sow. Washing a sow changes its cleanliness, not its nature; it returns to mire because it is still a sow. The regenerate are given a new nature (2 Peter 1:4, "partakers of the divine nature"), sheep may fall in the mud, but they do not love it or live in it. The false teachers of 2 Peter 2 escaped the world's pollutions through knowledge, outward reformation through doctrine, and their return exposes what they always were, exactly as 1 John 2:19 states the rule: "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us."