PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Plan of Salvation
B. B. Warfield, 1851–1921 · 33,235 words · 41 reading sections
THE DIFFERING CONCEPTIONS
Ze PLAN OF SALVATION _ BENJAMIN B.WARFIELD - LJ \ M Biblical Theological Seminary Library у THE PLAN OF SALVATION Biblical Theological Seminary Library 200 NORTH MAIN ST. HATFIELD, PA 19440 7341 [JE Vf jr Li Al BHR PLAN OF SALVATION FIVE LECTURES Delivered at The Princeton Summer School of Theology June…
688 wordsSECTION 2THE PLAN OF SALVATION
What the actual Deist stands for is law. He con- ceives that God commits his universe, not to unfore- seen and unprepared caprice, but to law; law which God has impressed on his universe and to the guid- ance of which he can safely leave his universe. That is to say, even the Deist conceives God to have a plan; a plan …
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is native to man himself. But Pelagianism is not merely a matter of history, nor does it always exist in its purity. As the poor in earthly goods are always with us, so the poor in spiritual things are also always with us. It may indeed be thought that there never was a period in the history of the Church in which natu…
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ever this indispensability is made absolute. Thus what are called the Means of Grace are given the “necessity of means," and are made in the strict sense not merely the sine quibus non, but the actual quibus of salvation. Over against this whole view evangelicalism, seeking to conserve what it conceives to be only con…
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gelicalism takes by a clear line of demarkation. Such a principle, however, seems to be provided by the opposition between what we may call the Universal- istic and the Particularistic conceptions of the plan of salvation. All evangelicals agree that all the power exerted in saving the soul is from God, and that this s…
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tion of men; and those who wish to discriminate among God’s operations in this matter and to assign only to some of them a particularistic while they assign to others a universalistic reference. The latter view is, of course, an attempt to mediate between the par- ticularistic and the universalistic conceptions, pre- s…
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indeed’ upon the terms of the plan of salvation itself, upon which they are all at one, but in the region of the presuppositions of that plan; and for the sake of com- pleteness of enumeration it is desirable that this difference, too, should be adverted to here. It does not concern what God has done in the course of h…
832 wordsSECTION 8-109 MA
attempt to push particularism out of the sphere of the plan of salvation, where the issue is diverse (because confessedly only some men are saved), into the sphere of creation or of the fall, where the issue is common (for all men are created and all men are fallen), fails of the very necessity of the case. Particulari…
902 wordsSECTION 9AUTOSOTERISM
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The Pelagian scheme therefore embraces the follow- ing points. God has endowed man with an inalienable freedom of will, by virtue of which he is fully able to do all that can be required of him. To this great gift God has added the gifts of the law and the gospel to illuminate the way of righteousness and to persuade m…
826 wordsSECTION 11AUTOSOTERISM
The gravitation of this Synergistic system is ob- viously downward, and therefore we cannot be surprised to learn that it easily fell away into that express Semi-pelagianism which, despite its official condemnation by the Church, seems to have formed the practical faith of most men throughout the Middle Ages, and in wh…
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It was not long, however, before, even in these ` circles of realized Augustinianism, in which the as- cription of salvation to God alone was something like a passion, the old leaven of self-salvation began to work again.^ It was in no less a person than Philip Melanchthon that this new “falling from grace" en- tered i…
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matter is enunciated in the words: “‘All men are, so far as concerns God, written in the Book of Life (benev- olentia universalis); but who of them all stays written in it, is finally determined only at the end of the day.” The result cannot be known beforehand, even by God.” It is not enough that redemption should eng…
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should not be there. There is, for example, the whole sphere of the accidental. If we cooperate with others in dangerous employments, or, say, go out seeking pleasure with a shooting party, we may be killed by an unskillful act of a fellow workman or by the random shot of a careless marksman. God is helpless in the mat…
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tion, "or rather no solution, of the weak, *It must be possible for us to become better, even if that which we are able to do should be of itself insufficient, and all that we could do was to make ourselves receptive for a higher assistance of an inscrutable kind." ^ Beyond a similar appeal to an inscrutable mystical p…
847 wordsSECTION 16III SACERDOTALISM
which is intended to be emphasized. But do we not shoot beyond the mark when we seem to hang sal- vation purely on the human will? And should we not stop to consider that, if so we seem to open salva- tion to “whosoever will" on the one hand, on the other we open it only to “whosoever will"? And who, in this world of d…
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It is the consentient testimony of the universal Church that salvation is from God, and from God alone. The tendency constantly showing itself in all branches of the Church alike to conceive of salvation as, in one way or another, to a greater or less degree, from man, is thus branded by the entire Church in its offici…
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him on earth in the exercise of the priestly office. It represents him so completely in the priestly function of mediation between God and man, that even as there is none other name given among men than that of Jesus, whereby we must be saved, so there is no covenanted salvation outside the visible organization of whic…
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second causes. God’s antecedent conditional will that all should be saved, that is, on the condition of their receiving grace through the sacraments dis- tributed under the government of second causes, is supplanted by a consequent absolute will of salvation, therefore, only in the case of those who, he foresees, will,…
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labors of his ministers, the infants should be brought to the grace of baptism. As in the natural order, so also in the supernatural order of sanctification and eternal salvation, God wills to provide for infants through other human beings, and in accordance with the demands of the general laws of divine providence. “…
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If we ask therefore why, on this scheme, one man is saved rather than another, we must answer, Because the sacraments come to one and not to the other. If we ask why the sacraments come to one rather than to another, we must answer, Because the general order of providence, wisely and justly instituted for the governmen…
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the Atonement sufficient grace is given to every soul for its salvation; but grace, though sufficient, if neglected, becomes of no avail" (p. 82)." “Тһе In- carnation and the Atonement affected humanity as a race only.” Some means, therefore, was needed to transmit the priceless gifts which flowed from them to the indi…
848 wordsSECTION 23UNIV ERSALISM
There are three aspects of the working of the sacerdotal system which must be kept clearly in view, if we wish to appraise with any accuracy the injury to the religious interest which it inevitably works. These have been more or less expressly alluded to already, but it seems desirable to call particular attention to t…
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Who loved me, and gave himself up for me.—Gal, 2 : 20. IV UNIVERSALISM The evangelical note is formally sounded by the entirety of organized Protestantism. That is to say, all the great Protestant bodies, in their formal official confessions, agree in confessing the utter dependence of sinful man upon the grace of Go…
761 wordsSECTION 25UNIVERSALISM
The most recent and perhaps the most instructive instances of this tendency are provided by two divines of the Church of Scotland of our own day, Dr. William Hastie, late Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow and Dr. William P. Paterson, now holding the Chair of Divinity, the Chair of Chalmers and Flint, i…
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Paterson’s reasoning. If the case were really as he represents it and men in their mere misery, appealing solely to God’s pity, lay before the divine mind, it would be inexplicable that he did not save all. The physician who, having the power to treat and cure all his patients, arbitrarily discriminates between them an…
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recognizes, lies at its center; and thus he gives us a definition of evangelicalism from the Wesleyan stand- point. It proves to be just that all the saving process is from God, and that all the power exerted in saving the soul is God’s. It may please us in passing to ask whether this evangelicalism is really separable…
823 wordsSECTION 28UNIVERSALISM
We may more than question therefore whether the cherished evangelicalism of the Arminian and Lutheran constructions is not more theoretical than practical; though meanwhile we must recognize that they at least postulate the evangelical principle in theory. It is, however, the universalistic note which is the character…
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leveling politics of the day. Shall we not fix it once for all in our minds that salvation is the right of no man; that a “chance” to save himself is no “chance” of salvation for any; and that, if any of the sinful race of man is saved, it must be by a miracle of al- mighty grace, on which he has no claim, and, contem-…
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true universalism of grace. There is confessedly no direct Biblical support for the doctrine: it is simply a postulate of the universalism of God’s will of sal- vation in connection with the confinement of grace to the means of grace. The Scriptures teach that no man can be saved without a knowledge of Jesus Christ in …
813 wordsSECTION 31CALVINISM
The antipathy which is widely felt to the funda- mental evangelical postulate which brings the soul into immediate contact with God and suspends all its health on the immediate operations of God, finds an odd illustration in Albrecht Ritschl’s teaching that the direct object even of justification is not the in- dividua…
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Others, recognizing that election has to do specifi- cally with salvation, (that is to say, that it is the logical prius, not of creation or of the providential government of the world, but of the salvation of sin- ful man,) conceive that the principle of particularism, in the sense of discrimination, belongs in the sp…
785 wordsSECTION 33CALVINISM
party has always existed even among Calvinists which has had so large an interest in the autonomy of the human will, that it has been unwilling to conceive of it as “passive” with respect to that operation of God which we call regeneration, and has earnestly wished to look upon the reception of salvation as in a true s…
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place accorded by each in its construction to the principle of particularism and the emphasis placed on it. Particularism, however, though the distin- guishing mark of Calvinism, by which it may be identified as over against the other conceptions of the plan of salvation, in comparison with which we have brought it, do…
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We are now fairly on the basis of the Governmental Theory of the Atonement; and this is in very truth the highest form of doctrine of atonement to which we can on these premises attain. In other words, all the substance of the atonement is evaporated, that, it may be given a universal reference. And, indeed, we may at …
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vation only for and to men in the mass: Whether in dealing with the individual souls of men, he visits with his saving grace few or many, so many that in our imagination they may readily pass into all, does not lie in the question. So far as the principles of sovereignty and particularism are concerned, there is no rea…
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which is significally termed a universe. Of course the plan of salvation as it lies in the divine mind cannot be supposed to.be concerned, therefore, alone with individuals as such: it of necessity has its re- lations with the greater unities into which these in- dividuals enter as elements. We have only partially unde…
840 wordsSECTION 38NOTES
of the world’s salvation through numerous generations involves, of course, the loss of many souls in the course of the long process through which the world advances to its salvation. And therefore the Biblical doctrine of the salvation of the world is not “universalism” in the common sense of that term. It does not mea…
889 wordsSECTION 39EDO BD 2560:
*Not that the autosoteric idea ever really satisfied the religious heart. Cf. Т. К. Glover, “Conflict of Religions, etc.” p. 67: “That salvation was not from within was the testi- mony of every man who underwent the taurobolium. So far as such things can be, it is established by the witness of every religious mind that…
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" George Tyrrell, who had had his own experiences, ex- claims: “Peace is more necessary even that Sacraments, which men can give and take away at pleasure, and use as a whip." ("Life," by Miss Petre, ii, p. 305). Мо words could better show Tyrrell's emancipation. 6 “An answer to my Lord of Winchester's Book," 1547, in…
848 wordsSECTION 41DEMCU
5 “The Homilectical Review," Feb., 1910, vol. lix, no. 2, p. 101. ® Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift, 1900, xi, p. 500. ® p. 601. ? Schmid, p. 421. ™ As cited, p. 601. 7* “System of Christian Doctrine," 1903, p. 417. ЗН. Е. Henderson, “Тһе Religious Controversies of Scotland," 1905, p. 187. ™ H. F. Henderson, as cite…
599 wordsSource & rights
Public-domain historical work by B. B. Warfield, 1851–1921. OCR from an original historical scan hosted by Internet Archive; OCR may contain recognition errors.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.