The Plan of Salvation
As finals approach for Seminary I’ve been brushing up & re-reading some books that we’ll be discussing or that I have to make presentations on. One such book is B.B. Warfield’s The Plan of Salvation. In it Warfield lays out (you guessed it) God’s plan for the salvation of Man. The opening chapter, which was the introduction to a series of lectures Warfield gave which became the book lays down the paths towards salvation.
He begins by examining Deism and Theism. Often time Deists will appeal to a perceived freedom from God (who no longer has any direct involvement in the world which He created). Warfield shows these people to be slaves to law through an Ackbar-esque proclamation that Deism is a trap. If we are bound by the laws that God put in place at creation with no hope of divine intervention, there is no hope, or no plan for salvation. Things simply move on. Warfield dismisses this view as dumb and moves onto theism, skilfully halving the views of theists on salvation as he goes along.
There are fundamentally only two doctrines of salvation: that salvation is from God, and that salvation is from ourselves.
Can’t wait to wade further in through the rest of the week!
