Chosen For Life - Chapter 6 - Amazing Grace

In Sam Storms excellent and thorough book on divine election he devotes a chapter to discussing grace. Storms believes that anything less than the doctrine of unconditional election as espoused in Calvinism seriously compromises God's grace (Chosen For Life, 77).

Early on in Chapter 6 Storms discusses God's goodness which he defines as "the inclination and resolve of his nature to promote the welfare and happiness of his creatures." (Chosen For Life,78) He then considers a few general attributes that pertain to goodness: longsuffering, the delay of penal judgment; mercy, the restoration of the wretched; and grace, the goodness of God manifested toward the guilty and undeserving (Chosen For Life, 78).

Following his elucidating of goodness, Storms proceeds to list and explain 10 characteristics of grace:

1. grace presupposes sin and guilt
2. grace contemplates sinners as ill-deserving not merely undeserving
3. grace is not dependent on the merit or the demerit of its objects
4. grace cannot incur a debt and is thus uncompensated
5. grace stands opposed to works in justification but is the source of works in sanctification
6. grace that saves is eternal but is manifested in the historical appearance of Christ
7. grace is free
8. grace is sovereign; God is gracious in His being but need not be gracious to anyone
9. grace is the foundation or the means of our election
10. grace is unconditional in election but conditional in many of God's acts and blessings

(Chosen For Life, 79-81)

The sixth chapter of Chosen For Life, entitled Amazing Grace, is a clearly written and compelling explanation of grace and how it works in and through the doctrine of unconditional election. This chapter alone makes the book's purchase well worthwhile.

Sam Storms' problems with the Arminian view of election

In Chapter Two of his book Chosen For Life, Storms addresses the Arminian view of election by describing, in a fair manner, their view on election followed by some problems he has with it.




He briefly list 5 potential problems:

1. If one denies prevenient grace, as some Arminians do, it means that fallen humans are both willing and able to believe in Christ apart from regenerating grace
2. Prevenient grace is not found in Scripture
3. The Arminian view, in Storms' opinion, gives man something to boast about
4. The view in discussion suspends God's work on man's will
5. Claiming God's election is based on His foreknowledge proves nothing since God foreknows all things; there remains to be seen how man comes to put his faith in God

Storms also produces what I believe to be an excellent question for the Arminian:
"The question, then, is this: If God truly desires for all to be saved in the way the Arminian contends, and if he knows what it is in the means of persuasion contained in the gospel that brings people to say yes, why doesn't he orchestrate the presentation of the gospel in such a way that it will succeed in persuading all people to believe? The point is this: Surely the God who perfectly knows every human heart is capable of creating a world in which the gospel would prove successful in every case. And if God desires for all to be saved in the way the Arminian contends, why didn't He bring every one of them to salvation?"(Chosen For Life, 31)