This post is part of my series Blogging Calvinism in which I blog my thoughts and reaction to Chosen for Life: The Case for Divine Election by Sam Storms.

I have finally finished working through Storms’ book on Calvinism. The last few chapters and the appendices basically just wrap everything up so I’ve decided not to blog on them each individually but I will discuss a few things from those chapters in this concluding post.

First, here are the remaining chapters in the book:

• 12. The Order of Salvation
• 13. Crucial Questions Concerning Election: Hyper-Calvinism and the Nature of God
• 14. Crucial Questions Concerning Election: Love, Preaching, and Prayer
• 15. A Defense of a Defense of Divine Election
• Conclusion
• Appendix A: Three Problem Passages (1 Timothy 2:3-4; 2 Peter 3:9; John 3:16)
• Appendix B: Who Can and Who Cannot Pray for God to Save the Lost? (Mostly a response to open theism)
• Appendix C: The Divine Decrees

This book has been a good read. On the whole Storms has been very helpful in my thinking about Calvinism. There is not much (well, any) new material here but Storms does a good job of putting pieces together and presenting Calvinism as a unified whole. There are places where Storms should have done a little more work or clarified things a bit and some places where I felt he did not really address the issues he raised so I’m left with about as many questions as I started with.

To wrap things up I want to bring up a few odds and ends from the chapters I have not covered. This will not be comprehensive, not even close. The concluding chapters are helpful but one, I’m ready to be done with this series and two, though helpful the chapters don’t add much new material to a consideration of Calvinism itself. Storms clarifies a few things, responds to some specific objections, and hits on a few theological matters that are related to Calvinism.

In his first chapter on crucial questions Storms deals some with the nature of God. The questions are how can God be just, impartial, and loving if salvation is a matter of divine, sovereign election? For all of these the basic response is to remind the reader that none of us deserves salvation, all of us deserve only Hell. That God saves anyone at all is a miracle, no one can accuse God of injustice if what they get from God is what they deserve. No one has any grounds to complain when God shows mercy to someone who deserves only wrath. Modern notions of what it means to be fair do not apply to a sovereign God. God is truly impartial, his mercy is shown on the basis of his will alone and not on the basis of any human merit. Race, gender, socioeconomic status, political influence, physical power – none of these influence God’s choice of who he will save. We can say that God is partial toward the elect, but he is not partial in how he chooses the elect.

All of this gets rehashed in his chapter A Defense of a Defense of Divine Election. In that chapter he raises one other issue that has been a biggie for me – “why didn’t God choose all?” (183) There are a few possible responses but here again is a place where Storms does a good job of putting together and presenting arguments I had picked up from other places but had not yet seen in a more organized fashion.

The basic question starts with the recognition that if Calvinism be true then God could have chosen to save every person. He could have elected every individual and then we would live in a world where all people are saved. If he could have saved every individual, why didn’t he? This becomes particularly confusing in light of texts that speak of God’s love for the world (a brief aside – I disagree slightly with Storms’ treatment of John 3:16; he is right that we often emphasize the wrong thing. The point of John 3:16 is not so much God’s love for lots of people but his love for sinful people. Nonetheless, we have to reckon with the fact that John 3:16 does refer to his love for the world.) and his desire for all people to be saved. I am on Piper’s side here (and Storms is as well) that this is understood when we recognize that there are two wills in God. God does desire the salvation of all but there is something he desires even more. As I have said again and again, both Calvinists and non-Calvinists must agree on this point. Even the non-Calvinist has this dilemma – why does God not enforce what he desires in salvation? It is because he desires something even more than that we be saved. Storms and Piper argues that God is most greatly motivated by a desire to proclaim his glory. Not all people are saved because God wants all of his character and attributes to be on display. The only way to show mercy is to have someone that deserves only wrath. The only way to show just wrath and judgment is to have sinners who die in their sin.

This does not take away from human responsibility. That which leads a person to Hell comes from the person himself. We commit our own sins, we carry out our own rebellion. God is not unjust to inflict on us that which we bring on ourselves.

Here I must admit that I am still wrestling with this some. Storms does not adequately deal with the question of how humans are still responsible for sin when that sin is the will of God. This next might sound shocking, though by now it shouldn’t be surprising to any reader: I do believe there are places in the Bible that makes it clear that God has ordained some sins. The clearest example is found in Jesus himself, everything that took place in his betrayal and crucifixion was done in fulfillment of Scripture. It was done according to the will of God. How can we reconcile God’s will and human responsibility? God is not the author of sin, we say, and yet God does ordain sin. And yet humans are responsible for their sins. How this works is as yet a mystery to me.

Storms’ chapter on praying for the lost is quite good. As I mentioned before it is primarily a response to open theism and those who believe in libertarian free will. Libertarian free will is basically defined as “an agent is free with respect to a given action at a given time if at that time it is within the agent’s power to perform the action and also in the agent’s power to refrain from the action.” (204, Storms quoting William Hasker) Those who believe God gives individuals this kind of freedom would have a hard time praying for the salvation of anyone. How would God answer such a prayer? When we pray for someone’s salvation are we simply asking for God to try even harder to talk the person into being saved? That is the most God could do if libertarian free will is true.

One might ask how the Calvinist could pray. Storms deals with this in his chapter on crucial questions. Essentially, we pray because God has told us to pray and we pray because God works through our prayers. God has chosen to use humans as his instruments to bring salvation to people and prayer is one of the things we must do as we work to bring salvation to others. Prayer does not influence God to act one way or another but prayer is an obedient act God uses to bring about his will.

There is plenty more in these chapters and plenty more in this book that I have not touched on. It has been a good read and I recommend it to anyone wanting to dig into Calvinism. I plan to continue my thinking about this, though it is time to approach the subject from the other side. I have Norman Geisler’s Chosen But Free and Roger Olson’s Arminian Theology. Someday I will read Geisler’s book but for now I will read Olson’s. I’ve seen favorable reviews on it from several sources and one of my non-Calvinist seminary professors has a recommendation on the back cover. I don’t plan to work through it as I did Storms’ book but I am sure reading it will inspire a few blog posts.