Theological Outlines • by • Francis J. Hall

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August 13, 2005

Ch. XV. Q. 93. Preparation for Salvation

MAN WAS not abandoned by God after his fall, but was assured that deliverance frum Satan should be achieved in due season by the seed of Eve. In preparation for redemption a series of dispensations or covenants was granted by God.1

2. The coming of the redeemer was delayed, apparently in order that mankind might be prepared both mentally and morally to apprehend and accept the Gospel of salvation.2 Because the fall was moral it could be remedied only in a moral way, and on the basis of men's persuasion and willingness to believe and to repent. The need of prevenient grace to enable men to turn to God does not alter the necessity of his voluntary response to grace, but long preparation was required before the Gospel could appeal to him.

3. The method of election was adopted in preparing mankind for salvation, a chosen race being gradually isolated and educated with long-suffering patience to become the immediate recipients of the covenant of salvation through Christ3 and its propagandists to the rest of the race.4

4. The chosen people were prepared both mentally and morally. The mental preparation was through (a) prefigurative ceremonial requirements of the Old Covenant;5 (b) prophecies wherein the nature of what was to come was proclaimed with increasing definiteness;6 (c) The very history of the Israelites and of their leaders was so overruled, and so recorded in sacred writings, as to afford a succession of prophetic types and object lessons concerning the messianic kingdom.7 This mental preparation was reënforced by moral factors: (a) The moral law, which, because they could not fulfil it, convicted the Israelites of ingrained siufulness;8 (b) divine judgments and national failures, which developed the sense of need of a superhuman Deliverer.9

5. All dispensations previous to the coming of Christ were prefigurative, promissory and provisional. Their rites could not effect what they figured, but pledged the benefits of redemption to those who worthily used them.10

6. In the meantime the Gentiles were not forgotten, for God was overruling all human history with reference to His redemptive purpose,11 and His spirit was acting in unseen ways to reduce the effects of evil and to develop important elements of religious truth outside the pale of supernaturally revealed religion.12 In particular: (a) The failure of successive world-empires was teaching the futility of those principles of life by which they were controlled; (b) Forms of thought and language were developed, notably among the Greeks, which were to make possible an intelligible promulgation and accurate and permanent definitions of the truths of the Gospel; (c) Under the Roman pax, conditions had developed which at the right moment brought the ends of the Mediterranean world together, facilitated travel, and made possible an effective initiation of the great work of world-evangelization.

Posted by AKMA at August 13, 2005 11:45 AM

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