Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Salvation, Part 5.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

Over the past few weeks, we've been looking at the Doctrine of Salvation from the perspectives of

Calvinism and Armenianism. And today, we want to come to some evaluation of these competing

views. It seems to me that the Armenian notion of corporate election does make good sense of many of the biblical

passages that we've surveyed, particularly Romans 9 and 10. As I've previously explained, it seems to me

that Paul's burden in Romans 9 is to emphasize

that it is up to God, whom he will save and whom he will damn, and that Paul wants to broaden

out the scope of God's salvation as wide as possible to include the Gentiles as well as the Jews.

So God has decided to save all who place their faith in Christ Jesus, regardless of their

ethnic origin. That's why in chapter 10, Paul can say, therefore, everyone who calls

upon the name of the Lord will be saved. A statement that would be impossible on a Calvinistic

interpretation, because only those who are elect and are effectually and irresistibly

called can be saved.

So the view of corporate election, I think, makes very good sense out of Romans 9 and

10, as well as the many corporate metaphors that Paul uses in his epistles, such as the

body of Christ, the church, the olive tree with branches broken off and grafted in, and so forth.

Having said that, however, I do not think that corporate election is the whole

story. I say this on the basis of passages like Acts 1348. Here, Luke is describing the response

to the Apostles preaching, preaching and he says when the gentiles heard this

they were glad and glorified the word of God and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.

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