How Is Salvation Possible | Henri Blocher

The Henry Center Archive

2015 Kantzer Lecture #6 - Possibility and Salvation In the final lecture Blocher concludes by accounting for the place of possibility in God’s response to the intrusion of evil, contending that the truth about evil can only be known through God’s response of salvation. Blocher maintains that in the biblical portrait that evil is an intruder, preceding salvation. Salvation is God’s reply and repair to the damage that has been done by evil. Blocher offers three instances of the relation between salvation and possibility. The first is the real possibility of certain occurrence of God’s working out of election in the created order. Second is a treatment of how Christ created the real possibility of certain occurrence of salvation for future believers by dying on the cross. Third is the real possibility of certain non-occurrence regarding salvation for humankind apart from grace and the real possibility with certain occurrence of their salvation by grace. In concluding his Kantzer lectures, Blocher considers the final state in which there is no real possibility for evil, for the alien intruder will no longer have a place. God’s victory over evil shall be total and definitive—if we cannot answer whence and why, we have this sure hope: God will be all in all. Henri A. G. Blocher (DD Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) is Professor Emeritus at Faculte Libre de Theologie Evangelique. He is author of In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis (IVP Academic, 1984) and Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle (IVP Academic, 2000). Blocher was a member of the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelization (1975-1980), served the World Evangelical Fellowship/Alliance in a number of capacities, and taught in schools in Europe, Australia, Africa, Canada, and the US.

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