The story of humanity is one of rebellion, sin and of increasing alienation from God. The purpose of life is fellowship with God, gazing on His insurpassable beauty and dwelling in his presence, which is life. But humanity, wanting to establish its own righteousness suppresses the truth about God to varying degrees by inventing its own ways of complete or partial self-salvation. In this book, Warfield describes these various errors in detail and then ends by pointing to God's plan of salvation and what He has done to accomplish it

Dr. Michael J. Kruger wrote the following of this little book....

The critical question that every Christian must be able to answer is "How are people saved?" In the seminary context, the doctrine of salvation (soteriology) is a central feature in the curriculum. Preachers can't preach a message of salvation if they don't understand it themselves.

Of course, as an institution that bases its theology on the Reformation...is committed to the doctrines of grace-the idea that people are sinners who cannot save themselves but desperately need God to save them. On a popular level, this is simply known as Calvinism.

But, of course, not all Christians agree with this Reformed perspective. Throughout the history of the church, there are have been many different perspectives on how a person is saved. So, what is the best way to help Christians understand these various approaches? And what is the most effective way to make the case for Calvinism?

There are many answers to these questions, but there is one resource that I have found tremendously helpful. And it is a resource that is often overlooked and forgotten. And that resource is the five lectures delivered by B.B. Warfield in 1914 at Princeton Theological Seminary.

What makes Warfield's approach so helpful is that he takes the reader through a series of choices about how God saves-starting with very broad concepts and moving towards more specific concepts. At each point along the way he eliminates the options that just don't work. Thus, the reader is able to see how theologians have arrived at a belief in Calvinism in a gradual, step by step fashion.