Since this is lighting up the blogosphere for a moment, I think I will comment.
I believe in limited atonement because I believe in God’s comprehensive foreordination of all things–including God’s unconditional election of many (most ultimately) fallen sinful human beings to be saved from God’s wrath at the last day and to be raised in glory. The fact of God’s predestination of those he has chosen to glory is taught in several places like Romans 8 and 9 and Ephesians 1.
Of course, the reason for the term “limited atonement” is not simply a result of an acknowledgment of the fact of predestination or unconditional election. As far as I know the term first came into vogue long after John Calvin was dead (not to mention Augustine, Aquinas, etc). Like the genesis of many theological terms, controversy gave it birth (in theology war is the mother of all things).
There arose in Holland a group who taught that God did not predestine particular individuals to glory and leave out others. Rather, God simply strove to save all who would be saved. There was nothing further to say about the love of God for individuals beyond his general love for all sinners and his desire for them to be saved. Thus, the atonement–the work of Christ in his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension–was nothing more than a result of this general desire to save all people. (These people came to be called arminians after a teacher named named Jacob Arminius.)
Those who continued to hold to the Biblical doctrine a predestination disagreed that the Bible revealed to us nothing more than a generalized desire for all men to be saved. Those who were saved, they insisted, were saved by God’s specific work in their lives which was withheld from others. Those who believed did so because God made them willing and able to believe. And when God sent his son to be born and live and die and rise and ascend, he did so in part to bring about the salvation of these people he had chosen for glory.
So the question of a “limited” or “particular” atonement vs an “unlimited” or “general” one was specifically a question about whether or not God predestined who would benefit at the Last Day from the work and person of Christ. It was not about whether or not the blood of Christ was sufficient to cover the sins of the whole world (and an infinite series of sinful worlds beside). It was not a claim that, in order to bring more people into glory, Christ would need to bleed more on the cross. It was not a claim that, if fewer people were going to be raised in glory at the Last Day, Christ could have suffered less. It involved no logical puzzle of offering people who were not predestined something that wasn’t there for them. It was simply an angle of looking at the question of whether predestination is true or false. That is all.
Which raises the question as to whether “limited atonement” really has that much pastoral value as a generalized slogan describing Reformed belief. As a generalized teaching, as far as I can tell, it simply raises a lot of confusion. Instead of an expression of God’s predestination it has become a separate entity which is used to derive the doctrine. This backwards method leads to confusions like eternal justification (i.e. a denial of justification by faith), an evasive Gospel presentation, an an incredulity regarding the sincere offer of the Gospel.
To be clear, I am talking about misunderstandings of the term, “limited atonement.” In addition to misunderstanding due to a lack of context, like all slogans that define group identity “limited atonement” seems prone to abuse. Identity is established, often, by differentiation. And “limited atonement” seems to have expanded as a way to define many calvinists as not quite Reformed.
Let me try to explain this by a conversation I had recently with a fellow calvinist.
MH: “I own two vehicles, a five-person Dodge Intrepid and a seven-person Chrysler Town&Country.”
FC: “Don’t you mean a five-seater and a seven-seater?”
MH: “You’re right: that is the more standard term.”
FC: “I only bring it up because I expected more precise language from a Presbyterian pastor.”
MH: “Huh?”
FC: “Well you know that God is sovereign and has fore-ordained all things. Or do you?”
MH: “Absolutely, no pun intended.”
FC: “Ha ha. This is no laughing matter. There are many who are bringing Arminian doctrine into the PCA.”
MH: “That’s interesting. Unfounded, but interesting.”
FC: “Well we can’t be too careful. By calling you’re cars “five-person” and “sevin-person” you are implying that just anyone might sit in them.
MH: “Well, that is true, isn’t it?”
FC: “I can’t believe how much our Reformed Scholastic heritage is forgotten by the ministers in our denomination! Of course that is totally untrue. Only those chosen by God from eternity to sit in those seats are going to sit in them.”
MH: “So you are accusing me of denying the doctrine of Limited Car Seating.”
FC: “Yes. We believe in a sovereign God which means limited everything. What you are saying is implicitly heterodox.”
MH: “But strangely that doesn’t seem to bother me when I consider the comfort of being explicitly sane.
Only those predestined to glory will ultimately benefit from the atonement. But that doesn’t mean it is lacking in value for all who are offered eternal life in the preaching of the Gospel. It means they will refuse God’s great offer. This is according to God’s own sovereign plan, but that plan does not destroy one’s moral responsibility. Nor does it deny the incredible magnitude of God’s generosity to sinful men.
Of course the scandal of this doctrine (and this is something I see a lot from the more arminian folks, self-acknowledged seekers and skeptics) is that it raises the question, “does that mean God doesn’t love everyone?”
Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t take a certain amount of time to assess the importance of particular doctrines based on their rhetorical value.
While I agree with what you wrote, I don’t know that that’s a doctrine I would ever attempt to present to someone who was not already a believer.
There’s also the question of whether the biblical doctrine of predestination is to be best thought of in calvinistic terms, but I’ll let others debate that one. Just rattles around in my brain once in a while.
G’day Mark,
I probably should not do this. But you did like the quotation I posted before from CHodge on 1 Jn 2:2.
I thought you might be interested in reading these:
The Mediator between God and man must be sinless. Under the law the victim offered on the altar must be without blemish. Christ, who was to offer Himself unto God as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, must be Himself free from sin. The High Priest, therefore, who becomes us, He whom our necessities demand, must be holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. (Hebrews vii. 26.) He was, therefore, “without sin.” (Hebrews iv. 15; 1 Peter ii. 22.) Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol 2, p., 457.
Another consequence of the union with Christ effected by faith, is the indwelling of the Spirit. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by being made a curse for us, in order that we might receive the promise of the Holy Ghost. (Gal. iii. 13, 14.) It was not
consistent with the perfections or purposes of God that the Spirit should be given to dwell with his saving influences in the apostate children of men, until Christ had made a full satisfaction for the sins of the world. But as with God there are no distinctions of time,
Christ was slain from the foundation of the world, and his death availed as fully for the salvation of those who lived before, as for that of those who have lived since his coming in the flesh. C. Hodge,
Systematic Theology, vol 3, p., 227.
Me now: Thats just 2 ive found in CHodge.
There are at least 2 versions of limited atonement. If you are interested, I can quote comparable, yet even more explicit, comments from Shedd and Dabney.
What’s a web surfer to do? I was going along, searching for some info on Infant Car Seats, and saw a link here. You can bet I’ll be bookmarking this site TODAY (Friday). Great post!