1
THE PROTESTANT DEBATE OVER THE EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT
In Chapter Four as we
studied the death of the King I mentioned that there arose in Church history, following
the clarification of the nature of the atonement, a debate over the extent of
the atonement. Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy never have been too
concerned about this question because in their theologies the extent of the
atonement is contingent upon one’s good works and penitence. The Protestant
Reformers, however, on the basis of Scripture, took a very hard stand that the
atonement completely satisfied God’s justice. Once this point was made, the
question was raised that if the atonement satisfied God’s justice, why do some
men remain
unsaved? In trying to answer
this question, a division occurred among Protestants that remains until this
day. In this appendix I briefly note why this issue is important in evangelism
and sanctification, how the debate developed in Protestant circles, and the
present approach of many biblical fundamentalists, including myself.
WHY ARGUE OVER THIS ISSUE? .
. .
Let’s examine the issue a
little bit before talking about its importance. If the atonement “satisfies”
God’s justice, why are not all men thereby saved? If all men are not saved,
then isn’t the atonement limited after all—limited to only those who believe?
If its benefits accrue only to those who believe, the elect, then in what sense
is the King’s death a “propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but
also for those of the whole world” (I Jn. 2:2)? If it is thus limited by men’s
belief or unbelief, isn’t it
merely a provisional and
potential saving action but not an actual one? If potential, then doesn’t it
follow that something more must be added to the so-called finished work
of Christ? If something must be added, what is it? Human choice? Virtue? Faith?
Good works? Right here we come face to face with the basic doctrines of
election, justification, faith, and sanctification!
. . .BECAUSE IT SHAPES THE
BASIC TRUTHS UNDERLYING EVANGELISM AND THE CHRISTIAN LIFE!
Let’s look at each of the
four basic doctrines and their relationship to the atonement question. The
Doctrine of Election. We studied the doctrine of election as it was
revealed through the call of
Abraham in Part III of this series. Election has to do with God’s sovereign
choices. It insists that God “calls the shots”, not man. If, then, God intended
to save all men by having His Son die for their sins but in the end all are not
saved, what does this fact do to our view of His sovereignty? Are His
intentions in conflict with His sovereign choices? And how can He remain
sovereign if men’s decisions to accept or reject the Cross in the end control
the extent of the atonement? If we say that He elected upon the basis of His
foreknowledge of men’s response to the Cross, isn’t this the saying the same thing—men initiate the action
and God “seconds” it? Suppose we take the other approach and postulate that the
atonement is limited to only the elect. Then, the preaching of the Cross to
those who reject, to the non-elect, cannot be a valid “call.” As a strong
Reformed theology professor acquaintance of mine once said “if I knew who the
non-elect were, I wouldn’t bother to preach to them.” Obviously, the extent of
the atonement is closely linked to the truths of election.
The Doctrine of
Justification.
If justification is somehow based upon the atonement and it is not sufficient
to remove all my sin when I initially believe in Christ, isn’t the atonement in
some fashion limited in my life? If we die physically after being justified,
aren’t we still under the Edenic death sentence for sin? If we all have to
appear before the judgment seat of Christ in the future, aren’t we still in
some way identified with sin? If the atonement is thus limited in those who
believe and apparently only partially effective, how can we ever be sure we are
wholly justified before God?
The Doctrine of Faith. If the atonement is limited
and saving for the elect, what role does faith play in appropriating salvation?
Is it necessary? Or, from our human perspective how do we know that we are of
the elect? If false faith of mere “professing” Christians exists, how is
genuine faith to be distinguished from the false? If, to answer this question,
I must ponder my faithfulness, then what role does the Cross play as an object
of faith? On the other hand, if the atonement is unlimited but ineffective
without faith, then isn’t faith again the center of action rather than the
Cross? In this case, doesn’t faith somehow become a meritorious good work?
The Doctrine of
Sanctification. Are post-salvation sins covered in the atonement, or is it limited in
this respect? If the benefits of the atonement must be appropriated by faith,
what happens when this faith fails? Do these benefits fluctuate with the ups
and downs in the Christian life? If, however, the atonement is not so limited,
why must we forgive in order to be forgiven, confess our sins, repent, and be
disciplined when we sin?
This debate is not an easy
one to follow. The reason for the difficulty is that the various parties to the
debate use the same terms in different ways. Perhaps a better way of saying it
is that the disputants bring to the table different sets of ideological
“baggage.” Hopefully, therefore, if I clarify some of this “baggage” that
accompanies the terms used, the debate will be a bit easier to follow.
Preliminary Considerations. With a Satisfactory
Atonement along side the obvious continuation of evil in history, the
Protestant mentality centered upon the plan behind the atonement. A plan
involves the choice of the planner. In this case, God’s sovereignty came to the
fore. How is this sovereign attribute to be viewed? Do we think of it
abstractly, as a prime quality “cleansed” from all historical connotation? Or
do we view it in light of the Creator-creature distinction?
If we think of sovereignty as
an abstract property or a universal classification that belongs to both God and
the creation, then we haven’t broken with Aristotelian logic. We are still
enmeshed in the pagan idea of the Continuity of Being wherein both God and man
are on the same level of existence. Immediately, we find ourselves with an
internal logical contradiction: two beings on the same level cannot have total
sovereignty.
If, however, we think of the
Creator-creature distinction and derive our view of sovereignty within that distinction,
we find no such contradiction. God’s divine (Q)uality of sovereignty is
distinct from man’s human (q)uality of choice. The two are on different levels
of existence. We still are no closer to explaining how this condition can be,
but we no longer have an internal logical contradiction. In the ensuing brief
narration of the Protestant debate keep these two ways of viewing sovereignty
in mind.
Development of the Debate. In Luther and Calvin
(1509-1564) there is little or no evidence of the limited atonement idea. Their
focus is upon Christ as the believer’s savior and source of assurance, viz.,
that Christ died for him. Wrote Calvin: “if we have been chosen in Him, we
shall not find assurance of our election in ourselves. . . .Christ [Himself] is
the mirror wherein we must. . .contemplate our election”[1]. Thus each person
at the point of saving faith knows without doubt that Christ died for him or
her. The elect are those creatures who come to this faith in post-fall history.
However God in eternity past viewed His plan, He viewed it as involving real
history in which there was a fall.
Following Calvin a number of Reformers, such as Theodore Beza (1519- 1605) entertained an abstract approach to God’s sovereignty that led to the limited atonement doctrine. Their reasoning was simple. God from all eternity had a plan expressed in His “eternal decrees.” Since only the elect are saved, it must be that the atonement was designed only for them. In essence, their argument was a straightforward reasoning from effect to cause. This approach, however, quickly affected faith and assurance. If Christ died only for the elect, then how can I know He died for me? I can’t know that He died for me directly—that would require omniscience—so my
assurance must come from inspecting
my “fruit”, the evidences of the Holy Spirit’s work in my heart. Luther and
Calvin had argued earlier that looking inwardly at my fallen nature only leads
to anxiety so that one must look outwardly to the Cross of Christ
instead! The “second generation” Reformers coming after Luther and Calvin,
because of their system, had to look inwardly for assurance. Thus the
limited atonement doctrine effectively divorced faith and assurance. In the
days of Luther and Calvin, faith was assurance that Christ died for me; in the
later days of the Reformers assurance could only follow and reinforce faith—to
show evidence of election and the coverage of my sin by the atonement.
Assurance thus became for them “faith in faith” or persevering faith evidenced
by the fruit in one’s life.
Soon after limited atonement
had become dominant in Reformed circles, one of the Reformers, Jacob Arminius
(1559-1609), rejected limited atonement and taught:
“that. . .Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, died for all men
and for every man, so that he has obtained for them all, by his death on the
cross, redemption and the forgiveness of sin; yet that no one actually enjoys
this forgiveness of sins except the believer, according to the word of the
gospel of John iii.16: ‘God so loved the world. . .’ And in the First Epistle
of John ii.2: ‘And he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for our sins
only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”[2]
The unlimited atonement,
according to Arminius, is for all men potentially, but not actually. What makes
it actually apply to me is my act of faith. God chose the elect, in this view,
upon the basis of foreseen persevering faith. Arminius then added that one
could lose this faith, in which case it would be shown that he did not have true
persevering faith and was not of the elect.
Arminius’ teachings were
rejected because they seemed to depose God from His sovereignty and replace Him
with man’s choice. At the Synod of Dort (1619) it was stated over against
Arminius that:
“It was by the will of God
that Christ by the blood of the cross. . .should effectively redeem. . .all
those, and those only, who were from eternity chosen to salvation. . . ; that
he should confer upon them faith, which, together with all other saving gifts
of the Holy Spirit, he purchased for them by his death”[3].
In this view man’s response
to the Cross is clearly a passive one, derived from the Holy Spirit’s
regenerating work. Later, the Westminster Confession (1643)
systematized Reformed
thought into the form it continues in today.
Summarized by the
abbreviation “TULIP”, it included (T)otal depravity, (U)nconditional election,
(L)imited atonement, (I)rresistable grace, and (P)erseverence of faith.
All Calvinists were not
happy with the Dort statement against Arminianism. They were troubled by the
texts Arminius had used which did emphasize the atonement’s application to all
men (e.g., John 3:16; 4:42; Rom. 5:15-18; II Cor. 5:14-20; I Tim. 2:4-6; II
Pet. 2:1; 3:9; I John 2:2). One of these people was Moise Amyraut (1596-1664)
who taught theology at Saumer, France. Although his teachings were called
heretical in Holland, they were accepted by Calvinists in France. His position
was this: “God wills all men to be saved, on condition they believe—a condition
in which they could well fulfill in the abstract, but which, in fact, owing to
inherited corruption, they stubbornly reject, so that this universal will for
salvation actually saves no one” [4]. In the centuries since the Reformation, Protestantism has been divided
over this issue. Until modern liberalism destroyed orthodoxy in most
denominations, Arminianism prevailed in Methodist and Pentecostal circles while
Calvinism in Presbyterian and Reformed circles. Since present day “Bible
fundamentalism” is largely dispensational which originated in the Calvinist
camp (broadly speaking), it tends to follow a mild version of Calvinism that
resembles Amyraldianism.
Observations about the
Debate. The
second generation Reformers in their desire to strengthen Protestantism over against
the Roman Catholic anti-Protestant reaction tried to “systematize” Protestant
doctrine after the manner of scholastic logic inherited from Rome. In other
words, they mixed scriptural truths (newly re-discovered in the Reformation)
with a methodology shared with their opponents. They had not yet reformed their
methodological tools. The problem with these scholastic tools is that they bore
the stamp of the pagan philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle’s logic is tightly
linked to his philosophical categories, categories which reflect earthly
thinking, not heavenly thinking (cf. Col. 2:8).
Calvin’s successor, Beza, for example, devoted more weight to an argument from effect to cause in discussing the atonement rather then to exegesis of the Scriptural texts. In so doing, he absorbs the Aristotelian concepts of universal categories which apply to Creator and creature in the same fashion. God’s sovereignty, therefore, for Beza and those who follow his approach is conceived of as an abstract “cause.” This focus tends to obliterate created history. At the end of history, what about the vast community of unbelieving men who go without the eternal benefits of the atonement? That condition must have been caused by God’s sovereignty. If so, then it seems to follow that God could never have intended to save them with the atonement. And if that is true, the atonement must always have been limited. Christ could
not have died “for all.”
Thus Scriptural texts that seem to argue for an unlimited atonement cannot “really”
teach what they appear to teach.
Another example is the
tendency of the later Reformers to alter Luther’s and Calvin’s teaching on
faith. Catholicism counter-attacked the original teaching of Luther and Calvin
(that faith was assurance) as an incentive to loose living. To defend
Protestantism, the later Reformers began to argue that we cannot be assured
that we have believed unto salvation unless there are evidences of the Holy
Spirit’s work in our lives. The famous Civil War era Southern Reformed
theologian, Robert Dabney pointed out that later Reformers separated faith and
assurance:
“[The first Reformers]
defined saving faith as a belief that ‘Christ saved me,’ making the
assurance of hope of its necessary essence. Now, the later Reformers, and those
learned, holy and modest teachers of the Reformed Churches. . .have subjected
this view to searching examination, and rejected it (as does the Westminster
Assembly) on scriptural grounds.”[4]
Christ, in this view, died
only for the elect, and neither you nor I can be sure we are of the elect
company until we can experientially prove out in our lives that we
have “persevering faith”,
i.e., faith that never fails until we die. As Dillow has pointed out, this
later Reformed Calvinism is strangely akin to Arminianism because both agree in
the end that whosoever whose faith does not persevere are non-elect
reprobates--the Calvinists because they had a temporary false “professing”
faith and the Arminian because God foresaw in His election that they would not
persevere.[5] The Calvinists hold to a limited atonement that applies in its
eternal benefits only to the elect who will persevere; the Arminians to an
unlimited atonement that applies eternally only to those whose perseverance was
foreseen by God when He elected them.
If the later Reformers and
the Arminians had re-examined the intellectual tools they were using to argue
with and subjected them to correction from the Scriptural text, they might have
avoided much of the divisive debates. If instead they had seen their way more
clearly from the Creator-creature distinction revealed in Genesis, they might
have questioned the scholastic logic inherited from Aristotle. They might have
noticed that the Creator, although knowable, is incomprehensible. “My thoughts
are not your thoughts saith the Lord” (Isa. 55:8). “To whom then will ye liken
Me? saith the Holy One” (Isa. 40:25). Logical categories, therefore, cannot be
“universal” for God and man. And if this is so, then there is no such thing as
a “universal cause.” God has sovereignty over all things as Creator; man has
responsible choice as creature, a finite analog to God’s sovereignty.
Then it follows that the
atonement can be unlimited toward all to whatever degree God chooses, and
that man has genuine choice in responding to the Cross yet so as never to alter
the Creator-creature order.
To sum up the debate: it
looks as if the second generation Reformers did not exploit the open door to
Scripture that Luther and Calvin provided. They did not carry forward the
principle of sola scriptura into the areas of philosophical categories and
logical propositions as Paul urged in Colossians 2:8. In such a hurry to defend
their new movement against Catholic counterattacks they prematurely
systematized Protestant truths before enough exegetical work had been
completed.
Modern fundamentalism with
its heavy emphasis upon careful exegesis of the biblical text is more open to
the significance of creature history than classical Reformed thought. As I
noted in Chapter One above, the Incarnation of the Son of God implies eternal
significance to history. The Second Person of the Trinity acquired genuine human
nature with a body scarred from its historical experience. History has “made a
difference.” As I noted in Chapter Four, there are numerous textual references
to both optimistic and pessimistic “options” to history. An additional feature
to note is how human prayers resulted in God “repenting” and altering the
apparent course of history. This view of creature history leaves room for an
atonement with unlimited options of application under the Creator’ s sovereign
will.
To expound such a view of
the atonement I summarize the doctrine under the four points covered in Chapter
Four:
• The atonement is the sole
legal basis for all grace (there can be no “bloodless forgiveness” in view of
the biblical notion of restitutionary justice);
• God calls mankind to
repentance with an atonement sufficient for all (the status of all mankind,
every person, has been eternally changed by such an
atonement—either for good or
for evil);
• The saving benefits of the
atonement are received through faith (a human act of reception is necessary to
enjoy eternal salvation);
• The moral responsibility
for judgment and salvation is asymmetrical (God’s sovereignty has an
incomprehensible complexity that violates all attempts to
describe it in terms of an
abstract universal cause after Aristotle).
This view of the atonement
resolves some questions asked above about the four doctrines we have learned:
election, justification, faith, and sanctification. It resolves election
questions in a fallen world because the atonement gives God total freedom to
save whomever He chooses however He chooses. It calls to all men, not just some
men. It resolves justification questions because it leaves to God the extent of
implementing its blessings. The existence of physical death as well as
believers’ discipline and judgment cannot undermine the atonement’s efficacy if
God deems to thus limit its application. It resolves faith questions because it
provides a sufficient basis for forgiveness as well as convincing evidence of
God’s love toward each person. It provides our external upward focus to replace
our inward self reflection. It provides the powerful motivation of God’s
gracious love toward us rather than the self-frustration of trying to earn
acceptability with God. It resolves sanctification questions because it allows
God freedom to deal with each of us as individuals without erasing the
possibility of failures and temporal discipline. It provides a historical
foundation for stability in a world of flux and chaos.
The extent of the atonement
challenges our comprehension of God’s sovereignty and love. It affects every
man by removing the necessity of eternal judgment for our sins. For those who
reject God’s grace, it reveals them to be stubborn fools. For those who accept,
it calls for eternal thankfulness..8
END NOTES FOR APPENDIX C
1. John Calvin, Institutes,
3.24.5.
2. Phillip Schaff, Creeds of
Christendom (ppbk ed., Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1977 [1877]), iii, 546.
3. Schaff, iii, 586.
4. Ernest F. K. Mueller,
“Amyraud,” The New Shaff-Herzog Religious Encyclopedia (New York, 1908), I.
161.
5. Joseph C. Dillow, The
Reign of the Servant Kings (Hayesville, NC: Schoettle Publishing Co., 2nd ed., 1993), p. 266..9.10.11