A Few Thoughts on the Doctrine of Limited Atonement

One of the greatest obstacles for me personally in embracing what is commonly known as “Five-Point Calvinism” is the idea of Limited Atonement.  On the surface, the doctrine states that Christ died for the elect.  Which of course infers that He did not die for those who are “not elect”, aka, the lost who will find themselves in Hell.

Now, my first objection was that this depends on divine predestination, for if God does not predestine who is to be saved, there is no good talking of Christ dying “for the elect”.  But this issue of God’s sovereign predestination I have dealt with several times over the last few posts, so to that I will say nothing more here.  But the more specific objection is that it appears to go against scriptures that state that Christ died “for all” (2 Corinthians 5:15) and of course John 3:16, which states that God so loved “the world” that He gave His Son.

Now, a theologian might get into a long talk about context and Greek and such with regard to passages such as these, but I will simply lay out the my own reasoning behind why Limited Atonement in no way contradicts Scripture.  Whether the theologian would approve of these arguments I’m not qualified to say, seeing as I am not one myself.  But from my own, smaller mind, the chief principle that stands out is this:

All believers (with the exception of universalists) believe in Limited Atonement in some basic form, whether or not they describe it in this manner.

Now, before anyone gets too upset with the above statement, let me explain what I mean:

If a person who rejects Calvinism (in particular, predestination and limited atonement) asserts that Christ died for all, what they generally mean (unless they are universalists) is that Christ’s death was sufficient for the salvation of the whole world, not that all will necessarily be saved because of it.  Generally speaking, this would also be heartily affirmed by a Calvinist.  Thus, if I tell you, as a Five-Point Calvinist, that there is a thing called “limited atonement”, I do not mean that Christ’s death lacked the power to save the world, or was in any way deficient, but what I mean is that Christ’s death only secured the salvation of those whom God predestined to be saved.  To put it another way, although Christ’s death was sufficient for the salvation of all, not all are actually atoned thereby.  Only those who believe in Christ and bow to Him as Lord actually have their sins atoned for; the rest, by means of their unbelief and rejection of God, persist in their sin and will be condemned.

In this way, the common ground is easy to see.  Although you may reject the idea that those who come to accept Christ do so through the predestination of God, yet (unless you are a universalist) you will never argue that Christ’s death secured an effectual, active atonement for all.  If it did, no soul would ever see Hell.  Thus, “Limited Atonement” is simply a statement that when Christ died on the cross, though His death was sufficient for all, He knew who He was effectively dying for (those who would believe and be saved).

Thoughts on Free Will and God's Sovereignty

In almost every instance where I hear (or read) someone defending the "law of free will" I cannot escape the sense that they desire, very greatly, to say that they chose God themselves, as though they had done at least one good and wise thing that was their own. Certainly this is not so. I've heard many people explain the nature of sin by stating that "we're not all as bad as we could be, but we're as bad off as we could be". It would be more accurate, I think, to state that we're all as guilty as we could be because we're all just as enslaved to sin. The Bible doesn't make much of free-will...in fact, strictly speaking it is an un-Biblical idea. Your will is in bondage; you are either a slave to sin or a slave to Christ (see John 8:34 and Romans 6:19). If you have not, say, brought about a holocaust that resulted in the murder of millions, that is not to say that you are less sinful than Adolf Hitler, and only to say that by the mercy of God and sovereign outworking of his plan, you were given less opportunity and perhaps divinely held-back more than he. If you are free to choose, it is a one-sided freedom, for you are only free to choose evil. A vast set of choices may spread out before you, but all lead to damnation. Only the direct, divine and sovereign intervention of Christ can result in your righteousness: and if it comes from God, it's not really your righteousness, but His. That is the Gospel, after all.

People do not like to believe that our futures are not in our own hands. Somehow we feel that if our destiny is not chosen beforehand by God, then we have more hope than if it were laid out before us. It's a bizarre view, one that puts more hope in what is out of God's hands, rather than what is in them. For my part, as my wife and I are bringing a child into the world, I find far more hope that my child's eternal destiny lies with God than in any idea that it lies within its own "free will". Why? Only for what seems to me to be the most reasonable of assumptions: that if my child's eternal destiny lies within the divine, unchangeable and absolutely sovereign will of God, there is far more hope for it than if it lies within its own broken and sinful nature, because I must conclude that if our destinies lie within the hands of ourselves, or anyone else on this planet, then the outcome is certain: we are all of us damned. There is hope in no one but God, in no will but His, and so I will raise my child to know Him, and pray that He will show it the same grace that He has shown to me and my wife, trusting that whatever takes place, takes place because it is His best.

The Importance of Theology

There are many schools of thought with regard to theology today; perhaps one of the most harmful is that theology is largely unimportant, or even a distraction from the reality of living out and experiencing the true and Biblical Christian faith. This is not so, because true theology is nothing less than true Christianity properly understood, and the study of theology is the study of the true Biblical faith.

If I say that I am a Calvinist, it is not to say, as happened at the church of Corinth, that I am a follower of Paul, while another claims to be a follower of Apollos (1 Corinthians 3:3-5), for the theological position which is commonly called Calvinism is not a personality-cult formed around the man John Calvin, but is an understanding of the Scriptures which is also known as "Reformed", and has at its very heart the goal, not of taking any particular side in an argument, except the side of Scripture itself. It is perhaps unfortunate that it came to be called by any name at all, except that people love to label things, and there are so many divisions that if I were to say that I believe in "sola Scriptura" it may still convey many things to many people, so for simplicity sake I may say that I am a Calvinist, knowing that this at least gives a brief, commonly known (if not commonly understood) outline of how I approach Scripture and its message. If I were to say that I am a proponent of Arminianism, it would have the same effect.

As it is I hold to Reformed tradition not because it is a particular tradition, or one which immediately appealed to my mind and thought (it did not) but one which, after long (and still ongoing) study, became apparent to my mind as being, not one of a varied number of systematic theologies, but simply the appropriate, true and rightly handled message of Scripture itself, so that for me to say that I am Reformed and that I believe in the Gospel is to say the very same thing. It is for this reason that I consider it especially important to study, promote and encourage theology, because rightly understood theology is the study of God's own truth, and in particular the truth of the Gospel, and it is critical that the Gospel be known and understood by all, or at least by all to whom God will grant the grace to know and to understand.

Video Games and the Sovereignty of God

One of thing things that first helped me really understand the issue of the "problem of pain" and God's sovereignty was a change in perspective I was given while playing the Super Nintendo game Actraiser. In it you play a divine being (called the "Master") in a kind of mythological battle with a demonic overlord. Part of the game involves a kind of "Sim City" game where you help your mortal followers build cities and grow food, and generally protect them from evil. Sometimes, however, helping their societies involves taking drastic measures that seem cruel on the outset. At one point I had a large, thriving city of devout followers, but needed to removing a mountain barrier cutting off a critical area. To do so, I had to cause an earthquake. This resulted in the almost complete destruction of the city and the death of most of the inhabitants. As I wiped them out, I felt a tinge of regret at killing my people. Yet it was at this very point that God taught me a lesson using what was a very simple scenario in a game: I considered that if I were God, and these my people, and if we assume a Christian afterlife, although the people below do not understand what is happening to them or why, I, looking down from above, see a bigger picture; I am not casting them out, I am bringing them to myself, where they will live in bliss forever, and meanwhile setting the stage for grander things on Earth. The people below, they will understand in time when they too come to be with me.

Now although you can accuse me of becoming over-involved in the course of the gameplay, it wasn't really about me justifying my actions in a game...it was the parallel, simplistic though it may be, that helped me to realize that sometimes things God may allow, or do, seem senseless and cruel to us down here, but if we could only glimpse things, for one moment, from God's perspective, our entire outlook would surely be changed and we would recognize that God does what is necessary and what is good, even when we do not understand the good He is accomplishing. I do not know why people have to die, or disasters have to take place. I know that the fault lies with sin, and our own guilt, but that God is gracious and merciful. I do not know why people go to Hell while God saves others, but I know that whatever happens, God "God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28).

I have no issue with the doctrine of God's complete sovereignty, with the idea that it is God who initiates our salvation, that He raises some up for glory, while others He purposes for wrath (Romans 9:17-20). I don't understand how it all works out, but I believe it, accept it, and I know that there is a good purpose behind it all.