In yesterday’s post we overviewed Dr. David Allen’s argument against Limited Atonement and I began my response, giving a defense for understanding Edwards as a five point Calvinist and not as a four pointer like Dr. Allen claimed.
Moving on, I would want to address Allen’s exegesis next. Over all, I will be the first to admit that I am not a fan of running immediately to the ‘All’, ‘Whole’, and ‘Many’ arguments as an argument for or against limited atonement, seeing as how both sides can use these texts to say what they want, usually without much weight. Instead, what I think is more fruitful is to actually investigate the nature of the atonement, which I think will be sufficient to show that it can be no other than a limited act if not all are to be saved. That said, I won’t be doing that in this post, but in the next week or so look for a small series in which I attempt to actually execute this argument.
Observing then the attempted exegesis on the “Christ died for his sheep” and “Christ died for the church” passages, to claim that these don’t preclude a universal atonement based upon their silence on the matter is a violation of the pragmatic use of implication in linguistics. Dr. Allen used the sentence “I love my wife” to demonstrate that this does not necessarily mean the negative assertion that he does not love anyone else, but only the positive assertion that he does love his wife. Yet this is not the same, particularly as in John 10.11, 14-15. This passage states that “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. . . . I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.” It is true that Christ never says “I lay down my life for the sheep and none other,” but the context of the passage, Christ’s continual emphasis on his special role of protection and caring for the sheep, his intimate knowledge of who they are, screams that Christ laying down his life for the sheep is a favored and particular act. Otherwise, if Christ means only that he lays down his life for the sheep as a subset of all people, then the repetition of Christ’s distinct relationship to the sheep becomes superfluous. Why does Christ having a reason for dying for his sheep matter if he dies for everyone? If Christ does die for everyone is there no reason for why he would die for those who aren’t his sheep? To avoid the implication of a limitation on Christ’s dying is to make this passage more general than it intends itself to be.
Thirdly, in Dr. Allen’s attempts to give a defense for why the free offer of the Gospel means telling people that Christ died for them, I don’t think the evidence he offered was very convincing. Citing 1 Corinthians 15.1-5, Dr. Allen said that his view is supported by the passage “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures” (v.3). Yet, in this context, whether limited or unlimited atonement is true, the fact that Paul delivered to these people that Christ died for their sins is accurate because they are presupposed to be believers, a status which both camps would argue makes them recipients of the atonement. Thus, it is inconclusive whether Paul used the “God loves you and died for your sins” approach or the more Calvinistic “God gave his only begotten Son to die for sin so that if you believe on him you may have eternal life” (this being John Piper’s formulation) which is just as free, but does not obligate God to atoning for any but those who believe.
As for his other text, Acts 3.26, this is what it says: “God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.” Dr. Allen’s argument on this is that, if Christ was “raised up” and “sent to [them] first” to turn “every one of [them] from [their] wickedness” then this necessarily means that his death and resurrection provided an atonement which was freely available to all who are being spoken of. Yet this interpretation neglects the simple context of the passage. What we see here is that Christ being “raised up” is the completion of verses 22 and 23 which say, “Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.’” Thus, the raising up was not from the dead once atonement was made, but was as a prophet (teacher) to call the Jews to repentance, as Christ declares of himself in Matthew 15.24 (“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”) and John states of him in John 1.11 (“He came to his own“). Thus, the Jews were to be blessed by receiving Christ as a prophet to bring them to repentance under the Law, and yet instead they murdered him (Acts 3.13-15). Therefore, once again, this passage should not be understood as a justification for including an unlimited atonement in the free offer of the Gospel.
Finally, I would like to address Dr. Allen’s closing comments about the consequences of holding to a limited view of the atonement. Dr. Allen stated that limited atonement undermines God’s salvific will, undermines evangelistic zeal, removes the ability to tell a sinner Christ died for them, affects the way a preacher may speak to his congregation, attacks the idea of giving evangelistic invitations, and that “should the Southern Baptist Convention move toward 5-point Calvinism, such a move would be away from, and not toward, the gospel.” As we have already shown, the way in which limited atonement affects a preachers ability to speak to his congregation and the way we evangelize is only in a sense which to speak that way would have no justification in Scripture to begin with. (Resting on the Bible also restricts us from telling people that God has purple unicorns lined up for us in heaven, but oddly people don’t seem so determined to want to say this to nonbelievers.) Neither does the giving of evangelistic invitations stand on solid biblical ground.
The idea that limited atonement undermines God’s salvific will came only as an assertion, not a defended point, and following the argument of Edwards as quoted in the previous post, one can see that it in no way actually does this.
Finally, to state that limited atonement affects evangelistic zeal, and that a “move toward 5-point Calvinism . . . would be [a move] away from . . . the gospel,” though a common theme at the conference, and basically its initial impetus, was an accusation that was only ever stated but never hashed out. The fact that the greatest preachers and missionaries of all time held four- and five-point Calvinistic convictions seems lost on the speakers at this gathering, who simply hide behind the idea that these people were only evangelistic in spite of their convictions. This, to me, is the biggest problem with the current debate: large numbers of SBC ministers and deacons, who only know horror stories of legalists masquerading as Calvinists, coming into this with their own misconceptions of what Calvinism is and stirring up conflict with brothers that they are never actually willing to engage.
Overall, I felt Dr. Allen’s presentation against Limited Atonement, admittedly the hardest point to defend in Scripture, was poor and seemed more focused on rallying the base against a perceived evil instead of giving a strong biblical argument in opposition to it.
