The doctrine most contested within Calvinism is that of the “Limited Atonement” or “Particular Redemption.” This has produced the myriad of “four-point Calvinists” or the so-called 4.5 Calvinism of neo-Reformers such as Mark Driscoll. This is the one point that most have difficulty swallowing, unless of course you are John Piper. However, any slight attempt to examine the system of Calvinism will reveal that the paradigm needs limited atonement to logically work. For if you throw out limited atonement, what do you have? You have either a blasphemous application of Christ’s death ie., that He died in vain for billions of souls and did not even come close to accomplishing what He said He came to do OR you must have universalism. If you throw out limited atonement those are your only two choices according to J. I. Packer:
“The true evangelical evaluation of the claim that Christ died for every man, even those who perish, comes through at point after point in Owen’s book. So far from magnifying the love and grace of God, this claim dishonors both it and him, for it reduces God’s love to an impotent wish and turns the whole economy of ‘saving’ grace, so-called (‘saving’ is really a misnomer on this view), into a monumental divine failure.”
“In order to avoid universalism, we [if we are Arminians] have to depreciate all that we were previously extolling, and to explain that, after all, nothing that God and Christ have done can save us unless we add something to it; the decisive factor which actually saves us is our own believing. What we say comes to this – that Christ saves us with our help; and what that means, when one thinks it out, is this – that we save ourselves with Christ’s help. This is a hollow anticlimax. But if we start by affirming that God has a saving love for all, and Christ died a saving death for all, and yet balk at becoming universalists, there is nothing else that we can say… We have not exalted grace and the cross; we have limited the atonement far more drastically than Calvinism does, for whereas Calvinism asserts that Christ’s death, as such, saves all whom it was meant to save, we have denied that Christ’s death, as such, is sufficient to save any of them.”
In Ron Rhodes’ presentation of “Limited Atonement vs Unlimited Atonement” he convincingly dispels the argument for what Calvinists have renamed “particular redemption” (or limited atonement). But in turn he is left holding the bag of the other “great conundrum.” He has here traded one major problem for another: If Christ did indeed die for all people, all without exception, then we must admit that either Christ failed miserably in His mission or that the universal atonement was effectual for all (evangelical universalism). If you are an Arminian, which would you choose? The message of failure of Christ’s mission resulting in eternal death for most of mankind or of a universal effectual atonement resulting in life for all mankind? Which sounds like Good News? Which appears to be in line with Christ’s title as the “Savior of the World”?
If you are a Calvinist and want to be consistent and logical you must forfeit the belief that God loves and died for everyone because it would follow that if He loves someone, He would actually save them. But all are not “saved” so He must not love them. So as a Calvinist, which do you choose, the message that God loves all but can’t save all or that God doesn’t save all because He did not have the sovereign intention to do so? Or dare you choose that God’s sovereign will to save applies to all His creation?
The perennial issues dividing Calvinists and Arminians are not going away because they are at an impasse, a theological stalemate. There’s no budging from either side because both sides KNOW that the Scriptures support their view. And the ironic thing is that they are both absolutely right! There IS a God who loves and has redeemed all people without exception and there IS a God who is powerful enough to create an effectual plan to save them. I believe because of the internet’s ability to intensify the act of “iron sharpening iron” we are dawning the day when we will all realize they are indeed the same God! Hallelujah!
Here is an article at Monergism that explains how “unlimited atonement” logically makes you a universalist: http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/jhendryx03.html
ADDITIONAL NOTES: Here is an excerpt where Ron Rhodes effectively concludes how the burden of proof lies with those trying to restrict the atonement to the elect. He is right, but what view of God is he left with if he lets go of the sovereign power of God alone to save?
Entire article is found here: http://home.earthlink.net/~ronrhodes/Atonement.html
Seemingly restrictive references can be logically fit into an unlimited scenario more easily than universal references made to fit into a limited atonement scenario:
The two sets of passages noted earlier – one set seemingly in support of limited atonement, the other in support of unlimited atonement – are not irreconcilable. As Elwell puts it, “It is true that the benefits of Christ’s death are referred to as belonging to the elect, his sheep, his people, but it would have to be shown that Christ died only for them. No one denies that Christ died for them. It is only denied that Christ died exclusively for them.”
Millard Erickson likewise says that “statements about Jesus loving and dying for his church or his sheep need not be understood as confining his special love and salvific death strictly to them….It does not follow from a statement that Christ died for his church, or for his sheep, that he did not die for anyone else, unless, of course, the passage specifically states that it was only for them that he died….Certainly if Christ died for the whole, there is no problem in asserting that he died for a specific part of the whole. To insist that those passages which focus on his dying for his people require the understanding that he died only for them and not for any others contradicts the universal passages. We conclude that the hypothesis of universal atonement is able to account for a larger segment of the biblical witness with less distortion than is the hypothesis of limited atonement.”
Robert Lightner similarly argues: “The task of harmonizing those various Scriptures poses a far greater problem for those who hold to a limited atonement than it does to those who hold to an unlimited position. Those who hold to an unlimited atonement recognize that some Scriptures emphasize the fact that Christ died for the elect, for the church, and for individual believers. However, they point out that when those verses single out a specific group they do not do so to the exclusion of any who are outside that group since dozens of other passages include them. The ‘limited’ passages are just emphasizing one aspect of a larger truth. In contrast, those who hold to a limited atonement have a far more difficult time explaining away the ‘unlimited’ passages.”
The fact is, the Scriptures do not always include all aspects of a truth in any one passage. “If these texts are used in isolation to ‘prove’ that Christ died only for the elect, then it could be argued with equal logic from other isolated passages that Christ died only for Israel (cf. John 11:51; Isa. 53:8), or that He died only for the Apostle Paul (for Paul declares of Christ, ‘Who loved me, and gave himself for me,’ Gal. 2:20). As well might one contend that Christ restricted His prayers to Peter because of the fact that He said to Peter, ‘But I have prayed for thee’ (Luke 22:32).”
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