Dominic Bnonn Tennant

In my original post, ‘Thinking about the atonement’, I critiqued an article by Darryl Burling which argued for a four-and-a-half point Calvinism. Darryl responded very thoughtfully to my critique with some criticisms of his own. These expose a number of problems with my original argument, which ought to be corrected.

Darryl’s following comment is helpful for understanding the errors I made in my previous post:

Perhaps I should say the following by way of clarification: Christ’s death in itself had unlimited and infinite value because He is Holy God. The intention of Christ’s death (actual satisfaction and atonement of sin for individuals) is given only to those who believe. Salvation is offered to all – the whole world, but received only by those who believe (which indeed implies repentance from sin).

I am inclined to agree (at least largely) with what Darryl says here. Now, it goes without saying that the precise mechanism of the atonement is difficult to understand and the subject of much dispute, even from the earliest times. And our view of that mechanism will have an influence on the rest of our understanding of the atonement. It is therefore important to identify the assumptions we’re making when we discuss the sacrifice of Christ, and the way in which it justifies us. I unfortunately did not do this in my first response to Darryl—being a presuppositionist, I should know better, but perhaps this illustrates how easily presuppositions go unnoticed and unquestioned.

As I formulated that first response, I wrote with the implicit assumption that Christ was punished for specific sins of specific people, and no others. In other words, I understood that certain sins were imputed to Christ at the cross, and it was for these that he suffered and died. Given this, every sin imputed would then be actually atoned for already, and so if he did genuinely die for every person without exception, then every sin without exception would be covered; including unbelief, so no one would ever be damned (believer or not). This was the implicit assumption in my two syllogisms, by which I demonstrated that Christ’s sacrifice could not have been sufficient to save all people.

It was my argument that those who suppose unlimited atonement but specific justification mistakenly ignore that an unlimited atonement must nonetheless be for specific sins. That is to say, I supposed that those favoring an unlimited atonement considered the atonement qualitative but not quantitative—but the former nonetheless implies the latter. Therefore, an unlimited atonement would ultimately imply that everyone’s sins were actually covered; as opposed to a particular atonement, which would have covered only the elect. Unfortunately, by merit of importing into the unlimited atonement argument my own implicit presupposition that sins were imputed to Christ at the cross, I succeeded in misunderstanding and misrepresenting this argument.

This being the case, a distinction must be drawn between “unlimited” atonement (an atonement capable of expiating all sin), and general redemption, which is a rather more broad category and can include hypothetical universalism and the like; from which Darryl specifically distances himself. If all sin was indeed imputed to Christ at the cross, then all sin is indeed actually already covered, and so all people are saved (since unbelief is one of the sins that was covered). However, if sin was not imputed to Christ in the way I supposed, it may be that unlimited atonement should be reconsidered.

It seems to me that this reconsideration should really take the form of a careful evaluation of the idea of federal headship. When we look at the way in which righteousness is imputed to us, it is not in the form of specific acts of righteousness; but rather a state of righteousness. Christ, having fulfilled the whole law, is counted righteous, and this state of being righteous is imputed to us by God. Now, did Christ fulfill the whole law in the sense of keeping every commandment given? He certainly kept every commandment which was relevant to him, but what if he never encountered his enemy’s donkey going astray, that he might return it (Deut 23:4)? Does this imply that his adherence to the law was less than perfect? Would a Jew, after he was converted to Christianity, have to go out and find a donkey to return, so as to be sure that his righteousness before God was complete?

Of course not. For we know this is not how God views the law. Darryl correctly commented to me by email that “as far as God is concerned sin is sin and as long as you have any quantity of sin you are guilty”. He cited Galatians 3:22 and Romans 3:23 in defense of this, but I think it is much more clearly stated in James 2:10:

For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.

What this shows us is that the law is merely a description of all the ways in which we must be obedient to God. There is one underlying principle—obedience—which is manifested in various ways. Therefore, to break one of the laws is to break the whole law, because the law itself is a single principle: obedience. If we break one law, we have been disobedient, and so we have transgressed the whole law. There may be a quality and a quantity to our disobedience in terms of the law—that is, we break a certain number of laws a certain number of times (quantity); and each on occasion with a certain severity (quality). We know that lying is not as severe a sin as murder; and that lying with evil intentions should suffer harsher penalties than lying with good intentions. But in terms of obedience there is no quality or quantity at all. Either we are obedient, and therefore perfect; or we are not. The relationship is purely binary. And we know that disobedience demands death. That is the punishment that each of us must suffer apart from Christ, for “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23), and we have all sinned (Rom 3:23).

So, therefore, just as by the breaking of one commandment the whole law is broken, bringing the guilt of disobedience, in the same way when no commandment is broken, the whole law is kept. This is the manner in which guilt and righteousness is imputed by federal headship: for we are not counted as having eaten a fruit in Adam, but as having disobeyed. Similarly, we are not counted as having returned our neighbor’s donkey in Jesus, but as having obeyed.

If it is the case that headship works in this way, then it seems incongruent that, when it comes to our own sin which is hidden in Christ, this binary obedience/disobedience relationship would be replaced by the boolean quantity and quality relationship which accompanies individual transgressions of the law. If Adam’s disobedience is accounted to us without concern for the specific sin; and if Christ’s obedience is accounted to us without concern for the specific laws kept; then it is difficult to suggest that our disobedience is accounted to Christ in a different way. If this is how headship works, then there must be a parity between the way in which Christ’s righteousness is counted as ours; and our sin is counted as his. So it would seem that it is not individual sins which were imputed to Christ at the cross, but simply disobedience itself. He was counted as disobedient; as guilty of the whole law, as we are; and he was punished for this.

Thus, although Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that was only one half of the equation. Being perfect God, his suffering counted as a perfect payment for disobedience—that is, it was a perfect propitiation for the guilt of transgressing the whole law. Therefore, whatever sin we have committed, it can be covered to the uttermost in Christ (see Heb 7:25), if he is counted as the transgressor of the law in our place. However, this alone does not save, for the atonement must be applied to us in order for us to be counted righteous. This second part of the equation is justification, by which the atonement he made is applied to us as individuals through faith. This is done at a time other than the atonement itself—otherwise we would all have been justified at the cross, and would surely not have been “children of wrath” (Eph 2:3) at any point, since we would always have been in Christ. But we know that if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation—the old has passed away; the new has come (2 Cor 5:17). And indeed, we are a new creation: a spiritual person, rather than a natural one (1 Cor 2:6ff), who is reconciled to God (Rom 5:10). But the reconciliation, the new creation, is through the Spirit, by faith (Rom 5:1). Therefore, the application of the atonement comes at another time, when we are given faith, making it efficacious for us.

To summarize everything I have said so far, I think it would be helpful to focus on the term limited atonement. When formulating my first response to Darryl, I had thought about mentioning the imprecision of this term, and how I prefer particular redemption. However, it seemed a little pedantic and unnecessary. Given the discussion so far, however, I think that it is something now worth mentioning. The term limited atonement implies that Jesus’ sacrifice was limited only to the elect. Now, in intention and application this is true, and that is its intended meaning. But in principle it is not, if the federal headship argument I have elucidated above is correct. For, in principle, Christ’s atonement was perfect and infinite; and so the term limited is utterly inappropriate.

Since I think that the federal headship argument is sound, and so the quantity/quality argument I made previously is eliminated, it seems to me that what we are left with is a perfect atonement, with a particular application. The application, of course, is the justification of the elect. The argument I made in my first response, regarding God’s plan of salvation being centered around the elect, with no redemption intended for the reprobate at any stage, still stands. In terms of its intended purpose, the atonement was never made for the reprobate; it was made only for God’s people (John 10:15)—for those to whom he had purposed to apply it. The fact that it could be applied to the reprobate if God had so purposed instead is merely an incidental consequence of the perfect nature of that atonement. A million people could be as easily covered as a thousand; and a billion as easily as a million. It would make no difference; the atonement is without limit in this regard. Thus, the term limited atonement is very confusing and misleading.

However, the intended consequence of this unlimited (ie perfect) atonement was the particular redemption of God’s elect: the individual justification of each and every person chosen by God from the foundation of the world, and not a single other. This justification is applied by God, through faith, as I have already discussed—and with which Darryl agrees. Thus, his “unlimited” atonement is really a “limited” one in the sense meant by the Synod of Dort—at least, that is, the sense apparently meant by interpreters of the Synod, which itself never used the term “limited” in its canons. It is an atonement limited in scope, but unlimited in its nature, because it is perfect. But a perfect atonement must still be applied, and it is done so in a particular sense: to particular people. Therefore, unless I am vastly misunderstanding Darryl, we appear to have come to the same conclusion: that the perfect atonement led to a particular redemption for God’s elect.

This seems to comport with the five-point Calvinist position; although, by denying the quantitative aspect of sin in the atonement itself, we have done a mischief to the popular view of penal substitution, which has Christ covering specific and actual sins at the cross. However, I don’t immediately see a reason to think that penal substitution necessitates such a view. Indeed, since it developed out of satisfaction theory, which focuses on God’s honor but comports perfectly well with the headship view I have offered above, it seems sensible that, in focusing on God’s justice, a similar view of satisfaction is taken. But perhaps I am missing something. In any case, it ought to be noted that this article does reject the classical Calvinist view of actual sins being covered at the cross, which I had presupposed in my first response to Darryl (although it by no means rejects penal substitution itself). I cannot actually see how the traditional position can be reconciled with a perfect sacrifice, for the reasons I’ve given above. Neither does it seem to comport as well with the various places in Scripture where the atonement is spoken of in a more all-encompassing sense (1 Timothy 4:10 springs immediately to mind, though I think traditional Calvinists have offered good alternative interpretations).

In any case, following Darryl’s helpful clarification, a closer examination of the issues leads me into what seems to be agreement with his position. Nonetheless, this is a complex topic encumbered by imprecise language, and so I invite his further comment.