Engaging the Controversy
Perhaps the most controversial of all of the points of Calvinism is this one: Limited Atonement. If you ever hear of people claiming to be “4-point Calvinists,” it is almost always this one point that they reject.
Here is the idea behind limited atonement in a nutshell: Limited atonement means that Jesus’ death on the cross only had saving effect for the elect. In other words, the sins of the non-elect were not paid for by Jesus’ death.
I’m not writing this to defend limited atonement. If you want a good defense of limited atonement, check out these resources at Monergism.com.
My purpose is to show why the language of “limited atonement”–while good and helpful in many ways–screens out some other realities about the work of the Messiah on the cross.
Perhaps this is why our non-limited-atonement friends get so upset. Perhaps they see some other biblical realities that take place at the cross that we ignore simply because we use language that screens them out.
Think about it: When we say we believe in limited atonement, we have just defined all of what happened on the cross in terms of “atonement.” But is atonement the only thing that Christ accomplished by his death? To ask it another way, is the saving of the elect the only effect of the cross?
This quote by Louis Berkhof comes from his work on Common Grace:
Reformed theologians…believe that important natural benefits accrue to the whole human race from the death of Christ, and that in these benefits the unbelieving, the impenitent, and the reprobate also share. In every covenant transaction recorded in Scripture it appears that the covenant of grace carries with it not only spiritual but also material blessings, and those material blessings are generally of such a kind that they are naturally shared also by unbelievers.
…
These general blessings of mankind, indirectly resulting from the atoning work of Christ, were not only foreseen by God, but designed by Him as blessings for all concerned. It is perfectly true, of course, that the design of God in the work of Christ pertained primarily and directly, not to the temporal well-being of men in general, but to the redemption of the elect; but secondarily and indirectly it also included the natural blessings bestowed on mankind indiscriminately. All that the natural man receives other than curse and death is an indirect result of the redemptive work of Christ.
More Than One Way to View the Atonement
Throughout Church history there have been (and continue to be) various views of what we call “The Atonement.” Wayne Grudem lists these:
- Penal Substitution
- Ransom to Satan
- Moral Influence
- Example
- Governmental
[quote] There is a view not mentioned here, though perhaps hinted at, known as the Christus Victor view. In essence, this view claims that in his death and resurrection, Jesus claimed victory over everything: sin, death, hell, the power of Satan over all of creation.
Perhaps what we need to is to see how this understanding of the atonement and the penal substitutionary view fit together, since both are true. We have tended to neglect Christ’s victory over all things and have just focused instead on the legal aspect of the atonement.
When we speak of “limited atonement” we speak explicitly in penal substitutionary categories. We need to see more than that in the death of Jesus.
Justin Taylor pointed out in a recent post this quote by John Murray:
Redemption from sin cannot be adequately conceived or formulated except as it comprehends the victory which Christ secured once for all over him who is the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air . . .
[I]t is impossible to speak in terms of redemption from the power of sin except as there comes within the range of this redemptive accomplishment the destruction of the power of darkness.
(Redemption—Accomplished and Applied, p. 50)
So as we speak of the death of Jesus and what it accomplished and what God intended to accomplish by it, we need to remember that the bride of Christ is indeed at the heart of redemption, but that even creation itself has been affected by work of the Messiah. Jesus has set in motion his kingdom through his death and resurrection, and it is spreading throughout nations and communities and social structures and even the earth itself as people are being renewed in the image of God.
Let’s be careful not to screen out the greatness and the bigness of the gospel by only using language that focuses on one aspect of the gospel.
