Did Jesus die for the damned?

From a Facebook exchange:

Davenant cites Zanchi saying:

"It is not false that Christ died for all men: for the passion of Christ is offered to all in the Gospel. But he died effectually for the elect alone, because indeed they only are made partakers of the efficacy of the passion of Christ."

Hays 

How is the passion of Christ offered to all in the Gospel unless all hear the Gospel?

Jorge

I don’t think that is the point of the quote (not the main one at least), but that when the gospel is offered at earshot, it is truly offered irrespective of election.

Hays 

Perhaps, but that still wouldn't mean Christ died for all men.

Jorge 

If the offer is real and objective, then he did. Even in a sense.

Hays 

Well, the offer of the Gospel is conditional. If you repent of your sin and believe in Christ, you will be saved. Which doesn't entail universal atonement.

Jorge 

What is being offered is there is nothing to give for some?

Hays 

Again, it's conditional. Christ died for those who respond to the offer.

Jorge 

Sure, it is conditional and all that, but what is he offering to those who don’t respond positively?

Hays 

It's not a promise to those who don't respond. The offer is contingent on a receptive response.

Jorge

So, there is no offer until the hearer responds positively?

Hays 

No, it has nothing to do with chronology. It's not like there's some leftover atonement for sin for those who refuse the offer. Christ never died to atone for the sins of those who refuse the offer.

Jorge

That is an affirmation. But I keep asking, what is being offered to those who will reject?

Hays 

It's not an offer to those who reject it but to those who accept it.

Jorge

So, what is it for those who reject it?

Hays 

It's a promise provided that the offer is accepted.

Jorge

So, it is an offer. You previously said it wasn’t.

Hays 

No, it's a qualified offer. Why is that distinction so difficult to grasp? In one sense you could say those who reject it are promised nothing. Or you could say they are counterfactually promised something (if they were to accept it).

Jorge 

So, if some reject it, do they reject nothing?

Hays 

i) There's nothing in reserve for those who refuse to comply with the terms of the offer.

ii) You keep ignoring the qualified nature of the offer–as if it's either simply a promise or simply not a promise.

iii) The problem is looking for a shortcut formula to reconcile particularist passages of Scripture with universal sounding passages. It's a facile solution that doesn't work.

What's required is to exegete the more universal sounding passages to show that they are in fact consistent with the particularist passages.

Terry

The problem you have in seeing what is being said is your categories. You are falling into the error of thinking in terms of quantity rather than quality. Pecuniary rather than penal. Christ death was not a commercial transaction with the Father...so much suffering for so many sins plural.

Hays 

i) To begin with, you're making ignorant assumptions about my position. I don't take the position that Christ died for x number of sins, but that he died for x number of sinners. 

ii) In addition, "died for" is shorthand for "died with the intention of saving." Jesus didn't die with the intention of saving those who will never be saved.

Bona fide offer

A snippet from Facebook

Elliott

They also face the problems of explaining why it is coherent to say that God loves everyone…

Hays

Calvinists don't necessarily say God loves everyone.

Elliott

…and that the Gospel is genuinely offered to all people if divine determinism is true and universal salvation is false.

Hays

The offer of the gospel is conditional: if you repent of your sins and have faith in Jesus, you will be saved. It's a genuine offer if it's true. If you get what's offered by compliance with the terms of the offer, that's what makes it a genuine offer.

Unless you're an open theist, how is the Gospel genuinely offered to people whom God foreknows will reject the offer?

Elliott

Your language suggests that you are open to humans having LFW; “compliance with the terms” suggests the ability to accept or reject.

Hays

No, I'm referring to a logical if-then relation. 

Elliott

In my view, for a genuine offer to be “true,” as you say, it must be such that those to whom the offer applies have LFW. I.e., one must have the categorical ability to either freely accept or freely decline the offer w/o being determined by prior conditions. The decision must be categorically up to the agent. I don’t believe a genuine offer can be given to one who has compatibilist freedom, since such a person can only choose according to a desire that has been causally determined by prior conditions over which he has no control. 

Hays

The truth of a conditional offer doesn't depend on whether everyone can respond, but whether they will get what is offered in they do meet the terms of the offer. 

Suppose a mansion is put on the market for $10 million. That's beyond my pay grade. That doesn't mean it's not a genuine offer. 

Is the lottery sincere?

In Calvinism, doesn't the butcher first determine that you won't like liver, and then offer you liver? That doesn't come across as a sincere offer.

That's a comment on my analogy in this post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/01/chopped-liver.html

I'd like to respond to it separately, because it has several permutations. 

i) God doesn't directly and individually address the Gospel offer to anyone. It's not like Gabriel appears to every human being. No one's name is on the Gospel offer. It's not a question of God making an offer to people face to face and one by one. Indeed, tens of millions of people never hear the Gospel offer.

So it's not as though God is personally encouraging the reprobate to take him up on the offer. Rather, it's an all-purpose promise that's filtered through second-parties. Preachers and evangelists who don't know who's elect and who's reprobate.

ii) Let's take a comparison. Suppose you buy a lotto ticket. There's an implied promise that if you have the winning number, the prize money is yours.

But the machine has no idea who you are. The ticket machine isn't making you an offer. 

iii) Moreover, does every ticket-holder have a chance to win the lotto? Depends on what you mean. The promise is that if you have the winning number, the prize money is yours. But every ticket-holder can't have the winning number. In that respect,99.9999% of ticket-holders have no chance of winning, since the vast majority of ticket-holders are bound to have a losing number. By design, the intention of the lottery is to limit the offer or promise to a single winner, to the exclusion of everyone else. Most customers go into the process doomed to lose. Their ticket number predetermines the outcome. Yet we wouldn't say that makes the lotto a scam.  

My point is not that that's a direct parallel to the Gospel offer, but it illustrates the complexities and unspoken assumptions about what makes an offer or a promise a bona fide offer or true promise. 

iv) Let's take a different comparison. Suppose two uncover cops infiltrate the mob. In fact, the two cops are partners.

Suppose the Don discovers that one of the agents is an undercover cop, while he's suspicious of the other agent, but unsure.

So he proposes to test the ultimate loyalties of the suspected agent. He names the agent he knows to be an infiltrator. He then tells the suspected agent to shoot him dead.

He does that to smoke out which side the suspected agent is on. He doesn't expect the suspected agent will kill his partner to maintain his cover. 

v) By the same token, Scripture depicts the atonement as having a twofold purpose. It's designed to save some, but drive others away or expose their ultimately loyalties. Intended to inculpate or aggravate their guilt. For instance:

7 But the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me: because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart (Ezk 3:7).

Why does Yahweh send Ezekiel on a mission when he predicts the prophet's failure to win over his audience? Is the futility of the task "insincere"? But it demonstrates how hardhearted they are.

Likewise,

34 And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed” (Lk 2:34).

So the atonement is divisive of by design. Intended to stir up opposition. 

By the same token:

20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God (Jn 3:20-21).

39 Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind” (Jn 9:39).

37 Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, 38 so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,

    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

39 Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,

40 “He has blinded their eyes

    and hardened their heart,

lest they see with their eyes,

    and understand with their heart, and turn,

    and I would heal them.” (Jn 12:37-40).

Chopped liver

I recently had an exchange with an intemperate freewill theist:

"Calvinism tells sinners there is nothing they can do to change their eternal fate."

That confuses predestination with fatalism. Sure, there's nothing you can do to change a predestined outcome, but that hardly means faith or lack of faith is irrelevant to the outcome–for what sinners do or don't do is, itself, a predestined factor leading to the predestined outcome. The outcome won't happen apart from intervening causes.  

"Calvinists are dangerous heretics because they insist that God has NOT made a SINCERE offer of salvation to the whole world through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, His only son."

The offer of salvation is a conditional offer: if you repent of your sins and put your faith in Jesus, you will be saved. That's a sincere offer that's entirely consistent with Calvinism.

"God saves ONLY a relative handful that He Himself has chosen to save, and that these lucky few cannot"

That's a willfully ignorant Arminian trope. Calvinism is neutral on what percentage of humanity will be saved. Some Calvinists think it will be the majority.

"Is this something I can choose to do, or do I have to hope and pray that my 'dead spirit' has been supernaturally "regenerated" first?"

Unless you're Pelagian, even evangelical freewill theists believe prevenient grace is necessary to enable sinners to repent and believe the Gospel. 

What makes an offer a bona fide offer is that if anybody complies with the terms of the offer, he will get what he was offered.

To take a comparison, suppose a butcher offers to sell two pounds of chopped liver for the price of one. If you only buy one pound, you don't get half price. You have to buy two pounds. 

Okay, but suppose I can't stand the taste of liver. In that sense, I can't take him up on the offer. 

Does my distaste for chopped liver make the offer insincere? Not by any reasonable definition of a bona fide offer.

Once again, are you ignorant of evangelical freewill theism? According to evangelical theology generally, original sin renders humans unable to accept the Gospel unless God provides necessary preliminary grace. In Arminian theology, that's prevenient grace. To deny that is Pelagian.

In addition, you keep missing the point. The stated purpose of the chopped liver analogy is to illustrate that an offer isn't rendered insincere due to the inability of a customer to be receptive to the offer. A sale on chopped liver is a bona fide offer even if many customers hate chopped liver. 

"So the offer--at whatever price--is INSINCERE if the person it is being offered to has no ABILITY to receive it."

People who can't stand chopped liver are unable to enjoy the taste of chopped liver. Therefore, they are constitutionally unreceptive to the offer. They find the offer repellant. 

It is insincere for the butcher to offer chopped liver unless every customer is able to enjoy the taste of chopped liver? 

No. It's only insincere in case the butcher has no intention to giving them what was offered if they comply with the terms of the offer. 

Moreover, the butcher isn't even offering chopped liver to customers face-to-face. He simply put an ad in the newspaper.

Actually, the reprobate don't show up. That's the point. It's not as if they show up, only to be served bad food. Rather, they refuse to come because they hate the food. 

Or, to use my analogy, it's not as if they go to the store to buy the chopped liver, present their coupon, only to be charged full price. No, they don't take the butcher up on the offer in the first place since they hate chopped liver.

But there are other customers who just love chopped liver. They go to the store, present the coupon, and get two for the price of one–exactly as advertised. A bona fide offer. 

Dropping the metaphors, the elect accept the Gospel and the reprobate reject the Gospel.

Pecuniary atonement

Furthermore, not only is the gospel call undermined, but so is God’s justice in condemning those who refuse it. Just as a non-elect sinner cannot be asked to take hold of an atonement which was not actually made for him, so he equally cannot be punished for failing to do so. How can he heap condemnation on himself for rejecting the gospel, as in John 3:18, when the gospel was never for him? Indeed, what sense is there to even speak of him “rejecting” something which was never sincerely offered him to begin with? May he not actually turn around and, without any impertinence, point out that God is manifestly dishonest to call everyone to believe a promise which is not made to everyone, and manifestly unjust to punish those who don’t believe when there is nothing for them to believe in? Yet John says, to the contrary, that “whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son. And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:10–12). Eric Svendsen further expands this point by bringing to bear passages which describe the additional condemnation of those who profess the faith, but later fall away. In part 1 of his dialog with James White, ‘When Does Our Union With Christ’s Death Occur?’ he asks, why are they condemned if the gospel was not for them? But Peter says that they deny the Master who bought them (2 Peter 2:1). 

http://bnonn.com/on-the-atonement-part-2/

I'd like to make a few comments on this:

1. I'm going to skip over the objection that it's unjust or insincere for God to condemn the reprobate for refusing to believe an offer that was never extended to them in the first place, inasmuch as I recently discussed that objection:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/05/duty-faith.html

Of course, Bnonn may view that response as inadequate.

2. I don't know how Bnonn is using 1 Jn 5:10-12. Is he using that as a prooftext for unlimited atonement? Is he using that to show how a faulty view of the atonement can be tantamount to calling God a liar? Is he linking the two? Does he think 1 Jn 5:10-12 proves both? If you deny unlimited atonement, in effect you make God out to be a liar?

3. I'd simply point out that in v11, the "we" stands in implicit contrast to John's opponents. In the context of 1 John, these were schismatics who separated themselves from the churches of Asia Minor which John oversaw. 

They were denying that Christians have eternal life in Christ. Ironically, since Christ is the only source of eternal life, to deny that is to exclude yourself from that very source. If anything, this passage cuts against the grain of unlimited atonement. They stand in opposition to the atonement. They reject the atonement. Thus, they are not party to the atonement.

4. Regarding 2 Pet 2:1, that is, of course, a stock prooftext for unlimited atonement. So Bnonn's appeal to that passage is more straightforward. However, 4-point Calvinists reframe the passage by placing that within an overall doctrine of the atonement. The passage itself merely says they deny the Master who bought them. Consider all the things it doesn't say:

i) Christ died for them

ii) Christ died in their place

iii) Christ shed his blood for them

iv) Christ made atonement for them

v) Christ made propitiation for them

vi) Christ redeemed their sins

vii) Christ reconciled them to God

In other words, the passage says nothing about the death of Christ, or sin, or sacrifice, or blood atonement, or vicarious atonement, or penal substitution. To read this as a prooftext for unlimited atonement, you have to superimpose categories that are conspicuous by their absence from the text.

5. In fact, the passage trades on the metaphor of master/slave relations. Even that is very compressed. It could depict transfer of ownership. On that view, they remain slaves, but they have a new master. Or it could depict manumission: a benefactor buys their freedom. On that view, they were no longer slaves, but freemen. 

No doubt the passage indicates that Jesus did something for them. But it doesn't use atonement language or sacrificial language. It doesn't use any religious terminology. Rather, it uses a secular metaphor. 

To take a close comparison, Yahweh redeemed Israel from Egyptian bondage. An act of divine manumission. That, however, wasn't the same thing as atoning for their sins. The Mosaic cultus had atonement ceremonies. But that's different from the Exodus. 

In that respect you can have three different classes of people:

i) The unredeemed

ii) The soterically redeemed

iii) The unsoterically redeemed

On the one hand, you have people who are outside the pale of special grace. On the other hand, you have people who due to their association with Christianity, have enjoyed some benefits or privileges which, however, fall short of the elect. This is like the OT distinction between pagans, nominal Jews, and pious Jews. 

6. Finally, even if 2 Pet 2:1 or 1 Jn 5:10-12 indicated unlimited atonement, that falls short of what Bnonn needs, because he has a very precise model of the atonement. He distinguishes between pecuniary atonement (e.g. John Owen), and judicial atonement. But is there any prooftext for unlimited atonement which specifies or implies that Jesus died for everyone or redeemed everyone in the sense of judicial atonement–in contradistinction to pecuniary atonement?

Duty-faith

This is a follow-up to my previous post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/05/christ-died-for-sinners.html

To my knowledge, this is one objection that 4-point Calvinists (more precisely, Amyraldism) raise to limited atonement: Sinners, including the reprobate, have a duty to believe the gospel. Unless they had a duty to believe it, their failure to believe the gospel would be blameless. But if Christ never made atonement for the reprobate, how can they be obliged to believe in something they were never party to?

That's my own formulation of the argument. Assuming that's accurate, let's assess the argument:

1. As often bears repeating in these discussions, the offer of the gospel is a conditional offer: If you repent and believe in Jesus, you will be saved.

So long as that remains true, the reprobate have a duty to believe it–because it's true. To disbelieve it is to treat it as a false promise. But it's culpable to say God's promise is false–if, in fact, his promise is true.

According to 5-point Calvinism, it is always the case that whoever satisfies the terms of the gospel offer will be saved. 

If Christ didn't make atonement for the reprobate, that does nothing to change the veracity of the promise. According to 5-point Calvinism, Christ made atonement for everyone who satisfies the terms of the gospel offer. 

So limited atonement doesn't generate any inconsistency regarding duty faith. 

2. However, a 4-point Calvinist might object that the conditional formula is deceptively simple: If you believe, you will be saved.

Believe in what? That's a fair question. The 4-point Calvinist fills this out as: Believe that Christ died to save me (or something like that).

But there are problems with that:

i) Prooftexts for the gospel offer don't actually unpack the promise in those terms. A 4-point Calvinist may think that's implicit in the promise, yet that's the very question at issue.

ii) A 5-point Calvinist can fill it out as: To believe in Christ is to believe that there's no salvation apart from Christ, that Christ alone is the only hope of salvation. If you throw yourself on the mercy of Christ, you will be saved. 

iii) We might define it in reverse: not to believe in Christ is to presume that you don't need to be saved, or you don't need Christ to save you.

And that definition is borne out by the enemies of the Christian faith throughout the NT. Jewish opponents of Jesus, as well as heretics. 

iv) Furthermore, the 4-point formula is deceptively simple, for the 4-point Calvinist believes you can't be saved unless you are one of the elect. Therefore, if he were to build that qualification into this conditional formula, if he made that explicit, it would read: If you are one of the elect, and you believe in Christ, you will be saved.

But since 4-point Calvinists affirm limited election, how can a person trust a promise that's predicated on a condition he may not fulfill? Election is an additional ground. Another sine qua non of salvation. 

4. Even though that's all that we really need to say, for the sake of completeness, let's consider some other permutations of this issue.

Do 4-point Calvinists think everyone has a duty to believe the gospel? What about people who died before the atonement? What about people who lived and died outside the pale of the gospel? Are they culpable for failing to believe a gospel they never had a chance to hear? Are they culpable for failing to believe in the atonement before it took place? In principle, a 4-point Calvinist could answer that in either, or both, of two different ways:

i) No, people in general are not obligated to believe the gospel. Not believing the gospel is only blameworthy if you heard it, but disbelieve it. Or, perhaps, not believing the gospel is culpable if you failed to take advantage of opportunities to hear it. 

If so, that's a significant concession. Duty-faith is not a universal duty. God can justly condemn sinners apart from failure to believe the gospel. 

But in that event, universal atonement is hardly a necessary condition for divine condemnation. So a 5-point Calvinist could agree with the negative answer of the 4-point Calvinist, and redeploy that answer to defend the consistency of limited atonement with God's judgment of the reprobate.

ii) Yes, everyone is obligated to believe the gospel, although in some cases that's a counterfactual duty. If God had given that person the opportunity to hear the gospel, then he'd be obligated to believe it, and blameworthy for failing to do so.

But in that event, a 5-point Calvinist can resort to a counterfactual defense of limited atonement. If, in a possible world, the same person believes the gospel who was reprobate in this world, Christ would have died for him in that alternate scenario. In this world he is reprobate, but in that possible world, he's elect (and redeemed). If, in an alternate timeline, he were to believe the gospel, then Christ atoned for him in that alternate timeline.

5. Finally, we can be obliged to believe things we're not party to:

i) For instance, suppose a judge hears a case about breach of contract. The judge isn't party to the contract. Rather, the plaintiff and the defendant are the contractual parties. Yet the judge is obligated to believe certain truths about the contract. It's his duty to rule on the law and the facts of the case. 

ii) Suppose a Martian heard St. John preaching the gospel. Jesus didn't die to make atonement for Martians. Suppose Martians are sinless. 

So the terms of the gospel are irrelevant to a Martian. The offer of the gospel is not a promise to Martians.

Even so, our hypothetical Martian is still obliged to believe certain things about the gospel. If the gospel is true, then he has a duty to believe it's true.

iii) Likewise, suppose I'm reprobate. Suppose Jesus didn't make atonement for me. 

Yet there can still be truths regarding the gospel that I'm obligated to believe. It's true that no one can be saved apart from the atonement. It is my duty to believe that, even if I'm excluded from the atonement. I can have an obligation to believe certain truths concerning the redemptive death of Christ regardless of whether he died to redeem me. Those are two distinct issues. 

6. Now, a 4-point Calvinist might complain that a 5-point Calvinist has to introduce finespun qualifications to make limited atonement consistent with the universal offer–qualifications that are unnecessary for a 4-point Calvinist. These are gratuitous complications, made necessary by commitment to limited atonement. 

However, 4-point Calvinism has its own complications. It must qualify its position to make it consistent with the fact that the offer of the gospel is not universal in time and space. In what, sense, then, is there a duty to believe it? In what sense is that a precondition for divine judgment? Likewise, the 4-point Calvinist must qualify his position to make it consistent with limited election. 

Therefore, both positions have complications. Indeed, 4-point Calvinism has some complications that 5-point Calvinism avoids. The distinctives of each position give rise to corresponding caveats.

Christ died for sinners

In 5-point Calvinism, is limited atonement and/or limited election in tension with the universal offer of the gospel? 

i) God doesn't directly offer the gospel to every individual, or directly command every individual to believe the gospel. 

In that respect, the offer of the gospel parallels special revelation. In might be more efficient if God privately revealed himself to every individual, but instead, God resorts to a public revelation. A mass medium. 

One reason, perhaps, is that humans are social creatures, so having Scripture as a common reference point is a unifying principle.

Be that as it may, the offer of the gospel is like a recipe. If you follow the instructions, this will be the result. A recipe doesn't order anyone in particular to use that recipe. 

ii) In nature, there's a principle of redundancy. For instance, a maple tree produces far more seeds (or maple copters) than will every take root and become trees in their own right. But the redundancy is purposeful. If enough maple trees produce enough airborne seeds, that greatly raises the odds that some of them will take root and produce trees in their own right.

Likewise, many animals produce multiple offspring, only a few of which survive to maturity. But in order to at least achieve a replacement rate, it's necessary to produce offspring in excess of the replacement rate, to offset the loss of the offspring that are eaten by predators before they reach sexual maturity and repeat the reproductive cycle. By the same token, multiple sperm raise the odds that one will fertilize the ovum. 

Humans imitate this principle. For instance, absent vaccination, some people will contract a serious communicable disease and some won't. Since we don't know which is which, we resort to mass vaccination to ensure, as best we can, that everyone who would be susceptible is covered. We vaccinate everyone, not because everyone needs it, but to make reasonably certain that we get the ones who do need it. It isn't necessary for everyone, but it's necessary to include more people in order to cover the subset that really need it. 

Likewise, the military might resort to more extensive bombing strikes to raise the odds of hitting the targets. Or resort to bombs with higher yield to achieve the same end. It gives you a margin of error. 

By analogy, the universal offer of the gospel will be heard by elect and reprobate alike. That's the nature of a mass medium of communication. That doesn't mean it's intended for all. Rather, that's a way of reaching the intended subset. Given that humans are social creatures, unless God privately discloses the gospel to the elect, the only alternative is a general message. 

iii) Let's consider a more subtle illustration. Suppose one country invades another country. Some of the natives form an underground resistance movement. They are planning a counterattack to oust the occupation force. But it will take a while for them to get all their ducks in a row. 

When they are ready to launch the counterattack, they have sympathizers in the news media do a public service announcement. This will seem to be a perfectly innocuous message. But will contain some code phrases that members of the resistance movement will recognize. That will be the signal to come out of hiding and strike back.

The enemy will hear the same announcement, but it won't detect the coded message embedded in the announcement. The enemy isn't privy to the code phrases. 

The message has to be broadcast nationwide to reach all the far-flung resistance cells. Everyone will hear the same message, but everyone won't register the ulterior significance of the message. 

iv) Perhaps a 4-point Calvinist would say this is parallel to the relationship between unlimited atonement and limited election. Christ dies for everyone to cover the elect. 

Whether you think that makes sense depends on your view of what the atonement targets. Does it cover sin? Sins? Or sinners? Does the death of Christ make atonement for some abstraction we call sin? Does it make atonement for sins, as distinct from the agents who committed them? Or does it make atonement for elect sinners? For their guilt?

I don't deny that Scripture sometimes speaks of making atonement for "sin" or "sins", but I think that's shorthand for sinners. I doubt Scripture intends to treat sin as an aggregate substance in abstraction from the particular agents who commit particular sins. Sin is personal. 

If Christ died for elect sinners, then it isn't necessary for the scope of the atonement to exceed the elect in order to cover the elect. If, moreover, Christ dies for the damned, then the atonement doesn't entail the salvation of anyone in particular. That greatly weakens the link between atonement and salvation. 

Olson on hyper-Calvinism

I will comment on this post:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/04/why-hyper-calvinism-is-consistent-calvinism/

I know, I know. I will be accused of being “uncharitable” simply for deconstructing Calvinism.

I don't accuse him of being uncharitable. I accuse him of being a hack. 

Knowing full well that many Calvinists who visit my blog will wrongly take offense, I forge ahead anyway. 

I don't take offense at Olson's hatchet jobs. To the contrary, he invariably performs an unwitting service to the cause of Calvinism by illustrating the weakness of Arminian objections. 

There are many folks out there who are confused about Calvinism and have not considered it from every angle. Before they commit to it, they should consider it from every angle.

i) Not coincidentally, those are the folks who are predisposed to leave Calvinism for freewill theism. They never understood Calvinism in the first place.

ii) If you want to understand Calvinism, you need to begin with some good Reformed expositors. For instance:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2015/02/select-bibliography-on-reformed-theology.html

iii) After that, it's good to read the critics. 

Some years ago, in one particular episode of intra-Calvinist controversy over this issue, the Christian Reformed Church officially affirmed that the gospel message proclaimed to sinners, including the non-elect (!), is a “well meant offer” of God’s grace unto salvation. The denomination affirmed that even from God’s perspective it is a well meant offer to the non-elect. Most Calvinists agree with this; those that do not and therefore avoid indiscriminate evangelism rightly deserve the label “hyper-Calvinist.” The pastor-theologian at the center of that particular controversy was Herman Hoeksema…Hoeksema left the CRC over this issue, believing that the gospel message cannot be a well meant offer to the non-elect and that therefore indiscriminate evangelism should be avoided, and founded his own Reformed denomination.

i) If Olson were an honest critic, he'd engage the clarifications of David Engelsma in Hyper-Calvinism and the Call of the Gospel and Common Grace Revisited.

ii) Moreover, Olson oversimplifies the issues, and reflects ignorance over the breadth of the historical debate. For a corrective:

http://reformedpresbyterianveritasdocuments.blogspot.com/2009/01/free-offer-of-gospel-dr-william-young.html

http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2009/02/language-and-theology-of-free-offer.html

iii) On the Dutch-Reformed side, the debate was bound up with the theory of common grace. Hoeksema was reacting to Kuyper's formulation of common grace.

I think Hoeksema was wrong to reject common grace. However, that doesn't mean Kuyper's formulation is above criticism. There's arguably tension between Kuyperian common grace and the Kuyperian principle of antithesis. 

The non-elect have no real chance of being saved. God will not extend to them the “inward call” which is the basis for regeneration.

That's not what an evangelist is "offering." He's in no position to extend to them the inward call. He doesn't have the power to regenerate people. 

And we can easily construct a parallel argument for freewill theism. An Arminian evangelist can't make people accept the message. He can't make people believe the Gospel. He can only tell them what they ought to believe.

The results are out of his hands, whether you think divine agency is the decisive factor (Calvinism) or human freewill is the decisive factor (Arminianism).

The issue at the center of the hyper-Calvinism controversy is this: Is the “outward call”only, by itself, without the inward call, a well-meant offer to the non-elect? The answer should be obvious. And yet…non-hyper-Calvinists do not see the obvious. Only hyper-Calvinists see it.

i) Notice how often he uses adjectives ("obvious") as a substitute for arguments. He can't actually show how his conclusion is true. 

ii) Notice, too, how Olson's objection applies to anything whatsoever. Arminians fail to see the obvious problems with Arminianism. Only non-Arminians see it.

The objection is essentially circular, for you always have this insider/outsider dichotom between adherents and non-adherents, whatever the theological, philosophical, ideological position. In the nature of the case, insiders don't view their position the same way outsiders do. Otherwise, outsiders would become insiders and insiders would become outsiders. So Olson's objection is self-refuting. 

The argument that Calvinist belief in unconditional particular election of individuals to salvation leads inexorably, logically, to hyper-Calvinism (a la Hoeksema) should be transparent to any thinking person.

In that event, nothing should be simpler or easier than for Olson to explicate how he arrives at his conclusion. Give us a stepwise argument. 

Imagine any hypothetical but realistic scenario in which I “offer” a great gift to a group of people or an unknown individual indiscriminately all the while knowing that some of them are ineligible from the outset for the gift. There are only a hundred gifts but I offer it to a thousand people. Even if I somehow know that only a hundred will ask to receive the gift, my indiscriminate offer to the thousand cannot be called a well-meant offer. It was deceptive.

That's equivocal. You don't offer it to everyone. Rather, you offer it to everyone who will take it. That's easy to formulate:

If you repent of your sins and trust in Christ for salvation, God will save you. 

Here's a related treatment:

http://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/38/38-3/38-3-pp403-412_JETS.pdf

I suppose now that someone will argue that I have misrepresented hyper-Calvinism. It is an essentially contested concept; there is no “official” definition.

Actually, I think hyper-Calvinism should be retired from the theological lexicon. It's become an umbrella term to cover a number of disparate positions. And it's often defined by critics.

Divine frustration

In this post I’m going to defend a position I don’t happen to agree with. I’m going to show how it’s potentially defensible. In other words, if I subscribed to this position, then here’s how I’d go about defending it.

There are Calvinists who think God has unrequited desires. God sincerely desires the salvation of the reprobate.

Not surprisingly, Arminians attack this position as inconsistent. They also use it as a wedge issue.

But in principle, there is a pretty straightforward argument which a Calvinist of this persuasion could use to demonstrate the consistency of his position.

If we accept the metaphysical assumption that only one possible world can be instantiated, then God might like to save the reprobate. But since he can only instantiate one possible world, that desire might be in conflict with another possible world which is preferable overall. All things being equal, God wishes that he could save everyone–but all things considered, a world in which some are lost may be preferable to a world in which everyone is saved. And keep in mind that we’re not necessarily referring to the same set of people in each world.

If this case, God is “limited” (as it were) by what’s logically compossible. Not all possibilities are compossible.

And that would be a “limitation” internal to God, inasmuch as logic is internal to God. The mind of God constitutes the laws of logic.

A Calvinist of this stripe might say God is “frustrated” with his choices. Even so, that would have a fundamentally different basis than divine frustration in freewill theism. In the latter case, God is stymied by human freedom. That’s a limitation imposed on God by outside forces. By something external to God. By the sinful or libertarian will of the creature.

So that’s not a wedge issue. It doesn’t concede a principle to freewill theism. For divine frustration would operate on two essentially different, respective principles.

I myself am sympathetic to a qualified version of the megaverse, so I don’t grant the metaphysical postulate underlying this position. And I also don’t share the hermeneutical assumptions driving this view of the well-meant offer.

If, however, we presume that only one universe can exist at a time, then this is a simple, elegant argument for a Calvinist God who can’t get everything he wants.

Chew on this

Daniel Chew has on interesting back-to-back comparison and contrast between Turretin and Murray on the free offer of the gospel:

http://puritanreformed.blogspot.com/2012/10/turretin-contra-murray-on-well-meant.html

"A Reexamination of the So-Called Well-Meant Offer of Salvation"

http://www.prca.org/articles/ctjblack.html

Did Christ die for anyone?

Debates over the scope of the atonement are typically cast in the following terms:

Calvinists say Christ only died for some (the elect) whereas Arminians say Christ died for all.

This, in turn, raises stock objections to Calvinism. For instance, the Arminian will say, “How does a Calvinist know that Christ died for him?”

Or, “A Reformed evangelist can’t tell a sinner that Christ died for him.”

In this formulation, both sides seem to share a qualitatively similar view of the atonement: vicarious atonement. Where they differ is on the quantitative extent of the atonement.

Mind you, the apparent similarity is quite superficial. In Calvinism, the atonement of Christ actually secures the salvation of the redeemed.

But there’s another issue. The framework is deceptive inasmuch as it fosters the impression that both sides are talking about the same thing.  But consider the following statement:

randal says:

Friday, January 6, 2012 at 9:13pm

Historically the governmental view of atonement (Grotius’ theory) has been much more influential, and for good reason since Arminians historically have rejected both limited atonment and universalism.

 

And we should confess and sing it even if we believe (as most Arminians historically have) that Jesus did not literally suffer for specific sins committed by human beings.

 

*Sort of* in the sense that God’s moral governance requires there be a repercussion for sinful indiscretions. But governance theory surrenders the one conceptually problematic piece of penal substitution (the one that I raised with you), namely the notion of guilt for specific sins being such that it can be transferred from one agent to another like a debt.

http://randalrauser.com/2011/12/singing-the-praises-of-the-imprecatory-psalms/#comments-wrap

Arminians like Rauser have a fundamentally different view of the atonement. It isn’t just the extent of the atonement, but what kind of atonement is being extended.

If you operate with Rauser’s view, then the point of contrast doesn’t lie between Christ dying for some over against Christ dying for all.

Rather, the point contrast lies between Christ dying for some over against Christ dying for none. Rauser doesn’t believe Christ died for anyone, in the penal substitutionary sense.

He may still use vicarious or substitutionary verbiage, but that’s code language for something very different.

Put another way, there are two different ways of asking the question:

i) Did Christ die for you?

ii) Did Christ die for you?

Arminians typically accentuate the pronoun (“you”). Yet the preposition (“for”) does the heavy lifting.

When we say that Christ died for someone, we typically take that as shorthand for saying Christ took their place.

We could also ask the question this way:

iii) Did Christ die for you?

This throws emphasis on the death of Christ. Why did he have to die? What’s the redemptive significance or redemptive necessity of his dying?

If the preposition (“for”) accentuates the vicarious character of the atonement, the verb (“died)” accentuates the penal character of the atonement.

Incidentally, Calvinists don’t object to telling people that Christ died for them. They just object to telling unbelievers that Christ died for them. But they don’t object to telling believers that Christ died for them.

This could also be expressed conditionally: if you believe in Christ, then Christ died for you.

Rauser thinks that penal substitution is consistent with Calvinism and universalism, but inconsistent with Arminianism. So why do contemporary Arminians generally subscribe to penal substitution? For two reasons:

i) It’s more preachable. Very direct. Many people intuitively appreciate the principle. For many, it has great emotional appeal.

ii) In modern times, most Arminians are fundamentalists, dispensationalists, or Pentecostals. They come out of theological traditions that affirm penal substitution. They may have broken with the parent tradition in other respects, but penal substitution is a carryover which they stoutly maintain.  It’s only recently that this residual Calvinism has come under scrutiny from Arminians who wish to purify their theology of these vestigial debts to Calvinism.

Finally, it would be possible to preach a 5-point sermon on each word in this brief question:

Did Christ die for you?

Did Christ die for you?

Did Christ die for you?

Did Christ die for you?

Did Christ die for you?