Yesterday, I found an old post from A Puritan’s Perspective- a blog published by a student at Boyce College- offering biblical proof for the doctrine of Limited atonement. The article offers some good insights, and I commend reading of this article [found HERE] to anyone who may currently be thinking through this issue.

This past Tuesday Dr. Ben Witherington III of Asbury Theological Seminary wrote the following at the end of a blogpost titled “The Freedom of God and the Free Will of Human Beings“: “What God requires of us, he enables us to do, so that in small measure we may reflect the virtuous and free character of our God.” (more…)

[See Part 1.]

Dr. Allen’s second argument against Limited atonement in relation to Hebrews 2:9 attempts to set the verse in the broader context of the soteriology presented by the author of Hebrews. Dr. Allen explains:

What precedes the issue of the extent of the atonement is… ‘why the Incarnation?’ … The… point of the author of Hebrews is that what Man messed up because of sin, Jesus, as the final Adam, is going to fix it up by virtue of His death on the Cross, His resurrection, and His ascension, and His reigning in heaven for all eternity, and therefore, He will fulfill what mankind could never fulfill in Psalm 8. And He did that, and a part of His doing that, and a part of His exaltation, and His kingship is not just that He is Lord by virtue of His deity (though that is true), it is (according to Hebrews) He is Lord by virtue of the fact that He died for all people, He rose again, He ascended to heaven, and as the perfect Man and the fulfillment of Adam– what Adam was, Christ has regained for all of humanity, and the key to it was his death on the Cross to make it happen. Does that mean everybody’s going to be saved? No! But it does mean that the Bible teaches Jesus died for all people. (more…)

[Continued from the post Limited Atonement in Historical Theology.]

In arguing against Limited atonement from Hebrews 2:9, Dr. Allen actually spends the majority of his time discussing issues of Historical Theology (i.e., as mentioned before, he asserts, “Virtually every Christian from the early church until the Reformation believed in an unlimited atonement;” he also spends a great deal of time proving that John Calvin believed in universal atonement) and offering rhetoric against Limited atonement.

Dr. Allen makes two arguments from the text itself; I intend to discuss the first of his arguments in this post and the second in a post next weekend. (more…)

In response to the post “Death by Degrees?” a commenter named Brad posed the following objections:

Does this really matter?

Can’t we all agree that so much of the world needs help, and the only way to help anyone is with the love of Jesus?

Does it really matter how depraved we think the world is, as long as we agree that without Jesus they need our love?

This debate — what a fantastic way to waste 5 hours of some probably intelligent people’s time, as well as the time of however many people might listen.

Think of the value of that time. Think of the things that God could do through us during that time to bring his reality to others rather than deciding who’s more right about this or that.

I guess I don’t understand how this is vital to anything, or even important — meaningless talk and debate.

-Brad

Initially, my thought when reading the above comment was to wonder why, given his low view of this conversation, Brad would want to waste precious moments of his life even addressing such a useless issue. But then I realized that the points he raised are serious and are probably common.

So, what does it matter if people living after Genesis 3 are Totally depraved by nature? Why should we be willing to debate this issue? (more…)

I wanted to repeat this point, as it may have gotten somewhat buried in my last post.

The Reformer Martin Luther taught Limited atonement.

Regarding Romans 9:20-21, Luther wrote:

“God will have all men to be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4), and he gave his Son for us men, and he created man for the sake of eternal life. And likewise: Everything is there for man’s sake and he is there for God’s sake in order that he may enjoy him, etc. But this objection [to God’s sovereignty in salvation] and others like it can just as easily be refuted as the first one: because all these sayings must be understood only with respect to the elect [emphasis in original], as the apostle says in 2 Timothy 2:10, “All for the elect.” Christ did not die for absolutely all, for he says: “This is my blood which is shed for you” (Luke 22:20) and “for many” (Mark 14:24)- he did not say: for all- “to the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28). [Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans, translated and edited by Wilhelm Pauck (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1961), 252.]

This is (at least) historically significant, for with all the debate over ‘did Calvin himself believe the L of TULIP?’ and with all the charges against Beza– that he introduced Limited atonement as a strange new teaching within Reformed thought (Dr. Allen is far from alone in this kind of argumentation), it turns out that at the time of the Reformation, the first teacher to assert Limited atonement was the same man who (in a sense) started the Reformation, with his clear, forceful assertions of justification by faith alone.

This past February, Dr. David Allen, the Dean of the School of Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, delivered two lectures from the book of Hebrews. In the first lecture, Dr. Allen argued for Lukan authorship of Hebrews and against the contemporary practice of sign gifts as found in modern charismatic movement. In the second lecture, Dr. Allen offered additional arguments for Lukan authorship of Hebrews and argued against Limited atonement. [Listen to the lecture HERE.]

Dr. Allen’s argument against Limited atonement is primarily based on his understanding of Hebrews 2:9, and I hope to interact with his teaching on this verse in a future post. In this post, however, I wish to examine some historical comments that Dr. Allen made while prefacing his assertions from Hebrews.

Dr. Allen said:

Virtually every Christian from the early church until the Reformation believed in an unlimited atonement. That is a historical, provable fact. The only possible exception to that fact would be the later writings of Augustine, and even that’s disputed… Martin Luther believed in an unlimited atonement… Lutherans still believe that today, it’s a part of their doctrinal statement… All of the [early] English reformers– Cranmer, Latimer, you just name [them]– they all believed in an unlimited atonement… Ulrich Zwingli believed in a universal atonement… Universal atonement was the accepted viewpoint even of Reformed theology until about the year 1600. [The Heidelberg Catechism is quoted in support of this last point: “He bore in body and soul the wrath of God against the whole human race.”] Theodore Beza was probably the first Reformer to explicitly teach limited atonement, and then follows the Synod of Dort. (more…)

In an issue of The Founders Journal titled Contending for Truth in Love an article by Fred Malone was published titled “Infant Baptism and the Regulative Principle of Worship.” I draw attention to this article because it rightly ties together topics of two recent discussions on Strange BaptistFire- the defense of believers’ baptism and the regulative principle of worship. Readers are encouraged to view the article HERE and to leave comments about the article in the meta of this post.

Most of us have seen a TV show or have read a story in which the plot involves the use of a love potion. Usually, the case is one of unrequited love: The guy cherishes a girl who barely recognizes his existence. A love potion is obtained (typically from an elderly gypsy lady), applied to the girl, and she magically begins to return his affection. Generally, this leads to disastrous results, contrary to the enamored guy’s intentions, and the relationship ends- either permanently, or in such a way that the guy must re-win the girl’s affections through normal means.

The viewer or reader understands this storyline because we recognize the use of a love potion as a violation of a person’s will. The Arminian capitalizes on this line of thought in arguing against the doctrine of Irresistible grace. The Arminian argues that just as a love potion cannot be ethically used to bring someone into a human relationship, God cannot act by sovereign decree to bring an individual to Himself, if a relationship of love is to be established. God must (the reasoning goes) either preserve or restore a sinner’s free-will so that he or she can freely choose to either accept or reject His offer of grace. We see an example of this argument during the first episode of the five-part debate on Calvinism between James White and Steve Gregg [the entire debate can be heard HERE.]

Gregg asserted:

Salvation is itself a relationship with God, and relationships are not of really very much worth if they are forced. If a person is forced to be in relationship with someone they don’t want to be in a relationship with, or did not previously want to be in– they were made to– that’s not the same thing as a relationship. (more…)

Last Thursday, Reformed Baptist apologist James White began a debate with Steve Gregg, radio host and author of Revelation: Four Views (a very useful resource), on the subject of “Calvinism,” which will last a total of five one-hour time periods, concluding this coming Wednesday. [The debate can be heard HERE.] Gregg rightly identified the core distinctives of “Calvinism” to lie in a particular view of God and of Man (as Calvin noted at the beginning of his Institutes, “Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves”); “Calvinism” teaches that God is totally sovereign and that Man, after his fall into sin recorded in Genesis 3, is totally depraved. [These teachings are, in fact, see, common to the Reformers; see, for example, John Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996), 26, in which Calvin demonstrates that he is in agreement with Martin Luther’s teaching on these matters.]

In explaining total depravity, Gregg said:

Total depravity, as is taught in Calvinism, teaches that Man in his natural state at birth is totally so in bondage to sin, so dead in sin, so incapable of making any response to God, that in our natural state there is nothing we can do to approach God or even to really want to approach God– that our hearts are strictly hostile to God from birth, that we hate God and we hate His laws, all people do, says Calvinism.

This definition of the T in TULIP is not bad, as far as it goes. But it does contain at least one notable curiosity, seen in the [repeated] use of the word “so.” (more…)