Particular Redemption/Limited Atonement - Some Questions Answered

(This is not meant to be an exhaustive defence, just some persoal thoughts on the subject. For a more thorough defence of Limited Atonement, please see John Owen's, 'The Death of Death in the Death of Christ')

Most people acknowledge that Reformation Theology has at its centre, the idea that man is morally incapable of pleasing God or turning to Him without God first freeing their will to do so. This system of theology (sometimes termed Calvinism) is often presented in the acronym T.U.L.I.P. A kind of theological shorthand that was formulated at the Synod of Dort (1618-1619).

At the heart of the infamous TULIP is the most controversial point called Limited Atonement indicated by the ‘L’. This view has always come under much scrutiny and there is a growing trend amongst Reformed folk today to abandon the ‘L’ and embrace a kind of 4 point formulation.

Does God Love the World?

It was just a few weeks back that I was posed three questions regarding my belief in 'Particular Redemption', here's how I responded (the questions will appear highlightes to allow for easy reference).

“I just don't get all the verses that declare the gospel is available to all humanity.”

And indeed it is. Reformed Theology has never made a distinction between WHO the gospel is AVAILABLE to. It is for all; for all men everywhere, on all occasions. The call of the church is to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, baptising those who believe (Matt 28:19). There are a small band of (so-called) Christians (hyper-Calvinists) who believe we are to preach to the elect only, which of course is absurd. We have no idea who they are, and it also goes against every biblical command to preach in season and out of season (meaning there’s never an occasion NOT to preach the glorious truths of God’s saving grace).

“[But]…scripture says [Jesus] died for the world."

Indeed it does, and I will have to take a moment longer on this one then the last, so please bear with me.

Here’s the problem: we are terribly unskilled exegetes of God’s word when our minds are often so plagued with our own ideas and definitions of terms. This is so bad that often we are unable to go back into the minds of the authors of the text and discern what it is they meant when they wrote. After all, it matters NOT what you or I or the clown down the road thinks a verse means. It matters what God means. And because God used real human beings to pen scripture, it then matters ultimately what the actual human author meant.

When John, Paul or Moses used a word, our only job in finding out what the word means is to discern what the word meant in them.

We all have a duty to keep this in mind when we come to the text of Holy Scripture.

So what about the world the apostles lived in? What did that kind of world look like? How did they view it? These questions are of absolute importance because the word, world, after all, is theirs.

• John 1:29, "The next day he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, 'Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!'"
• John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life."
• John 4:42, "and they were saying to the woman, 'It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Saviour of the world.'"
• 1 John 2:2, "and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world."
• 1 John 4:14, "And we have beheld and bear witness that the Father has sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world."

What on earth does the word world mean in these texts, and does it mean what the one wrestling to harmonise these texts with a limited atonement thinks it means?

The world to a 1st century Jew had an unquestionable shape and context. The world to a 1st century Jew was comprised of two categories of people, Jew and Gentile. This was an unkind appellation to give those who were not Jew, for to the Jew this meant they were NOT the people of God, they were NOT His covenant people nor were they to be recipients of His goodness.  The Gentile world was how they were viewed because they obviously made up the greater part of God’s globe.

Interestingly, Jesus and the apostles fought against this distinction of separating Jew and Gentile at surface level, and yet they often used the same wording in their teachings. Jesus could say, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated Me first.” (Jn. 15:18). This is obviously not a polite way of viewing the world and OBVIOUSLY this use of the term world is not meant to be interpreted as, ALL PEOPLE, EVERYWHERE.  Jesus has made a kind of distinction between the people of God, in this case Christians, and those who are outside God’s grace and covenant, the world. John the beloved did the same thing in his first epistle when he said, “Do not love the world or anything in the world.” (1 Jn. 2:15), again making a separation between what is of God and what is not. Now here is another great example where we are NOT to interpret the term world as ALL PEOPLE, EVERYWHERE, otherwise this text then forbids me loving my wife and children, or my church family or anyone else for that matter.

Sometimes the apostles and prophets in writing scripture used shorthand expressions much the same way you and I do today. They didn’t need to express every word of a sentence because they knew the listeners were adept enough to take context as a guiding rule of interpretation.

A clear modern example is this.

Let’s say I told you that I was once ordained as a minister in a Christian denomination that forbade their ministers from drinking. You would not be safe concluding we all died of thirst, because you know due to the context, the word drinking is to be taken as short hand for drinking-alcohol. I think we would all be very surprised to know that we speak like this quite often. A very important part of our doctrine of scripture is that we know the scribes God used to pen scripture were not auto-scribes or robots, or people God made to pass out while He took their hand and wrote through them. Instead, we believe that each author’s idiosyncrasies and personality traits come right through the text. We allow these authors to use shorthand as they see fit and the context to give us our interpretation.

Here’s an obvious example of this.

Luke is arguably the most careful and intellegent historian in all of scripture, and thus if you want to study the life of Jesus or the early church, Luke is the man you’ll probably turn to. Luke is likely the highest educated of our New Testament authors (aside from Paul), and was not a Jew, but was Greek.

In Chapter two of his Gospel narrative he opens with this line, “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.” (vs. 1)

Now I have just said that Luke is probably scripture’s best historian and this is not in doubt, but there’s no question that Caesar did not decree that ALL THE WORLD should be registered, did he? I mean, did he decree that every Aboriginal should be registered also? What about the North American Indians? Or the New Zealand Maoris? This is, of course, absurd. Luke is speaking of an emperor who called for a census of the people in his empire and the context demands we interpret the word world  here as the Roman Empire; a juggernaut of political power that was many times within and without scripture referred to simply as the world.

And as I said earlier, in Jewish language it was very appropriate to categorise humanity as Jew and Gentile. At times, the word Gentile dropped off and the Jew would simply speak of the Jews and the world – God’s covenant people and the rest of the world, and as seen earlier John and Jesus use these same categories for the church, by saying the church and the world (“the world will hate you”, “Do not love the world” etc.)

The word, world, means something totally different to us in our day and there’s no mystery why. We must understand that in the days of Jesus and just about every era that preceded it, each individual that ever lived NEVER saw themself like we see ourselves today. The catch cry of our humanistic, modern existence is, look out for numero uno; that is to say when we think of human existence we think of a numberless mass of individuals. We think of the world as countless people who are each different and unique. There’s some truth to this, but this is such a historically foreign concept that we had better be aware that it is alien to the text of scripture. People in Jesus’ day and throughout history identified themselves, not as individuals, but rather in some form of community. People’s identity was entirely wrapped up in their nationality, their family name, their religious allegiance (etc.), so much so that if you asked a 1st century Palestinian who he was, he might give you his family name (perhaps even omitting his first name) and religion, or something to identify how he belongs in a community on some level. If you ask a person on the street today who he is, they’ll often give you their individual name and perhaps their job title or identifying achievement.

e.g. “I’m Craig and I pastor a church.”

Or, “I’m Darren Lockyer and I captain the Australian Rugby League team.”

In our modern world identity is about the individual, in the Ancient Near East (Jesus’ day and geography) identity meant whose son you were, or which family you descended from, or your nationality (son of Abraham, son of Edom, son of Amalek etc.).

One must see the way in which the human psyche has evolved over the past few millennia, from referencing existence in community, to referencing individualism, in able to discover the intent of the biblical authors.

So again, when they said the word, world what did they mean? Did they mean every individual that made up the globe, past, present and future? Well truthfully, they never really thought about the world in terms of individuals; that is a very modern concept that one imports into the text of scripture. This way of reading history is called anachronistic; where we read backward (chronologically) a concept or thought that was never in the minds of those of the past.

Paul gives us a great example of this in one of those texts that often gets launched against Reformed Theology.

1 Tim. 2:1-6, “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.”

In the above we see the word, all used twice to refer to redemption and salvation of men and once for prayer. In our modern understanding of the world we just conclude that all means every person. I think that’s how we get stuck. Even Paul makes the clear distinction as to what he means by all when he says, “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life”. He gives us in the context explicitly who he is referring to by all and he doesn’t say, “Jack, Jill, John, Jane”, but rather gives us a category of people; “kings and all in authority”. He wanted those in Ephesus (the church to which 1st and 2nd Timothy were written to) to pray for their persecutors. The ones leading the charge against the church were the kings and leaders of the realm. Why did Paul want them to pray for all categories of people, especially “kings”? Because the people had inadvertently concluded that those in leadership cannot be saved when they are trying so hard to destroy God’s church. Paul wants to strike this stupidity down and say that God does not discriminate against what COMMUNITY, or CATEGORY you belong to, “He wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

All individuals, in every place at all times?  

Well, that would be a concept utterly foreign to the apostle Paul who so clearly speaks against a universal ransom – saying ever so clearly that NOT all will be saved and that Christ died only for His church (Acts 20:28).

Paul believed that Jesus was the Saviour for all people, which is to say they were NOT getting another, no matter who they were or where and how they belonged. Jesus is this world’s saviour, He is the Saviour for all men, Paul does NOT say Jesus SAVES ALL MEN, for that is entirely different and this would make Paul a Universalist.

So when we see the text of scripture speak about God’s love for the world, God’s salvation for the world, God’s propitiation for the world, it is more often spoken as a way of understanding that salvation through Christ is offered for all; not for the financial elite only, and not the poor only; not for the fisherman only but also the doctors and not for the Jews only but for the rest of the world too.

1 John 2:2 when read in context should be understood as, "and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours [Jews] only, but also for those of the whole world." [parentheses mine]

Does the “those of the whole world” phrase here mean every person in the world; past, present, future? Of course not, but it does mean every category of people, BOTH Jew and Gentile.

When we leave the theme of atonement and just consider texts that speak to everyday issues (like the census in Luke 2), even there we find that the language of all-inclusivity is never meant to be understood as EVERY PERSON.

Here’s another example (and we could provide a very many).

Paul says to the church in Colossae, “Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing—as it also does among you.” (Col. 1:5-6)

Here Paul is complimenting the hearers of his letter and commending them who heard the “word of truth, the gospel” and are bearing fruit thereby. Then he says, “as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing”. Now surely we are not to expect Paul here means EVERY PERSON on planet earth, past, present and future. Paul cannot mean that each individual has heard the gospel and the gospel is growing in them and bearing fruit. Of course not, that would be absurd and no one suggests that it should mean such. Paul simply means that as far as the Known World had stretched, the gospel is growing and bearing fruit to those outer limits in all facets of society. There’s no way we can try and understand him to mean world as we, in our day, often mean world – that is by meaning all individuals because it’s simply absurd again to assume that God had, in Paul's day, caused the gospel to bear fruit among the Australian Aboriginals; North American Indians and New Zealand Maoris.

It was also asked,

“Also, something I’m not getting is how it is a loving relationship if he is controlling it… We're like chess pieces or puppets and he’s controlling everything. I'm fine with that though, God is sovereign and has complete right to do as he pleases. But I don't get how it's a loving, responsive relationship if he has predestined everything and is controlling everything...”

Might I simply ask where you ascertained that definition of love from? You seem to be operating from a definition of love that demands “non-control” and “responsiveness”.

I am not saying that this is necessarily wrong but I wonder if those things really do matter in a love relationship if God has not explicitly said so. Remember that our source of truth is always GOD’S WORD, not some humanistic view of love that can be learned from popular romance novels.

The text of scripture says GOD is Love (1 John 4:8) therefore however GOD LOVES, is in fact, the definition of love and nothing else.

Let me provide an illustration for you (partly stolen from Mark Driscoll, yet this did really happened to me recently, so it’s now my illustration).

I have a 19 month old son who is a very fast runner, and just recently I was at the car park of the local shopping centre with him, as well as with my niece and nephew (8yrs and 7yrs respectively). I asked my nephew to release my child’s seat restraint when we were fully stopped and what I DIDN’T ask him to do was open my child’s door (for obvious reasons). Well, lo and behold, my nephew (with nothing but good intentions) thought he’d go one step farther and let my son out of the vehicle.  I had no idea what was going on until I turned around and saw my son, running as fast as he could toward the VERY busy main road. My heart stopped and I threw myself toward him sprinting as fast as I could (he was about five metres distant at this point), with all my might and all my attention and literally (I’m not just saying this to make the story more dramatic), I was able to snatch him in my grasp a split second before he would have run right into oncoming traffic.

I saved him, and I did it WITHOUT requiring him to want me to do so; or to exercise his own free will toward choosing my actions toward him. He was MY CHILD and I snatched him from danger and I would do it again without notice, and I care not what or how he protests because I know BETTER than he, I am his sovereign father and I LOVE HIM!!!!!!

• Can God do that without being impugned or accused of being loveless?
• Can God snatch His children out of the flames of hell, by the greatest act of self-sacrifice the world WILL EVER KNOW?
• Can God be loving and NOT ASK PERMISSION to save us?
• Can God love us and refuse to listen to our tantrums and protests about how much we love sin and do not feel all-together drawn to a completely sovereign God who doesn’t want to know what we want?
• Can God love us by taming our will and showing sovereignly that He cares not about our self-flattering concept of autonomy?
• Can God LOVE US and NOT ASK permission to save us?

I present to you that GOD can and will do just that.