Outline of Limited Atonement Argument for Debate with Anthony Aquino

 

1. Background to the Atonement

1. Sin renders us guilty and binds us over to punishment. Colossians 2:14 refers to the law as a hand-writing in this regard.  Thus, sinners are called “debtors” (Matthew 6:12), “enemies to God” (Colossians 1:21); and “guilty before God” (Romans 3:19). 

2. There are three things necessary for our redemption:

1. The payment of the debt contracted by sin;

2. The appeasing of Divine wrath;

3. Expiation of guilt. (p. 15)

3. Sin requires the penalty due to sin.  This penalty enacted against sin is also referred to as “Satisfaction.”  In this case, the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). However, to be more specific, the law demands the person who sins dies (Ezekiel 18:4 & 20).

4. Just as the law demands personal obedience, so also the law demands personal suffering.  Thus, for the release of the guilty, the judge must permit the substitution.  So, the death itself would not be enough if it were not accepted by the judge.

5. Thus, Christ made the satisfaction (in other words, paid the debt that was owed) in his life and death, and God the Father, by accepting the satisfaction provides for remission.

6. God has a threefold relation to the sinner:

1. As the creditor

2. As the Lord and offended party; and

3. As the judge and ruler

7. Similarly, Christ has a threefold relationship

1. As a surety (for the payment of the debt)

2. As a mediator and peacemaker (to take away the enmity of the parties)

3. As priest and victim to substitute for us and make atonement by enduring the penal sanction

8. For the atonement to be made, two things were necessary:

1. The human nature in order to suffer; and

2. A divine nature to give the necessary value to such suffering.

9. For the substitution to meet the standard of justice, the following were needed:

1. A common nature so that sin may be punished in the same nature as the guilty (Hebrews 2:14)

2. The consent of the will (Hebrews 10:9; John 10:15&17-18) 

3. Power over his own life (John 10:18)

4. Freedom from his own obligation of death (Hebrews 4:15; 1 John 3:5; 1 Peter 2:22; 2 Corinthians 5:21)

5. Holiness and immaculate purity (Hebrews 7:26-27)

2. The Necessity of the Atonement

1. The vindicatory justice of God (Romans 7:12)

2. The nature of Sin 

3. The sanction of the law (Deuteronomy 26:29; Genesis 2:17; Ezekiel 18:20; Romans 1:18&32 and 6:23)

4. The preaching of the gospel (Romans 3:5) 

5. Positive statements of Scripture linking redemption and blood: Romans 3:24, Ephesians 1:7; Colossians 1:20.

3. The Matter of the Atonement

1. The active obedience of Christ (Romans 3:25-26; Romans 5:19)

2. The passive obedience of Christ

1. Both in suffering in life (Isaiah 53:4-5; 1 Peter 2:21 and 3:17; Matthew 16:21; Hebrews 5:7 and 10:8-9; and Philippians 2:6-7)

2. And death itself 

4. Christ’s Obedience has a two-fold efficacy corresponding to the two-fold effects of sin (mortality and death)

1. Expiatory (freeing us from punishments) and

2. Meritorious (purchasing eternal life and salvation)

5. Statement of the Issue

1. Not the value and intrinsic sufficiency (infinite)

2. Not the fruits and efficacy (we both agree that only believers receive the efficacy)

3. Not the collateral blessings (God’s patience with the reprobate for the sake of the elect allows them to avoid being destroyed in an instant)

4. The mission and death of Christ are restricted to a limited number - to his people, his sheep, his friends, his Church, his body; and nowhere extended to all men severally and collectively.

1. Matthew 1:21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins. 

1. Christ is the Savior of his people by actually saving them, indeed that’s a central purpose of his incarnation and the reason for his name

2. Ephesians 5:23 Ephesians 5:25-26; For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body … Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,

1. Similarly Titus 2:14 (Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.), and from the context we see this relates to the special love of God for his elect

2. Just as “husbands love your wives” is understood restrictively, so also Christ loved the church should be understood restrictively 

3. John 10:15 As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.

4. John 15:13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

5. John 11:52 And not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad

6. Acts 20:28 Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

7. Matthew 20:28 Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. 

8. Matthew 26:28 For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

9. Hebrews 9:28 So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

10. Question for the listener: If Christ died for every one of Adam’s posterity, why should the Scriptures so often restrict the object of his death to a few?

11. The Atonement is definite because specific people were foreknown and given to the Son

1. John 17:2 (As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.), 6 (I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.), 12 (While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.); John 6:37 (All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.)

2. Romans 9:2, 8 (That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. … That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.)

3. Romans 4:13 (For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.); Galatians 3:18 (For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise.); Hebrews 2:16 (For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham.)

4. Matthew 1:21 (And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins); Ephesians 5:23 (For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body)

5. Romans 9:24 (Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?)

6. Romans 8:30 (Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.); Ephesians 1:4-5 (According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will)

7. 1 Corinthians 15:22-23 (For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming.)

12. The Atonement and Intercession are Interconnected

1. I John 2:1-2

2. Romans 8:34

3. John 17:9

4. Isaiah 53:12

6. Objections

1. The Scripture elsewhere extends it to all:

1. While words like “all” and “world” and the like may sometimes be used, the extent is nevertheless contextually limited in each case.

2. The Satisfaction has not been separately considered (as compared to the Application)

1. Laying down life, giving himself, and savior must refer to the satisfaction

2. Although they imply application of the satisfaction, this is not a weakness because satisfaction and atonement are inseparably connected (Numbers 15:28)

3. Christ died absolutely for some and conditionally for other

1. This begs the question

2. Scripture nowhere suggests a two-fold intention to Christ’s death

4. Paul says Christ died for him that doesn’t mean Christ didn’t die for the elect (Galatians 2:20)

1. Although the passages for limited atonement don’t explicitly exclude others, they contextually do exclude others

2. By contrast in Galatians 2:20, Paul is  making himself an example for other believers

5. 1 Timothy 4:10

1. God is not described as the potential savior of all, but the actual savior of all, which is by being the preserver of life

2. Specially distinguishes between life and eternal life (or clarifies who the all are)

3. Acts 17:28 teaches that all men live and move and have their being in God

4. Psalm 36:6 says God saves man and beast

5. Thomas Aquinas agrees

6. The “many” passages are not inconsistent with “all”

1. This was the position of Rome, which shamefully allowed the translation “shed for you and for all” in its English new mass for many years.

2. The “many” passages relate to the application, not merely to the satisfaction for “remission” and “bearing their sins” are not merely a price