Limited Atonement discussion

Reformed thought affirms the idea that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross covers only the elect, only those God has predestined to be saved without regard to anything they deserve. Arminians question much of the Reformed picture, but limited atonement comes under fire even by middle-of-the-road people. One way Calvinists often put the doctrine is misleading, and they often have to give what seems to me to be a strange reinterpretation of very straightforward passages about God’s love for the world or for everyone or about Christ’s death for all or for the whole world. However, I don’t think you have to give up the doctrine of limited atonement to affirm these passages the way that seems most obvious. These reflections below explain why I think that. They were written in a context of an online debate, and I’ve included some of the statement that I’m responding to.

[What follows is a conversation I had online but before my blog was originally created. I posted it to my website before I knew what a blog was, but it eventually found its way to my blog once I started blogging. The introduction above was added 28 February, 2003. The rest of the post was written 10 October, 2002, and I have dated this post to that original date of writing. A better introduction to this issue and fuller argumentation for my approach appears in a later post. This post is more aimed at tying together some of the things I think about this issue with some of the things I think about other issues that tie into it.]

From the Reformed end:
​

•  Some men are saved and some men are damned. If Christ died, and atoned for the sins of all men, then why aren't all men saved? The only answer to this is that they did not have faith. Christ's atonement for their sin did nothing for them. It was their lack of faith. Now we can see from this that salvation then, is not contingent upon Christ's atoning work but man's work of faith. This is works salvation and a plain denial of Christ's work. Now, since denying limited atonement posits something within the person that he must do apart from Christ, this implies an ability to do so. If there is an ability to do so, then one denies total depravity which posits that there is no ability...and with a denial of total depravity the rest of the doctrines go as well.... 
  ​

This is an argument about what you have to say if you deny limited atonement. What I was suggesting is that someone could believe in limited atonement but be an Arminian on the other points. The atonement was intended only for those who would freely choose. So God didn't specifically plan who it would cover, just that it would cover only the saved. This seems to be a consistent position. I just haven't seen any motivation for holding this odd combination of views. There's no logical problem, though.
 
Again:

• The one [and probably only one] thing that I agree with [name omitted: the person is a universalist who thinks Christ’s death literally covers everyone, since all will be saved] on is that in denying limited atonement, the only other logical position to hold is universalism if one defines the atonement biblically as Christ securing the salvation of those for whom He died. Now Arminians would disagree with this definition of the atonement. They would define it as an act of Christ that makes one saveable [sic] ... but I digress. 
  
  

Right. The doctrine of unlimited atonement that isn't universalism is a misnomer, and [name omitted: the universalist] would be better off pointing that out rather than saying unlimited atonement is universalism. The view is that the atonement doesn't actually cover but potentially could cover anyone. (I think that's consistent with a Calvinist viewpoint, but the meaning of 'potential' is a compatibilist meaning, which isn't the same as how Arminians use the word. What Arminians mean by potential in this case rules out predestination though not necessarily foreknowledge, depending on some other issues.) Anyway, the view [name omitted: the universalist] calls unlimited atonement is just that the atonement really is unlimited in actuality -- it really does cover anyone's sin. That's what the expression literally means, so it's a misnomer to descrine the potentially unlimited atonement as an unlimited atonement. It's actually a limited atonement in its effect, though it's unlimited in its potential. So there are three views.
 
Again:

• Then please explain in what "sense" Christ died for the reprobate. This doesn't follow from the above point. You say above the right view is, "that Christ's death in fact covers only the elect and was not intended to cover any who didn't repent and trust in Christ for their salvation." If it "was not intended to cover any..." then in what "sense" did Christ die for all men? 

 
In one sense, it's that they're in the creation that is being restored. I'm not sure that we can just say that God has no desire for the lost to be saved. He created all things good, and it saddens him that evil would take place. To be orthodox, even Calvinists have to admit this. Maybe evil serves some purposes of God, but that doesn't mean he's excited about the evil itself. He's certainly not excited about the pain and suffering when disciplining people. What he enjoys is that justice is served or that discipline produces godliness. Ezekiel (with a few quotes of it in the NT) says God doesn't delight in the death of the wicked. It's a stretch to apply this to only the wicked elect, just as it's a stretch to say John 3:16 is only about the elect. So in some way God cares enough about the non-elect lost that he has a desire that they be saved, and it's sad to him that they aren't. For some higher purpose that we can't fully understand, he doesn't save them despite this, and he's sad about that, as much as he can delight when justice is served. In the end he's still doing what's best, though we can't see all the reasons why it's best.
 
In that way, something of the potentiality talk of the Arminians should be kept in a full description of the atonement. A Calvinist can get away with saying God intended to save everyone but failed because people's free will resisted him. But a Calvinist can say that God chose to work through humans' choices, some acting naturally to resist him and some acting with supernatural aid from God's grace to repent and follow him. What leads to salvation is the repenting. It's logically possible that those people could have benefited from the atonement if they had repented and followed Christ. They didn't do so, and on one level that's the result of what God has decreed in terms of who is elect. But on another level, namely on the level of human understanding of our own actions, they could have repented. They were given an opportunity, and they resisted out of their natural, depraved heart. In some sense they could have done otherwise, even though they had no power on their own to do so, because they could have been given God's grace to do otherwise.
 
Again:

• This seems to me to be ascribing irrationality to God...He does, He doesn't....I think there is a way of looking at those texts you seem to think are troubling. This seems to imply that God desires to save all men but does not or cannot.

 
No, it's a will not, and it's because of conflicting values in God's hierarchy of what's truly good and worth doing or allowing to happen. He balances things out in a way we can't understand, but there are things to be balanced out. The verses you have given about God doing what pleases him don't undermine this but rather support what I'm saying.
 
Again:

• But I'm also sure that you're aware of the many interpretations that are used on these passages to which you refer. We ascribe no irrationality to God as those who posit the "many wills of God" in fact do.

 
I know about a fair number of reinterpretations of what seem to me to be obvious sayings. It's reminiscent of the Arminian views of Ephesians 1, Romans 8-11, Isaiah 10, and other passages hard to fit with their view. I'm not endorsing a many wills view, as if God has different wills that conflict with each other. God values different things, and some of those values conflict with each other, possibly not absolutely, but maybe once God has created beings who are short of his maximal perfection, certainly once the fall occured. If it was worth it to create beings whom God knew would fall, then this goes back to earlier. Augustine's view was that the libertarian free will view was correct about Adam and Eve but not since then. If he's wrong, and the Calvinist account of human choices was correct even about Adam and Eve, then this goes back all the way. But there's no irrationality here. God sorts out what's truly good and balances out the things necessary to have the best of the best goods. That may of logical necessity involve compromising some truly good things that, isolated from other concerns, God would desire.
 
An example might illustrate this better. To be in genuine relationships, we need to be able to predict the consequences of our actions. If I try to slug someone, and they end up not feeling the consequences, then God isn't having us really interact. My intention was to slug the person. This isn't a real relationship. So certain evils, once evil is allowed, are necessary for more important goods to exist. If you had a choice of a post-fall world with slugging without consequences and a post-fall world with slugging without consequences, ideally the first seems better, but once you realize that the consequences are important for real relationships, you can see why the second is better. This is the true meaning of 'hypothetical' anyway. It involves 'if' statements. If the first option could be had in isolation from this other thing, then it would be better. So God desires it on its own. Unfortunately, sometimes of logical necessity that thing can't happen in isolation without something else that God would rather not have, so God
doesn't always go for everything that he desires when considered in isolation from all the relevant facts.
 
Our use of 'possible' and 'free' is just like this. We say something is possible, and we mean that it's possible with respect to certain facts. It's possible given the laws of physics, it's possible given all we know, it's possible given our abilities but in isolation from external facts we don't know about or in isolation from our own desires. Similarly I might say I'm free to go outside now. I might mean I have the ability (even if not the desire, since it's cold). I might mean nothing external to me is stopping
me. I might mean the laws of physics would allow it if I were to try. I might mean I have this capacity to resist God if he didn't want me to. In the fullest sense of possibility and freedom, I'm not free to do something that I won't do. But that doesn't mean talk of freedom, possibility, potentiality, ability, hypotheticals, and so on are inappropriate in every situation. It's only this last one that is inconsistent with a Calvinist understanding of predestination.