“T. F. Torrance argued that, as the High Priest in the OT disappeared when he entered the Most Holy Place on the day of Atonement, so the atonement is a mystery. Limited atonement is seen as a rationalistic attempt to reduce a mystery to the bar of human logic, and so is imperssible.”
Robert Letham
Systematic Theology — pg. 573
I always love it theologians use logic to insist that we shouldn’t use logic.
If human logic is out of bounds as having explanatory power then we are all blind, deaf mutes when it comes to understanding anything.
Keep in mind Gordon H. Clark’s words here;
“in the beginning was the Logic and the Logic was with God and the Logic was God.”
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John 10:11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
The good shepherd laid down His life for the sheep but many of those sheep the good shepherd laid down His life for were not yet born and would not be for millennium. This fact drives us to conclude that countless number of the sheep that Christ laid down His life for were His sheep before they were His sheep. That is, His sheep were His sheep from eternity past so that there existed an objective Union between the Shepherd who would give His life and the countless number of sheep yet to be conceived who would be the future beneficiaries of the Shepherd’s cruciform work.
Before Christ won me, I belonged to Christ. Objective Union with Christ from eternity. Subjective Union w/ Christ when we are regenerated with a regeneration that is a gift flowing from the Cross wherein Christ justified the people who were objectively justified from eternity.
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All those who hold to the idea that Christ’s death is universal in scope (or hypothetically universal in scope) cannot have a penal substitution understanding of the atonement wherein Christ makes effective atonement for particular sinners. If Christ died for everybody in general and nobody in particular then Christ’s simply suffered various sufferings so that eventually in time sinners in general might do something to effectuate what up until the point of effectuating was inert and without power. The Cross is latent with salvation but it does not save without something from the human being mixed with it to make it effectual. That something is usually a inverted definition of faith, wherein faith actually becomes a work that activates the Cross’s power and obligates God to give salvation in response to the human response of faith.
Those who don’t hold to the penal-substitution theory, at best, have a Governmental view of the Atonement where the Father punishes the Son to uphold a generic justice in His universe and whereupon men, feeling pity for the suffering Christ, come to Christ out of a sense of compassion.
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“Calvin’s dominant theme on the atonement is satisfaction of the justice of God. Christ has abolished sin, banished the resulting separation from God, and acquired righteousness for us ‘by the whole course of his obedience,’ although peculiarly and properly by His death. Even in death ‘his willing obedience is the important thing because a sacrifice not offered voluntarily would not have furthered righteousness.’ He offered Himself to the Father as an expiatory sacrifice. By His obedience He acquired and merited grace w/ His Father. The substitutionary nature of Christ’s death is clear as Calvin cites Mt. 20:28, John 1:29, Rmns. 4:25, and 5:19, and Gal.4:4-5. Christ’s offerings rends ‘ the Father favorable to us, this propitiatory sacrifice being a provision of God’s love. Calvin affirms, ‘Christ’s grace is too much weakened unless we grant to His sacrifice the power of expiating, appeasing, and making satisfaction.’ ‘The righteousness He acquired for us when He reconciled us to God is as if we had kept the law. The link to justification is clear.”
Robert Letham
Systematic Theology — p. 566-567
Citing Calvin’s Institutes
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“The merciful Father … said to [his Son]: ‘Be Peter the denier; Paul the persecutor, blasphemer, and assaulter; David the adulterer; the sinner who ate the apple in Paradise; the thief on the cross. In short, be the person of all men, the one who has committed the sins of all men. And see to it that you that you pay and make satisfaction for them.”
Martin Luther
Luther Works – Vol. 26 – p. 280
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If you have a doctrine of the atonement that emphasizes satisfaction to God’s honor then don’t be surprised if the culture around that doctrine ends up being a honor culture.
The fact that the concept of honor has been so diminished in our culture, I would suggest, is proof positive that we have abandoned the Satisfaction theory of the Atonement.
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John 17: 9 I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours.
As our great High Priest Jesus prays for a very particular people. Part of the ministry of the Priest was not only to offer sacrifices for the sins of the people (which Jesus did by offering up Himself as our sacrifice) but the ministry of the Priest was to represent the people to God in prayer.
If that is true (and it is) then if Jesus as our Great High Priest only prays for those the Father has given Him then consistency demands that this same Great High Priest only renders up Himself as the sacrifice for those same particular and unique people He prays for.
Non particularistic doctrines of the Atonement are NOT Biblical and really should be read out of Christendom.
