limited

Limited Atonement

ka-Chunk!

That's the sound of the last petal of the TULIP falling into place in my personal beliefs. After 27 years of being a Christian, I finally understand (I'm slow, what can I say?) why Limited Atonement is necessary - demanded, even, by the other parts of the tulip.

One of the proofs responsible for this is reading a section of Owen's "The Death of Death in the Death of Christ", where he challenges Arminians on the threefold possibilities. Either Christ died for:

1. All the sins of All men, or
2. All the sins of Some men, or
3. Some of the sins of All men.

The Arminians - and the PTUIs, like I was earlier this week - are hard-pressed to maintain, if Christ died for all sins of all men, why any should finally go to Hell for unbelief, seeing that He died for that unbelief of those who would not accept His Atonement. In other words, their position seems to require a special class for that unbelief apart from all the other sins. I see now that it is much more logical and scriptural to see that Christ died to pay for all of the sins of the elect.

Another book that has been instrumental was R.K. McGregor Wright's "No Place for Sovereignty". His book especially helped me to see that election absolutely cannot be determined by (as I have heard in many Baptist churches) the fact "God looked down the corridors of time and saw who would come to Him and elected those people". I see that now as circular, unscriptural and demeaning of God's other attributes.

Another good point that RKMW made was that Arminianism often leads to worse views about God. On reflecting on this I had to agree. I considered those in the different email groups who had heterodox views of God:

"God cannot see all of the future, because it hasn't happened yet."
"We can change the outcome of what God said would happen through our prayers or declarations of "faith.""
"God has no hands but our hands, no feet but our feet".
Most, if not all of these loony-tune doctrines, seem to come from a less-than--God theology.

All this has been quite liberating. I do have some reservations about that last book. He does seem to put too much emphasis on logic at -times-, where Scripture would have done the trick more convincingly. Not devaluing logic at all. I am just saying that though God expects us to use logic as far as we can, it is ultimately the entrance of God's Word that brings light. Logic is necessary,at least in part, to dislodge all the presuppositions that are masquerading as Spirit-taught doctrine. I had held free-will to be one of those Spirit taught basics, when actually I was believing in a distinct and unscriptural brand of free-will. I can see now, for instance, that there is a whole gamut of wills and choices from "I will be like the Most High" to "Dare I eat a peach". We are free to do some (eat all the peaches we want, maybe) but are absolutely dead when it comes to things of God and eternity.

The author for these pages can be reached at asterisk@delrio.com

Updated: July 12, 2002.