By Mark W. Christy, PhD
Among Calvinistic and Arminian Southern Baptists, the debate over the sufficiency of Christ’s atonement continues unabated. Stoking this fire, some from the Arminian side opted to publish “A Statement of the Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation” in 2012.[i] One of the signatories of this doctrinal statement, David Allen, submitted a detailed defense of the Article 3 on Christ’s atoning work in a work entitled Anyone Can be Saved.[ii] In his article, Allen discusses and defends what he believes to be the prevailing view of the atonement among Southern Baptists.
Allen contends only two options exist when it comes to the extent of the atonement. The Calvinist submits limited atonement (LA) as the best explanation for Christ’s atonement, while Arminians support unlimited atonement (UA). In defense of the second option, Allen seeks to fortify the latter view by decimating five arguments in support of the UA stance.
To begin with, he notes that Paul commonly preached to the unsaved and offered them all an opportunity to respond to the gospel with repentance and faith.[iii] In response, any biblically astute Calvinist would certainly agree that universalistic appeals for salvation is the common practice on display throughout the New Testament. Nonetheless, making a universalistic appeal does not equate to Paul’s acquiescence to the Arminian contention that God has already worked His prevenient (coming before) saving grace in the hearts (mind, will, emotions, and desires) of the hearer. Given this faulty equivocation of the Pauline message, Allen’s first defense seems to fail to the extent that it will definitely require reinforcement from his additional argumentation if he hopes to sustain the UA theology.
To buttress his position, Allen takes on another typical argument posed by the Calvinistic detractors. Specifically, many charge Arminians with making Christ’s atoning into a double payment for sin since its supporters contend that Christ did, in their view, die for the sins of all people. To counterattack this often repeated aspersion, Allen offers four defenses which will now be assessed.
Scripture, Allen points out, never declares that a given sin cannot be punished twice.[iv] In response, one would rightly become suspicious of any support for a theological proposition which employs an argument from silence. Even so, one could perhaps maintain that, in a sense, unforgiven sinners suffer eternally and therefore infinitely for a given number of sins, and this would mean they suffer repeatedly for their sins. This view, however, suffers from a major flaw. While it is true the unsaved suffer eternally, they never pay for their sins even once, much less multiple times, because their sins are against eternal God. With this in view, the eternality of God can only obtain sufficient payment for sin from One who is eternally sufficient, and that is Christ. This eternal sufficiency of Christ’s death must be applied to any theologically proper perspective on the atonement of Christ. Furthermore, making application of His work to a person’s sins by default covers that person’s sins sufficiently and eternally.
After derailing to address his arguments in support of the universal sufficiency of Christ’s atonement, Allen moves forward with third line of reasoning against those who would accuse him of the double payment debacle. In a nutshell, Allen suggests that all people including those who eventually become saved “are still under the wrath of God until they believe.”[v] In his reasoning, Allen is appealing to the Calvinist who believes that even the Elect (those chosen by God to be saved before the world and redeemed by Christ personally at the time of His death) remain under God’s wrath until a saving response to the gospel is rendered coupled with the sealing of the Holy Spirit. Despite his attempt, he fails to understand that the double payment charge is related to the application of the atoning sacrifice of Christ.
For many Calvinists, Christ personally died for the Elect, but the application of their salvation, wrought and guaranteed by Christ’s atoning work, is only applied as one responds to gospel with repentance and faith, both of which are prevenient works of grace by the Holy Spirit in the inner person. Under this view, a person who repents does so because they stand guilty and justly convicted as a sinner who must make restitution for all of his/her sins to Almighty God. For the Arminian, this same sinner would not have to make such restitution because their sins were fully atoned by Christ on the cross. As Allen himself states, “Christ’s death is actually sufficient for the sins of all because it actually paid for the sins of all. This is called ‘infinite’ or ‘universal’ sufficiency.”[vi] Somehow, this universal sufficiency becomes limited, according to Allen, by “the condition of repentance and faith.”[vii] This limitation, though, is at the behest of the free will as opposed to the Calvinist position which limits the atoning sufficiency of Christ to the will of God.
If Christ’s death is universally sufficient, then his death covers the sins of all people including the unredeemed irrespective of whether or not they offer a believing response. After all, the failure to believe would itself be a sin that would have been (or at least should have been) atoning if they wish to uphold universal sufficiency of the atonement.
Allen’s final argument against the double payment accusation is an appeal to God’s grace. In his view, “nobody is owed the application” of Christ’s atoning work even if Christ’s death was universally sufficient.[viii] This position is a sort of Arminian limited atonement whereby the Savior pays for the sins of all but all are not saved because many fail to make a free will response of faith and repentance to the gospel proclamation. As Allen puts it, “No one is saved by the death of Christ on the cross until they believe in Christ.”[ix] If he is to be believed, then Christ most certainly paid for sins of those who fail to savingly respond to the gospel.
To prevent himself from surrendering from to what seems to be an open and shut case in regard to the charge of double payment, he offers one last attempt to stay the sentence. Essentially, he tries to separate Christ’s atoning work into two categories of application: objective and subjective. He writes, “The death of Christ objectively reconciles the world to God in the sense that his justice is satisfied, but the subjective side of reconciliation does not occur until the atonement is applied when the individual repents of sin and puts faith in Christ.”[x]
In response, the Bible teaches that a personal God takes personal offense from personal sin which in turn invokes His personal wrath and causes Him to demand personal justice. Instead of personally and directly meeting out his personally just wrath upon all humanity, since all are guilty of personal offense, He withheld His personal wrath and His personal judgement and instead sent His Son in Person to unjustly and personally die a substitutionary death for those God will personally redeem in Christ.
By stripping the atoning work of Christ of its subjective (personal) dimension and making that dependent on the free will response of humanity, Allen ultimately envisions Christ’s atoning work as an impersonal sacrifice for sins for which people are personally accountable to a personal God. In turn, this would seem to undermine Christ’s being a substitutionary sacrifice since his work fails to resolve God’s wrath in a personal manner. As opposed to Allen and those who hold to the Arminian view, Calvinists strongly affirm both the objective and subjective roles of Christ’s atonement. That being said, they do not apply his atoning work either objectively or subjectively to a person until the person responds to the gospel via repentance and faith. Until that point, the person exists under the objective and subjective wrath of God and, like all other people, remains completely in bondage to sin in such a manner that they are rendered incapable of responding rightly to the gospel apart from God’s prevenient grace.
[i]This document is available for downloads on many websites including the ‘Useful Documents’ tab on this blog.
[ii]David Allen, “Commentary on Article 3: The Atonement of Jesus Christ,” in Anyone Can be Saved: A Defense of “Traditional” Southern Baptist Soteriology, ed. David Allen, Eric Hankins, and Adam Harwood (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016).
[iii]Ibid., 60-61.
[iv]Ibid., 61.
[v]Ibid.
[vi]Ibid., 58.
[vii]Ibid., 55.
[viii]Ibid., 61.
[ix]Ibid., 62.
[x]Ibid.