Post
by steve » Mon Aug 31, 2009 6:34 pm
Hi Lee,
If the death of Jesus guarantees the salvation of everyone for whom He died, then we must either settle for Calvinism (which claims that Jesus only died for the elect, who, of course, will inevitably be saved), or else for Christian universalism (which claims that Jesus died for all men, and that all will eventually be saved). Of these two options, the latter would seem to have the fewer biblical objections against it.
Arminianism takes a third view, and does not assume that everyone for whom Christ died will necessarily be saved. There are many conflicting views of how the atonement works, and there are various metaphors that are employed to illustrate the various concepts. The ideas of a punishment being applied or a debt being paid are very common metaphors (there are also those that are drawn from the rituals of animal sacrifice, from the idea of a ransom being paid, of the removal of a barrier, and of a shepherd losing his life in an effort to protect his sheep, among others). It is hard to know which, if any, of these metaphors perfectly corresponds to the reality of Christ's atoning work, and which of them, if any, can be pressed to the final detail as parallels.
If we think primarily of a substitution—that is, an innocent victim taking the deserved punishment in the stead of the guilty party (the "Tale of Two Cities" scenario), then your objections would seem to be unanswerable, and we would have to choose between Calvinism and universalism. If, on the other hand, one of the other metaphors were closer to the exact nature of the matter, there might be other options.
One thing we can say with certainty, regardless which view is correct, a person does not benefit from the atonement without personal repentance. This means that, even though Jesus has died two-thousand years ago (for whomever He may have died), no one—not even the elect—is personally saved by that action without personal repentance and faith. This means that, even if we allow the Calvinist idea of limited atonement, and that Christ died for the elect only, it remains true that the elect man, prior to his conversion, is unsaved and has received no benefit from what Christ did for him.
This should tell us that, whatever metaphor we may choose for the atonement, we cannot accept any view that makes salvation automatic to anyone, just because Christ died for them. An elect man, may not convert until he is 90 years old, which means that an elect person can live 90 years prior to conversion, in a world where Christ might as well have never died for him, so far as his own experience of grace is concerned. How can this be, if the death of Jesus, two-thousand years ago, automatically covered his sins? If the death of Christ automatically removes the guilt and lostness of all for whom He died, would this not have occurred at the time of His crucifixion? Wouldn't this mean that the elect who are born after that event could never have been condemned, guilty sinners in God's sight—even prior to their personal conversion—since He had "atoned" for their sins long before they were born?
My conclusion is that we don't understand all there is to know about the nature of the atonement. What we know is what the Bible tells us: 1) that Christ died to take away the sins of the whole world, and 2) that no one benefits savingly from His atoning work without personal repentance and faith.
