Why I Don't Believe In Limited Atonement

I have never been able to agree with limited atonement doctrine, for all kinds of reasons. Strict Calvinists believe that Christ died only for the sins of the elect, and no one else. There are a host of problems I see with the third leaf in the TULIP.

First and foremost is that there are certain verses which flat-out contradict it. Isaiah 53:6 says that the number of people who went astray is equal to the number of people whose iniquities fell upon Him. There's no getting around the grammar of the verse. Even if you limit that verse to the people of Israel, it's still saying that all the iniquities of all Israelites were laid on the Messiah.

1 John 2:2 says that Christ's death propitiated the sins of "the whole world". This is not saying that Christ propitiated the sins of Gentiles as well as Jews. This exact same phrase, "whole world", is used in 5:19 -- same book, same author. "The whole world" refers to everyone over whom Satan rules. In light of this explicit definition, "whole world" clearly does not mean "all races, as opposed to just the Jews." That's a dodge created by strict Calvinists to distort the meaning of the verse so it fits into the Procrustean bed of the system.

1 Corinthians 15:1-3, esp. 3, says that Paul preached to the unsaved Corinthians that Christ died for "our" sins. Paul wasn't retroactively modifying what he preached. He says that this is the same Gospel that he preached, past tense, to you, by which you were saved. Paul told all the unsaved Corinthians, the eternal destiny of whom he knew nothing, that Jesus Christ died for their sins. How could Paul make a promise like that? Paul didn't preach that Xhrist died for the vaguely-defined sins of artfully-undefined "sinners." That is the Sophist word trick that many Reformed preachers use. Paul didn't know who the elect were, but he told the Corinthians, without discrimination, that Christ died for their sins.

Limited atonement doctrine removes the Lord's redemptive right to offer forgiveness indiscriminately. In order for God to be both just and justifier (as Paul says in Romans 3:26), the Lord needs a redemptive ground on which to make an offer. The Lord cannot offer anyone forgiveness if He doesn't have the just right to do so. If Christ didn't die for everyone's sins, then the Lord is compromising His own holiness by making an indiscriminate offer of forgiveness. But Christ's cross frees God to offer forgiveness to everyone. Limited atonement doctrine also entangles God in dishonesty. He's offering something He did not provide, indeed never intended from all eternity to provide, and so is pretending. This is bad.

Limited atonement doctrine also removes the cross as an object of faith. Since we, not being God, can't know for whom Christ died, then that means we can't know if Christ died for us. We can't know if Christ died for us after believing Christ, any more than we could know before! After all, we still have no historical ground for faith. Contrary to some of the heretical things that Zane Hodges taught near the end of his life, the cross is not a dispensable part of the Gospel message.

Being mystically convinced within isn't knowing, and inward mystical insight is contradictory to how God communicates Gospel truth to men everywhere else in Scripture. The New Testament never turns the doubting Christian's mind inward, as the antidote to doubt. It always turns the doubting mind outward, to the objective facts of the cross and the resurrection. Considering that there is the problem of false faith and delusion, turning doubter's minds inward to navel-gaze whether or not their inward faith is actually faith is just to make matters worse.

I believe limited atonement is why Reformed Christians have a reputation of struggling so mightily with assurance of their own salvation. Limited atonement doctrine means you have no objective, historical way of knowing whether or not Christ died for your sins. If Christ died for everyone, then you can know He died for you. If Christ only died for the elect, and only God knows who the elect are (including whether or not you are among the elect), then it's impossible to know if Christ died for you, and as a result you can't be sure you're saved.

Answer to Derek, because my computer at work is acting funky and won't let me post a reply in the commbox: Usually the controversial stuff is the stuff that people care about, and so carries a lot of significance!

Unlimited in potential, limited only to those who exercise faith.

What strict Calvinists like Gerstner did was treat the atonement as a commercial exchange, like paying off somebody's mortgage at the bank with or without their co-signage.

But Romans 3:25 says that Christ's death only propitiates God's wrath for us on the condition of faith. The strict Reformed view (i.e., Sproul, Gerstner) makes faith a consequence of the atonement; Romans 3:25 makes faith the means by which one appropriates the atonement. Those are two really different ideas.

So the typical Reformed objections to general atonement, that it inevitably leads to universalism, or amounts to double jeopardy for the sinner in hell, are misguided. The atonement works just like the examples in the Old Testament. The paschal lamb was slain, but the blood had to be individually applied to the doorposts and lintels, otherwise the death angel would have struck down first-born Jews, too. The worshiper who brought a sacrifice to the tabernacle had to lay his hand on its head before the priest slayed it, thus signifying it as a stand-in. The bronze serpent on Moses' pole had the potential power to heal everyone without exception of snakebite, but the individual had to look at it. In no cases did the OT types of atomement work unilaterally.