Merry Christmas all!

Reid says: I think part of the problem in this discussion is that it seems he was more interested in making predestination acceptable to his Romanist friends, then really trying to build a doctrine of the atonement.

David: Thats a charge, but as I recall its denied by Armstrong etc. What evidence do you have for this?

Reid continues: His atonement issues almost come come under the heading of collateral damage. This may be why the attempts to censure him were not successful. He nudges or crowds atonement concepts while trying to make room for an untenable predestination. Then again, I might be totally off. I would be interested in an offline discussion of how you took the entire work when you are done. I admit I am reading extremely slowly to make sure I digest him rightly.

David: Right now I am not too keen to allow 19thC definitions of Amyraut set my definitional agendum. So far in the book (which seems at one level fairly harmless, and at another level refreshing), is that he develops his schema along a historia salutis, ie following the outline of the history of man, from Creation to fall. It retains the infralapsarian aspect of God loving man as undifferentiated man in Adam. After this he proposes that God loves mankind, all men, with that same sort of undifferentiated love. This love induces God to send his Son to die. The tricky bit is his emphasis upon the term foreknowledge. A critical reader could be inclined to say he meant a bare foreknowledge. But in the beginning of this section he says that all divine foreknowledge is based on the decree of God.

At this point, the infralapsarian Calvinist needs to be very careful. Why he is an infralapsarian is because he wants to deny a straightline causation from creation to sin, which is implicit in classic supralapsarians, or which hypercalvinists like Hoeksema outright affirm. As soon as you factor in permission of sin, even an ordained permission (Calvin and Beza), you are now into some tricky waters. The reason why we adoptive a permissive decree is that we refuse to accept that God can will sin or ordain it directly, an will or ordain it to be, to come into being, to manifest. This dictum has been with us since Augustine, affirmed by Aquinas and even by Turretin. But now, sin being only governed and bounded, not caused into being, how does the divine mind, as we conceive it, describe this causality with relation to the knowledge and decree of God. If all that God knows is caused and grounded by the decree of God, and God does not cause sin (will or ordain it) directly, we are now moving into the direction of speaking of sin as foreknown. Some of the early infralapsarians were saying the fall was foreknown. The more orthodox challenged this and preferred not to use this language, but recoursed in mystery.

If the general take of Amyraut by men like Armstrong and Lum is right, then Amyraut was trying to step away from the technical and speculative realms of ordered decretalism and so sought to use the language of Scripture itself. Whats interesting is that mystery is not usually associated by the biblical writers when they speak of God’s ordination, rather they just pair the words/terms ordination and foreknowledge. To a reader steeped in the technical words and realm of ordered decretalism, which seeks to establish a hierarchy of relationship between ordination and foreknowledge (one grounds or causes the other), Amyraut will sound very Arminian.

So working from this, I am not sure that Amyraut is trying to nudge the atonement, but be truer to the language of Scripture. His underlying exegetical assumptions were opposed to the high Calvinists’. He considered the exposition of the Johannine kosmos as the elect a sham, says Armstrong. For example, as soon as you accept that the kosmos of 3:16 is mankind generally, reprobate inclusive, the you are %80 now in the Amyraldian camp, as the love of God here is a love to mankind, undifferentiated with respect to election or reprobation. And the Son is God’s gift to this electively undifferentiated mass of mankind. If that can be accepted, then how it could be also congruent to then suppose that the Son, however, only died for the elect, and in no direct manner died he for the reprobate, baffles me.

You mention predestination. His language in the translation is interesting and would raise some problems for someone operating within the high Calvinist paradigm. But I now think that more time and research needs to be done so that we can understand his underlying assumptions regarding divine intentionality and appointment to life.

Reid says: All: As weÂ’ve already seen, some like Dabney, Shedd and Hodge treat other aspects of ChristÂ’s atonement, but they seldom get developed fully. I wonder if it because we tend to see sin monolithically, and thus do not entertain the complexity of the atonement at the same rate.

David: I rather think its the opposite case. The Protestant Scholastic emphasis on LA places the stress on sins–a collection of individual sins–imputed to Christ, and not sin. If one emphasises certain sins as being laid upon Christ, one will end with a doctrine of limited imputation, what you call LA. Dabney and Shedd had the most insight here and saw that its sin, not sins imputed. Historically, why their views were not fully developed, was, I think, due the theological climate. The work by Shedd, Dabney et al, was seen as the synthesis in 19th C America of the impact of Bellamy and the New England theology of the atonement. In the UK, tho, the grip of the high Calvinist view of limited imputation held fast. Imagine a theological climate that sought to depose men like Thomas Boston, calling him all things such as Arminian, seeking to depose him from office and worse. Boston is now received by the mainstream as fairly harmless. Yet back then he was considered anathema by the children of the Protestant Scholastics, who opposed him. Dabney’s position is technically, even more radical than Boston’s because of his unlimited imputation and expiation etc. The views of Shedd and Dabney then are not going to be allowed to develop. In the 1960s we saw a resurgent flood of Puritan literature which followed the Protestant Scholastic view on the expiation. That wave of Puritanism pushed out the views of Shedd and Dabney. What some of us are trying to do is reestablish their positions, giving them a new defence and criticism where needs be.

Reid: Two other factors may play a role. 1. Have we explored the nature of Christ being the 2nd Adam enough? If He was made the new head of the human race, not just the head of a new race - then did His corss-work purchase all mankind - all of which then need to be reconciled to Him by faith? See SpurgeonÂ’s take on Matt. 13Â’s parable of the treasure in the field. Did Christ purchase the entire field - the world - in order to ultimately obtain the elect? If so, what are the ramifications?

David: That is one of the verses which Curt Daniel’s cites. Calvin does seem to have considered Christ the head of humanity, as the true complimentary second Adam.

Reid: 2. Christ having propitiatied the Father on our behalf, does not mean the issue is ended. If some bank buys out my current mortgage, the bill has been settled with the first lender, but is now transferred to the new buyer. What if Christ bought our debt so to speak? Yes, the Father is satisfied, but remember, the Father has committed all judgement to the Son. He now owns our debts having paid for them. Forgiveness is His personal preroggative. Simple satisfaction of the debt with the first party does not mean automatic negation of the debt. Perhaps double payment isnÂ’t such a problem after all.

David: Double payment should never have been a problem. It arose early by converting 1 Jn 2:2 into a statement that has a verbal mood, as if John had said that Christ had expiated our sins, not only ours but those of the whole world. For this reason some of the early translations seem to have used “reconciled” or “propitiation” (as favour obtained and secured), not as expiation, or expiatory sacrifice. The NIV and the NET actually capture the proper intent of 1 Jn 2:2 by relocating the stress on the expiation as sacrifice, not on expiation as accomplished for the individual (eg as in the KJV).

Take care,
David

Ryan: Good call on Erickson, I need to go back and dig that up. I do think many of us lay inordinate stress on LA, to the point that we almost forget Unconditional Election comes first. If that is established, we do not need to make LA bear the same weight or press it to serve the same purpose. We can let it breath a little more, and (what I think Davenant understood it to do at Dortdt) be the reply to Universalsim proper.

All: As we’ve already seen, some like Dabney, Shedd and Hodge treat other aspects of Christ’s atonement, but they seldom get developed fully. I wonder if it because we tend to see sin monolithically, and thus do not entertain the complexity of the atonement at the same rate. Two other factors may play a role. 1. Have we explored the nature of Christ being the 2nd Adam enough? If He was made the new head of the human race, not jus the head of a new race - then did His corss-work purchase all mankind - all of which then need to be reconciled to Him by faith? See Spurgeon’s take on Matt. 13’s parable of the treasure in the field. Did Christ purchase the entire field - the world - in order to ultimately obtain the elect? If so, what are the ramifications?
2. Christ having propitiatied the Father on our behalf, does not mean the issue is ended. If some bank buys out my current mortgage, the bill has been settled with the first lender, but is now transferred to the new buyer. What if Christ bought our debt so to speak? Yes, the Father is satisfied, but remember, the Father has committed all judgment to the Son. He now owns our debts having paid for them. Forgiveness is His personal preroggative. Simple satisfaction of the debt with the first party does not mean automatic negation of the debt. Perhaps double payment isn’t such a problem after all.

Blessings: Reid