Who Put the “L” in TULIP?

I know a lot of people who would say, “I’m a 4-point (or a 4 ½-point) Calvinist.” The point that hangs them up is the “L” which stands for Limited Atonement. This point is the most disputed of the doctrines that comprise the TULIP, even amongst Calvinists. In this post I will attempt to give a brief synopsis of Limited Atonement, provide some alternative language that may be more helpful, present a logical defense of the doctrine, and point to some of its limitations — all in fewer than one thousand words. Here goes.

The Protoevanglion and Christus Victor?

Is it of any significance that in the Protoevangelion(Genesis 3:15) the promise was not of man’s deliverance but of the defeat of the evil one through the offspring of the woman? I suppose the latter involves the former, but no such promise is made directly to the man and woman in the same narrative…that is, unless you somehow count the making of garments of skins for their covering as a foreshadowing of that.

The Atonement in Full

I had lunch with my friend David (always a great time) and we talked about the atonement for a few minutes. The question of a dominant motif came up, and David shared this observation connecting the atonement motifs with the offices of Christ, namely, Prophet, Priest and King. (Time is short so I’m not going to fill it out very much. Maybe discussion in the comments will do that.)

Moral Exemplar = Prophet

Penal Substitution = Priest

Christus Victor = King

To try to set one up as dominant, it seems, is to minimize the others, and quite unnecessarily at that. Very helpful, David. Very helpful.

Jesus Was (is) Missional

Green on the Atonement

I just finished The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views, and it finished reasonably well with Joel Green making a pretty good case for his kaleidoscopic view. Central to his thesis is that the atonement cannot be understood by merely one theme, but sees it as a multi-layered, multi-dimensional reality.

Some Thoughts on Atonement

Romans 8:18-21:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of glory of the children of God.

In working through the meaning of the atonement, a couple of things have occurred to me that are worth further consideration.

Reichenbach on Healing

Well, I got through Reichenbach’s contribution in The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views, and I must say that I gleaned more from him than I anticipated. His crankiness emerges from time to time, but maybe only because I’m looking for it. While I am unconvinced that his view should be viewed as the central or fundamental motif if the atonement, there were some brilliant reminders in his piece and he certainly added to the rich texture of it.

Schreiner on Penal Substitution

Second up in the presenters in The Nature of the Atonement is Thomas Schreiner. All in all it puts forward  a good representation of the Penal Substitution View of the atonement. While there weren’t many surprises for me (this is essentially the view I’ve lived with for as long as I knew there was such a thing as an atonement), it was a good read and didn’t say anything concerning the work of Christ on the cross that would raise my hackels (whatever those are).

The Problem of Evil is Hell

The assumptions: 

1. God exists before everything (including evil).
2. God creates something (heavens and earth?) and somehow, at some point evil is introduced (we can presume that God at least knew it was coming, and perhaps on some level, and for some reason, he intended it).

Boyd on Christus Victor

In The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views, Greg Boyd takes up the Christus Victor motif as the overarching atonement view. He summarizes his views with eight reasons. Some are better than others, but I found number six to be interesting if not compelling.