Did Jesus die for everyone or only those going to heaven? In this episode Trent debunks the Calvinist doctrine of the limited atonement and shows that God wants every person to spend eternity with him in heaven.
Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic answers.
Trent Horn:
No matter who you meet in life, whether it’s a friend, a family member, the person who cut you off in traffic, your biggest enemy, the person that gives you the most grief in life. No matter who you meet, there’s one thing you can be certain of: God loves that person. That person would not exist if God had not willed it, and God willed that person to exist so that he or she would know God for all eternity in heaven.
God wants that person to repent, to turn him towards salvation. And Jesus Christ, Lord of the Universe, loves that person and wants to know him, and that person to know him for all eternity. No matter who you meet, right? That’s something you can always tell people, is God loves them. God wants you to spend eternity in heaven. Right? Isn’t that true for everybody?
Well, not all Christians believe that, and that’s what I want to talk about today here on the show. So welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. And today I want to talk about the Calvinist doctrine of limited atonement, or what is also called definite atonement, or particular redemption. The particular atonement.
It goes by a variety of names, but it gets down to a really core and basic question: does God love everybody? And does God desire that everyone be saved? If God does not desire that everyone be saved, what does that mean for Jesus’s death on the cross? Did Jesus die for everyone? Because normally you could tell … You would think, right? You could tell any stranger, God loves you. How do I know God loves me? Because Jesus Christ died for you, my friend. He knew you even before you were created. He knew the plans for you that he had for you. And he died, not just for the whole world, but he died for you, my friend. He died for me because he loves us.
But under Calvinism, you can’t say that. Because under what is called Five Point Calvinism, you think about the acronym TULIP that has been used to … Goes all the way back to beliefs that were articulated at the Synod of Dort all the way back during the reformation, about the essential elements of Calvinism. Which would be T, so tulip, total depravity, not that human beings are as evil as they can be, but that the image of God has been obliterated in human beings. We cannot possibly do anything to cooperate with god’s grace.
U is unconditional election. God chooses people to be saved and others to be damned. And he just does, for his own reasons we’ll never know about.
L is limited atonement. Jesus died on the cross only for the people God chose to be saved. If God elected some people to be damned, Jesus did not die for them because God did not choose for them to be saved. Under Calvinism, salvation is 100% up to God, 0% up to us. Which logically would mean that damnation is a hundred percent up to God, and 0% up to us as well.
We are born with a proclivity to sin, but all of that, the reason that we do that, is because of what God has ordained since the beginning of creation.
I is irresistible grace in TULIP. That means if God offers someone salvation, they cannot reject it. It’s an effectual call. They can’t say no.
And then P, perseverance of the saints. Once they are saved, there is no possibility for them to lose their salvation. Now, there are Protestants who will accept four out of the five. They are toips? Tuips? T-U-I-P. They’ll accept total depravity, unconditional election, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints. Or maybe just three of them.
I think a lot of Protestants will pick three, or even just the P. TUP or P. They’ll say that, at the very least, they want to hold onto the P, perseverance of the saints. I’ve met many, not all, but many Protestants that believe you can’t lose your salvation.
But Calvinists will tell them, hey buddy, if you could freely choose to get saved and accept salvation, why can’t you freely choose to throw it away? So Calvinists make a good point there. That if you want to be consistent as a Christian, if you believe that you could say no to God when he first offers salvation, why can’t you say no later down the line? So there’s a lot of Protestants who don’t want to go the full gamut.
But Calvinists, I got to give them credit where credit’s due. They are consistent. They are very consistent in what they believe in. Even if the consistency in their belief system leads to a repugnant conclusion, as we might call it in the world of philosophy, they embrace it. Because God is God, and we are not.
And so there’s a variety of different people who call themselves Calvinists. Many people who identify as Calvinists don’t hold to limited atonement. They will say Jesus died for everyone, but not everyone’s going to heaven. Now, of course, a five-point Calvinist who believes in the limited atonement, the idea that Jesus only died for those who are going to heaven, he’s going to say, wait a minute. You’re telling me Jesus died for people, Jesus did his work on the cross to save that person, and yet some people will not go to heaven?
That doesn’t make sense to him if he believes salvation is a hundred percent the work of God, and is not a work of man in any way, shape, or form. The Calvinist scholar, AW Pink. I think his first name is Arthur, AW Pink. This is how he summarized the Calvinist view of God’s sovereignty and election when it comes to who Jesus died for.
He says, “Not one for whom he died can possibly miss heaven.” So under the Calvinist framework, the idea is that if Jesus died for somebody, that person is going to heaven. And since Calvinists reject universalism, they don’t believe that everybody is going to heaven, it would logically fall to them … All right, I believe, if you’re a Calvinist, believes in limited atonement. It follows, if you think everyone Jesus died for his going to heaven, no matter what, some people are not going to heaven, er go there are some people Jesus did not die for.
So we see that the doctrine of limited atonement, I think, really arises a lot out of the preconfigured theology of Calvinism. To say well … And this came up in my debate with James White. A main point I made in the debate was that, White says that the biblical passages that warn about salvation can be read as hypothetical warnings. They shouldn’t be taken as literal warnings for us, or descriptions of things that will happen to the elect.
And I said he’s reading his theology into the text instead of just letting the Bible speak for itself, especially when it talks about people who are saved, true Christians, who later lose their salvation. Passages like Hebrews 10, 28 through 29. John 15, the parable when Jesus talks about the unforgiving servant, who the king forgives his debts, the servant refuses to forgive another servant’s debts, and then the king revokes the forgiveness of the debt.
Which means that God … What that means is that God can forgive us our sins. And then if we commit a grievous sin, God can revoke the forgiveness of our sin. He can revoke it in the sense that we can now stand accused again, even though we had been exonerated once before. Because salvation can be lost.
So I think one of the biggest problems though, in the limited atonement theory, is that the Bible seems very clear that God wants everyone to be saved. He loves everyone. And he wants everyone to be saved. Now, some Calvinist will say, “Well, God loves everyone. He just doesn’t want everyone to go to heaven.”
Well, it’s hard for me to believe that God could love somebody, and he is solely responsible for that person being saved, and chooses to not save that person.
It would be like saying, “I love everybody on a sinking ship, but I purposely chose not to save some to show, to glorify my sense of being able to judge when shipbuilders act poorly.” Or something like that.
And there’s different analogies that people will bring up when it comes to this. I want to focus on the biblical passages that show up here, and how Calvinists will try to re-interpret them to fit into the doctrine of the limited atonement. So the first one would be First Timothy, chapter two. And this is interesting here.
It says in verses one through four, “First of all, then I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanks givings be made for all men. For kings and all who are in high positions. That we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way. This is good, and it is acceptable in the sight of God, our savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
Seems very clear here, God desires all men to be saved. So if he desires all men to be saved, Jesus must’ve died for all of them. And whether the graces merited on the cross by Jesus Christ are applied to these people, that’s up to them. If they’re going to choose to accept it and retain it.
What a Calvinist will say is that what Paul is saying here, he’s not saying that God desires all men to be saved in the sense of every single human being on earth. He’s saying all kinds of men. So I’ve heard some people say, I urge prayers and thanks givings be made for all men. And so they’ll say, “Well, are you saying that I should pray for every single person in the phone book? I pray for A Aaronson, Albert Aaronson, Ashley Alcrest. I should pray for every single person?”
They make it sound absurd. But yeah, I could say, “Lord, please lead all people to salvation. Lord, please watch over and care for every single human being on this planet. Every single human being who’s ever lived, Lord, please let your will be done in their lives.” There. That wasn’t so hard. I prayed for every single person who lives now, and I could even pray for every single person in all of existence, past, present, and future.
And God can honor that prayer if he so chooses, if it’s aligned with his will. So the idea here is some people say, well, it can be read as, as all kinds of men, not necessarily every single men. “Thanks givings you made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life.”
So he’s saying, look, for Kings, for regular folks, pray for every single kind of person, that we can have a peaceful life. But the thing is with this Calvinist interpretation of First Timothy two, one through four, it’s not mutually exclusive. It can mean both. It can mean pray for all kinds of people, and literally for all people.
So for example, imagine someone is, we’ll go back to the sinking ship example. The Titanic is sinking, and one of the crew members says, “We have to save all the passengers. From steerage to first class, we have to help all the passengers.”
What does the crewman mean? Does he mean, well, we just help all kinds of passengers, from the lowly steerage, where Jack is, the delightful dancing and all that, to the first class passengers. We help all kinds. Well, yes, he means all kinds. But within that, he means also every single soul that is aboard the ship, he is supposed to help. So they’re not exclusive.
So First Timothy two, one through four, I could grant the Calvinist’s interpretation, Paul is talking about all kinds of men. But he means every single kind, and also every single human being within all of those kinds. So it doesn’t help them.
Here’s an interesting quote, actually, from Richard Carrier. So Richard is an atheistic historian who doesn’t think that Jesus even existed. We had a debate on it like seven years ago. So Carrier is an avowed atheist. He has no vested interest in this theological dispute. He could care less whether limited atonement is true or false. Because he’s an atheist, he doesn’t believe in any of this.
But he wrote an article a while back examining the Calvinist interpretation of First Timothy, two. And he holds that it’s ultimately flawed. And he’s an atheist, he doesn’t care who’s right or wrong in this, he’s just reading the text. So I’m not saying Carrier’s right or anything. I think there’s a lot of things he’s incorrect about. But I’m saying, here’s an example of someone who does not have a theological interest in this debate about which side is correct siding with the point that I’m making here.
So this is what Carrier writes. “Paul quote, “Is telling people to pray for peace on behalf of everyone alive.” But in verse four, he is describing what God wants. There is simply no other way to interpret what Paul is saying, except that what God actually wants is all people, not some of all kinds of people, to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. So God wants all people to be saved.”
Another clue that God wants everyone to be saved, and not just the elect, not just the people, a small group of believers, is that in First John two-two, it says that Christ is quote “The expiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” So here it’s saying Jesus Christ atones, he makes satisfaction for not just our sins as believers, but for the sins of the entire world.
Now Calvinists may say, well, what John is saying here is not just the Christians John was writing to, but Christians throughout the whole world. Their sins are atoned for. But that doesn’t make sense. Because whenever John talks about the world, he means the cosmos. The entire world, which includes believers and unbelievers. Look at First John, five-19 for example. It says, “We know that we are of God.” He’s talking about believers, “And the whole world,” in Greek, [foreign language 00:13:49], which is the same Greek phrase that is used in First John, two-two.
The whole world, [foreign language 00:13:58], “And the whole world is in the power of the evil one.” So in First John, two-two, it says, “Christ is expiation for the sins of the whole world.” Three chapters later John is saying here that whole world, he’s talking about the whole world, the same Greek words, is in the power of the evil one.
Is he saying that only the Christian world is in the power of the evil one? No, he’s saying the entire world, believers and unbelievers, are in the power of the evil one. And because of that, Christ died for every single person to atone for their sins. Whether that’s applied to every single person, that’s up to every individual. Are there verses that could be argued for the limited atonement?
There’s some, but they’d be an incorrect way of arguing. There are some verses the talk about Jesus dying for specific individuals. So it says, for example, that Jesus Christ gave his life as a ransom for many.
And so here it’s like, well, okay. If Jesus died for the whole world, why wouldn’t you say he gave his life as a ransom for all? Actually, in First Timothy two-six, Paul does say Jesus gave his life as a ransom for all. But there’s no contradiction in saying Christ died for all and that he died for many. Because there are many people.
So Matthew 20-28, it says, “The son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” So for example in 2009, Sully … There’s a great movie, by the way, about it. When captain Sully Sullenberger landed his crippled airliner in the Hudson River, all 155 passengers and crew were saved. Sully’s actions saved the lives of all the people on the plane. But you could have easily been there that day, and slapped Sully on the back and said, you saved many people today.
I couldn’t do that because I’m a kid, but I imagine some other, older pilots saying, “You saved many people today, Sully.” And that’s true, he did save many people. 155 is many. And he also saved all. It’s not mutually exclusive.
The Bible does talk about Christ dying for some, but it doesn’t mean he only died for them. In Galatians two-20, Paul says, “I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” So Paul said Christ died for me. But it doesn’t mean Christ died only for Paul, Christ died for the church. Doesn’t mean he only died for the church. It means he died for all people. And so because of that we have hope.
That’s why, in First Timothy chapter four, we have this really powerful verse. “For to this,” and it says First Timothy four, nine through 10, “The saying is sure, and worthy of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive because we have our hope set on the living God who is the savior of all men, especially of those who believe.”
So here, how can God be the savior of the ones who don’t believe? He can only be the savior of them if it is possible, if they cooperate with God’s grace, for them to be able to be saved. He is their savior. The only thing preventing him from saving them is their own free will that God gave them. So I hope this was helpful for you all. I really enjoyed going through this.
Maybe we’ll talk about some other Calvinist elements in a future video. Maybe there’ll be a debate on the subject. Who knows? I want to remind everyone, by the way, that the Catholic Answers conference is going to be the last weekend of September, 2021. Last weekend of September. In San Diego, I’ll be speaking there. The conference is on Jesus, who do you say that I am?
And right now until the end of July, for the 2021 conference at the end of July, you can get a discount by using promo code Trent, T-R-E-N-T, $30 off. Be sure to check out the conference and to do that.
Hey, thank you guys so much. Hope this was helpful for you all. And I hope that you have a very blessed day.
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