Norman Douty on the Double Payment Argument

4. If satisfaction has been made for all, how can any go to hell?

Answer: Though God has provided atonement for all, He has also stipulated that none get the good of it, except through repentance and faith. Deliverance from doom was not contingent on the atonement itself but on the reception of it. Men can starve in the presence of a free feast, if they refuse to partake of it.

Norman F. Douty, Did Christ Die Only for the Elect? (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1998), 129.

My comments:

Douty is arguing, like other Calvinists on the same subject, that Christ's satisfaction does not ipso facto liberate all for whom it was made. Though Christ suffered sufficiently for all, the promise of deliverance--on the legal basis of that satisfaction--is conditional. One must repent and believe in order to benefit by it unto eternal life. If a gospel hearer refuses to repent and believe into Christ, they will ultimately perish and suffer for their sins in hell.

None of this entails that the condition of faith is meritorious, or that the unregenerate have the moral ability to believe. Also, just because God gives the elect the gift of faith [in the sense of granting them moral ability by the Spirit], it is still their act and their responsibility.

The gospel not only sincerely promises life to the unbelieving elect and unbelieving non-elect on the condition of faith, but it also sincerely threatens them both with hell if they do not believe, despite the fact that Christ suffered sufficiently for their sins. The double payment argument not only entails that the non-elect cannot, with any consistency, receive well-meant offers by God through the external gospel call, it also entails that the unbelieving elect are not receiving sincere threats by that same gospel message. Consequently, God would not only be giving counterfeit offers to the non-elect, but He would also be merely pretending to threaten the unbelieving elect with perishing. The argument entails a double blasphemy that its advocates do not want to own.