(2d) The subjects of this redemption are those persons whom God has from all eternity elected of his sovereign good pleasure, out of the mass of fallen humanity, to everlasting life. This number is never said to be small, either absolutely or relatively. The promise to Abraham was that “his seed” (believers) should be multiplied “as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore.” The strictest Calvinists believe that the number of the elect includes all who die in infancy, and that in the end it will embrace the vast majority of the human race.Archibald Alexander Hodge, J. Aspinwall Hodge, The System of Theology Contained in the Westminster Shorter Catechism: Opened and Explained. (New York: A. C. Armstrong and Son, 1888), 38–39.
This does not mean that Christ did not really die for all men, so that whosoever will believe on him shall have everlasting life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). He has suffered the penalty the law denounced on all human sinners, and so removed the legal obstacles to the salvation of every one who accepts Christ as his Saviour. Nevertheless, faith itself is the gift of God, and if any man truly believes, he knows that it was only because he was moved thereto by the Holy Ghost. Those whom God thus effectually moves are those whom he has, out of special love, elected to salvation and to all the means thereof from all eternity (John 6:37, 39; 10:26; Acts 13:48; Eph. 1:4–6). This also follows from the revealed fact that God’s eternal decree determines whatsoever comes to pass. (See above, Ques. 7.) This works no injustice to those not elected. They will be only treated as they deserve. They have willfully sinned. Many of them have willfully rejected a freely and lovingly offered Christ (Rom. 9:19–23).
Notice that in the following quote, Hodge approvingly quotes from 4 Hypothetical Universalists.
§ 2. Proof of the Augustinian DoctrineA. A. Hodge, Questions on the Text of the Systematic Theology of Dr. Charles Hodge (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885), 103–5; italics original. Credit to Michael Lynch for this find.
5th. State the proof of this doctrine from the nature of the Covenant of Redemption.
6th. Also from the doctrine of Election.
7th. And from the express Declarations of Scripture.
8th. And from the special Love of God.
9th. And from the believer’s union with Christ.
10th. Show how the Church doctrine embraces all the facts of the case.
11th. State and show unfounded the criticism that the Augustinian view as to the design of the Atonement is founded upon a commercial view as to its nature.
12th. Answer the objection that if the Atonement is limited in design, it must be restricted in offer.
13th. How can the Augustinian doctrine be reconciled with those passages of Scripture which in various ways assert that Christ died for all men?
14th. The same as to those passages which speak of those perishing for whom Christ died.
As to this question “for whom did Christ die?” the difference between consistent Calvinists can be nothing more than one of emphasis at the most. Christ died in order to save His Elect seed. He also died in order to make it consistent with justice (in every sense of that word), to save any man (elect or non-elect) or all men without exception on the condition of faith. The one party insists that this state of purpose should be expressed by general Atonement. The other party insists that the specific intention to save the elect was the determining purpose, and therefore that the definite intention rather than the general one should be emphasized. But under this difference of language, there exists among Calvinists no real difference of doctrine.
Mr. [Edmund] Calamy, who in the Westminster Assembly argued for the broader view of the design of Christ’s Atonement, as far as that view was represented there at all, said “I am far from universal redemption in the Arminian sense; but that I hold is in the sense of our divines in the Synod of Dort, that Christ did pay a price for all—absolute for the elect, conditional intention for the reprobate in case they do believe—that all men should salvabiles, non obstante lapsu Adami.”*
The Synod of Dort said, “This” (that any perish) “is not owing to any defect or insufficiency in the sacrifice offered by Christ on the cross, but is wholly to be imputed to themselves.”†
Archbishop [James] Ussher, in his “Judgment on the Intent and Extent of Christ’s Satisfaction on the Cross,” and in his “Answer to some Objections,” Works vol. 12, pp. 555, 571, says, “For that Christ died for all men, that he impetrated reconciliation and remission of sins for each man, I hold to be untrue, being well assured that our Saviour hath obtained at the hands of His Father reconciliation and forgiveness of sins, not for the reprobate, but for the elect only, and not for them neither, before they be truly regenerated and implanted into Himself.”
“And, therefore, we may safely conclude out of these premises, that ‘the Lamb of God offering Himself for the sins of the whole world,’ intended by giving sufficient satisfaction, to make the nature of man, which He assumed, a fit subject for mercy and to prepare a medicine for sins of the whole world, which should be denied to none that intended to take the benefit of it; howsoever He intended not by applying this all-sufficient remedy unto every person in particular to make it effectual unto the salvation of all, or to procure thereby actual pardon for the sins of the whole world. So in one respect He may be said to have died for all, and in another respect not to have died for all; yet so as in respect of His mercy He may be counted a kind of universal cause of restoring of our nature, as Adam was of the depraving of it, for as far as I can discern he rightly hits the nail on the head that determineth the point in this manner.”
Richard Baxter, “Catholic Theology,” Part III., p. 67. “When we speak of Christ’s death as a sacrifice for the sins of all the world, we mean no more but that esse cognito et volito, the undertaking was so far for all as that all should have the conditional promise or gift of life, by the merits of it.”
p. 69. “He whose sufferings were primarily satisfaction for sin, were secondarily meritorious of the means to bring men to the intended end; that is by the word and spirit, by which Christ causeth sinners to believe; so that faith is a fruit of the death of Christ in a remote or secondary sense.”
Also in “the End of Controversy,” p. 160, Baxter says, “Christ died for all, but not for all alike or equally, that is, He intended good to all, but not an equal good with equal intention.” See also his Methodus Christianæ, Pars. III., Cap. I., p. 57–61.
“System of Christian Theology,” Dr. H. B. Smith, pp. 478–481. The doctrine of a General Atonement “does not suppose different and inconsistent purposes in God. One purpose is, to make the salvation of all possible; another is, to save some.” “The Scripture says Christ died to save His people. It also says, Christ died for the whole world. Christ’s special design does not exclude a more general design. To say, Christ came to save, redeem, deliver, sanctify His people, is most certainly true, but is, in this argument, a petitio principi; it assumes that Christ in His work had only one design. The doctrine of General Atonement (‘as held by Calvinists’) does not assert that the purpose of God on Christ’s death had equal respect to the elect and the non-elect, in the sense that God intended to apply it equally.”
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* “Minutes of the Proceedings of the West. Assem. of Divines,” edited by Prof. Alex. F. Mitchell, D.D., 1874, p. 152.
† “Canons of Synod of Dort,” Second Head of Doctrine, §§ 5 and 6.
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