Pondering Amyraldianism

Some of my friends who are under­tak­ing the Sote­ri­o­log­i­cal study are hav­ing prob­lems accept­ing Lim­ited Atone­ment, and I would hope so. It is not an easy doc­trine, and by show­ing they have a prob­lem with it then it proves they are crit­i­cally think­ing of it. Let us first exam­ine Amyral­dian­ism or “Hypo­thet­i­cal Universalism.”

This doc­trine accepts Total Deprav­ity, Uncon­di­tional Elec­tion, Irre­sistable Grace, and Perserver­ance of the Saints; but denies Lim­ited Atone­ment. The hold­ers of this phi­los­o­phy are com­monly called “4-point Calvin­ists,” but this is a mis­nomer. Amyral­dian­ists accept the illog­i­cal nature of this doc­trine by way of tex­tual basis, and that in one sense is great! It is great to base your the­ol­ogy on text alone, and I also agree that the often used proof texts for Lim­ited Atone­ment are rather vague; but that does not mean we should jump ship quite yet.

Even though a spe­cific text might not answer a ques­tion does not believe that we can­not sys­tem­at­i­cally come to a con­clu­sion. Take for instance the fol­low­ing doc­trines that do not have text that men­tion the doc­trine specif­i­cally, but they are dis­cov­ered through care­ful exe­ge­sis of Scripture:

The Trin­ity

Com­pat­i­bil­ism (Free Will Inside of Determinism)

Even though I am happy to see the­olo­gians stick­ing to the text, I am at the same dis­s­a­pointed that they forgo a the­o­log­i­cal truth for 1 or 2 proof texts. If you truly believe that man is dead to the things of God, and the only thing that can save them is the Holy Spirit’s resistable effi­ciaous grace based on God’s sov­er­eign elec­tion, then you are by nature accept­ing Lim­ited Atone­ment. If you deny Lim­ited Atone­ment you thereby deny Total Deprav­ity and Uncon­di­tional Elec­tion. Amyral­dian­ists also accept that there is a effi­ciaous grace only given to the elect, but still hold to this “hypo­thet­i­cal uni­ver­sal­ism” on the basis of Armin­ian proof texts for Unlim­ited Atone­ment. God can desire for all to be saved (1 Tim­o­thy 2:3–4) and yet have a will to not save all (Rev­e­la­tion 13:8). This is the dif­fer­ence between a will of decree (desire) and will of com­mand (effec­tual choice).

Although some accuse Calvin­ists of log­i­cally deduc­ing Lim­ited Atone­ment, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that the Five Points of Calvin­ism only came about because of the Remon­strance (points of Armini­an­ism). The point of Lim­ited Atone­ment was nec­es­sary to refute the doc­trine of Unlim­ited Atone­ment in the Remon­strance. In the Canon from the Synod of Dort, Elec­tion and Atone­ment were actu­ally com­bined into one chap­ter due to their reliance on each other.

Arti­cles for fur­ther inquiry: