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LIMITED ATONEMENT, DOUBLE JEOPARDY AND REINSTATED DEBT

In arguing for Limited Atonement, Calvinists often resort to either the Negative Inference Fallacy (eg Christ died for His sheep, ergo no one else) and the Double Jeopardy argument (ie If Christ paid for the sins of everyone, how can unbelievers be punished for the same sins again in hell?).

Regarding the latter, I want to point out something from the Bible. Matthew 18, the parable of the unforgiving servant.

v27: And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.

v34: And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt.

Did you catch it? The debt that was forgiven can be reinstated.

Christ paid it all for everyone without exception, but it’s not just an economic transaction – in return He demands obedience & loyalty as well, Saviour AND Lord. If anyone rejects the terms of His offer, He can reinstate the debt and demand its subsequent payment.

When they shift the goalposts, but don’t even shift them enough to avoid the ball scoring anyway

SOME FIGURES OF SPEECH WITH REGARDS TO THE BIBLE & DETERMINISM

“He was like putty in her hands.”

“That cute puppy melted her heart.”

“His rudeness really makes me angry!”

“They provoked the LORD with their deeds – Psalm 106:29”

None of these are taken to mean some sort of mind control or empath powers, like Professor X or Mantis in Marvel comics.

So why take the following as prooftexts for divine determinism, instead of allowing for poetic language, metaphor, figures of speech?

“I will harden Pharaoh’s heart – Exodus 7:3” (especially when far more verses state that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, or it was already hard)

“The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will – Proverbs 21:1”

“Behold, I am stirring up the Medes against them – Isaiah 13:7”

LIVING WATERS NON-ANSWERS ROMANS 9

Ray Comfort is well known for his confrontational street evangelism where he uses logical arguments to convince people away from untruth, but did you know he’s also Calvinist? Seems counterintuitive and contradictory, but the less one behaves like Calvinism is true the better results!

And here we see the flip side of it. This video ‘addresses’ this lady’s objection to (the Calvinistic interpretation of) Romans 9 which caused her to apostatize, by…

Reinforcing that nobody can accept Christ unless God first makes us alive like how Lazarus was dead and resurrected!

But then he does a U-turn and says, so use your free will to repent instead of be proud! (Something we see over and over again with pop Calvinists, who go from thumping their idea of Predestination, to then challenging the listeners to choose because Jesus provides for everyone as though they suddenly switched to Arminianism or Provisionism on a dime.)

Insert confused black guy meme here.

How can someone who was passed over by God’s Unconditional Election and not given Irresistible Grace be regenerated unto new life, use their corpselike dead non-free will to accept the Gospel? Does he actually believe in some sort of Prevenient Grace given to make everyone alive first, which he forgot to mention?

Wouldn’t a far better, non-inconsistent approach be to explain that her understanding of Romans 9 is held by only a small fraction of Christians and provide her with solid alternative interpretations that don’t end up in soteriological fatalism? That’s the sort of thing Leighton Flowers does on Soteriology 101.

Even if you don’t personally affirm such views, at least know them and be willing to use them as examples of what other Christians believe – what Tim Stratton terms Back Pocket Apologetics, have them readied for deployment.

YOUTUBE COMMENTS ON SOTERIOLOGY ARE THE LOWEST GRADE AMONG ALL PLATFORMS

So here’s a run of the mill commentor on my YouTube clip of Dr Flowers stumping Joel Webbon, the latter never seeming to have encountered Colossians 2:12.

Said commentor has some glaring errors and wild assumptions which I spotted immediately.

First off, like many kneejerk reactors out there, the commentor assumes that just because he only knows Dr Flowers from material refuting Calvinism, therefore that is all that Dr Flowers spends time doing. This is a form of self-selection bias, as the commentor does not seem aware of Dr Flowers’ day job as Director of Evangelism for the Texas Baptists. I mean, juts look at how infrequently new material is posted on the Soteriology 101 YouTube channel – someone who spends ‘nearly all of your time’ on a topic really should be outputting far more content!

Secondly, ‘the entire history of the church’ flatly disagrees with Calvinism’s claims. NonCalvinist and Calvinist scholars alike admit that nobody in the first 400 years of the early church taught what Augustine did, and by extension what John Calvin did 1200 years later. For a trio of Calvinists on this topic, I like to cite the Three B’s – Boettner, Bavinck and Berkhof. Furthermore, Calvin didn’t even affirm Limited Atonement – it had to be developed as a petal later on by Beza and the Owen.

Thirdly, the commentor dodged the actual point of contention – that the passage clearly places faith before being raised, faith precedes regeneration.

Fourthly, not even much more well read pop Calvinists like Matt Slick equates Calvinism with the Gospel. Not even Dr Flowers’ erstwhile antagonist James White accuses Flowers of being unsaved. For this commentor to do so is way out of line.

Taken all together, all the commentor did is expose his own limited understanding, haughty arrogance and bad attitude.

NB: At least he didn’t go the “Muh faith is a gift” like something like twenty other commenters individually and separately did without bothering to skim the other comments which already tried this, to which I responded as usual to check the Greek of Eph 2:8-9 which shows that ‘salvation by grace through faith’ is what is the gift of God, not effectually given faith per se.