Baxter:

Sect V.

I have perused oft the Confession of the Assembly, and verily judge it the most excellent fullness and exactness that I have ever read from any church. And though the truths therein being of several degrees of evidence and necessity, I do not hold them with equal clearness, confidence, or certainty, and though some few points in it are beyond my reach, yet I have observed nothing in it contrary to my judgement, if I may be allowed these expositions following.

1. Ch. 3. sect. 6. & ch. 8. sect. 8., which speak against universal redemption, I understand not of all redemption, and particularly not of the mere bearing the punishment of man’s sins, and satisfying God’s justice; but of that special redemption proper to the elect, which was accompanied with an intention of actual application of the saving benefits in time. If I may not be allowed this interpretation, I must herein dissent: and if this confession was intended for a test to all that should ever go into, or exercise ministry, I hope it was never the mind of that reverend assembly to have shut out such men as Bishop Ussher, Davenant, Hall, Dr. Preston, Dr. Staughton, Mr William Fenner, Dr. Ward, and many excellent divines, as never this church enjoyed, who were all for general redemption, though not for an equal general redemption: to say nothing of the divines of France, Breme, and Beroline, and other foreigners that go this way.

Richard Baxter, Richard Baxter’s Confession of Faith (London: Printed by R.W. for Tho. Underhil, and Fra. Tyton, and are to be sold at the Anchor and Bible in Pauls Church-yard, and at the three Daggers in Fleetstreet, 1665), 20-21. [Some spelling modernized; italics original; and underlining mine.]

Dekker:

In addition to Biblical data we should note what the Canons of Dort have to say. The question for Berkhof is the design of the atonement as such. To this detached question the Canons do not speak. They speak of the design of the atonement as far as its "saving efficacy" is concerned. The relevant statement (from II-8) is as follows: "For this was the sovereign counsel and most gracious will and purpose of God the Father that the quickening and saving efficacy of the most precious death of His Son should extend to the elect, for bestowing upon them alone the gift of justifying faith, thereby to bring them infallibly to salvation; that is, it was the will of God that Christ by the blood of the cross . . . should effectually redeem out of every people, tribe, nation and language . . . all those, and those only, who were from eternity chosen to salvation and given Him by the Father; that He should confer upon them faith, which, together with all the other saving gifts of the Holy Spirit, He purchased for them by His death.

"Limited atonement" as taught by the Canons is not precisely the same, it seems, as that taught by Berkhof. Dort did not deal with the design of the atonement in general, as Berkhof does. It dealt rather with the design of the atonement in specific connection with the efficacious application of saving grace. Contrary to the Arminians who taught that the atonement was intended to apply enabling grace to all men, Dort insisted that the atonement in no sense was intended to effectuate saving grace for all men. The key phrases in the above excerpt from the Canons are "saving efficacy," "justifying faith" and "effectually redeem." But Berkhof deals with the design of the atonement in a broader sense and it seems clear that the Canons of Dort do not demand adherence to the doctrine of limited atonement in exactly the way he sets forth.

Limited atonement as construed by Berkhof is apparently more a logical inference from the doctrine of election than a Biblically demonstrable doctrine. If any doctrine of limited atonement is allowed to stand as mere logical inference, without compelling Biblical evidence, it must be recognized that by equally logical inference from the doctrine of election one may hold that God loves not all men but only some, and that God’s sincere offer of the gospel is not for all but for a limited number. We must accept the paradoxes of Scripture wherever we find them, not merely where they suit our dogmatical predilections. 

Harold Dekker, “God So Loved–All men!” Reformed Journal 12 (December 1962), 6-7.

Credit to Tony for the find.

The following is a transcript from the PCA trial proceedings in which Dr Robert Letham was asked a series of questions. The overall subject matter of the trial is not relevant to our interests here. What is of interest, however, are Letham’s modified statements regarding the orthodoxy of hypothetical universalism in relation to the Westminster Confession and Assembly debates.¹

For each section, a question is asked of Letham, to which he answers. His answers are prefaced with an “A.”

5 Q: One of the reasons we’ve asked you to testify, Dr. Letham, is your expertise
6 on the Westminster Assembly and you’ve written that English Calvinism was a
7 heterogeneous creature. You’ve used the term generic Calvinism a few times in your book.
8 What do you mean by that and what do you mean by saying “the Assembly within–within
8 limits was inclusive rather than exclusive?

10 A: Yeah, well, the term generic Calvinism is not mine but comes from B. B.
11 Warfield who described the Assembly as representing a generic Calvinism in his book
1 (inaudible) the Westminster Assembly and Its Work. And I think Warfield was correct. For
13 example, there’s a number of reasons for saying that. Firstly, the aim of the Westminster
14 Assembly originally, of course, was to defend the doctrine of the Church of England from all
15 false calumnies and dispersions. But after a few months, the civil war, which was raging,
16 wasn’t going too well and so Parliament turned to the Scots for help. And as a pri–, the
17 price for this was the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant. And from then on the
18 task of the Assembly began to be, to unite the church and the three kingdoms, that is
19 England and Wales, which is one, Scotland and Ireland. So its aim was to unite the Church
20 within the parameters of reformed theology. And so that, that–that whole activity of the
21 assembly was under the direction, the supervision of Parliament. And Parliament’s interest
22 was in preserving the unity of the kingdom, the three kingdoms. That in turn led to a–a
23 concern to accommodate various parts of the reformed community. Second, there’s the
1 question of hypothetical universalism. Now, some have identified this with Amyraldianism.
2 It’s not quite accurate. Amyraut, the French reformed theologian whose books were
3 actually read by many members of the assembly during its se–sessions, Amyraut argued
4 that Christ died on the cross with the intention of atoning for all, or making universal
5 atonement. But God made a decree to save his elect and to apply that salvation by the Holy
6 Spirit. So it’s an internal conflict, you might say, between the father and the son and the
7 decrees of God.² Now, hypothetical³ universalism in its English context was rather
8 different. It owed its, one of its leading expositions to John Davenant, who was a member of
9 the British delegation at the Synod of Dort. John Preston was another advocate and in on
10 the floor of the Assembly it came to voice (inaudible) Edmund Calamy and at least four
11 others. Now this idea was that there was one decree, a decree, which on the one hand was
12 conditional and to all so that Christ was offered to all people for an salvation promise to all
13 people on condition that they believed. But there was another aspect to that decree that
14 God’s–also decreed absolutely to save his elect. To grant the Holy Spirit to them and to
15 give them faith. Now there was a quite a lengthy debate on this in–August 1645;
16 caused significant controversy. But and–and the Westminster Assembly of course did
17 not, we may say, teach hypothetical universalism of course as a clear doctrine of definite
18 atonement, perseverance of the saints and so on and so forth. But the hypothetical
19 Calvinists, hypothetical universalists, should I say, continue to play an active part in the
20 Assembly and the Confession itself was worded in such a way that they could accept it in
21 good conscience and interpret its–its–its statements without, without prejudice. Chapter
22 7, section 3 of the Confession, man by his fall having made himself incapable of life by that
23 covenant, the covenant of works, the Lord was pleased to make a second commonly called
1 the covenant of grace whereby, note this, he freely offers unto sinners life and salvation
2 by Jesus Christ requiring of them faith in him that they may be saved. So, there you have
3 the conditional promise of the gospel. And promising to give onto all those that who are
4 ordained onto eternal life his Holy Spirit to make them willing and able to believe. Now, a
5 hypothetical universalist could accept that in good conscience. I’m not saying, mark you,
6 that the Westminster Assembly teaches hypothetical universalism. But because it was, its
7 task was to provide the basis for unity in the three kingdoms, it was careful to word its
8 statements in a way which allowed for different views to be accommodated within the
9 broad consensus of reformed theology, within what Warfield calls generic Calvinism.

Transcript of Proceedings June 3-4, 2011 (Transcribed from an Audio recording) PCA v. Leithart. 352-355. Available from http://pnwp.org/images/resources/final-leithart-trial-transcript.pdf; Internet; accessed 15 October 2011.

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Moore:

1)

6.4.2 The Westminster Confession

Finding modified or intentionally ambiguous codification in the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) is altogether more difficult, but, just as a significant body of hypothetical universalists successfully influenced the final wording at Dordt, so too at the Westminster Assembly do we meet with a vocal minority who were able to restrain the final codification sufficiently for there to be some significant ambiguity at crucial places. This may come as a surprise to many, because it is quite clear that the Westminster Standards not only do not teach English Hypothetical Universalism or allow it to be deduced or expounded by logical deduction from various propositional statements made, but the whole exegetical approach and systematic structures of the finally codified Westminster theology are inimical to it.¹⁰³ But that should not take away from the fact that the Westminster Assembly was far from unanimous on the issue of the extent of the atonement, and the vocal and influential English Hypothetical Universalist minority pushed hard so as not to be needless ly excluded from orthodoxy at any crucial point.

And neither was the Assembly unwilling to comply. There is no evidence to suggest that the Assembly excluded views unnecessarily just because it could. Indeed, to have done so would have been strategically disastrous for this parliamentary committee, as well as against the stated will of some of its leading divines. For example, on the Fast Day of 8 October, 1645, days before the extent of the atonement was debated at the Westminster Assembly, Edward Reynolds preached a sermon to the Assembly in which he exhorted the divines to self-denial in relation to the Assembly, including in the matter of expressing their “judgments and opinions” when these threatened “to hinder the peace of the church.” Reynolds feared that a “divided ministry” would only serve as “an advantage for the common enemy.¹⁰⁴ By ‘common enemy’ Reynolds would have included Papists, Anabaptists, Arminians and the like, but not– despite his own particular redemptionist convictions–English Hypothetical Universalists. The printed edition of this sermon “Published by Authority” indicates that what Reynolds had in mind by judgments and opinions that needed to be suppressed for the sake of unity were those that were “not in themselves matters of faith and morall duty” but rather “matters meerly problematicall, and of private perswasion, wherein godly men may be differently minded, without breach of love, or hazard of salvation.”¹⁰⁵ Reynolds’ spirit here is not out of keeping with the fact that although the Westminster Confession goes way beyond Dordt’s calculated ambiguity in the direction of a much more defensive particularism, it too also falls short of explicitly proscribing English Hypothetical Universalism where, in theory, it could have done so.

An exhaustive investigation of this complicated matter is beyond the scope of this essay, but one example of this falling short would arguably be Chapter 3 of the Confession concerning “Gods eternall Decree”. This chapter was debated at length during the Assembly in the autumn of 1645, following the report of the first Committee concerning predestination on Friday, 17 October. It is significant, given his irenicism above, that Reynolds himself was in charge of this committee.¹⁰⁶ A surviving comment from Scots Commissioner George Gillespie on the opening session of the debate on the following Monday also gives an indication of the spirit in which its predestinarian statements were drawn up. Gillespie advocated studied ambiguity in the confession at this point “soe every one may injoy his owne sence.”‘¹⁰⁷ Two days later, as the debate continued, the boundaries of Gillespie’s commitment to studied ambiguity were to be put to the test as the debate moved towards the relationship between the decree of election and the redemption of Christ. Gillespie, along with Samuel Rutherford, John Lightfoot, Thomas Goodwin, Anthony Burgess and various other particular redemptionists, locked horns with the English Hypothetical Universalists Edmund Calamy, Lazarus Seaman, Stephen Marshall and Richard Vines for extensive debates on whether “Christ did intend to Redeeme the elect only.”¹⁰⁸ The extent of the atonement was debated at length for the rest of the week and rolled on into a second week of debates, with the “debate about Redemption” still appearing in the Minutes as late as 31 October. By this stage some level of agreement appears to have been reached, for discussion then proceeded to the doctrine of reprobation. But just what was this agreement, and to what extent could ‘everyone enjoy their own sense’?

WCF 3.6 reads:

Wherefore they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ, by his Spirit working in due season, arc justified , adopted, sanctified, and kept by his power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified and saved, but the Elect only.”¹⁰⁹

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