Clifford:

Consistent with his commercialism, [John] Owen insisted that God’s justice was only satisfied by Christ’s payment of the same quantitative penalty or debt owed by the elect to God on account of their sins–the solutio ejusdem.³¹ Baxter (following Grotius at the only point where he could do so with any real justification) argued that, in virtue of the differences (in detail and duration) between Christ’s sufferings and the actual sufferings of the lost, Christ only paid a qualitative equivalent–the solutio tantidem.³² Since the penalty of the law threatens eternal punishment to impenitent offenders, Christ clearly did not suffer the identical punishment, for his resurrection terminated his banishment.³³ God therefore relaxed the law with regard both to the persons who should suffer (which Owen obviously agreed with)³⁴34 and to the penalty suffered. Clearly, there was not the ‘sameness’ Owen pleads for.

Although a strict particularist like William Cunningham denied the importance of this issue,³⁵ Owen saw clearly that his doctrine of limited atonement hung upon the ‘sameness’ between Christ’s sufferings and those deserved by the elect. However, he could only argue his case with the aid of Aristotle’s metaphysics. His very language betrays him: ‘When I say the same, I mean essentially the same in weight and pressure, though not in all the accidents of duration and the like; for it was impossible that he should be detained by death.’³⁶ He therefore resorts to Aristotle’s dubious essence-accidents theory³⁷ to prove his point. In Baxter’s view even this statement ‘yieldeth the cause,’³⁸ but after learning of Baxter’s criticism Owen granted that ‘There is a sameness in Christ’s sufferings with that in the obligation in respect of essence, and equivalency in respect of attendencies.’³⁹

But Owen’s use of this philosophical distinction simply obscures the fact that there is a real difference between Christ’s temporary sufferings and the eternal sufferings deserved by the elect. He cannot establish his concept of ‘sameness’ without philosophical double-talk. If he is prepared to grant an equivalence in either respect, he is forced to concede that there is only a similarity, and not a sameness at all. Clearly, Aristotle’s metaphysical formula⁴⁰ only serves to permit unreal and meaningless distinctions. Had Baxter been as nimble as David Hume⁴¹ at this point, he would have exploded Owen’s case; however, Aristotle had a few more years to reign in scholastic circles. In view of later criticism of ‘the philosopher’ it is possible to see how Owen’s questionable commercialism falls to the ground, and with it the classical doctrine of limited atonement. In other words, he cannot demonstrate that the sufferings of Christ were commensurate with the deserved sufferings of the elect without the doubtful support of Aristotle. He fails, therefore, to prove that the atonement is necessarily limited by its nature. Indeed, his thesis requires that the sinner be eternally saved at the ‘expense’ of the Saviour’s eternal loss.

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