Dodsworth:

2. But this farther appears from the ground of the world’s condemnation. "Under the Christian dispensation what is the ground of condemnation? "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds evil." And again, “The Spirit shall reprove the world of sin, because they believe not in me.”–“If ye believe not, ye shall die in your’ sins." From these and many similar "passages we understand that the ground of man’s condemnation’ is that he will not believe in Christ, and that all his future. torment in a world of misery will be to be attributed to this. But how can this be if Christ were not a ransom for all? It is true, as far as this world is concerned, men might still be exhorted to lay hold of Christ, because it is not known but that they may be among the favoured number, and this I know is the argument constantly used. But let us follow one of these lost and reprobate men into another world, and ask how he could then, when his condition is decided, trace up his condemnation to unbelief in Christ? How can he blame himself for rejecting that which was never truly offered to him, or for despising that which was never truly given to him? How should they come to the feast for whom nothing is prepared? How should they eat and drink for whom the paschal lamb is not slain? Salvation was, in the very nature of things, beyond his reach. It is impossible, in the nature of things, that he should be saved; there was no redemption for him, no ransom. The justice of God raised an eternal barrier against his entrance; escape therefore was physically impracticable. The fault of original sin would indeed remain upon him, but how should he feel himself condemned for unbelief? It seems to me impossible to escape from this. The advocate for particular and limited redemption, must admit either that he might have been saved without any redemption, or else that he could impute no blame to himself for not being saved, and therefore that unbelief is not that ground of his condemnation.

William Dodsworth, General Redemption and Limited Salvation (London: James Nisbet, 1831), 27-29. [Italics original; spelling original; and underlining mine.]

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CONCLUSION

Fundamental to the doctrine of faith in John Calvin (1509-64) is his
belief that Christ died indiscriminately for all men . . . Had not Christ died for all,
we could have no assurance that our sins have been expiated in God’s sight. . . .’¹

The evidence that Calvin was a limited redemptionist is far more extensive
than the few quotations offered by writers like Murray and Helm . . . would indicate.
There is . . . a wealth of explicit and unambiguous statements in Calvin to the effect
that Christ died only for the elect. . . .²

‘Well, what was Calvin’s view?’ This is a question. I have frequently been asked when people learn that I studied Calvin’s doctrine of the atonement. They are asking, of course, whether Calvin subscribed to a doctrine of limited atonement, the view that Christ died only to save the elect, or unlimited atonement, the view that he died to save everyone. As the quotations above demonstrate, scholars have strong and contrary opinions on this matter.

I will address Calvin’s view of the extent of the atonement at the beginning of my conclusion for two reasons. First, because there continues to be great interest in the subject. Of the twenty two Calvin sources that I added to the bibliography for this edition, half deal with this issue. Second, I will discuss Calvin on the extent of the atonement, an issue he does not address in the Institutes, because after having dealt with this issue, we will be able to focus on the many things he does address in the Institutes concerning the work of Christ.

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De Jong:

This love of God comes to sinners as members of the world which God so loved in Christ. It is a carried to them in the proclamation of the gospel. Christ is administering his work. He carries on the ministry though his heralds. As we saw previously it is Christ himself the world-Savior who stands behind the herald and is present in the proclamation⁹⁹ There is the one message which is addressed to all sinners and it is addressed to them as sinful members of a sinful world which Christ redeemed. It is not addressed to them in their specific quality as either chosen or rejected in God’s world plan. It is a message in which the Christ himself calls sinners to live in him. It is a call to faith. And it is the proclamation which relates all sinners to the work of Christ. The redemptive universality of the New Testament is a kerygmatic universality which calls the sinner to repentance and faith. The Son of God’s love, the Savior of the world, now meets the sinner who lives under the wrath of God and summons him to salvation. It is the sinner where he is, that is as member of a world in the process of being saved by the reigning Christ, who is called to live in Christ. It is the sinner as a redeemable son of the first Adam who is confronted by the Second Adam and summoned to faith. It is the transgressor of the Old Adamic covenant who is offered salvation by the Mediator of the new and better covenant (Hebrews 8). He offers this sinner salvation in the way of faith because God keeps his word and deals with the post-lapsarian sinner in the same way as he dealt with him in the pre-lapsarian situation of Paradise. Man must believe.

If we see the offer of salvation in term of the call to faith we can understand that preaching is not in the first moment the communication of a certain group of logically interrelated doctrines. It is a beneficent and uniquely effective summons to share in Christ’s victory over sin. Hoeksema tends to obscure this latter fact because of his unfortunate, competitive polarity motif. At no costs can the preacher tell the sinner what he must do. He says that whoever proclaims "wat de mensch moet doen, verkondigt eenvoudig niet het Evangelie Gods,"¹⁰⁰ Preaching, gospel preaching. receives a predominant intellectual emphasis in Hoeksema’s theological reflection. It tends to become an explication of certain dogmas and the decision required is a choice for or against these truths.

The emphasis is clearly discernable as we read, "Twee dingen gaan in de historie des Heiligen Evangelies altijd samen: God vervult de Belofte en verklaart aan de erfgenamen der Belofte wat Hij doet, dat is, Hij verkondigt hun het Evangelie."¹⁰¹ We notice here the unique equation of gospel proclamation with an explanation to the heirs of the promise concerning that which God does. The intellectual note comes to expression in his view of Holy Baptism as a seal "op deze waarheid, dat Hij het geloof voor gerechtigheid rekent."¹⁰² This same emphasis is found in the Protestant Reformed Declaration of Principles. We read that gospel preaching is "an oath of God that he will infallibly lead al the elect unto salvation and eternal glory though faith."¹⁰³ There is in Hoeksema’s theology a subtle mutation of preaching into a report of an objective and fixed set of circumstances.

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De Jong:

Hoeksema’s competitive polarity motif lies at the root of his objections to the idea that gospel preaching can ever be considered as an offer. For implicit in the concept of offer is the idea of conditionality. The concept conditionality involves decision, moral response. Hoeksema believes that the Biblical emphasis of total depravity renders conditional presentation an impossibility. Since no sinner by nature is able to accept an offer of salvation or an invitation to accept salvation "vervalt ook absoluut de mogelijkheid van een aanbod.”⁶⁸ Hoeksema argues thus because he conceives of the gospel offer in terms of an human offer. The very fact that he argues against the term offer by employing analogies of a human offerer betrays the fundamental misconstruction we ca the competitive polarity motif.

In speaking about the gospel offer we must ever bear in mind that (u>it is God who makes the offer. Because it is God in Christ who meets the sinner in the situation of gospel preaching we can accentuate the offer motif.

The concept offer with its implicit corollary of conditionality accentuates a truth which is. as constitutive of the genius of the Reformed faith as the soteric significance of our predestination in Jesus Christ. It is the truth of human responsibility which comes to its sharpest focus when we consider the sinner’s moral response to the gospel. In the preaching activity of the Church, God in Christ meets the sinner on the moral level. The fact of the gospel offer creates the highly charged dynamic situation when the redeeming Lord meets the redeemable sinner. At this point of soteric confrontation we must sensitively articulate our theological concepts so that we neither prejudice the comforting fact of free, unmerited grace nor the equally comforting fact that we are human beings, not senseless stocks and blocks. Here the dangers of a subtle emergence of various synergistic errors are more than imaginary. The history of Christian theological reflection attests this truth. However, the sensitivity to these synergistic perversions of the gospel ought not’ to force us to create a mechanical construction of the divine-human encounter which takes place when the redeeming Lord offers his saving gospel to sinners. Although it is no easy task to delineate with conceptual precision the full truth at this point of the divine-human confrontation as it comes to focus in the term offer, we must not hesitate to call the sinner to decision.

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