Austin Brown’s A Boisterously Reformed Polemic Against Limited Atonement is a befitting title for such a bold endeavor. Brown challenges the status quo of TULIP orthodoxy right where it hurts most, in the middle. Limited atonement has long been the subject of many pugilistic enterprises in Reformational history, and Austin puts his typewriter to work forcefully in such endeavor.
Introduction
The book argues for a universal satisfaction view of the atonement (1) with the added qualifier that “Christ did not die with an equal intent for all men (5).” Brown seeks to exalt the Lombardian formula to a place of consistency (7), derailing the attempts of limitarians to absorb Lombard as their own. Calvinists of all stripes (cranky Dutch exempted) would affirm that “Christ’s death is sufficient for all, but efficient for the elect (7).” Strict particularists, according to the author, wish to qualify to death the sufficiency of the atonement. They want to treat sufficiency as a potentiality divorcing it from universal expiation (14). But if such sufficiency remains in the realm of potentiality, then there are vast implications for strict particularists, namely that the universal offer of the Gospel is not a legitimate one (16). If Christ did not die for the non-elect, “there is no gospel for them” (20). The free offer, even spoused by strict particularists, fails to be genuine since it is not ultimately sufficient to atone for the sins of the non-elect.
Brown argues, following 17th-century Anglican, John Davenant, that the free offer is only genuine if the “death of Christ is applicable to all men (24).” Davenant sought to find a middle ground between Arminianism and Supralapsarianism. But Davenant is not the only one to oppose limited atonement in its modern definition. Anglican writer and friend Steven Wedgeworth, considering the history of TULIP theology, argues that:
Amazingly, Dabney, Charles Hodge, and William Shedd all distance themselves from theologians like Francis Turretin on the relationship between the decree of God and the cross of Christ, and even go so far as to explicitly reject key exegesis that underlies the “limited atonement” argument found in John Owen’s The Death of Death.[1]
Wedgeworth goes on to make a distinction between high and moderate Calvinists. He argues that the high Calvinist,
“…place the limit in the content of the punishment born by Christ at the cross insisting on only the special will of God toward the elect, whereas the “moderate Calvinists” allow for a general will of God toward all men, as well as the special will toward the elect, and typically place the limitation on God’s effectual calling and application of the cross-work of Christ.”
It’s important to note that the Reformed tradition has built itself on various degrees of atonement language, and there have been exegetical disputes among certifiably Calvinistic figures. Therefore, to accuse Brown of any form of an Arminian spy within the Reformed camp is to miss the diversity inherent in such conversations. It is one reason that I rarely, if ever, associate Reformed theology with TULIP. Such associations minimize the depth of Reformed history by trivializing Calvin and Bucer’s rich sacramental theology and the profound political theories of the theonomic Puritans, not to mention the liturgical theology of the German theologian John Williamson Nevin, who sought to re-articulate a rich ecclesiastical vision from Calvin.[2] To limit Reformed theology to individual soteriology would be to mock the broad themes and emphases of the Reformation.
Brown makes helpful observations throughout, working carefully through key universal texts and showing that the exegetical gymnastics done by some do not comport with the nature or context of the passage. They cannot be limited when they are naturally meant to be universalized. Again, Brown is merely stating that there is a sense in which the atonement reaches the elect and another sense in which it reaches the non-elect; but in both cases, the offer is free and genuine to all.
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