on the atonement

Here's the concluding chapter to my Calvin paper. It was my last paper and I'm all finished... and it feels good!

"Let me here restate the aspects of Calvin’s thought covered so far. It was seen that it was from his abundant and free love that God created the world, and that it is the same love which maintains the world against its sin and death. That sin is ubiquitous, totally corrupting both the whole individual, and the whole number of human individuals ever, for which we are obliged to make restitution to God, and failing that, deserve punishment. Because of our corrupt nature we require a mediator, whom God has provided in the person of his Son, sent into the created order. He took on human flesh as Jesus of Nazareth, and in his death the weakness of flesh and the sin of humanity was killed with him. Further, the obedience by which he lived his life sufficed as satisfaction to the Father, such that the guilt of sin was actually expiated, and redemption was achieved. It was not merely the incarnation that actualised this redemption, but the work of the Spirit brings it about in the individual by imparting the gift of faith that joins the believer to Christ and enables them to partake of his benefits. In all this, nothing of the work is man’s but it is all God’s, and so the achieving of salvation is outside the will or action of humans. It being the decision of God, salvation is only for those whom God has elected to save, and impossible for those whom God has elected to death and punishment.
What then of the scope of the atonement? It is certainly clear that for Calvin, the work of “the Spirit, strictly speaking, seals forgiveness of sins in the elect alone.” This is because the Spirit only works within and according to the eternal decree of the Father, and thus regenerates only those elected to salvation. It is clear then that the decree of the Father, and the regenerating work of the Spirit, are solely for those elected to life. But what of the work of the Son? Is his work limited to only the elect? Several features of Calvin’s thought do point to the conclusion that Christ’s work was only done on behalf of the elect. Firstly, Calvin writes regarding Christ’s kingly office that he only “fulfils the combined duties of king and pastor for the godly who submit willingly and obediently.” If one makes the reasonable assumption that there cannot be a variety of scope between the work of the different offices, then one must say that the priestly office has the same scope as the kingly, which Calvin here says extends only to the godly who submit willingly. But by reference to ‘willingly’ Calvin may be making reference to the varied degrees of sanctification visible in God’s people, meaning that Christ’s lordship is seen as fulfilled in so far as individuals obey. There are other indicators regarding the work of salvation being exclusively on behalf of the elect, as when he writes that “God regenerates only the elect…[and] firmly seals the gift of his adoption in them.” The problem here is that regeneration and sealing are works of the Spirit, which we have already seen are works limited to the elect, as Calvin says here. The real question is whether the atonement that the Spirit is sealing was itself limited to the elect, or not. We come closer to the issue of atonement when Calvin says that “the Lord freely justifies his own” , justification being predicated on satisfaction, and here we have a hint that this extends only to ‘his own’. Further, Calvin writes that God truly carries out his work with regard to “his own people” in order that “the sway of sin is abolished in them.” This seems to be confirmed in one of his more succinct statements, that “we know, moreover, that he benefits only those whose ‘Head’ he is.” This is perhaps the closest Calvin comes to saying that the atonement is limited, in so far as he speaks of the limiting of Christ’s ‘benefits’ which includes atonement, rather than the limiting of regeneration or some such, which is the work of the Spirit. From this it seems that there is warrant within Calvin’s own writings to suspect that the atonement is limited to the elect, and one may draw some further conclusions from the ‘fit’ that the idea has within his system.
In particular, two other ideas seem to be the basic correlates that demand a limited atonement, those being, namely, the efficacy of his death, and the damnation of some. It can be represented in a syllogistic form as follows:
i) All are guilty
ii) Christ’s death effectively atones for sin
iii) Some are damned
iv) Some were not atoned for
From the conclusion that some are not atoned for, it seems reasonable to point out then, that Christ only atoned for the elect. The reply might be made that the reason some are damned is that God’s election and the Spirit’s application are selective, but that the atonement is universal, and therefore they are not saved because they lack the Spirit’s work of faith. However, it must be pointed out that for Calvin, the Spirit plays an important role that is doing two jobs. Firstly, it is ensuring that even the work of faith is not a form of human cooperation, but that every moment of salvation belongs to the work of God. Secondly and more importantly, it functions to qualify the apparently universalistic implications of a soteriology grounded only in the incarnation, of which Christ’s death is a part. If human nature per se is by Christ taken up into the divine life, then anyone who has a human nature participates in that life. This universalistic tendency is clearly in conflict with Calvin’s doctrine of the reprobation of some, and so he distinguishes the work of salvation done by the Son and that done by the Spirit, in order to qualify the extent of the benefits derived via incarnation, but without losing the efficacy of Christ’s death and atoning work. Furthermore, the logic of atonement here seems to require its limitation. If it is genuinely effective, and if satisfaction is truly made for sin, then how can the Father require any more from anyone? If Christ’s atoning work was universal, then the Father was universally appeased and there could be no wrath whatsoever left. But if God punishes anyone in hell, then God is unjust, for he has punished twice for the same sin: he punished Christ once for someone’s sin, and then punished the man himself. If that is the case, then Christ’s substitutionary work seems not at all to have absorbed God’s wrath, but this is just what Calvin cannot admit. And so it seems that in the theology of John Calvin, to hold to both the efficacy of Christ’s atoning death and the punishment of those elected to reprobation, requires that in strict coherence with the saving decree of God, Christ’s death was limited to only atoning for the elect."