For Calvinism

by Michael Scott Horton

the important aspect of Christ’s work as victory over the powers cannot be regarded as an alternative to the concept of vicarious substitution.

Satan and his demonic forces, including death, hold sway only as long as there is a legal basis for God’s own case against us.

Clearly, then, far from being an alternative, Christ’s victory over the powers is based on its character as penal substitution.

Sin’s character is not sufficiently appreciated when it is reduced simply to broken lives and relationships between human beings or even to the individual’s subjective sense of anxiety, guilt, and alienation from God.

While Anselm grounds the atonement in the need to satisfy God’s offended dignity, Reformation theology recognized that it was God’s justice that was at stake.

Especially in Immanuel Kant, Christ’s death can only offer a motive for repentance, but it is our own repentance that finally effects our redemption.9 Since one does not need a radical salvation, one does not need a divine Savior.

Finney’s scheme was essentially Pelagian, beginning with a rejection of original sin.

Death is not merely an example of his displeasure or an arbitrary punishment. Rather, it is the legal sentence for violating his covenant (Ezek. 18:4; Rom. 6:23).

Even in evangelical circles where substitutionary atonement is held in theory, the popular message seems to be that the principal purpose of Christ’s death was simply to display God’s love, which should provoke us to love him in return.

“The concept of the cross as sacrifice belongs to the very warp and woof of the New Testament, while there is no evidence whatever that the early church entertained the view that the purpose of Christ’s death was to disclose the love of God.”

Atonement cancels debts, but justification raises us upright in God’s presence, with Christ’s righteousness credited to our account. Atonement bears away our guilt, but justification gives us that positive standing in God’s court so that we are not only forgiven but wholly acceptable, righteous, holy, and pleasing to God for Christ’s sake.

However, Calvinism also points out that none of these other aspects can actually be realized unless Christ’s work is first of all a vicarious substitution, addressing the objective problem of guilt before a holy God.

Does the cross display God’s love? Indeed it does, but only if it actually satisfies God’s righteous demands and absolves us of our debt. Otherwise, it is a cruel object lesson. If the death of Christ was not necessary for the satisfaction of God’s justice, it then reveals God’s injustice rather than his love.

A third view is that Christ died for all of the sins of the elect, thereby redeeming them at the cross. According to this view, expressed by the Canons of Dort (chap. II, art. 3), Christ’s death is “of infinite worth and value, abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world,” although Christ objectively and effectively bore the sins of the elect alone.

either it is limited in its extent or in its effect. Owen summarizes the options: Christ died for (1) all of the sins of all people; (2) some of the sins of all people, or (3) all of the sins of some people.31 If unbelief is a sin and some people are finally condemned, there is at least one sin for which Christ did not make adequate satisfaction.

First, this view maintains that Christ’s death actually saves.

Through faith we receive this salvation that was accomplished at Golgotha.

Second, this view emphasizes the relationship between the Trinity and redemption.

Our entire salvation is credited not to the cooperation of sinners with God, but to the cooperation of the persons of the Trinity. In unity with the Father and the Spirit, the Son’s purpose was to save the elect.

Third, this view places the focus entirely on Christ rather than on the believer.

The question is never the sufficiency of Christ’s work but the purpose of the triune God.

So even though Arminianism should not be equated with semi-Pelagianism, it does in fact deny that the new birth is a unilateral act of God’s grace. Every person is graciously enabled to believe, and the new birth is the consequence rather than the source of that decision.

Thus, there are dead and living branches: those who are related merely outwardly and visibly and those who are united to Christ inwardly and invisibly in the communion of the elect.

The gospel is proclaimed publicly to all people, but only the elect receive it, Jesus says (Matt. 22:14).

The blessings of the covenant lead ordinarily to salvation, but when instead one hardens his or her heart to these blessings and does not receive the Christ who gives them, they become curses.

So these warning passages themselves target those who are visible members of the covenant community (professing believers and their children), in some sense benefiting from the Spirit’s ministry, who have nevertheless failed to embrace the gift of salvation.

The first form is synergism, meaning “working together”; this view maintains that salvation is attained through a cooperative process between God and human beings.

teaching that the believer’s security depends at least to some extent on his or her own cooperation with God’s grace, and this grace may be finally lost.

but at some point have lost their salvation through unbelief and serious (mortal) sin.

Both insist on the necessity of grace, but this grace is regarded as making final salvation merely possible; it becomes effectual only to the extent that the believer cooperates with its infused powers.

eternal security,

However, at least as it is articulated by many of its leading proponents, this view locates security in the believer’s decision to accept Christ.25 Although genuine Christians may fail to grow in their sanctification and persevere in their faith — in fact, they may never even begin to bear the fruit of righteousness—they are assured of eternal life. Such “carnal Christians” may leave the church, even deny Christ, and thereby lose the blessings of living as “victorious Christians” as well as the rewards in the next life for faithful service, but they will be saved, though “only as through fire”

How can one say that God alone saves, from beginning to end, while also affirming the possibility of losing one’s salvation?

The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints reflects a consistently monergistic view of salvation as entirely due to God’s grace alone from beginning to end.

Faith bears the fruit of righteousness. However, we do not present our works to God but to our neighbors. Receivers before God, we are active in the world.

“The much discussed activism of Calvin is rooted in the fact that we belong to Christ and thus can go our way free from care and confess our membership in Christ; but it does not arise from any zealous desire to prove one’s Christian faith by good works.”

It is that true godliness can only begin when we cast off all confidence in our own obedience to the law.

A just judge cannot overlook violations of the law, but a good father is pleased with his children even though their obedience falls short of his standards.

Missing a “quiet time” can provoke greater censure in some evangelical circles than missing church services on Sunday.

Redemption is cosmic in its scale, even though for now its evidence is seen in the remission of sins and the gathering of a people from every nation in Christ’s name.

we oppose any effort to support Christian faith and practice by public coercion or civil laws.

Although election teaches that “God chose what is low and despised in the world” (1 Cor. 1:28), we can exude an ungodly pride as if God has chosen the high and privileged.

Calvin no less than Luther regarded the justification of the ungodly as the heart of the gospel.

The Reformers did not deny sanctification; they simply distinguished it from justification.

When you start with the triune God and his gospel, sanctification cannot be seen as a process of our ascending a ladder of mystical experience or moral achievement. Rather, it is the outworking of God’s descent to us in our own flesh, into our misery.

God does not need our good works, but he wants our good works to serve our neighbors.

sanctification is not our striving for divine approval but the outworking of that approval that we already possess.

However, they would have been as baffled as the apostles with the dichotomy between “a personal relationship with Christ” and “belonging to a church.” “God’s glory and the salvation of the church are things almost inseparably united.”

We are not self-feeders but sheep to whom the good Shepherd has provided undershepherds for our lifelong growth.

Consequently, it moves from the corporate and public worship of the covenant community on the Lord’s Day to the daily instruction and worship in the family to the personal times of prayer and meditation.