Universal atonement

Universal atonement, also called general atonement, is the position that Christ’s death was intended to provide a way of salvation for every human being, rather than to secure the salvation only of those God has chosen (see election). The Dutch Remonstrants gave the doctrine its classic 1610 statement: Christ “died for all and every man… on this condition, that no one should have actual fruition of that reconciliation, unless he is a believer.”¹ Arminian and Lutheran theologians have both held some form of it, against the Reformed teaching that Christ died specifically for the elect (see limited atonement).

Historical Origin

Patristic and medieval background

The question of the atonement’s design predates the Reformation. Augustine taught that Christ’s death was for the predestined alone: “everyone who has been redeemed by the blood of Christ is a human; yet not everyone who is a human has been actually redeemed by the blood of Christ.”² He read Paul’s statement that God “wants all men to be saved” (1 Tim. 2:4) as describing the wide diversity of peoples and classes God saves, not the scope of every individual.² Medieval scholastic theology largely followed Augustine, debating the question through distinctions such as God’s antecedent and consequent will, and, above all, a formula of Christ’s work being “sufficient but not efficacious” for all, language Reformed theologians would later adapt for their own purposes (see Confessional Contrast, below).²

The Remonstrant controversy and the Synod of Dort

Universal atonement became a formal point of confessional dispute when the Dutch followers of Jacobus Arminius, the Remonstrants, rejected the Reformed doctrine of election along with the particular design of Christ’s death that Augustinians had tied to it.³ Their 1610 Remonstrance stated the position that would be debated at the Synod of Dort: Christ died “for all and every man” to obtain reconciliation, which each person enjoys only on the condition of his own faith.¹ The Synod met at Dort from 1618 to 1619 and rejected the Remonstrant position, affirming instead that Christ’s death was intended to “effectually redeem out of every people, tribe, nation, and language, all those, and those only, who were from eternity chosen to salvation and given to Him by the Father.”⁴ The Arminians were condemned at Dort but not suppressed; their view of the atonement’s extent went on to shape Lutheran and Anglican theology and to influence later evangelical traditions including the Wesleyan Methodists, Baptists, and Quakers.⁵

Nineteenth-century revival

The design of the atonement returned as a live dispute within Presbyterian and Reformed churches in the 1820s, when the Scottish minister John McLeod Campbell began teaching that Christ died for all people because he had perfectly fulfilled the law’s command to love one’s neighbor, and neighbor-love could not be less than universal.⁶ Campbell was deposed by the Church of Scotland in 1831, but his argument proved influential and contributed to a broader nineteenth-century move away from the doctrine of limited atonement in circles that had historically held it.⁶

Core Tenets

Despite their differences, the traditions that hold some form of universal atonement share a common logical shape. Charles Hodge frames the dividing question as one of design: was Christ’s coming into the world meant “merely to make the salvation of all men possible, to remove the obstacles which stood in the way of the offer of pardon and acceptance to sinners,” or was it meant “specially to render certain the salvation of his own people,” those given to him by the Father?⁷ Universal atonement answers the first way. This reverses the order Reformed theology assigns to redemption and election: rather than God first choosing a people and then sending Christ to secure their salvation, on this scheme Christ’s work is universal in design, and whatever particularity exists belongs to a separate, later act, an individual’s own faith, or, in some accounts, God’s foreknowledge of that faith. Christ’s death is accordingly described as rendering salvation possible for everyone rather than certain for anyone in particular.⁸

Variants

Arminian and Wesleyan Methodist doctrine

The Remonstrants held that fallen humanity, unable to meet the original covenant’s demands, receives from God a new covenant offering salvation on the easier terms of faith and repentance, terms Christ’s death made available to all alike.⁹ Wesleyan Arminian theology developed the position further: Christ’s death secures the pardon of original sin and the gift of the Holy Spirit for every person, Jew or Gentile, and those are saved who “duly improve” the grace they receive.⁹ In both forms, Christ’s death provides equally for the salvation of everyone; what differs from person to person is not the provision itself but whether it is received.

Lutheran doctrine

Lutheran theology agrees with the Reformed on the nature of Christ’s work as a true, vicarious satisfaction for sin, differing only on its design. Confessional Lutheranism holds “that God sent his Son to make a full and real legal satisfaction for the sins of all mankind,” and that on the ground of this satisfaction the gospel offer goes out to everyone who hears it, with saving grace given through Word and sacrament to all who do not resist it.¹⁰

Hypothetical universalism

A distinct Reformed-adjacent variant, associated with Moïse Amyraut of the French academy of Saumur and, in England, Richard Baxter, held that God decreed Christ’s satisfaction for all people conditionally, on faith, before separately and unconditionally electing those to whom he would grant that faith.¹⁰ Because it keeps unconditional election, this scheme (also called Amyraldism, or “four-point Calvinism”) differs from the Arminian, Wesleyan, and Lutheran views above in important respects and is treated in its own article; see Amyraldism.

Confessional Contrast

The wider Reformed confessional family rejects universal atonement in near-identical language, not only the 1689. The Canons of Dort, drafted specifically against the Remonstrants, state that it was “the will of God that Christ by the blood of the cross… should effectually redeem out of every people, tribe, nation, and language, all those, and those only, who were from eternity chosen to salvation and given to Him by the Father,” even while affirming that Christ’s death is “of infinite worth and value, abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world.”⁴ The Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration state, in identical language, that Christ “hath fully satisfied the justice of his Father” and “purchased… an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto him.”¹¹ The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession repeats the same clause word for word: Christ, by his obedience and sacrifice, “hath fully satisfied the justice of God, procured reconciliation, and purchased an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto Him.”¹²

Reformed theologians have long summarized this position in the Latin formula sufficienter pro omnibus, efficaciter tantum pro electis: Christ’s death is sufficient for all, but efficacious only for the elect.⁹ The confessions accordingly do not deny that Christ’s death has infinite value or that it grounds a sincere gospel offer to every hearer; they deny that God’s own design in sending Christ to die was equally directed toward the salvation of the elect and the non-elect alike.⁷

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t Scripture’s repeated use of “all” and “the world” show that Christ died for every person without exception? Advocates of universal atonement point to texts such as John 3:16, 1 John 2:2 (“he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world”), 2 Corinthians 5:15, and Hebrews 2:9. Loraine Boettner responds that “all” and “world” are demonstrably used in restricted senses elsewhere in Scripture: “all the country of Judea” went out to John the Baptist (Mark 1:5), Paul was accused of “teaching all men everywhere” (Acts 21:28), and “all the world” was to be enrolled under Caesar Augustus (Luke 2:1), none of which describe every individual on earth. When 1 Corinthians 15:22 says Christ makes “all” alive as Adam made “all” die, Boettner argues the “all in Christ” must be narrower than the “all in Adam,” since Paul elsewhere restricts being “in Christ” to believers; and 1 John 2:2’s “whole world” is read alongside 1 John 5:19’s claim that “the whole world lieth in the evil one,” a claim that cannot include the apostle and his readers, who are “of God.” In each case, Boettner concludes, “the word all has no reference to individuals, but means mankind in general,” or, in the “world” texts, that Gentiles as well as Jews are now included in Christ’s saving work, not that every person without exception is.¹³

If Christ’s death was not designed for every person, can the gospel’s offer to every hearer still be sincere? Charles Hodge answers that the objection confuses the design of the atonement with its sufficiency and its offer. What was legally necessary for the salvation of one sinner was necessary for the salvation of all, since every person stands under the same covenant demand; Christ’s satisfaction is therefore, in its own nature and value, equally suited to elect and non-elect alike.¹⁴ A ransom sufficient to deliver a whole company of captives may be offered to the whole company, Hodge argues, even though it was specially intended to redeem only a part of their number.¹⁵ The offer’s sincerity rests on the sufficiency and suitableness of what Christ has done, not on God’s secret purpose in providing it; on this ground, Hodge writes, “all Augustinians can join with the Synod of Dort in saying, ‘No man perishes for want of an atonement.’”¹⁵

Doesn’t a universal atonement better preserve the assurance that Christ actually died for the sinner, rather than only made salvation possible? Herman Bavinck argues the opposite is the case. If Christ’s death only renders salvation possible pending each individual’s own faith, “the center of gravity shifts from Christ to the Christian; salvation comes to depend on our faith,” and what Christ accomplished becomes a mere potentiality rather than an actual redemption of his own.¹⁶ Because Scripture ties Christ’s ongoing intercession for believers as closely to his sacrifice as it does (John 17:9, 24; Heb. 7:25), and describes that intercession as particular, Bavinck argues the sacrifice underlying it must be particular as well: God does not, on the Reformed account, merely open a door that a sinner’s own faith must then walk through, but “truly effects the salvation of his own” through the very death that also secures the faith by which it is received.¹⁶

Related Doctrines

References

Remonstrantia, Art. 2 (1610), quoted in Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), 401-425. ↩ ↩²
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 16, “The Exalted Lord Christ.” ↩ ↩² ↩³
Charles Hodge, “Chapter VIII. For Whom Did Christ Die?,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 546. ↩
Canons of Dort, Second Head of Doctrine, Art. 8, quoted in Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, chap. 16, “The Exalted Lord Christ.” ↩ ↩²
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, chap. 16, “The Exalted Lord Christ.” ↩
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, chap. 16, “The Exalted Lord Christ.” ↩ ↩²
Charles Hodge, “Chapter VIII. For Whom Did Christ Die?,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 543-544. ↩ ↩²
Charles Hodge, “Chapter VIII. For Whom Did Christ Die?,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 553-554. ↩
Charles Hodge, “Chapter VIII. For Whom Did Christ Die?,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 544. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Charles Hodge, “Chapter VIII. For Whom Did Christ Die?,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 544-545. ↩ ↩²
Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 8, “Of Christ the Mediator,” para. 5; identical in the Savoy Declaration (1658), chap. 8, para. 5. ↩
Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 8, “Of Christ the Mediator,” para. 5. ↩
Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1932), 210-213. ↩
Charles Hodge, “Chapter VIII. For Whom Did Christ Die?,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 553. ↩
Charles Hodge, “Chapter VIII. For Whom Did Christ Die?,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 554-555. ↩ ↩²
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, chap. 16, “The Exalted Lord Christ.” ↩ ↩²