Reformed Covenanter
Cancelled Commissioner
Did any of the early church fathers believe in limited atonement? I have heard that none of them did.
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The Early Church Fathers were inconsistent in their affirmations of particular redemption. You may want to check out the citations in The Works of John Owen (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust), Vol. 10, pp. 422-424. I’m not convinced that all these whom Owen quotes were indeed affirming definite atonement, as such, but his list is worth observing. Most of the affirmations of definite atonement come from western fathers following and after Augustine. Here are some quotes I’ve compiled in my studies...Did any of the early church fathers believe in limited atonement? I have heard that none of them did.
***The question at issue between Calvin and the later Reformed does not entail any debate over the value or merit of Christ’s death: virtually all were agreed that it was sufficient to pay the price for the sins of the whole world. Neither was the question at issue whether all human beings would actually be saved: all (including Arminius) were agreed that this was not to be the case. To make the point another way, if “atonement” is taken to mean the value or sufficiency of Christ’s death, no one taught limited atonement — and if atonement is taken to mean the actual salvation accomplished in particular persons, then no one taught unlimited atonement (except perhaps the much-reviled Samuel Huber).
More simply put, was the value of Christ’s death such that, it would be sufficient for all sin if God had so intended — or was the value of Christ’s death such that if all would believe all would be saved. On this very specific question Calvin is, arguably, silent. He did not often mention the traditional sufficiency-efficiency formula; and he did not address the issue, posed by Amyraut, of a hypothetical or conditional decree of salvation for all who would believe, prior to the absolute decree to save the elect. He did frequently state, without further modification, that Christ expiated the sins of the world and that this “favor” is extended “indiscriminately to the whole human race.” Various of the later Reformed appealed to Calvin on both sides of the debate. (Only a very few writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century argued that Christ’s death was sufficient payment only for the sins of the elect.) Later Reformed theology, then, is more specific on this particular point than Calvin had been — and arguably, his somewhat vague formulations point (or could be pointed) in several directions, as in fact can the formulae from the Synod of Dort.