Dabney and Certain Objections to Effectual Redemption

The reader may recall the last post on Dabney where he chides the strict Calvinist and complains that their “answer” (by way of limited imputation of sin upon Christ) to the Arminian challenge is not adequate. His point there was to delineate the first objection to Calvinism, and in doing so lay out the basic type of response from the strict Calvinists.

In what follows, Dabney continues to outline key challenges and problems tabled against Calvinism and particular redemption. His plan of attack here will to document a cluster of objections from non-Calvinists, and then, in reverse order, respond to them. After this he will set out his own solution against all parties, the rigid or strict Calvinists, on the one hand, and the Arminians, on the other.

Dabney:

The student should understand fully the ingenious pertinacity with which this line of objection is urged, and reinforced; from the command which makes it all sinners duty to believe on Christ for their own salvation; from the alleged impossibility of their reaching any appropriating faith by the Calvinistic view, and from the various warnings of Scripture, which clearly contemplate the possible destruction of one for whom Christ died. Our opponents proceed thus. God commands every man to believe on Christ. But since only an appropriating faith saves, and since God of course calls for a saving faith, and not the faith of Devils. God commands every man to appropriate Christ by his faith. But the man for whom Christ did not die has no right to appropriate Him. it would be erroneous presumption, and not faith.

This is a powerful argument. I have to be honest here, and I think Dabney would agree with me in principle. Properly speaking, if there is absolutely no provision of the expiation for all men, there can be no sincere or credible call or command to men to come to Christ. To be honest, to me such a scenario would be like holding up an empty bottle of medicine and offering it as a life-giving remedy.

I know there can be some standard objections to my incredulity. Some like Cunningham, may try to argue that sinners are only commanded to come. I, however, do not find this to capture the proper biblical dynamic here. The feast is ready, come, come you are invited, is the point of the parable in Matt 22. Cunningham thankfully is not consistent for in other places he will speak of the offer of the gospel. And of course, the offer is an offer of something, which takes back to our bottle of medicine analogy.

I know others will say the provision is available hypothetically. I will readily grant that partly works as a response. It is part of an answer, and is somewhat valid. But this is not the issue I am challenging here. My point was, if we say there is absolutely no provision, then there can be no sincere offer. I know the ‘hypothetical provision’ is one idea out there, but that is not what I am focusing on today.

And of course on the hyper side, some will say there is no offer at all. God, in some bare or raw power, simple commands repentance. The duty of man is grounded barely on this raw command. A.C. de Jong, well challenges the PRC idea that men are called to nothing. I intend to blog that at some future point.

Back to Dabney:

Again, both Roman Catholics and Arminians object that the strict Calvinistic scheme would make it necessary for a man’s mind to pass through and accept a paralogism, in order to believe unto salvation. This point may be found stated with the utmost adroitness, in the works of Bellamy, (loco citato ). He argues, if I know that Christ died only for the elect, then I must know whether I am elect, in order to be sure that He died for me. But God’s election is secret, and it is mere fanaticism to pretend that I know my own election by direct revelation. My name is nowhere set down specifically in the Bible. That book directs me to find out my election a posteriori by finding in my own graces the results of the secret decree towards me. Thus I am shut up to this sophism, in order to obey God’s command to believe. I must assume, in advance of proof, that I am elected in order to attain through faith the Christian traits, by which alone I can infer that I am elected.

Again, I have to admit that, in principle, this is a strong argument. I am not sure what to say here, because anything I say may detract from Dabney’s later response. I do not really want to pre-empt myself or Dabney. :-) It is clear that if again, there is no provision at all, for all men, then I think Bellamy’s point is spot on.

As it stands, we can all agree on the Calvinian side that one need not know his or her personal election in order to first believe upon Christ. But if we modify the argument a little. We could trim down Bellamy’s argument to this: I must know that Christ died for me, before I can be seriously called to repent and believe upon Christ. This argument does not rely on trying to first know a previous step, whether I am elect or not.

There are a couple of standard responses to this modified Bellamy-like counter. The first one which in my mind fails, the second one is better. The first would be say something like this: “Christ died for sinners ‘such as you’… therefore believe…”

I have never found this helpful. What does “such as you” mean? What happens if we take the language of Mark 10:14 (the kingdom belongs to ‘such as these’) an example of this type of speech, no one would think that the present children were not properly the direct objects of the kingdom. Right? So the phrase “such as you” is open to ambiguity. The strict Calvinist would not want his hearer to understand “such as you” in the same way we are all to obviously understand the equivalent phrase on Mark 10:14. Thus I find this coded way of speaking unsatisfactory. How is it helpful to say to a sinner something like, ‘Christ died for sinners like you, but perhaps not for you, but come to Christ, repent and believe…’ We are back to an agnosia and a leap of faith. I think Bellamy would be right to scoff at this sort of approach. And I doubt the original intent of the phrase was intended to deny any direct possible inference made by the given subjects.

The better strategy was the Boston or Marrow response which said that Christ died for you, by which they meant, the death of Christ is sufficient for you. That sufficiency was obtained for you. So we are coming back to the hypothetical sufficiency. Thus I can see no way to ground the integrity of the free offer apart from some provision for all mankind. For without this, it is impossible to credibly offer the gospel or command all to come to Christ.

Dabney:

The third argument is that founded on the warnings against apostasy. In Rom. 14:15, for instance, the Apostle cautions strong Christians “not to destroy, with their meat, those for whom Christ died.” Hebrews 10:29, the apostate “counts the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing.” 2 Peter 2:1, heretics “even deny the Lord that bought them.” Here, it is urged, Calvinists must either hold that some of the elect perish, or that Christ died for others than the elect.

Lectures, pp., 523-524.

Here I will say little other than, as with Dabney, it is true that Christ died for others than the elect. But as Dabney would ask, “In what sense?” To play on something Dabney says elsewhere, we can say Christ died for all, but in the sense that he died unequally for all. He died for Peter in a different sense that he died for Judas. This claim, of course, is what I will demonstrate from Dabney later.

David