Sunday, November 16, 2014

Universal Atonement in the Early Church

In spite of recent revisionist attempts to portray Limited Atonement (Particular Redemption) as being the theology of the early Church[1], the evidence for Christ dying for all men, not just individuals within all ethnic groups, is all over the literature of both Scripture and early Christianity. As one representative example, take Eusebius of Caesarea in his “Oration on the Thirtieth Anniversary of Constantine’s Reign” (Migne, Patrologia Graeca: 20, 1315-51, translated by Hugo Rahner, Church and State in Early Christianity [Ignatius, 1992], p. 126):

[God the Father’s] pre-existent, only begotten Word, he who is in all, before all, and after all, intercedes with him for the salvation of all.

Christ died for all men and intercedes for all men, not just a select few based on an arbitrary decision in the eternal past by God just to display his justice while actively (or passively; there is an internal debate within Calvinism about this) reprobating the rest of humanity. Such is not biblical, but Satanical (cf. Gal 1:6-9).


[1] For a thorough refutation of Reformed understandings of Christ’s atonement, see Darrin W. Snyder Belousek, Atonement, Justice and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2012).