Monday, August 15, 2022

David L. Allen: John 10:15 does not teach Limited Atonement

  

John 10:15 is a statement that occurs within a broader context of the eternal security of those who belong to Christ via salvation and the fact that Christ will never abandon them. John 10 is not an atonement context; much less does it address the issue of the extent of the atonement. The verse does not explicitly teach a limited atonement. That is a deduction not made based on the teaching of the text itself but on a logical fallacy—negative inference.

 

What cannot be demonstrated is where John 10:15 logically demands that Christ died only for the sheep. By what logic does not exclude Jesus’s critics from the scope of his death by the revelation that they are not his sheep? There is nothing in Jesus’s statement that limits the scope of his death. As long as the Pharisees and other unbelievers refused what Jesus was saying, they were incapable of receiving the saving benefits of his death. Even if Jesus’s statement indicates that his critics are not now nor ever will be among his sheep, that does not affirm or entail limited atonement

 

However, that is not the only error made by limitarians in their interpretation of John 10:15. To assert this verse teaches limited atonement is to take what applies to existing believers and extrapolate the prediction to all the elect in the abstract—the unborn and currently unbelieving elect. What are the exegetical grounds for reading “sheep” in John’s context as the abstract class of all the elect? There are none. Notice Jesus describes the “sheep” as those who hear his voice and follow him in obedience. That cannot be said for all the elect. Where is the term “elect” in the New Testament ever used for anyone other than believers? Nowhere.

 

Here is the logical argument limitarians desire to set out from John 10:15:

 

1. Christ died for his sheep (where “sheep” are understood as all the elect of all time).

2. Pharisees are not his sheep (since Jesus states this is the case).

3. Therefore, Christ did not die for them.

 

Most defenders of limited atonement attempt to employ this kind of logical argument without stating it explicitly. But the argument is invalid. The conclusion does not follow, and the syllogism is logically fallacious. Consider this parallel example from Donald A. Carson:

 

All orthodox Jews believe in Moses.

Smith is not an orthodox Jew.

Therefore, Smith does not believe in Moses. (Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed. [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996], 102)

 

No matter how you parse it, this is invalid logic, and no sound argument can be grounded in an invalid logical argument. It does not matter what interpretation of the sheep one takes in John 10; the argument is invalid. Limitarians wrongly conclude from John 10 that Christ died only for those given to him. Jesus’s statements in John 10 in no way prove exclusivity. When we are told Jesus died for his “friends,” does that prove he died only for them? Did he not die for his enemies as well? I would point out also that contextually, those who are given to Christ are in a believing state as the sense of “friends” connotes. The point here is that simple positive statements cannot logically be used to infer category negations. To attempt to sustain the case for limited atonement in this way is merely a circular argument.

 

The point of John 10 is not about the extent of Christ’s death at all, but the faithfulness and loyalty of Christ to the sheep. The Pharisees are the hirelings who abandon the sheep. Jesus is saying to them something like this: “I am not like you, who run away, rather I will lay my life down for the sheep, defending them to the end.” And by implication, we, the sheep, can truly know that Christ has effectually saved us. There is no limited atonement in John 10:15 or in John 10 at all. (David L. Allen, “A Critique of Limited Atonement,” in Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique, ed. David L. Allen and Steve M. Lemke [Nashville, Tenn.: B&H Academic, 2022], 82-83, emphasis in bold added)

 

Do also note that the "sheep" in John 10 is (correctly) interpreted by Allen as being present believers in Christ, not then-future believers. This is important as the next verse speaks of Christ's "other sheep," showing that the then-unbelieving Gentiles are not in view. On this, see:


The "other sheep" of John 10:16: A Critique of the "Gentile" Interpretation