Display of Arminianism
By John Owen
(Modern English)
The controversies raised by the Arminians concerning the death of Christ can be reduced to two main questions:
First, for whom did Christ die?
Second, what did His death actually accomplish for those for whom He died?
Regarding the first question, the Arminians teach that Christ died equally for every individual person who has ever lived.
Regarding the second, they effectively teach that Christ died for no one in the way Christians have traditionally understood His death—that is, that He truly bore God's wrath in the place of sinners and secured their salvation.
This seems to me a remarkable diminishing of Christ's merit. They teach that many people for whom Christ supposedly died receive absolutely no benefit from His death.
What benefit did Pharaoh receive from Christ's suffering? What benefit did Judas receive?
Are they not now suffering, and will they not forever suffer, the punishment of their own sins?
Did they receive grace in this life? Will they receive glory in the next?
If not, in what meaningful sense can they be said to have a share in Christ's death?
Christians have always believed that when Christ died for someone, He made satisfaction for that person's sins so that the sinner would not have to bear eternal punishment for them.
Would God punish the same sins twice—first in His Son and then again in the sinner?
I cannot understand how God could intend Christ to satisfy divine justice for people who had already been in hell for thousands of years and yet still determine to punish them forever.
Surely not.
Christ gives life to everyone for whom He gave His life.
He loses none of those whom He purchased with His blood.
The first part of this controversy may be considered under two questions:
When God gave His Son and Christ offered Himself as a ransom for sin, did God intend to redeem every individual without exception, so that all people—from the beginning of the world to its end—would equally share in the benefits of Christ's death?
If so, then God's purpose has been largely frustrated.
Or did God have a definite and infallible purpose to gather a chosen people to Himself—to build a church of firstborn children, save His little flock, and certainly bring some people to eternal happiness through the death of His Son?
And does He actually accomplish this purpose?
The second part of the controversy may also be reduced to two questions:
Did Christ make full satisfaction for the sins of those for whom He died and obtain eternal glory for them, to be given upon their fulfilling the conditions God requires?
And this is the principal issue I intend to address:
Did Christ also obtain for His people the grace necessary to fulfill those conditions?
Did He purchase for them faith, righteousness, sanctification, and every spiritual gift necessary to make them children of God and enable them infallibly to fulfill the requirements of the new covenant?
To the first question in the first section, the Arminians answer yes.
They say Christ died equally for all people and that the benefits of His suffering belong equally to every descendant of Adam.
To the second question they answer no.
They deny that God had any special purpose to save certain chosen people through Christ's death.
According to them, God determined grace and glory no more specifically for John than for Judas, or for Abraham than for Pharaoh.
As the learned Pierre Du Moulin observed, such teaching seems designed to make Christianity appear ridiculous and expose it to mockery.
For who can reasonably believe that one person should die in another's place by God's appointment, yet that same person should still be condemned to death?
Who can believe that Christ fully satisfied for sins that sinners themselves must eternally bear?
Who can believe that Christ obtained reconciliation with God for those who live and die as God's enemies?
That He purchased grace and glory for those who never possess grace and ultimately perish?
That He obtained forgiveness for those whose sins are never forgiven?
In short, either:
Christ's death did not truly reconcile us to God, satisfy divine justice, redeem us from sin, and purchase an eternal inheritance for us—which no Christian should say;
or,
All these absurd conclusions must follow—which no rational person should accept.
Nor should anyone accuse us of limiting the value of Christ's death.
In reality, we exalt its worth far above anything the Arminians attribute to it.
We gladly confess that the blood of Christ—the blood of the Son of God, the spotless and perfect Lamb—possesses infinite value.
Its worth is so great that it could have saved a thousand worlds of believing sinners.
His death was fully sufficient to serve as a ransom for every sin of every person who has ever lived.
This infinite sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice forms the foundation of the universal offer of the gospel.
The promises of the gospel are not restricted in their nature so that they cannot be sincerely proclaimed to all people.
Though God, in His providence, determines where and when those promises are made known, the promises themselves are broad and unrestricted.
Likewise, through the new covenant, the wall separating Jew and Gentile has been broken down, and the nations of the earth have become Christ's inheritance.
Therefore, in a certain sense, Christ may rightly be said to have died for "all" and for "the whole world."
This can be understood in several ways:
Because His death possesses sufficient worth to pay for the sins of all people.
Because Scripture often uses the word all to mean people from every class and nation rather than every individual without exception.
For example, when Christ says that He will draw "all people" to Himself, He means believers drawn from every kind of person.
Similarly, when Scripture says the apostles healed all diseases, it does not mean every individual disease that ever existed, but every category of disease.
Thus, when Scripture says Christ died for "all," it may mean:
all believers,
some people from every group,
or both Jews and Gentiles rather than Jews alone.
But the true purpose of God in sending His Son into the world was something far more definite.
God intended by Christ's death to establish and confirm the new covenant with His elect.
Christ came to purchase for them all the blessings promised in that covenant—both grace and glory.
By His death He would bring many sons to glory.
He would obtain reconciliation with God, forgiveness of sins, faith, righteousness, sanctification, and eternal life for all whom the Father had given Him.
This is the end God intended.
This is the means by which He accomplishes it.
Christ died to gather together God's scattered children and make them heirs of everlasting glory.
He came to give eternal life to all whom the Father had entrusted to Him.
This divine purpose forms the basis of Christ's intercession for His people.
Part of that intercession was offered on earth; part continues in heaven before the throne of grace.
Christ's heavenly intercession is His continual presentation of Himself and His accomplished work before the Father.
He presents His merits and mediatorial prayers, asking that all the blessings He purchased be effectively applied to those for whom He purchased them.
His intercession is, in effect, the continual presentation of His sacrifice.
Therefore, whatever Christ obtained by His death must certainly be applied to those for whom He obtained it.
Otherwise His intercession would be ineffective and His mediatorial prayers unanswered.
Those who truly possess an interest in Christ's righteousness must eventually receive reconciliation with God, grace, and glory.
For the very reason Christ purchased these blessings at such a cost was that they might actually be bestowed upon His people.
God displayed Christ as a propitiation for sin so that He might justify those who believe.
The purpose of Christ's death was not merely to make salvation possible, but to secure its actual application to those whom God intended to save.
(Continued in the next portion, where Owen begins presenting his scriptural arguments that Christ died particularly for His people and that His death actually secured their salvation.)
Owen now turns to Scripture itself and briefly summarizes the main reasons why Christ's death was intended to save a definite people and why it actually secures their salvation.
The Bible often speaks of Christ's death as being specifically for His people, His elect, His church, and His sheep.
He came to save His people from their sins.
He laid down His life for His sheep.
He purchased His church with His own blood.
He loved the church and gave Himself for her.
Because Scripture repeatedly identifies a particular people as the objects of Christ's saving work, the benefits purchased by His death should not be indiscriminately extended to those who remain outside His flock.
If Christ's death was intended to secure salvation, then the salvation purchased by His blood belongs properly to those whom Scripture identifies as His own.
Scripture teaches that Christ stood in the place of sinners.
He acted as their representative and substitute.
He took upon Himself the punishment they deserved so that they would not have to bear it themselves.
Isaiah declares:
"He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities."
Paul says:
"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us."
Again:
"He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us."
In all these passages, Christ is presented as taking our place.
He bears what we deserved so that we may receive what He deserved.
There is a gracious exchange:
He takes our guilt.
We receive His righteousness.
He bears our curse.
We receive His blessing.
This is the very nature of substitution.
And throughout Scripture, when one dies in another's place, the purpose is that the other might live.
Therefore, if Christ truly satisfied God's justice for a person's sins, then God's justice can no longer demand punishment for those same sins.
For justice cannot rightly require the same debt to be paid twice.
Yet the reprobate are eternally punished for their sins.
Therefore Christ did not make satisfaction for their sins in the same way He did for those who are saved.
Those for whom Christ died are also those for whom He intercedes.
The two acts belong to the same priestly office.
The One who offered Himself as a sacrifice is the same One who now pleads for His people before the Father.
Paul teaches that Christ was delivered up for our offenses and raised again for our justification.
The author of Hebrews presents Christ as the High Priest who entered the heavenly sanctuary with His own blood and obtained eternal redemption for His people.
Likewise, the Apostle John grounds Christ's advocacy upon His propitiatory sacrifice.
If His blood was shed for someone, He is also that person's advocate.
Yet Christ Himself plainly declares that He does not intercede for all people indiscriminately.
In His high-priestly prayer, He specifically says:
"I pray for them; I do not pray for the world."
Christ intercedes only for those who come to God through Him.
He is not the mediator of those who finally perish.
Neither is He the advocate of those whose case ultimately fails.
Therefore, if His intercession is limited to a particular people, His sacrifice must be limited in the same way.
We must not divide Christ's mediatorial work.
The same persons for whom He offered Himself are the persons for whom He prays.
And those for whom He prays are the persons to whom the benefits of His death are certainly applied.
Christ's death did not merely make salvation possible.
It actually obtained saving blessings.
Through His death He secured:
faith,
reconciliation,
righteousness,
sanctification,
salvation,
and eternal glory.
But these blessings are not possessed by every individual.
Many never believe.
Many die under God's wrath.
Scripture expressly states that God's wrath remains upon the unbeliever.
The word remains indicates a continuing condition.
Now it is difficult to understand how someone can simultaneously be reconciled to God and yet remain under His wrath.
Reconciliation and abiding condemnation cannot coexist.
Therefore Christ did not obtain reconciliation for every individual without exception.
For if He had, all would certainly enjoy it.
Jesus repeatedly speaks of a people whom the Father gave to Him.
These are His sheep.
These are those entrusted to His care.
These are the ones for whom He lays down His life.
In His prayer He says:
"Yours they were, and You gave them to Me."
Again:
"You have given Him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom You have given Him."
Not all people belong to this company.
Not all are Christ's sheep.
Not all are given to Him in this special saving sense.
And of those who are given to Him, none perish.
He gives eternal life to every one of them.
No one can pluck them from His Father's hand.
Therefore Christ's death was directed toward the salvation of those entrusted to Him by the Father.
We must consider the love of God that moved Him to send His Son.
For whom did the Father intend Christ's death?
The answer is: for those whom He loved with His saving and electing love.
Scripture describes this love as God's gracious purpose to bless His people in Christ.
It is His good pleasure to choose and save.
This special love is not universal in the same sense toward all people.
Scripture frequently distinguishes between those whom God graciously chooses and those whom He passes by.
Furthermore, the love that gave Christ is inseparably connected with the grace that calls sinners to faith.
Paul writes that believers are called according to God's purpose and grace given in Christ before the world began.
Since this effectual calling is not given equally to all people, the saving love from which it flows cannot be universal in the Arminian sense.
Therefore Christ's redemptive work extends as far as the Father's saving love extends—and no farther.
Many more arguments could be given.
But the matter may be summed up simply.
The Father gave a particular people to the Son.
The Son loved those people and redeemed them.
The Holy Spirit sanctifies those same people.
The three Persons of the Trinity work together in one harmonious purpose.
The Father elects.
The Son redeems.
The Spirit sanctifies.
Therefore it is not our place to distribute the benefits of Christ's redemption beyond those whom the Father has chosen, the Son has purchased, and the Spirit renews.
We must not assign salvation to those outside the company of God's chosen people, outside the church for which Christ gave Himself, and outside the body of which Christ is the Head and Savior.
At this point Owen turns away from the question "For whom did Christ die?" and moves to what he considers the even more important issue:
What exactly did Christ purchase by His death?
Here he begins his major attack on the Arminian claim that Christ's death merely made salvation possible rather than actually obtaining faith, grace, and salvation for His people. This is the heart of the controversy that occupies the remainder of the chapter.