Limited Atonement is…Heresy?
Apr 16th, 2007 by Nathan White
James White and Tom Ascol have mentioned this already, so I am simply working off of what they have previously shared.
If you haven’t heard already, this past Friday, Jerry Falwell, President of Liberty University, publicly said that Limited Atonement, i.e., Particular Redemption, is heresy.
Simply put, heresy is a strong word. It is a suggestion of apostasy and of ultimately, unbelief. Heresy is not ever a word that one uses to describe a fellow believer in Christ, but one to describe the most severe enemies to the faith.
Falwell’s statement can be heard HERE.
This would place me in the camp with unbelievers, as in the beliefs section of this site I stated:
God the Father, in choosing His elect, sent the Son to accomplish their perfection. The Son, Jesus Christ, became sin on behalf of the elect, a subsitutionary atonement for the elect, and the elect alone did He love in this specific, sacraficial manner (though God does have a general love for all of mankind): Matt 1:21; Titus 2:14; Heb 9:12; Heb 10:14; John 6:38-39, etc.
Not only am I a heretic, but the writers of the 1689 London Baptist Confession were as well:
5._____ The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of himself, which he through the eternal Spirit once offered up unto God, hath fully satisfied the justice of God, procured reconciliation, and purchased an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto Him.
( Hebrews 9:14; Hebrews 10:14; Romans 3:25, 26; John 17:2; Hebrews 9:15 )
I have reasons for believing that the yellow Tella-Tubby is a Limited Atonement heretic.
It’s odd that people like to refer to one another as heretics in this day and age.
It would seem to me that only a zealot and an extremist would consider putting a label like that on somebody today.
Pretty sad.
Here’s Richard Baxter in Reformed Pastor:
How tragic it is that there are those who tear their brothers apart as heretics before they made any effort to understand them. We must learn to understand the basic reasons for controversies, and then reduce them to the point where we see the differences between genuine differences instead of just seeing the prejudices. Then we will refrain from making the differences worse than they really are. Instead of quarreling with our brethren, let us rather cooperate against our real and common adversaries.
Go ahead, burn me!
Rodney, you had a great post on this subject. For others, you can find it here.
don’t think he understands “substitutionary”
[…] light of Jerry Falwell’s recent statement that he and Liberty University consider the doctrine of Limited Atonement to be heresy, it would be […]
[…] light of Jerry Falwell’s recent statement that he and Liberty University consider the doctrine of Limited Atonement to be heresy, it would be […]
It is a problem of misunderstanding on Falwell’s part. It wrongly pits “whosoever” against Limited Atonement. False dichotomy, Jerry.
Well, it’s not like we want to be associated with Falwell anyway… right?
All Glory and Honor and Praise to the LORD Jesus Christ!