Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 7084. Whether the worst sinners imaginable could be forgiven is a question people ask in two very different tones of voice, and the tone matters. Some ask it as a challenge, expecting Christianity to flinch. Others ask it because of somebody in their own family, and they need to know whether there is a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 7079. Physical healing as a guaranteed benefit of the atonement is taught confidently in a good many places, and the proof text is almost always the same. Isaiah says that with his stripes we are healed, Peter quotes it, and the conclusion drawn is that sickness in a believer indicates either unconfessed sin or…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 7045. Scripture says plainly that Jesus died for all, and just as plainly that not everyone will be saved. Put those two statements next to each other and many people feel a contradiction opening up. Either the death of Jesus did not accomplish what it set out to do, or the all is not…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 7043. Unlimited atonement is my answer to the oldest question in this discussion: for whom did Jesus die? Did He die for every human being who has ever lived, or only for those who would finally believe? The question sounds abstract until you are sitting with a dying man who wants to know whether…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 07039. Limited atonement, also called particular redemption or definite atonement, is the third point of the Calvinist system and the one that causes most trouble even inside Calvinism itself. It teaches that Jesus did not die for every human being, but died specifically and efficaciously for the elect, so that the cross actually secured…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 07036. The argument between Calvinism and Arminianism has been running for four centuries and shows no sign of tiring, which tells you either that the questions are unanswerable or that they matter enormously. I think it is the second. What is at stake is how God saves, what human beings contribute, for whom Jesus…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07029. Redemption in Christ is a word borrowed from the slave market and the auction block, and I think we lose most of its force because we have never stood in either. When Paul writes about being bought with a price, his first readers did not need the metaphor explained. Many of them had…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07028. Reconciliation with God presupposes something most people would rather not admit, which is that a real estrangement exists in the first place. You cannot reconcile parties who were never at odds. So before we can say anything useful about how peace is made, we have to be honest about how the quarrel started…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3084. Roman crucifixion has a strong claim to being the cruellest method of execution human beings have ever devised, and the question of whether anything since has surpassed it deserves an honest answer rather than a pious one. It is partly a historical question, partly a matter of grim comparison, and behind both stands…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3078. The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world is one of the most arresting phrases in the whole Bible, and depending on which translation you pick up, Revelation 13:8 can sound as though Jesus was actually crucified before the world was even made. That is a staggering thought. Was the cross somehow…