Abstract of the Argument against Hypothetical Universalism Ex Natura Rei

There are few things I've spent as much time studying as the atonement. I very rarely comment on the debate between hypothetical univeralists and particularists because I don't see it as very important and most often a waste of time. Nevertheless, I've been wanting for some time to create something of a follow-up to Garry Williams's second chapter in From Heaven He Came and Sought Her as I think he's hit on something very important there that has not received the attention it deserves and can be significantly tuned-up with a few more scholastic considerations and categories both from the original sources themselves and from Van den Brink's recent The Transfer of Sin. I think that Garry has put his finger on what I perceive to be the only argument against hypothetical universalism ex natura rei; I think that HU (Davenant's specifically) is otherwise possible, but simply a very unnatural reading of Scripture. While I'm certain that I will not get around to this for quite some time, I thought I would at least post the abstract of what little notes I have on this for now as they might still be helpful, as brief as they are.

It is first important to emphaize that I have Davenant's version of hypothetical universalism specifically in mind here.

I want to work this into a more formal argument, but the following is what I understand the double-payment argument as advocated by Garry Williams to essentially consist in. First, to summarize the argument in Garry’s own words:

“The punishment-bearing, ransoming, self-giving work of the Son was thus absolute. Davenant is resolved not to water down the penal character of the atonement. He does, however, limit the death of Christ itself as an act of procurement to the elect only. Christ’s death did not purchase the conditions of application for the lost, but only for those predestined to life:

“He willed that it should so pertain to the elect alone, that by the merit of it all things which relate to the obtaining of salvation, should be infallibly given to them. And in this sense we confess that the oblation of Christ is of the same extent as the predestination of God.”

“But this argument narrows only the atonement as procurement, not the atonement as penal substitution. If the penal substitution, ransom, and self-giving is indeed absolute, then the double punishment argument applies despite any conditionality: God has answered the specific sins of every individual. The creation, seen and unseen, has witnessed the suffering that answers the sin. No man can answer again for that which has already been answered.”

Now to give my own formulation:

Davenant grants that impetration (or Christ’s merit/purchase) is equal with application such that all for whom he merited, they will receive the reward merited.

I think that an argument for limited atonement can be made by probing into the formal reason for the necessary connection between merit and reward and then seeing that this formal reason is the same reason that there is a necessary connection between penalty and satisfaction.

Merit is a relation between a good work and a reward. To take away the reward is for it no longer to be merit. The two can be said to be formally distinct (but as a moral cause, not as a physical cause, which is why there can be a time difference between merit and reward, yet reward must infallibly follow merit). Likewise, guilt is nothing but a relation between an evil work and a punishment. Furthermore, punishment is nothing but a means of satisfaction. Therefore, as reward must infallibly follow merit, so also must satisfaction necessarily follow punishment. As, if Christ merited for us, the reward must necessarily follow, so also, if Christ bore our penalty, satisfaction must necessarily follow. But the hypothetical universalism of Davenant posits that there are some for whom Christ bore punishment for whom satisfaction does not follow, which is just as absurd as positing that there are some for whom Christ merited for whom reward does not follow.

In this way, we can see why the appeal to the distinction between impetration and application is not valid. Garry puts it in this way,

“it might theoretically be possible to imagine unspecified suffering that would later be identified with someone’s sins upon their existential union with Christ, positing some kind of subsequent, retro-active specificity dependent on faith. But then the suffering itself at the time when it happened was as yet un-associated with sin and sinners, leaving it at that point zoned in the twilight as mere afflictio and not poena. As Augustine reminds us, ‘every just penalty is a penalty for sin’. Suffering unconnected to sins, even awaiting a connection to sins, is not substitutionary punishment, it is mere affliction. And if God laid on Christ affliction not yet related to guilt, then he committed an injustice.”

But we can say, with perhaps more precision, that such an appeal fails because it attempts to separate two formally distinct parts of a moral cause and is no less absurd than arguing that the distinction between impetration and application allows Christ to merit for those who never receive the reward merited.

Here is ChatGPT summarizing what I have written above, which I find helpful and accurate to the structure of my argument:

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I. The Basic Moral Structure of Satisfaction and Merit

Proposition 1.

Merit is a relation between a work and its proportionate reward. To deny the reward is to destroy the merit.

Proposition 2.

Guilt is a relation between a sin and its proportionate punishment. To deny the punishment is to destroy the guilt.

Proposition 3.

Satisfaction consists in the punishment fully meeting and exhausting the debt of guilt.

Proposition 4.

In moral causes, merit and reward, as well as guilt and punishment, are formally distinct but inseparably related.

• This formal distinction is not physical but moral: one can be temporally prior to the other, but not logically or morally separated.

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II. Christ’s Work of Penal Substitution

Proposition 5.

In penal substitution, Christ bears the guilt of specific persons by bearing their punishment.

Proposition 6.

If Christ bears the punishment of guilt, then satisfaction is necessarily made for that guilt.

Proposition 7.

Satisfaction for sin necessarily entails that those sins cannot be punished again (otherwise God would exact double satisfaction, violating justice).

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III. The Flaw in Davenant’s Hypothetical Universalism

Proposition 8.

Davenant maintains that impetration (Christ’s meritorious work) is equivalent with application for the elect alone: all for whom Christ merited, they infallibly receive the reward merited.

Proposition 9.

But Davenant also posits that Christ bore the punishment for the sins of the non-elect, without their receiving the benefit of that satisfaction.

Proposition 10.

This is incoherent:

• It is as absurd to say that Christ bore the punishment for some whose sins are not satisfied,

• as it is to say that Christ merited for some who do not receive the reward merited.

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IV. The Invalidity of Appealing to the Impetration/Application Distinction

Proposition 11.

The distinction between impetration and application concerns the mode of bestowal, not the moral ground of satisfaction.

Proposition 12.

The moral relation between guilt and satisfaction operates prior to application, because it belongs to the intrinsic nature of Christ’s work as substitution.

Proposition 13.

Therefore, one cannot logically say that Christ bore the punishment of particular sins while withholding satisfaction until application. If He bore the guilt, the guilt is satisfied. If satisfaction is not applied, it is because He did not bear their guilt.

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V. Garry Williams’ Clarification on the Nature of Substitutionary Suffering

Proposition 14.

Suffering not associated with particular guilt is not poena (penalty) but mere afflictio (affliction).

• Penal substitution requires definite guilt imputed to the substitute at the moment of suffering.

• If suffering awaits later association with guilt via faith, then at the time of suffering it was not substitutionary punishment at all.

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Conclusion:

Thus, the structure of penal substitution demands definite particularity. Christ’s bearing of punishment entails actual satisfaction at the moment of His suffering. The distinction between impetration and application cannot salvage hypothetical universalism, since it violates the intrinsic moral nature of both satisfaction and merit

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Objection: only universal satisfaction can render all men salvageable so as to ground a sincere and universal offer of the Gospel.

Answer: It seems to me that when hypothetical universalists say that the atonement renders all men “salvageable” (which, in my judgment, is the ultimate reason Davenant introduces a distinct intention in the atonement in the first place), what this “salvageability” essentially consists in is the truth of this conditional proposition: if any man believes, he will be saved. But I would argue that the truth of this proposition arises directly from the constitution of the Covenant of Grace itself, which establishes the connection between faith and salvation. Accordingly, all men are “salvageable” simply by virtue of the existence of the Covenant of Grace, which offers salvation on the condition of faith. In this sense, there exists in all men an obediential potency for salvation grounded not in the extent of the atonement as such, but in the universal offer established by the Covenant of Grace; and therefore, all men are salvageable. If my logic holds here, then this explanation is open to hypothetical universalists themselves and will allow them to, more accurately, give the formal reason for the salvageability of men and the argument has hope of advancing beyond what I take to be a very unnecessary and ill-thought-out yet all too common objection.

1. The Covenant of Grace extends the offer of salvation to all men under the condition of faith.

2. This offer entails an obediential potency in all men to receive salvation, insofar as God grants the offer and enables the condition to be fulfilled.

3. Therefore, all men possess an obediential potency for salvation by virtue of the Covenant of Grace.

There first is granted by all and is, in essence, the universal offer of the Gospel, which is proposed conditionally to all men as men, not as they are elect or reprobate. The second explicates the necessary condition for this offer to hold good. Whereas—at least some—hypothetical universalists badly replace this necessary condition in universal satisfaction itself, the above correctly grounds it in obediential potency and ought to be accepted by hypothetical universalists as the correct way to ground the free offer.

Objection: Faith retroactively makes Christ’s satisfaction into a moral cause for those for whom the atonement is effectually applied.

Answer: I add this objection here, lest someone still try to escape through retroactive moral causality (although I don’t think Davenant would do this). A moral cause cannot be actualized after the act. That is, the moral qualities or relations of a particular act are constituted at the time of that act. A moral relation cannot be retroactively added to an act: the relation itself either exists when the act existed and it causes its effect at some point in time (whether that is before, during, or after the act) or the moral relation does not exist with the act at all. Moral causes are constituted at the time of action; their effects may be applied later, but no moral relation can be retroactively added to an act after its completion.

I will return to this principle in a future post that I have been planning to make for some time on the validity of the sacraments. But suffice it to say for now that this principle is the same reason that a sacrament cannot be retroactively made valid (as I erroneously attempted to argue of infant baptism in the past). Nor can, for instance, an invalid marriage in which the consent of one of the parties was lacking, be made into a valid marriage at a later time after that party has given their consent. The marriage was invalid in the past and is now valid by mutual consent, but such consent does not validate the past “marriage.” Thus were a man to force a woman to “marry” him at gunpoint, yet should the woman later give consent to marriage, her newfound consent does not validate the past “marriage,” but only constitutes the first true, valid marriage.

This is also why in civil law, there can be no ex post facto laws—such “laws” are null and void and essentially unjust and unreasonable precisely for this reason.