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Originally Posted by cih1355  I think that you have covered all of the bases.
Which strain of Arminianism believes in the moral government theory of the atonement?
I think they all do. Most Arminians today will use Calvinistic terms such as 'Christ paying the penalty for our sins,' and thus depart from historic Arminians in that respect, for historic Arminians would deny that Christ payed any penalty, but rather that he suffered for all and every man. Being more scholarly, historic Arminians would be more consistent within their own system. A consitent Arminian must conceive that Jesus did not really die for any man in particular, but as John Piper puts it, that Christ died for God. Of course most most of them like to stress the fact that Jesus died "for the whole world," since this is the language that Scripture uses in many places. Unfortunately, they beg you to interpret "the whole world" to mean "every single person in the whole world." John Gill actually points out from various Rabbinical books that it was not uncommon for Rabbis to use 'world' to denote the 'congregation', and the best scholars including Calvin agree that the "whole world" in those instances such as 1 John 2:2 refers to the "whole church" as opposed to the Christian Jews only. It is likely of course that John and other apostles may not have had the time to ponder on the logic surrounding Christ's substitutionary atonement. We do know, however, from the writing of various church fathers that some of them obviously held to limited atonement in some sense. Anyway, the government view of the atonement is completely foreign to Scriptures.
Are there any Arminians who believe that the penalty of sin is paid for twice- once by Christ's atonement and another time when a person goes to hell? |
That's a funny one. Toplady wrote a hymn about that. It is true, however, that many Arminians will claim that if Christ did not die in any sense for those who would reject him, then God cannot compound their guilt of unbelief. Some hyper-Calvinists would agree with them on that point and claim that the reprobates are not responsible to believe in Jesus, and that they will not receive a greater punishment for rejecting him. John Owen responds to this in his book "The Death of Death" by proving that nowhere does Scripture command unbelievers to believe that Jesus died for them. Rather, they are commanded to repent, and so it is for disobeying God's call to repentance that they will be punished further. Thus, in a sense they do like the idea of a penalty being paid in two parts; Christ having died for all their sins except unbelief, and finally the reprobates going to hell for none of their sins except unbelief. But you can probably see where this leads us: that those who die never having heard the gospel go to heaven, because they were never given a chance to believe. Most Arminians will deny this of course, since it is most heterodox. If it were true, it would mean that it is preferrable not to share the gospel and evangelize!