Limited Atonement Homer C. Hoeksema
Nowadays when you hear the expression ‘‘Limited Atonement” you immediately think of the debate and, to an extent, controversy that is going on in the Reformed community exactly about this subject. And if you expect that in this chapter I will have some thing to say about matters connected with what generally has come to be called the ‘‘Dekker Case,” you are correct. But I wish to make the following crystal clear in this con nection. In the first place, I have absolutely no interest in and no intention of engaging in personalities or in tearing down or railing against anyone’s church, whatever the name of that church may be, or in gloating abour anyone’s ecclesiastical difficulties. 1 want no part of that. The matter of the church and the matter of the truth of our Reformed heritage are far too serious for that. Let this, therefore, be understood. In the second place, the other side of the previous statement is that 1 am interested solely in the truth of the gospel and its advance; and I approach you, my readers, on that same basis. I expect that you are interested in the same thing. And let me add immediately that for me the truth of the gospel and the Reformed faith are synonymous. In the third place the question is, therefore, solely this: what do our Reformed confessions say about this doctrine, and what does Scripture, on which our Reformed confessions are based, say about it? That is rhe only issue. The issue is not one of theological opinions. Nor is it a question of what is popular, — because certainly the Reformed truth is not very popular today. Nor is it a question of what is apparently useful or what may apparently be harmful in the preaching or on the mission field. Nor is it a question of what we would like to think. But the issue, first of all, for Reformed believers is this: what do our con fessions, which we agree are binding and to which Reformed officebearers must subscribe, — what do these confessions say? 45
