PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
I am a Reformer as you are well aware and I hold to the doctrine of Limited Atonement BECAUSE I believe that the death of Jesus Christ was substitutional and penal.
That is not to disagree that Jesus was lifted up bearing the sin of mankind. He was. He did.
But He suffered the wrath of God for only those the Father gave Him to redeem and He died their death in their stead. John 10 and 17 reveals this elect love and purpose of God very clearly, as do the various covenant promises to only a select few persons throughout bible history.
A wonderful and exhaustive work on Limited Atonement is John Owen's "The Death of Death in the Death of Jesus Christ"
To modify the Truth that Jesus died for His people alone, is to lose substitutional redemption, which destroys the power and purpose of the cross.
That was my point. They don't understand Calvinism. They have a caricature of it.