Hi Tom,

Being a Calvinist ex-English teacher now in the procurement business, and full of Christmas turkey that was given to me as a gift by a coupon, I find your questions intriguing, bringing the blood back to my head. Below my post here, I'll paste a portion of the second article referred to by Pilgrim above, which is good background support for what I'm about to say. So you might read that, and then read my note, or not.

DEFINING OUR TERMS
I think the confusion arises because of a subtle but important difference between the verbs "to buy" and "to procure". In Greek language you tend to have to consider more carefully the context of a word because the same word is used across the contexts. English grants us the ability to be much lazier in the interpretation of things because we just come up with another whole word.

While there may be differences in the languages, and even our own general usage of our English (as I'll illustrate below), I think the concepts are consistent. So the extend that a Calvinst ex-English teacher now in procurement full of turkey-by-coupon can do, I'll give my two bits here.

Because of the beauty of the English language, we're able to illustrate how we can split that hair between to buy and to procure and solve your dilemma. That blurb from the article does a similar thing, but by word study of the Greek, which is why I repost it here.

TERMS OF CONTRACT
Being "bought" doesn't necessarily mean "procured". As you know in both a complete and incomplete transaction, a price may be fully paid. The difference between whether or not there is breach of contract is whether the goods are ever handed over once the tender (usually money) is surrendered. When they take your money and don't give you the goods paid for, it's a kind of thievery by breach of contract. They've stolen, not your money, which is theirs, but the thing bought, which is now yours. But do you see that the price is still paid? And see how the rightful claim over the goods by the payor is now created, even though he hasn't collected? The thievery is not about the money, it;s about the thing purchased; you own it now, and they still have it. In our day to day experience, the concept of actually collecting what was paid for tends to go with the concept of "to buy" or "to pay". Christmas shopping bags hanging from both arms you run into a friend in the mall who asks "So what did you buy?" He doesn't ask "What did you procure?" But it's not strictly necessary that paying the price goes with collecting the goods (in this fallen world) and that's where I think people may trip up on Scirpture's use of "bought" when it's referring to false Christians, or any covenant-breaking heathen.

Yet it's not complicated, it's just our habit of the word's use.

If you sue in court because you paid for something and they never delivered the goods and the judge asks you "Sir, did you buy that item?" you can say yes. It's by virtue of you having bought it that you have any claim over it in court at all; answer "no" and the judge will throw the whole thing out of court. If he asks "Sir, did you procure that item?" you must say no because of the difference between the concepts of merely paying a price and actually procuring a paid-for item, which is a verb that includes the notion of actually taking possession. This is English at it's best. You can use the word procure in other ways, too, to take into possession without the concept of buying something , as in "I hiked to the stream and procured some water".

Being "bought" by Christ doesn't mean that someone was "procured".

Scripture is at liberty to use the term bought to mean that Christ paid a sufficient price for all mankind, including Christians, even if not all mankind completed the transaction with him. In this sense, they are "bought" just as we are bought and have God's claim over them just as his claim is over us (and your claim in court is over the goods you bought), yet they are not procured as we ar, nor does Scripture ever refer to them in that sense. So Scripture is right to speak of both the elect and non-elect as "bought" or "purchased" because indeed God has given over sufficient funds to buy the whole store. As Calvinists though, we never separate the notion of bought in the sense of fully procured, and being saved; they go together. People trip up on this verse when they assume that paying a price always means collecting what was paid for, and with thieves that's not the case. The sticker price for my sin was the same as for the unbeliever's sin; Christ's suffering and death and that price was paid. They get no discounts off that, nor are they charged any more. The difference between me and the unbeliever who dies in his sin is that while we are both wards of the state and peasant paupers, I'm the one who didn't despise the King when he offered up adoption papers and was delivered to him as his child. In any analogy you care to make, the transaction between God and me was completed and their transaction was not, which is why he is angry with them.

CALVINISM'S MAGNIFICENCE
So I find that when preachers sermonize only about how Christ paid "the price", it is less magnanimous to me than sermonizing about how far he went to write the covenantal terms, pay the price, and then secure the possession, which is how Calvinism outshines the competition. On this topic their theology is not incorrect, and ours is magnificent.


More on your question: "Why would Christ purchase all mankind if He wasn't going to redeem them also?"


In case you don't have time for a wordy answer, I'll offer this.....

SHORT ANSWER
So that no turkey may boast.

But I think some theological thinking may be necessary before that answer can be understood. So I will also give a more long winded....

LONG ANSWER
He did purchase them and he did all that is necessary for them to be redeemed. But perhaps there's a deficiency in understanding how the transaction in redemption is supposed to go. I think it's related to the fact that we have a trinitarian and sovereign God and a depraved humanity, very Calvinistic notions. Which means the question has roots in an Arminian understanding, but the answer is Calvinistic and so it may take more words if I feel like digging down, and I do.

Christ's work, while a sufficient price, is not fully redemption for the non-elect because while the price was given up, the goods were not handed over. It's an incomplete transaction. It's not that God is angry because they stole the price of Christ's atonement, or made it worth less by not converting. The Father is satisfied with the Son's accomplishment and does not look down upon it has having been shamed or made void. As I noted earlier, it is the purchased unbeliever that is the stolen item, not the price paid, and it is the selfish unbeliever who has kept himself to himself and not surrendered that which has been claimed by purchaser who bought him. That, by definition, means the covenant terms are not fulfilled; there was ultimately no redemption. That coupon is not redeemed because of a default by the greedy one still holding onto the goods.

I'd like to expand on that....

"Why would Christ purchase all mankind if He wasn't going to redeem them also?" I think there are two ways to think about the redemption mentioned in your question and analyzing that may reveal the root of your concern as lying in a misconception about redemption. Those two ways are to see redemption as;

1) us cashing in on Christ's atonement to get eternal life we never deserved (the simpler view) or

2) God cashing in on Christ's atonement to get us whom he always loved (the more complex understanding).

The first case tends to tickle the Arminian mind, the latter a Calvinist. The former focuses on the individual person's temporal claim in this life, the latter a triune God's claim in eternity. I'll respond to both perspectives by referring to them by #1 and #2 respectively and we'll see how only Calvinism can fully reconcile the Scripture troubling you by the theological majesty of it's response. In the end, Arminianism can not put together a coherent response, only Calvinism can.

I would say first that, Calvinist or Arminian, redemption isn't a guarantee of anything. It's simply a definition of a type of transaction by coupon, as it were. It's a guarantee that IF the redeemer submits the coupon THEN they will receive the goods without having to pay more, but it's NOT a guarantee that:

1) everyone will cash in their coupons (this is where Arminian gets off the bus), or

2) everyone gets a coupon to cash in (considered a more Calvinist idea).

Some would say the latter is more Calvinist, but that is where you have your question....why then isn't God handing out more coupons and getting full value for the price paid? Who would pay enough money to buy everyone in town a turkey, then only give out coupons to two people? That's your struggle.

But there is one other possibility, that redemption is not a guarantee that;

2) all coupons will be honoured.

How this dishonour happens is the much more intriguing story than the other two responses, and far more Calvinist. I think this is where the Calvinist bus leaves, dropping off the Arminian before the theological journey has even begun to shed it's riches.

Now, if you're asking why God doesn't give that redemption coupon guarantee to everyone, then you do not sufficiently understand covenant and you are thinking like an Arminian. Alternatively, if you are asking why, despite God giving everyone a coupon, not everyone cashes in then you do not understand the depravity of man and the noetic effect of sin, and you are thinking like an Arminian.

I think the questioners think of redemption with an Arminian tinge, and it's confusing them.

A purely Calvinist approach to the question would be, why did Christ pay the full price of redemption for all mankind yet only collect so few? Maybe that sounds like the same thing to some. Yes this question understands that redemption and the cost of redemption are concepts that cannot be separated, given the definition of redemption. Yet Arminians make that mistake of separating them in the foundation of their theology. They have it right that God pays the price for my redemption, so that he can collect me. But they mess it up with their "and then I choose to be redeemed," as if it was the soup cans choice for you to get the soup can coupon! The graceful notion of the Trinity paying the price, fulfilling the terms, and delivering the goods under consideration (which is us) is absent for the Arminian. But the Calvinist believes that, while Christ has deposited enough money in the world's account to buy the whole rotten store for himself, nothing is offered up when God the Father keeps his part of the coupon's covenant, which is to simply present it and make the demand, "this is my beloved son. Repent." . But this world offers up no repentance in return. He's kept his part of the bargain as the coupon's "redeemer" and he is angry. He could turn around and go home empty like you and I must when our coupon is denied. But he has means, and a plan.

I'd like to expand on that, to complete the understanding with a present example of how we all know this concept already, and it's not complex.

My generous neighbour paid for a coupon for a turkey at the grocery store and gave me the coupon as a gift. The coupon calls me the "redeemer" and it says all I have to do is present the coupon and I will receive my gift, no more charge. A store coupon for a Christmas turkey is considered redeemed only when the contract terms are fulfilled, where somebody else pays the price and the redeemer simply shows up with the covenant. So when the terms and conditions on that document have been delivered up, then I get the turkey whose only obligation in this festive transaction was to surrender his life. If I show up with my coupon on demand, "here's the coupon, turkey please" but don't collect, then the coupon hasn't been redeemed and the account is outstanding and my turkey is still wandering around some far field. So you see how redemption is just a name for a kind of transaction where somebody else fulfills terms of a covenant (involving a price) for some other [Linked Image] beneficiary. My turkey redemption had nothing to do with a guarantee that everyone in town gets a turkey coupon, and nothing to with any guarantee that I will even cash in the coupon. It's only a covenant that IF I produce the coupon THEN the price will be considered to have been paid and the goods will be delivered. Fine, so I show up with my one coupon and make the demand, the neighbour paid, and my part of the deal is over. The Bible teaches that, in effect, the store takes the coupon and without a thanks, ignores me completely, keeping my turkey and my neighbour's hard earned money. That's the last fail in the whole redemption thing, that my neighbour and I have been dealing with a bunch of crooks who took off with the payment that actually bought the turkey, plus the coupon which is worthless to them alone. Unless I have some power to enforce the contractual terms, I'm out a turkey and the money is lost. I return home with nothing unless I have some means to turn those crooks into truth-loving, honest citizens who will do the right thing.

But God is not without means nor power, and his Holy Spirit sets to working. That's the story of regeneration, justification, and sanctification.

In the end, the compassionate Christ (the third party) pays the price, the powerful Holy Spirit ensures sufficient completion of the covenantal terms (the coupon), and God (the redeemer) gets his Christmas turkey; me. All it took from me was my life (of truth-hating sin) and the Holy Spirit ensured that my life closed for the transaction to occur. I'm not the one cashing in the coupon, I'm the point and purpose of a fulfilled transaction while the others are turkeys still afield. Why are they still out there denying God a completed redemption? As Bonhoeffer wrote, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." Every turkey thinks he understands what that means and he runs the other way, leaving Christ penniless and God mocked.

This is how and why the doctrine of the Trinity and understanding redemption and the depravity of man matters to answering your question.

CONCLUSION
The Calvinist asks, so if the price for all was paid by Christ and the redemption for all was sufficiently completed by God the claimant, then why doesn't the Holy Spirit make sure all the turkeys are collected?

That is a lot like the question we Christians sometimes ask, so why has God save me and not my neighbour, who is a very generous and unsaved heathen?

We know the answer to that, that nobody has the answer to that. I don't know why me and not him. Which leads us to ask, so why doesn't God give us the answer to that? The Bible says, so that no turkey may boast.

And that is the long way to answer your question.

The rest of the Bible's teaching on the miracle of new life in Christ ensures we wind up as a newly embodied guest at the meal in heaven and not the main course, and maybe I could have stuck with my prince/pauper analogy and not a butchered turkey and thus twisted up the image of the heavenly gathering, but I've been eating a lot of turkey since yesterday, so I digress.



EXCERPT from Agorazo in II Peter 2:1 by Jim Ellis:
First, in the Greek Septuagint agorazõ and its related noun forms are used some twenty times to translate three Hebrew words (sabar, qanhh, and laqah); yet it is never used to translate the two great redemptive words—— those translated “redeem” (gã’al) and “ransom” or “purchase” (pãdãh). Second, of its thirty occurrences in the New Testament, agorazõ is never used in a salvation context (unless II Peter 2:1 is the exception) without the technical term “price” (times—a technical term for the blood of Christ) or its equivalent being stated or made explicit in the context (see I Cor. 6:20; 7:23; Rev. 5:9; 14:3-4). Third, in each of the latter five references the context clearly restricts the extent of agorazõ (regardless of what it means) to believers—never to non-believers. Fourth, a word study of agorazõ, in both the Greek Old and New Testaments, reveals that the word itself does not include the payment price. When it is translated with a meaning “to buy,” whether in a salvation or non-salvation context, a payment price is always stated or made explicit by the context. Fifth, in contexts where no payment price is stated or implied, agorazõ may often be better translated as “acquire” or “obtain”. Sixth, agorazõ is never used in Scripture in a hypothetical sense unless II Peter 2:1 be the exception. Rather it is always used in a context where the buying or acquiring actually takes place.