Thanks for your response, Pilgrim. Thought provoking, but I'm sticking with my thesis...maybe with a few clarifications. I even edited my responses to be shorter ;-) If you think I'm still off base, please jab again.

Would I be wrong in concluding, after reading through your rather long originative response to Tom, that you hold to an Amyraldian position?

Yes, you'd be wrong. Which isn't to say that that I did a sufficient enough job to keep someone from concluding that, but I don't hold to an Amyraldian position. The time I spent around the sufficiency of the atonement for all mankind may have suggested that, and common understanding around sufficiency can even slip into notions of efficacy or suggest that it's feasible for men to univocally choose. Always have to be careful around discussions on "sufficiency". But we can still say that his sacrifice was sufficient for the whole world to be saved without actually subtracting from the doctrine of limited atonement.

If the price was paid for all, then de facto, the Holy Spirit does indeed make sure all the "turkeys" are collected. The incarnate Christ says it is to be so (Jh 6:37).

I'd say you're close, but not quite right. Indeed John 6:37 confirms that all those whom the Father draws to the Son are paid for, but it does not extend so far to say that all who are paid for are necessarily drawn to the Son. We know this because of verses like 2 Peter 2:1, contrasting the notions of being "bought" with "being bought and saved". Failing to make that distinction is what gives rise to questions like Tom's. If we stick with the "all who are bought are saved" idea, then we are still left having to explain 2 Peter 2:1 which clearly contradicts that notion. Unless I'm still missing something, I think my explanation is sufficient for both verses at once.

I will say this, that while Scripture does teach that Christ's sacrifice is full of enough wealth to procure all to salvation while only being effective for us, I'm not altogether comfortable making such straight-line comparisons with our little finite definitions. Again, strict definitions do not always match common usage and we must beware of lending too much suggestion to universalism when we speak about sufficiency for all. Also, our understanding of price and sufficiency are fairly limited and I am not certain that these ideas reach the full depths of what instrinsic "worth" and "sufficiency" the atonement ultimately have, so there's a grain of salt there. Even my real-world example of turkey coupons, while overturning Arminian notions and does better than most contrived examples that leave out the securing work of the Holy Spirit, is not entirely sufficient to capture all the nuances of how atonement ultimately works....rather like painting-by-number a copy of the Mona Lisa to illustrate what the real thing looks like. But parable-like stories have their place I suppose.


Linguistically, agorazo connotes not merely the payment of price but the acquisition of that which has been paid for, aka: ownership.
I wrote a lot of words hoping to make clear that purchase, ownership and the right of possession are not the same as possession, which is part of the offence to God since possession (with regard to salvation since I understand that God still possesses all) was denied by those were bought in 2 Peter 2:11...you can sense the contempt in the tone of that verse. So while agorazo does speak of price and ownership, we see in this verse that it does not also always include possession, which was what Tom's question was about. But it is apparently a unique exception best kept to interpreting just those matters spoken of in this verse, where possession is lacking.

God has saved me and not my neighbor because it was the eternal good pleasure of God to do so.
From the revelation we have, this is is the only reply we can give. I appreciate that. But I trust you see it does not answer the question directly. The asker always wants to know "what is it about me that so eternally pleased him to choose me and what it is about my neighbour that God did not choose him?" Certainly we all understand that this is really what the question is asking. And our answer to that must be that we are not given that answer for reasons I mentioned already. Much the way people ask why a certain evil exists, we say that God has a sufficient reason. When they ask what that reason is, we must answer that while it is know and sufficient for God to know, I don't know. Not popular, but it's also not invalid.