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From Heaven He Came and Sought Her: Definite Atonement in Historical, Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspective
Definite Atonement in Historical, Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspective edited by David Gibson & Jonathan Gibson
I knew I wanted to read this exhaustive study of definite atonement the first time I heard about it way back in July of last year. I pre-ordered immediately, waited until it finally arrived mid-December, and began reading right after Christmas, finishing (finally!) a couple of weeks ago.
Yes, it took me more than 5 months to make it through From Heaven He Came, not so much because it’s nearly 700 pages long (although that would be reason enough), but because every one of its pages is dense. I rarely write in a book as much as I have in this one, but I needed heavy marking to understand and remember what I read. Now it’s time to write a review, and this is not easy task, either. How can I sum up a book that took five months to read in one blog post?
Defining
Definite atonement, the doctrine defended within this book, means that
in the death of Jesus Christ, the triune God intended to achieve the redemption of every person given to the Son by the Father in eternity past, and to apply the accomplishment of his sacrifice to each of them by the Spirit. The death of Christ was intended to win the salvation of God’s people alone (page 33).
You may recognize this quote as a statement of what is more commonly called limited atonement, the L in the TULIP acronym used to represent the five points of Calvinism. But definite atonement is the name used for this doctrine throughout this book and there’s good reason for this: definite atonement is a simply a better descriptor of it. That the atonement is definite means it has a defined purpose and a defined effect. Christ died to save a specific group of people, his people, and his work actually saves all of them.
When someone embraces Calvinism, definite atonement is frequently the last of the five points of Calvinism to be affirmed, and some who accept the other four points who never accept it. If I had to explain this, I’d guess it’s because in a battle of proof texts it can look like definite atonement loses to universal atonement, although this is not really the case, as the biblical argument laid out in this book shows.
Summarizing
From Heaven He Came consists of 23 essays by 21 authors, plus a foreword by J. I. Packe—an interesting choice since Packer also wrote the now-classic introduction to a reprint of John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, the only other work in history that could also be considered a definitive study of definite atonement. The overarching aim of this volume is
to show that history, the Bible, theology, and pastoral practice combine together to provide a framework within which the doctrine of definite atonement is best articulated … (page 37).
Accordingly, the essays are grouped into four sections corresponding with these categories. Contributors include Michael Haykin, Paul Helm, Carl R. Trueman, Tom Schreiner, Robert Letham, Stephen Wellum, Sinclair Ferguson, and John Piper, to list some of the authors you may know.
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