Does Hebrews 10:14 teach limited atonement?

This is the sec­ond of four posts on Calvin­ist proof-texts for for lim­it­ed atone­ment. The first was a dis­cus­sion of Romans 8:28–30. Still to come in this series are John 6:37 and Eph­esians 1:4–5.

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efore we get to Hebrews 10:14, dear read­er, let us look a few vers­es ahead to Hebrews 10:26. “For if we sin wil­ful­ly,” the author says—for it almost cer­tain­ly is not Paul—“after that we have received the knowl­edge of the truth, there remaineth no more sac­ri­fice for sins.” This text, like 1 Cor. 10:12, warns of the dan­ger of apos­ta­sy; and that’s a tricky con­cept if you believe in once saved, always saved. Some Calvin­ists try to nuance this by say­ing that only those who were nev­er saved in the first place can apos­ta­size, but that’s non­sense: If you were nev­er saved in the first place, there’s noth­ing to apos­ta­size from. The word is ren­dered mean­ing­less. Hebrews 10:26 address­es the sit­u­a­tion of those who sin “wil­ful­ly,” which rather sug­gests that we have free will to turn toward God or away from God. Words mean things, dear read­er.

Any­way, we can now turn to Hebrews 10:14: “By one offer­ing [Christ] hath per­fect­ed for ever them that are sanc­ti­fied.” Calvin­ists read this text and say: “See, Alt? This shows that Christ died only for the elect; he per­fects only ‘them that are sanc­ti­fied.’ And he per­fects them ‘for ever,’ which means you can’t lose your sal­va­tion. QED, L & P!”

Right. The Calvin­ist who reads Hebrews 10:14 this way con­flates pre­ve­nient grace, jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, sal­va­tion, and sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion. These are not the same. These are dif­fer­ent stages of a process that occurs through the entire life of a per­son.

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• Pre­ve­nient grace pre­cedes the human deci­sion to accept or reject Christ. It is also called “enabling grace,” because it enables a per­son dead in sins to act in coop­er­a­tion with God; with­out it, no one can save him­self. (It is not, how­ev­er, as Calvin­ists false­ly assert, irre­sistible; it is only enabling. Nor is it to be con­fused with con­tin­u­ing grace.)

And so the Coun­cil of Trent says (Canon 3):

If any one saith, that with­out the pre­ve­nient inspi­ra­tion of the Holy Ghost, and with­out his help, man can believe, hope, love, or be pen­i­tent as he ought, so as that the grace of Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion may be bestowed upon him; let him be anath­e­ma.

Pre­ve­nient grace pre­cedes jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. Again, here is Trent: “[I]n adults, the begin­ning of the said Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is to be derived from the pre­ve­nient grace of God, through Jesus Christ, that is to say, from His voca­tion, where­by, with­out any mer­its exist­ing on their parts, they are called; that so they, who by sins were alien­at­ed from God, may be dis­posed through His quick­en­ing and assist­ing grace, to con­vert them­selves to their own jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, by freely assent­ing to and co-oper­at­ing with that said grace.

Pre­ve­nient grace is most clear­ly taught in John 6:44, where Jesus says: “No man can come unto me, unless the Father who hath sent me, draw him.”

• Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is for­give­ness for sin which fol­lows repen­tance and the deci­sion to fol­low Christ in coop­er­a­tion with grace. As a result, God infus­es us with grace more and more to enable us to con­tin­u­al­ly choose him. Right­eous­ness is not “imput­ed,” as Calvin­ists claim. “We are his work­man­ship, says Eph­esians 2:10—implying that we are to be made right­eous, not just declared right­eous. God is a pot­ter (Jer. 18:6). He does­n’t make dec­la­ra­tions; he fash­ions us when we con­sent to be mold­ed.
• Sal­va­tion refers to our hav­ing been freed from bondage to sin. Pri­or to pre­ve­nient grace, we had no free­dom to choose the good. We were slaves to sin. But as we choose it more and more, God infus­es us with grace more and more, and we grad­u­al­ly become more capa­ble of good, less cap­tive to sin itself. This is the result of God’s con­tin­u­ing grace, which we must also coop­er­ate with.

Thus St. Paul says in Romans 6:20–22:

When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the con­trol of right­eous­ness. What ben­e­fit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the ben­e­fit you reap leads to holi­ness, and the result is eter­nal life.

Paul here speaks of a process. We have “become slaves of God.” That will “lead to holi­ness.”

And here is Gala­tians 4:4–9 (RSV-CE):

But when the time had ful­ly come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adop­tion as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spir­it of his Son into our hearts [pre­ve­nient grace], cry­ing, “Abba! Father!” So through God you are no longer a slave but a son [jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, and if a son then an heir. For­mer­ly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods; but now that you have come to know God [sal­va­tion], or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beg­gar­ly ele­men­tal spir­its, whose slaves you want to be once more?

Paul lays out the process, but also says that it is pos­si­ble to “turn back” and become slaves to sin “once more.” This is a strange way to talk if one can’t lose sal­va­tion.

• Sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion Occurs when we have been trans­formed into the divine nature (cf. 2 Pet. 1:4 and 2 Pet. 1:15–16).

Sanctification—or holiness—is the end of the process. “He who has begun a good work in you will per­form it until the day of Christ” (Phil. 1:6).

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That’s an overview, and it’s not pos­si­ble to flesh out every nuance or answer every objec­tion in one blog post. The point here is that there are dis­tinc­tions we must make and Hebrews 10:14 is address­ing sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion. “Christ,” says the author of Hebrews, “hath per­fect­ed for ever them that are sanc­ti­fied.” This is not a ref­er­ence to those whom God calls by pre­ve­nient grace, nor even those whom God has jus­ti­fied. It is a ref­er­ence to those who have been made holy.

The Coun­cil of Trent says again (and I quot­ed this in the pri­or arti­cle): “[T]hough He died for all, yet all do not receive the ben­e­fit of His death, but those only unto whom the mer­it of His pas­sion is com­mu­ni­cat­ed.” That’s ful­ly con­sis­tent with Hebrews 10:14 lim­it­ing “per­fec­tion” to a sub­set who have been “sanc­ti­fied.”

You can only get Calvin­ism out of the text if you con­flate pre­ve­nient grace and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion with sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion.