Do John 6:37 and John 6:44 teach limited atonement?

This is the third of four posts on Calvin­ist proof-texts for for lim­it­ed atone­ment. The first was a dis­cus­sion of Romans 8:28–30, and the sec­ond Hebrews 10:14. In the final post, I will dis­cuss Eph­esians 1:4–5.

—

ohn 6:44 cer­tain­ly teach­es pre­ve­nient grace: “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” Apart from being drawn by grace, we would be pow­er­less to come. “And I will raise him up on the last day.” But—and this is important—Christ’s rais­ing on the last day is depen­dent not just upon being drawn, but on com­ing to him. Not all who are drawn will come. And that pre­sup­pos­es free will.

With that in mind, we can turn to John 6:37: “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” Calvin­ist’s read eter­nal secu­ri­ty into this text, and there is a kind of secu­ri­ty in Christ’s promise that he will “in no wise cast out” those who come to him. Except that one does have to come first, which would seem to be impor­tant.

“But Alt! Jesus says that all whom God gives to Christ will come to him. The text gives no allowance for any­one choos­ing to not come. And, pshaw, you insist upon free will!”

No: In fact, the Scrip­ture insists upon free will.

• Matt. 23:37: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and ston­est them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gath­ered thy chil­dren togeth­er, even as a hen gath­ereth her chick­ens under her wings, and ye would not!
• John 5:39–40: “Search the scrip­tures; for in them ye think ye have eter­nal life: and they are they which tes­ti­fy of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.

One can choose not to come. If only those who are drawn can come, and if every­one who is drawn comes, then it hard­ly makes sense for Christ to con­demn those who don’t do what they had no pow­er to do.

Yes, all whom God gives to Christ will come to him: But when does this giv­ing take place? The one answer we can rule out is that it hap­pened before the foun­da­tion of the world. δίδωσιν, didosin, is a present-tense verb. (Specif­i­cal­ly, present active indica­tive.) It refers to an ongo­ing action, not one that was com­plet­ed in the past.

Because of that, an arguable read­ing of the text is that the giv­ing and the com­ing are co-depen­dent. Because God will give me to Christ, I come; because I come, God gives. There is noth­ing in the text that would war­rant us spec­u­lat­ing about eter­nal decrees occur­ring before the foun­da­tion of the world.

And cer­tain­ly Jesus will not cast us out, but that does not imply that we aren’t free to leave of our own accord. My par­ents aren’t going to escort me into the car so they can dri­ve me to the edge of town and push me out. But I can still run away from home.

And so once again the Calvin­ist is ask­ing the text to sup­port a doc­trine larg­er than the actu­al words can bear. There is noth­ing in the text to sug­gest that the “giv­ing” was a com­plet­ed action of the past, and there is noth­ing in the the text that denies human free will to come or to go.