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God_Seeker_1
Guest
I heard a Calvinist say that Noah’s ark proves limited atonement because baptism is the anti type of the ark…can anyone help in addressing the argument?
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SonCatcher
Guest
He’s got it backwards. The Flood was a prefiguring of baptism - a "proto-"type of sorts.
[BIBLEDRB]1 Peter 3:19-21[/BIBLEDRB]
[BIBLEDRB]1 Peter 3:19-21[/BIBLEDRB]
po18guy
Well-known member
Limited atonement strikes me as associated with an impotent savior. Or an irrational one. Its concept of Christ strikes me as more human than divine.
1 Timothy 2:4
Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)
4 Who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
1 John 2:2
Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)
2 And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.
Why would an omnipotent God cause His only Son to suffer on behalf of those already doomed to perdition? Frankly, it seems nonsensical.
1 Timothy 2:4
Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)
4 Who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
1 John 2:2
Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)
2 And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.
Why would an omnipotent God cause His only Son to suffer on behalf of those already doomed to perdition? Frankly, it seems nonsensical.
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MarcoPolo
Guest
I get that baptism and Noah’s ark are types, but how is he figuring that favors limited atonement?
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SonCatcher
Guest
Because only eight were saved from the Flood.
The prefigures were of course limited in scope because they were meant to point to Christ’s Redemptive Work. They were not intended to be redeeming in themselves.
The Redemption bought by Christ is perfect, however. Thus, unlimited.
The Calvinist is in a bind, however, because by emphasizing God’s Sovereignty at the expense of Free Will, he has to come up with a plausible reason why Salvation is not universal in practice.
po18guy
Well-known member
“Limited atonement” from the flood strikes me as results-based inductive reasoning. This is the error that always arrives when one must reverse engineer history from a chosen viewpoint.
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garysibio
Guest
Every one who wanted to be saved was in the ark. Those who did not enter stayed outside by their own choice. How does that prove limited atonement?
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MarcoPolo
Guest
Ah - I would add this to what you said. The eight were saved because they entered the vessel of salvation. As Peter teaches (as SonCatcher quoted) the incident is a figure of baptism. The Ark itself is a figure of the Church, entered by baptism - remember Scripture says the Church is Jesus’ body, and the Catechism teaches that the birth of the Church goes back to Jesus being pierced in the side on the cross when blood and water flowed, another sign of baptism in the words of the Church Fathers. A non-Catholic can see this by looking at other figures with this feature: this corresponds to Eve being born from the “side” of the first Adam, and Eve is another figure of the Church, a maternal figure of the physical living. In the same way, the ark’s door was in its “side” (Gen. 6:16) through which those saved “entered.”
So you have Eve, those in the Ark, and the blood and water, all flowing from the “side” of these church figures. With regard to the 8 saved, I don’t see in the type a symmetrical pattern in the OT and NT that the 8 were saved to the exclusion of anyone else who may have been able to enter the ark. According to the Calvinist, it would have been impossible for anyone else to enter the ark. Yet I don’t see that. In fact, the whole image of diversity of animals entering the ark seems to reflect Peter’s dream of many animals (Acts 10:12ff), revelation he uses in Acts 15 when he teaches that circumcision is not necessary - thus salvation is open to other “creatures” besides Jews. So I even see the many animals on the ark as a sign that no one is excluded. I think the Calvinist also misses the typology of the animals in the ark story. They probably think this means Christ’s limited atonement includes various races, but not all persons, as they have interpreted other verses in Scripture, but I think this is to miss the representational value of diverse animals with regard to Gentiles.
In the Jewish roots of Christianity, it was an emphasized teaching that God’s people were not Jews alone, but that their ministry as a people points and teaches us the way. Limited atonement should thus have some typological basis in Judaism itself, that some Jews were somehow disqualified from being among God’s people for whatever un-understandable reason God may have. But take the incident of Moses crossing the Red Sea (another baptismal figure according to the NT) - did Moses stop at the edge of the water and say to the crowd, “Okay, only some of us are allowed to cross. Only some are allowed to take the journey to the promised land.” Of course not.
Anyway, those are some rambling thoughts off the cuff. Hope they’re not incoherent - I’m sure a Calvinist would think so.
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TRH1292
Guest
I am very puzzled by what you must mean by that. Limited Atonement is exactly the opposite of that. Calvinistic Limited Atonement is that God dies only for the elect he predestines to heaven, not those that go to hell. Limited Atonement is a heresy and Catholic’s absolutely cannot believe it, but I don’t understand your remark.
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