Perkins’s universalism

William Perkins has been accused of being “addicted to adding the qualifying phrase ‘for the elect’ to universalist Biblical statements.” In his recent book on John Preston and English Hypothetical Universalism (Eerdmans), Jonathan Moore argues that this assessment is exaggerated. Moore lays out Perkins’s views on definite atonement thoroughly, yet he also finds that Perkins “is not only completely uninhibited about employing Scripture’s own universal language, but he seems to relish an opportunity for doing so.”

Perkins emphasizes, for instance, the infinite merit of Christ’s death: He “hath perfectly alone by himselfe accomplished all things that are needful for the salvation of mankinde” because he made “satisfaction to his Father for the sinne of man.” In what Moore describes as a “Thomist” move, Perkins argues that “the vertue and efficacie of this price beeing paid, in respect of merit and operation is infinite.”

When we examine the “value and sufficiencie of the death of Christ” we find that it is “as general as the sin of Adam.” He is willing to speak of “potentiall efficacie” in what Christ paid as being “in it selfe sufficient to redeeme every one without exception from his sins, albeit there were a thousand worlds of men.” Moore notes that Christ’s death has this value because the “divine nature of Christ” corresponds “to the infinitely evil nature of sin.”

Based on this, Perkins “can go so far as to write, ‘I doe willingly acknowledge and teach universall redemption and grace, so farre as it is possible by the word,’ and he admits that ‘Universall redemption of all men, we grant: the Scripture saith so.’ However, when Perkins states that ‘Christ offered himselfe a sacrifice to the Father for the sinnes of the world,’ he is simultaneously maintaining that Christ died ‘only for those which are elected and predestinated.’ This is because Perkins sees that ‘there is an universalitie among the Elect and beleevers.’ Similarly, Perkins can concede that ‘Christ died for all men in the sense of Scripture,’ but simultaneously denied that Christ ‘died for every man without exception.’”

This complex doctrine, Moore says, arises from Perkins’s determination to avoid “the charge of so forcing his own system on the text of Scripture that he can no longer use the very language of Scripture itself to explain his position.”