What is the extent of the atonement, according to Calvin? Paul A. Hartog discerns three possible responses: (1) Calvin understood Christ to have died for the elect alone; (2) Calvin believed that Christ died for all human beings, yet the Spirit grants salvation to a limited number; and (3) Calvin offers no clear answer, albeit for debated reasons. Demonstrating careful engagement with both Calvin’s writings and secondary literature, Calvin on the Death of Christ advances a compelling version of the second response.

Following an introduction and remarks on the status quaestionis in the first chapter, Chapter 2 engages Calvin at close quarters. And while this chapter aims to “let Calvin’s own materials speak for themselves” (26), the rudiments of Hartog’s interpretation soon begin to emerge. Christ’s atoning death, in principle, could secure salvation for all. He does not die for a limited number; his death is sufficient to pardon humankind as such. That is why the gospel must be preached indiscriminately. Yet salvation is not bestowed upon everyone. It is applied particularly to the elect, who are distinguished by a faith evoked by the Spirit. How, then, should one coordinate an affirmation of God’s all-inclusive, in-principle provision of salvation with an affirmation of salvation for a limited number? By situating Calvin’s claims in a trinitarian context. God’s delimitation of the elect should be viewed as an eternal action appropriable to the Father. The all-encompassing act of atonement, by contrast, is a discrete event in time and space, undertaken by the Word, which permits the gospel to be declared to all (thereby ensuring, concomitantly, the “inexcusability” of those who refuse it). And the gift of faith, whose receipt is magnified by believers’ awareness of God’s universal provision, is appropriable to God qua Spirit.

Chapter 3 bolsters Hartog’s interpretation by exposing the weakness of arguments for “limited atonement.” Important here are Calvin’s “Reply to Heshusius,” the commentary on 1 John 2:2, remarks on 1 Tim. 2:4, and sermons on Deuteronomy. Upon close inspection, none of these texts exhibits a commitment to limited atonement. Each balances an awareness of Christ’s universal provision with an appreciation for the particularity of election and the gift of faith.

Chapter 4 broadens the view. It notes that Calvin’s perspective is usefully compared with later proposals, stretching from the sophisticated writings of Moïse Amyraut, John Cameron, John Davenant, and others, to the terser (and perhaps strategically ambiguous) statements found in the Heidelberg Catechism, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the Westminster Confession. Indeed, just as these later works, like Calvin’s, are nuanced in ways that exceed Peter Lombard’s crude remark (Christ’s death being “sufficient for all but efficient only for the elect”), so recent formulations – particularly the infamous acrostic, “TULIP” – have limited dogmatic value.

The fifth chapter seeks to set scholarly debates on a new footing. Hartog commends a “complex-intentioned approach” to reading Calvin and thinking generally about the extent of atonement. His principal claim: the universal provision of salvation, the limited elective decision of the Father, and the limited evocation of faith by the Spirit comprise discrete (but related) dimensions of the triune God’s wise relationship to humankind. God intends particular effects, when working out God’s redemptive purposes, not least of which is an elected people whose faith includes an awareness of “the all-sufficient provision and the universal promises of the gospel” (p. 131). Also noteworthy is Hartog’s refusal to foreclose on further debate, as evidenced in his willingness to pose questions about his reading of Calvin. (A particularly shrewd one: “Is God’s gospel offer available to all without his sincerely desiring that it be accepted by all? If he sincerely desires that it be accepted by all, how does this harmonize with his particular will of election?” (p. 154).

This book is a worthy contribution. Although I worry about a lack of attention to Calvin’s Latin and French and discern a tendency toward over-quotation, Hartog distinguishes himself as a judicious reader who balances attention to detail with a grasp of Calvin’s broader project. That Hartog connects his analysis to Calvin’s trinitarianism is very laudable. On the assumption that Calvin sought to honor scripture’s “universal” and “limited” emphases, the right interpretive question is not if but how Calvin combines these emphases in his writing. To suggest that he nested them in a wide-angled account of God’s ways and works, with the particularity of the Father’s elective decision and the particularity of the Spirit’s operations being set (for believers) in dialectical tension with the Son’s willingness to die for all – Christ being “the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 Jn 2:2) – is an important proposal.

Two critical points. First, while Hartog is right to note the “pastoral” dimensions of Calvin’s writing, he needed to think more about Calvin’s relationship with his immediate contemporaries. Much could be gained, I suspect, from an engagement with studies that examine Calvin’s interest in the formation of piety, stretching from Serene Jones’s Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety (1995) to Michelle Chaplin Sanchez’s Calvin and the Resignification of the World (2019). Such works attend valuably to Calvin’s context – a time of new intellectual dynamics, disorienting geopolitical realities, and surging religious energies – and could help Hartog refine his “complex-intentioned approach.”

Second, and granted the propriety of an exclusively “historical examination” (p. 155), I wish Hartog had engaged constructively with a possibility that Calvin deemed “monstrous”: a bestowal of salvation that is universal in its provision and – in some complex way – its efficacy. Why so? On one level, specialized debates about limited atonement are unhelpfully divorced from contemporary life. Although Calvin wrote for an overwhelmingly Christian audience, we receive his writing differently, and often with a sense that nonChristian convictions are improperly viewed as symptoms of sinful obstinacy or an “inexcusable” rejection of the gospel. (Yes, it is an open question as to whether the topics of religious pluralism and universalism should be connected, but the connection is made, and Calvin scholars might have something useful to say about it.) On another level, there is here an opportunity for conversation between Calvin and later thinkers who have drawn on his insights to challenge the claim that God ultimately limits salvation to those who are granted faith. This reviewer, for instance, is unconvinced by Calvin’s stance. A universal provision applied to a limited number suggests that God gives with one hand, and then takes away with another. That could imply capriciousness – or at least suggest that God is unwilling (or unable?) justly to reject humanity’s sinfulness and mercifully lavish salvation upon all of God’s children. But I do not suppose that discussions about the extent of salvation can be closed, and I long for interlocutors who challenge my universalist tendencies on Calvinian grounds. My hope, then, is that Hartog will continue to reckon with the issues raised in this book and that he will do so in ways that draw Calvin’s more soteriologically adventurous descendants into his orbit.