Ursinus' Hypothetical-Universalism

One also finds among these earlier Reformed theologians a universal satisfaction for sins. The eminent German Reformer and primary author of the Heidelberg Catechism, Ursinus, in his lectures on the Catechism plainly affirmed a universal satisfaction for the sins of all human beings. In question 20, Ursinus’s imaginary interlocutor posits that if Christ made a satisfaction for the sins of all, all must be saved. Ursinus responds by reaffirming the notion that Christ made a satisfaction for the sins of all people, but he added that its application is suspended upon the condition of belief. He then quotes Jn. 3:16. In answer to question 37, the Catechism says that Christ “suffered the wrath of God against the sins of the whole human race,” which Pareus, Ursinus’s student, glossed as “the sense and sustaining of God’s wrath kindled against the sins, not of some human beings, but of the whole race of mankind; whence indeed there is a universality of sin and of God’s wrath suffered by Christ against sin.” Note, as well, Ursinus’s comments on question 37.

 

Michael Lynch, John Davenant’s Hypothetical Universalism (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021), 52