Thibodaux has written a response to me in his comments on his “Arminianism is cancer” article. Here are my thoughts:

We have a little more from the same objector on Owen:

@He argues that if you believe Christ dealt with sin/sin guilt or whatever makes mankind guilty before God, then it follows that all men must be saved.

That follows if an only if the arguer assumes that the atonement saves people apart from faith.

@It never states the people will be saved apart from faith.

Indeed, it doesn’t state it outright, but he necessarily must presuppose as much for the argument to work.

@But further just to show that it doesn’t presuppose that someone can be saved without faith. You can maintain that God created a world where postmortem repentance occurs to all, freely.

Non-sequitur. Even were such a thing possible, it would still be salvation by faith. That has no bearing upon the deficiencies in Owen’s argument.

@It poses a dilemma for the Arminian where a man is innocent and guilty of the same crimes at the same time.
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@But how can their sins be atoned for and yet they are condemned for sin?
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@At least, they are in a neutral state. They can’t be condemned but they didn’t believe so Jesus’ righteousness isn’t imputed to them.

This has already been answered. One is not declared innocent (justified) until one believes; that’s why it’s called justification by faith. One who isn’t justified is condemned for his sins. Ergo, Owen’s argument is still unscriptural in its premise, and unsound in its formulation as a result.

Well, he states that it was a necessary presupposition of Owen’s argument to state that a person can be saved apart from faith. Suppose for the sake of argument that it does and that is what Owen meant. Well, that doesn’t deal with my reformulation of the argument where God atones for mankinds sin and therefore makes mankind in a state of neutrality. I presented that idea at the end of the article he is responding to. 

The notion being that double imputation hasn’t been fulfilled because the unbeliever hasn’t believed. Christ’s righteousness isn’t imputed so they aren’t saved. That is a fair and theologically accurate response. The issue is that it just doesn’t affect what I stated about them being innocent. Christ has a positive righteousness but that just leaves an unbeliever without a positive righteousness before God. But the unbeliever’s sins have been washed away and he remains eternally innocent of his sins. This leaves him only with a legal fiction. Unbelievers seem as damned as they could ever be but just so happen to be completely exonerated of all their sins. The atonement is merely a legal fiction on the behalf of the unbeliever. We are left with only a few options. Either Christ atones for the sins of people when they believe and thus limited atonement is true in some regard. This is understood by the idea that the imputation both ways only occur when someone believes. But Christ died 2000 years ago for the sins of all as Thibodaux states. What atonement doesn’t actually atone for sins anyways? What did it even do on this view? Pretty much it isn’t an atonement without faith of an individual. Or Christ atoned for the sins of everyone and they are punished arbitrarily(this supposes he maintains eternal damnation for unbelievers). The last option is that there exists men that are neutral and those that are saved. But the disadvantage of that understanding is that it contradicts the antinomies the bible presents. So, Thibodaux and other freewill theist lose either way.