Matt’s main contention is that the TULIP acronym has caused many problems, and led to many misunderstandings, that the Canons of Dordt did not, particularly with respect to Limited Atonement. (Are there any others? I doubt Matt would rush to distance himself from Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Irresistible Grace or the Perseverance of the Saints). Quite rightly, Matt goes back to Dordt to see what the original source of the doctrine of Limited Atonement was:

Who make use of the distinction between obtaining and applying in order to instill in the unwary and inexperienced the opinion that God, as far as he is concerned, wished to bestow equally upon all people the benefits which are gained by Christ’s death; but that the distinction by which some rather than others come to share in the forgiveness of sins and eternal life depends on their own free choice (which applies itself to the grace offered indiscriminately) but does not depend on the unique gift of mercy which effectively works in them, so that they, rather than others, apply that grace to themselves. For, while pretending to set forth this distinction in an acceptable sense, they attempt to give the people the deadly poison of Pelagianism.

 
Matt’s point, which is well made, is that this citation says nothing at all about any “limitations” to the atonement. He’s right: it doesn’t. It simply says that the difference between those who believe and those who don’t is not “free choice” but a “unique gift of mercy” – which is effectively a restatement of Unconditional Election. The question to be asked here, then, is: why five points at all? Matt believes in five point Calvinism, but if he is to take the wording of the Canons of Dordt as his only launchpad for it, he should properly be a four point Calvinist on the basis of the above text: Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Irresistible Grace and Perseverance of the Saints. TUIP might not be as catchy, but on his reading (and mine) it would be truer to what the relevant paragraph actually said.
 
So why five points at all? The reason for the fifth point is probably that Dordt made this statement in response to the second Article of Remonstrance, and in doing so, implied a correction to the Arminians’ statement:

That, agreeably thereto, Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, died for all men and for every man, so that he has obtained for them all, by his death on the cross, redemption, and the forgiveness of sins; yet that no one actually enjoys this forgiveness of sins, except the believer.

 
From reading Matt’s article, I’m not sure whether he believes (a) the Remonstrants were wrong that Christ died for all men, and needed correction, or (b) the Remonstrants were right, and they didn’t. So my question for him is: is the Remonstrants’ statement above - that Christ died for all but only believers enjoy the benefits of it - true, or false? If he says it is true, then I am with him all the way, and simply express my puzzlement that he sees the need for a fifth point of Calvinism at all. If he says it is false, because Christ’s death is not actually for all people, then I submit that the label “Limited Atonement”, even though not expressed in the Canons of Dordt, fits him like a glove, whether he likes the language or not. (The five-point Calvinist, on top of saying that “unique mercy” is required to believe, typically makes the additional claim that the death of Christ is not for everyone, thus shifting the ground from the predestining work of the Father (U) and the regenerating work of the Spirit (I) to the atoning work of the Son (L). For my part, I simply cannot find any scriptural text anywhere that indicates this is true, or that indicates the Second Article of Remonstrance requires any correction whatsoever.)
 
Moreover, I’m not sure that TULIP is as unfair a representation of five-point Calvinism as Matt implies. Leading Calvinists today frequently express Calvinism in those terms, and when asked to defend the L, use exactly the same blend of logical inference and texts-that-don’t-really-say-that (John 10:11 et al) as we heard at THINK (mentioning no names!). Not only that, but Matt’s article quotes Carl Trueman’s robust defence of Limited Atonement, which includes the L-word in its noun form, and Matt strongly implies he agrees with it. All of which is to say that, when Matt objects to the term “Limited Atonement”, I can’t tell whether that is because he doesn’t agree with the doctrine (as implied by his insistence that the Canons of Dordt don’t teach it), or because he agrees with it but doesn’t think it sounds very nice (as implied by his apparent affirmation of Carl Trueman). Humph.
 
One final point to raise: Trueman’s defence of Limited Atonement, which Matt quotes in support, is (with the greatest respect to two of my favourite bloggers), very weak. He says:

The claim is that Amyraldian [= four point Calvinist] views of atonement allow the evangelist or the pastor to say to the people in an unequivocal way that then undergirds both evangelism and assurance, “Christ died for you!” Anyone who understands the Amyraldian scheme, however, is not going to be impressed by such an answer; what they will really want to know is whether Christ is interceding for them. The problem of limitation has simply been shifted from Calvary to the right hand of God the Father.

 
The reason I say this is weak is that the “problem of limitation” is shifted from Calvary to the right hand of the Father, not by Amyraldians, but by Scripture itself. The idea that Jesus died for everyone, but intercedes for the elect only, comes from the Bible, not from four-point Calvinists. The two biblical passages that speak directly of the intercession of Christ make it clear that believers, rather than all people, are the focus of his prayers (Rom 8:33-34; Heb 7:25). The death of Christ, however, is regularly said to be for “all”, and nowhere limited to the elect. So when Trueman says that Amyraldians believe Christ died for every person but aren’t sure if he is praying for every person, I happily concede the point. But from what I can tell, Paul and Hebrews would agree. (It’s also worth saying that, when I tell unbelievers that Jesus died for them, they never sound unimpressed because they aren’t sure if Jesus is interceding for them. Believing in Limited Atonement does, I think, make preaching the gospel harder than Limited Intercession would).
 
So: either we say that Christ died for all, and become four-point Calvinists (like Calvin), or we say that he only died for some, and face the fact that Limited Atonement is a good description of what we actually believe (like Trueman). But I’m not sure we have the option of retaining the five points, and binning the acronym because we don’t like the sound of it. A TULIP by any other name would smell as fishy.