Sunday, April 15, 2018

When does All Mean All?

Here are at least four passages where the use of the word "all" is viewed as pretty significant by Evangelical Universalists such as myself.  By no means all of the "all" verses Unvierslaists would site, but I want to limit myself here to ones where the counterarguments are most difficult to make, and also to what I personally recall at this moment in time.

John 12:32
"And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."
Romans 5:17-21
"For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)  Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.  For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.  Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord."
1 Corinthians 15:21-22
"For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
1 Timothy 4:10
"For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, especially of those that believe."
But one could respond to that by pointing to many Bible Passages where the use of the word All does not preclude exceptions.  Here is a Calvanist questing if all ever means all, mostly for the purpose of responding to Arminiasm, in which context verses where All has at face value a Unvierslaist implication are part of his proof it can't mean "all".  There is an article by a skeptic called 10 Bible verses where "all" does not mean "all".  In both of those cases it involved a lot of cases where the qualifier is right there in the verse, all of something specific. But even then, was every single individual in Jerusalem upset about the Magi's arrival?  Probably not but that can't be proven.  In most of the verses I'm talking about the qualified classification is humanity.

Anthropos is the Greek for "Men" in each of these, so don't even think about saying it precludes women, if it meant only all males or adult males in the Greek it would have been Asren or Andros.

When "All" truly has an exception to it, it's a rare exception, maybe one only.  So no that can't be used to make these verses consistent with the usual position of Conservative Christians that the vast majority of Humanity will not be saved.

The verse in Timothy specifically rules out the possibility that the "all" in mind is only those that believe, as does 1 John 2:2 but it doesn't quite use the word all, in English at least.  Those verses at least destroy the Limited Atonement doctrine of Calvinism.

John's Gospel uses "all men" quite a few times.  Some in passages that you might say at face value imply all men become believers in this life which is demonstrably not true.  However I believe that is fulfilled by all men believing once they're Resurrected.

Speaking of which, 1 Corinthians 15 is specifically about the Resurrection.  So I know they'll say that we know from Revelation 20 all unbelievers will be Resurrected, to then immediately be sent to Burn for all Eternity or be Annihilated.  I feel that's inconsistent with the tone of what Paul says here, but traditionalists can say Unvierslaists' interpretations of passages on Judgment are inconsistent with their tone.  Revelation can be shown to be consistent with a Universalsit message, but that's for other posts.  What I can say in short is God many times says His Anger is what's limited, His Mercy endures forever.

The most important of the above passages is Romans 5.

There is one exception to all Men becoming sinners, that's Jesus.  Jesus however was able to be that Spotless Lamb because He was The Word of God made Flesh.  So to suggest that there could be an equivalent exception to Jesus making All men Righteous suggests there can be an entity who is equally as without righteousness as Jesus is without Sin.  That Satan is just as Sinful as God is Sinless.  And that is Dualism and thus Blasphemy.

Verse 19 is suddenly saying "many" instead of "all", but that goes for the statement about being condemned as sinners as well.  The fact remains that the same people who became sinners are now made righteous.  In fact in the Greek the definite article is used before both uses of "many", so it should be translated "the many", meaning they can't be referring to separate groups of "many".

Paul concludes the Chapter by saying that Grace abounds MORE then Sin did.

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