The “Series Overview” will be the next comment. This opening comment is reserved for links to series threads as I post them elsewhere (no doubt on a rather irregular schedule, due to the depth of analysis involved and my attempts to work on other large projects simultaneously.
The thread will be temporarily locked whenever I am making official updates.
Chapter 1: The Prologue of Prologues, John 1:1-18
SERIES OVERVIEW
Calv? Arm? or Kath?
How well does each broad category of salvation theory (or perhaps their variants) fit the scriptures?–or not?
CALVinistic (or Augustinian): God persists to success in saving from sin whomever He originally intends to save; but God doesn’t even intend (much less act) to save some sinners from sin.
ARMinianistic (also Roman Catholic, and non-universalistic Eastern Orthodoxy): God originally intends and acts to save all sinners from sin; but for whatever reason(s) doesn’t persist in saving some sinners from sin.
KATHolicistic (Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Christian universalism, also hopeful Roman Catholic): God originally intends and acts to save all sinners from sin; and persists to success in saving those sinners from sin.
There are variations of each of these, and even some major in-house disputes, regarding the details; and as noted the basic ideas, although I have given them Protestant-ish names for convenience (including for nifty abbreviations), each idea can be found among both Protestant and Catholic theologians and teachers, Eastern and Western, ancient and modern. (Augustine after all was a Roman Catholic, and a very influential one, even if Roman Catholicism has taken a more Arminianistic route in subsequent centuries. Nor was Augustine alone among Catholics at the time.) But broadly speaking these are the logical options in regard to God’s salvation of sinners from sin.
In this book-length series (hopefully to be a book someday, or rather a series of books! 
) I will be examining the Judeo-Christian scriptures recognized as canonical by East and West, Catholic and Protestant, starting with the four canonical Gospels, to analyze how well these three ideas each fit (with variations) each portion.
This is not intended as an apologetic for my own side of the debate: it is a self-critical exercise as much as anything. Naturally I currently expect my own ‘side’ to come out ahead at the end of the day (otherwise I would currently believe something else, and currently expect it to come out ahead!); but for critical purposes I am neutralizing my own expectations (and personal preferences) insofar as willfully possible.
My initial expectation (not to be insisted on however) is that different categories of salvation theory will fit better with some portions of scripture than others. One portion may fit Calv and/or Arm better than Kath for example, or may fit Kath and/or Calv better than Arm, etc. It might even be possible that a portion of scriptural discussion of salvation or condemnation does not fit overly well with any of the three broad theories!–being too obscure in what the portion implies and having characteristics difficult to square with any of the three. (I do not anticipate this will happen, but I acknowledge the possibility beforehand.)
To help in summarizing the analysis, I will attempt to assign particular statements (or small statement sets) within each portion a number expressing how well I find each soteriology fitting with that statement. Since different variants of each salvation theory may fit better or worse than other variants, I will also provide a range of fit (where appropriate) for each statement. At the end of analysis of the portion I will average out the results from each statement while retaining the ranges. Non-range results will be counted in the average of both lower- and upper-range results.
This is only intended to provide a rough representation of how I have regarded the fit between scripture and each (broad) soteriology group. I encourage readers to decide for themselves how well portions and sub-portions of scripture fit each soteriology, and to compare with other commentaries on those topics; and I strongly caution against trying to push such pseudo-‘mathematical’ results beyond their very limited scope.
As there are several possible results, I have tried to be nuanced in assigning categories of fitness. My reader may decide there is no appreciable difference between categories 1 and 0, however.
6 == the text seems to be directly and specifically testifying to this doctrine and not to the others.
5 == the text, once local contexts (in the same portion) are considered, seems to be specifically testifying to this doctrine and not to the others, although taken by itself it would seem to carry no weight or weight against the doctrine.
4 == the text as it stands (including in local context) is quite compatible with the doctrine, but doesn’t seem to be specifically testifying to it.
3 == the text (including in local context) is compatible with the doctrine, but requires a little interpretation in light of other data from extended context (yet without simply reading the doctrine into the text here.)
2 == same as category 3, but requires a moderate amount of interpretation in light of other data.
1 == same as category 3, but requires lot of interpretation in light of other data.
0 == the doctrine has to be read flatly into the text here from extended context; but at least the text doesn’t seem to be testifying against the doctrine.
-1 == the doctrine has to be read directly into the text here (ideally from extended context), because the text (immediately and/or in local context) would otherwise seem to be testifying to some other doctrine!
By “immediate context” I mostly mean the grammar of the verse or small verse portion, perhaps also the thematic and/or narrative context of the small portion of verses in immediate view.
By “local context” I mostly mean the thematic and/or narrative context (but possibly also grammatic context) from nearby sub-portions of scripture within the larger portion being considered; possibly also from nearby larger portions.
By “extended context” I mean thematic, narrative and/or grammatic context from at least a few scriptural chapters away (by modern standard chapter-and-verse reckoning for convenience of reference) or even from different “books” of scripture altogether. Extended context may also refer to previously established metaphysical doctrines.
I do not mean to claim or imply that appeal to extended context is always wrong. I am only trying to provide a way to consider whether a set of scripture is providing evidence for a doctrine (the doctrine is being read out of the considered scripture, “exegesis”) or whether a set of scripture is being interpreted by a doctrine read into it from somewhere else (“eisegesis”). Both methods are necessary to learn any coherent idea from any text and its contexts, including when that text is religious scripture. Obviously, though, so far as a doctrine is read into instead of out of a portion of scripture, that portion cannot be appealed to as evidence for the doctrine.
Citations of other scripture by scriptural authors are a special case of extended context which, due to their presumed intention of expressing ideas similar and in conjunction to their reference, I may count as local context, as though the contextual portions of scripture being referred to are included in the portion of scripture at hand: just as the portion of scripture being considered may cover a few chapters, so the referential scripture being cited or alluded to by the author may also topically cover a few chapters. Each should be considered local context for interpretation, although eventually the reference would grade into extended context of course (since not everything should be considered “local” context and indeed most things should not.) Admittedly it may be difficult to decide when a reference to other scripture should not be pressed, in its own contexts, as local context anymore. But as one example, in practice I regard the prophecy from Isaiah chapters 2 through 5 to be local contexts of 2 Thess 1:9, since the topics, although extended compared to Paul’s few verses there, are demonstrably parallel with what Paul is talking about, and by its own standard of presentation the prophecy is intended to be taken as a whole reference. (On the other hand it is sometimes difficult to decide where to draw the line between prophecies elsewhere in Isaiah!)
In this first volume (or series of chapters/threads), I will follow the Gospels piecemeal through in detail from portion to portion. (Scholars call portions of scripture “pericopes”; and there can be smaller portions within larger portions of course.) This leads to the question of what order to analyze the scriptures in. Since narrative and/or historical order may be important for interpretation of meaning, I will follow a harmonization study; and since (naturally) the best harmonization I am currently aware of is my own continuing study (based primarily on timing/spacing cues in the language of each “pericope”), I will for convenience base my order of progression on my King of Stories harmonization project. (The harmonization scheme in that project is based on soteriologically neutral criteria such as identifying and weighing the importance of time/place cues in pericopes.)
However, since local contexts in the Gospels themselves may also be important for interpreting meaning, I will be including a consideration of local contexts even when (to avoid too much repetition or because I inferred from internal evidence that the author had moved material around from somewhere else for his own topical emphases or narrative strategy) I don’t mention some nearby material in chapters of KoS. (I do however in KoS usually include repeated material in different scenes, especially when it seemed topically likely that Christ said something twice, perhaps in somewhat different ways, at different times in His ministry.)
Theologically I will be analyzing the scriptures from within orthodox trinitarian Christian theism (with an agreement on the filioque, i.e. that the Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father, but with respect to EOx disagreement on that doctrine, too.) While on occasion my analysis will give some idea how I would exegetically argue ortho-trin from portions of scripture, this isn’t intended to be an apologetic for ortho-trin per se. This is a matter of objective convenience as well as of personal preference, since (1) it will be helpful to have a definite and detailed theological basis on which to stand while engaging in dispute on other doctrines; and (2) I would argue that logically any doctrine of salvation and/or condemnation by God should depend on previously established characteristics of God, including the characteristics of God’s relationship to not-God entities and persons whom God might “save” and/or “condemn”. Since I am a trinitarian Christian theist, obviously this means I should analyze soteriology from that position, whether by metaphysical logic or by scriptural exegetics (although scriptural exegetics will always involve some level of metaphysical logic, too.)
God willing and the creek don’t rise, as we say here in West Tennessee, I will be taking the opportunity to run a parallel series on exegetical ortho-trin apologetics at the Christian Cadre web journal, to which I will provide links (once up) in the opening post of each thread. I would prefer for any dispute about the trinitarian exegetics to be directed to the comments there, please.
This thread will serve as the table of contents for Gospel analysis chapters of the Calv/Arm/Kath project. Future volumes on other large sections of scripture (the Pauline epistles; Acts and the Catholic epistles; RevJohn and the Johannine epistles; etc.) will each be provided with their own table of contents for ease of reference.
Since the series involves scriptural analysis, I will post this thread to the “Biblical Theology” category first before moving it to “General Discussion on Evangelical Universalism” so that I can leave behind a shadow link, thus in effect providing this ToC thread in two categories without my needing to update both threads. Comments posted to this thread concerning specific chapters of analysis will be moved to the appropriate thread. Please keep comments and discussion on this thread limited to the overall project generally.
For ease of reference I will not only add new “Calv/Arm/Kath” chapter-thread references to unique comments below (which will help alert to new material by “bumping” the thread), but also I will add links to the new chapter-threads to the first comment above as I complete them, so that new readers of the thread can go straight to the chapters that interest them.