Lord, I sure want to get back to posting here on a regular basis… (sigh. Still several projects to complete, though, so as not to be distracted from them.)
Until then, since I was passing through on other business, I thought I’d put forth the rhetorical logic of St. Paul’s address to the philosophers of the Mars Hill forum in Athens (aka the Areopagus; Acts 17:16-34). (I mentioned this in the body of my document critiquing Professor De Young’s critique of The Shack, but I don’t see that I’ve posted it anywhere more obviously online yet.)
Paul is saying that he has come to proclaim to them new knowledge, not about “strange demons” (as some of the philosophers had wondered, being unable to quite cipher out what Paul was talking about in the marketplaces), but about “the Unknowable God” whom they are already willing to acknowledge (along with all the other idols collected in the city).
The emphasis here, for our purposes, is on St. Paul’s rhetorical use of “all”. Consider the developing line of thought:
1.) This God makes the world (kosmos, all natural creation) and all that is in it.
2.) He gives life and breath (or maybe spirit) to all.
3.) He makes every nation of humankind, to be dwelling on every surface of the earth.
4.) He does this (and appoints the setting of the seasons and the bounds of their dwelling, probably referring to death in the latter case) for them (i.e. all of them) to be seeking Him if they consequently grope for Him.
5.) And they may be finding Him, for to be sure He inheres “not far from each one of us”; for in Him we live and move and exist. (Thus it isn’t like they have to grope for something far off).
6.) Condoning (literally “winking at”) times of ignorance, God is now charging mankind that all everywhere are to repent.
7.) For He assigns a day in which He is about to be judging (all) the inhabited earth in righteousness…
8.) … offering faith to all.
Unfortunately, at this point St. Paul mentions that God will be doing this by “the Man whom He specifies, raising him of the dead”; which leads to jeering and a breakdown of his presentation. (Though some are willing to hear him again on this, and some converts are eventually made, one being Dionysius the Areopagite–traditionally believed to be the first bishop of Athens–and a woman named Damaris.)
The grammatic thrust of those last two points are connected: a day is coming when God will be judging the earth in righteousness and (per the grammar) in that judgment He shall be offering faith to all: the same ‘all’ St. Paul has been collectively talking about throughout his speech.
This, to say the least, is not what most non-universalists are expecting from the judgment of the Final Day. It could of course still be consonant with some Arminian soteriologies–C. S. Lewis would have no problem with it–but at the very least the grammar indicates what amounts to a post-mortem (and post resurrection) offer of ‘saving faith’ at the final judgment.
It might be rather more than merely giving people a chance to ‘believe’, too: God is offering faith. That’s an action of God, something does for us from the inside–an action restricted only to the ‘elect’ in Calvinism. But the faith God is offering is God’s own faithfulness; the faithfulness of the Persons for one another, but also the faithfulness of God to us.
As St. Paul writes in his epistle to the Romans: does the unfaithfulness of sinners to God, annul the faithfulness of God? May it never be!! God is faithful to us even when we are unfaithful to Him.
So!–comments?