The Evangelical Universalist Forum

The savior of all

Evangelical Universalism Arguments for Evangelical Universalism
#1

I just had to write my thoughts on this.

Timothy 4,10:
‘‘10 That is why we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.’’

I was looking at that text and I thought: If that is really fully correctly translated (I hope that someone here has a good insight to what it says orginally in greek! I’ll just pin [tag]JasonPratt[/tag] here) then there can not be any doubt that everyone will be saved.

Who is s savior? Only someone who actually does save, anything else is just a try.
If God IS the savior of all, then he is not a potential savior, not one with conditions, but then what needs to be done to be saved has actually really been DONE by God! If people that have to go into punishment are anhiliated- is God a savior to them then? Since death is what we receive for committing sins, dying in the lake of fire makes God no savior- then that statement is simply false. They would not have been saved but be lost(forever). It states at different points in the Bible that those who do not believe are lost- but is it impossible for God to find and get again what was lost? Wasn’t Jesus here because he seeked to find the lost?
Actually- has God not always seeked the lost throughout the whole Bible? Israel multiple times in the Ot, then the poor/mistreated/sick/disabled among the Jews that were not prioritised the way the Pharisees were, then the gentiles when he blinded the eyes of Israel and made them deaf to the gospel. They all were perfectly lost in every case!
Now clearly it is said that NOT all will believe before this world ends (and I think this is a clear fact that needs no furtehr proving). So this time what is lost are those that did not believe until they died and have to eventually face the lake of fire. Are they lost? Yes.
After all that is written, is God LEAVING them lost? I do not believe so. He always has been the savior and his Holy Ghost told Paul clearly: He IS the savior, so in my eyes there will have to be a way for everyone, including those in the lake of fire, to leave that place and come to enjoy God’s grace.

I do not know about one point though- if those people will actually (ever) inherit the kingdom of God and become sons and daughters. Maybe they will not and get a different (lower) status and be rules by the sons and daughters. Nevertheless I think God loves everyone of his creation and I think he will still have something good in store (in the long run).

I hope you did not feel that this was unnecessary but I just had to get it off my chest :slight_smile:

#2

Yep, that’s a pretty famous text! :slight_smile:

Non-universalists tend to take the “especially” as an exception, as though it said (in English), “the living God is the Savior of all people, but not really, only of those who believe.” Or “the living God is the Savior of all people in theory, but in practice only of those who believe.”

The Greek term {malista} for (in English) “especially” however is important: everywhere else in the New Testament it is an inclusive emphasis. It affirms and does not deny the previous statement but adds a special emphasis for a particular group within that larger statement.

We talk about this verse quite a bit, but your post reminds me this is one of the (many, many) entries I haven’t posted yet in the ExCom.

So I’ll go get that posted up! :mrgreen:

Meanwhile, for an equally famous and interesting verse earlier in the same epistle, here are my notes on 1 Tim 2:3-6 (and some contexts).

(By the way, remember when I said that the verse I recalled about a Christian denying his faith and being worse than an unbeliever, was about a man not providing for his own people and especially for his own household? That’s a chapter later in 1 Tim 5:8, and the term there is also {malista}, and I’ll be talking about that example in my notes.)

#3

Righty then! – now posted up: JRP's Exegetical Compilation: 1 Tim 4:10

Including with 100% more satire at the end, in regard to facetious appeals by desperate non-universalists to Paul’s warnings earlier in the same chapter, as though those count contextually against a universalistic conclusion. :mrgreen: