Good Day, John
So you quote a bit Calvin thinking you have a point.... Now you may disagree with Him and that is ok. But one would think that you at least would address the issue he raises with in the whole context of what he is writing about.
I assume you have read Calvin on 1 Tim 2:1-6... Lets look at premier Greek NT Scholar Thomas R. Schreiner on this text
CONTEXT OF 1 TIMOTHY
As most commentators agree, a mirror reading of 1 Timothy suggests that in this epistle the apostle Paul confronts some kind of exclusivism heresy. Perhaps Paul’s opponents relied on genealogies to limit salvation to only a certain group of people, excluding from God’s saving purposes those who were notoriously sinful or those from so-called inferior backgrounds (1:4; cf. Titus 3:9).
2 Paul writes to remind Timothy and the church that God’s grace is surprising: his grace reaches down and rescues all kinds of sinners, even people like Paul who seem to be beyond his saving love (1:12–17).
GOD’S DESIRE TO SAVE ALL IN 1 TIMOTHY 2:1–7
Paul’s reflections on his own salvation function as an important backdrop for the discussion of salvation in 1 Timothy 2:1–7, a key passage relating to definite atonement. Some contend that the emphasis on “all” precludes definite atonement.
3 Paul begins by exhorting his readers to pray “for all people” (ὑπὲρ πάντων ἀνθρώπων; v. 1). Does Paul refer here to every person without exception or to every person without distinction? The immediate reference to “kings and all who are in high positions” (v. 2) suggests that various classes of people are in view.
4Is such a reading of 1 Timothy 2:1–2 borne out by the subsequent verses? Praying for all is “good” and “pleasing” (v. 3), for God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (ὃς πάντας ἀνθρώπους θέλει σωθῆναι καὶ εἰς ἐπίγνωσιν ἀληθείας ἐλθεῖν; v. 4). The same question arising in verse 1 surfaces here again: Does “all people” (πάντας ἀνθρώπους; v. 4) refer to every person without exception or to every person without distinction? The Reformed have traditionally defended the latter option.
5 Sometimes this exegesis is dismissed as special pleading and attributed to Reformed biases. Such a response is too simplistic, for there are good contextual reasons for such a reading. A focus on all people without distinction is supported by verse 7, where Paul emphasizes his apostleship and his ministry to the Gentiles: “For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.” Hence, there are grounds in the context for concluding that “all people” zeros in on people groups, so that Paul is reflecting on his Gentile mission. In Acts 22:15 (NIV), when Paul speaks of being a witness “to all people” (πρὸς πάντας ἀνθρώπους), he clearly does not mean all people without exception; “all” refers to the inclusion of the Gentiles in his mission (Acts 22:21).
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The parallel with Romans 3:28–30 provides further evidence that Paul thinks particularly of all people without distinction in 1 Timothy 2:4.
7 Both Jews and Gentiles, according to Paul, are included within the circle of God’s saving promises. Paul contends that both are justified by faith, for the oneness of God means that there can be only one way of salvation (cf. 1 Tim. 2:5). One of the advantages of the people group interpretation is that it centers on a major theme in Pauline theology, namely, the inclusion of the Gentiles.
Such an interpretation does not seem to be special pleading, for even interpreters unsympathetic to the Reformed position detect an emphasis on Gentile inclusion in response to some kind of Jewish exclusivism (1 Tim. 1:4). For example, Marshall says, “This universalistic thrust is most probably a corrective response to an exclusive elitist understanding of salvation connected with the false teaching. . . . The context shows that the inclusion of Gentiles alongside Jews in salvation is the primary issue here.”
8 And Gordon Fee remarks on verse 7, “This latter phrase in particular would seem to suggest some form of Jewish exclusivism as lying at the heart of the problem.”
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In sum, Paul reminds his readers of a fundamental truth of his gospel: God desires to save all kinds of people.
10 As William Mounce says, “the universality of salvation [is] the dominant theme” in the paragraph.
11 The idea of salvation is supported by the phrase “to come to the knowledge of the truth” (εἰς ἐπίγνωσιν ἀληθείας ἐλθεῖν; v. 4), which is simply another way of describing the gospel message of salvation (cf. 2 Tim. 2:25; 3:7; cf. Titus 1:1). The universal reach of salvation flows from a fundamental tenet of the OT and Judaism: there is only one God (cf. Deut. 6:4). Since there is only one God, there is only one way of salvation, for “there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (εἷς καὶ μεσίτης θεοῦ καὶ ἀνθρώπων, ἄνθρωπος Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς; 1 Tim. 2:5). God’s saving intentions are universal, including both Jews and Gentiles.
Marshall objects to the Reformed interpretation of all kinds of people, arguing that dividing groups from individuals fails, “since in the last analysis divisions between individuals and classes of humankind merge into one another.”
12 But the Reformed view does not exclude individuals from God’s saving purposes, for people groups are made up of individuals. The exegetical question centers on whether Paul refers here to every person without exception or every person without distinction. We have already seen that there is strong evidence (even in Marshall) that the focus is on the salvation of individuals from different people groups. For example, in his paper, “Universal Grace and Atonement in the Pastoral Epistles,” Marshall states,
The pastor [Paul] is emphasizing that salvation is for everybody, both Jew and Gentile. . . . But it does not help the defender of limited atonement, any more than the view that “all” refers to “all kinds of people,” for what the Pastor is telling his readers to do is to pray for “both Jews and Gentiles,” not for the “the elect among Jews and Gentiles.”
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Marshall fails to see that by arguing that prayers are to be made for “Jews and Gentiles” he inadvertently affirms what he earlier denies: the Reformed position of “all kinds of people.” Moreover, Marshall actually misrepresents the Reformed view here, which is not that Paul teaches that our prayers should be limited to the elect. The Reformed position has consistently maintained that we are to pray for Jews and Gentiles, Armenians and Turks, Tutsis and Hutus, knowing that God desires to save individuals from every people group. Knowing this does not mean that we know who the elect are so that we limit our prayers to them.
The interpretation of “all without distinction” should be carried over into 1 Timothy 2:6. Here Christ is designated as the one “who gave himself as a ransom [ἀντίλυτρον] for all.”
14 Clearly, we have the idea of Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice, where he gives his life as a ransom for the sake of others.
15 It seems best to take the “all” (πάντων) in the same sense as we saw earlier (vv. 1, 4), meaning all kinds of people, since Paul particularly emphasizes his Gentile mission in the next verse (v. 7). Moreover, Paul most likely alludes here to Jesus’s teaching that he gave “his life as a ransom [λύτρον] for many [πολλῶν]” (Matt. 20:28; Mark 10:45), which in turn echoes Isaiah 53:11–12. As Alec Motyer demonstrates elsewhere in this volume, the referent of “many” in Isaiah 53, though it encompasses an undefined but numerous group of people, is still necessarily limited—it refers to those for whom redemption is both accomplished and applied—and therefore cannot refer to every single person.
16 If these intertextual connections are correct, then Christ giving himself as a ransom for “all without exception” is ruled out.
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First Timothy 2:6 supports the notion that Christ purchased salvation for all kinds of individuals from various people groups. The verse and context say nothing about Christ being the potential ransom of everyone. The language in verse 6—“who gave himself” (ὁ δοὺς ἑαυτόν)—is a typically Pauline way of referring to the cross, and always refers to Christ’s actual self-sacrifice for believers (Rom. 8:32; Gal. 1:4; 2:20; Eph. 5:2; Titus 2:14). It stresses that Christ gave himself as a ransom so that at the cost of his death he actually purchased those who would be his people. The reason Paul can speak of Christ’s death in expansive, all-inclusive terms in 1 Timothy 2:6 is because he sees his ministry as worldwide (2:7; cf. Acts 22:15), his soteriology is universal in the right sense (2:5; cf. Rom. 3:28–30), and he is confronting an elitist heresy that was excluding certain kinds of people from God’s salvation (1 Tim. 1:4). Paul wants to make it clear: Christ died for all kinds of people, not just some elite group.
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Do you deny that God saves all kinds of people?
In Him,
Bill
