I have heard that position...
Ok, I see!
So God shows His kindly purpose to creation by sending His Son, so all who believe will be saved? I think it follows that the way God loved the world, was so everyone who believes can be saved.
Of course. "Everyone believing", or, "All those believing", is the Greek, which in English I think valid, is, "Everyone that is believing".
I see, interesting! You still have other options to keep the Tulip intact and still refer to the "world" as "everyone". At least many leading Calvinists believe so.
Yes, agree, it's unavoidable.
How do you think the original readers would have understood the word "world" when they got the letter?
One of the things I gain from being an MK (missionary kid)/ 3rd culture kid/ bilingual with some knowledge of other language structures, is to very well understand that what one person means by something is not quite universal with what another means by the very same term, even within one contemporary social culture. When you step outside that culture, to a VERY foreign culture, subjugated to another, using yet another language to work between the two and used also as a common 'trade language' with still other cultures, in a world without common [electronic] communication and fast transportation between trade points, a word like, "world", would,—I'm projecting here—run the gamit. In such cases the listener learns to sit back and let the rest of what is being said give context to such words before concluding that it means only his usual use of it, and even his use of the context.
You too, I expect, have seen the phenomenon, which is driven not only by whatever lens a person prefers or assumes valid, but by their hurry to render meaning to what is being said, ignoring the rest of a perhaps long speech, post or paragraph. I expect it's been done to you as it has to me. Just one example: We have watched people take the book of Ecclesiastes, quoting this and that out of it, without regard for the introduction and 'conclusion to the matter'. They apparently never considered the whole book to be one statement—one sentence, if you will—one argument. In a certain sense, the whole Bible is like that. It is ALL of it context. The whole story is the Gospel.
I'm going to say this, too, which may ruffle feathers in both 'Self-Actualizer' and Calvinistic Camps: One of the favorite hermeneutic principles in Bible study is to ask, "What did the original audience understand by the term, (phrase, story, etc)?" The problem with asking that question is to assume that therefore, it is what the human author meant by it, and it is therefore, what God meant by it, and that it therefore, cannot mean more than that, AND (this is the objectionable part) that God knew very well—in fact, intended—that modern man would read it and understand things and misunderstand things by it, which God will use for his own purposes. SO: The original Greek word is not so easy to nail down as all that.
One of the things Bible students like to do also is to assign only to some places, a method or style or category, or 'here it is poetry'- 'here they use the old 'school master' teaching method' etc etc. to the loss of realizing that each style does not necessarily fade out of other passages. We love to organize what doesn't well adapt to organizing. When John wrote John 3 (and the whole book of John) he was not just narrating, not just commenting, not just rendering judgement, not even
just prose. (This is something that I find mindboggling about how God can write—using human words to move human concepts through the ages to produce thoughts full of mistakes and selfish uses, all dancing
around the truth, yet every jot and tittle
is truth.)
So: When God says, "world", there is a whole lot of thinking foreign to our immediate judgement on it. For myself, I prefer to sit back and read and read, context, commentary on the context, Biblical record concerning the context and force of the passage's grammar/syntax/logical argument, implications of different views and meanings, etc. THAT is why I don't accept either POV on, "world", and why I am even skeptical of my own favorite way to look at it.
I have concluded that the verse cannot MEAN the common use in people's minds: "
God loved everyone in world so equally and so much that he offered his son as a sacrifice to be, in case just anyone's by their own free will should maybe just happen to choose to do so, accepted in the place of their own deserved punishment—deserved, because if there is no free will, punishment is monstrous—which needs also to be explained, that this accepting necessarily implies an exhaustive relinquishing of control, at least for the moment, to God."
Naturally, that is exaggerating, but all that is commonly read into the verse—not just brought to bear in considering the verse, but become part of the meaning of the terms in the verse.
You also keep raising the question of free will, but I don't think that determines the meaning of John 3:16-17 and the word "world." The meaning of the "world", has to be established by the immediate context IMO.
Yes, I agree. It most definitely doesn't determine the meaning of John 3:16 and context. But it is assumed to do so, and that is my point. It should not be. That someone believes does not imply that they chose to believe. I easily grant that they think it is by their choice, and God does not often berate them for that. Eventually, I hope, they begin to see the gracious hand of God in bringing them to believe and placing them "in Christ", when they were helpless and 'dead' (Ephesians 2), unable to do anything spiritual (1 Corinthians 2), at enmity with him (Romans 8).
