I was getting to that Iosias. Incidentally, that's my quote, not his.
* * * * *
chestertonrules said:
No problem. I can be annoying.
Can be?
chestertonrules said:
You didn't. I didn't claim that you did.
Do you have any idea what
implication is? When I ask you to refute
something that I said, and then you give your
reason for not even addressing it to be "But I don't believe in universal salvation," that would be like you applying to me for a job, and then me saying, "No, I don't hire homosexuals." Yeah, you can get off
saying that I didn't "actually" call you a homosexual, but you would know that I
implied it.
Same way with what you did to me.
You told me that
what I wrote was not worth refuting because
you didn't believe in universal salvation. Good for you, but that had no place in my argument, so
why did you bring it up? To be annoying? Probably.
It's like you saying, "Refute my arguments that have destroyed the doctrine of limited atonement," and me saying, "What's to refute? I don't believe in Mormonism."
chestertonrules said:
Not true. Jesus could have provided atoning grace for everyone even if some refuse it. Calvinists believe that some were never offered this opportunity to refuse. Am I wrong?
You're wrong about what I'm asking. I'm not talking about what Calvinists believe. I'm talking about what
you believe about what this passage is saying in particular. *SIGH* Let's go through this
again, and I'll use words that a five-year-old can understand.
[Did you see that? This is another instance of implication. I am suggesting that you require the reading level of a five-year-old in order to understand what I'm going to say. Same thing you did before with the comment about universal salvation: that my argument did not require rebuttal because you suggested that it was about universal salvation, which you did not believe in.]
The verse in question:
Romans 5:18 -
Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.
I tried to make my question as clear as possible, but perhaps the wordiness confused you. I'll try it again.
IF it literally means that "one act of righteousness" merely and only leads to "justification and life for all men," and Jesus' sacrifice does not in any way mean that justification will ever actually happen to anyone (i.e., saying, "It isn't guaranteed for anyone, but it's possible for everyone), THEN does it ALSO literally mean, in the preceding sentence, that "one trespass" merely and only leads to "condemnation for all men," and Adam's sin does not in any way mean that condemnation ever actually would happen to anyone (i.e., saying, "It isn't guaranteed for anyone, but it's possible for everyone)?
Now. You can see that there's a very important
so in the middle of this verse. Strong's number is 3779,
houto. It means "in like manner," or "in this way," or "in this fashion." It's how English-speakers used to talk to each other: "Why do you talk to me so?" (That is, "Why do you talk to me
in this manner?") Or poetry:
"As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God" (
Psalm 42:1).
(Incidentally, this is the same word used for
John 3:16 -- People often try to claim that the "so" used in that verse (
"For God so loved the world...") expresses that God
really, really, really, really loved the world a whole lot (e.g., "God SOOOOOOO loved the world!"). But that's not what it says. It says, when read correctly,
"For God loved the world in this way"--nothing about how MUCH, though that's expressed elsewhere... but
not here!)
See there, that there are two parts of the sentence. For example:
Part 1) "The hart panteth after the water brooks";
Part 2) "My soul panteth after thee, O God." We need a way of
comparing the two. This is how the words "As" and "So" are used. Here's how it is inserted:
Part 1) "
AS the hart panteth after the water brooks"; Part 2) "
SO my soul panteth after thee, O God."
And then what we do is just remove the labels and switch a word order to make it more poetic (verb first, then noun, since it makes no difference in English), and we come out with the first verse of Psalm 42:
"As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God"
Very basic. Follow up to here?
The very same thing is happening in this verse in Romans 5:18 and elsewhere in Romans 5. Paul is making an "AS.......SO......." statement. What are the two parts?
Part 1) "One trespass led to condemnation for all men";
Part 2) "One act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men."
Let's take a slight detour. If I were to say to you, "Just as the frog leaps high into the air with its strong legs, so also does the dog chase its own tail in circles," would you conclude that I'm making any sense? You ask yourself, "What is the comparison here?" And of course, there is virtually none. No, it doesn't make any sense. How about this one: "As a man wipes off the kitchen counters with a paper towel and cleaning solution, so does a man play an E on the fourth string of the violin in eighth position." This is an absolute
non sequitur. It does not follow
at all.
Okay, back on track. Now,
you made a statement about the
second part of this verse,
"One act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men." And your claim was that the verse is saying that
"one act of righteousness" (which you substitute with
"the sacrifice of Jesus")
only leads to, as in, is the opened pathway in the
direction of, "justification and life for all men," but is not in any way, shape, or form, the guaranteed or even expected
reality for any person
ever. It's just
there--a possibility for
all people.
But now that you've said that about the verse, and explained your meaning behind the second part, when you couple it with the first part, it reads this way:
As one trespass
most certainly and definitely resulted in the condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness
does not most certainly and definitely result in justification and life for all men.
That doesn't work, does it? No, it doesn't. So what's our problem? We need to make sure the words' comparison fits the logic of Paul's reasoning. So to what do we turn? We can
either say that
1) the condemnation and the justification
alike are only possibilities and never actually admit anything of an
actual occurrence in the lives of anyone, or
2) the condemnation and the justification
alike describe an actual reality evident in the lives of the group referred to as "all."
But you obviously didn't understand this, because when I asked you if you believe that NOT every person is condemned, you answered,
chestertonrules said:
I hope not. God desires that all men are saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. Given that, at least a few should make it!
which does not at all address what I was asking, nor even what Paul is saying about "condemnation." In this instance, "condemnation" is
not referring to an aforedetermined destination for every person. It's obvious that you thought that's what it meant; otherwise, you would not have said, "I hope not," when I asked if you thought not
everybody is condemned. Nobody believes that
every person will go to Hell. That's absurd. Thus, since the verse said that the trespass led to condemnation for all, and I asked you if you believed the same, and you concluded that I was asking you if all people are going to go to Hell,
you must have logically concluded the same about the first half of verse 18.
No, instead, what I was asking is if you believe that
because of Adam's sin, all of his posterity stands guilty of sin and is under the wrath and judgement of God. I'm not going to wait around for you to answer, because you'll probably misread it again,
somehow. The answer is, of course, of course! It's practically what the first
half of the entire book of Romans is talking about!
So with this in mind, that this instance of the word
condemnation is talking about the state in which man stands before God
on account of "one man's trespass," and not a fixed, eternal destiny, we still need to resolve the logic of this "AS....... SO......." statement that Paul has used.
You've made two mistakes. I'll just tell you that right now. The first mistake was in misunderstanding the extent, and the second mistake was in misunderstanding the scope. You say that
whatever it was, it wasn't even a guaranteed reality, but just a choice, or possibility, and you say that
whatever it was, it was
for ALL. I've already gone through and shown you your first mistake. It cannot be just a possibility (just "leading" to justification), because the way Paul introduced it (with the "AS... SO..." logical statement) does not allow for the first part of the sentence to follow your conclusion about the second part (in other words, that therefore the trespass only "leads" to condemnation, not actually applying it to all people in a very apparent reality--which the rest of Bible, especially Romans, proves false). Your second mistake is introduced by verse 19:
"For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous." Many, many, many, many, many NOT ALL. Right? But you'd turn that right around back at me by saying, "See?! It says only
many were made sinners! There goes your interpretation of verse 18!" But you'd be wrong. Why? Because look at what I said earlier:
2) the condemnation and the justification alike describe an actual reality evident in the lives of the group referred to as "all."
The word "all" in the Greek is "pas" (Strong's number 3956), and it can mean a few things: "all," "any," "every," "the whole," and then in particular, this one of interest: "all manner of," or "all of a group." Matthew 3:5 says,
"Then Jerusalem and all [Greek,
pas]
Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him." You are so emphatic that "all" means only "every single last person." Do you think it must be the case here, as well--that
every last living being in Judea left the entire city barren to go follow Jesus? That's quite ludicrous to believe that. So what do we find? That little word that you ignored at the
very beginning of this "debate":
CONTEXT.
Why did Paul say "all" in one verse, and then in the next verse, speaking upon the very same subject, only say "many"? What is this talk of all and many, anyhow? How did we get onto it? Context, context, CONTEXT. Look at what he said in verse 14:
"Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come." "Type," in the Greek language, is "tupos" (Strong's number 5179) and basically means figure, shadow, print, pattern, form, manner, etc. That's why I said that Christ was called the "second" or "last Adam" (
1 Corinthians 15:45)
for a reason. That reason is fully explained here in Romans. Paul explains the same concept in 1 Corinthians, in fact, in the same chapter, verse 22:
"For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." Universal salvation is entirely incorrect. Thus, you cannot make a universal application here and say, "Look, it says that ALL shall be made alive!" And you wouldn't, would you? Because you said, after all, that you did not believe in universal salvation. But you might attempt to argue, "However, we must ACCEPT it in order for it to happen, just like Romans 5:18!" Really? JUST LIKE ROMANS 5:18? But that is incorrect, as well, since you said that
it does not mean that it will actually happen--only that it's
possible for it to happen, and it's up to each individual by himself to make that choice to accept the gift of Jesus' sacrifice--and this verse, entirely opposite of what you suppose, says that it
most certainly and without fail will happen that all who are in Christ shall be made alive.
This is the argumentation that Paul used frequently in Romans: "AS [something because of Adam], SO [something because of Christ]." Adam was the type of the Christ to come. Where Adam failed and doomed the fate of all his posterity, Christ succeeded and redeemed the fate of all His posterity. This admits that there are those still under Adam and those currently under Christ who
were at one time under Adam.
So your second mistake was in not realizing that you can't just pull a verse out of its context and try to make it say something it doesn't. You missed the stream of logic and reasoning that "AS [something because of Adam], SO [something because of Christ]."
And it's especially not "AS [something because of Adam], SO [something because of Christ because of us]." It's all attributed to Christ, not our accepting of something Christ did. Just as you were not consulted in "accepting" the condemnation of Adam, so you were not consulted in "accepting" the justification
that belongs to and was bought by Christ!!
