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Who Is Paul A Universalist?

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To understand whether Paul was a universalist we must first define universalism. The Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms defines Universalism as: “The view that all persons will ultimately receive salvation from God”. Using this definition we must examine whether the bible verse quoted in the title implicates or absolves Paul as a universalist. It is near impossible to truly know someones theological opinion from one sentence, therefore we must also include the rest of Paul’s letter to the Romans, and finally, the rest of his letters. This structure should provide us with enough evidence to attempt a conclusion on Paul’s theological standpoint.

“Clearly both Adam and Christ are conceived as having universal impact”. Schreiner labels …show more content…

What did Paul mean by the word “all”? If he meant every person, than he was probably a universalist, if not, what did he mean? Talbott uses a sports reference which supports this line of enquiry, “When the Portland Trailblazers passed over the chance to draft Michael Jordan, they disappointed all of Oregon”. The word all is commonly used when not literally meaning all. This does not prove that Paul did not mean all, however it does cast doubt on whether he did. Boettner casts further doubt by scouring the New Testament for use of the word, “In some fifty places throughout the New Testament the words ‘all’ and ‘every’ are used in a limited sense”. This is an excellent approach to understanding what Paul meant. However it is fatally flawed. Talbott observes “Boettner fails to cite a single example from one of these [Paul’s theological arguments] contexts”. While there are some examples of hyperbole in the New Testament, Paul’s use of the word ‘all’ is not certainly one of them. This leaves us where we started, not sure whether the word was used in a deliberate statement of universalist belief. Weddeburn perspective is that Romans is written with a specific intention and a specific “divided” audience in mind. He argues Paul intends to “form” a mixture of Jews and Gentiles. Because of this audience and the conflict between them, Paul uses the word all to mean that salvation is no longer limited to …show more content…

Paul says much about it”. Moo seemingly dismisses one word absence as evidence of universalism, instead emphasising the overall message delivered in the letter. Fudge cites Moo, “none of the key words that constitute Paul's vocabulary of destruction usually means extinction...words are used figuratively and metaphorically in contexts that have nothing to do with divine judgement”. The meaning behind one word can be subjective. Using hell as an example, the lack of the word has lead to at the least two conclusions, and as seen above alternative words have been equally distorted to create multiple conclusions. These quotes from Moo seem to further emphasise the difficult ramifications of translation. The veiled idea within these quotations is that each letter holds its own reason. This is a thought that carries on from the one put forward by Wedderburn; Each letter is addressed to a particular context and it is foolish to ignore that context completely when attempting to decipher meaning. Yet, despite this consideration each theologian, or indeed, reader of Paul infers something different. Perhaps the best course of action to answer our question is to attempt to extrapolate the majority opinion of the church. And yet, this is not a research project, but a quest for scriptural evidence so we must not

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