Yearly Archives: 2011

And that’s ALL I have to say about that

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Some years back I wrote something about the word “all” in an article entitled “All always means all, right?” Now I find that Dr. Phil Johnson has written something with just about the same exact title. He calls his article, “”All” Always Means ALL. Right?” I am not sure who came up with the title first (though I think it was me), and to be honest, it does not really matter. I like his article, even though he may never be made aware of mine.

I think its worthwhile to quote his words here, and God willing, tomorrow I will post mine. I love “all” he has to say. 🙂

Phil wrote:

Usually when someone wants to argue that the word all is inflexibly comprehensive, it’s an Arminian who wants to put a universalist spin on biblical statements such as “one has died for all, therefore all have died” (2 Corinthians 5:14) or “[Christ] gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:6).

The last conversation I had on that subject, however, was an e-mail dialogue with a radically pacifist anabaptist, who insisted that Jesus’ command in Matthew 5:34 (“Do not swear at all”) rules out all oaths of all kinds, including legal oaths, swearings-in, marriage vows, and formal covenants.

His argument was simple: “All” means all, full stop.

What follows is taken verbatim from the e-mail dialogue that ensued. (I’ve put my interlocutor’s words in bold, to make it easier to follow the dialogue):

Me: The word “all” is not necessarily (or even usually) meant to be taken in an absolute sense. We understand this perfectly well in everyday speech:

•”He travels overseas all the time.”

•”I have tried all kinds of shoes, but I like these the best.”

•”Solving that puzzle was no trouble at all.”

In each case, “all” plainly expresses something less than a sweeping, comprehensive, all-inclusive, woodenly literal “all.”

Him: Phil, you know I can’t let this one slide by, well-intentioned though it was. It is of course possible that the first man is always overseas, and the second has tried all kinds of shoes, and that the third instantly saw the entire solution to the puzzle (as God always would). Barring these, however, all three would be lying.

Me: Don’t be ridiculous. In normal discourse, no one would imagine that the speaker means all in the exhaustive sense in any of those examples. If you tried to press that sort of woodenly literal meaning into the words of people you dialogue with, you would never be able to communicate sensibly. We all frequently employ the word all in all kinds of contexts where the meaning is clearly not meant to be exhaustive. See? I just did it twice.

Him: Like it or not, using the word figuratively like that is a form of lying, and we know that our God and His Prophets are/were not liars.

Me: Now you’re being worse than ridiculous. None of those would be a lie. People use expressions like that all the time, and they are not lies. See? I just did it again.

And consider this: Jesus said, “The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me” (John 12:8). If you insist on the absolute sense of “always,” Jesus got it exactly backward! Because He is the one who is always with us in the absolute sense (Hebrews 13:5); the poor are “with us always” only in a non-absolute sense. He has existed from before the foundation of the world, and He will exist for all eternity, and he is omnipresent at (exhaustively) all times. By comparison, “the poor” aren’t even a blip on the screen. They are here today, gone tomorrow. So if you insist parsing Jesus’ statement with absolute meanings, you must conclude that He got it wrong—or else (by the standard you are insisting on) He lied.

Him: The statement “Do not swear at all” doesn’t need a whole lot of parsing. Either all kinds of oaths are sinful, as I believe, or Jesus and James lied (or at least exaggerated), which I am disinclined to assume.

Me: You need to do some more careful thinking about what constitutes a “lie,” and what words mean in their normal usage.

Him: It sounds to me like you are claiming “all” never means all at all.

Me: On the contrary, the word all always means “all.” What I am actually claiming is that the word has all kinds of possible meanings. Look up “all” in an unabridged dictionary if you want to see the semantic range of the word.

Him: How then do we know that all (without exception) have sinned and fall short of the glory of God?

Me: Simple. The context makes that clear. Similarly, we know that the word in Matthew 5:34 is not an absolute “all” because of the contextual reasons I have already cited. Namely, we have biblical examples that prove this is not an exhaustive prohibition. Jesus Himself testified under oath. Paul included an oath in 2 Corinthians 1:23 under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In the context of Matthew 5, What Jesus forbade was the casual use of flippant oaths in everyday speech.

This is not complex hermeneutics. I’m guessing you make sense of the various ways people use words like all and always all the time in everyday speech. All you need to do is apply the same standards of common sense and context when you read Scripture, and it will all make better sense.

How Can Christ’s Work Atone for More than One Person?

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After all, if Jesus was a single person, and only died and rose again once, shouldn’t his saving work only be vicariously transferable to one other single person, if justice is to be maintained?

No, says Herman Bavinck:

“When the Socinians say that . . . Christ could make satisfaction only for one person and not for many, inasmuch as he only bore the punishment of sin once, this reasoning is based on the same quantitative calculation as the ‘acceptation’ of Duns Scotus and the ‘superabundance’ of Aquinas.

For though the sin that entered the world through Adam manifests itself in an incalculable series of sinful thoughts, words, and deeds, and though the wrath of God is felt individually by every guilty member of the human race, it is and remains the one indivisible law that has been violated, the one indivisible wrath of God that has been ignited against the sin of the whole human race, the one indivisible righteousness of God that has been offended by sin, the one unchangeable eternal God who has been affronted by sin.

The punishment of Christ, therefore, is also one: one that balances in intensity and quality the sin and guilt of the whole human race. . . . That punishment, after all, was laid on him who was not an individual on a level with other individuals but the second Adam head of the human race, both Son of Man and Son of God.” – Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:402

HT: Dane Ortlund

Regarding Leadership, Sin, Repentance and Restoration

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Dr. R. C. Sproul, Jr was asked this question:

“If a man in leadership falls into sin, admits it, repents and turns from it, should he ever lead again in the same role?”

He answered it on his blog as follows:

All men, save Jesus, are sinners. All men, save Jesus, are called to repent and turn from their sins. And only men are called to lead in the church. As such, if we are going to have leaders, that is, elders, and deacons in the church, we had better leave room for repentant elders and deacons. The only thing worse and the only other thing possible is unrepentant elders and deacons.

That said, I suspect the question, while vague, is aiming at something a bit more particular. What do we do with a pastor who has committed adultery? What do we do with a deacon who has embezzled the church’s funds? If they repent, it would seem we are called to forgive. And doesn’t forgiveness mean we act as though it never happened?

Yes, of course we are to forgive the repentant. That doesn’t mean, however, that we are to act as though it never happened. When we forgive we do not forget as if we had amnesia, or as if there is nothing to be concerned about. Instead we forget in the sense that we no longer hold the sin against the sinner. We do not hold a grudge against them. We love the repentant. We embrace the repentant, and we seek to help not just the repentant, but those whom they have wronged. We do not require the embezzler to wear a scarlet E for the rest of his life. But we do not either leave him alone to count the offering. We would be poor stewards of his soul and the kingdom’s funds were we to leave him to his temptation.

Consider how God’s law deals with adultery and divorce. Were I unfaithful to my wife, and were I to repent for such a sin, she would have an obligation to forgive me. She would not, however, have an obligation to stay married to me. Adultery is biblical grounds for a divorce precisely because it is such a betrayal of a trust that future trust is hard to come by. The victim is to forgive. The adulterer is forgiven, But the divorce can still happen, and is still laid at the feet of the adulterer. He is the one who broke the covenant. The victim is free to acknowledge that reality by seeking the legal divorce.

One could argue, and indeed some have, that a pastor who is guilty of infidelity is to be forgiven, but as with marriage itself, has so betrayed the trust inherent in his office that it would preclude his future service as a minister of the gospel. Others, perhaps pointing to Peter’s betrayal of Jesus, and Jesus’ admonition after his repentance that he strengthen the brethren, that a pastor in such a circumstance is oddly even more empowered to serve as a minister of the gospel, having experienced its power so immediately. The danger is, in both positions, papering over our emotional response with pious words. That is, too often the pastor is put out not because it is the right thing, but because of anger, because we haven’t honestly forgiven. Even more common we are fearful of how the church would fare without our pastor, and so keep him on, even cover up for him, and excuse our fear by baptizing it in “forgiveness” and “grace.” Because we are all sinners our temptation is always to do what we want to do. Because we profess Christ, we then cover our desires with rationalizations.

God is good. God can and does not only forgive us, but can and does cleanse us from all unrighteousness (I John 1:9). That said, a man who has proven his willingness to betray his family is more likely than one who has remained faithful to walk into adultery again. A man who has betrayed his office sexually, is likewise more likely to do so again. My counsel would be to remove the man from office. But it is just that, counsel. I cannot claim that the Bible commands it, nor that it forbids leaving such a man in office should he repent.