Where Everybody's Crazy

Yes, it's a heavy blogging day, but it's the only day of late I've had enough time and energy to put fingers to keyboard and get this stuff out of my head. So anyway, the other day I said:

The idea is that God wants all men to be saved (I have yet another blog post brewing about what that actually means)

The Bible is a book written by people who, on the whole, are first-language Hebrew speakers. Even the bits which are written down in Greek contain a self-expression and mode of thought which is authentically Semitic. When people who are not expecting a Semitic mode of thought read the Semiticisms in the Bible, funny things can happen. A particularly funny one is the use of the word "all".

As you may have just gathered, I have an unusual view of the Law. This view was formed in part by having a leading Messianic Jewish thinker as my tutor at Bible college, who turned me on to some of the Semiticisms going on in the Bible. For instance, one day we were talking about evangelism to the Jews and I, being a little naughty, said "Why bother? Doesn't Romans 11 say 'all Israel will be saved'?" Now of course Richard had probably heard this a hundred times before, and I was just trying to stir things a little, but he still floored me with his answer: "Of course all Israel will be saved. But not every single member of Israel will be saved."

‏כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל. "All Israel". But "כָּל" means, in the parlance of British Law, jointly but not severally. The group known as Israel will be saved, but not every single member of that group.

Once you get your head around this, then other troublesome verses containing the word "all" fall into place. 1st Corinthians says "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive", and if we follow the standard evangelical line, the first "all" means that "every single person will die" and the second "all" means "only those who believe in Christ and confess their sins and turn to him will be made alive". Even if we permit a certain overreaching of interpretation it would be best to require a little internal consistency. "All" either means "all" or it doesn't.

But we need not follow that line; the Orthodox line is perfectly reasonable under the Semitic interpretation: the group known as humanity died through Adam's sin; the group known as humanity will be made alive in Christ. Which individuals make up that group is a separate question.

And another verse, the subject of my frustration, the insistance on making "God... desires all men to be saved" into a missionary text.

Since God desires all men to be saved, goes the Western reading of this Semitic text, we need to go out and make sure that every single individual gets saved. And, under this reading, since not every single individual actually is saved, God is frustrated with us and it's all our fault for not being good enough evangelists. Bad Christian. Go proselytise more. (Amusingly, the people who believe this also believe that nobody can be saved without the work of the Holy Spirit. But even knowing that, they still blame each other and themselves rather than blaming God for their evangelistic work not paying off. Remember what I said about internal consistency.) We talked about the house church being legalistic and driven. This is where it comes from.

My view is that God's Will is also God's Responsibility. If God really does desire that every single individual gets saved, then, being omnipotent and stuff, He's only got Himself to blame if His will gets frustrated.

A major mission motivation of the sixties and seventies went something like: (I don't have Bosch to hand, but it's certainly in there) "When God holds you responsible for the souls of your generation, how will you respond?" Here's Keith Green, who was a great musician but a bloody awful theologian:

It's our fault because this generation of believers is responsible for this generation of souls on the earth.

But I include the quote because it's typical of the genre: If people don't get saved "it's our fault". It's our fault.

I tell you what, if I die and stand before the Judgment Seat of God and He holds me responsible for all these Japanese souls in my generation, I know exactly how I'm going to respond: (i) "Hey, You're God, You could have made it happen but You didn't, so why are You suddenly blaming me?", and (ii) "Nobody can come to faith without the work of Your Holy Spirit, and it looks like You didn't open their hearts, so let's not try to make that my problem."

The stupid thing is, we could have avoided all of this rubbish if only we'd have been a little more careful about the way we translated the tiny little word "כָּל".

God wants humanity to be saved. And it will be. Precisely who gets to be a part of that is His problem, not ours.