Agency A Reply to Dale Tuggy

Dale; I really appreciate your podcast. I am not a Trinitarian. But, nor am I a Dale Tuggy Unitarian.

In connection with your reply on creatorship to Douglas. You replied: “that Now in the case of God, he’s omnipotent and omniscient, so we can be sure that he would not *need* to employ others to create the cosmos. Perhaps he might desire to share the work, conceivably; but a few times in the Old Testament he forcefully says that he alone did it. Obviously, this would exclude any of the deities of the nations’ pantheons. But on the face of it, it’d exclude “good guys” too – such as angels, or the pre-Incarnate Son.And as I mention in my Who is the one creator episodes, the clear NT mentions of creation show an assumption of one creator, who is God himself, aka the Father’

 

“panta di auto egeneto” All things were made through him John 1.3

A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament by Dana And Mantey pg 162 says: (2)The Passive With Intermediate Agent. “When the agent is the medium through which the original cause has effected the action expressed by the passive verb, the regular construction is dia with the genitive.” panta di autou egeneto

“Here God the Father is thought of as the original cause of creation, and the logos as the intermediate agent.”

I also think this genitive form is found in Col. 1.15 “firstborn of all creation”. And passive verb forms to describe his role in creation. “ektisthe” Col. 1.16

I do believe because of your Unitarian leanings you must work your way around these text. You said, “he forcefully says that he alone did it.”

Now come on Dale, this is just an old trinity text ignoring agency and ascribing absoluteness to God. When we both know that other text that seem to indicate absoluteness are not really absolute. For instance Isaiah 43.11 Is this true or is agency involved in many occasions. Jud 3.9:1 John 4.14 Psalms 8.6 “Everything you have put under his feet. Does this mean everything? Angels, God etc.

Another text that highlights my position and also yours to a certain extent is 1 Cor.15.27, ” For God ‘subjected all things under his feet (does ‘All things really mean this absolute sense?) No, for the text goes on to say; ‘But when he says that ‘all things have been subjected, it is evident that it is with the exception of the one who subjected all things to him.’

Of course a simple word search on the Greek word panta would testify to ‘all’ not meaning a totality.

 Nor do the expressions in Hebrew text “Besides me there is no God” when we both know Elohim is used of Angels, Men,and even Jesus. A lot of these text that seem to imply absoluteness are couched in with a society that worshiped idols and foreign gods. So you would expect statements of absoluteness that are truly not absolute only in relation to pagan gods.

In conclusion, I think agency and context must be considered when using text that imply absoluteness.

Thank you;

Dale

 I still think you are remarkable

addendum

“Phrases such as ‘there is no god besides me’…and ‘besides me there is no other’…do not deny the existence of other [ELOHIM]. This is readily demonstrated by the fact that the phrases occur in passages that presume the division of the nations and their allotment to other gods (e.g. Duet. 4:35, 39 [cp. Duet. 4:19-20] and Duet. 32:29 [cp. Duet. 32:8-9, 43]). This sort of phrasing is also used of Nineveh and Babylon, where the point cannot be non-existence, but incomparability (Zeph. 2:15; Isa. 47:8, 10).” (Monotheism and the Language of Divine Plurality in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls) p. 98, footnote 46.

 

“In connection with the Second God theory, logically, and to some extent also historically, may be taken the distinction between ‘God’ (Θεὸς, used without the definite article) and ‘the God’ (ὁ Θεὸς, with the addition of the article). The difference may be indicated in English by contrasting the phrases ‘a divine being’ and ‘the supreme being.'” (G.L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought), p. 144

Does "All" Ever Mean "All" in Scripture?

 

Tom Hicks

Eric Hankins preached a sermon on September 26, 2013 at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in which he said, “All means all and that’s all all means.” Jump to 17:23 in the linked video to hear this claim. But is Hankins’ statement true? Does the Greek word “pas” (each, every, any, all, the whole, etc.) ever mean “all” categorically and apart from any limitation? There are over 1,200 occurrences of the word “pas;” so, it’s not practical to list them all here, but an examination of a concordance will show that the term “all” is almost always limited to some category. The meaning of “all” in Scripture is always determined by the context, and rarely, if ever, means “all without any kind of limitation.” Consider the first ten occurrences of the term “pas” in the Greek New Testament.

• Matt 1:17 – “There were fourteen generations in all”
• Matt 2:3 – “All Jerusalem”
• Matt 2:4 – “All the people’s chief priests”
• Matt 2:16 – “All the boys in Bethlehem”
• Matt 2:16 – “All that region”
• Matt 3:5 – “All Judea”
• Matt 3:5 – “All the region of the Jordan”
• Matt 3:10 – “Every tree that does not produce good fruit”
• Matt 3:15 – “Fulfill all righteousness”
• Matt 4:4 – “Every word that comes from the mouth of God”

In each of these occurrences of the word “pas,” there’s some kind of categorical limitation. In the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Gerhard Kittel, who has never been accused of having a Calvinistic agenda, outlines a number of uses of the Greek word “pas.”  He states, “In particular, one may speak of a summative, implicative and distributive signification of pas as the term embraces either a totality or sum as an independent entity (summative), an inclusion of all individual parts or representatives of a concept (implicative), or extension to relatively independent particulars (distributive).  If the reference is to the attainment of the supreme height or breadth of a concept, we have an elative or (amplificative) significance” (Volume 5, 887).  Since the biblical writers used the word “pas” in a variety of different ways, interpreting the word requires careful attention to context.  It is, therefore, inaccurate to say as Eric Hankins does that “all means all and that’s all all means.”

There’s only one way to use the word “all” such that it means “all” without qualification, and it isn’t very useful because it’s so comprehensive. “All” only means “all without any kind of limitation” if it refers to all things and no things, created and uncreated, existent and non-existent, abstract and concrete, actual and potential, true and false, rational and irrational, beautiful and ugly, good and evil, etc. Scripture, however, very rarely, if ever, uses the word “all” in that kind of comprehensive way.

What About “All” in Romans 3:23?

Some may suggest that the word “all” in Romans 3:23 is a place where “all means all without any limitation.”  Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  But I submit that the meaning of the word “all”  is limited here too.  Romans 3:23 doesn’t mean that all of the angels sinned, and it certainly doesn’t mean that Jesus sinned.

If we look at the wider context of Romans 1-3, we’ll see that Paul uses the word “all” in Romans 3:23 to speak of all humanity since creation, both Jews and Greeks.  But in Romans 3, Paul goes even further to show that the word “all” in Romans 3:23 doesn’t just mean “all ethnic groups have sinned,” “all in general have sinned,” or that “every kind of person has sinned.” Rather Paul shows that each and every individual of fallen humanity has sinned.  In Romans 3:10-11, Paul makes this crystal clear: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.  All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”  The fact that Paul denies the goodness of any fallen individual in Romans 3:10-11 clarifies his meaning of “all” in Romans 3:23.  There would be little reason for Paul to deny that any individual is good, not even one, if “all” always meant “all” without any qualification.  Thus we see that the word “all” in Romans 3:23 alone isn’t sufficient to prove that each and every individual descended from Adam has sinned.  But the context of Romans 3 demonstrates that that’s exactly what Paul means.

What About “All” in Romans 11:32?

When Eric Hankins said that “all means all and that’s all all means,” he was referring to Romans 11:32, among other passages (16:53 in the video).  Romans 11:32 says that God has “mercy on all.” But in Romans 11:32, does “all” mean “all” and is that really “all all means?” Is Romans 11:32 saying that God has mercy on Satan and his angels? I assume Eric Hankins would want to limit the meaning of “all” to human beings and exclude the devil and his demons. What about human beings who have already died and are under punishment at this very moment? Does God have “mercy on all” human beings, including those currently under punishment?  I suspect that Eric Hankins would want to limit the meaning of “all” even further to something like “all fallen human beings while they are alive” in order to avoid serious theological error.

But does Romans 11:32 teach that Christ has “mercy on all” human beings while they are alive?  Is that the category of Romans 11 itself?

Romans 11 is dealing with elect Israelites and elect Gentiles.  In Romans 11:5-7, Paul writes, “So too at the present time, there is a remnant chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened.”  These verses tell us that God’s saving grace and mercy extends to the “elect,” while “the rest,” the non-elect, are “hardened.”

The phrase “mercy on all” in Romans 11:32 is limited to Jews and Gentiles (Rom 11:25-26) who are part of the “remnant chosen by grace” (Rom 11:5) and “the elect” (Rom 11:7). In Romans 11:30-32 Paul is saying that the elect Gentile believers in Rome had all once been disobedient but that they were shown mercy.  So also, Paul says, elect Israelites have been consigned to disobedience that God might have mercy on them.