Does “All” Always Mean “Every Single One” in the Bible? (Romans 11:26)
“I carefully began looking up every appearance of ‘all’ in Romans. Guess what? ‘All’ (unsurprisingly) often refers to every single one in Paul’s letter to the Romans, but sometimes it doesn’t.” - Kenneth Berding
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I have heard it said that of the remaining living Jews at the end of the tribulation (a small number) all will be saved. I think this is a perfectly plausible interpretation.
Kenneth Berding is right about this. I've discovered that many uses of the word "all" in the Bible do not mean every individual without exception. I suspect that the "all always means all" declaration is designed to neutralize the doctrine of limited atonement (better labeled particular redemption). If "all" doesn't mean "everyone" every time its used, then it's possible that it doesn't mean everyone in statements about the intent and extent of Christ's atonement. We wouldn't want to admit that could be possible, now would we? (wink, wink)
G. N. Barkman
That’s a long article for a really simple idea. “All of what?” is the question. Read the context and look for grammatical and theological modifiers.
For instance, the all of John 3:16 is all who believe. Which means that John 3:16 has absolutely no relevance to discussions about election or atonement. No matter what you believe about those, eternal life is given to all who believe and none who don’t believe.
So in Romans 11, all is in reference to Israel and we must ask who Israel is. In Romans 9, it has already been defined for us as a subset of Israel.
In reality, this isn’t that controversial.
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