Revisiting the phrases: “All without distinction,” and “All without exception.” part 2

[Part 1 here.]

I’ve  been trying to think of ways to explain this.

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I love all kinds of corn chips.

Hold that thought.

A few weeks ago I asked a friend what does “all without distinction” mean:

One answer I have seen a few times is that it means this: “all kinds of men.”

On the surface my above question may seem silly. But here is why I would argue it was not.

Let’s run with that and see if it can take us anywhere.

I guess what this entails then is that when “all without distinction” is applied to 1 Tim 2:4 it means, precisely, that God wills the salvation of all kinds of men.

Why? cos I love all kinds of corn chips.  What does that mean? It means I love all kinds of flavours, brands, colours, shapes, sizes, and so forth. But at no point can it be a statement about any particular corn chip of any kind.

Here is my basic problem. What I want to argue is that for the High Calvinist reading, “all” becomes “some” and that the way this is done is self-deceptive.

We have a phrase, “all men”

All is the modifier, and it modifies “men”.

Then we have the “rule” that here all men must mean all without distinction. Okay, so lets apply this “rule”.

All men becomes: “All men without distinction.”

If we ask what “all men without distinction” means, we are told it means all kinds of men.

So now “all men” becomes “all kinds of men”.

But now, note the modifier does not modify the noun. Now it modifies the term “kinds”.

Yet no High Calvinist can really seriously say that Paul is commanding us to pray for kinds of men. Rather he wants us to pray for concrete particulars, such that  no concrete particular is to be excluded from our prayers (Calvin). Paul has actual people in mind, either as subjects of our prayers, or objects of the will of God.

So almost immediately we are brought down from the forms and abstractions to the concrete and the particular.

So “all kinds of men”becomes “some men of all kinds” (Owen). [It must become some men of all kinds, because the very intent of the High Calvinist is to preclude the idea that Paul has “all men of every kind” in view here.]

So now, all men becomes some men of all kinds.

Thus: All becomes Some.

The modifier “all” now becomes “some” in order to truly modify “men”.

I think this strategy is quite deceptive. And I have demonstrated before that “all without distinction” properly meant all men without this or that distinction or exception.

But obviously that too seems quite artificial and counter-intuitive to some of us. Later I will explore this from my perspective, because the question is, what internal evidence is there in this text that Paul has in mind the idea of “some men of every kind”

David