Friday, December 27, 2019

Anti-Mormon Admitting "All" Should not be Absolutised and Limited By the Context it is Used in


Commenting on Rev 21:7 (“He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son”) and its potential for being a “proof-text” for theosis, one anti-Mormon author admitted that “all” (πας in Greek) should not be absolutised and instead, is limited based on the context it is used in:

In 1 Corinthians 13:7, Christians are told to believe “all things.” What are “all things”? Are they teachings that are contrary to the Bible? Bible readers need to be careful when the word “all” is in the biblical text. “All” needs to be kept in the immediate context. Clearly, “all” should be restricted to the context of the passage and not to be understood to encompass all spiritual things or all physical things. (Matthew A. Paulson, Breaking the Mormon Code: A Critique of Mormon Scholarship Regarding Classic Christian Theology and the Book of Mormon [Livermore, Calif.: WingSpan Press, 2006, 2009], 54)

Such is important in light of Col 1:15-20, a common “proof-text” against Latter-day Saint Christology. On this, see my article:


On πας itself, a good book-length study is:

J. William Johnston, The Use of Πας in the New Testament (Studies in Biblical Greek)