Does Paul Teach Universalism in 1 Corinthians 15:22?

Some debate arises as to the universal salvation implied in verse 22. How much weight should be given to the two uses of “all” in 22b? Is Paul teaching the ultimate salvation of all humankind in Christ in the same way that he asserts the universal death of all humankind in Adam? Most commentators agree that such an idea is incompatible with the rest of Paul’s teaching; throughout this letter Paul has spoken of those who perish (1 Cor 1:18; 3:17; 5:13; 6:9; 9:27). In light of this it seems that we are left to limit both (or at least the second) “all” clauses of verse 22 and have them act as modifiers of “in Adam” and “in Christ.” Thus we can take the meaning of the verse to be “all who are in Adam die, while all who are in Christ shall be made alive.”

Larry Kreitzer
Adam and Christ in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters
editors: G. Hawthorne, R. Martin, and D. Reid

Leisure and Relaxation as Modern Idols

JOHN F. MACARTHUR
I Corinthians
Macarthur New Testament Commentary

"Leisure and relaxation are two great modern idols, to which many Christians seem quite willing to bow down. In proper proportion recreation and diversions can help restore our energy and increase our effectiveness. But they also can easily become ends in themselves, demanding more and more of our attention, concern, time, and energy. More than one believer has relaxed and hobbied himself completely out of the work of the Lord."

What Keeps Sungenis from Embracing Sedevacantism?

"As I have repeatedly suggested to the traditionalists, you have a much better chance of saving the Church if you fight the battle from within the Church rather than from outside. You've already lost the battle if you fight from outside...  There is no reason to cut off your nose (the pope) to spite your face, since it would be quite impossible for us not to have a legitimate pope for the last six popes (as the Dimond brothers teach) and still believe Jesus' words that the gates of hell shall not prevail. We all know that the popes have made mistakes, but none of us has the mandate or the authority from God to declare that any of them are anti-popes, except another pope. "

~ Robert Sungenis

Source

Sungenis and Pope John Paul II

From this statement, Robert Sungenis says:

"But why attack me? I didn’t invite pagans to pray to their false gods. I condemned it for the last 10 years in numerous articles and lectures. I didn’t shuffle pedophiles and homosexuals from parish to parish. I wrote a plethora of papers against it. I didn’t give them safe haven at the Vatican. I wrote several papers exposing the Vatican sin‐sanctuary. I didn’t exonerate Luther and allow the Luther‐Catholic Joint Declaration, signed by a high‐ranking Cardinal, to explicitly state that “man is justified by faith alone.” I wrote a book against it titled Not By Faith Alone that has a Catholic imprimatur. I didn’t go against the tradition by putting women in leadership positions and dispensing with head coverings. I wrote papers against it and sent them to the Vatican. I didn’t disobey the Fatima request to consecrate Russia. I wrote papers exposing the cowardliness of the last few popes who disobeyed heaven on this point. I didn’t protect Bishop Marcinkus and his entourage of financial hoodlums in the Vatican. I exposed it. I didn’t accept the tenets of evolution. I exposed it for the fraud it is. I didn’t make it appear as if God has given man universal salvation by using ambiguous language in my writings, and I never suggested that hell might not exist. I wrote papers saying that the Catholic Church has one task, which is to preach the Gospel of the Last Four things – the same Gospel our tradition preached. I didn’t kiss the Koran, or suggest that the Jews still have their Old Covenant, or write a catechism that contained theological errors and ambiguities. I didn’t change the canonization laws, or the marriage laws, or the capital punishment laws, or laws about women’s roles, or any law. I wrote papers showing that our tradition and our Scripture were against all of these novelties. I didn’t watch scantily clad women dance while Mass was being said. I didn’t marginalize and ignore the pleas of a bishop who was merely trying to preserve the tradition (Archbishop Levebre) but instead threw Assisi in his face. I didn’t fail to excommunicate heretical bishops and priests who were spouting heresies. I decried their heresies. These and many more aberrations happened by express order of John Paul II, yet Mr. Dejak condemns me for pointing them all out. I guess I must have burst the little bubble he lives in. I marred the fantastic and idolized image he has of the pope. So the only thing Mr. Dejak can do (since in his essay he decided NOT to defend any of the actions of John Paul II), is to attack the messenger. He hopes that if he can generate a low opinion of me to the audience, then the audience will decide not to listen to me.Clever. That’s what I would expect from the hit‐and‐run artist Mr. Dejak appears to be."

From One of Rome's Staunchest Defenders

In this paper, Robert Sungenis says:

"When compared to the Catholic Church of tradition, I have resolved that the modern Catholic Church will be required to stand on its own, for I simply cannot defend it any longer. There are simply too many doctrinal aberrations and moral laxities in today's Catholic Church that are indefensible. In light of these problems, I have assumed what I believe is the more appropriate position - that of being a prophet of warning rather than one an apologist seeking to exonerate the Church from false accusations. Today many accusations against the Church are quite legitimate and I certainly will not be a party to sweeping them under the rug. Hence, I presently take my model from that of Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and all the other prophets who spoke out against similar doctrinal aberrations and moral laxities that occurred in Israel before God finally judged them. I believe that if the modern Catholic Church stays on the course it has chosen, it also will be judged by God as Israel was, and, in fact, it is already being judged as we have seen the deterioration in the Church for the last few decades. I'm sorry to have to say this, but from all my knowledge and experience, I would have to say that the last few pontificates have been an almost total disaster for the Catholic Church, especially the pontificate of John Paul II."

James White: The Peter Syndrome

"The Peter Syndrome is a deadly disease rampant amongst modern Roman Catholic apologists. And it is a disease that makes you see every reference to Peter anywhere in an early father as somehow relevant to the bishop in Rome even if that father never makes that connection himself, never shows that he believes the bishop of Rome is the vicar of Christ on earth, never says that Peter's successor sit only on the sit in Rome, it doesn't matter as long as an early father says something nice about Peter, therefore he is in support of the bishop of Rome."

 ~ James White

Ecumenism in Heaven ???

"Will there be in heaven saints saved according to a score sorts of gospel? Will these agree together to sing the same song? And what will the song be? Saved on different footings, and believing different doctrines, will they enjoy eternal concord, or will heaven itself be only a new arena for disputation between the varieties of faith."

            - Charles Spurgeon

Progressive Theology

Sword & Trowel (April, 1888)

McCheyne: Upon Hearing About a Friend's Death

"O, how I repent of our vain controversies when we last met, and we spoke so little of Jesus. O, that we had spoken more one to another! Lord, teach me to be always speaking as dying to dying."

- Robert Murray McCheyne

Packer: Sola Gratia understood in varying degrees of adequacy

"The doctrine of free justification by faith only, which became the storm-centre of so much controversy during the Reformation Period, is often regarded as the heart of the Reformers' theology, but this is hardly accurate. The truth is that their thinking was really centered upon the contention of Paul, echoed with varying degrees of adequacy by Augustine, and Gottschalk, and Bradwardine, and Wycliffe, that the sinner's entire salvation is by free and sovereign grace only. The doctrine of justification by faith was important to them because it safeguarded the principle of sovereign grace."

- J.I. Packer & O.R. Johnston
Historical and Theological Introduction
in Martin Luther's The Bondage of the Will
(Fleming H. Revell, 1957) p.58 (Ed. Scott Larsen)

Zacharias: The influence of books and teachers

"If I had even the faintest clue when I was younger as to how profound an impact books and professors would have upon my life, I would have kept a better record of my thoughts and emotions. Why? Because some books and teachers leave indelible fingerprints on our souls. And when those fingerprints are left, it's as if your DNA has changed. Our physical body takes on characteristics because of our chemical DNA. Likewise, those whom we've read and those whose feet we have studied will transform our passions, power and purpose."

-Ravi Zacharias
Just Thinking (Winter 2003), p.1; also appeared in the book Indellible Ink: 22 Prominent Leaders Discuss the Books That Shaped Their Faith

Murray on Barth's Universal Reconciliation

"unless exegesis of Paul is evacuated completely at the most vital point, this means that all men without exception must be ultimately  the beneficiaries of that grace which reigns through righteousness unto eternal life (5:21). Barth cannot hold to universalism at one point in the relationship to Christ without carrying out the implications for the ultimate salvation of all men. For if there is distributive universalism in the apodoses of verses 18 and 19, as Barth's interpretation demands, there must also be in the apodosis of verse 21, and the reign of grace through righteousness unto eternal life must embrace all men without exception. This is not Paul's teaching (cf. II Thess. 1:9; 2:10-14)..."

-John Murray
The Epistle to the Romans

Love Says Hard Things

"They think it unkind to say anything that appears to condemn others. For my part I cannot understand such charity. It seems to me the kind of charity which would see a neighbor drinking slow poison but never interfere to stop him, or which would allow passengers to embark in a leaky vessel and not try to prevent them, or which would see a blind man walking near a precipice and think it wrong to cry out and tell him he was in danger" 

-J.C. Ryle

Knots Untied

Salvation in Dim Light and Our Great Accountability

JAMES BUCHANAN
The Office and Work of the Holy Spirit

"... how little of God's truth may serve for conversion, if it be suitably improved by the hearer, and savingly applied by the Spirit. The penitent on the cross was saved by means of mere fragments of truth, and these presented to him in the blasphemies of Christ's accusers and the inscription on his cross. This is a delightful thought, when it is viewed in connection with the case of the poor and ignorant, and of others who live under a dark or defective dispensation of truth; but it is unutterably solemn when viewed in connection with our own case, for how shall we escape if we die unconverted, after the light we have received, the many sermons we have heard, the much truth which we have slighted and despised!"

Demarest: Barth's Trinity is Suborthodox

Have read about Karl Barth's replacement of the traditional formula "One God in three persons" with "one divine subject in three different modes of being". Bruce Demarest concludes that Barth's position is a form of "idealistic modalism". In one of the end notes, Demarest further labels Barth's understanding of the Trinity as "suborthodox" 

(chapter 7, Integrative Theology Vol.1-- co-authored with Gordon Lewis)

Douglas Wilson: Kindness to Wolves is Hostility to Sheep

"Sheep are to be kind to sheep. Shepherds are to be kind to sheep. But if a shepherd is kind to wolves, that is just another way to let them savage the sheep. Kindness to sheep is hostility to wolves. Kindness to wolves is hostility to sheep. All attempts to get the wolves and sheep together for some kind of ecumenical lovefest will only result in fat, contented wolves."

~ Douglas Wilson

A Serrated Edge

cited by Mark Driscoll in "How Sharp the Edge? Christ, Controversy and Cutting Words"

Chapter 4 in "The Power of Words and the Wonder of God" (eds. John Piper and Justin Taylor), p.87