I had an argument with someone not so long ago. I recently read Romans 11 right after reading all of Hebrews, and it sounded extremely URish to me. I pointed to “all Israel” as being, well, all of any valid Israel, including the hardened ones and the cut off ones, and the Pharisees, since Paul was speaking about the hardened group. The argument against me was that the “hardened” Israel included only some specific subset of disbelieving Israel. It got a bit convoluted there and I asked if there was an elected group among the non-elected group or something. Or why does some hardened Israel get away with all the stuff they did described in the prophets while someone defying the Sabbath does not. He said “all Israel” doesn’t include the Pharisees, but from where I am sitting, Paul is EXACTLY talking about the Pharisees, because they are hardened. And if the Pharisees will be saved that makes all the warnings Jesus threw at them moot as far as eternal damnation goes - clearly they were enemies of the Gospel. My opponent actually thew Galantians at me as trying to prove that Israel didn’t really mean Israel, but Paul described what he was talking about at the end of Romans 10/beginning of Romans 11.
It was really bewildering.
The thing about ECT arguments, is that it seems for people a verse saying “they will be punished forever” has, for whatever reason, more power than “one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for fall men”. It’s as if the negativity of the previous statement overpowers any positive of the latter. And whenever ECT becomes suspicious, words like “all” and “world” are redefined to somehow mean a small subset of humanity, while words like “eonian” are permanently defined as “forever”, even when clearly shown to not make sense.
It’s just bias, that’s all. May all of us URish lot get some self-esteem and realize that.
I guess you could reply “well, you are ignoring the passages you like!”