[Note to admins: might this portion of the thread be well-ported over to the discussion forum against universalism? We don’t really have a thread there yet…]
Oy… that verse is freakishly difficult to translate anyway:
“If any should be seeing the brother of him sinning sin not toward death {pros} typically means ‘toward’, which is why in KJV English it’s translated ‘unto’], he shall be asking, and He [God] will be giving him life. These are sinning not toward death. There-is [or Is…? or Is there…?] sin toward death; [emphatically] not concerning this-there {ekeine_s}, ‘there’ as a noun] I say that he should be asking. All unfairness [or injustice] is sin; yet is sin not toward death.”
Notice that there isn’t actually a preposition concerning {tois}, ‘these’; though translators often add one in (trying to make a contextual guess). Also, I’m not entirely sure the phrase I’ve marked with a bracketed [Is there…?] shouldn’t be a question: it’s hard sometimes in NT Greek to tell when something is being asked instead of stated. I can however tell that the subsequent phrase is clearly about a ‘there’, as a noun, and not about a ‘this’, or a ‘that’ either. (Even though all my English translations including the various literal ones render it as either ‘this’ or ‘that’.)
I’m inclined to think that switching terms like that, indicates the writer doesn’t want the reader to be asking whether there is a sin toward death: “don’t go there!” as we would say colloquially in English to someone asking us a question we’d rather they not be asking. This impression is heightened by the final phrase of the set, which could be translated “there-is sin” (with the subject tacit), or “is sin” or “sin [emphatically] is”, or even rhetorically, “yet/and is sin not toward death?”
Another reason I’m inclined to think this paragraph isn’t talking about a distinction between praying for brothers who aren’t sinning toward death and not praying for brothers (or whoever) who are sinning toward death, is because we’re clearly taught elsewhere all over the scriptures that any sin is a sin toward death! It is only because of God’s grace that any sin does not result in death, whether in the short run or in the long run.
One could adduce the subsequent paragraph, where John is talking about how those who are begotten of God are not sinning or being touched by the evil (one?) despite living in a whole kosmos lying in the evil; to mean something along Calvinist lines: that there is no point praying for the salvation of those who are not already being begotten of God, in the sense of those whom God has not chosen to act toward saving.
The concept, then, of the previous paragraph (vv 16-17) would be that if we see a person doing sin, whom God has chosen to act toward saving from sin, then even though we know he won’t arrive at death (thanks to God) from doing that sin, we still ought to pray for God to help us cooperate with God in leading our fellow-chosen-one away from sin. (The grammar might work out that way well enough, especially if a ‘for’ was helpfully interpolated into the translation in one of a couple of strategic places.)
My problems with this are a minor exegetical and a majorly practical one. The (only?) minor exegetical problem is that this would render verse 17 inexplicable as an addition: John already told us there is a sin not to the death (that’s presumed already in his injunction, isn’t it?) Why is he reiterating it?–and why bother adding that all injustice is sin? (This is probably why a few late Greek texts omit the negative {mu} in verse 17.) This is aside from the question of whether the smoothest reading of the extant Greek wording allows this meaning, since technically one could interpolate a few words here and there (as pretty much all translations have to do anyway) in order to get the sentences to synch with this meaning.
My major practical problem is that, strictly speaking, the advice is useless–not because there’s no point praying for brethren-who-will-be-saved (since the grammar can be read to indicate, probably correctly in any case, that the point to praying is to ask God how we can help God lead our brother out of sin, in loving cooperation with Him); but because under this kind of theology WE HAVE NO WAY OF TELLING WHO IS AND WHO ISN’T CHOSEN BY GOD FOR SALVATION FROM SIN! Even people who by all outward appearances seem to be professing Christians, and even doing works of miraculous power in His name, may be headed for a condemnation that can only be hopelessly final under Calv (and Arm) soteriology. (cf RevJohn 2:1-7; Matt 7:21-23) Whereas, any of those pagan idolators over there may be led at the last moment to accept Christ. None of us have any way of knowing; we might even be (self?)-deceived about thinking we are of the ‘elect’!
It might be replied that since we cannot know for sure who is and who isn’t of the ‘elect’, then we could pray for everyone and (as the saying goes) let God sort out the bodies. True; but then the Calv translation of the injunction is still useless, insofar as it is read to be saying that we should distinguish between praying for those who are already slated not to arrive at death from their sins and those who will be so arriving.
Given that the larger local context is about idolatry, one might suppose that the topic of whom to pray for and whom not to pray for is actually limited to those who are not pagans and those who (currently?) are, respectively. This would mean that we are not to pray for pagans to be converted to Christianity; which if anything would seem worse than a more general application of the principle! (Since in the more general application at least we have no idea really who we are and are not supposed to pray for; but here the application would practically exclude everyone who isn’t already officially a professing Christian except maybe those, like Jews, who are strict monotheists right now. Even Muslims give pagans a chance to convert before killing them!)
My last observation is that St. Paul, in a couple of epistles (most famously 1 Cor 5 but also 1 Tim 1), hands over to Satan certain rebel teachers who (as 1 Tim puts it) have shipwrecked in regard the faith. (In 1 Tim these are Hymenaeus and Alexander “among others”; in 1 Cor 5 it’s the unnamed teacher and Epicurian factionalizer I like to call Stepmom-Sleeping Guy. Possibly he’s one of the named guys in 1 Tim, of course.) In 1 Cor 5’s case, this looks pretty certainly like it’s to the death; and the phrasing is extreme in either case. It also reminds me of the phrasing in 1 John 5 which might be rendered “the evil one” (a nickname for Satan).
But is their cause hopeless?! Not at all! Paul in each case specifically says he’s doing it so that they’ll learn better: in 1 Tim 1:20, “so that they may be taught not to blaspheme”, and in 1 Cor 5:5, “so that [the SSG’s] spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”. Insofar as what they’re doing counts as idolatry, Paul can be said to be praying not for them to live but for them to die: he’s going further in that sense than the Evangelist in 1 John 5! (Even on Calv interpretation, John is simply saying don’t ask for those who are sinning toward death to be given life by God. He isn’t saying his readers should pray for them to die!) But Paul’s active condemnation, though into death, isn’t into hopelessness. On the contrary, he has hope for them through the condemnation of God.
Taken altogether, then, I have to lean toward rejecting a Calv interpretation/translation of 1 John 5: 16-17; and I certainly don’t see how Arminians could do any better with it, even when the translational options are factored in. Whereas, when translational options are factored in, I arrive at a result that synchs up with things I think are being taught elsewhere in Scripture (even on basically the same topic); provides the smoothest use of the Greek as it stands; has some exegetical superiority to other options… and, perhaps incidentally, fits well enough into universalism.