"God our Savior desires everyone to be saved" (1Tim 2:4). Does God get what God wants? "Yes, but--" depending on how we read the Bible.
The Bible is universal: One God, Sovereign Creator of everything, especially humanity in God's image, God's partner to manage creation. Science and evolution say humanity evolved, gradually acquiring superior capabilities. We have yet to transcend animal nature and acknowledge oneness of creation under God.
Humans exploited our semi-divine status, becoming alienated. God chose Israelites/Jews for blessing and reconciling humanity. They exploited chosenness, so God sent the Jew Jesus to reveal God's gracious concern for all people. Roman political and Jewish religious power killed Jesus, but he appeared resurrected to his disciples, who proclaimed him Savior.
God gave another Jew, Paul, a vision of Jesus resurrected and appointed him to proclaim God's reconciliation to Gentiles. Paul taught that through the faithfulness of Jesus, Gentiles too become God's people and share Israel's blessings without becoming Jews. All who experience reconciliation share Jesus's partnership with God. "We toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe" (1 Tim 4:10).
Arch B. Taylor Jr. is an ordained Presbyterian minister who served for over thirty years in Japan and taught Bible at Shikoku Gakuin University.
"God For All interweaves a complete survey of the entire Christian Bible with the author's personal and denominational pilgrimage. It interprets that Christian Bible--positively, powerfully, and persuasively--with a vision both Christian in its particularity and ecumenical in its universality. Read this book because it offers a profound basis for dialogue between religions. Read this book because it challenges every religion to imagine a God that is for all of the world and for all of the world's peoples."
--John Dominic Crossan, DePaul University
"This book is a sustained assertion that the God of the Bible is savior of all. The argument is made more poignant because it is filtered candidly through the personal journey of the author to a more inclusive gospel. Readers who are situated in scholastic traditions of theology will find this a welcome invitation to a more gracious God and to a fuller declaration of the good news."
--Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary