“How can the immaculate conception be true if Paul stated that ‘all have sinned’?”
“How can Mary be the most important person after Jesus if Jesus said that John the Baptist was the greatest of those ‘born of women’?”
“Was Jesus the child prophesied in Isaiah 7:14?”
The answers to these and many more questions are made clear if one understands an important but often neglected concept-the universe of discourse.
WHAT IT IS
When someone is speaking or writing, he has in mind a set of things (a universe) about which he is talking (discoursing). Anything that is part of that set is in his universe of discourse. Anything that is not part of that set is not.
Sometimes it is very clear what the universe of discourse is, because it is explicitly stated. If, for example, a given speaker makes the claim, “Of the twelve apostles, Peter was the greatest,” then it is clear what his universe of discourse is, for he has explicitly told us: It’s the twelve apostles.
It would be improper then to object to his thesis by arguing the greater merits of the apostle Paul. Paul might or might not be a greater apostle than Peter, but that isn’t relevant to the claim that, if the Twelve, Peter was the greatest. To properly evaluate a statement, one has to stick to the relevant universe of discourse, and in this case Paul is not a part of it.
If you wanted to challenge the speaker’s claim, you would have to appeal to matters among the Twelve-for example, by pointing to Peter’s flaws or by expounding on the merits of other members of the group, such as John and James.
“IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING…”
Sometimes it’s difficult to identify the universe of discourse. By far the most common source of problems with the universe of discourse is speaker omission. Most of the time speakers never come out and say what their universe of discourse is, and this leaves it up to the listeners to figure it out.
It’s a fact of human communication that we leave things out when we speak. Of itself, that’s not a problem. In fact, it’s what makes ordinary human communication possible. If every time we spoke we had to divulge everything we’re thinking, every step in our reasoning, every background assumption we’re making, then we’d never get anything done.
Human communication can be as rapid and efficient as it is only because we leave things out while still communicating enough information for our listeners to get the point. While omitting things speeds up communication, it also creates dangers, because if you leave it to your listeners to “fill in the blanks” they may fill them in differently than you would have. Confusion can result.
The problem is magnified when more than one culture is involved. Different cultures want different things stated and omitted. A person from Victorian England, for example, might only want a hint concerning topics that were regarded as “delicate” in nineteenth-century Britain, whereas a twenty-first century American youth might have to be hit over the head with graphic details before he understands what the hint was about.
The problem is even greater when twenty-first century English speakers try to interpret the Bible, the most recent part of which was written two millennia ago, in a language nobody speaks natively today and in a culture that was different in many fundamental ways.
The number of background assumptions that are shared between the biblical authors and modern readers is not as great as many imagine. This poses problems for interpretation, not the least of which is trying to figure out a biblical author’s universe of discourse.
“All HAVE SINNED”
For example, when many modern readers approach Romans 3:23, where Paul says “all have sinned,” they assume he is referring to every member of the family of Adam. This is reinforced when they turn to Romans 3:10-“None is righteous, no not one.” They wonder how Mary can fail to be a sinner.
The problem here is that the universe of discourse has been misidentified. It can’t be the entire family of Adam. If it were, Jesus would be included, for we have quite a clear statement in Luke 3:23-38 that Jesus is a son of Adam, yet he was sinless (Heb.4:15).
Further, Paul is clear that there is a time in each person’s life when he has not yet done any wrong. Paul comments on how Jacob and Esau, when they were yet unborn, “had done nothing either good or bad” (Rom. 9:11).
Thus Paul’s universe of discourse is not the whole human race but a subset of it that includes exceptions for at least some individuals-such as those too young to commit personal sin and those who playa unique role in the history of salvation. Because of the passage’s restricted universe of discourse, one cannot say that the text requires Mary to be included in the class Paul is talking about. If there is an exception for Jesus, the Second Adam, there can be an exception for Mary, the Second Eve.
“BORN OF WOMEN”
Another text that is sometimes used to discount the distinctives of Mary is Matthew 11: 11, where Jesus declares, “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” How can Mary be second only to her Son if John the Baptist is the greatest “among those born of women?”
The answer again has to do with correctly identifying the class of things being discussed. This is made clear by the context. The reference to John’s greatness occurs in a discussion of his role as a prophet (11:7-15). And the declaration of his greatness is occasioned by Jesus quoting the prophecy of the coming prophet (v. 10) who would herald the Messiah (Mal. 3:1). Jesus follows up the remark by pointing to John as the terminus of the Law and the prophets (v. 13) and as the fulfillment of the prophecy that Elijah (or one like Elijah) would come (v. 14).
This explains the sense in which John is greater than all others: He is the greatest of the pre-Christian prophets in the sense that he gets to be the herald of the Messiah himself. Indeed, some manuscripts of Luke’s Gospel give the parallel to this saying as, “I tell you, among those born of women no prophet is greater than John the Baptist” (Luke 7:28, var.). Needless to say, the class of Old Testament prophets is a set to which Mary does not belong.
Further, Jesus’ universe of discourse at this point is limited by another factor: time. “The kingdom of heaven” refers to the Christian age, to the Church that Jesus will found. John thus may be the most blessed of the line of Old Covenant prophets because he is the Messiah’s herald, but even the humblest Christian will be more blessed than John is. And of course Mary-unlike John-lived into the Christian age and became part of the Church.
WHO IS IMMANUEL?
A perennial sore spot for many is the question of who the child is who is prophesied by Isaiah 7:14. Since the New Testament applies this prophecy to Jesus (Matt. 1:23), there is no doubt that he is afulfillment of it. But is he the only one?
The solution-again-is to look at Isaiah 7 to determine from the context the set of things under discussion. When we do this, we discover that the prophecy of Immanuel was given for a specific reason. At the time, the kingdom of Judah was being threatened by an alliance between Samaria and Damascus. Isaiah went to Ahaz, king of Judah, and prophesied that his kingdom would be delivered and that ruin would come upon his northern foes. So that the king might know that this would come to pass, God offered the king a sign, saying, “Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven” (v. 11). Ahaz, however, refused to name a sign for God to perform, and so God replied, “Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (vv. 13-14).
From this we have enough to answer our question. Immanuel was to be the sign that would let Ahaz know that the northern alliance against Judah would not succeed, so the set of things under discussion was the signs that Ahaz might receive in the near term to reassure him about his enemies. But the prophecy doesn’t reassure Ahaz that the northern alliance will fail if the sign isn’t given until seven hundred years later, long after Ahaz was dead and the alliance had fallen apart. Thus Jesus is not the only fulfillment of the Immanuel prophecy. The immediate, literal fulfillment of it must have been someone born in Ahaz’s day, thought by many-based on other details in the passage-to be King Hezekiah. Jesus’ Virgin Birth is a second fulfillment of the Immanuel prophecy, based on its spiritual rather than literal sense.
It is clear, therefore, that for Bible interpreters to correctly solve many biblical and theological issues it is necessary to devote conscious attention to the various universes of discourse we encounter in Scripture. If we fail to do this, error results.