Furthermore…

Teacher to class:

“Does anyone else have an answer to ‘What is the Trinity’ besides ‘Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll’?”

Whenever I hear St. Paul read, I am struck by the number of times he used the word “all.” Some Greek scholar might spoil my fun by telling me that in Greek there are fifteen different words for ‘all,’ so I really am not hearing the same thing repeated every time. It least that would prove that someone reads me.

It’s hard to crystallize what his use of all conveys to me, beyond the obvious regular meaning.  There seems to be a definite sense of the oratorical and declamatory, bordering on browbeating. And it has a kind of ‘take no prisoners’ sound to it too, as though he were weighting his words to the ultimate degree: no exceptions, no quibbles, no shades of meaning, no special cases, no partial applications; I said ALL, and I mean ALL, you uncertain weaklings!

And there is a sense of “the spiritual world is incredibly rich, powerful, extensive and deep, beyond what you have ever imagined!” (you uncertain weaklings). And as corallary, I get a sense of “I know what these things involve, and it’s far beyond anything you (uncertain weaklings) have possibly even  considered.

Sometimes he uses a whole string of all’s in succession, each one coming across more resonant and thunderous than the one before. Sort of a ‘with all the stops out’ effect. I imagine his listeners looking at one another and saying, “This fellow is not kidding around!” And he wasn’t.