N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope

I read N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope last summer, and it made a big impact on me. The following article is a summary of what stood out to me in that book. Wright argues that Evangelical theology tends to gloss over the Resurrection of Jesus, and thus also glosses over the doctrines of physical resurrection of believers and the renewal of the earth that is promised in Romans 8 and Revelation 21. He writes that by recovering the centrality of the Resurrection to our understanding of faith, we can also recover a sense of purpose in our lives in present-day reality.

The Problem with a Cross-Centered Theology

Those who know me know that I wear a cross signet ring. It's actually my college class ring; I wanted something that I would want to continue wearing, and not just put in a box somewhere, so my parents bought me a plain signet ring and had a cross etched in it. It was intended as a statement of my faith, as an opportunity to share Jesus with others.

The cross has been the main symbol of Christianity for most of its history. Not all of its history--it wasn't until crucifixion stopped being actively used by the Romans as a means of torture and death that Christians began widely using it as the symbol of their faith. But it has long been Christianity's predominant symbol. Every church has at least one. Most Christian organizations use it in their logos. And it's not hard to see why. What Jesus did on the cross for us is central to what we believe.

Most Christians, if asked what they believe, would offer something like this: "God created human beings to be in a relationship with him, but we messed that up through sin, so he came to the earth as a human being--Jesus--and lived a sinless life and then died on a cross in our place, so we could be in a relationship with him again and spend eternity with him in heaven." You'll notice that the cross is at the very turning point of this statement of faith. It's completely central.

Now, although I agree with every part of that statement, there's something I think is missing--and it's more significant than simply the fact that the whole thing needs a lot of fleshing out and explanation. What's missing is the resurrection of Jesus. Having had this issue brought to my attention by N. T. Wright's fantastic book, Surprised by Hope, it is astonishing to me that any statement of Christian faith could ever be made without reference to the Resurrection. And yet I wonder how many people, reading that statement the first time through, noticed its absence or considered it significant.

Of course, you could tuck it in there, right between "place" and "so," and it would fit. And Christians do believe in the Resurrection and do think that affirming the Resurrection is important. My problem isn't that Christians don't believe in Jesus' resurrection; it's that the Resurrection ends up being an afterthought in the way most of us think about our faith.

Think about it: we view the central problem as sin, and the fact that a holy God can't simply let sin slide. The penalty--death--must be paid. The solution is a substitute: if someone who doesn't deserve to die dies in our place, then we don't have to die ourselves. The crime is paid for. And that's what Jesus did on the cross. But notice what we've done: Jesus' work on the cross solves the problem. When He said, "It is finished," it really was--that is to say, the whole problem is solved. It's like the end of a detective story: once the detective solves the crime, the story is, for all intents and purposes, over. The technical term for the ending of a story, after its climax, is denouement. It's really just window dressing, and a lot of modern writers try to get rid of it entirely, and just end at the climax. You can think up your own window dressing, imagine how it came out on your own.

That's what happens to the Resurrection, in the typical way of looking at it. It happened, and we believe in it, but it's not really crucial to the story. If it hadn't happened, it wouldn't really matter, because the sin problem is already taken care of at the Cross. We try to make it matter, by saying that it demonstrated that Jesus really was who he said he was, or that it proves that there is life after death. But whatever it demonstrated, or whatever it proves, really doesn't matter in the end--the real work had already been done.

But that's not how the Apostle Paul saw it. "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith" (1 Cor. 15:14). For Paul, the Resurrection is absolutely central. All of the gospel messages preached in the book of Acts make the Resurrection central. What Jesus did on the Cross was very important. But the biblical writers seem to indicate that what he did by rising from the dead was equally important, maybe even more so.

In my next few blog posts, I'm going to sketch out why I think the Resurrection needs to occupy a more central place in our theology. And I'm wondering if we've missed a rather obvious symbol of the faith. The world has seen us as people of the cross for a long time. Maybe it's time we need to be seen as people of the empty tomb.

What Resurrection Means

In order to understand the importance of the Resurrection, we first have to understand what the first-century views of resurrection were. What were the prior expectations of the people who first heard the story of Jesus' resurrection?

In the non-Jewish Greco-Roman world, there were two predominant views of the afterlife. The first was the basic materialist stance that there is no afterlife. The Greek Epicurean philosophical school would be an example of this stance. Although construed somewhat differently than contemporary philosophers and scientists would use the terms, this point of view would hold that the material universe is all there is. There is no "spirit" apart from the body in which there is any consciousness, hence there is no continuing existence once the physical body ceases to function. Dead is dead.

The other major strand of Greco-Roman thought is well represented by Plato. There is a continued existence after death; in fact, this is what earthly existence longs for--a release from bondage to the body and the corrupted physical realm. We are essentially spirits trapped in bodies, longing for release. You may recognize this point of view--many Christians' view of "heaven" owes more to Plato than to the Bible. This earthly life is something merely to be endured until we escape it to live in heaven forevermore with God. More on this later.

For now, the relevant point is that no one in the Greco-Roman world was expecting anything like physical resurrection. It would either have been considered impossible or pointless. The spirit either didn't exist apart from the physical body, or if it did, the last thing it wanted was to be re-embodied. (The concept of reincarnation did exist, but this is different from resurrection--it is embodiment in a different body, not the same one, and was not considered the goal of existence, but rather a punishment or a continued stage on the way to fully-realized--that is, disembodied--spirituality.)

But that's the non-Jewish world. Christianity arose in a Jewish cultural context. What did the Jews believe regarding resurrection?

Once again, there were two predominant views. And once again, one of them precluded resurrection. The Sadducean group, which dominated the Temple priesthood, rejected resurrection (as well as angels and providence). While present-day Christians tend to scoff at this point of view, it actually accords with the Sadducees' generally more strict reading of the Hebrew scriptures, which must be admitted to have little to say on the afterlife in general and resurrection specifically.

On the other hand, the Pharisaical group which dominated the rabbis in the synagogues did believe in resurrection. However, this resurrection was not expected to occur until the eschaton--the final culmination of history. After the death of Lazarus in John 11, his sister Martha expresses this point of view in her dialogue with Jesus: "Martha answered, 'I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day'." So yes, there were Jews who believed in resurrection, but not in present-day reality--only at the end of history. It's also worth noting that resurrection played no part in Jewish messianic expectations. Messiah was to bring about the liberation of Israel as a nation and reestablish the throne of David; neither the death of the messiah nor a resurrection was envisioned.

What does this all mean with regard to Jesus' resurrection? Quite simply, it means that the usual explanations for why Jesus' resurrection is important are wrong, or at least beside the main point.

Christians generally view Jesus' resurrection in terms of God vindicating Jesus, demonstrating that he was the Messiah, God in flesh, and innocent of any crime or sin for which he should die. But while this all is true, it reflects backward reasoning: if we come to trust in Jesus and believe that he was God in human flesh, then his resurrection takes on all these meanings. But resurrection itself would not have demonstrated any of these things to anyone in the first-century world. Remember, nobody was expecting anyone to be resurrected--not in the Gentile world at all, and not in the Jewish world in the here-and-now.

But for those who were hoping for resurrection "at the last day," as Martha was, Jesus' resurrection would have meant something mind-blowing and worldview-changing: that something that had been hoped for at the end of time was a present reality, right now. It was a glimpse into a deeply longed-for future, breaking into the present. Evidently, when Jesus (and before him, John the Baptist) were proclaiming that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 3:2; 4:17), it really was.

Everything they had ever hoped for was beginning to come to pass. Right now.

What Resurrection Implies

What Jesus' resurrection meant was that what the Jews (at least some of them) were hoping for at the end of time was breaking into present-day reality. The technical way of saying this is that their eschatological hopes were being realized. Imagine everything you've ever longed for beginning to come true. That's what was going on for the first believers, the ones who saw Jesus after the resurrection.

But what did this imply to them? So far, just one guy had come back from the dead (I'm not counting Lazarus and other resuscitations--I mean permanent resurrection), and he didn't even stick around all that long. Granted, Jesus' followers would certainly be happy to see him return from death, but why would that have created a worldwide movement?

Well, it didn't simply mean that there was life after death after all, and that if we believe in Jesus then we can live with him in heaven forever after we die--and yet that is what most contemporary Christians believe today. That idea reflects the view that we are really spirits trapped in earthly bodies in a corrupt world, and what we are longing for is release from this corrupt world so we can live spiritually--that is, non-physically--forever, all of which reflects Platonic philosophy more than it does the Bible.

The biblical view is that Jesus' resurrection was not an isolated incident, however pivotal or unique. It was rather the spearheading of a new age coming into being in our present one. "But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man" (1 Cor 15:20-21). "Firstfruits" is an agricultural term meaning the beginning of a harvest. Its importance is not so much in itself as in the promise of the full harvest to come. The "harvest" of which Jesus was the firstfruits is not merely a harvest of souls to be saved (although it includes that) because Jesus didn't need saving. Jesus' resurrection was the firstfruits of a new age, a new creation, what Jesus and John the Baptist had called the Kingdom. God's plan is simply much larger than simply rescuing a few of us sinners off of this wicked old earth. He plans to bring into resurrection life the whole first creation:

The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. (Romans 8:19-24)

Christians generally look forward to being with God eternally in heaven, often looking to Revelation 21:1 for a new heaven and a new earth (although they are not really much interested in the new earth), especially noting that "the first heaven and the first earth had passed away." Let's not worry about this world, because God's going to scrap it anyway. But in the above passage from Romans, creation itself is eagerly longing and groaning like a woman in labor, not for its own destruction, but rather for liberation from its bondage to decay and for being brought into freedom and glory. God isn't going to scrap the old creation and start fresh, any more than he was willing to scrap us sinful human beings and start fresh with a new Adam and Eve on Venus. Just as God's desire is to renew and transform us, his plan is to renew and transform the old creation. If you will, the "new heaven and the new earth" are going to be made out of the old ones. God's not opposed to physical reality. He created it.

That's where the resurrection of our bodies fits in. Why are we going to be resurrected? Because we're going to inhabit the new physical reality that God is going to create by redeeming and transforming the old one. And just as we are still ourselves, but redeemed, purified, and changed, so also the creation will still be the same creation, but redeemed, purified, and changed. The last chapter of the Bible doesn't speak of us going off to heaven, ridding ourselves of this awful physical universe once and for all; rather, it speaks of the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven to earth. It's not us going off to live with God, but God coming down and inhabiting earth with us. The passage is worth quoting:

I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God." (Revelation 21:2-3)

God's plan is to come to earth and be with us eternally in an incorruptible world which will be born out of the world we are presently in. While you may go off to be with God in heaven after you die--for a while--your ultimate destiny, if your trust is in Jesus, is to be an eternal resident of this world, once God is through remaking it. Jesus first, and then those of us who trust in him, are the beginnings of that new creation. And therefore, Paul's challenge to us is to live as though we were resurrected people right now:

Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:55-58)

Here's the point: if we know we're going to be resurrected, we need to begin living as though we were resurrected; and if we know that this present creation is going to be redeemed, then we need to live in it as though we were an agent of that transformation.

Overcoming an Objection to Physical Resurrection

One of the stumbling blocks to Christians fully embracing the biblical teaching of physical resurrection lies right in Paul's exposition of the importance of resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. Verses 42-43 read,

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

The stumbling point is in the contrast between "natural" and "spiritual." In post-Enlightenment rationalistic thought, "natural" means material, physical, and "spiritual" means non-material, non-physical. So even though we'll affirm the reality of resurrection because it's there in the Bible, the really relevant teaching to us is "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8). Being reunited with the body seems mostly anticlimactic.

But this is a misreading of the words "natural" and "spiritual." "Natural" is Greek ψυχικον, psychikon; it refers not to the substance of which the body is composed, but rather the nature of the motivating force behind that body's activity. The "natural" body's activity is driven by the human psyche--i.e., the mind. Similarly, the "spiritual" body does not refer to the substance (or lack of it) of which that body is composed. The Greek word is πνευματικον, pneumatikon; the motivating force behind that body's activity is the Spirit of God. Paul is not saying, "It is sown a physical body, it is raised a non-material body"; he's saying, "It is sown a mentally-motivated body, it is raised a Spiritually-motivated body."

The main difference between the natural body and the spiritual body is not that the spiritual body is immaterial; it is that the spiritual body is imperishable, glorious, powerful, and motivated by God's Spirit. The main physical aspect of this resurrection body is that it is incorruptible, not subject to decay; but then, the entire creation will be incorruptible as well: "the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God" (Romans 8:21). Once again, we are confronted not with disembodied spirits sitting on clouds with harps, but with a renewed physical creation. The picture is more like Adam and Eve pre-fall than it is like what we generally think of as ghosts or spirits--or even, dare I say, the mental pictures most of us have involving heaven.

As I write this, I can look out my window on a beautiful spring day. The sun is shining, the trees are in bloom--I really should get outside today. I'm blessed to live in a place where I can see at least a little of the beauty of nature. But think of the difference in my perspective, if I think on the one hand, "This is beautiful, but temporary and corrupt. The real thing God has for me waits on the other side of death, or the Rapture. One glad morning, when this life is o'er, I'll fly away," or if I think on the other hand, "This is beautiful, and in some sense, this is the home God has given me forever. God is going to remake it, reshape it, remove the sting of sin and death; I may leave it for a while, but eventually I will be brought back, and therefore, in some sense, I am an eternal being in an eternal place."

If you are a disciple of Jesus, then today think of yourself as an eternal being in an eternal place, and see if it doesn't change your perspective on things.

"Your Labor Is Not In Vain"

To wrap up this summary of what was memorable to me in N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope, I'd like to focus on a particular verse that Wright points out as significant, and which ended up being perhaps the most significant insight in the book for me. It occurs at the end of 1 Corinthians 15--that is, at the end of Paul's powerful defense of physical resurrection as a necessary future event, and of his description of the resurrection body. In verse 58, Paul writes:

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Here's the point: the traditional view of the afterlife, with us being whisked off into heaven and this present creation being destroyed, tends to leave a futile view of our actions in the present life. It's often said in Evangelical churches that the only thing that really counts is how many people we bring along with us into heaven. Although it's seldom directly stated, we're left to infer that everything else in life is pretty much just marking time until we die or until Jesus comes.

Even a view that takes resurrection seriously can be liable to the same distortion. This present life is just marking time. God's going to remake both our bodies and our world, so what we do in this lifetime doesn't ultimately have any value. What we do to this world, or to our bodies, might be regrettable--as when we give ourselves cancer through smoking or a poor diet, or poke a hole in the bottom of the ocean and let it spew oil into our oceans--but it's ultimately unimportant. God's going to right it all.

But that's not at all the point of view that Paul is espousing in this verse. Rather than ending his treatise on resurrection by saying, "Therefore, relax. Continue trusting in Jesus, and know that God will resurrect your bodies and remake this world," Paul specifically affirms to his readers the value of their work in the Lord. In some sense, our work is going to endure. What we do in the Lord's service, in this present fallen world, matters.

Most Evangelicals would see "your labor in the Lord" as referring, in some sense, to evangelism. What Paul means here is that our labor produces new followers of Jesus, who will then be resurrected and inhabit God's new creation: in that way, our labor is not in vain. That is how it endures.

Certainly that is at least part of what Paul means here. But it's hard to see that that's everything that he means. For one thing, there's very little about overt evangelism either in the context of this verse, or in 1 Corinthians in general--which deals much more with Christian character and behavior than it does with evangelism--or, to be honest, in the Pauline epistles in general. This is not to say that evangelism is unimportant; but taking "your labor in the Lord" to refer exclusively to evangelism is an assumption that has to be imported into the text. You can't get it out of what Paul writes here.

It seems much more likely to me that "your labor in the Lord" refers to anything and everything that we do in this life because we are followers of Jesus--whether it's fighting against the slave trade, conducting one's business in an honorable and charitable manner, working toward conservation of the environment, reaching people for Christ, standing against abortion, helping those who are oppressed, sharing grace and mercy to people, opposing unjust business or governmental practices, or anything else we do to live out Jesus' life in us. It all matters. It's all going to carry over into the future creation that God has envisioned for us.

As a matter of fact, it might be instructive to look at how prophecies in the Old Testament were fulfilled. Let's take the one about the city of Tyre in Ezekiel 26. While Ezekiel makes clear that God is accomplishing the judgment against Tyre, the actual fulfillment occurred through the actions of human beings. God worked through people, including some who were not following him and were not consciously trying to fulfill the prophecy, to accomplish his work.

While the new heavens and the new earth spoken of in Revelation 21:1 and Romans 8:21-22 certainly seem to involve a supernatural transformation, there may be in some sense a redemptive aspect to what we do in this age. Perhaps, instead of God just speaking the word and the world's transformation happening, we will be a part of it happening. Perhaps we are supposed to be a part of it happening even now. And maybe that's the way in which our labor is not in vain.

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Romans 9 An Arminian/New Perspective Reading

Abstract: a discussion of Romans 9, often used as a major buttress of the Calvinist viewpoint, with a close examination of the passage with special regard to the overall context of chapters 9-11, as well as the Old Testament contexts of the passages Paul quotes. It is the contention of this author that when Paul's quotes are understood in their Old Testament contexts, it becomes impossible to take this passage in the manner that Reformed interpreters have traditionally taken it.

Introduction

Romans 9 is often cited as one of the clearest examples in Scripture of the Reformed doctrine of individual election. It discusses God’s sovereign choice of Isaac in preference to Ishmael and Jacob rather than Esau, without regard to any merit of the chosen or demerit of those who were not chosen. It counters what would later be the Arminian objection that unconditional election appears unjust to our human sense of justice, and uses Pharaoh as an example of someone whom God “raised up” for the express purpose of becoming a demonstration of God’s power. God bears with great patience these “objects of wrath,” in order to glorify himself before the “objects of his mercy,” that is, the elect (see Augustine, “To Prosper and Hilary” 14; Calvin, Institutes 3.22.4-6).

I would contend that this interpretation ignores the larger context of Romans 9-11, whose main theme is struggling with the implications of the Gospel for the nation of Israel. It also ignores the Old Testament contexts of Paul’s quotations, which when viewed in proper perspective shed a distinctly different light on Paul’s argument. Paul is struggling with the fact that God had made certain promises in the scriptures concerning the Israel, many of which he sees as fulfilled in and through Christ. Yet Israel as a whole has not come to Christ. What does this mean for Israel, for the veracity of the Scriptures, and for Paul’s gospel? These questions dominate Paul’s mind in Romans 9-11, and his statements about election in Romans 9 must be evaluated in terms of them.

Romans 9:1 makes a clear break with what has gone on before, and yet the chapters that follow are intimately related to those that precede. Paul has demonstrated in Romans 1-8 the fallenness of all humanity (both Jew and Gentile), justification not by the “works of the law” (ergon nomou, 3:20) but rather by “faith in Jesus Christ” (pisteos Iesou Christou, 3:22), Abraham as an example of justification by faith, and the practical implications of justification by faith. Paul’s theoretical argument is rather nicely wrapped up at the end of chapter 8, except for establishing the relationship between his doctrine of justification by faith in Christ and the historic relationship God has had with ethnic Israel. Even though Paul represents justification by faith not as a novelty but as something that began with Abraham, that does not answer the question of why God had related to His people Israel primarily on the basis of their descent from Abraham and on their keeping of the Law. Scripture makes clear that the Israelites viewed themselves as relating to God on the basis of those two things (descent from Abraham: Gen. 26:24; Dt. 4:37; Matt. 3:9; Lk. 1:72-74; keeping the Law: Ex. 20:6; Lev. 26:3ff; 1 Kings 9:4-5; Neh. 1:9; Dn. 9:4; Mt. 19:17; Ac. 15:5). The Jewish people, who had not been coming in great numbers to Christ, may well argue that if Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith were true, then God would have essentially broken His promises to Israel. If Israel sees inclusion in the covenant as based on descent from Abraham and keeping the Law, then how can God turn around and say, “No, inclusion in the covenant is not based on descent from Abraham or keeping the Law, but rather on faith in Christ”? It would seem to them that God’s word had failed (v. 6), which is what Paul is at pains to dispute in Romans 9-11.

In a nutshell, Paul’s argument begins by assaulting the two assumptions that had been made concerning God’s relationship to His people. Paul’s line of argumentation in Romans 9-11 is intended to answer the specific charge that if Paul’s gospel were true, God’s word would have failed regarding Israel. Much of the traditional interpretation of this passage seems to keep this emphasis in mind only for a few verses, but in fact this charge is the primary position against which Paul is writing throughout the three chapters. It is the essential position of the “hypothetical questioner” whom Paul invokes in 9:19-20, and is implied in a number of other verses (e.g., 9:6, 16, 32). In chapter 3, Paul has already demolished the possible contention that Jews can rely on keeping the Law; however, Jews may still rely on their descent from Abraham as indicating their inclusion in the covenant community. After all, the Old Testament promises regarding the restoration of Israel are not contingent upon perfect obedience to the Law; in some ways, it appears that adherence to the Law is actually one of the promises to be fulfilled (e.g., Jer. 31:33). So if Paul says that justification is by faith in Christ, and if this standard ends up excluding the majority of Jews, who have not come to faith in Christ, then he seems to void God’s promises to Israel.

Paul’s response is simply to demonstrate that God never chose descendants of Abraham, merely as descendants of Abraham, for inclusion in the covenant community. This is clear because not all the descendants of Abraham were included, but only the descendants of Isaac, and then of Jacob. In other words, the “attrition” (if we may be permitted to call it that) that occurs with the generations of Isaac and Jacob does not stop there, but progresses throughout the descendants of Israel. It is in this sense that “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel” (9:6).

Isaac and Jacob

In verse 7, Paul quotes Genesis 21:12 to explain that, even before Isaac was born, God had determined that Abraham’s offspring would be “reckoned” through Isaac—in other words, that the covenant people would pass through the line of Isaac rather than that of Ishmael. The original context of this passage, incidentally, makes it clear not only that Isaac is to be chosen, but that Ishmael is to be rejected in favor of Isaac. Yet God makes it clear that Ishmael is to be rejected by Abraham, so that the covenant line is clearly through Isaac; nevertheless, He reassures Abraham in the very next verse (Gen. 21:13) that “I will make the son of the maidservant into a nation also, because he is your offspring.” In the following verses we read that “God heard the boy [Ishmael] crying …. ‘I will make him into a great nation’ …. God was with the boy as he grew up” (Gen. 21:17-18, 20). In other words, God has a positive plan for Ishmael and his descendants as well as for Isaac and his descendants; it is only as a member of the covenant nation that Ishmael is rejected.

Paul, significantly, interprets the quotation by stating that “it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring” (v. 8). He is subtly doing here what he does clearly in Galatians 4:21-31: he identifies ethnic Israel with the children of Hagar, as opposed to those of Sarah. Since ethnic Israel is depending on natural descent from Abraham, they are analogous to Ishmael, who was Abraham’s descendant (not to mention the firstborn) by purely natural means. The Christians, trusting that “those who believe are children of Abraham” (Gal. 3:7), are analogous to Isaac, the child of promise. In Romans 9:8, Paul quotes Genesis 18:10, 14 to establish that the promise had indeed occurred before Isaac’s conception.

Paul’s use of Isaac and Ishmael, then, is primarily intended neither to be a statement of their individual eternal election, nor to be typical of the elect and reprobate. It rather establishes that the Jewish people have no reason to trust in their descent from Abraham to guarantee their inclusion in the covenant. If they could, the descendants of Ishmael would have just as much right to claim God’s promises as could the descendants of Isaac.

Lest the Jewish questioner argue that Isaac was the legitimate son, as opposed to the illegitimate, Paul moves down to the next generation to find an even more compelling example, that of Jacob and Esau (9:10-13). These have the same set of parents, and were even born together as twins. The only natural primacy that one would have over the other would have been the birthright, which would have gone to Esau. And yet, before they were born, Rebekah was told that “the older will serve the younger” (9:12, quoting Gen. 25:23). Paul even states that the reason God told Rebekah this was “in order that God’s purpose in election might stand” (v. 11). Surely here is clear reference to unconditional individual election.

Many Arminians have chosen at this point to insert God’s foreknowledge as the key to understanding the passage; i.e., even though this was “before the twins… had done anything good or bad” (v. 11), God still judged them on the basis of what He knew that they would later do. This clearly runs counter to the intent of the passage. Paul obviously means to exclude personal merit from consideration of Jacob and Esau’s election. Such election is “not by works, but by him who calls.” God was perfectly free to choose either Jacob or Esau, and freely chose Jacob.

However, again, the choice involves not individual election to personal salvation or damnation, but rather the line through which the covenant people will come. Genesis 25:23, from which Paul quotes, clearly refers to nations, not individuals:

Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples from within you will be separated;
one people will be stronger than the other,
and the older will serve the younger.

And what is to be done with “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Rom. 9:13, quoting Mal. 1:2-3)? Again, a look at the source of the quote clearly reveals that the nations are being referenced, rather than the individuals Jacob and Esau. The point of comparison lies in the nature of the land that was given to the two nations. God had given preference to Jacob in the land that He gave to Israel. Malachi goes on to discuss the fact that Edom had come under such judgment that it would never be able to rebuild its land; but was this a foregone conclusion from before Jacob and Esau were born? It seems not to be. Deuteronomy 2:4-6 suggests quite the opposite. God did not allow the Israelites to attack Edom or to take any portion of their land, stating that “I have given Esau the hill country of Seir as his own. You are to pay them in silver for the food you eat and the water you drink.” This hardly seems consistent with a people whom God “hated.”

It seems more likely that “loved” and “hated” in Malachi 1 and Romans 9 are to be understood merely in terms of preference, as in Jesus' statement in Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.” No one could imagine that Jesus is actually calling upon his disciples to hate their families in absolute terms, but merely to choose Him in preference to their families. God had simply given preference to Jacob over Esau, in terms of the land received by their respective descendants, and in terms of whose line would comprise the covenant nation.

If one wishes to argue that “Jacob I loved but Esau I hated” must refer to election to salvation, one must grapple with the fact that this statement first appears, not in Genesis, but in Malachi. God’s point cannot be that all of Israel in Malachi’s time are saved! In fact, God indicts Israel throughout the rest of Malachi specifically because they have been unfaithful to the covenant and have broken faith with God in many ways. Rather than being a pleasant assurance of God’s favor, the statement, “Jacob I loved but Esau I hated,” forms part of God’s indictment—that even though God had favored Israel, nevertheless Israel had been unfaithful, and was therefore under judgment.

Paul uses these quotations in Romans 9 once again to oppose those Jews who would say that, if Paul’s gospel were correct, then “God’s word had failed” (9:6). His response to them is that God had never made the unconditional promises, based either on “works” or ethnicity, that they were claiming. God sovereignly chose Isaac over Ishmael; He sovereignly chose Jacob over Esau; and by implication, He can sovereignly choose on the basis of faith in Christ, as opposed to works of the law or ethnicity.

To the hypothetical Jewish questioner, of course, God’s apparent change (from law and ethnicity to faith as the criterion of election) would appear to be unjust (v. 14). Note, by the way, that the present interpretation of Paul’s argument makes perfect sense of the questioner’s sense of injustice. No Jew would see injustice in God’s gratuitous election of Isaac over Ishmael or Jacob over Esau as individuals. The only thing about the argument that would have caused them to view God as unjust is the implication that “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel” (9:6), and for Paul, of course, to be a true descendant of Abraham was to follow him in faith (4:11-12, Gal. 3:7-8).

Pharaoh

Paul buttresses his contention that his doctrine does not in fact imply injustice with God by citing Exodus 33:19, where in reference to Moses, God states

I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. (Rom. 9:18)

Because in Romans Paul moves on to discuss the Pharaoh of the Exodus, this quote is ordinarily understood primarily to imply its negation—that God also has the right to refuse mercy and compassion on whom He wills. However, in its original context in Exodus, God does not make this statement to justify His refusal of mercy to anyone, but rather to justify his granting of Moses’ request to show him His glory (Ex. 33:18). This comes in the larger context of the episode of the golden calf and of Moses’ destruction of the first two tablets of the Testimony (chs. 32-33). Moses’ conversation with God (33:12-20) seems to reveal genuine concern that God will abandon His people and that Moses will be left to lead them on his own. The fact that Moses had to chisel out the second set of stone tablets himself has led some interpreters to suggest that Moses wasn’t entirely guiltless in his response to the Israelites. A subsequent outburst of anger would prevent Moses from entering the Promised Land. Nonetheless, God chooses to have mercy on Moses and to allow him to see His glory. Therefore, as Paul notes in 9:16, God’s favor does not “depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.” Even Moses didn’t receive blessings as a result of descent from Abraham or lawkeeping. He was a recipient of God’s mercy. Those who expected God’s blessings based on ethnicity or following God’s commandments couldn’t very well exalt themselves above even Moses in that regard!

Paul then turns to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth” (9:17). This is typically taken to mean that Pharaoh was raised up to a position of power specifically to be destroyed by the plagues on Egypt, and thus to mean that God can justly create people for the purpose of condemning them and thus glorify Himself. Again, an examination of the quote in its original context provides a different view:

For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up [or have spared you, NIV mg.] for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. (Exodus 9:15-16)

In other words, the Lord’s point to Pharaoh was not that He was destroying Pharaoh to show His power, but that He had not yet destroyed Pharaoh, in order further to demonstrate His power. The NIV margin captures the sense perfectly—God’s power had been demonstrated precisely by sparing Pharaoh and not by destroying Egypt more quickly.[1] The larger context (vv. 13-17) places this statement in one of a number of appeals to Pharaoh to let Israel go, or else another plague would come, and specifically indicts Pharaoh on his own stubbornness in refusing to let the people go.

Therefore, when Paul in Romans 9 draws the conclusion that “God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (v. 18), it is typically understood that Pharaoh is Paul’s example of hardening. In fact, as the quote above demonstrates, Pharaoh is an example both of God’s mercy and of His hardening. God is merciful to Pharaoh up to a point, in that He doesn’t wipe Egypt out immediately but rather warns Pharaoh through the plagues. He also, as we know, hardens Pharaoh as well, although Pharaoh is also said to have hardened himself.

But what are we to make of God’s hardening of Pharaoh? Paul neither quotes any passage referring directly to Pharaoh’s hardening, nor gives any explanation of the hardening, although he clearly refers to it. In Exodus, the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is expressed in four ways: the Lord prophesies ahead of time that he will harden Pharaoh’s heart (4:21, 7:3, 14:4); the hardening is expressed passively, without an expressed subject (i.e., “Pharaoh’s heart was hardened”: 7:13, 22, 8:19, 9:35); Pharaoh is said to have hardened his own heart (8:15, 32, 9:34); and the Lord hardens Pharaoh’s heart (9:12, 10:1, 20, 27, 11:10, 14:8). In general, it appears that the hardening is either expressed passively or attributed to Pharaoh early on in the plagues, and attributed more frequently to the direct action of the Lord in the later plagues. One way of looking at the hardening, therefore, is that Pharaoh incurs judgment upon himself by hardening his own heart early on, and was thereafter hardened by the Lord, in order to demonstrate the Lord’s power better. The Lord, of course, knew that this would happen, and foretold to Moses that fact.

Another way of looking at the hardening is to recognize various types of causation. What the Lord actually does is confront Pharaoh through Moses and send the plagues. What Pharaoh does is respond by refusing Moses’ demand; in other words, by hardening his heart. Pharaoh therefore hardens his own heart, in the sense that he chooses that response; the Lord hardens Pharaoh’s heart, in the sense that He provides the impetus for Pharaoh to respond as he does. In the same way, we all may say that a person angered us, but in fact that person merely provided the impetus for us to become angry; we were the ones who responded in anger.

At any rate, no one imagines that God forced Pharaoh to harden his heart despite himself; in other words, that God made Pharaoh harden his heart when he otherwise would not have done so. Everyone agrees that Pharaoh was himself culpable for the hardening, regardless of whether it was predestined or not. The fact that God “hardens whom he wills” does not obviate the fact that those whom He hardens, also harden themselves. In other words, we are told that God “hardens whom he wills,” but not told on what basis he chooses to harden some and not others.

This discussion of Pharaoh’s hardening becomes relevant in the interpretation of Romans 9 when we examine the following verse: “One of you will say to me, ‘Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?” (v. 19). Typically, the understanding of this verse is to see Pharaoh, as typical of the non-elect, having been hardened by the Lord, nonetheless blamed by God, and to see the hypothetical questioner questioning the justice of this situation. “How can God blame Pharaoh,” the questioner asks, “or by extension, any of the non-elect, when He Himself has predestined their response?” Thus, the typical interpretation views the questioner as mirroring precisely the Arminian position. (e.g., Calvin, Institutes 3.22.8)

This interpretation, however, makes the hypothetical questioner identify too strongly with Pharaoh. (NIV recognizes this problem by making the object of the Lord’s blame “us,” although the Greek provides no such referent.) The questioner has no interest in whether God has dealt justly with Pharaoh! He sees, rather, the point that Paul is making with regard to ethnic Israel. God is not unjust (v. 14) in choosing Gentiles who have faith, as opposed to Jews who try to keep the Law, because God “has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and hardens whom he wants to harden” (v. 18). If God wants to have mercy on those who come to Him in faith, and harden those who do not, regardless of their ethnicity or relative adherence to the Law, that is His business. Paul’s point regarding Pharaoh is not that God had mercy on Moses and reprobated Pharaoh, which would easily fall in line with the Jewish self-understanding; his point is that God has the right sovereignly to set the criteria on which he will have mercy or harden.

The Potter and the Clay

So, the questioner asks, “Why does God still blame us?” It has always been the contention of Reformed interpreters that if Arminians were right, the obvious response to the questioner should be that the questioner should use his free will to come to God in faith; if he does so, he will not be condemned. However, this misunderstands the question. The questioner is not asking why Pharaoh or the Jews cannot come to God in faith; the questioner is asking why faith in Christ should be necessary. That is, how can God blame the Jew for expecting to be among the chosen people because he’s a Jew—in other words, because he’s descended from Abraham and because he’s kept (in a relative sense) the Law? How can God blame the Jews for failing to come to faith in Christ, since faith was not what the Jews were led to expect to be the criterion of election?

It may be responded that neither the Jew/Gentile question nor faith are in the immediate context. One must remember that justification by faith forms a major crux of Paul’s argument throughout Romans 1-8, and that Romans 9-11 forms an extended answer to the question of what this doctrine means for ethnic Jews. Paul is defending his thesis that God’s word had not failed, in that not everyone descended from Israel constitutes the Israel of God (9:6). Paul explicitly draws this conclusion from his argument in 9:30-32. It is only by divorcing vv. 10-24 from the surrounding context that this passage has been interpreted primarily in terms of unconditional individual election.

Paul therefore responds to his questioner, “Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?” (9:20). If the question in v. 19 means, “Why are the reprobate judged for not having come to faith?” the answer continues to seem unsatisfying. But if the question means, “Why should God’s chosen people—Israel—have to come to faith in Christ?” then the answer makes quite a bit of sense. It is not up to us to determine God’s criteria of inclusion in the covenant community.

Paul then paraphrases a portion of Isaiah 29:16 in support of his rebuff of the questioner. “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” (9:20). The section from Isaiah from which it is taken is worthy of quoting:

The Lord says:
“These people come near to me with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
is made up only of rules taught by men.
Therefore once more I will astound these people
with wonder upon wonder;
The wisdom of the wise will perish,
the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.”
Woe to those who go to great depths
to hide their plans from the LORD,
Who do their work in darkness and think,
“Who sees us? Who will know?”
You turn things upside down,
as if the potter were thought to be like the clay!
Shall what is formed say to him who formed it,
“He did not make me”?
Can the pot say of the potter,
“He knows nothing”? (Is. 29:13-16)

This clearly refers to people whose worship of God is mere pretense, and who think that they can plan and do evil without the Lord’s knowledge or interference. Not only this passage, which is directly quoted (in part), but in fact the OT passages in which this type of potter-clay illustration is used (Isa. 45:1-13; 64:4-8; Jer. 18:1-10) all refer to people who are under judgment for their own false worship and disregard of God and His Law, and either imply or specifically offer restoration to those who repent (e.g., Isa. 29:17-19; 45:14, 22; 64:9-12). Jeremiah 18:6-10 clearly indicates that the “clay” is not merely passive:

“O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.”

God has sovereignly chosen what he will do regarding the clay, in that he has chosen to respond to the clay according to its repentance or lack of repentance. By quoting the potter/clay metaphor in Romans 9:20, Paul essentially tells the Jews that God will deal with them based on their repentance—as he has always said he would deal with them. The “clay” in this quotation is not the non-elect; it is Israel, which does not feel it needs to come to Christ. The questioner who believes that Israel should be saved because of its ethnic descent is reminded that repentance has always been required for God’s salvation—even of the Jew. The image is that of the clay blaming its position on the potter, rather than humbly asking to be made anew.

Paul goes on to ask, “Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?” The offense here is precisely that Israel, which would have thought of itself as the “pottery for noble purposes” in comparison with the gentiles, is being placed in the position of being the pottery “for common use.” Significantly, in 2 Timothy 2:20-21, Paul indicates that a person’s choices determine to what kind of uses he will be put:In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for noble purposes and some for ignoble. If a man cleanses himself from the latter, he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.

To suggest that the purpose of the pottery is determined and unalterable from God’s point of view flies in the face of the way this imagery is used in the rest of scripture.“What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction?” (Rom. 9:22). Again, it is usually assumed here that the “objects of his wrath” are the non-elect, as represented by Pharaoh, Ishmael, and Esau. But in the larger context of chapters 9 through 11, Paul’s main concern is the Jews who have not come to Christ. The “objects of his wrath,” then, are the majority of the Israelite nation. The patience with which God has borne them reflects his desire for their repentance (2:4). Nonetheless, as long as they remain objects of his wrath through their refusal to repent, they are prepared for destruction. “Prepared for destruction” echoes Proverbs 16:4, “The Lord works out everything for his own ends—even the wicked for a day of disaster.” But “the wicked” are not necessarily a static category: God’s desire for them is that they “turn and live” (Ezek. 18:23, 30-32).

“What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory” (Rom. 9:23). One of the reasons that God bears with the wicked—even those whom he knows beforehand will not repent—is to make “the riches of his glory known.” It may reasonably be asked how God’s forbearance actually accomplishes this. One can easily understand how God’s judgment would accomplish this, by demonstrating to the “objects of his mercy” the righteous judgment from which they have been rescued. But this does not explain how God’s forbearance from immediate judgment accomplishes this. Perhaps it simply exalts God’s sovereign majesty—he does not need to panic and “do something” about the wicked: their end is assured. But it seems more reasonable to recognize that the “objects of his mercy” were at one point “objects of his wrath” (cf. Eph. 2:3) but escaped that wrath through repentance and faith. For them, certainly, God’s “riches of his glory” are truly revealed, because they recognize that only through God’s forbearance during their former life of rebellion did they receive any hope of salvation. Thus, the categories, “objects of his mercy” and “objects of his wrath,” are dynamic categories, not static. The inclusion of an individual in either is based on that individual’s own response to the offer of grace.[2]

In the next verse, Paul becomes more explicit in his identification of the “objects of his mercy.” They are “us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles” (9:24). Here Paul explicitly comes back to his original theme (vv. 1-6), lending support to the idea that he has never really departed from it. The offense to the Jews is that God is now openly calling people from among the Gentiles, as well as those from among the Jews who have accepted Christ in faith. Paul buttresses his comments from more Old Testament quotations. He cites Hosea 2:23 and 1:10 to the effect that those who were previously not included in the covenant nation will be included among those whom he calls “my people.” Moreover, he cites Isaiah 10:22-23 and 1:9 to the effect that those who are saved among Israel will be merely a “remnant.”

In other words, to those Jews who counted on ethnicity and adherence to the Law for their inclusion among God’s people, Paul demonstrates from the Hebrew scriptures themselves that they had no reason to count on that. Therefore he sums up his own argument in vv. 30-32. “The Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it.” In what way? “By faith.” Paul makes clear that this is the criterion, this is the issue: Gentiles are coming to righteousness by faith. Israel, meanwhile, “pursued a law of righteousness…. not by faith, but as if it were by works.” The issue is not that God has sovereignly elected only a few Jews but many Gentiles; the issue is that Israel rejects faith as the defining characteristic of the covenant people, in favor of continuing to trust in Law. Thus, God’s gracious gift of salvation through faith in Christ is a stumbling stone to those who will not believe, but “one who trusts in him will not be ashamed” (v. 33; cf. Isa. 8:14, 28:16).

Conclusion

So, to sum up, according to the traditional interpretation, which assumes faith in Christ for salvation and arises in opposition to Pelagianism and later the medieval Catholic church, Paul begins by agonizing over the failure of Israel to come to salvation through faith in Christ (9:1-5). Paul’s solution is that not all of Israel is Israel; i.e., not all of Israel is elect (v. 6). Paul demonstrates God’s prerogative to elect whomever he wills by having elected Isaac over Ishmael and Jacob over Esau (vv. 7-13). God has mercy only on those whom he chooses to have mercy, and hardens the rest, as exemplified by Pharaoh (vv. 14-18). At this point, Paul hypothesizes a questioner who articulates the Arminian contention: if God has chosen to harden someone like Pharaoh, how can God then judge him for what he was predestined to do (v. 19)? Paul rebukes the questioner for impiety, and uses the potter-clay illustration to reiterate that God has the right to elect some and reprobate some as he deems fit (vv. 20-21). Paul then adds, as a supporting argument, the fact that when God chooses to reprobate someone like Pharaoh, he has to bear patiently their sin and arrogance, but does so, in order to demonstrate his glory to his elect, which turn out to be among the Gentiles as well as among the Jews (vv. 22-24). He thus brings the discussion back to the issue of Jewish unbelief in Christ, from which his discussion of election has been an excursus. From that point, the rest of the chapter is interpreted with regard to the Jew-Gentile question and salvation by faith, as opposed to works, without explicit reference to election (vv. 25-33).

The present interpretation recognizes the significant paradigm shift that takes place in the first century with regard to the identity of the people of God. It contrasts with the traditional one chiefly in terms of keeping the dominant issues of the Jews and of salvation by faith in mind throughout. It begins, as before, with Paul agonizing over the failure of Israel to come to faith in Christ (vv. 1-5). He has to confront the Jewish objection that, if his gospel were correct, it would mean that God’s promises to the Jews had failed. His response is that God’s promises have not failed, but others are inheriting the promises, because not all of Israel is Israel: i.e., not all of Israel has followed Abraham in faith (v. 6). Ethnic descent from Abraham is not enough to be considered “Abraham’s children,” as the examples of Ishmael and Esau demonstrate; Israel has already been granted unmerited blessings as compared with other descendants of Abraham (vv. 7-13). Therefore God is not unjust if he now excludes those descendants of Jacob who do not come to faith, because anyone he blesses, even Moses, is a recipient of his mercy (vv. 14-16). God may choose to spare for a time even someone like Pharaoh, whom God has chosen to harden—knowing that he will harden himself in response to God’s challenge—in order for God to glorify himself through that person, who can be viewed as both an example of God’s mercy and hardening (vv. 17-18). The implication is therefore that the Jews have been given mercy in the past but are not guaranteed mercy in the future if they do not come to faith in Christ. The hypothetical questioner asks why God still blames the Jews, if He has hardened them (v. 19), refusing to recognize that the Jews are hardened just as Pharaoh was hardened, by their own stubborn refusal to repent. Paul therefore rebukes them, and uses the potter-clay illustration to point out that God has always dealt with Israel on the basis of its repentance, and it is only those who refuse to repent who argue back to God that he made them as they are (vv. 20-21).

Paul then points out that God has to bear patiently the “objects of his wrath”—the unbelieving—in order to make his glory known to the “objects of his mercy”—those who come to faith, which he specifically identifies as having come not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles (vv. 22-24). The supporting quotations from Hosea and Isaiah make clear the point: that many of those whom the Jews had considered excluded from the covenant (the Gentiles) would in the end be included, while many whom the Jews had considered included in the covenant (themselves) would be excluded (vv. 25-29). The basis upon which Gentiles have been included and Jews excluded is made explicit in vv. 30-33: it is that the Gentiles are obtaining righteousness through faith, while the Jews have pursued it by works.

It may be argued against this interpretation that the traditional one reads more simply from the text in Romans, and that it does not interject issues of ethnic Judaism or justification by faith, neither of which are clearly referenced in the central passage (vv. 14-23). To this may be responded that the traditional interpretation may read more simply by virtue of one’s familiarity with it, and because it assumes certain interpretations of the OT quotations which are simple but are demonstrably false, once the contexts are understood. The issue of ethnic Judaism dominates chs. 9-11, and thus can safely be assumed in a short passage that doesn’t reference it explicitly; while justification by faith is the dominant theme of the book of Romans as a whole, and it is the Israelite rejection of justification by faith that provokes the present discussion. On the other hand, the traditional interpretation reads into the text the assumption of unconditional individual election, which is a debatable doctrine, certainly not a major theme of Romans 1-8, and not followed up as a theme in Romans 9:25ff.

In essence, Paul is telling ethnic Israel something very close to what Reformed interpreters see. He is telling them that God has the right to choose whomever he wills to be among his covenant people. But he is not telling them this because God has chosen not to elect most of them. He’s telling them this because the paradigm for inclusion in the covenant people has shifted, from national Israel following the Law to anyone who comes to faith in Christ. Israel feels betrayed by this paradigm shift, so Paul explains that God has no obligation to the physical descendants of Abraham; rather, Paul demonstrates from the Old Testament that his relationship to Israel has always depended upon repentance.

---

Notes

[1] Supported by LXX dietarathas, kept or preserved. Paul’s translation in Rom. 9:17 uses exegeiro, to raise up, but in the sense of arousal from sleep or being stirred up or incited. It does not mean “raised into a position of power.” The only other occurrence of this word in the NT is 1 Cor. 6:14, in which it refers to the resurrection of the believer.

[2] Of course, all this begs the question of whether and how the reprobate are enabled to come to faith in Christ. If they are not, apart from the application of irresistible grace to the elect alone, then the Calvinist position holds, even with the interpretation here presented for Romans 9. A detailed discussion of the relevant passage from Ephesians 2 is outside the purview of this post; however, it is arguable that the first two chapters of Ephesians also deal with the relationship between Jews and Gentiles, as is made clear in the rest of that book, and that Paul’s point in Ephesians 2 is to identify Jewish believers (“we also,” Eph. 2:1) with Gentile believers (those being addressed) in their common experience of being “dead in trespasses and sins” before conversion, without specific reference to how their conversion was enabled.

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Divine Election in the Old Testament

Abstract: a discussion of divine election as it first appears as a concept in the Old Testament, first with Abraham, and later with the nation of Israel, and how this concept should relate to our understanding of the election passages in the New Testament. It appears clear from the Old Testament record that divine election was always predicated on faith, and that while it was unconditionally effective for the group as a whole (the nation of Israel), individuals were given the responsibility of remaining within the covenant and could fall away from it.

It is important to recognize, when dealing with the subject of divine election, that the concept does not originate in the New Testament. When the New Testament writers--primarily Paul--discuss our election in Christ, they are not coming up with a new concept, but rather are applying an Old Testament concept to New Covenant believers. In order to understand what they mean, it is necessary to go back to the Old Testament and see how those concepts were introduced.

Election in the Old Testament begins with Abraham. (Cases could be made that it begins with Adam, or Abel, or Enoch, or Noah, but the election of Israel as a nation that is taken up in the New Testament begins with Abraham.) Genesis 12:1-3 records God's call of Abraham:

The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.
I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you;
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

Scripture does not record why Abraham was chosen. Joshua 24:2-3 records that Abraham's father "worshiped other gods"; it is probable that in his early life, Abraham had done so as well. However Nehemiah 9:8 suggestively says "You [God] found his [Abraham's] heart faithful before you, and made with him the covenant." At any rate, Abraham was chosen.

Genesis 12:7 and 13:14-17 reaffirm God's promises to Abraham, and chapter 15 records God's covenant with him. It is a covenant of promise, also called an unconditional covenant: there are no stipulations upon Abraham for receiving the covenant. God stipulates Himself to essentially three promises in chapters 12-15:

Descendants: Abraham will have a child, and through that child, a nation of descendants that are uncountable.
Land: Abraham's descendants will inherit the entirety of the land at that time known as Canaan.
Blessing: Abraham and his descendants will be blessed; more importantly, the rest of the nations of the world will be blessed through him.

It is in this context that we read the crucial verse which Paul quotes in support of justification through faith (Rom. 4:3; Gal. 3:6): "Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness" (15:6). God makes no stipulations upon Abraham to receive the promises of the covenant, but Abraham's faith is credited as righteousness.

In chapter 17, God adds the stipulation of circumcision to the covenant. This is not a "work" in the sense of earning the blessings of the covenant--most of Abraham's descendants would be infants at the time they were circumcised, and have no choice in the matter--but it is a "work" in the sense that Paul later uses the term: a mark of identification by which one may be recognized as being in the covenant. The New Perspective suggests that first-century Jews never imagined that circumcision earned their way into the covenant; but circumcision and other aspects of the Torah that separated Jews from Gentiles--dietary laws and feast days being two others--identified them and marked them as being part of the covenant. Paul makes the point that since righteousness was credited to Abraham before he received the sign of circumcision, it is not dependent upon circumcision (Rom. 4:9-12). It is rather dependent upon faith: simply believing the promise that God made to Abraham.

As we interpret Paul's writings regarding the divine election, it would be wise to recognize how central the example of Abraham is to him: the fact that Abraham is first called upon to believe an unconditional promise, and only later is called upon to take actions that reflect the faith he already has. This pattern will be recapitulated in the history of Israel as a whole.

Divine Election and the Nation of Israel

If you had to describe the significance of the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, it would be hard to do it better than with the simple phrase, "chosen people." Israel is not represented as superior to other nations either militarily, intellectually, or in any other way. Even morally, the history of Israel makes clear that they were much more interested in emulating the immorality of the cultures around them than following the Law that God had given them. The significance of Israel is simply that they are chosen by God, and the reason that they are chosen is because of God's love for them and for their forefathers, beginning with Abraham. Deuteronomy 7:6-8 is a clear statement of this:

For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

It is sometimes said that Abraham's descendents inherit the promises God gave to Abraham; it might be more correct to say that they are included in those promises. God promised Abraham descendents, land, and blessing; the land and the blessing were explicitly to be given to Abraham's descendents, so the descendents receiving land and blessing is not so much a matter of God fulfilling a promise to them as God fulfilling a promise to Abraham.

It should be clear from the foregoing that Israel was chosen as a nation; that is to say, as a group, based on the criterion of descent from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Hebrew word bachar is used of God's choice of Israel as a nation, Jerusalem as the place of sacrifice, and David as God's choice as King of Israel. However, despite the fact that Israel is chosen, it is possible both for individual Israelites to be cut off from the covenant people (Gen. 17:14; Ex. 30:33, 38; 31:14; Lev. 7:20-27; 19:8; 23:29; Num. 9:13; 15:30) and for outsiders to become a part of the covenant people (Ex. 12:48-49; cf. Matt. 23:15; Acts 2:11; 6:5; 13:43). In other words, "Israel" is not a static category of individuals: it is rather a dynamic category defined by God's gracious favor and the people's faithfulness to the covenant.

This fact was implicitly acknowledged by Calvin. In Institutes 3.21, he argues for his doctrine of election by appeal to the Old Covenant election of Israel. He writes, “The prophets remind the Jews of this election by way of disparagement and opprobrium, because they had shamefully revolted from it” (Inst. 3.21.5). Israelites, evidently, could revolt against their election. Similarly, he writes

I admit that it was by their own fault Ishmael, Esau, and others, fell from their adoption; for the condition annexed was, that they should faithfully keep the covenant of God, whereas they perfidiously violated it. (3.21.6)

So Calvin acknowledges that while the election of Israel as a whole was unconditional, individuals within Israel were required to keep God's covenant in order to remain within its blessings, and the history of Israel shows that the majority of them did not remain within the covenant.

Calvin distinguishes this type of election from “the case of single individuals, to whom God not only offers salvation, but so assigns it, that the certainty of the result remains not dubious or suspended” (3.21.7). In other words, Calvin is forced to recognize two types of election: one in which whole nations are chosen, but in which individual participation is conditional and based on keeping the covenant; and another in which individuals are chosen and salvation is assigned to them with an absolutely certain result. But throughout Institutes 3.21, Calvin has been demonstrating individual election—election of the second type—by appeal to the Old Testament election of Israel, which is clearly election of the first type. If Calvin now wants to make a distinction between these types of election, he undercuts his whole preceding argument. The only thing he has positively demonstrated is election of the first type—that is, unconditional sovereign election of a group, in which individual participation is conditional, which is precisely what the Arminian believes. When Calvin applies this to individual unconditional election, he does so by mere assertion.

The main point of this essay is not a wholesale rebuttal of Calvin's argument. It is simply to demonstrate how the doctrine of election is presented in the Old Testament, and therefore what the concept was that Paul was appealing to in his letters. It is, of course, possible that Paul modified the concept and used it in the way that Augustine and Calvin thought he did. But this would have to be demonstrated by the New Testament election passages themselves. Otherwise, one must assume that the original readers of the New Testament would have had in mind the Old Testament concept of election: the election of a group, in which individual participation in the covenant is required.

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Old and New Perspectives:The New Perspective on Paul, the Development of Reformed Doctrine, and a New Perspective Reading of Ephesians

To subscribers: just adding an abstract to the article. No new material in the article itself.

Abstract: an introduction to the "New Perspective on Paul," a development in Pauline Studies since the late 1970s that challenges longstanding Protestant assumptions about the nature of Paul's theological principles; a discussion of how the New Perspective can impact our understanding of the development of Reformed theology; and an application of New Perspective insights on interpretation of Ephesians 1 and 2.

The New Perspective on Paul is a response to studies in Judaism, notably E.P. Sanders's Paul and Palestinian Judaism, that indicate that first century Judaism was not legalistic in the technical sense meant by Luther and the other Reformers--a system of law by which an individual would attempt to earn salvation. If this is true, then it follows that the classical Protestant understanding of Romans and Galatians is faulty, since the Reformers viewed Paul as struggling against precisely this sort of legalism, which the Reformers considered to be analogous to their own struggle with the medieval Roman Catholic Church. According to the New Perspective, first century Judaism understood that God's choice of Israel was completely by grace; keeping the Law only kept one in the covenant; it didn't earn one's way into it.

I first learned about the NP from my days at Gordon-Conwell. I should stress that it was one of my favorite professors, Dr. T. David Gordon, who introduced me to the New Perspective in his classes on Galatians and Romans. This is important to note because Dr. Gordon was (probably still is) an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church of America, extremely Reformed in his thinking, and consciously in the tradition of the Reformers and English Puritans. He has one of the most logical minds and sharp wits it has been my pleasure to encounter. The New Perspective has been attacked popularly because it is seen to undercut the Reformed understanding of justification, and thus to undercut the core beliefs of the Reformers. Dr. Gordon is evidence that one can be fully Reformed in one's thought, subscribe to the New Perspective, and remain logically consistent. There is nothing in the New Perspective that contradicts the ideas of Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistable grace, or Perseverence.

I feel that it is important to lay out the foundation that the New Perspective is not inherently anti-Reformed, in order to set up a counterpoint: although the New Perspective does not, by itself, contradict traditional Reformed theology, it does offer an insight into the development of that theology, and perhaps an insight into how misunderstandings of key scriptures led to Reformed theology taking the particular shape it did. It is my conviction that the key passages that are used to support Calvinist distinctives were misunderstood by Luther and the Reformers, leading to an over-individualized view of election as well as to an overly passive view of how an individual enters into salvation.

The Development of Reformed Doctrine

Reevaluating our perspective on Paul necessitates a reevaluation of the development of Protestant doctrine in the wake of the Reformation, since the development of that doctrine was dependent on a reading of Paul that understood the Judaizers as advocates of salvation by works, analogous to the medieval Roman Catholic church system of penance, sacramental grace, and indulgences. Moreover, one must go back beyond the Reformation to Augustine, since the Reformers felt that their own struggle was analogous to that of Augustine against the Pelagians, and in fact Augustine had used a similar reading of Paul to come to his own conclusions regarding predestination and the operation of divine grace.

What happened, in a nutshell, was this: both Augustine in his day and the Reformers in theirs were responding to challenges (Pelagius and the medieval Catholic church, respectively) that undercut the necessity of God's grace in human salvation. Pelagius maintained that it was possible, at least in principle, for any human being to live entirely without sin and thus never need God's forgiveness and the atoning work of Christ. A millenium later, the medieval Catholic church had built up a system of meritorious works by which a person could attain salvation; penance and indulgences were merely a part of that system. What Luther thought he had found in the writings of the Apostle Paul, especially in Romans and Galatians, was an inspired and forceful argument against precisely these challenges. Paul argues stridently that justification is by faith and not by the "works of the Law" (Rom. 3:28; Gal. 2:16; 3:2, 5). Luther and the Reformers after him applied the term "works of the Law" to any legal system by which a person might be supposed to earn salvation. They read into Paul's writings their own struggle with a legalistic system, and thereby missed what the New Perspective sees as the actual struggle Paul was dealing with: the resistance of Jews to the full inclusion of the Gentiles as the covenant people of God. Since the church had long since been predominantly Gentile, this aspect of Paul's argument was easy to overlook. Where Paul was concerned to evangelize the Gentiles without requiring from them Torah observance (i.e., the "works of the Law"), the Reformers were concerned to establish a relationship between the believer and God based entirely on God's grace without any contributing "work" from the human end at all.

Having begun in this direction, both Augustine and the Reformers were concerned to eliminate the possibility of any sort of syncretism--that is, of any human action that could contribute to that person's salvation, Eventually, they concluded that even the exercise of faith could not bring a person into the covenant community, lest that exercise be considered a "work" on which the individual could "boast." (This despite the fact that Jesus has no problem whatever in construing faith as a "work": John 6:27-29.) To be sure, faith was hailed as the means by which an individual appropriated the salvation made available by God's grace; but faith could only be exercised by someone who had been chosen by God's unconditional election, and would inevitably be exercised once God regenerated the unbeliever and applied irresistable grace; in other words, faith was something of a byproduct of the election process.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that the Reformers were wrong in recognizing and emphasizing Paul's assertion that justification is by grace and through faith. However, Paul doesn't treat this assertion as anything new--it's at least as old as Abraham. What the New Perspective does is reopen our eyes to the actual issues within first century Judaism to which Paul was responding, which in turn allows us to reexamine the passages that have been historically regarded as crucial to of Reformed doctrine.

A New Perspective Reading of Ephesians 1 and 2

The New Perspective on Paul is generally associated with a reinterpretation of Romans and Galatians, inasmuch as these two books have been most closely associated with the Old Perspective and the traditional Protestant interpretation of justification being derived from these two epistles. However, the traditional (especially Reformed) interpretation of Ephesians 1 and 2 should also be reexamined in light of the New Perspective.

The message of the Gospel, available to anyone who believes, was a direct threat to the special status that Israel had held as the chosen people. According to the New Perspective, this opposition to the full inclusion of the Gentiles was the major issue against which Paul was arguing in Romans and Galatians. Ephesians is quite clearly about much the same issue, although not directed against Jewish opposition or Judaizers, but written to Gentile believers to assure them of their full inclusion with Jewish believers in the New Covenant. Ephesians 2:11-3:21, which forms the heart of the book, are quite explicitly about this issue: the "mystery of Christ," which is that "the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (3:4-6). However, in traditional Reformed interpretation, chapters 1 and 2 are read as though they had nothing to do with the Jew-Gentile problem, and instead read as though they are a treatise on individual election.

The key to understanding Ephesians 1-2 is to identify whom Paul means by “you” and by “us” and “we.” For example, when he states “he chose us . . . he predestined us” (1:4, 5), what exactly constitutes “us”? How does the context define “us”? What are the defining characteristics of the group of people to whom Paul is referring?

In the first verse of the epistle, Paul designates his readers as πιστοῖς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, "faithful [or believing] in Christ Jesus." In the rest of his epistles, Paul only addresses his readers as πιστοῖς one other time, in Colossians. This designation, then, has special significance to the readers of Ephesians. The prominent role of faith in subsequent verses highlights the fact that Paul's designation is intended to frame the self-perception of his readers.

In connection with “having been predestined” in v. 11, Paul identifies “we” in vv. 11 and 12 as “the first to hope in Christ.” In v. 13, he identifies “you” as having been “included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of salvation” and as “having believed.” He refers in v. 15 to “your faith,” in v. 19 to “us who believe,” and states in 2:10 that “you” have been saved “through faith.” Based on the above verses, one defining characteristic of both “you” and “us” throughout the passage would clearly seem to be that they are believers and have faith.

In 2:11, "you" is more explicitly identified as "you who are Gentiles by birth and called 'uncircumcised' by those who call themselves 'the circumcision' (that done in the body by the hands of men)...." It is probable that virtually all of Paul's readers were Gentiles, so this verse further defines the "you." Paul's identification of "we" as "the first to hope in Christ" in verse 13 now makes more sense: the first generation of Christians, including Paul himself, were Jewish believers; therefore where "we" is contrasted with "you," Paul is referring to Jewish believers. (When not contrasted with "you," Paul may mean either Jewish believers or Jewish and Gentile believers considered together.) This connects the early part of the epistle thematically with the central section, the main point of which is the union of Jewish and Gentile believers into one body (2:16, 3:6).

Taking this understanding back to the passages dealing with election helps to understand Paul's intent better. In 1:4-5, Paul discusses how God chose "us" and predestined "us"; here, he is writing of Jewish and Gentile believers considered together. He is including the Gentiles in the election that Israel was already understood as having. His point is that the Gentiles are not an afterthought in God's plan; they were chosen "before the creation of the world." 1:9-10 foreshadow 3:6: the "all things" that are to be brought "together under one head" are the Jewish and Gentile believers.

Verses 11-14 begin to make a distinction between "we" and "you." The "we" in verse 11 who were "predestined" are defined in verse 12 as "the first to hope in Christ"; i.e., Paul now means by "we" the first generation of believers, who were largely Jewish. Then "you also [Gentile believers] were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth.... Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal...." Paul is saying that just as we Jews who believed were chosen and predestined according to God's plan, even so you Gentile believers are also included in that same plan. The Gentiles are fully included in the plan that God had from the beginning.

At the beginning of chapter 2, Paul continues the comparison: just as "you were dead in your transgressions and sins" (2:1-2), even so "all of us also lived among them [the 'sons of disobedience'] at one time.... we were by nature objects of wrath" (2:3). The Jews, just like the Gentiles, had once been alienated from God--the same point he makes in Galatians 2:15-16, and reiterates explicitly with regard to the Gentiles in 2:12-13.

Because of the individualistic emphasis of the Old Perspective, Ephesians 1:1-2:10 has been interpreted as an exposition of individual unconditional election, total depravity, and regeneration prior to justification. Understanding the role of the Jew-Gentile issue in Ephesians leads to a different conception of Paul's message here--one that reaches out to Gentile believers and assures them that they are just as fundamentally a part of God's election and plan as Israel had been in the Old Testament. Although this understanding can still be fit into the Reformed framework, it does not require the Reformed understanding of unconditional, individual election. Gentile believers are being reassured that they are just as much "chosen" as Jewish believers had been--because God's choice is not based on whether they are Jews or Gentiles, but rather upon faith in Christ as the only necessary criterion.

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