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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"Salt" and "Light" An Exercise in Biblical Allegory

Abstract: An attempt to find a methodological principle to control the interpretation of analogies in Scripture, with a focus on salt and light in Matthew 5:13-16 as a case study. Not all properties of an image used as a metaphor are fair game to be "spiritually applied."

Jesus' metaphorical use of salt and light to describe his disciples in Matthew 5:13-16 is one of the most familiar illustrations in scripture. It is also one of the most mishandled in interpretation, especially in interactive teaching settings. The usual procedure, often spelled out in Sunday school and youth group curricula, is for the participants to offer as many different properties and uses of salt and light as they can think of, then to find a "spiritual application" by way of analogy to each of these properties and uses. The leader is then to encourage the group to exhibit those applications in their own lives.

The problem with this type of interpretation, which amounts to allegorizing, is twofold. First, there is no control on the interpretations allowable. It is usually brought up that salt flavors food, acts as a preservative, was a valuable commodity, etc. But since there is no control--i.e., any property of salt is allowable--we may presumably find a "spiritual application" for the fact that salt is a stable crystalline compound, composed of the two highly reactive elements sodium and chlorine. Light illuminates darkness, makes vision possible, creates heat, etc.; we may again attempt to find a spiritual application for the fact that light acts both as a wave and a particle, and travels in a vacuum at a constant speed of about 186,000 miles per second. It may be objected that during Jesus' lifetime such scientific facts were unknown, but surely divine intelligence knew them when putting the metaphors in the Bible and knew that twenty centuries later we would learn them. At any rate, although such obscure facts usually do not come up in the context of an informal Bible study, the point is that there is nothing in the method to exclude them, precisely because the implied assumption is that everything about salt and light is somehow analogous to some aspect of the Christian life.

This brings us to the second problem with this type of interpretation: it ignores what the author (and in this case the speaker, Jesus) intended by the images used. It is not apparent, or even intrinsically likely, that Jesus meant that his disciples were similar to salt or light in every possible respect. Analogies normally resemble their objects in only one respect, or in a limited range of respects; usually the relationship is made clear by the context of the analogy itself. Therefore, the proper goal of interpretation in this case should be to discover in what way or ways Jesus' disciples are similar to salt and light. This is a point unfortunately lost even in some excellent commentaries.[1]

The first thing that should be noticed is that the examples are parallel. After the analogy itself is made, the point made about both of them is that they can be made ineffectual, and lose any benefit that they may otherwise offer. Therefore, the most reasonable assumption we may make is that both of these analogies are being used to illustrate a single point. If then salt and light are analogous to us in a similar way, they would therefore be similarly analogous to each other. This immediately precludes most of the interpretations we may make based on the properties or uses of light or salt individually--for these two substances are distinctly dissimilar to one another. Jesus is making a single point in these verses, reinforced by using two analogies, but a single point is being made.

That single point is evident by what is done with the analogies: in both cases, the useful property of the element involved is lost or made ineffectual. In verse 13, the salt "loses its saltiness"; in verse 14, the possibility of the lamp being lit and "put under a bowl" is envisioned (in the form of a rejection). Therefore, whatever it is that salt and light do, there are situations in which they are prevented from doing it. That is the point: believers can become ineffectual in this world, and Jesus is warning them against it.

In the case of the salt, losing its saltiness makes it worthless (v. 13). Nothing can be done with it; it can only be disposed of. "How can it be made salty again?" is a rhetorical question; there is no answer. The point is that unsalty salt is useless to anyone--therefore precautions were taken to protect salt from humidity, which would leech it out.[2] Putting a lamp under a bowl (v. 15) similarly makes it useless. No one can benefit from the light of a covered lamp. But everyone benefits from a lamp "on its stand" that "gives light to everyone in the house." It is for this reason--the common need for light--that "a city on a hill cannot be hidden." Jesus goes on in verse 16 to apply the analogy directly to his disciples: "let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."

Herein lies the key to both analogies: letting one's light shine before people somehow involves letting them see one's good works--not in the ostentatious manner of the Pharisees (cf. Matt. 6:1-18), but in a way that gives glory to the Father in heaven. That is, what we are as believers--the fact that we are believers, and what that means in terms of what God is doing in our lives--must come out, find expression in our daily lives. This shouldn't have to be forced, but should be natural--as natural as a lamp being placed where it gives light, or salt being salty. Yet there is a danger that this will not be the case--else Jesus' warning loses its import.

If there is a difference in Jesus' handling of the two analogies, it would be that while the salt is actually lost, the lamp is only covered (although a covered flame, starved for oxygen, would presumably go out soon enough). Jesus may be saying that a disciple's testimony can be made ineffectual either by assimilation to the world (the salt losing its saltiness) or by hiding it from the world (the lamp covered by a bowl). But if such a distinction is made, it should be made on the basis of what Jesus actually does with the analogies, not on the basis of the intrinsic properties of salt and light themselves.

Examples of such overapplication of analogies are legion, and constitute a common fallacy in biblical interpretation. They have in some circumstances contributed to unbiblical Christian practice. One of the most common examples is that of "shepherd," applied (first metaphorically to Jesus) to Christian ministers. Everything that a shepherd does for his sheep is applied to the work of the pastor: feeding them, protecting them from enemies, leading them to water, etc. "Spiritual applications" can again be found for all of these aspects of shepherding. But careful study of how "shepherd" is used metaphorically in scripture indicates that it is used, in the Old Testament, never of the prophet and priest, but of the king; i.e., it is a leadership quality, not a prophetic and priestly one. In the New Testament, it is used primarily of leadership through teaching. Overapplying the shepherding analogy may be convenient for those parishioners who aren't interested in being anything but sheep, or for leaders who prefer to control every aspect of their people's lives, but it isn't biblical. It contributes to the overwork of pastors, the lack of responsible body ministry, and the general negligence of average Christians to grow into responsible positions of service.

In both academic and pastoral worlds, there is substantial pressure to come up with interpretations that are novel, creative, different. We want to pull out of a passage everything that may be gleaned from it. Unfortunately, we may at times overinterpret, discover meanings that were never intended by the writer, or the Holy Spirit. We need the discipline to distinguish between interpretations that are supported by the text and those that aren't.

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Notes

[1] E.g., Carson, D.A., Matthew, in The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, ed. by Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), p. 138-39.

[2] Salt could lose its saltiness if a cake of salt containing impurities had the actual salt leeched out by humidity (Carson, 138). This is relevant to the extent that it makes the image itself understandable to modern people, for whom salt losing its saltiness is not a common occurrence. It would not do, however, to spiritualize the impurities, the leeching process, etc.

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A Positive Case for Arminianism

Abstract: A biblical overview of the Arminian position regarding the doctrine of Divine election. Arminianism--the rejection of unconditional divine election of specific individuals to salvation--is often defended only in reaction to the Calvinist position; the present paper attempts to make a positive, Biblical case for Arminianism. The second half of the paper discusses the Calvinist critique of Arminianism and attempts to respond to that critique from the Arminian point of view. The paper as a whole is merely intended to be an overview, not an exhaustive examination of the issues that surround divine election; a close exegetical study of the Biblical passages that bear upon divine election is necessary to decide upon one position or another.

Introduction: Against Reaction to Calvinism

Since the Reformation, what has come to be known as "Calvinism" or Reformed theology has been the fundamental interpretive grid through which the doctrine of election has been historically understood by Protestants. This is to say that the Reformers established a dominant Protestant tradition upholding some form of unconditional divine election of specific individuals to salvation (largely by contrast to the medieval Roman Catholic position). Those that differed from this position, notably Jacobus Arminius, John Wesley, and the traditions that arose from them, did so largely in reaction to a prior Reformed tradition. (For convenience’ sake, this paper will use the terms "Calvinism" and "Reformed" in reference to all Protestant traditions, including Lutheran, that espouse unconditional, particular election to salvation, and Wesleyan and Arminian interchangeably in reference to all Protestant traditions that reject unconditional, particular election.)

The result of this is that even today, advocates of an Arminian position find themselves generally arguing defensively--that is to say, attempting to refute established Calvinistic doctrines rather than developing a positive case for an alternative point of view. This is seen most clearly in defenses of the Arminian position that are cast (as rebuttals) within the framework of the "five points" of Calvinism. A number of reasons for the continuing of this situation exist:

1. For most people who haven’t been specifically taught unconditional, particular election, the possibility of anyone coming to faith through the gospel seems to be the natural understanding of scripture.[1] Therefore, most people never bother to defend Arminianism except when confronting a specific Calvinistic challenge; and so they end up doing so reactively, rather than proactively.
   
2. Arminians would hold that their position is an assumption which undergirds scripture (just as the Bible doesn’t defend God’s existence but rather everywhere assumes it) rather than a doctrine to be proven by explicit scriptural statement.
   
3. For the above reasons and because of the historical prominence of this question within Reformation debate, the issue of election rises to a greater importance for the Calvinist than for the Arminian. The "five points" are taught within the Reformed tradition, whereas the possibility of anyone who hears the gospel coming to saving faith is simply a working assumption within the Wesleyan tradition.

The practical result of this situation is that Calvinism is generally thought to be the only intellectually respectable form of evangelicalism. A defense of the Arminian position needs to be made, but it cannot be made merely in reaction to the Calvinistic position; that is to concede to the opposition the terms of debate. A positive case needs to be made for Arminianism. Two points must be understood regarding the following treatise:

1. Some of the foundations of such a case will be common to both Calvinistic and Arminian understandings of scripture--so to assert something as essential to the Arminian position is not necessarily to deny that Calvinists may agree; and
   
2. Since the immediate point is to build a positive case for Arminianism without reference to Calvinism, some Arminian assertions to which Calvinists have historically responded will need to be laid down without immediate engagement with Reformed criticism. A later section of the paper will be devoted to the Reformed critique of Arminian assertions and to the Arminian response.

The Positive Case for Arminianism

I. The Mercy of God
Arminianism is based in the first instance on an expansive understanding of God’s mercy.

Throughout Scripture, the theme of the Lord’s mercy is prominent, if not preeminent. Where it is contextually related to the Lord’s justice, it is always treated as more fundamental to God’s character. The seminal scripture in this regard would be Exodus 34.6-7:

The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands [or, "a thousand generations," cf. Ex. 20.6], and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.

It is difficult to imagine that a comparison of attributes is not intentional. First and overwhelmingly, God identifies Himself with those attributes that stress His mercy, and only subsequently identifies Himself in terms of justice. In contrast to the "third and fourth generation" to which He punishes sin, He stipulates "a thousand" whom He forgives.

The atonement itself is in many ways a triumph of mercy over justice--compelled by His own nature to remain just, God nonetheless finds a way to extend mercy to those who justly deserve death, even at the cost of His own Son (Rom. 4.25). This is not to say that God is not ultimately just, or that His mercy somehow obviates His justice; it is merely to state that where the scriptures bring these two attributes together, mercy is always magnified over justice. It would thus seem to be unbiblical to regard God’s mercy as somehow restricted as compared with His justice.

Scripture notably records God’s desire to see the wicked--spoken of inclusively; i.e., all the wicked--come to salvation: "I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live" (Ezek. 33.11; cf. 3.18-19, 13.22); "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance" (2 Pet. 3.9); God "wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2.4). The object of His love is also seen expansively: "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son . . . For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him should live" (Jn. 3.16-17). The scope of God’s mercy breaks out of the apparent "covenant community" even in the OT; most clearly in Jonah: "Ninevah has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?" (Jon. 4.11). One of clearest and most important doctrines in the NT is the expansion of the covenant people to include those who have been previously excluded; and many references to this expansion read as though it is to encompass potentially everyone (e.g., John 1:7 and scriptures included under heading II).

II. The Scope and Sufficiency of the Atonement
Arminians believe that Jesus’ sacrificial death is sufficient and applicable through faith to all the sins committed by all people in the world.

The scope of the atonement is repeatedly cast in inclusive terms: "And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world" (1 Jn. 2.2); "So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men" (Rom. 5.18); "May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me" (John 17.21).

Although all people are alike under just condemnation and deserving of death, and although God is not under obligation to save anyone, it is nonetheless true that there is something worthy of redeeming in fallen man; namely, the image of God (Gen. 1.18, 5.1, 9.2; James 3.9). The Genesis 9 and James passages make it abundantly clear that the image has not been lost or destroyed since the Fall, and that it is the possession of the unbeliever as well as the believer. It is often said that the image has been "distorted" or "damaged" by the Fall, but nothing in the scripture says this. Due to human sinfulness, the image is being constantly misused--in C.S. Lewis’s words, every sin is an act of sacrilege--but it nonetheless provides a ground for God’s love for sinful human beings. Moreover, it provides a ground for all human beings to become objects of God’s mercy.

III. The Requirement of Faith
Although Christ’s death is sufficient to atone for all sins, God requires faith on the part of the sinner in order to apply Christ’s atonement to individual sin and thus to save people from damnation.

By far, Christians in the NT are more often identified as "believers" or "those who believe" than with any other term (e.g. John 1.12; 8.31, 11.25-26, 12.44, 46, 14.12, 17.20; Acts 2.44, 4.32, 5.14, 11.17, 15.5; Rom. 3.22, 26, 4.11, 24; 1 Cor. 1.21, 14.22; Gal. 3.7, 9; Eph. 1.19; 1 Thes. 1.7, 2.10, 13; 2 Thes. 1.10; 1 Pet. 2.6-7; 1 Jn. 5.1, 5). The term that is most often used to describe the action of a person coming to salvation in Christ is that such a person "believed" (John 2.11, 23, 4.39, 41, 53, 7.31, 8.30, 10.42, 12.11; Acts 4.4, 8.12, 13, 9.42, 11.21, 13.12, 14.1, 17.12, 34, 18.8). Pistis is recognized as a criterion for inclusion in the covenant people and even as a requirement for salvation: "Everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness in his name " (Acts 10.43); "Through him everyone who believes is justified" (Acts 13.39); "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved" (Acts 16.31); the Gospel is "the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes" (Rom. 1.16). The salvation message continually calls upon the unsaved to "believe" (John 11.15, 20.31). Faith is regarded as instrumental to the salvation process (Luke 7.50, 18.42; Acts 14.27, 15.9; Rom. 3.25, 5.1-2, 9.30). The reason for such an expansive (though not nearly exhaustive) tabulation of the use of pistiV and pisteuw in relation to salvation is to document the clear and consistent identification that the scriptures make between the action of trusting in Christ and the state of being saved; it is much more frequently encountered than the identification made between God’s action of electing people and the state of being saved. The clear implication of such passages is to see faith as 1) possible for all who are confronted with the gospel; and 2) the defining characteristic of the covenant community.

IV. The Order of Salvation
Differences in understanding God’s election of believers leads to differences in understanding the logical order of events by which salvation takes place. In discussing this order, it is important to understand that the terms by which salvation is described refer primarily to aspects of salvation, and not, unless scripture warrants, successive links in a process.

What is known as conversion is generally understood to refer to the composite subjective action involving separately repentance--i.e., turning from sin--and faith--i.e., turning toward God. These actions are not sequential, either temporally or logically; they are simultaneous and in fact refer to the same subjective change viewed from different points of view.

Similarly, both regeneration and justification refer to objective changes in the being and status of the Christian. Regeneration refers to the "new birth," the change in nature from death to new life (e.g., John 3.3, 7, 8; 1 Jn. 2.29, 3.9, 4.7, 5.1, 4, 18; 1 Pet. 1.23). The term appears to be a Johannine coinage, picked up infrequently elsewhere, although the concept appears in different form in Paul (e.g. 2 Cor. 5.17). Justification refers to the legal status of the Christian, the change from guilt to righteousness before God, and appears to be a Pauline concept (e.g., Rom. 3.24, 26, 28, 30, 5.1, 8.30, 33; 1 Cor. 6.11; Gal. 2.16-17, 3.8, 24; 1 Tim. 3.16; Tit. 3.7). No scripture clearly relates these two concepts, much less makes one contingent upon the other. The most reasonable assumption to be made is that they refer to the same fundamental spiritual change, viewed from two conceptual frameworks: ontological (regeneration) and legal/moral (justification).

Although the above groups of terms cannot be related temporally or causally to one another within each group, scripture does relate one group causally to the other. Specifically, conversion--viewed either as repentance or faith or both--is viewed as the means of apprehending regeneration/justification: "Peter replied, ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’" (Acts 2.38); "They replied, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved--you and your household’" (Acts 16.31). This pattern is confirmed by formulae that identify those who believe with those whose sins are forgiven in such a manner as to suggest some kind of causal relationship between the two: "All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name" (Acts 10.43). Thus, although the ultimate cause of salvation is God’s grace through the sacrifice of Jesus, the immediate cause of that salvation being applied to the individual is that individual’s repentance from sin and faith toward God. Therefore, conversion is logically prior to regeneration and justification.

V. The Role of Election
An emphasis on the expansiveness of God’s mercy, on the sufficiency of the atonement to cover the sins of everyone, and on the necessity of faith on the part of the unregenerate would seem to obviate the biblical witness to the doctrine of divine election. This has historically been the basic criticism of Arminianism. However, when viewed in its biblical context, the doctrine of election is properly understood not to conflict with the above premises.

It is first necessary to place divine election in the context of providing assurance for the believer. Romans 8.30, in which the salvation process is described as a chain of divine acts leading from predestination to glorification, occurs as part of a ground statement supporting the assertion in v. 28 that "in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose," which itself supports the promises in vv. 18-27 of future glory and the Spirit’s assistance in our weaknesses. Similarly Paul, in Ephesians 1.11, asserts election and predestination only to follow the train of thought out to the "guarantee" of "our inheritance" in v. 14. The basic point in these passages would seem to be that even as God has chosen us, so also he will keep us until the end. The issue of assurance, in turn, mainly addresses itself to those facing the possibility of persecution: the promise is that God will enable them to endure to the end whatever sufferings he permits.

The foregoing discussion of election has not addressed the issue of the criteria of election: on what basis does God predestine those whom he does? Romans 8.29 asserts that "those God foreknew he also predestined," while Ephesians 1.12 identifies the "we" who were chosen and predestined in v. 11 as those "who were the first to hope in Christ." In neither case is a causal relationship made from predestination to foreknowledge or to hoping in Christ, but rather, the reverse (especially clear in the Romans passage): predestination is based on foreknowledge, and those who are foreknown are those who hope in Christ. Although Romans 8.29 does not make clear what it is that God foreknows about us that leads to our predestination, Ephesians 1.12 and the preponderance of scriptures indicating the requirement and necessity of faith for salvation indicates that what God foreknows about those whom he predestines is that they will come to faith in Christ. Faith in Christ, thus, appears biblically to be the criterion by which God elects to salvation; in fact, the substance of God’s election would seem to be sovereignly choosing faith in Christ’s atoning sacrifice, as opposed to any other criterion of merit, as the criterion for salvation (1 Cor. 1.20-21).

VI. The Necessity of Personal Perseverance
Although the above scriptures give us assurance in Christ, other scriptures make clear that it is also our own responsibility to avoid sin and to remain in a faith relationship with Christ. The alternative to doing so is often explicitly stated as not being saved.

The preeminent standard for the assurance of our salvation is to remain in a faith relationship with Christ. Jesus illustrates this clearly in his analogy of the vine and the branches:

I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit . . . . If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. (John 15.5-6)

Jesus clearly identifies his listeners as "branches," and the clear implication is that in order to bear fruit and not to wither and be thrown into the fire, one must "remain in" Jesus. The analogy inevitably implies that branches can fail to remain in Christ and that the result of such failure is eschatological destruction. If it is asserted that those who fail to persevere in Christ were never truly believers at all, then what is the point of talking about "remaining" in him? One cannot remain where one never was. Indeed, what is the point of talking about branches? The one who has never been redeemed can hardly be called a "branch" of Jesus, the vine. Even the branch that has fallen away is still called a branch, indicating that it once was "in" the vine. Defenders of eternal security at this point must be reduced to suggesting that Jesus is describing a null category: what would be the case if someone were to fall away, which in fact never occurs because of security in Christ.

Similar arguments may be made about the planting and initial growth of the seed in rocky and thorny ground, Luke 8; and also about Hebrews 6.4-8, 10.26-31, 35-39, and 12.25; Ezekiel 18.24; Matt. 18.21-35 and many other passages. In each case, on the hypothesis of eternal security, the person spoken of as having fallen away must either be supposed never to have believed truly, or the situation must be thought of as hypothetical, a warning against a situation that never actually obtains. In each case, there is a complete lack of textual warrant for such an understanding. In addition, we must also recognize direct imperatives to perseverance such as Galatians 6.9, Ephesians 6.10-18, Jude 21, and Hebrews 10.36. Whatever enablement we may suppose God has granted us by virtue of our salvation, it is still we who are being called upon to persevere ourselves.

Scripture makes very clear that the ground of salvation is God’s grace through faith in Jesus, and is not human works in any sense (Rom. 3.21-4.25, Gal. 3.1-14). However, it is equally clear that salvation should result in a changed life, and therefore be evidenced by works of righteousness. Although this is most clearly stated in James 2.14-26, suggesting to some a basic conflict between the theologies of James and Paul, one sees in Paul an equally serious concern for the ethical ramifications of salvation, e.g. Romans chs. 12-15; Galatians 5.16-6.10; Ephesians chs. 4-6; Colossians 3.1-4.6, etc. The clear implication of this is that if there is no moral-ethical-behavioral change on the part of one claiming to have received salvation, there is no reason to believe that such a person is saved.

Objections from Reformed Theology
The above outline of the Arminian position purposely makes its case without reference to the Calvinistic objections that have been made to the various points. A summary of these follows. (It should go without saying that this section does not pretend to give an orderly or complete presentation of the Calvinist position. It merely responds point by point to the Arminian position represented above.) Letters in parentheses refer to the acronym TULIP, and thus to the various points of "five point" Calvinism.

I. The Justice of God
The Calvinistic point of view rests primarily upon an emphasis on God’s justice.

God’s justice is universal, as opposed to His mercy, which is granted specifically and only to the elect. Justice is logically prior to mercy, since mercy deals with amelioration of the effects of justice. Thus God’s expressions of His mercy are addressed specifically and only to His covenant people, but His justice is applicable to all.

While certain scriptures indicate that God desires the repentance of the wicked, God in fact refuses to offer saving grace to many of them. If God truly wished for all to be saved, all would indeed be saved, since God is sovereign and nothing can frustrate His will. Therefore, God evidently does not ultimately wish the salvation of all, and the desire for the wicked to be saved that these scriptures indicate must simply be a desire He does not act upon.

II. The Scope and Sufficiency of the Atonement
Although Jesus’ death is potentially sufficient to save everyone, God has chosen to limit the efficacy of the atonement to the elect.

God’s sovereignty implies that He is under no obligation to save anyone. He has chosen to glorify Himself in His mercy by saving some, and to glorify Himself in His justice by allowing some to be condemned in their sin. The atonement is therefore limited to those whom He has chosen, or elected, to save. (L)

Human beings are thoroughly and completely corrupted by sin (Rom. 3.10-18), and thus are justly under the sentence of divine condemnation. God is therefore under no obligation to save anyone, and those who remain under His judgment are there solely because of their own sin and rebellion against God. God’s justice could not have been impugned even if He had chosen never to save anyone and to allow the entire human race to go to hell. (T)

III. The Role of Faith

Those who are described as "believers" are only able to believe because God has regenerated them and given them faith (Eph. 2.8-9). Thus, all the scriptures describing God’s elect with terms relating to pistis merely reaffirm the regeneration that God has effected in them.

If the Arminian view were correct, it would be possible to construe exercising faith as a work meriting salvation. Since scripture excludes salvation by works categorically, such a view of faith is excluded as well. If this were not the case, then those who responded in faith would have something to boast in as compared with others who did not, and this is prohibited by God (Rom. 3.27).

Since God is sovereign, His plan of salvation must be accomplished without fail. Therefore, when He regenerates those whom He has elected and calls them to salvation, they will be irresistibly drawn to His grace and will inevitably come to saving faith and justification. (I)

IV. The Order of Salvation
The Reformed point of view requires a different understanding of the order of salvation. The order is: regeneration, effectual calling, conversion (repentance and faith), and justification.

Because of the total depravity of man, human beings are utterly unable to please God in themselves, or even to reach out to God for help. God therefore does not require faith on the part of the unregenerate person, because that person is completely unable to exercise saving faith.

Since the unregenerate person cannot exercise faith, God must first regenerate the person, who will then necessarily and unfailingly exercise faith and repentance. Hence, regeneration is prior to conversion.

Since regeneration is logically prior to conversion, and conversion is necessary to justification there is in the Calvinist system a necessary separation between regeneration and justification. The Calvinist order of salvation is thus: election, regeneration, conversion, justification.

V. The Role of Election

God is sovereign over all things; therefore, His will is not contingent upon anything else. Therefore, when the Bible describes the election of believers, it must be unconditional--conditioned, that is, solely upon the sovereign, unchangeable will of God. (U)

An unconditional election raises the question of why the Bible specifically relates election to foreknowledge, since foreseen merit or foreseen faith are excluded as criteria for salvation. Calvinism sees "foreknow" as meaning "forelove" (to "know" being an intimate form of knowledge; cf. Gen. 4.1); therefore, it was those whom God "foreloved" that he predestined.

If salvation is in any sense synergistic, then part of one’s salvation is contingent upon maintaining the proper human response. Scriptures relating assurance to election would therefore be meaningless unless election were unconditional. If salvation is all of God, then assurance of security is also all of God.

VI. Perseverance

If election is unconditional and grace is given irresistibly, then it follows that the elect person cannot ever fall out of grace. If it is God’s will that someone will be saved, then that person will be saved and will never lose that salvation. This does not negate the possibility that a person who is elect and regenerated can fall into grievous sin temporarily, or that a person who outwardly appears to be a true believer may in fact demonstrate that he is not by falling away and rejecting the faith entirely. (P)

In addition to the above logical requirement of perseverance, scripture also promises that believers will in fact persevere to the end: e.g., Romans 8.17, 38-39; Ephesians 1.13-14; Philippians 1.6.


The Arminian Response to Calvinistic Objections

I. The Justice of God

Although mercy must be predicated upon justice--one must be adjudged guilty of a sin before one may be forgiven for it--that does not mean that mercy is less important, or less extensively offered. To the Calvinist’s contention that God is not required to save anyone, it may be responded that it is in God’s merciful nature, as revealed by the scriptures, to offer salvation to human beings. The question is not, "What is God obligated to do"; it is rather, "What is it in God’s nature to do?" The Arminian believer holds that it is in God’s nature to reach out in love and save.

Although it is contended that God’s desire for all to be saved is simply one He does not act upon, one must ask why He does not act upon it. The scriptures that deal with this matter are uniform in their answer: it is because the wicked person refuses to repent (e.g., Ezek. 33.17-19; 2 Pet. 3.9). Not one scripture suggests that God ever refuses to offer grace to anyone, which is why election’s negative corollary--reprobation--cannot find scriptural support and is why even most Calvinists attempt to repudiate or modify it.

II. The Scope and Sufficiency of the Atonement

The fact that God is sovereign does not in itself negate the possibility of human freedom. God may in fact will that a portion of His creation have some genuine autonomy. Suggesting that God’s sovereignty precludes any human autonomy does not enhance, but actually diminishes His omnipotence; is God not free to create agents of free moral choice? Scripture seems to be clear that God accomplishes His will despite human freedom and sinfulness, not by negating it. Therefore, it is at least theoretically possible --it is consistent with God’s sovereignty--to hold that God sovereignly chooses to make salvation contingent upon some aspect of human freedom; specifically, the free choice to respond to the call of the gospel.

Moreover, the Reformed point of view runs into problems by acknowledging a universal (or general) call to repentance and faith (see III. C.) and yet asserting that atonement is limited to the elect. Calvinists usually respond to this point by arguing that only those to whom God gives irresistible grace and faith are able to believe or have any desire to do so; i.e., God is not offering anything that the unregenerate person wants, so there can be no possibility that anyone could actually desire to be saved without provision having been made for that person’s salvation. Granted that this point of view is consistent within the Calvinistic scheme, it ignores the fact that, by making a general call to salvation, God is (in the Reformed view) construed as offering something for which He has not made provision--in fact, for which He has expressly refused to make provision--namely, salvation for the non-elect. The fact that none will accept the offer is immaterial to the fact that God is here represented as making an offer which is not in good faith.

Although the Bible makes clear the depravity of man, in that everyone without exception falls short of the glory of God and has no innate desire to live a life worthy of God, the scriptures involving depravity never state that human beings are unable to respond to the Gospel in faith; rather, the reverse is everywhere assumed (e.g., Rom. 10.12-15). The Gospel itself "is the power of God for salvation" (Rom. 1.16).

III. The Role of Faith

All evangelicals are committed to the propositions that one must believe in Jesus to be saved; that those who have been saved are described as having been chosen by God; and that faith is a gift. Nevertheless, the call to exercise faith is always put in the imperative. Faith is not something that one inevitably exercises if one has it, else it would be pointless to be called upon to believe, and to put one’s faith in God. It must be reemphasized that faith and the action of believing are the most frequent ways in which Scripture identifies God’s people.

By contrast, such terms as "the chosen [elect]," which might lead the reader to view the saved as passive recipients of mercy, appear comparatively rarely in connection with the NT people of God (eklekton is used 23 times in the NT; of these, four refer either to Christ or to angels and three occur as a parallel passage with another three, leaving only sixteen distinct references referring to individuals, groups, or the church as a whole being described as "chosen" or "elect"). This is not to say that these references can be ignored simply because they are comparatively few in number, but they should not be built into an interpretive grid through which the rest of the Biblical witness must be viewed.

Scripture is clear that faith is not only not a meritorious work but is opposed to works "For by grace are you saved through faith--and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast" (Eph. 2.8). The capacity to believe is given by God; but the requirement to exercise that faith with respect to Christ, as above, is a commandment given to us. Scripture simply never considers exercising such faith a work, still less a "work of the Law" (Gal. 3.2; i.e., Torah observance) which is what Scripture seems most at pains to oppose. With regard to the issue of boasting, it is related in scripture specifically to the issue of works as explicitly contrasted with faith. Since faith is merely a response to a free offer from God, it is never in any sense considered a ground for boasting.

Most of the scriptures that Calvinists point use to demonstrate the call of God to saving grace as inevitably effectual actually refer in the past tense to believers having been called by God (e.g., 1 Cor. 1.9; Rom. 1.7; 1 Cor. 1.26; Eph. 1.18; Phil. 3.14; 2 Tim. 1.9; Heb. 3.1). Of course, if the group being described as having been called is comprised of believers, then of course, the call was effectual in their case; these scriptures, however, do not have any bearing on whether there are others who were called and did not respond in faith. Just because believers are described as "called" by God doesn’t mean that God didn’t call others. In fact, other scriptures explicitly describe the Lord calling all to salvation (e.g., Matt. 11.28; Isa. 45.22; Matt. 22.14), and the Reformed view is forced to distinguish between a "general" call and an "effectual" call. There are a number of passages in which people are clearly represented as resisting God’s grace (e.g., Acts 7.51; Matt. 23.37; Jer. 3.19-20)--indeed it makes a great deal of sense to view the entirety of the historical sections of the Bible as one long record of people resisting grace offered by God.

IV. The Order of Salvation

It is stipulated that unregenerate persons are unable to do anything to please God, merit salvation, or even come to the Lord without God first drawing them (Jn. 6.44, 65). Yet Jesus announces his intention to "draw all men" to himself (Jn. 12.32). Although unredeemed humanity is pictured in scripture as being spiritually dead and blind, completely unable to come to the Lord, there is no indication in scripture that those who are actually confronted with the Gospel are unable to receive it. The Gospel itself is viewed in the New Testament as bringing with it the power of salvation (e.g., Rom. 1.16, 10.14-15; Eph. 1.13; 2 Tim. 1.10). Although Arminians have historically appealed to "prevenient grace" as enabling all persons everywhere to be able to believe, it must be admitted that this concept finds little support in scripture. A better means of understanding God’s work in enabling people to believe would be to view the Gospel itself as being invested with the power to respond with saving faith.

If the power to respond to the Gospel lies in the Gospel itself, rather than in regeneration, then it is not necessary to suppose that God regenerates a person who is not yet converted or justified. No passage of scripture states that conversion is subsequent to regeneration; however, there are scriptures that place conversion at the entrance to salvation (e.g., Acts 2.38, 10.43, 16.31).

As explained above, there is no clear scriptural reason to separate regeneration and justification, other than the necessity in Reformed theology of postulating regeneration before conversion and justification after. Once that necessity is obviated, one may see regeneration and justification as simply two metaphors for expressing the same spiritual change. This is the most natural reading of the scripture.

V. The Role of Election

Since God is sovereign, the criteria of election must be sovereignly determined by Him, and the sole criterion he has established is faith in Christ. However, to suppose that God’s sovereignty prevents Him from allowing humans to make a free response to the gospel diminishes His sovereignty, rather than supporting it. God is able to make creatures that exercise free will; God is able to enable them to respond to the Gospel even if they are dead in sin; God is able to elect them based on their response to the Gospel. None of this is precluded by God’s sovereignty; in fact, if any of them are precluded, the result is to diminish God’s sovereignty.
Reformed understanding of foreknowledge

The understanding of proginosko as meaning "forelove" rather than "foreknow" must be understood as a desperate expedient to avoid the clear implication of scripture that election is based on foreknowledge. The usual passage referred to in defense of this interpretation is Genesis 4.1, in which Adam "knew" his wife; i.e., had sexual relations with her. However, the fact that "know" is used biblically as a euphemism for sexual intercourse does not mean that "know" in general can have the meaning of "love," much less that "foreknow" can have the meaning of "forelove." At any rate, if God "foreloves" certain people, He must have already chosen--elected--them for such "foreloving." Yet the scripture makes clear that God’s election is based on His foreknowledge, not the reverse.

The fact that the doctrine of unconditional election provides assurance of salvation (for those who know themselves to be elect) does not make it true. If anything, it suggests an ulterior motive (beyond the testimony of scripture and reason) for those who hold that doctrine. We must hold a doctrine because Scripture clearly supports it, not because it produces a result that we like.

VI. The Necessity of Personal Perseverance

It seems logical that if election is unconditional and grace is irresistible, then perseverance is a necessary corollary. However, since the Arminian position views personal election as conditioned upon the response of faith and views grace as resistible, it is not committed to perseverance as a doctrine.

Scriptures dealing with assurance, including those relating it to election, are there to give comfort to sincere believers that despite external pressures and persecutions, they will be enabled to remain in a faith relationship by the power of God. These scriptures, however, do not give assurance that the believer will never fall away; indeed, many scriptures warn against precisely that possibility. We can be assured that we will always be enabled to believe and thus never need lose our salvation; we are not assured that once we’ve been saved, we will never fall away.

Further Considerations: Overall perspectives of the rival systems

The areas in which the two systems are most clearly divergent are two. Calvinism views God primarily in His aspect of justice, and views the human will as essentially passive or mechanical--the sum total of all a person’s desires. It is therefore basically deterministic. Arminianism views God primarily in His aspect of mercy, and views the human will as essentially active and determinative. Apart from the pressures of a person’s various desires is something that retains the power of individual choice. This faculty, the will, is enabled by the reception of the Gospel to respond in faith and to receive salvation. The will is also able to reject faith after salvation, despite the fact that God will not allow any circumstances to take our faith from us. Although it would satisfy justice for God to select from the mass of sinful and condemned humanity a small number (Matt. 7.14) to save, and to abandon the rest to their deserved fate without hope, it does not seem in the character of God to so selectively and parsimoniously mete out mercy to the fortunate few. It seems much more in the character of God to offer mercy generously to all, even though we are sinful, rebellious, and rightfully condemned, and to give us the enablement to respond to His offer of grace freely offered.

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[1] This "naive Arminianism" in itself is neither an argument for or against Arminianism: one could argue that the average Christian hasn’t studied the Bible closely enough to recognize the implication of passages dealing with election, or one could argue that Calvinism is a system of interpretation not naturally arising from Scripture but imposed upon it. What the present writer is concerned with here is the practical implication of "natural Arminianism" that Arminianism tends to be taught only in reaction to Calvinism, as opposed to being taught on its own.

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