The following is a section from the book Why I Am Not A Calvinist by Jerry L. Walls and Joseph R. Dongell (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004), pp. 84-95. It is taken from chapter 2, “Engaging the Bible.”
“Romans 9:11-12, 16, 18, 21
“[God commanded that Esau serve Jacob] before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad-in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls…It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy…Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden…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?”
These verses form the most contested territory of the Calvinist-Arminian dispute. They appear to support directly the Calvinist teaching of an individual, unconditional election to salvation (and to damnation). What could be clearer than these straightforward declarations that God has mercy on whomever he wills, that human beings are but clay in his hands, and that the individual fates of Jacob and Esau were divinely determined without any consideration of their future responses to God? Indeed R. C. Sproul, a prominent Calvinist, claims that the entire edifice of Arminian theology is destroyed by a single verse: “It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy” (Rom 9:16).[1]
But the context in which these verses are planted helps us grasp their sense more clearly, that is, Romans 9-11, recognized by most scholars as a single cohesive argument forming the climax of Romans 1-11.[2] Romans 9:1-5 sets the tone for the remainder of chapters 9-11, as Paul reveals the anguish of his heart over his fellow Jews, who have in large measure turned away from the gospel. If we fail to see that Paul from the start identifies Israel’s unbelief as the cause of his anguish and the issue he wishes to pursue, we will likely misread many statements throughout these chapters and mistakenly build a theology on a single verse.[3] These three chapters, properly read together, address not so much the question of how individuals are saved (see Rom 3-6 for a direct address of these matters), but rather what Christians should say about Israel in light of its current rejection of the gospel.
If many of Paul’s fellow Jews resisted the gospel because God had (unconditionally) chosen to elect some individuals for salvation and others for damnation (as Rom 9:11 alone might be read), it is hard to understand why such a simple claim requires three chapters of explanation, and why the warning against the clay’s questioning the potter (Rom 9:19-20) should not immediately end the entire discussion. If it is God’s sovereign will to unconditionally damn specific persons, then it is also difficult to account for Paul’s anguish over their loss and for his zealous and hopeful efforts to save some of them (Rom 11:14). But Paul has much more to say beyond Romans 9:23, and his line of argument leads away from a deterministic interpretation of salvation.
Paul contends that Israel is still God’s designated lineage of salvation and that faith in Christ remains God’s designated avenue of salvation. Both elements of this claim must be preserved for Paul’s gospel to stand. If Paul allows membership in Israel to determine salvation, then salvation by faith is no longer the sole avenue through which God redeems fallen creatures. But if Paul casts off the unique status of Israel in order to safeguard salvation by faith alone, then God’s character and reliability are undercut and all is lost. The care Paul takes in establishing both of these seemingly irreconcilable claims signals just how essential their harmony is for bringing his whole argument (Rom 1-11) to a successful conclusion.
Paul is apparently worried that some Gentile Christians are all too ready to dispense entirely with Israel and its history (see Rom 11:18-21), perhaps reasoning that if God awards salvation by faith alone apart from national identity, and if most Jews have rejected God’s call to this salvation, then the nation has sinned away its privileged position; its national identity has become irrelevant. But Paul emphatically halts such thinking. He asks, “Did God reject his people?” and immediately supplies an unequivocal answer, “By no means!” (Rom 11:1). Though some (if not most) Israelites have fallen, Paul insists that the nation still functions as God’s chosen vessel, serving as God’s instrument in extending his gospel to the world (Rom 11:11-12, 15). Furthermore, Gentiles who now believe in Jesus must realize that they, like wild olive branches, have been grafted into an ancient tree. Despite having lost many branches, the original tree remains the chosen tree – the vital trunk supplies God’s life to all living branches, whether natural or engrafted ones (Rom 11:18, 24). The ancient tree of Israel, planted by grace, remains the chosen tree, for “God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable” (Rom 11:29).
Paul distinguishes the irrevocable call of the nation of Israel as a whole from the fate of individual Israelites. While the final destination of the people of God is absolutely certain, the future of any given individual is determined by his or her continued faith and trust in God. Gentiles who believe are grafted into the ancient tree, whereas Jews who fall into unbelief are broken off. Since faith is the sole condition for remaining engrafted, Paul issues both warning and hope. On the one hand, those Gentiles who have recently been grafted into the ancient tree through faith must humbly guard against falling into unbelief, since they too would then be severed from the tree. On the other hand, the natural branches lying on the ground can “be grafted into their own olive tree” if “they do not persist in unbelief’ (Rom 11:23-24). In other words, the destiny of God’s people as a whole is unchanged throughout the ages, though each individual branch participates in this salvation only if he or she remains engrafted by faith (cf. Jn 15:5-6). As Paul Achtemeier explains, “Paul teaches destiny without teaching individual determinism.”[4]
But we have yet to see the fullness of Paul’s agony. For though God’s faithfulness to Israel’s lineage stands secure alongside the gospel of salvation by faith, Paul is painfully aware that most of his people have turned aside from the gospel, even showing a hardened resistance to it. Neutral observers could wonder whether God has properly proclaimed the gospel of Jesus to Israel or whether the large-scale rejection of the gospel among the people of Israel will ultimately derail God’s larger plan.
In Romans 10 Paul asserts that Israel’s failure to receive the gospel did not follow from simple ignorance. Instead, Israel refused to submit to God’s provisions, stubbornly insisting on establishing its own righteousness (Rom 10:3). The gospel message has been spread so widely that Paul employs Psalm 19:4 to characterize its reach: “Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” If Israel is ignorant of God’s gift of righteousness by faith (Rom 10:3), this ignorance is Israel’s own creation, rooted in its refusal to listen to the message even now. God’s lament over wayward Israel in Isaiah’s day remains tragically accurate in Paul’s day: “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people” (Rom 10:2 1; cf. Is 65:1-2).
But what then of the divine plan for Israel? Is it a success if in the end only a few original branches can be found on the ancient trunk? Here we reach Paul’s remarkable vision of the future. Essentially, he envisions the reversal of an older prophetic expectation. Isaiah, for example, looked forward to the day when God’s people would so thoroughly cast out evil and obey the Lord that they would become a beacon of truth to the world: “The nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory” (Is 62:2; see also Is 56:7-8; 60:1-22). Israel’s restoration would lead to the gathering of the Gentiles in an “Israel first, then the Gentiles” sequence of redemption.
But in light of Israel’s present rejection of the gospel, Paul announces that God will now work in the inverse sequence: it will be the Gentiles first, then Israel. Israel is in a hardened state, while multitudes of Gentiles are streaming to God and will continue to do so until the Gentile response reaches its fullness. At that point, Paul envisions that many Jews will turn in faith to Jesus, marking the completion of God’s redemptive plan (Rom 11:12, 25-27). So unexpected is this reversed sequence that it constitutes a “mystery” only recently made known to the church (Rom 11:25; see also Acts 15:14-21).
Israel’s present condition, though it grieves God and Paul alike, does not represent the end of Israel. Israel’s hardness is temporary because this hardness may be reversed; it is conditional because it will last only so long as unbelief persists (Rom 11:23). Paul hopes to penetrate the Jews’ hard hearts from time to time through proclamation of the gospel (Rom 11:14), showing that such hardness can scarcely be considered an unconditional and irreversible decree of God’s eternal will.
But we must ask why God hardens hearts at all. What does he hope to accomplish? Pharaoh’s story will help us clarify Paul’s argument. With Pharaoh, we see a man already shaking his fist in defiance even as Moses first issued God’s command: “Who is the LORD, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD and I will not let Israel go” (Ex 5:2). We see that Pharaoh was obstinate even before God began to harden his heart. It is apparent that God did not transform Pharaoh from a meek and mild gentleman to the fire-breathing dragon Moses met; rather God strengthened Pharaoh’s heart in the perverse direction Pharaoh himself had already resolutely chosen.[5]
Why was such strengthening necessary? To enable Pharaoh to go more than one round with the omnipotent God, so that God could repeatedly display his overwhelming power through a series of plagues. But here is the key: God designed this impressive display of power to reveal the truth about himself to Pharaoh’s people. God tells Moses, “The Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it” (Ex 7:5). We discern the positive aspects of this gift when we realize that God desired to also reveal himself to his own people: “[I shall bring about the fourth plague] so that you will know that I, the LORD, am in this land” (Ex 8:22). God strengthened Pharaoh’s obstinacy in order to reveal himself more widely among all peoples of the earth as the one and only God (Ex 9:16; Rom 9:17).
Turning back to Paul’s argument, we see that understanding Pharaoh’s story helps us make sense of Israel’s hardness. God did not create Pharaoh’s initial hostility any more than he caused Israel’s initial unbelief. Rather God reinforced their tendencies to bring about a greater proclamation of his truth around the world. While some might have wondered whether the unbelief of God’s chosen people would thwart God’s plan to redeem the world through Israel, Paul assures us that God will triumph even more spectacularly by using Israel’s unbelief to serve his larger purpose. While Paul does not flesh out the dynamics involved, the book of Acts repeatedly shows that the Jews’ hostile reaction to Christian preaching actually propelled the gospel to ever-wider Gentile audiences.[6] Jewish resistance to the gospel formed, in effect, a bridge the apostles and evangelists crossed to evangelize the nations of the world. God transformed their resistance into opportunity.
But standing in the way of Paul’s teaching were the strong presumptions of many Jews that Abraham descendants were assured salvation and that any theology which allowed that an Israelite might be ‘lost” would render God’s promise to Abraham a failure (see Rom 9:6). To counter this view Paul shows that a genealogical approach to salvation has never been valid, even in Israel’s own history. God chose Isaac but not Ishmael, though Abraham was the father of both. God chose Jacob over Esau, though they were both sons of Isaac. God’s distinction between children within the genetic lineage of Abraham proves God’s freedom to operate along lines other than genetic ties (Rom 9:6-13).
To make sense of Romans 9-11 as a whole, we must identify properly those most offended by Paul’s claim that God may choose to be merciful to whomever God wishes (Rom 9:14). Calvinists typically understand the objectors to be the non-elect worldwide whom God has chosen to “hate.” According to this interpretation, the non-elect accuse God of acting unfairly because he chooses some humans for salvation while passing over others for no discernible reason. Paul, according to the Calvinist view, defends God’s right to act unconditionally in choosing to have mercy on or to harden whomever he wishes.
While this interpretation makes some sense within the confines of Romans 9:6-26 alone, it stands at odds with the rest of Romans 9-11, which emphasizes that faith is what distinguishes the redeemed from the lost. Furthermore, the focus of chapters 9 through 11 has not been on the world at large but on Israel—eternally chosen but still unbelieving (Rom 11:28). If Paul is claiming that God can be faithful to this nation as a whole while pouring out his wrath on many of its individual members, the chief objectors to Paul likely are Jews! Indeed, the presumption of Paul’s Jewish opponents in Romans 2:1 is that their membership in Abraham’s genetic lineage and possession of the law should render them immune to God’s final wrath (see esp. Rom 2:1-29).
To identify God’s accusers in Romans 9:14 as Paul’s opponents, then, makes all the difference in interpreting the rest of this passage. The justice Jews were demanding from God was not equal treatment of all human beings (in the spirit of modern liberals or humanists who demand “fairness” from God on their own terms); rather, they were demanding the guarantee of salvation to every individual Israelite. In effect, the accusers were demanding that God’s mercy be given only to the descendants of Abraham and that Gentiles first transform themselves into Jews before receiving salvation (cf. Gal 2:14).
When Paul asserts God’s freedom to have mercy on whomever he wishes, Paul is not forging a doctrine of unconditional individual election but establishing God’s freedom to pour out his mercy beyond the boundaries of Jewish ethnic identity. To those Jews who cherished a narrower version of God’s mercy, Paul repeated God’s word to Moses: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (Rom 9:15; cf. Ex 33:19). There is a wideness in God’s mercy!
Paradoxically then, God’s selection of Isaac and Jacob over Ishmael and Esau ultimately served to broaden the flow of mercy by dethroning simple genetic connection to Abraham. Now the gates are open wide for God’s plan of universal mercy to come into play. The question that naturally arises at this point is, how wide is his mercy? The answer is explicitly announced in Romans 11:32: “For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.” In other words, as wide as the problem of sin reaches (universally), so wide has God’s mercy spread in granting the possibility of salvation (universally). While Paul himself does not draw these loose ends together, we may surmise that even the descendants of Ishmael and Esau—whose lineages were ruled out as carriers of the sonship, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises—can enter into the stream of God’s mercy by faith, just as any other wild olive branch might.
We are now in a position to clarify two of the most challenging issues in chapter 9: the right of God to harden whomever he desires and the role (if any) of human faith in God’s sovereign choice of Jacob over Esau. Our review of the whole drift of Romans 9-11 now provides crucial guidance in seeing the point Paul shapes in using the story of Pharaoh and the image of the potter. Since the present unbelief and possible future conversion of (presently) unbelieving Israel drives the whole of this three-chapter argument (Rom 9:1-5; 11:25-32), it is nearly certain that Paul’s reference to two different vessels being crafted from the “same lump” (Rom 9:19-24) correspond to the two different subgroups making up the one nation of Israel: believing Jews and unbelieving Jews. God has the right, Paul explains, to harden and make use of this unbelieving portion of Israel even though these very folk are Abraham’s physical descendants, those privileged to possess the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the law, the temple worship, the promises and the patriarchs (see Rom 9:3-5), and even though they are beloved for the sake of the fathers (Rom 11:28). In other words, their privileged position on these matters cannot shield them from God’s punishment for their sin and faithlessness, or from God’s choice to harden them in their sin in order to accomplish God’s larger purposes. And it is clear from the way Paul wraps up his treatment of the whole matter in chapter 11 that the hardening of some Jews and their preparation (as vessels of wrath) for destruction (Rom 9:22-23) is not rooted in an irreversible, eternal, unconditional divine decree, since it is rooted in nothing other than their own unbelief (Rom 9:31-32; 10:1-4, 18-21; 11:20, 30-31), which may one day yield to saving faith, whether on a small scale (Rom 11:1 3-1 4) or on a larger scale (Rom 11:12, 15, 23-27). God has a sovereign right, insists Paul, to condition the salvation of individual Israelites upon their faith, however deeply this may offend their sense of entitlement based on their racial connection to Abraham (Rom 11:19-2 1).
Finally we approach Paul’s teaching that God chose Jacob over Esau “before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad-in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls” (Rom 9:11 12). Accordingly “It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy” (Rom 9:16). Now if these verses are stripped from their place within the whole argument of Romans 9-11, then they quite easily conform to the Calvinist doctrine of unconditional, individual election to salvation. But again the larger context and flow of the argument takes us in another direction. If Paul’s focus all along has been upon that large body of unbelieving Jews who imagine that their physical connection to the people of Israel guarantees salvation, then it is quite likely that the “doing of good or bad” and “works” and human “desire or effort” have reference to what Paul has targeted again and again throughout Romans: Jewish confidence that possessing and doing (specific features of) the Mosaic law will guarantee salvation (e.g., Rom 2:17-29). Put differently, Paul is not sweeping every human response or choice or act of faith off the table as irrelevant in the matter of salvation. He is sweeping away the kind of narrow dedication to doing the law that Paul himself reported as part of his own pre-Christian past: “If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless” (Phil 3:4-6).
That precisely this kind of “doing” is in view here in Romans 9 is confirmed when Paul immediately turns to diagnose the problem of unbelieving Jews: “For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes” (Rom 10:2-4). Note that Paul does not condemn zeal in and of itself, but misdirected zeal. Nor does Paul sweep human choice and response away as irrelevant, but he urges submission and faith. In other words, God’s choice of Jacob over Esau reinforces Paul’s steady opposition to trust in the (Mosaic) law: God chose one lad over the other before either had a chance to engage the works of the law, making it clear that by such works, righteousness will not be attained.[7] Rather, salvation is found by submitting to and trusting in the gracious God of Israel.
In summary, Romans 9-11 tells the story of God’s determination to extend his mercy beyond the confines of Abraham’s genetic lineage, to preserve the special status of this nation as “gifted and called” despite the disobedience of many individual Israelites, and then to lavish them with an even grander measure of mercy when they abandon their unbelief (Rom 11:23-27). God, in his sovereign freedom, does extend mercy even to Gentiles while hardening some disobedient Jews, though this may offend Jewish sensitivities. Furthermore, God’s unconditional selection of Jacob over Esau before they could do any good works shows that God’s salvation will be granted neither as a birthright to Abraham’s physical descendants nor as a reward to those privileged to possess (and perform in part) the Mosaic law. Rather, it is the sovereign God’s will that all who believe, whether Jew or Gentile, be grafted into the holy tree of salvation. The beauty and majesty of God’s plan for universal mercy stirs Paul to an outburst of praise: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Rom 11:33).
In this brief treatment of biblical material, we have defended a view of God’s salvation that honors his decision to create a world of free creatures. It celebrates God’s loving pursuit of all persons for salvation; it finds human faith (uncaused by God) as the fundamental condition for receiving God’s gracious salvation; and it views the divine election of Israel and Christ as that tree of redemption into which all persons can be incorporated by faith. We read in Scripture of sin’s devastating power to cripple all dimensions of the human realm, but we also find clues that God lovingly pursues all persons by graciously creating room for their positive response to available light. We discourage any approach to Scripture that imagines a single verse can prove or disprove a given doctrine. Rather, we encourage the study of passages within their various contexts with literary and theological sensitivity.
Return to Chapter 16 – The Doctrine of Election According to Scripture
Footnotes
[1] R.C. Sproul, Chosen by God (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1986), p. 151.
[2] The single greatest weakness of John Piper’s Calvinistic interpretation of Romans 9 is his failure to account adequately for the remainder of Paul’s argument in Romans 10-11. In these chapters (esp. in the image of branches being broken off, perhaps being grafted in, perhaps being broken off again and then perhaps grafted in yet again) we see most vividly that Paul views unconditional election in a corporate sense and individual salvation conditioned not on a divine decree, but on the faith of individuals. Not once does Piper mention Romans 11:22-23, verses that directly challenge his interpretation of unconditional, individual divine election in Romans 9. John Piper, The Justification of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1983), p. 306.
[3] For a readable treatment of the whole argument of Romans 9-11, we recommend Paul J. Achtemeier, Romans (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), pp. 153-92, esp. pp. 161-65.
[4] Ibid., pp. 163-64.
[5] Here we agree with Sproul’s assessment of the hardening of Pharaoh as “passive hardening.” Sproul, Chosen by God, pp. 143-46.
[6] See Acts 8:1-4, 14: 1:19-23; 3:46-48; 7:1-15; 19:8-10; 23:1-11; 28:25-29.
[7] A similar case is made in James D. G. Dunn, Romans 9-16, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas, Tex.: Word, 1988), p. 549. It is surprising that Moo rejects the possibility that performance of the Mosaic law (after a fashion) is in view in the case of Esau and Jacob (Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996], p. 582 n. 55). While it is true that Paul in Galatians insists that the law came centuries after the patriarchs (Gal 3:1 7), it is also true that here in Romans Paul argues that Abraham’s faith preceded his circumcision (Rom 4:9 1 2). The point of identifying Abraham’s circumcision no doubt relates to the strong place of circumcision in the Mosaic law, and the common Jewish belief (in Paul’s day) that Abraham knew and obeyed the Mosaic law. See Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), PP 372, 384.
The Truth of the Gospel 