Romans 9 - Part 1

Intro: I think the single greatest difficulty for the average reader of Romans 9 is that we miss what Paul and the Spirit would have come to mind when he either quotes or alludes to Old Testament citations. A Jew of that time would have been expected to call to mind the entire passage in it’s context either from part of a citation or merely a passing allusion to an Old Testament text. Remember, many faithful Israelites would have memorized massive portions of the Torah if not the whole thing. As Adam Clarke states "It should be considered that the apostle, in this and the following quotations, does not give us the whole of the text which he intends should be taken into his argument, but only a hint or reference to the passages to which they belong; directing us to recollect or peruse the whole passage, and there view and judge of the argument."

I believe when a reader understands the citations and allusions the meaning becomes clearer, and clearly non-Calvinistic. Perhaps surprising to many is that many Calvinists admit this! How do they account or the difficulty? They argue that Paul uses the citations in a different and new way, not originally found in the Old Testament context. Hogwash I say! I think the more likely scenario is that Paul is not proof texting and actually using the passages in accord with their original admittedly (by Calvinist’s) non-Calvinistic meaning. 

To help illustrate the point I have provided Romans 9 and emboldened the Old Testament citations and italicized and emboldened the illusions. Then, the full quote or passage is provided in blue. If the citations is already full enough in the passage itself I chose to omit it. Merely seeing just this basic point of hermeneutics sheds immense light on an otherwise very difficult passage. See for yourself.

Romans 9 New King James Version (NKJV)

Israel’s Rejection of Christ

9 I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, 2 that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen[a] according to the flesh, 4 who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; 5 of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.

Israel’s Rejection and God’s Purpose

6 But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel, 7 nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham; but, “In Isaac your seed shall be called.”[b] Genesis 21:12 (NKJV)12 But God said to Abraham, “Do not let it be displeasing in your sight because of the lad or because of your bondwoman. Whatever Sarah has said to you, listen to her voice; for in Isaac your seed shall be called.

8 That is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted as the seed. 9 For this is the word of promise: “At this time I will come and Sarah shall have a son.”[c] Genesis 18:10-14 (NKJV) 10 And He said, “I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son.”

(Sarah was listening in the tent door which was behind him.) 11 Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age; and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing.[a] 12 Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?”

13 And the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I surely bear a child, since I am old?’ 14 Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.”

10 And not only this, but when Rebecca also had conceived by one man, even by our father Isaac 11 (for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls), 12 it was said to her, “The older shall serve the younger.”[d]  Genesis 25:23(NKJV)

23 And the Lord said to her:

“Two nations are in your womb,

Two peoples shall be separated from your body;

One people shall be stronger than the other,

And the older shall serve the younger.”

13 As it is written, “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.”[e] Malachi 1:2-3 (NKJV)

2 “I have loved you,” says the Lord.

“Yet you say, ‘In what way have You loved us?’

Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?”

Says the Lord.

“Yet Jacob I have loved;

3 But Esau I have hated,

And laid waste his mountains and his heritage

For the jackals of the wilderness.”

Israel’s Rejection and God’s Justice

14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! 15 For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.”[f] Exodus 33:19(NKJV)

19 Then He said, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”

16 So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. 17 For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.”[g]18 Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.

19 You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” 20 But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?

Jeremiah 18 (NKJV)

18 The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying: 2 “Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause you to hear My words.” 3 Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something at the wheel. 4 And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make.5 Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter?” says the Lord. “Look, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel! 7 The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, 8 if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. 9 And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, 10 if it does evil in My sight so that it does not obey My voice, then I will relent concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it.

22 What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, 24 even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?

25 As He says also in Hosea:

“I will call them My people, who were not My people,

And her beloved, who was not beloved.”[h]

Hosea 2:23 (NKJV)

23 Then I will sow her for Myself in the earth,

And I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy;[a]

Then I will say to those who were not My people,[b]

‘You are My people!’

And they shall say, ‘You are my God!’”

26 “And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them,

‘You are not My people,’

There they shall be called sons of the living God.”[ ai] Hosea 1:10(NKJV)

10 “Yet the number of the children of Israel

Shall be as the sand of the sea,

Which cannot be measured or numbered.

And it shall come to pass

In the place where it was said to them,

‘You are not My people,’[a]

There it shall be said to them,

‘You are sons of the living God.’

27 Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel:[j]

“Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea,

The remnant will be saved.

28 For He will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness,

Because the Lord will make a short work upon the earth.”[k]

29 And as Isaiah said before:

“Unless the Lord of Sabaoth[l] had left us a seed,

We would have become like Sodom,

And we would have been made like Gomorrah.”[m]

Present Condition of Israel

30 What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith; 31 but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness.[n] 32 Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law.[o] For they stumbled at that stumbling stone. 33 As it is written:

“Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense,

And whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.”[p]

John 6

Thesis: Traditional Calvinistic interpretation fails to due justice to the context by disconnecting any known reason  for the Father drawing people. Whereas I believe the text gives the reason for those drawn and not drawn. 

Contemporary Arminian Interpretation Fails: By also not paying attention to the context. It essentially see's the drawing in the same way albeit universal and not effective. 

However, there exists a strand of Arminian Interpretation that has some history and pedigree to it. This A) reads the passage in context with sensitivity to the Old Testament background. B) Explains the rationale for Christ's statement and the reason for the drawing. C) Posits a prior relationship with the Father as key to understanding to the text. D) Emphasizes the main point is the unity between father and son, and thus Christology. 

The Argument: After explaining why the classical/contemporary Arminian view fails because clearly not all are drawn (as they would argue), Joe Dongell writes in Why I am not a Calvinist...

But the Calvinist reading likewise fails to account fully for the context. Jesus is locked in a strenuous debate with religious leaders who claim special knowledge of and standing with God. From this privileged position, they seek to discredit Jesus completely. Their implied charge essentially involves an attempt to sever Jesus from God, affirming the latter while rejecting the former. In doing this, they wish to establish the right to claim, "We know God intimately, but you are utterly alien to us! We stand in right relationship to God, but we completely reject you." 

Jesus counter charge strikes directly at the root of their authority: the presumption that they knew God in the first place! "You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you (Jn 5:37-38). Far from knowing God, then, Jesus opponents had already rejected not only the testimony of John the baptist but also of Moses: "If you believed Moses, you believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?" (Jn 5:46) In this question poses by Jesus we discover the key principle: rejecting God's first offerings of truth will utterly block further illumination. God will not offer more truth or manifest his full glory (the eternal Son) while light at hand is being spurned. In other words, we can't actively reject the Father and at the same time have any chance of accepting the Son. Since the Father and Son are one in nature, character and mission, the rejection of one necessarily involves the rejection of the other. The fundamental issue of this passage is not that of predestination but of Christology and the unity of the Father and Son. 

The Jewish opponents's inability to come to Jesus did not lie, then, in the hidden, eternal plan of God but in their own track record of trampling prior light, of having already denied God himself and spurned God's corrective punishment. Had they received Moses fully, thereby coming to know the Father to the degree possible at that time, they would have already belonged to the Father's flock, and the Father would have drawn them to the Son. But in rejecting Jesus, they demonstrated that they never surrendered to God in the first place, that they had set their faces like flint against all of his continued overtures. Since they did not belong to the Father's own flock, they wouldn't be part of the transfer of sheep already trusting the Father into the fold of the Son (Jn 6:37, 39). 

Their spiritual vanity came to full light when they imagined themselves as being qualified to pass judgment on Jesus, the very embodiment of all truth, while persistently spurning God's lesser lights (e.g., Moses and John the Baptist). Were they willing to drop their pretensions and surrender to God's teaching, they would have been taught by God and led on to the Lord of life, since Jesus promises that "everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me (Jn 6:45)

By way of analogy (a really bad one) ... If some critic of Ben Aflecks Batman  said "that was a bad portrayal of Batman." He was "nothing like the real batman is supposed to be like in the comics," one might say. Yet, the truth is this critic has never once read the comics. He has a Batman of his own creation in his head. The source material strongly supports that Ben Afleck is actually doing a great job as Batman. Those who truly know the comics, and are acquainted thoroughly with them, will naturally appreciate Ben's performance. Those who are presumptuous and think they know better, reject him for the batman they saw in the Joel Schumacher films or some other abomination. But those who know the comics, the animated series, exc. will be drawn. Again not a great analogy but it makes a point. Whether Calvinism is true or not, it is not found in this passage.