I know cutting and pasting has come under fire here recently, but this is from my own page (
http://members.aol.com/etb700/predestination.html), and is what I would want to type out anyway. The subject of Romans 9 needed a better answer than what has been given so far:
...but people don't even bother to check the [SIZE=-1]CONTEXT[/SIZE]. This passage is discussing
Israel, a
nation of people God was judging as opposed to Gentiles whom He was spreading His grace to, not individual people or everyone in a particular group being predestined for wrath as opposed to other individual people being elected for grace. The passage also mentions God's hardening of Pharaoh, but this is still not talking about salvation or [SIZE=-1]ETERNAL[/SIZE] punishment. Paul uses the example of Isaac, Jacob, Esau and Pharaoh to show how the people were chosen ("elected") by God for His purpose and not by their own will in the first place, and how God raised them up to show his power, and then hardens, all according to His will, and chooses others (and once again, individual salvation is not even mentioned. The very context of Jacob and Esau from Malachi 1:1-4, 3:6, and even the original Genesis 25:12 account is discussing nations!).
The Jews thought that their physical nation was "chosen" by God over others.
This is precisely what Paul is debunking, as the Gospel tells us all have sinned and are under the same condemnation. Therefore, salvation must be purely by God's grace. The
Think about it:
who would ask Paul such a question in the first place? One of the "non-elect"? But who could know now that they are ultimately non-elect? Or is it just any arbitrary listener who happens not to like God's election process? A first century reader who just grasped the context regarding Israel and inheritance versus faith would get the point and have no reason to be so offended. But an Israelite in the Church who still had not fully submitted to the Gospel (as we see in the Gospels, Galatians and elsewhere), was another story. The Jews saw their national identity (physical inheritance) as an extension of themselves. It was everything to them, including their salvation. So to suggest they were no longer "chosen" in the sense they were used to was a great affront to them. So
then, one of them might ask "why does He find fault" [i.e., with the people], and
then Paul says "Who are you O man, to reply against God"? The Jews had been opposing the Gospel and the apostles all along, for among other things, criticizing the Jews for their hardness in rejecting Christ, as well as opening up to the gentiles; yet, possessing the Law (v.4), they should have known better. But the entire Gospel is showing that "chosen" groups one had no choice belonging to did not solve the problem of sin, and thus could not save.
Calvinists argue that the entire book of Romans is a "long argument on [individual] salvation, so why would he now be discussing groups?" Let's review the context by further examining the "why does He yet find fault; for who has resisted His will?" question.
WHAT is really being asked here? "Yet" find "fault" for what? "Why would God unconditionally choose someone else and not me/[others], and save them by 'enabling' them to repent, yet leave me/[others] in this helpless state, dead in sin, unable to repent, yet still hold me/[them] responsible [i.e. 'find fault'] for my sin, and send me/[them] to Hell when I/[they] couldn't even 'resist His will' to place me/[them] in this state (before I[/they] were born, even) in the first place?".
This is what people are asking Calvinists today, who then in turn simply project this into the text. But Paul had just mentioned Jacob, Esau and Pharaoh, These may be individuals, but what were they being used to illustrate? Step back another few verses: "not the children of the flesh are children of God; but the children of the promise are counted for a seed." (v.8) Paul argues that simply being "Abraham's children" does not make one a child of promise, because for one thing, Abraham had other children beside just the Jews. But God had declared that "In Isaac shall your Seed be called." (v.7) Being from Isaac also wasn't enough, because Esau also was his child. But God had still unconditionally chosen Jacob (v.12, 13), not because of any righteousness of his (Jews thought that their forefathers must have been chosen because of being more righteous, thus "works" rather than "Him that calleth"), for they were not even yet born when God made this decision.(v.11) So the whole point here is that it must be more than physical lineage from Abraham. The next step is that even being of Jacob's physical lineage is not enough.
To further demonstrate God's choice of men for these purposes was not "unjust" (v.14) Paul goes into the whole story of Pharaoh. No Jew thought of what God did to Pharaoh as being "unjust" (after all, it was for their sake, and that's what mattered to them!) So then what Paul is getting to nobody also should think is unjust. The whole context is two
groups "the Children of the flesh", and "the children of promise". It says nothing about the individuals in either group being unconditionally elected or preteritioned into those groups. It just assumes two groups, and emphasizes that what many thought was the class that mattered (Jew as opposed to Gentile) was actually not the right one.
Let's for once look more at the second part of v.20 (the beginning of Paul's answer to this question): "
Shall the thing formed say to Him who formed it, 'Why have you made me this way'?".
Made them what way? Predestined to Hell? Helplessly unable to repent, yet "held responsible" to repent and left in that state? Passed over for "saving grace" and therefore doomed to suffer the eternal "justice" for their sins? But
none of the above concepts are what was being discussed! So you just can't say "Paul was answering the objection to God's unconditional election and preterition process"!
The focus is on "children of promise" as opposed to "children of the flesh". Calvinists also take these two groups of "children" as classes of predetermined individuals.
According to Ephesians 2:3, we all started out as "children of wrath" (which would be synonymous with "vessels of wrath", "sons of disobedience"(Col.3:6), "seed of Satan" (Matt.13) and also "children of the flesh" for the Jews), and John clearly defines "children of the devil" and "children of God" as "he that commits..." or "...does not commit [practice] sin" (1 John 3:8-10). Thanks to our "depravity" (sin from Adam), nobody is born in the latter state, and so the former, as an eternal state of condemnation, is not what God unconditionally "makes" anybody. This should prove once and for all that the question and Paul's answer have nothing to do with Calvinistic reprobation or preterition. God has declared that there are two groups: Physical Israel (which is in the same spiritual status as the rest of humanity) and spiritual Israel (Romans 2:28, 29).
"Why did God make us physical Israel only if that doesn't make us the true children of promise? As much as we try so hard to keep the Law He gave us, why is he still finding fault
or not accepting us as we are? Didn't He create us as His people? Could we have resisted His will
to create us this way, if this is not what He counts?" T
HIS is what is being asked! HERE is where Paul says "who are you to reply back to God?" He as "the Potter" sovereignly laid out a plan, involving two categories of people; the first had a purpose, but this purpose is not the salvation of the individuals in the group, but to pave the way for the second. It's this second group one must be apart of, and who are we to question this plan? All of this is apart of the theme or "long argument" Paul is making throughout the whole book of Romans.
And this was the way the Church had read the passage for the first four centuries before the idea of unconditional "reprobation" was first posed.
Also, "vessels" is like a plural unity in this case— Israel consists of individual "vessels" as all creatures can be likened to vessels, but Israel as a whole was the "vessel",
as shown in Isaiah 29:16 & 45:9 and Jer. 18:4-6ff & 25:34 which are the very passages Paul is drawing upon here. Further proof that even as individual "vessels", one is not preordained,
in 2 Tim.2:20, 21, the 'vessels' of honor and dishonor are mentioned again, and a person chooses to be a vessel of honor, rather his choice being because he was preordained as a vessel of honor. And likewise, "mercy" and "wrath" must not be assumed to have only eternal meanings. The passage does NOT say "He shall have
saving mercy on who He shall have saving mercy", but it is made clear elsewhere that it is offered to all. Furthermore,
as one studies the gruesome fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, and how this fulfilled much of scriptural prophecy regarding the judgment of Israel; it becomes quite clear that THIS was the immediate "wrath" and "destruction" the passage is referring to, and which the Israelites were the "vessels" of!. The "vessels of mercy": the Christian Church composed of people of all nations (including Jews who crossed out of the former group!), was spared this horrific event, and continued on with God's grace to the present.
