In deference to the overriding concern that these responses be brief…this will probably be a bit disjointed and will certainly require constant reference to Michael–MG…whatever he wants to be called–’s post.
General Response: Basically, this will be backwards…Michael’s conclusion deals with the whole of my argument. So I will begin by responding to his general critiques.
“…though it is good to hear how Donald understands the meaning of Scripture, I don’t think that this understanding is privileged as superior if we can’t be given reasons for preferring it.”: I guess I could have been clearer on this, but basically, I’ve structured this debate much more in the Lincoln-Douglas debate style. I’ve been cast as the negative role, but no one would know what I was talking about if I only critiqued Michael’s exegesis. What I did instead was to give a positive construction of my own which was largely aware of your analysis and tried to anticipate some of Michael’s responses. I did this for two reasons: 1) If this is a debate and not a court case, there should be an even burden of proof. If Michael’s interpretation is presumed accurate unless I both debunk it and propose my own, better solution, well, I have a much harder job than him. 2) I wanted to show where I’m coming from. When I read the passage, my exegesis jumped off of the page at me. Now, it may not do that to everyone, but in many cases, I think the beauty of my exegesis and that of far greater scholars such as Calvin is that it just fits the passage. You don’t need an advanced degree to be able to say, “Mmmmm, that’s good exegesis.”
What Michael’s final two paragraphs demand from me (or assume from the passage) is a proof-text. He says, “I think there needs to be some kind of argument that says either some part of Romans 9 or the whole of Romans 9 entails full-blooded Calvinism.” What he seems to be expecting is impossible. To accept Calvinism, he demands that only a specific aspect of election be taught…that of elected individuals. He then critiques that idea by pointing to a more robust doctrine of election which includes corporate election, non-salvific election, historic calls, and effectual calling. What you’ll really find in “full-blooded” Calvinism is much more than TULIP. TULIP itself is not a summation of Calvinism but a response to Arminianism. What John Calvin taught was a view of this passage which covers many of the points that Michael makes. To say that a passage talks about election is not to say that it does not talk about more than one type of election. But I’ll defer to the much more concisely-stated response by David Roth on that.
Specific Response: Yes, section-by-section (hopefully brief)
I.
Fundamentally accepting Michael’s argument requires accepting his demand that this passage somewhere teach all four of his i-iv aspects of election at once (if one is to conclude Calvinism). From the very start, I’ve never accepted this premise. This may be the breaking point of the whole debate, but I still think those four categories were rather arbitrary and see no reason to accept them as binding on this circumstance. (and yes, I was listening to Michael’s presentation. He can review some of it, but I simply didn’t find it convincing)
My next comment gets back to a more general critique I have of Michael’s approach. He uses a heck of a lot of hedges to basically say there’s something between this passage arguing for and it arguing against Calvinism. On one level, this is correct…Paul isn’t trying to prove election here, he’s making arguments which assume a certain nature of election. Paul’s argument here is about showing that God’s promises have not failed, not laying out a theological encyclopedia reference for “election.” However, what Michael ends up doing is presuming that unless my case proves that the only responsible reading is Calvinist, then his argument stands. I guess this is where his point really confuses me. When positively stating his thesis, Michael uses a lot of hedge words, basically asking that we admit that there are other possible readings of this passage. He does make one concrete leap, namely that those readings are equally valid, which is an impossible point for anyone to reach unless they’re relativist, unconcerned with theology, or think this passage is unimportant. (In other words, if one reads the Bible, they’ll obviously gravitate to what they feel is the best reading, not just pick one out of a hat and say, ‘eh, they’re all good, but I’ll go with door #3′.) In his critique, however, Michael goes one further and says that his explanations leave no particular reason to choose the Calvinist interpretation. He should just be open and honest, he thinks he’s offering a point-by-point refutation of Calvinism in Romans 9, to say anything else is to be evasive and needlessly politic.
Since he didn’t make much of it, I won’t push my point about divine inspiration to human authorship other than to say that the flipside of Michael’s argument is also true. As much as Jesus and Paul were tied to their circumstances, they were able to transcend them at times. This is not to say they were not related to their background, only that an a priori assumption that they were slaves of their surroundings is unwarranted.
II.
I’m not sure what Michael is getting at in his critique. My point was precisely that Paul was not talking about salvation when he referred to Isaac and Ishmael. He was quite obviously countering the common Jewish assumption (found in much Tannaitic literature) that the Jews were saved by virtue of their lineage. Yes, this was a communal identity, but it had bearing for individual salvation. Therefore, Paul pointed out that the covenant promise (which operated within a cultural sphere) did not entail a promise of salvation.
As to Michael’s counter of my assertion that Romans 9 has increasing levels of specificity: I’m simply saying that this is a feature of Paul’s argument…specifically in the run-up to his prolepsis (if we’re going to earn points with the big words). This does not mean that he goes from all of Israel right down to Bob and Mordechai. What it means is that he whittles down the groups that he’s talking about. Specifically, Paul is moving us toward his point that not all of Israel is the true Israel. In fact, Paul soon moves to the proposition that the true Israel is the remnant, the believing few. In other words, Abraham’s true descendants are delineated by faith, not blood, which is how Paul transitions into his ingrafting argument, stating that the Gentiles are really children of Abraham, thereby showing how “God’s word has certainly not failed.”
In more specific examples, Jacob and Esau is most certainly referring to both senses of the names. However, in pointing this out, Michael more or less glosses over the literal, individual people when the words of the text (esp. referring to physical birth and God’s promise to Jacob over Esau) clearly refer to the literal Jacob and Esau. What Paul is doing here is continuing his point in a similar vein as the Isaac/Ishmael point. Just as much as not all sons of Abraham are sons of promise, so not all sons of Isaac share in that promise. Paul points out in making this point that this exclusion of Esau had nothing to do with the actions of either person, being predestined before birth. This is certainly unconditional election, but the focus here is the tracing of the promise, not debates over the salvation of the two (although it is fairly clear from Scripture that Esau was probably reprobate).
Michael then questioned my reference to Pharoah: “For instance, Donald assumes that God hardened Pharoah’s heart so that he would challenge God’s power. But is there any good reason given for why we should think this was God’s motivation?” I can’t think of a better response than this: “You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. And the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.” Exodus 7: 2-5 And in case you were wondering, eight verses later, “Yet Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the LORD had said.”
III.
Michael questions why I think that Paul is talking here from God’s perspective. Well, I don’t see how he couldn’t be. Who’s side is Paul arguing on here? When he talks about God’s purposes and choice, who’s perspective does the Apostle take? This entire passage is an apologetic for God’s actions. Paul’s whole purpose is to point out that God is not being unfaithful. To prove this fully, Paul must talk about the spiritual nature of the true Israel, a community only God can truly see. Beyond that, Paul is chronicling the broad strokes of redemptive history here, and who weaves the tapestry of history but God? I’m not saying that Paul is arguing as if he were God…what I’m saying is that the side/perspective/apologetic is all centered around God and His relationship to His people, specifically how He has interacted with them (not how they are called to interact with Him). Part of the reason that Paul sounds so electiony here while he says, “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling” in Philippians 2:12 is specifically the point I made. Paul is talking about God’s interactions with His people…in terms of election, Paul’s talking about things the way they are. When he talks about our call to obey and our call to love Christ, Paul is addressing us as a fellow Christian and how we are to interact with God. In other words, he’s taking the human perspective and how things seem.
David’s response pretty much covers what I was going to say about the potter analogy other than my initial assertion that it is simply bad exegesis. Paul is using Biblical language, not quotes in this passage, and while context means a lot for quotes, just because an analogy is used for one purpose in one place does not mean that it therefore has the same scope everywhere else.
Conclusion:
I’m sure Michael will vehemently disagree with me, but I think that he is never able to superecede the fallacy that the sum of the parts equals the whole in his argument. He boils down passages into tidbits seemingly at random and hopes to fire enough holes through them so that he can say that Calvinism doesn’t work in any of them; therefore, it can’t work in this passage. I know he maintains that the whole also does not entail Calvinism, but in doing so, he always points to the parts. He also brings up other areas such as ‘working out our salvation’ and ’shipwrecking our faith’, saying that those passages seem to be concise rebuttals of Calvinism. Basically, I don’t think he’s ever left the proof-text mentality. When Calvinists lay out what they believe to be Paul’s (and therefore the Biblical) doctrine of election, they look to passages throughout Paul’s epistles (including this one). What they do is say that Paul often talks as if he is making a lot of assumptions about the nature of theology/God, while he spends precious little space (if any) giving concrete and total definitions of theological precepts like election. When I talk about the Calvinist flavor that the Bible gives me, it’s seeking to distill these underlying assumptions of Paul that I’m talking about. The election of Romans 9 is certainly unconditional (not predicated on human action), and it certainly has strong implications for salvation. In the end, Paul spends much more time talking about the sovereignty, power, and irresistible will of God (ie. in several non-salvific and salvific senses in this passage) than predestination, but understanding the previous three in a Calvinist sense lends a homogeny and flow to a consistent Scriptural understanding of all of the ideas.
