Does Voting Count in God’s ‘Election’?
It is exactly one week before Christmas, and earlier today an announcement was made in my church that one of our young congregants, Cameron, a 26-year old husband and father of three young daughters, died from injuries suffered in an accident. The crash itself happened about a week earlier, when, in the early morning hours after Cameron helped a friend and was returning home, his vehicle hit a patch of black ice and he lost control of it. Since then, Cameron had lain in the hospital, and the congregation was told that despite the severity of the crash there was no major head trauma or damage to the spinal column. In short, Cameron was expected to recover. But again, that was last week. The man who made the announcement today added as compassionately as possible that this was apparently the time God had “determined” to bring Cameron home. This kind of statement was meant to offer consolation to the family, but, of course, it was also meant to calm the anxieties of those who might be tempted to wonder where God was in the midst of this terrible circumstance. Couldn’t God, we are tempted to ask, have done something to prevent this awful tragedy? Couldn’t the weather have been different so that the roads were in better shape? Couldn’t the young man have taken a different way home, so he wasn’t in that exact place on that particular part of the highway? These are natural questions for people to ask, but they pale into insignificance if one truly believes that God determined to take this young man home. After all, who are we to tell God that Cameron should still be here with us? (Shall the thing formed say to him who formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?) And so the traditional explanation prevailed of “whatever the Lord wills,” as yet another tragedy was generalized into a God-approved event to reassure nervous Christians of a Final Providence in a frightening world.
No doubt the age-old idea presented today, that man proposes but God disposes, has led many Christians throughout the centuries to wonder just what kind of a God they serve. Of all the chapters in the Bible (in this regard), Romans 9 seems to trouble Christians more than any other passage. This is because Romans 9 appears to add fuel to the fire of the argument about persons’ divinely appointed ends. So at this fundamental level, there is this question of whether God ‘conducts’ his relationships with people so that some men receive eternal mercy while others are “sovereignly passed over” (if not outrightly reprobated). Says Dr. Bob Deffinbaugh, a Reformed thinker trying to understand the biblical issue of election in Romans 9, while trying to figure out what God is doing:
If Romans 8 has the distinction of being the high-water mark of the New Testament, chapter 9 has the dubious honor of teaching one of the most emotionally volatile doctrines of all the Bible, that of election. This chapter is so troublesome to some Bible teachers that they would prefer it not to be in Scripture. One of the pastors I regard most highly in terms of his ministry in my life told me that he would try not to teach on chapter 9, even if he were teaching through the Book of Romans chapter by chapter.xxxix
Probably every Christian (including myself at one time) has wondered why God’s nature appears so different in Romans 9 compared to elsewhere in the Bible. The Psalms, for example, tell us that God is merciful and good, and certainly we see these divine traits exercised throughout the Old Testament as God enters into relationship with people. In the New Testament we also see God in the person of His Son as similarly benign: Jesus invites little children to come to him, feeds multitudes of people to prevent their becoming faint on their way home, walks on the Sea of Galilee to comfort His disciples during a storm, forgives the heinous sin of a repentant adulteress, heals the sick and the maim, raises the dead, and preaches the gospel to the poor. But all this benevolence of character seems suddenly cast aside as we read through the infamous examples of Romans 9. Indeed, God seems to choose Jacob over Esau for no particular reason, even while the twins are still in their mother’s womb. He also appears to raise up Pharaoh for the purpose of destroying him in order to bring glory to Himself. God even appears to decide individual eternal destinies in such a complete way that the only image strong enough to convey the idea of divine, unilateral activity is the Potter forming the clay into whatever the Potter wants.
It appears that a careful study of Romans 9, however, yields a different conclusion than the typical explanation about God’s unconditional election of some persons to be saved, and the reprobation of the rest to be lost. Here, Paul, in comparing one thing or person with another, uses Old Testament history to clarify God’s nature and work in the world. As we come to better understand this difficult chapter we will find that a chief theme is not that God is inscrutably wrathful toward vessels of destruction, but that He is patient with all and everlastingly merciful to those who trust Him.
As we begin, then, to examine Romans 9, note the many contrasts made (or implied) by Paul. They are: 1) unbelieving Israel to believing Israel; 2) Abraham’s behavior prior to the birth of Ishmael to Abraham’s subsequent behavior surrounding the birth of Isaac; 3) Ishmael to Isaac; 4) Esau to Jacob; 5) Pharaoh to Moses; and 6) vessels of wrath to vessels of mercy. Let us consider verses 1-24 (with a notation at verse 16):
1I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, 2That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. 3For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: 4Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; 5Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. 6Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: 7Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. 8That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. 9For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son. 10And not only this; but when Rebekah also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; 11(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) 12It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. 13As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. 14What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. 15For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 16So then it is not of him that willeth (Gr. thelo), nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. 17For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. 18Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. 19Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? 20Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? 21Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? 22What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: 23And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory, 24Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?
Leaving the discussions of (a) Pharaoh; and (b) the pot and potter metaphor for later chapters (detailed esp. in chpts. 14 and 15); let us for now consider the acts of Abraham. Again, as Paul begins chapter 9 he has just finished one of the loftiest passages of the Bible (as Deffinbaugh notes). It is one in which he states that the believer shall never be separated from God (Rom. 8:38-39). The segue of Paul’s thoughts now naturally turn to those who are separated from God, i.e., the great majority of Israelites—”My kinsmen,” says Paul, “according to the flesh.” The question at hand is the same as that taken up by Christ in the gospels, namely, whether or not salvation is based upon being a physical descendent of a blessed ancestor, i.e., Abraham. Paul agrees with Christ that physical ancestry does not save, answering the question by saying,
…Neither, because they (Abraham’s physical descendents) are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. 8That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. 9For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son.
Paul has said in verses 2-3 that he has great heaviness of heart because the majority of Israelites remain under the curse of God due to their unbelief. He is especially grieved because Israel, his own nation, was the vehicle God used to give His Word. God’s promises, covenants, and intended glory were all for the Jewish people, and so the shortcoming of Israel has been all the more tragic. Paul notes, however, that some Israelites have not followed the wrongful course of the greater part of the nation. These are Abraham’s true spiritual children because they are like Isaac whom Sarah bore—children born of God’s promise and intervention. The allusion here is that God’s promise to Abraham of a son was not realized when Abraham willfully took Hagar (his barren wife’s handmaiden) as a concubine to try to make God’s promise a reality. This act of Abraham is a picture of works, of man striving on his own to achieve some end he imagines to be good. Though Abraham was a believer at this time, his failure to wait on the Lord is parabolic of the unsaved man striving to reach God’s promises through his own will and effort. Consequently, the Lord told Abraham that the resulting child, Ishmael, was not the son God had promised. Abraham thus learned to be more patient, and so exercised his faith in this matter by now waiting diligently upon the Lord. Finally, at age 90, Sarah gave birth to Isaac.42
Note here how Paul’s allusion to Abraham’s faith in Romans 9 hearkens us back to the principle of Abrahamic faith which Paul discussed earlier in Romans 4:
1What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? 2For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” 4Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. 5But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, 6just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works: 7“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, And whose sins are covered; 8Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.“
This passage, as well as Romans 7 (where the emphasis is on the believer’s struggle between following the flesh or following the Spirit) is complimented in Romans 9 by Abraham’s example, which first shows the patriarch in failure but then shows his restoration to faith. Again, Abraham’s failure with Hagar is a picture of the man who mistakenly tries to accomplish God’s will through inappropriate means. In other words, it appears that Abraham was double-minded in his intentions. Thus in one sense he acted with some purpose toward wanting God’s promise to become a reality (i.e., the promise that he would be the father of many nations) by taking Hagar to wife, but in doing so he acted from the presumption that God could not use his barren wife to fulfill the divine promise. Such a motive was not born of faith. Hence, Galatians tells us that Abraham’s son, Ishmael, was the fruit of Abraham’s desire, not God’s desire. The main lesson here is that any assumption by man that his human striving is sufficient before God is wrongheaded. One can only receive/take God’s promises by faith apart from works. [The word ‘receive’ is of the kind described in John 1:12 (“received”) and Matthew 26:26 (“take”), the Greek word being the same in these passages, i.e., to receive by taking.] Thus, observe in particular Romans 4:5: “Now to him who does not work but believes on Him…”The Bible is talking about faith, and this is faith that a man himself produces ex nihilio (by which I mean, without prior cause). Nothing is in view here about God making the man believe. (The difference between these two thoughts will be examined further as we cover Romans 9.) Any normal reading of Romans 4 fails to leave such an impression about any alleged impotence of man to have faith. Despite certain other verses that Calvinists try to use to claim that man cannot believe (which we will also address later in this chapter), the statement here in Romans 4:5 says that Abraham believed God. This statement leaves no ambiguity about who is the causal agent of faith. The faith is produced by Abraham, not God. Note, too, that Abraham’s belief is not boastworthy. Calvinists often make a contrary claim. They say that if a man were self-determinative and could receive Christ, he would be able to do something he could boast about. But that idea is refuted by Romans 4, which actually defines what is boastworthy. It says that works by some men are boastworthy when compared relative to the works of other men. Before God, however, no works are boastworthy or acceptable. And yet we see that Abraham’s belief is acceptable before God. Thus logically speaking, Abraham’s faith is not boastworthy, and on this basis we may say that faith is not a work. Furthermore, even in the claim by Calvinists that Ephesians 2:8-9 describes grace and faith as the gifts of God, the Calvinist ought to admit that within the Ephesians 2:8-9 sentence structure the phrase, “grace…through faith” is posited as a contrast to works. The Calvinist seems to want to stop reading after the word God in order to say that faith is not of ourselves, thus, ‘For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God,‘ rather than allow Paul to finish the thought of what he means by the term ‘yourselves’—”not of works (i.e. the works of yourselves), lest any man should boast.” The substitution of the word yourselves for what Paul means is works is known as a metonymy.43
Whenever Paul uses the terms work or works in the book of Romans where the immediate context is about justification vs. judgment, he always defines them according to his definition in Romans 4. When therefore in Romans 9 Paul discusses Abraham’s belief in God to provide him a son through Sarah, Abraham’s belief has nothing to do with works. And it is in this context (i.e., the example of Abraham’s faith vs. works) that the next verses in Romans 9 concerning Jacob’s election over Esau are intended to be understood. Let us pick up the reading with verse 10:
10And not only this; but when Rebekah also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; 11(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) 12It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. 13As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated (emphasis added).
What exactly do these verses mean when understood in their near context about Abrahamic faith? What, but that God wanted to make evident that election would not be based upon works (as pictured in Abraham’s wrongful striving for a son), but upon His calling as apprehended by faith (as pictured in God’s call for Abraham to believe God and to wait patiently until God opened the womb of Sarah). Thus God so established ‘election’ (rather, lit. the naming out of from among), by defining it prior to the births of Esau and Jacob, so that no one would suppose that Jacob had been ‘chosen’ on a works-based comparison between he and his brother. For the natural tendency is for men to link God’s favor to positive44 human behavior. But God does not want any to suppose that the ‘selection’ of Jacob was due to any works that Jacob had done. Rather, the ‘election’ (naming out of from among) of Jacob is based upon God’s foreknowledge of what Jacob himself would do in exercising Abrahamic-type faith in God’s Provision (note: compare 1 Peter 1:2: “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father…”). Divine election, then, is merely the naming out of, from among the persons in the world, those whom God knows in advance will believe in Him. This has nothing to do with “irresistibility.” The matter is similar to a boss of a company making an announcement of whom he will select from among a larger group of applicants. (This analogy is not to be pressed; one should not suppose it endorses a works-based salvation.) And as is the nature in such cases, every announced hiring is contingent on the hiree’s agreement to the conditions set by the boss. Biblically speaking, God’s conditions for those who will follow Him are belief in Christ and confession of that belief. Note again that God’s naming out of these individuals is NOT anything like the kind of “selection” or “election” that is defined by the Calvinist. In fact, the same Greek verb translated “to elect” is used when Stephen was named out from among [others] by the church for special service, or when the Pharisees named out from among [others] the most prestigious seats during feasts, or when Christ named out from among [others] those who would be His 12 disciples. The same root word is also used when Paul named out Silas from among and over others to accompany him on his missionary journey. Obviously, Silas and Stephen, as objects of the subject, could have declined to go along with the proceedings of the naming out of themselves from among others. In fact, Judas Iscariot ultimately did reject Christ’s naming out of him, i.e., his ‘election.’ So, when the Bible tells us that God (KJV) “elects” us, the word does not change meaning just because God is the grammatical subject. As we have already noted, words do not change meaning based on the subject of the sentence, even when that subject is God. The difference involving believers, of course, is that God’s naming out of from among [others] is in a context in which He foreknows who will believe and not shrink back unto perdition. So then, when we read the word “election” in an English translation, we must keep in mind its proper definition. Indeed, we must do our best to resist the definition of Calvinists, who, during the course of overrunning and redefining in Evangelical minds key words like “election” (or “predestination,” “foreknowledge,” “adoption,” etc.), always employ a kind of twisted, Farragutean strategy to gain more of the opponent’s territory—i.e., damning the lexical history to move full speed ahead. Thus Calvinists change a verb’s meaning and then marry it off to some noun, usually “God,” as done here in Romans 9 with “election.” In fact they perform this kind of ceremony every time they face a passage that contradicts their theology.
The naming out of some from among others (i.e., regarding believers’ “election”) might be better understood if we give an analogy. I once heard the story of a football coach who had his entire team run a sprint. He decided ahead of time that the fastest 11 guys would be his defense. Now suppose that football coach is God, but that instead of God having his players run a sprint, He puts them through a series of drills to see if they will make the team. Furthermore, let us suppose that the young men trying out for the team are a stubborn lot. Often they do not obey the Coach when He tells them to run drills. One day, after a difficult double session of practice that exposes every man’s weakness, God lines them up and says, “None of you are worthy to play on My football team, but if you want to accept Me as your Coach, take one step forward.” There is considerable hesitancy, but at length 11 guys step forward. The rest believe that their performance should have satisfied the Coach. Disgusted, the ones who did not step forward head back to the locker room to clear out their gear and leave. The Coach (God) had already circled the 11 names of the guys who ended up stepping forward from a roster of everybody who had tried out for the football team. In fact He circled their names before any of them were born. He did this simply on the basis that He knew beforehand who would step forward to accept Him as their Coach. That is, they were ‘chosen’ according to His foreknowledge.45 Yet the Coach’s ’selection’ ahead of time in no way made them decide to play or not to play. Nor in any way did it determine that some would clear out their lockers and go home. Again, the ’selection’ was simply based on the Coach’s foreknowledge of who would, and who would not, decide to accept Him as their Coach; it impinged nothing whatsoever on the choices of each young man.
Let us now take the analogy one step farther. The Coach decides that, when these 11 young men grow up and get married and have families, He will give their children special instruction about the game of football. He does this because He loves these children, but also because He especially loves their fathers who had accepted Him as their Coach. The instruction the Coach will give these children does not guarantee that they too will accept Him as their own Coach when they grow up. Regardless of what the children will decide for themselves in upcoming years, they are in a place of special privilege, because their fathers had accepted the Coach so many years ago. The Coach knows already which children will come to accept Him as their Coach, and He has already circled their names on a roster, i.e., named them out from among others. Meanwhile, the children who were born to those players who walked off the field many years earlier are not in a position of special privilege. Nevertheless, they have heard of the Coach. They even know something of what is expected of those who are on the Coach’s team. Nearly all of these underprivileged children will grow up disinterested in the Coach based on what they know the Coach will expect of them, and based on their fathers’ negative stories about the Coach. Nevertheless, the Coach will contact them about joining His team. And if any of them want further information about joining, the Coach will provide even more details.
This analogy helps to explain what Romans 9 is saying about God’s ‘selection’ of people. Men like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were sinners like everybody else, but when God’s invitation was given to all men, they accepted God as their ‘Coach’ (Savior). The Bible makes clear that these men decided to have a personal relationship with God. For this reason God had a special affinity for their descendants, and He decided to enter into relationship with them (i.e., the Jewish people) by giving them special instruction. God has not been pleased, however, with the overall response of these children to His instructions. As a result, He has decided to make His instructions known to the children of all men everywhere. The ultimate hope is that the first group of children will become jealous of the relationship which the second group of children has with God, so that they too might decide to accept Him whom they had forsaken. Even so, Paul, in the book of Romans, is discussing the circumstances surrounding the Jewish and Gentile nations. Thus one should not lose sight in Romans 9 of the back-story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The faith of these individuals helps us to understand the current relationships which God has with the Jewish and Gentile nations.
So the view by many non-Reformed commentators, that Jacob and Esau in Romans 9 ought to be viewed primarily as nations, is an argument we would grant (based in part on the fact that “Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated” is from Malachi 1:2-3 and refers to the descendents of Jacob and Esau). In this regard we should note that Moses tells the Israelites in Deuteronomy that God was pleased to have a special relationship with them, not just because He loved them, but because of what He swore unto their fathers (Deut. 7:8). The implication here is that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob believed God’s promises about their descendents inheriting the land, and acted with faith accordingly.46 Note Romans 11:28b in this regard: “As concerning the gospel, they [Jewish people] are enemies for your [you Gentiles’] sakes: but as touching the election (the naming out of some from among others), they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes.” Thus, Romans 9 has in view the “selection’ of Israel unto the place of special privilege to be God’s intended vehicle for communicating His good news of salvation to all peoples (see Rom. 9:4). This ’selection’ was a result of their fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who met the condition of divine selection by believing in God. So then, to see the individuals mentioned in Romans 9 as merely nation states is an unnecessarily forced interpretation. Such an unlayered interpretation, i.e., that Jacob and Esau merely represent nations, is the one traditionally held by non-Calvinists. While I would probably agree that nation states are primarily in view in verse 10, there is certainly a lesson about grace vs. works regarding the individual that informs the entire passage. Thus the conditional selection is not just of nations, but also of individuals unto a place of special privilege. It is, in fact, a confluence of thought stemming from chapter 4 where Abraham and David are discussed as individuals who had faith. The believer, after all, has his individual identity in Christ but lives out his faith in the corporate community of the church; and observe that Paul has both the individual and corporate experience of the believer in view throughout much of chapters 4, 6, 7, and 8. Note too that in chapter 9 the climax of illustrative examples culminates in vessels of mercy and vessels of wrath (plural, not singular), which, though it indicates nations, may also indicate persons, i.e., the individual components that make up the Jewish and Gentile nations that are otherwise in view. Also, the pot/potter metaphor hearkens back to the same metaphor in Jeremiah and Isaiah (discussed in chapter 15 of this book in detail), and while we admit that these pots are metaphors primarily meaning nations, Jeremiah also uses the metaphor to urge the men of Judah to repent, and of course such men are expected to repent of personal sin, not just their national sin. Furthermore, Pharaoh is cited as an individual (”For this purpose have I fully roused thee“). Given these considerations, the individual aspect ought not to be entirely set aside when attempting to understand Romans 9.
Picking up where we left off (with the story of Jacob), then, Genesis 24—49 shows that in the course of his life Jacob came to exercise faith in God. Initially, there does not seem to be much moral difference between Jacob and his brother. Esau despises his birthright, but Jacob steals his brother’s blessing; thus neither is stellar in his behavior. But then begins their different paths which God foresaw in His response to Rebekah’s inquiry about why her unborn children were struggling in her womb. ” ‘Two nations are in thy womb,’ the Lord had said, ‘and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels.’ ” According to Strong’s the word manner comes from a primitive root meaning tread and means a road (as trodden) and therefore figuratively means a course of life. Most of the time the word appears in the Old Testament it means “way.” That the lives of Jacob and Esau diverged unto different ways becomes evident in the course of Genesis. This process begins when Rebekah realizes that Esau plans on killing Jacob for stealing his birthright. Fearing for Jacob’s safety, she sends him away to her brother, Laban. Jacob journeys to Bethel while traveling toward Laban’s house, and there passes the night in sleep. It is here that he has a remarkable dream of angels ascending and descending on a ladder that reaches from earth to heaven. Jacob awakes with the realization that “Surely God is in this place,” and builds an altar and makes a vow that he will make the Lord his God if the Lord will provide him life’s necessities and return him to his father’s house in peace. He then continues his journey and finally reaches his uncle’s house, where he works for many years.
Meanwhile, Esau is moving away from God by taking a wife from the surrounding heathen people. From a human standpoint we can understand why Esau has chosen a different path to tread. Esau observed his father, Isaac (who, through no intention of his own, nevertheless gave Jacob the blessing), give specific instructions to Jacob about avoiding the Caananites in marriage. Esau sees that Jacob has departed to obey their father, but Esau decides to displease his father and marry a Caananite woman anyway. So despite Esau’s profession to Jacob upon their reunion some 20 years later, that “The Lord has blessed me,” the New Testament does not support the idea that Esau really followed the Lord. The New Testament gives us the sure word about Esau’s moral character in a succinct synopsis, calling him a “fornicator” and a “profane person” (Heb. 12:6).
When Jacob and Esau are about to meet again, Jacob is very worried that his brother might harm him and his family. The night before they meet, the angel of the Lord wrestles all night with Jacob in a prolonged test of strength and wills. Finally, Jacob asks the Lord to bless him, and the Lord replies by asking Jacob his name. This is the moment of truth for Jacob. He had stolen his brother’s blessing illegitimately by telling his father, “I am Esau.” Now he asks the Lord for a legitimate blessing. But, of course, God is not in the habit of blessing a dishonest man who has cheated another. The Lord thus tests Jacob by asking him to admit to his name Jacob, which means supplanter. Jacob admits, “I am Jacob“, i.e., confesses that he is a supplanter, and the Lord changes Jacob’s name to Israel, which means one who rules as God as a prince. The Lord Himself explains the name’s meaning in Genesis 32:27: “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” In effect, even as Jacob has had power with God (i.e., in a physical sense), so will he prevail with men. While Jacob’s descendents would eventually prevail over many of the people groups of Caanan in a physical sense, the reason for their military successes would really be the result of their spiritual strength—the same trust in God first evident in their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Even as Jacob finally humbled himself before God by admitting that his true nature was that of a supplanter, even so would the nation of Israel prosper so long as it humbled itself before God. The all-night wrestling match with the angel of the Lord was thus a turning point in Jacob’s life. We see this not only in Jacob’s request for God’s blessing but also in his naming the site Peniel—”for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” Though Jacob would suffer many things during the rest of his life, he would continue to grow in the fear the Lord—indeed, even prophesying about his sons at the end of his life.
The point here is that Jacob understood that only God could guarantee spiritual blessing, and would only do so for the man who humbled himself before Him. This type of trust in God is the mark of the believer. Should we yet doubt that Jacob was a believer we should remember that God would repeatedly refer to Himself in the Scriptures as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” As for Jacob’s father, Isaac, we have not treated him at any length here, but suffice it to say that he is also included in the I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob statement. By implication, Isaac is contrasted in Romans 9:7-9 with Ishmael, the child of Abraham’s ungodly striving.47 Note that God said that Ishmael would be a donkey of a man who would have his hand against every man, while every man would have his hand against him (Gen. 16:12 NAS). Such a description of Ishmael hardly befits that of a believer. We see then that Paul continues to draw out his argument that God’s choice for blessing is based upon His provision of salvation as received humbly by faith. Thus God’s calling unto election (lit. bidding unto the naming out of some from among others) is by His own provision and one conditioned by a man’s faith (and therefore not of works). Note that this conditional nature of election is exactly opposite of the Calvinist’s definition, which insists that faith is a work if it finds its origin in man.
At this point the Calvinist may argue that election is according to God’s calling, and that man’s belief is not in view. There are two faults with this argument. First, if it truly be according to God’s calling alone, i.e., without any other phenomena attending it, then neither can it involve God’s provision through His Son, which Paul does not expressly state, but which obviously he must be implying if God’s calling is to be effectual. By this logic we conclude that calling is meant by Paul to embrace more than just bare calling.
Second, by extension, as God’s provision is implied in the term calling, so too is man’s belief in response to God’s calling, i.e., as Romans 4 tells us, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.” How then, we ask, could God’s calling of Abraham be effectual without Abraham’s positive response, that the Calvinist should claim such a calling to be unconditional? The picture of calling here brings to mind Christ’s statement about his sheep. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life.” The Eastern custom was for shepherds to corral sheep at night into a place of safety, such as an enclosure of stone walls. This would prevent them from wandering off or from running away during a thunderstorm. A single opening allowed one of the shepherds to block the doorway from predators. In the morning the sheep would be let out, and each of the shepherds would call his sheep from out of the herd unto himself. Sheep are known for recognizing the voice of their master, and in this manner are properly separated. Thus, in Romans 9 when Paul refers to God’s calling, the apostle is not implying just the Shepherd’s calling, but also the Shepherd’s provision of Himself and the response of the sheep to the Shepherd’s voice (all of which form the familiar illustration used by Christ). But of course regarding all these considerations, the Calvinist casts them aside, singing the same chason about how a verb, in this case “calling,” has a special meaning because of its relation to the noun “God” when the elect are in view. And thus by special pleading [including the assumption that only the elect are in view, as only those objects that can be unconditionally bid (called), Calvinists put forth their necessary supposition, lest, e.g., the lexical case of Judas Iscariot, who rejected his election by Christ, proves Calvinism false].
Furthermore, to understand the language of Romans 9, it is also important to understand that Paul is addressing a proud readership. These were world-conquering Romans, after all. Like those Israelites who thought their ethnicity guaranteed God’s approval, so would these Romans have been tempted to think their ethnicity was something pretty special. Throughout the book of Romans Paul will repeat the argument that blessing comes through belief, not through ethnicity or human striving. Someone else has stated it succinctly: “Salvation is not dependent on race, but on relationship.” Paul stresses God’s provision as opposed to man’s striving, and this is true even in Romans 4, where the discussion involves Abraham and David’s faith. For though the book of Romans upholds the ability of man to have faith in God, the book is really a treatise against the kind of self-confident hubris that people have in themselves, their ethnicity, and their works. This is why some statements in Romans might, at first glance, appear to be speaking of God’s unilateral activity, i.e., the call of the one baby, Jacob, as opposed to the other baby, Esau—that is, of what sounds (at least to modern ears) like a forced reprobation of Esau, etc. This is why it is so important to study the near and far contexts of Paul’s statements. When working through Romans 9 this means looking at the stories of Abraham, Sarah, Ishmael, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, Esau, Moses, Pharaoh, Christ’s statement about His sheep in the gospel of John, the pot/potter metaphors in Isaiah and Jeremiah, and so forth. Until (or unless) one considers all these passages which are indicated or implied in Romans 9, some of Paul’s statements are likely to appear to have meanings other than what they really do have, and the language of the chapter may be misunderstood. I have to say, that in all the Calvinistic literature I have personally read, a great deal of assertive force is given to the immediate and very narrow context within chapter 9 itself (though not as we have properly contextualized it here), while essentially none of the force of the argument is about the detail of near and far contexts. This is especially true of Calvinists regarding the definition of works in Romans 4 and also of the pot/potter metaphors in Isaiah and Jeremiah, whose contexts of the instances of judgment are entirely ignored.48 Hence, what is sometimes offered in Calvinist books are clipped phrases from verses, or mere sound-bytes, such as Jesus saying of His sheep, “I know them,” or of Cyrus, of whom it is claimed had no intention to obey God, etc., i.e., the kind of statements that appear at first to support the Calvinistic view of God, that is, of God unilaterally knowing persons apart from their acknowledgement. But again, a fuller context shows the very opposite thought, i.e., “My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me,” etc.49>
The result of misunderstanding the conditional nature of election is that Calvinists have accepted a doctrine of unconditional election. This view has led to considerable confusion, because man’s faith (properly defined, not as the Calvinist ‘defines’ it) is not seen as a factor in God’s calling. Note again Romans 9:11-12:
11(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;). 12It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.
Now let us consider the standard Calvinist interpretation of these verses, represented here by the prolific Reformed writer, Arthur W. (A.W.) Pink:
The Sovereign exercise of grace is illustrated on nearly every page of Scripture. The Gentiles are left to walk in their own ways while Israel becomes the covenant people of Jehovah. Ishmael the firstborn is cast out comparatively unblest, while Isaac the son of his parents’ old age is made the child of promise. Esau the generous-hearted and forgiving-spirited is denied the blessing, though he sought it carefully with tears, while the worm Jacob receives the inheritance and is fashioned into a vessel of honor. So in the New Testament, Divine Truth is hidden from the wise and prudent, but is revealed to babes.xl
One almost wonders what Bible Pink is reading, that he should leave the impression that in the course of their lives Esau should be so applauded and Jacob so condemned! Indeed, where in his life do we see Esau exercising real faith? In forgiving Jacob after receiving large gifts of livestock? In seeking the blessing with tears instead of repenting in tears? Granted that Jacob stole the blessing; may he not have returned to Esau (following a life-changing wrestling match with the Lord) as much portion of that blessing which God could allow to a man neither interested in God for Himself nor willing to apprehend the blessing which required faith? Indeed, should Isaac have blessed his eldest son whose heart despised his own birthright, a son who likely believed in his own self-sufficiency such as he already perceived was evident in his hunting skills—i.e., even that which he likely presumed would help him make his own way in the world in so great a fashion as to render the question relatively meaningless as to whether he should receive a double portion of inheritance from his father (even such inheritance of physical and material blessing which implied the blessing of God)? Is not Esau called a “vain person” in the New Testament? Better, we think, had Isaac broken tradition’s protocol and intentionally blessed the younger son whose mother was told would have a different manner of life than his elder brother. But Isaac didn’t do this, though he himself had once been the younger son of his own father and the one favored over his older brother. Pink, however, makes no concessions to any of these facts, insisting that God simply chose (irresistibly) one over the other according to His own good pleasure. For Pink, Esau’s lack of repentance and Jacob’s eventual turnabout unto faith (neither of which he seems to recognize) would presumably be little more than God’s predestinated ends for these individuals. However, Pink seems not to cite the argument we might expect of him but speaks instead of the “generous-hearted and forgiving” Esau on the one hand, while referring to the “worm” Jacob on the other. Pink, by the way, is not alone among Evangelicals who see Jacob as a rascal. A general online search brought me to a similar viewpoint as expressed by Christian author, Ray Stedman:
Moreover, neither is it on the basis of God’s foreknowledge of what men will do that he chooses them. This is where many people feel that we have an explanation of why God chooses some and not others. They say he looks ahead and sees what they are going to do, and, because of his foreknowledge, he chooses them. No, it is not that! Paul says so! Before Jacob and Esau were born, when they had done no good or evil at all, God chose Jacob and not Esau—and these were twin boys. You see, it is not a question of what man’s character, or his work, may be. While these boys were yet in their mother’s womb, God chose to bless Jacob and accept him, and to reject Esau and allow him to remain under the curse of the Adamic sin in which he was born. Well, you say, he foreknew that Jacob would be a good man and that Esau would be a bad man. No, he didn’t. If you read the record very clearly, you can see that, in many ways, Esau was a much better man than Jacob. If we had our choice of which one to live with, I certainly would choose Esau rather than Jacob. Jacob was a schemer, a rascal, a usurper, always working underhandedly to see what advantage he could take of someone—and he did this all his life. No, God didn’t choose them because one of them was better than the other. Both of them were equally depraved at this point, and they were equally lost. Yet God chose to save Jacob but not Esau. Therefore he says, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
I know that this quotation is taken from the book of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, and it has been pointed out that this was written long after Jacob and Esau had lived, and that this was God’s conclusion after he had seen all that they were going to be and all that their descendants were going to be. But that is, of course, to ignore God’s foreknowledge; he knew that all along. No, that is putting the cart before the horse:
Men are not good and then God chooses them, Men are good only because God has chosen them —that is the point.xli
I find it fairly incredible that anyone could read the story of Jacob in its entirety and conclude so severely, as Stedman does, that Jacob was a schemer, a rascal, a usurper, always working underhandedly to see what advantage he could take of someone—and he did this all his life (emphasis added). Any fair-minded reading about Jacob shows that his understanding of faith developed slowly throughout much of his life, until at last he gives spiritual prophecy concerning each of his sons just prior to his death. Indeed, if Jacob were a supplanter all his life, as Stedman claims, why does God change Jacob’s name from supplanter to a ‘prince with God’? Are we to suppose that nothing in Jacob’s character changed, that God would so rename him? Indeed, where in the Bible does Jacob supplant anyone after his personal wrestling match with God?
The rest of Stedman’s apologetic regarding “election” appears to be based upon the Calvinistic assumption that faith is a work. Thus, when Stedman says, “Men are not good and then God chooses them, Men are good only because God has chosen them—that is the point,” a man’s faith is no where in view, or, if it is, Stedman is including the man’s faith as a work, which Romans 4 shows it is not. For his own part, Stedman does not even say whether the good he refers to is a work, faith, or a combination of both. Presumably, it is what he would call imparted faith—faith that a man cannot produce whatsoever (i.e., the same kind of ‘faith’ that, presumably, Stedman would have to assume activated Jacob to admit “I am Jacob “). Nevertheless, biblically understood, both faith and works are predicated by man—the difference being that a believing man’s faith is in the work of Christ, not in the work of himself.
Cannot or Will Not?
Finally, although we have been saying much about a man’s faith (i.e., by definition, faith that is unilaterally brought into being by the man himself), Calvinists object to such an idea. They claim that man cannot have faith unless God gives it to him. A number of passages are cited to support this view. John 8:43-44 is representative of the Calvinist argument in the main, which says that man of himself cannot believe. Calvinists take these two verses to mean that God has decreed all men not to believe in order that He may impart to some a desire to believe. As the meaning of “cannot” has often been used to great effect by Calvinists, let us consider the word ‘cannot’ in John 8:43 in some of its surrounding context:
40But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. 41Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. 42Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. 43Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. 44Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. 45And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.
Another verse sometimes cited is Romans 8:7, which we again show in some of its context:
5For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, 7because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.
Note how Paul describes the carnal mind as that which is upon,
i.e. (KJV) set upon, the flesh. I believe this explains the circumstance in which a man cannot come to Christ. If a mind is upon, i.e., determined that it shall not move from its position of unbelief regardless of what spiritual light God may give it, then by definition it cannot also be set toward the Spirit. In other words, how can a man respond to God if he will not?Again, by analogy, if a man will not be a good husband, how can he be a good husband?50 Indeed, such activity is confined to the sphere of the individual will in such cases. For example, imagine a man whose mind is set upon driving from Chicago to Philadelphia to meet his parents at 7:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Since his mind is already made up to drive to Philadelphia, it cannot also be made up to drive to San Francisco to meet someone else at the same hour on the same day. Paul’s point is one of formal logic: A cannot equal non-A. “Well, that is obvious,”someone will say, “and Paul wouldn’t waste our time with such obvious examples.” Oh, but have such Pauline arguments proved obvious to Christendom? Has not an entire philosophy known as Calvinism been dressed up in theological-sounding terms while standing upon a bold contradiction? And does not this same Calvinism make the skeptic’s statement in Romans 9:19-20 (For who hath resisted His will ) to mean that God’s will cannot be resisted whatsoever, thereby putting such an interpretation at conflict with Paul’s immediate rejoinder that such a rhetorical accusation by the skeptic is against God? (In other words, how can the skeptic’s reply be considered against God if Paul has just gotten done saying that the man is unable to resist God in any way?)51
We would grant that John 8:43-44 teaches that man will not seek God, but to where does such an argument bring us? It only proves that man is unable to seek God so long as he has determined that he will not seek Him.5253
42Sarah’s faith also played a part in Isaac’s birth, for Hebrews 11 tells us that God miraculously helped her to conceive because of her faith.
43Bullinger in his Figures of Speech gives many examples, but for our purposes here we cite just one. In Psalm 51:7 David says, “purge me with hyssop.” Hyssop was a moss-like shrub which was used to sprinkle the atoning blood for ceremonial cleansing. It was not the actual hyssop that effected purging in the symbolic ceremony, but the blood. Thus the use of the word hyssop in Psalm 51:7 is a metonymy—a word substitution in which (in this case) one noun is given to mean another.
44 Regarding “positive human behavior,” the following clarification needs to be added. Although there may be a positive aspect to a person’s act, such as loving one’s neighbor as himself in a given circumstance, there is no sense in which “positive” behavior can be assigned to any man’s life as a whole. This is because his works are judged as an entire whole.
45Likewise, we may presume God’s foreknowledge is in view in John 6:39, when Christ says, “And this is the Father’s will that hath sent me, that of all that he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.” Thus, the Father gives the Son those whom Christ said He should not lose. Let us consider this statement in light of the above football metaphor. We might say that God the Father, knowing in advance which men would accept God as their Coach, gave these men to Christ (God the Son) according to His foreknowledge. The problem in verse 39, however, is that some interpreters give the word given an undue force to say that God accomplishes man’s salvation irresistibly by forming the man’s will, thus applying to the word given in verse 39 the kind of force implied in the phrase, he was given a black eye, or again, as Paul actually uses it in 2 Corinthians 12:7, “There was given unto me a thorn….” Note that the term give/given behaves in English as it does in New Testament Greek, having a wide latitude of meaning but always determined by the context, sometimes implying irresistibility, but often not. For example, Christ also refers in Matthew 7:11 to earthly fathers who, though evil, nevertheless give their children good gifts. But note here that such gifts obviously could have been refused by these children because of the nature of giving as described in the particular context of Matthew 7:11; in other words, it is a giving that can be refused. Nor is Matthew 7:11 an exception, since the word give in certain other New Testament passages conveys this same meaning without implying anything of irresistibility. Hence, the meaning of give/given is determined by the particular context in view, and obviously this matters a great deal in theology when the exact nature of God is being expressed. For if God is such that He gives to Christ those men whose choices God Himself has formed, then human freedom is annihilated. In other words, the verb give/ given is one whose historical-grammatical history shows a wide latitude of meaning regardless of its subject. Moreover, the meaning of verbs and object nouns do not change with the subject. To insist otherwise is special pleading; for it is the general context that determines meaning. In regard to this point one ought to consider the remarks of Thomas Edgar, which, though they specifically have in view the Greek word proginwskw (Eng. to foreknow), are relevant to the study of all theologically controversial words (such as give) when used in reference to God. Says Edgar, regarding the practice of restricting the lexical study of such words to only those passages where God is the subject:
“It is exegetically incorrect to consider only those passages where God is the subject. Still, this approach is common. The subject involved in so restricting the study is that the meaning is different, and not merely modified, when God is the subject. Several reasons show this approach to be incorrect: (1) The meaning of a verb is not dependent on, not does it vary with the subject of the verb. (2) Other words do not have a different meaning when used of God. How do interpreters know that this one does? (3) God has given Scripture to communicate to humans. He uses human language with its normal meanings. If words have different meanings when God is the subject, the interpreter cannot know what they are, nor if our concepts about God are accurate. (4) Why would God deliberately make the communication difficult? Why would He use words with different meanings than normal when He could use readily available words that clearly communicate? If this term normally means “foreknowledge,” but when used of God, it means “electing love, intimate knowledge, or determining choice,” why use it here? Why not say, “electing love.” Such an approach is illogical. (5) If words do not have their normal meaning when used to describe God, there can be no objective control on interpretation, leaving each interpreter to read in his theological opinions. Thus, to study only those uses of proginwskw where God is the subject is defective hermeneutically and logically.”
Now consider the word give/given in light of Edgar’s comments. The lexical meaning of give/given is not automatically restricted in John 6:39 to mean an irresistible giving, simply because God is in view. Rather, the precise meaning depends on the context in which the word appears. And in John 6 the context of God’s giving is that of an offer to which men are asked to respond willingly. Specifically, the offer given to men is that of God’s provision, contextually shown here to be Jesus as the Bread from heaven which corresponds to 1) God’s provision of manna to the children of Israel in the wilderness, as echoed by 2) Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000 mentioned earlier in John 6. In both instances food was divinely given to a people, but not in the sense in which a thorn was given to Paul (that is, involuntarily). Note that no Israelite at the time of Moses, nor any among the 5,000 whom Jesus fed, had to accept God’s offered provision. While certainly it would have been foolish for them not to accept God’s provision, they could have chosen to refuse the food. To put it another way, the Lord did not make the food automatically appear involuntarily in the stomachs of those he wished to feed. His giving was not of that irresistible sort, and this is the context of giving in John 6.
So note again the conditional nature of God’s giving in John 6:39. Though God is giving certain ones to Christ, the giving is nevertheless also dependent on Christ’s decision as to whether He will do the will of the Father to confirm the Father’s giving. The word “will” in the phrase ” the Father’s will” is the Greek word thelo, i.e., contextually here, desire unto plan. (See p. 421ff, question about Phi. 2:13.) It was the Father’s desire and plan that Christ should (the KJV here properly recognizes the subjunctive mood) lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. The matter is subjunctive. For note that Christ could have refused to do the Father’s will. In fact, He states in the Garden of Gethsemane that He could call 12 legions of angels to rescue Him and His disciples from danger (one each for He and his 11 disciples?). Thus, in John 6:39, the exact nature of giving by the Father to the Son is not of an irresistible kind, either in regard to that which is given or even in regard to Whom it is given. To claim otherwise, as Edgar might explain it, is to read into the text one’s own theological opinions.
46—thus the verse that follows Deuteronomy 7:8, which speaks of “the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments.”
47In Genesis 21:12 God tells Abraham “In Isaac shall thy seed be called.” This is not meant to imply that only those whom God foreknows He invites. Rather, it implies a successful calling, and in this sense it parallels the assumption in John 6:44, i.e., that him who successfully responds to the Father’s drawing shall also be raised by the Son at the last day. (See p. 463, footnote 142)
48One observes this unfortunate consistency in Calvinist writings.
49We ought to be vigilant in pointing out the dangers of Calvinism to fellow believers who are searching. The Calvinist is an example of one who, as Proverbs 18:17 tells us, comes first in his explanation and seems to be right. But then his neighbor searches him [i.e., lit. penetrates (his argument)]. May we be a neighbor to those who have ears to hear.
50When Christ states in John 6:44 “No man can (Gr. dunamai, i.e., is able to) come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him,” it should be noted again that the use of can is tied to will. Hence an example from the same writer, John, who says in 1 John 3:9 “and he (i.e., whosoever is born of God) cannot (negative of same Gr. root, dunamai) sin, because he is born of God.” Here in the context of his first epistle, John is saying that we cannot sin because we have exercised our will to a point of repentance (a changing of the mind in which we receive Christ) from the lie (that Christ is not come in the flesh), a repentance of mind from which the true believer never departs because he will not. Moreover, God’s Spirit witnesses with the believer’s spirit that the believer is a child of God. A statement about the word ‘can’ in the New Testament is relevant here. I believe the word ‘can’ (Gr. dunamai, commonly claimed to mean ‘to be able to’) can be misleading to English readers in contexts about intention, and should in such cases be understood as “to be able by means of the will,” i.e., ‘powers the will to.’ This is not the exact same thing as “do,” if by “do” is meant “to bring the will unto an effect besides itself.” Carl Conrad notes the following about dunamai:
“As for DUNAMAI, it is an intransitive verb functioning as an auxiliary requiring a complementary infinitive in normal usage. Be careful about classification of active and passive and by no means assume that a verb that is not active must be passive. Perhaps it is a truism and not very helpful to say it, but I think that Voice in the ancient Greek verb is at least as slippery a phenomenon as Aspect. Particularly tricky is the Middle voice, and many of the forms that are traditionally categorized as passive in Greek are really, in my opinion, middle.”
Conrad also notes that middle-passive verbs are not middle OR passive; thus, the matter is not merely expressed by saying “The boy was baptized,” but also, “The boy allowed himself to be baptized.” Similarly, though not exact (owing to the object’s subject being the person himself), as regards dunamai, then, we note that a man’s own spirit (his will) is the subject that renders his own soul (his desires, thoughts, and deliberation) passive regarding the matter at hand. In short, man’s spirit renders his soul passive whenever the spirit acts. Thus, for example, Christ in Gethsemane, after lengthy deliberation upon His desire to avoid the cross, nevertheless acted in His spirit (willed Himself) to submit to His Father, and, in so doing, rendered His soul passive unto the Father’s desire. That is, Christ ruled His soul by His spirit. And his passions, though they remained in some degree present and even contrary to the Father, proved (because of Christ’s will) not active unto ruling. Even so, the disciple of Christ is called to deny himself and follow Christ. This means that our spirit is to deny our soul’s greatest desire of avoiding the persecution that arises from following Christ, and follow Christ nonetheless. Thus (again), the spirit of man, when it acts, renders his own soul passive. Put another way, the man puts his soul passive in relation to his will. Observe also that this is the case even when a man’s soul is congruent with what his will chooses, because it is a man’s own will—not his soul—that actually rules himself, for better or worse. This is simply the nature of what man is. Note the distinction in Hebrews 4:12 between the soul and the spirit, as represented by the thoughts and intents, respectively: “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and [is] a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Just as a skilled surgeon can separate the joints and marrow when operating, so God’s word exposes the difference between our desires on the one hand, and our will on the other, which involves our motives. It is, in fact, man’s motive of will that God judges. If this were not the case, then the Father would have judged Christ guilty for having different desires in His soul than that of the Father. But Christ was victor in His will, which is why God has given Him a name above all names, so that every knee [ought to (subjunctive mood)] bow, and every tongue [ought to (subjunctive mood)] confess, that Jesus is Lord.
So then, in turning our attention again upon John 6:44, the spirit of man wills, i.e., is actively rendering his thoughts, desires, and emotions passive, with the result that [and in order that (the ecbatic and telic sense are both apparent here in the middle-passive)] he is not coming toward Christ apart from the Father’s pulling. This is how the matter stands as a brute fact. Thus in John 6:44, though the complimentary infinitive for dunamai, as grammarians would normally describe it, would be “coming,” since dunamai is a verb that does not take an object and therefore requires an infinitive, which, in this case takes the object “Son”—yet it must also be understood in another sense that dunamai is a transitive verb insofar as man (his spirit) takes himself (his soul) as the object. Therefore, as dunamai is a middle-passive verb (which means that at least in some sense (in fact, in the soul sense) the person is the subject of his own actions), we could woodenly translate the opening phrase in John 6:44 thus: “No one wills himself to be coming to the Son…” Again, however, the KJV, instead of using to will or to power (one’s self ), here translates Gr. dunamai as “can” in the context of a man’s own will. The resulting traditional interpretation is that man, besides his inability to provide an atonement for himself, also cannot even receive God’s provided atonement of Christ’s blood unless the Father drags the man’s will into a place where the man ‘receives’ it. But unfortunately for the Calvinist, the surrounding context and examples of John 6 simply do not justify the Calvinistic idea that man cannot choose good (see John 6:44 in Scripture Index for further comments). Therefore, one may come to the conclusion that the verb “can” in (KJV) John 6:44 (i.e. “no man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him,”)—besides meaning “to be able to,” which at one level of meaning means that man cannot come to the Son for reconciliation because of his de facto inability to provide his own atonement—must be understood at another level to mean (even if it be not literally translated as such), the verb will, i.e., [“can (by virtue of the will)”]. Thus “will” is preferred (or at least understood within this verse’s polyvalent meaning), lest it be thought that total inability is in view, in which unfortunate case other key passages might be similarly misunderstood, and so lead to the thought that man has no real freedom of the will. In fact, a proper understanding of “can” as “will” clears up considerable confusion in certain other passages, even in which Jesus (as One Person of the Godhead) is the subject. For example, when Christ speaks in the present tense to state that, “The Son can do nothing of himself, except what he seeth the Father do,” the real meaning must be “The Son will do nothing of himself [lit., if expansively, wills himself to be doing nothing of himself] except that which the Father shows Him;” for otherwise the word “cannot” would mean that Christ had no free will choice of His own in the matter. Yet Christ’s remark in Gethsemane (i.e., “not my desire, but thine be done”) and His de facto choice of whether to call for angels to rescue Himself, clearly shows that He could have subverted the Father’s plan, broken Scripture, and not have drunk of the cup of death. Along these lines, note also how the following verse [(Int.) Mt. 26:54]—”How then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen this way?”—is actually used by some theologians to argue that Christ could not have failed. This assumption comes from reading the KJV’s “shall” (or the NAS’s “will”) instead of the Interlinear’s “should.” But observe that even here the word “must” is still subject to the word “fulfilled,” which is in the subjunctive mood, and therefore makes the matter contingent, i.e., in effect, “IF the Scriptures are to be fulfilled, it must be in this way.” But of course to the dedicated Calvinist there really is no such thing as the Subjunctive Mood when God or His Word is the grammatical subject of the sentence. Calvinists simply assign all such occurrences of the subjunctive to idiomatic expression. This is all part of the Calvinists’ rigorous program of special pleading whenever God (or His Word, etc.) is the grammatical subject, as necessary. Again, however, and for the reader’s sake, we will repeat the following to a point of ad nauseam—words don’t change meaning depending on the grammatical subject. (See “special pleading” in the Subject Index.)
So the Calvinist’s substitution of “can” for “will” is a major problem affecting key doctrine in all commonly used English translations. This is because in English translations the word “can” is often inferred to mean that even certain de facto acts which are possible of the human will are not hypothetically possible. The danger of this problem can hardly be overstated. In short, there is (especially) no single formal English quid pro quo word for Gr. dunamai, since formal English divides dunamai into “can,” “will,” and “may.” Only in informal English do we gain something of dunamai’s other meanings besides “can”, e.g., “Teacher, can I get a drink of water?”
So then, as part of its polyvalent meaning, John 6:44 means that men will not come, for to insist here on the English formal “can” instead of “will” would be to make the verse of private interpretation at the expense of numerous other detailed biblical passages (involving both near and far contexts) which affirm an uncorrupted human will (see Hoodwinked, chpts. 12, 13, 18, & 20). Thus, whether dunaami should mean “can” or “will” or even “may” depends on the context. (The only exception for John 6:44 would be if “can” refers only to man’s inability to produce his own atonement.)
Furthermore, a polyvalent meaning of “can” and “will” is also possible in at least one passage, e.g., Matthew 6:27, in which Jesus, besides asking the following question plainly, may also be using rhetorical humor to reply to the idea of mind-over-matter, when he asks who it is, that, by taking thought, ‘can,’ i.e., or chooses (wills) to add a cubit to his stature? Note too, and perhaps more importantly, that when Jesus is asked by his disciples and the father of the demoniacal son why the disciples (Gr.) ou dunamai (KJV Eng.) were not able to cast out the demon, Jesus replied that this generation was faithless and perverted, i.e., that the disciples (who could cast out demons because Christ gave them the power to) could not because they would not, i.e., chose not to have faith through the exercise of earnest prayer, but rather be perverted in this instance, in which they typified the generation of His hearers (Mk. 9). Finally in this regard, note also the “may” aspect of dunamai in Scripture, exampled when the Athenians (Acts 17:19) asked Paul, “May (dunamai) we know…?” Observe how especially the word “can” makes no sense here. In fact, this verse shows the ignorance of R.C. Sproul’s implicit argument that dunamai always means “can,” but never “may.” Or are we to suppose that Sproul thinks the Athenians were asking Paul if they “can” know, i.e., have the mental capacity to understand an argument! But if we wait a little, perhaps Sproul can (will) either 1) change the meaning of the verb dunamai in John 6:44,so that it has the restrictive meaning of “to be able to” when man’s coming to God is the subject; or 2) at the expense of his previous argument [i.e., “Who has not been corrected by a schoolteacher for confusing the words can and may?”], allow the word “may” but insist on a God who answers No to the question of “May we…?”, i.e., does not allow men to come apart from His pulling,so that all glory for man’s salvation goes to God (as though man having predicative ability to come to God would somehow nullify God’s glory). In other words, while arguably there IS a subjunctive aspect of the verb dumanai present here, pointing to the contingency of God providing atonement, Sproul, to follow Calvin, would take the subjunctive aspect (insofar as it can be said that Calvinists even grant God subjunctive contingency), to refer to the Calvinistic definition of “regeneration”; or 3) allow the word symbol “will” but imply (via a point about the “deadness” of man) that man has no more predicative possibility than a plant. But regardless of which of these three options Sproul may take—wood, hay, or stubble—we anticipate that if he becomes aware of our argument but remains deaf to it, he will step down into a darker, deeper irrationality in order to keep a retreating pace from the sunbeam of the Spirit’s truth that exposes more of his method. But by proceeding this way, Sproul can at least undergird his already false lexical assumptions with more of the same. And incidentally, note in the last sentence how “can” means both “can” and “will.”
But moving on, if the English reader will understand that “can” encompasses all the above proper considerations for dunamai as we, not Sproul or those like him, have explained it—that is, essentially like its informal English use—then “can” would appear to be an acceptable translation. Historically, I believe cultures blur the words “can” and “may” lexically to hide motive or to soften rejection. No one likes to say, “I will not come to your party,” nor even ask the question, “Will you come to my party?” Simply put, societies have found the word “can” easier on their souls.
Now, let me say one more thing here, regarding John 6:44, and that man cannot come, for I recently saw something additionally in my last reading. It appears to me that the essential issue in John 6 is about whether man will live by bread alone. Thus, Jesus perceived that the people whom He miraculously fed would COME and take Him by force, to make Him king (v. 15), because (as He told them later) they wanted physical bread alone, not the spiritual bread (Manna from heaven) which they also needed (see v. 26ff.). This kind of intended coming to the Son speaks of man’s protocol. But that is not the Father’s protocol. The Father’s protocol for coming toward the Son is through the Son on the cross. For it is the Son, lifted up, who will draw all men unto Himself. And so, the Father sets the protocol for approach like a king did in ancient times. This is the context of John 6:44, i.e., that man cannot come according to his own protocol-which is to live by bread alone. Thus, at the layer of meaning in John 6:44 regarding protocol, dunamai means may, i.e., no man may come to the Son except via the Father’s protocol-i.e., His drawing-which is through His Son’s lifting up which will draw all men. The reason this is called the Father’s drawing is because Christ came not on His own. [Note that, conversely, man’s (the human) protocol hearkens back to that which Satan claimed was Job’s modus operandi in serving God-bare self interest. And observe further that Jesus, being God, exhibited the opposite nature compared to that which Satan claimed of God in the book of Job, and chose self denial and the path of the cross, instead of offering bribery to ensure man’s following. For physical bread alone is what the crowd wanted, thus their challenge to Jesus to perform a daily miracle of physical bread as they believed Moses had done.]
51The Greek word translated against is antapokrinomai, from the primary particle anti, thus Strong’s primary definition is: over against, opposite to, before (Rom. 9:19-20). The NASB seems to understand the dilemma of how the Calvinistic interpretation leads to a contradiction and thus prefers a translation that says the skeptic answer[s] back, rather than the KJV’s repliest against. Thus the NASB translates the skeptic’s question connotatively without sufficiently conceding the denotative reality to the skeptic’s arrogant reply, which in fact is against God. In other words, the NAS somewhat treats the verse as though the skeptic merely returns a reply, rather than replies against. Yet the skeptic’s arrogance is implied not only in the skeptic’s question when the meaning of the question is properly understood [that is, Why does God delay judgment if He is able to bring it? (see p. 350ff, esp. p. 359), but also in Paul’s abrupt and severe censure.
52Gordon Olson makes a most interesting and helpful observation here (Getting the Gospel Right, p. 36-37): “Many Christians base their view of inability on the English of Romans 3:10-11: “There is none righteous, not even one; There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God.“ In Paul’s paraphrase of the Septuagint of Psalm 14, he was careful to use the intensified verb ekzētein, rather than the simple zētein. From its usage in Acts 15:17; Heb. 11:6; 12:17; and 1 Pet. 1:10, it is clear that Paul is not referring to an indifferent seeking, but a ‘diligent seeking’ for God. So Paul was not affirming that no one ever seeks God at all, but rather that no one diligently seeks God. It is also significant that this verb is a present participle, which likely has a customary force. This would refer to a regularly recurring action, and thus, could be rendered, “no one customarily and diligently seeks God.” Otherwise, if neither of the above were true, Scripture would be in contradiction with itself. There are only fifty verses which contradict a superficial reading of Romans 3:10-11! Why do people ignore the fifty and focus on the one? William A. Butler got it right: “We hold a few texts so near the eyes that they hide the rest of the Bible.” “
Incidentally, James White takes the position that the 50 texts Olson cites in defense of his position are but divine commands, directed either to the regenerated who will obey, or to the reprobated who will not obey, and thus these 50 offer nothing in support of the idea that man himself can generate saving faith. White’s argument thus assumes that man, if ‘regenerated,’ can choose—but only choose right, while man, if ‘unregenerated,’ can choose—but only choose evil. This is merely a sophisticated way of saying that man has a choice that is not a choice. Thus, like Piper, White dismisses logical definition based on his assumption that man is not self-determinative (that is, while White is on the front rock of Calvinism). Thus, for White, to seek and to diligently seek have the same essential grammatical range, and the difference implicit in the prefix ek all but nullified, and absolutely nullified for any passage that, we note, de facto contradicts Calvinism. This explains why White defines choice irrationally. Furthermore, it would seem that White concedes only salvific or reprobative contexts for these 50, as though nothing in any of the verses could be directed to backslidden believers to repent and to stop quenching the Spirit’s influence in their lives. In short, contingency by man appears to be simply dismissed by White, and the meaning of words ‘rehabilitated’ until man is not self-determinative and thus bankrupt of will.
53God confronted this stubbornness of man (in man’s less than diligent seeking of Him) when He sent Christ into the world. Christ’s incarnation, His manner of life, His performing of miracles, His death followed by His resurrection—all these raised the status quo of the old, if ongoing, revelation of creation. These made it harder for man to reject God. Once Christ accomplished the ordeal of the cross and the miracle of His own resurrection, God commanded with even greater intensity that every man repent. For it had been one thing for God to command repentance prior to the cross, quite another thing for Him to command it afterward. For prior to Christ’s first advent God “winked” at the sins of past generations without insisting as fully as He would come to do (following the resurrection of Christ), that all men should repent. Therefore when Christ accomplished His ministry, God obtained a fuller moral authority (from man’s point of view, at least) to insist on man’s repentance: “Let not him who puts on his armor boast like him who takes it off,” said an Old Testament king. It was one thing for God to speak of His salvation to men before Christ put on His armor to battle Satan, sin, and death, but quite another thing for God to command it after Christ was victor over all three. Thus, while the old revelation was enough to make unbelieving man inexcusable before his Creator, the further revelation of Christ makes unbelieving man inexcusable before God his Savior. And that is a significant difference.
xxxixDeffinbaugh, Bob. Reasoning in Romans. “The Sovereignty of God in Salvation.” (Romans 9). [http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1175].
xl Pink, Arthur W. The Sovereignty of God. [http://www.sovereign-grace. com/pink/chapter01.htm], Chapter One: “God’s Sovereignty Defined.”
xliStedman, Ray. Romans (Series #1), Message No: 16, Catalog No: 20, “Who Chose Whom?” [http://www.pbc.org/library/files/html/0020. html].