St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: A Practical Exposition. Vol. II. Gore Charles

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      1

      Ps. lxxxix. 33-7.

      2

      By this phrase is commonly meant the doctrine that God created some men absolutely and irresistibly predestined to eternal life and joy, and created the rest of mankind absolutely and hopelessly abandoned to eternal misery.

      3

      Matthew Arnold, St. Paul and Protestantism

1

Ps. lxxxix. 33-7.

2

By this phrase is commonly meant the doctrine that God created some men absolutely and irresistibly predestined to eternal life and joy, and created the rest of mankind absolutely and hopelessly abandoned to eternal misery.

3

Matthew Arnold, St. Paul and Protestantism (Smith, Elder, 1870), p. 99, admits that St. Paul 'falls into Calvinism,' but patronizingly excuses him on the ground that this Calvinism is with him secondary, or even less than secondary.

4

Of course the election of the nation or the church is felt, especially in the New Testament, or whenever in the Old Testament individuality is fully realized, to involve the election of each of the persons composing the nation or the church. But still their election is a challenge to their faith, and no guarantee of ultimate salvation. St. Paul is left praying and suffering 'for the elect's sake that they also may obtain the salvation … with eternal glory' (2 Tim. ii. 10). The elect have to 'make their calling and election sure' (2 Peter i. 10). It should, however, be noticed that election may be, and in the Gospels is, used to describe the final selection of those who are proved worthy of the 'marriage supper of the Lamb.' (Matt. xxii. 14.)

5

Vol. i. pp. 114 f.

6

Exod. iv. 23; Hos. xi. 1.

7

Exod. xvi. 10.

8

Or 'pray' (marg.) literally 'I was praying.'

9

Cf. Eph. v. 8-14.

10

Cf. Col. iii. 9.

11

Exod. xxxii. 32.

12

2 Esdr. viii. 15-16, x. 21-23. The latter passage is not spoken to God, but by one Jew to another.

13

2 Cor. iii. 8.

14

See 1 Cor. x. 1-13.

15

Heb. x. 29.

16

1 Thess. i. 10; Rom. viii. 3.

17

Acts xx. 28.

18

Phil. ii. 6-11.

19

Without the article which makes it a proper name of the Father.

20

R. V. margin2. It does further violence to the Greek to translate as R. V. margin1, 'He who is God over all is (be) blessed for ever.' I have nothing to add on the matter to S. and H. in loc., especially p. 236.

21

Tit. ii. 13. This is probably the right rendering.

22

St. Matt. iii. 9.

23

Great stress was laid by the prophets on the absence of any original merit or power in Israel, which caused the divine election; see Ezek. xvi, Deut. xxvi. 5.

24

See especially Amos ix. 7-10: 'Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the Lord. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir? Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord. For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all the nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth. All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say, The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us.'

25

Gen. xii. 3; Isa. lxvi. 18; Zech. viii. 23, &c.

26

Matt. viii. 11, 12.

27

In Weber's Jüdische Theologie (Leipzig, 1897, formerly called System der Altsynagog. Palästin. Theol. or Die Lehre des Talmud), pp. 51 ff, there are striking illustrations from the Talmud of this fixed tendency of thought among the Jews. Thus 'there exists no clearer proof of the Talmudic conviction of the absolutely holy character of Israel than that in all the places of Scripture in which Israel is reproved and has evil attributed to it, the expression, "the haters of Israel," is substituted for Israel.' 'We read: Isaiah was punished, because he called Israel a people of unclean lips,' &c. Cf. S. and H., p. 249, and my Ephesians, p. 261.

28

1 Pet. iv. 6. 'The gospel was preached to' these 'dead men that they might be judged according to men in the flesh,' i.e. by perishing in the flood, 'but live according to God in the spirit,' i.e. through our Lord's preaching in Hades. There is, I think, so far, no ambiguity about this passage.

29

Not, however, without regard to man's will to respond to the divine offer, see later, p. 82 ff.

30

Mal. i. 2, 3. 'Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the Lord: yet I loved Jacob; but Esau I hated, and made his mountains a desolation, and gave his heritage to the jackals of the wilderness. Whereas Edom saith, We are beaten down, but we will return,' &c. This passage (1) plainly refers to Esau as meaning Edom, the people; (2) describes not the original lot of Esau, which was secondary indeed, but highly blessed (Gen. xxvii. 39, 40); but the ultimate lot of Esau when he had misused his original endowment in violence and cruelty.

31

Isa. xxix. 16, xlv. 9, lxiv. 8; Jer. xviii. 6; Ecclus. xxxiii. 13.

32

xv. 7.

33

1 Cor. xii. 22-5; 2 Tim. ii. 20.

34

Jer. xviii. 4. The passage continues with a strong assertion of God's freedom to govern the destinies of nations on moral principles.

35

When Moses asked to see God's glory (Exod. xxxiii. 18), what was revealed to him was His goodness and free mercy, and what St. Paul here means by God's glory is His mercy especially.

36

In the original the words run, 'For this cause have I made thee to stand,' i.e. probably, 'I have preserved thy life under the plague of boils, and other plagues, in order to make thee an example of a more conspicuous judgement.' But St. Paul, departing from the Greek Bible, uses a word 'raised thee up,' which in Pharaoh's case, or in that of Cyrus, means to bring upon the stage of history. Isa. xli. 2; cf. Jer. 1. [xxvii in the Greek] 41; Hab. i. 6.

37

See Matt. xiii. 14, 15; Mark iv. 12; John xii. 40.

38

Cf. vol. i. p. 75.

39

On the meaning of divine foreknowledge in St. Paul see vol. i. p. 317.

40

See Joseph. Antiq. xiii. 5, 9; xviii. 1,