Third Meditation: What Is a Person? 137
their own "full entirety" (pleroma) enter in? Temporarily ex-
cluded (like Esau) for the sake of "the world's reconciliation,"
they too will at the last be restored to God's grace; and this will
be nothing less than a "resurrection from the dead" (11:11-12,
15). This, then, is the radiant answer dispelling the shadows of
Paul's grim "what if" in the ninth chapter of Romans, its clar-
ion negative. It turns out that there is no final illustrative divi-
sion between vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy; that was
a grotesque, all-too-human thought that can now be chased
away for good. God's wisdom far surpasses ours, and his love
can accomplish all that it intends. He has bound everyone in
disobedience so as to show mercy to everyone (11:32): all are
vessels of wrath precisely so that all may be made vessels of
mercy. As I say, not a difficult argument to follow, if one has
the will to do so.
Not that one can ever, apparently, be explicit enough.
One classic construal of those glorious closing reflections in
the eleventh chapter of Romans, particularly in the Reformed
tradition, is to claim that Paul's seemingly extravagant lan-
guage- "all," "full entirety," "the world," and so on - really still
means no more than that all peoples will be saved only in the
"exemplary" or "representative" form of the tiny number of
the elect. But this is absurd, of course. Paul is utterly and un-
waveringly clear that it is precisely those not called forth, those
who are not the "elect," those who have instead been allowed to
stumble, who still will never be allowed to fall. Those whom he
identifies as "elect" do not constitute the whole number of the
saved; they are merely the firstfruits of the grand plan of salva-
tion. The "derelict" too will, at the close of the tale, be gathered
in, caught up in the embrace of election before they can strike
the ground. And this is, of course, the only conclusion that
can deliver Paul from his fears. If he were not able to reach