conceived as to leave room for free agency and responsibility, and to exclude God from the
authorship of sin. Self-limitation is a part of freedom even in man, and may be exercised by the
sovereign God for holy purposes and from love to his creatures; in fact it is necessary, if salvation
is to be a moral process, and not a physical or mechanical necessity. Religion is worth nothing
except as the expression of free conviction and voluntary devotion. Paul represents sometimes the
divine sovereignty, sometimes the human responsibility, sometimes, as in Phil. 2:12, 13, he combines
both sides, without an attempt to solve the insolvable problem which really lies beyond the present
capacity of the human mind. "He does not deal with speculative extremes; and in whatever way
the question be speculatively adjusted, absolute dependence and moral self-determination are both
involved in the immediate Christian self-consciousness," Baur, Paul, II. 249. "Practical teaching,"
says Reuss (II. 532) to the same effect, "will always be constrained to insist upon the fact that man’s
salvation is a free gift of God, and that his condemnation is only the just punishment of sin." Comp.
also Farrar, St. Paul, II. 243, 590; Weiss, p. 356 sqq.; Beyschlag, Die paulinische Theodicee (Berlin,
1868). Weiss thus sums up Paul’s doctrine of predestination: "An sich hat Gott das absolute Becht,
die Menschen von vornherein zum Heil oder zum Verderben zu erschaffen und durch freie
Machtwirkung diesem Ziele zuzuführen; aber er hat sich in Betreff des christlichen Heils dieses
Rechtes nur insofern bedient, als er unabhängig von allem menschlichen Thun und Verdienen nach
seinem unbeschränkten Willen bestimmt, an welche Bedingung er seine Gnade knüpfen will. Die
Bedingung, an welche er seine Erwählung gebunden hat, ist nun nichts anders als die Liebe zu
ihm, welche er an den empfänglichen Seelen vorhererkennt. Die Erwählten aber werden berufen,
indem Gott durch das Evangelium in ihnen den Glauben wirkt."
There can be no doubt that Paul teaches an eternal election to eternal salvation by free grace,
an election which is to be actualized by faith in Christ and a holy life of obedience. But he does
not teach a decree of reprobation or a predestination to sin and perdition (which would indeed be
a "decretum horribile," if verum). This is a logical invention of supralapsarian theologians who
deem it to be the necessary counterpart of the decree of election. But man’s logic is not God’s logic.
A decree of reprobation is nowhere mentioned. The term ἀδόκιμος,disapproved, worthless, reprobate,
is used five times only as a description of character (twice of things). Romans 9 is the Gibraltar of
supralapsarianism, but it must be explained in connection with Rom. 10–11, which present the
other aspects. The strongest passage is Rom. 9:22, where Paul speaks of σκεύη ὀργῆς κατηρτισμένα
εἰς ἀπώλειαν. But he significantly uses here the passive: "fitted unto destruction," or rather (as
many of the best commentators from Chrysostom to Weiss take it) the middle: "who fitted themselves
for destruction," and so deserved it; while of the vessels of mercy he says that God "before prepared"
them unto glory (σκεύη ἐλέους ἃ προητοίμασεν, 9:23). He studiously avoids to say of the vessels
of wrath: ἃ κατήρτισεν, which would have corresponded to ἃ προητοίμασεν, and thus he exempts
God from a direct and efficient agency in sin and destruction. When in 9:17, he says of Pharaoh,
that God raised him up for the very purpose (εἰς αύτὸ τοῦτό ἐξήγειρά σε) that he might show in
him His power, he does not mean that God created him or called him into existence (which would
require a different verb), but, according to the Hebrew (Ex. 9:16, the hiphil of ﬠָמַד), that "he caused
him to stand forth" as actor in the scene; and when he says with reference to the same history that
God "hardens whom he will" (Rom. 9:18. ὃν δέ θέλει σκληρύνει), it must be remembered that
Pharaoh had already repeatedly hardened his own heart (Ex. 8:15, 32; 9:34, 35), so that God punished
him for his sin and abandoned him to its consequences. God does not cause evil, but he bends,A.D. 1-100.