136 Apokatastasis: Four Meditations
subversion of custom. There is, it turns out, no final division
between the elect and the derelict here at all, but rather the pre-
cise opposite: the final embrace of all parties in the single and
inventively universal grace of election. This is why Esau and
Jacob provide so apt a typology for Paul's argument. Esau, we
must remember, is not finally rejected in the story of the two
brothers; he and Jacob are reconciled, to the increase of both,
precisely as a consequence of their temporary estrangement.
Indeed, when they are reunited, it is Jacob who says to Esau
(not the reverse), "Seeing your face is like seeing God's." And
this is the pattern Paul explicitly invokes in his argument. In
the case of Israel and the church, moreover, election has be-
come even more literally "antinomian": Christ is the end of
the Law (in the sense both of its purpose and of its conclu-
sion) and for precisely this reason all persons may attain righ-
teousness; with the fulfillment of the Law's righteousness, its
prescriptions and restrictions have been set aside, the wall of
separation between peoples has been removed, and any dif-
ference between Jew and gentile has been effaced; thus God
blesses everyone (10:11-12). As for the believing "remnant" of
Israel (11:5), it turns out that they have been elected not as the
limited number of the "saved" within Israel, but as the earnest
through which all of Israel will be saved (11:26); they are the
part that makes the totality holy (11:16). And, again, as was
continually the case in Genesis, the providential ellipticality
of election's course vastly enlarges its embrace: For the time
being, true, a part of Israel is hardened, but this will remain
the case only until the "full entirety" (1rA~pw1-w, pleroma) of
the gentiles enter in. The unbelievers among the children of
Israel may have been allowed to stumble, but God will never
allow them to fall. And so, if their failure now brings enrich-
ment to the world, how much more will they provide when