Monday 4 December 2017

On Freewill

A lot of us read Romans 9-11 with 16th-century dichotomies in mind, rather than first-century dichotomies: as if the two dichotomies, with regard to God's sovereignty, are Calvinism or Arminianism.
But in the first century AD, the two dichotomies, with regards to God's sovereignty, weren't a choice between Calvinism or Arminianism: there was the Sadducees' view and the Pharisees' view.
And the question that was being asked, with regard to God's sovereignty, was not "how and why do some individuals get saved while others don't" - it was more to do with "how must Israel's restored kingdom come about".
The Pharisees believed (or at least one school among the Pharisees believed) in a certain amount of freewill - that is, they believed they had a role to play in bringing about the kingdom, a somewhat military/political role; while the Sadducees believed God would bring it about all by Himself in His own good time and that the Jews shouldn't engage in any activism to try to make it happen. 
The questions Paul was answering, with regards to God's sovereignty, in Romans 9-11, had more to do with the interaction between God and Israel and Israel's status in the kingdom - a different issue entirely to the Calvinists' issues with Arminians in the 17th century. Interestingly, Paul's background was Pharisaic, the most hands-on type of Pharisee at that, the type that believed most strongly in freewill with regard to Israel finding its place in God's purposes. 

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