Where Paul talked about foreknowledge, election and predestination, I have a feeling that the emphasis in Paul’s mind was likely a polemic for his gospel, against the Judaizers. He was likely using those grand terms to defend his gospel, to defend his thesis that God’s kingdom really revolves around grace, Jesus, His cross and resurrection, and faith, and that the kingdom is for Jews and Gentiles alike in one new, real Abrahamic family, rather than the kingdom having to do with Jewish ethnicity exclusively through the Law.
Paul's claim, Paul’s gospel (about God’s grace, Jesus, His cross and resurrection, and about the church comprising of both Jew and Gentile, the international body of people whom God, simply because of their faith in Jesus, was declaring righteous)—was authentic, Paul was explaining, seeing God had already foretold of it in the Old Testament, He already foreknew the existence of a Jew/Gentile body, already planned that these would be the ones destined for glory, that his election of a people destined for glory would be these people, the faith-in-Jesus people irrespective of their ethnicity and without them needing to become Observant (of Judaism). It was to this age-old plan, that people were now being called by the gospel. Paul was defending his answer to the question of the day. He was reassuring believers against the controversy of their day.
So that doesn’t primarily address the issue of the 1600s, which was: why don't some individuals believe. Paul doesn’t quite go there, one way or another, I suspect. He was addressing the issue of his day.
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