Romans Chapter 9

[megasamurai]

This is probably the most infamous and hard to defend chapter in the Bible. I always wondered why "free will Christianity" attacks Calvinists as being Biblically ignorant despite this chapter. How does this chapter even make sense from a free will perspective. According to this chapter, God hardens the hearts of whoever he wants. If god hardens hearts, how does this honor free will? Some Christians say that god only hardens people's hearts to make choices that they would have made on their own anyway. If they would have hardened their hearts without god's intervention, why did he harden their hearts? Also, the jars of clay speech claims that god can create jars of clay just to throw them into garbage, therefore god creates people just to send them to hell. How can you interpret the 9th chapter of Romans as being pro-free will? I remember when I read my Bible and asked god to guide me with his hand to where I need to read and I read this chapter. I was so disgusted that it ruined my faith.

[LogicalFallacy]

Hi have been having a discussion with my Christian friend about this.

I said considering all that is mentioned in the Bible how do you not know one of the following is true considering that 'friend' thinks I just don't want to believe or am deceived:

1) Satan has deceived me

2) God has sent a delusion to blind me so that he need not saved me

3) God has hardened my heart

4) I am not predestined

5) We have both been sent a strong delusion

6) Friend is actually a wolf in sheep's clothing, professing God but being a worker of iniquity

 

You start going down this path and they admit that well according to the Bible all that is possible... therefore they don't know that they are saved and I am intentionally not believing.

The free will argument is a load of rubbish and fails. As soon as you bring up original sin Christians scream "but free will". Which you can then immediately start asking more questions, which based on my experience will lead to "you just don't understand God" at which point you can consider the argument won.

[Joshpantera]

Quote

Romans 9New International Version (NIV)

Paul’s Anguish Over Israel

9 I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit— ² I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. ³ For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, ⁴ the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. ⁵ Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised!^[a] Amen.

God’s Sovereign Choice

⁶ It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. ⁷ Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”^[b] 8 In other words, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring. ⁹ For this was how the promise was stated: “At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son.”^[c]

¹⁰ Not only that, but Rebekah’s children were conceived at the same time by our father Isaac. ¹¹ Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: ¹² not by works but by him who calls—she was told, “The older will serve the younger.”^[d] 13 Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”^[e]

¹⁴ What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! ¹⁵ For he says to Moses,

“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
    and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”^[f]

¹⁶ It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. ¹⁷ For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”^[g] 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.

¹⁹ One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” ²⁰ But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”^[h] 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?

²² What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? ²³ What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory—²⁴ even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? ²⁵ As he says in Hosea:

“I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people;
    and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,”^[i]

²⁶ and,

“In the very place where it was said to them,
    ‘You are not my people,’
    there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”^[j]

²⁷ Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:

“Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea,
    only the remnant will be saved.
²⁸ For the Lord will carry out
    his sentence on earth with speed and finality.”^[k]

²⁹ It is just as Isaiah said previously:

“Unless the Lord Almighty
    had left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom,
    we would have been like Gomorrah.”^[l]

Israel’s Unbelief

³⁰ What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; ³¹ but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness,have not attained their goal. ³² Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone.³³ As it is written:

“See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble
    and a rock that makes them fall,
    and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.”^[m]

[Joshpantera]

We're back to more quote mining the OT again with this example. And of course it's out of context (as all NT quote mines tend to be) because it has to do with Paul trying to make an argument that these OT verses justify non-Jews, namely gentile christians carrying on as the chosen people of god. In this mix we find statements about the Jews being hardened by god which makes free will sound questionable.

 

The quote mines are interesting. If you go back to Hosea 2 it's one of the those old writings that seem addressed to the polytheism change over. Yahweh is pissed off about Israelite's giving offering to Baal, which is a pissing contest between two of the former "Son's of El." Yahweh is given Israel as his lot and people. They believed that there were 70 nations and these nations each had a god. Yahweh was one of many other gods below El Elyon the most high god. We covered this in detail elsewhere on the forum. And this is an example of how to utilize that back ground knowledge when facing NT writers trying to quote mine the OT way out of context. Paul was quite ignorant of the origins of his people. The dumb ass pulls these quotes from places that are bleeding with traces of the old polytheistic Israel going through an evolution from many gods to just one. I don't get the feeling that he even understood that in his day and age. 

 

He just skimmed through scripture looking for whatever suited his fancy. And this style of bible study has lasted right through to today. I was educated for the first 12 years in private school with bible class required every year. By high school I started picking up on this style of copying and pasting little bits jumping all over the place from the old and new testaments and calling these hack jobs a "bible study." It's more using the bible the way that a criminal in a crime movie is often portrayed as cutting individual letters out of various media and pasting the individual letters together forming an untraceable note for the police. Each individual letter came out of some context completely diverse to the other letters used to make the note.

 

That's basically what constitutes a "bible study." One sentence over in Hosea. And then jumping back to a few sentences in Isaiah. Then perhaps finding a few more sentences in Revelation or John and pasting them all together to claim that something the pastor created is "The Bible," simply because the various and diverse sentences from completely differing contexts happen to exist in the bible. And when you go look at all of the verses used to create one of these bible studies, you find that they're completely out of context with one another. And these guys are simply mimicking and copying what Paul and others set forward in the NT with their quote mining styles.I made an example elsewhere of how foolish this was of Paul and the NT writers.

 

Some one can come along and cherry pick verses the exact same way and come up with something new age like we are all gods. And they can quote mine the bible exactly the same way Paul was doing. And then they could present it to christian and Jewish audiences. And those audiences would likely reject it, as Paul was rejected by the Jews. But some other people who don't know any better could be fooled into thinking that this new age idea is "The Bible" simply because a few diverse and out of context verses from Psalm 82 and John 10:30 and perhaps Luke 22:10 were pasted together and presented as true enlightenment. I could say that god hardened the hearts of both the Jews and the christians and saved this message for future generations of new age people who are now the chosen people, because both the Jews and christians lost favor with god. And he hardened both the Jews and christians using them only as tools for a certain amount of time. I can look to Revelation and find something about Jesus speaking of a "new name" that will come. An entirely new age version of Judaism and christianity combined, set to the theme of the new age of Aquarius where Jesus will be known by a "new name" and the 12 apostles or 12 tribes of Israel / 12 constellations of the zodiac (see Philo and Josephus about the 12 tribes as the 12 months and signs of the zodiac)  are to follow Jesus, as the Sun into the house of Aquarius for the next Aeon, or 2150 years. 

 

See, it is written in scripture:

Luke 22:10New International Version (NIV)

¹⁰ He replied, “As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters,

 

See, it's cryptic. It wasn't meant for people back then to completely understand. It was really meant for new age people some 2,000 years after it was written. Who are the new chosen of god for the next world age of some 2150 years until the zodiacal age changes again. See according to prophecy we'll find life there in Aquarius, during the age of Aquarius! For it is written! 

 

I have to thank BAA for the perfect timing of that new astronomical discovery for use in my new age example of how christianity started back then. lol

 

But seriously, I keep bringing up these very foolish examples because this is quite literally what Paul and the NT writers were doing. As foolish as this seems to christians is precisely how foolish Pauls message must have appeared to the Jews. So he needed to take it to another audience. Just like I would have to take my quote mines to a non-christian audience who were too ignorant to know any better. I'd have to find non-christians or people with a limited familiarity of christianity. And I'd have to demonize the christians to this new and ignorant audience for rejecting my quote mined message the exact same way that Paul demonized the Jews for rejecting his out of context quote mining of their own scriptures.

 

This is all bloody obvious when you present some one with a modern example of what the early christians were doing back then. It's all the exact same quote mining out of the original context type of nonsense. 

 

But if my quote mining religion ever by chance found favor with political interests, lets say a NWO government or something to that effect, and they decided to use it as a political tool and impose it on the world as the new and superior religion, guess what? That's exactly what Rome did with christianity. It was horse shit all along from the outset. But political interests decided to use the horse shit to their advantage and that's the only reason that this horse shit found it's way around the globe and eventually into each and every one of OUR MINDS! Any horse shit nonsense can go from obscure and fringe to mainstream just like that regardless of it's merit. And then be imposed on children for generations and generations before people finally start catching on and breaking free of it.

 

It's like the Matrix and those of who understand this can then start pulling others out of the Matrix...

[megasamurai]

That provides quite the perspective on this chapter. Paul invented predestination to explain why the Jews didn't believe in Jesus and used the example of Pharaoh's heart being hardened to "prove" his point.

[TABA]

Even while I was a card-carrying Christian I found the New Testament's invoking of isolated fragments of OT 'prophecy' to be very flimsy and suspect.   I mean, that's the best they could come up with?  

[♦ ficino ♦]

But Josh, but ... you mean Romans 9 is just about "Israel" and it isn't Paul's declaration of Calvinism?

Sob.

Great analysis above! I like you "new age Bible guy" picture. My father did EXACTLY that kind of new age Bible quote mining directly from the Bible. His fundy sister, bless her heart, never bought it.

[Geezer]

Dr. Robert M. Price has an answer for all the contradictions, inconsistencies, & miracles found in the Bible in his book The Human Bible NT & it's companion book The Christ Myrh & Its Problems.

The short version is that the Bible is a collection of fictional stories with fictional characters. The Gospel story was likely created from Jewish midrash & Marcion not Paul (also a fictional character) wrote the Epistles. 

 

[Joshpantera]

I've read that sort of theory. It's interesting because Paul's writings suddenly appear into the historical record in the 2nd century, via Marcion the Gnostic who claims to have discovered them laying around in Antioch. Marcion creates the first canon with these Pauline Epistles which suddenly appeared. They have much to do with Midrash, or mining for quotes in the Jewish scriptures regardless of the original context. Still no Gospels in the historical record until after all of this in the early to mid 2nd century. Finally after Marcion's canon the Gospels appear into the historical record. They're all assumed to have been written near the end of the 1st century even though they're not in the historical record until the middle to late 2nd century. 

 

Earl Doherty's idea that the whole thing started out mystical and Gnostic but was later over powered by an orthodox exoteric and historical interpretation doesn't seem all that far fetched. The alternative is Bart Ehrman's ideas which suggest that after a real Jesus died and nothing happened, his surviving followers began looking to the Jewish scriptures for hidden clues from god and went on to produce all of the Midrashing. And it's hard to say how exactly it happened.

 

But what's clear is that it did happen that way - people were scouring the Jewish scriptures for some reason, more often with a Greek translation and considering themselves "other" with respect to "the Jews" of the story line. It's always "the Jews," this and "the Jews" that. Read the NT looking for every where that "the Jews" are mentioned. That aspect alone tends to show how far removed these writers were from the so called events, the so called nation and the so called people of the story line. I was talking about John before. Notice how the writer of John says when quote mining Psalm 82, "Isn't it written in YOUR law, 'I have called you gods?'" This is supposed to be a quote directly from Jesus. Wouldn't an historical Jewish Jesus who was raised in the land in question say, "Isn't it written in OUR law..." The anti-semetic bias of these writers is transparent. These are gentiles far removed from the region, customs, language and people of the story in question. That's all very transparent just by reading the stories with these problems in mind. And then add to it the problem of no historical record of these NT works until Marcion, somewhat of an anti-semite in the 2nd century and the whole thing seems very suspect...

[megasamurai]

Of course, these books are attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John for some reason, three of these four people being Jews. What are the origins of these attributions?

[Joshpantera]

Bart Ehrman's blog discusses that here: https://ehrmanblog.org/when-did-the-gospels-get-their-names/

 

 

[Joshpantera]

Here's another article about the third person writing style of the gospels, which are four completely anonymous letters : https://bittersweetend.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/third-person-gospels/

 

That's one of the main clues that removes the writers from eye witness and Jewish origins and pushes them further back to times when gentiles were reading the Septuagint (Greek Translation of the Jewish Scriptures). The antisemitic language of the writers makes more sense with all of this in mind.

 

'Oh, those pesky Jews! They didn't realize what they had. What idiots!' 

 

 

[megasamurai]

Of course, why is the continuity with the Old Testament a big deal. The genealogy goes back to Adam? Why make him the son of Jehovah and not some other god? 

[readyforchange]

On ‎2‎/‎22‎/‎2017 at 10:13 PM, Joshpantera said:

...

He just skimmed through scripture looking for whatever suited his fancy. And this style of bible study has lasted right through to today. I was educated for the first 12 years in private school with bible class required every year. By high school I started picking up on this style of copying and pasting little bits jumping all over the place from the old and new testaments and calling these hack jobs a "bible study." It's more using the bible the way that a criminal in a crime movie is often portrayed as cutting individual letters out of various media and pasting the individual letters together forming an untraceable note for the police. Each individual letter came out of some context completely diverse to the other letters used to make the note.

 

That's basically what constitutes a "bible study." One sentence over in Hosea. And then jumping back to a few sentences in Isaiah. Then perhaps finding a few more sentences in Revelation or John and pasting them all together to claim that something the pastor created is "The Bible," simply because the various and diverse sentences from completely differing contexts happen to exist in the bible. And when you go look at all of the verses used to create one of these bible studies, you find that they're completely out of context with one another. And these guys are simply mimicking and copying what Paul and others set forward in the NT with their quote mining styles.I made an example elsewhere of how foolish this was of Paul and the NT writers.

 

Some one can come along and cherry pick verses the exact same way and come up with something new age like we are all gods. And they can quote mine the bible exactly the same way Paul was doing. And then they could present it to christian and Jewish audiences. And those audiences would likely reject it, as Paul was rejected by the Jews. But some other people who don't know any better could be fooled into thinking that this new age idea is "The Bible" simply because a few diverse and out of context verses from Psalm 82 and John 10:30 and perhaps Luke 22:10 were pasted together and presented as true enlightenment. I could say that god hardened the hearts of both the Jews and the christians and saved this message for future generations of new age people who are now the chosen people, because both the Jews and christians lost favor with god. And he hardened both the Jews and christians using them only as tools for a certain amount of time. I can look to Revelation and find something about Jesus speaking of a "new name" that will come. An entirely new age version of Judaism and christianity combined, set to the theme of the new age of Aquarius where Jesus will be known by a "new name" and the 12 apostles or 12 tribes of Israel / 12 constellations of the zodiac (see Philo and Josephus about the 12 tribes as the 12 months and signs of the zodiac)  are to follow Jesus, as the Sun into the house of Aquarius for the next Aeon, or 2150 years. 

...

When reading many of these NT quotes from within their original Hebrew bible contexts, I think the only way it can work from a Christian perspective is reading the Hebrew bible passages as midrash, double-fulfillment prophecies, and hidden messages in the text, apparently revealed by God to Paul and the gospel writers.  I think an independent observer, with no prior bias towards Judaism or Christianity, would almost certainly side with orthodox Jewish interpretations of the passages over the Christian ones. 

[Joshpantera]

1 hour ago, megasamurai said:

Of course, why is the continuity with the Old Testament a big deal. The genealogy goes back to Adam? Why make him the son of Jehovah and not some other god? 

 

The people doing the creating were using the Jewish scriptures. I think that people were drawn to and wanted to get in on the snobbish attitude and superiority claims of the Jews in their mythology. People seem drawn to superiority claims, regardless of merit. 

 

 If we take the stories at face value, it's because Jews started this quote mining venture and then spread it out to gentiles around the region who were familiar with Judaism, in Greek. Not knowing better, the wanna be Jews accepted it. It was that time period far removed from the region in question when all of these writings seem to appear into history. And the gentiles were hijacking the Jews mythology and using it to there own liking at this point. It involved using the god, the patriarchal lineage and everything. They wanted in on it. 

 

But put that way, knowing what we know about how the Jews merely hijacked near eastern pagan myths in the first place, I guess it only seems fair that some other pagans eventually took their now ethnic mythology and returned the favor several hundred years later. It went from gentiles, to Jews, back to gentiles again. There's all sorts of irony there. 

[Joshpantera]

45 minutes ago, readyforchange said:

When reading many of these NT quotes from within their original Hebrew bible contexts, I think the only way it can work from a Christian perspective is reading the Hebrew bible passages as midrash, double-fulfillment prophecies, and hidden messages in the text, apparently revealed by God to Paul and the gospel writers.  I think an independent observer, with no prior bias towards Judaism or Christianity, would almost certainly side with orthodox Jewish interpretations of the passages over the Christian ones. 

 

I think you're right. When you check the context of said claims lack of belief seems compelling. Especially to an unbiased observer. 

[megasamurai]

Interesting, hijacking Jewish myths to tell the story of a new chosen people. Still, I'm surprised this thread has talked little about the 9th chapter of Romans specifically. The competing doctrines of predestination and free will have caused a huge split in Christianity. It's obvious that one or both of these factions tells lots of lies.

[★ Citsonga ★]

On 3/8/2017 at 2:15 PM, megasamurai said:

The competing doctrines of predestination and free will have caused a huge split in Christianity. It's obvious that one or both of these factions tells lots of lies.

 

...or that both sides focus on different quotes from a contradictory Bible.

[Joshpantera]