March 13, 2025 • 54 mins
Romans 9 is often used as an example for predestination and Calvinism. But does Paul actually teach predestination? Or did Calvin miss something significant in this passage? David Bercot explores the challenges of free will versus predestination, and shows a framework for what Paul was communicating in Romans 9.
David Bercot’s Romans commentary:
David’s previous episode on Romans:
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Yeah, it's up to God's mercy.
I mean, no one can say, God,I deserved it.
I mean, everyone of us, God,He, on Judgment Day,
He could come down with a liston every one of us and say, look,
I've got all these reasonsto cross you off.
But on the other hand, he'snot going to be arbitrary.
But on the other hand, he'snot going to be arbitrary.
He's going to have his reasons,
but he doesn't haveto explain his reasons to us.
(00:26):
David Bercot, welcome back to the podcast.
It's good to have you on again.Good being here Reagan.
So we did a previous episode with youabout the book of Romans.
And like you just finished, compilinga commentary based on the early church
writings about Romans.
And today I want to tackle a topicthat I don't believe
we've ever covered on this podcast,and that is predestination, Calvinism,
(00:48):
that whole package, essentially,because a section of Scripture
that's often used forthat framework would be Romans nine.
And you addressthat quite a bit in your book.
And I would be really curiousto hear your thoughts on this.
So we're going to plow into that and,and we'll see where it takes us.
But before we jump in to the text,
can you first definewhat is predestination, Calvanism, like
(01:10):
what do we meanwhen we're using terms like that?
Okay.
So predestination as it's used inCalvinism and before that from Augustine,
the doctrine says that
before the creation
either of the world or of or of mankind,
that God arbitrarily chose
(01:34):
who he was going to saveand who he was going to eternally.
Damn.
And that that arbitrarily is importantIn other words,
it was not based on his foreknowledgethat he looked in the future.
And oh, Reagan.
Yeah, this guy's living a godly life.
This guy has faith in Christ.
So yes, I'm going to, have him amongthe elect.
(01:54):
Is thatdoesn't have anything to do with you.
It just he just picked you.
You live a godly lifebecause you are of the elect,
not not the other way around.
That he picked youbecause you were living a godly life.
So, the basisand it all comes from Augustine
was this thought that we playno role in our own salvation.
(02:15):
Everything is from God,
our faith,
our initial belief, the godly workswe do, the whole thing.
God does every bit of that.
And yeah, we're basically,yeah, pieces of wood.
You know, they wouldn't say that thatthat he moves around, you know, but,
they wouldn't say that that last part.
(02:37):
But I think the rest would be all languagethat they would be comfortable with,
as in, like thereis there's nothing we can do to, to choose
or to become a Christian, etc.,because God has chosen
all of that for essentially like he's
that, he's the mover,and that makes all this possible.
It's nothing to do with us.
okay, so let's let's get into Romans ninethen a little bit, because this is one
(03:00):
that's going to come upquite a bit in conversation.
So I'm going to pull a couple examples,just as kind of places to start.
And we'll just kind of kind of usethose as launch points.
So for example verses 12 and 13,
it talks about how God loved Jacoband hated Esau.
It says in Romans nine verses 12 to 13,and it says before they were ever
born, before the idea that donegood or bad, you know, that's the claim.
(03:23):
Are people misreading thator they misconstruing that passage
to use that to say therefore that's preyou know, predestination.
Yeah. People are misunderstanding it.
I think to be fair,it's not like people are twisting it.
Like, where do you get that?
I mean, I think somebody reading this, itwould be easy to come to that conclusion.
(03:43):
But the problem is youthen have to ignore all the rest
of the Bible, you know, because everytime God gives a commandment,
the implicationis obvious that we can obey it.
I mean,why would he tell us to do something?
Yeah, well, I can'tI can't do it, you know?
I mean, you have to take the whole Bible
and say, well, there's this God who’sbasically playing games.
(04:05):
He tells the Israelites to do thiseven though he knows they can't do it,
or he tells them to do it,and he knows they will do it
because he's he's going to do it for them,you know?
And then Jesus complimenting like, just,
yesterday in Sunday School,we were talking about this centurion.
And Jesus says,I've never seen such remarkable faith.
Well, if Calvinism is true,God gave him the faith.
(04:25):
So what's remarkable? Why? Why praise him?
He didn't have anything to do with his,with his faith. So.
And like I say, this beganwith Augustine in the fifth century.
And, chapter nine was, you know,one of the ones.
And like I said, I think it's fair to sayjust reading that apart
(04:46):
from the rest of the scripture, you couldreasonably come to that conclusion.
Now, the early Christiansdidn't do that, though.
You know, they read this and they said,well, yeah, this sounds like this
on the surface, but yeah,what about all the rest of the Bible?
And they were having to deal with itbecause the Gnostics, many
of the Gnostic groups who John identifiesas the Antichrist,
(05:08):
they taught predestination that, you know,there's nothing you can do about it.
It's all been decided ahead of time.
You're either part of the elector you're or you're not.
So the early Christiansactually talk about this subject a lot
because they're havingto counter the Gnostics.
So and without the early Christians,
I don't I mean, like I say,this was always a mystery to me.
(05:31):
I knew it couldn't
mean what it says on the face just becauseit contradicts other scriptures.
But I never felt real comfortable.
And the early Christians.
Yeah.
I mean, it'sjust so amazing how they they could follow
Paul's arguments even though they get,you know, sometimes very,
what rearranged.
I mean, Paul doesn'tfollow this logical order
(05:53):
we were just talking aboutin the previous podcast.
So this one, you go back to verse
six and I mentioned just yesterday
I was listing the six, pointsof Paul's great argument.
And one of them isthat God has not been unfair to the Jews
(06:14):
in extending grace to the Gentilesand bringing them in.
And so Paul spends a lot of time on that.
Now, that aspect of those six things,
most of those I would have seen in Romans,I would not have seen that very much,
that God has not been unfairto the Gentiles.
They they recognize.
Okay, Paul, is is bringing this up a lotbecause the Jews are making that argument.
(06:38):
This if what you're sayingis true, then God isn't fair.
Okay.
So andyeah, how can these Gentiles come in?
They don't have the blood of Abraham.
So Paul points out, look,
there are a lot of peoplewho have Abraham's blood
and they're not includedas part of Israel.
(06:58):
So he begins, he says, verse six,but it is not that
the Word of God has taken no effect, forthey are not all Israel who are of Israel.
I think of Israel means of Jacob.
Okay, so just because you'rea descendant of Jacob, Paul is saying
it doesn't mean you're part of the trueIsrael, the the Israel of God.
(07:21):
Okay. And and this is a shocking thingto say to Jews.
Now, it's it should have been no issueto Christian Jews,
but it apparently was the fact that hehe has to explain it so many times.
But to the Jews in general,that would have been,
you know,just almost impossible for them to accept.
Okay.
So it says, nor are they all children
(07:43):
because they are the seed of Abraham,
but in Isaac your seed shall be called.
So his line of argument is okay.
You're saying that,
just because
we are fleshly Jews
doesn'tmean we're part of this Israel of God.
(08:03):
And and they're saying,all right, well, you know, you prove that.
So his argument is okay,think about it now,
there are a lot of people on earth
who are fleshly descendants of Abraham,
but they are not part of Israel.
And you Jews yourselves recognize that.
Look at Ishmael. Okay.
(08:24):
So he was part of the covenantof circumcision.
He's an heir of Abraham,but he's not included in Israel.
All right.
So just because you have Abraham's blood,it gets you nowhere.
Look at the sons of Keturah. Was it 12?
Well, yeah, it's a number of sons.
And they started tribes and all that.
They're not part of Israel yetthey all have Abraham's blood.
(08:47):
So he says. So. Yeah.
You have to agree with me
that just because you have Abraham'sblood, that doesn't get you anywhere.
All right.
That is
those who are the children of the flesh.
Okay.
So just becauseyou are a physical descendant,
a genetic descendant of Abraham,these are not the children of God.
It doesn't make you a child of God,which is what John the Baptist preached.
(09:10):
You know,
he said, God can raise up childrenof Abraham from these from these stones.
So this is all consistentwith what we see in the Gospels.
But the children of the promiseare counted as the seed.
Okay.
And here's where it gets a little bitmore in the Greek reasoning.
They're just a little bit harder to followhis argument, but he's saying, okay,
it has to be people who are part of,the promise of
(09:33):
of course, the Jews would have said,well, well, we are, but okay.
He develops this at this time I will comeand Sarah shall have a son.
Okay.
So so Abraham then had,
I guess, 14 sons,if I count correctly, but
only one of the 14 was a child of promise,and that was Isaac.
Okay, so like I say, the vast majority,all these people with Abraham's blood
(09:57):
who are out there now,you know, make up a lot of the Arab world,
probably who knows
what other people groups would havesome of Abraham's blood in them.
They're not counted because they're not achild with the promise. But,
Isaac was and the promise was,you know that.
Sarah. She'll have a son.
Okay. Now, here'swhere it gets a little bit more confusing.
And not only this,but when Rebecca also conceived.
(10:22):
Now, this says by one manand their understanding it to say by one
act of procreation, which is a lot
more significant even by our father Isaac.
Okay. So.
Ishmael didn't have the same motheras Isaac, nor did the sons of Keturah.
But now when you get to Jacob and Esau,you've got the same father,
(10:45):
the same mother,
the same act of procreation, you know,from one conception or one whatever.
That's how close it is.
But he's saying,even though it's that close, one
is part of the seedand the other one isn't.
And it's like, so his point is,it doesn't mean anything.
You can be that close to Abraham.
(11:07):
You're his grandson.You are a son of Isaac.
You know, your own brother is part of it.
But you aren't.
Even though you're twins, you know, okay,
for the children not yet being born,nor having done any good or evil,
that the purpose of Godaccording to election now
a better rendition today
(11:27):
because election people thinkoh, that means predestination.
Election just means to choose.
Well,I mean, we're going to have an election
here in the United States in two months.
Yeah, we just choose somebody. Elect meanswho do you choose?
You know, but because of Calvinism,you have people today.
Oh, election. That means predestination.
No, it means itjust was an ordinary Greek word.
(11:47):
It means to choose. Okay. So God
has chosen before they did that
according to his choice might standnot of works, but of him who calls.
Okay, now,one of the things that Chrysostom says
quite a few timeswhen he's discussing Romans is
we've got to keep in mindwhat Paul's point is,
(12:10):
because if you don't,you're going to go off
on a lot of strange tangentsand some wrong doctrines.
Okay, so what is the point? He'strying to get across.
The point he's trying to get acrossis that the Gentiles
are part ofthe promised seed through faith.
And the Jews were saying,but how can a Gentile, a filthy Gentile,
(12:30):
who worships stone idols,who probably lives in immorality,
you know, eats all these defiled foodsand everything,
and they can just come inand be saved like that.
And his argument is, you know, we getsaved, we come in, not through works.
Okay. It is, you know, God's choice.
And he's saying, okay, look at these twopeople groups, the Jews and the Gentiles.
(12:54):
They're like Jacob and Esau.
Now he's talking the promise to Rebecca.
He said,
in verse12, the older shall serve the younger.
And before that he doesn't quote it.
He says, there's two nationsinside of you.
So he's talking about two nationsthat are inside of Rebecca.
(13:17):
One would be the Israelites,the descendants of Jacob,
the other would be the Edomites,the the descendants of Esau.
Okay, so it's two nations.
He's not talking about two people.
And this is where people get messed upthat see, God decided to
he hated Esau and he loved Jacobbefore they were ever born and all that.
But he said,there's two nations inside of you,
(13:40):
and the younger shall serve.
The older shall serve the younger.
Now that was never truewith regard to Jacob and Esau.
Esau never served Jacob,if anything, was the other way around.
You remember when Jacob came back,you know, boy, he bows down
before Esau, you know, bringsall these presents and all that.
Esau never bowed down to Jacobor served him in any way.
(14:03):
It was the Edomites and the Israelites,okay, the two nations.
And he's saying that, okay, before these
either nation had done any works,he had already prophesied
that the younger,which was the Israelites,
would be served by the olderthe who would be the Edomites.
Even though we were talkingabout a few minutes apart in birth.
(14:23):
But, you know, you still had a youngerand a and an older.
Okay.
Now, what always tripped me up in that
most people,they don't go and look up these verses.
And so they're thinking that
the scriptures are saying that God says,
I love Jacob before he was ever born,just out of arbitrary.
(14:43):
And I hated Esau before he was ever born.
But Paul, they're the first one.
The older shall serve the younger.
That was the prophecy given to Rebecca.
When he told her, there's two nations now,
that last one is not a prophecy, it’sfrom Malachi.
It's a prophecy only in the sense of Goddeclaring his judgment on Edom.
(15:08):
But this is long after Jacoband Esau are dead.
This is more than a thousand years later.
And he's.
When he says that when you readthe whole passage is from Malachi,
I may have it here in the, the commentary.
He is saying this was the prophecythat the older would serve the younger.
Now here is how it was fulfilled. It.
(15:29):
And then he quotes.
So he quotes Genesisand he turns right around
and he quotes from Malachi.
So let me see.
I think I have it here in there.
So it's in Malachi chapter one, versestwo and three.
Jacob, I have love, but Esau I have hated,and I have made his mountains
to desolation.
(15:50):
And I've given his heritageto the jackals of the wilderness.
So when you read that.
So this is Malachi right at the end,towards the end of the Old Testament.
So Genesis is the first book,and this is in the Protestant Bibles.
Malachi is the last book.So he's saying, okay,
this was the prophecy,and you see how it was fulfilled.
He says,this is how these brothers will be.
(16:12):
But he doesn't say I hated him
one and love the other until the end,until they prove themselves.
And the Israelites,at least at this time, are serving God.
Not very well, but this is after the,
after the Babylonian captivity.
And the Israelites, God loves thembecause they're serving him.
The Edomites are persecuting the,the Israelites.
(16:34):
Well, and so really, you could sayMalachi is not even referring to
Jacob as an individual, Esauas individual,
because he's writing hundredsor a thousand years later.
Exactly. it's the name.
Okay.I missed that too. It wasn't like I say,
yeah, the early Christians, they got thatI mean immediately.
And it's like, And their knowledge ofthe Old Testament is just remarkable.
(16:58):
I mean, they
and they didn't have all the helps,you know,
you know, I've got to go to a commentaryto find it and.
Yeah, and all that.
So okay, so he's saying
but his point was just becauseyou have the blood of Abraham proves
nothing, you know, because with regardto Abraham's very sons,
13 out of 14 had his bloodand that got them nowhere.
(17:22):
Only, you know, only one of the 14
and then you get down to his grandchildren
equally Abraham's blood the same, motherthe same, you know, conception,
and one is chosen and the other one isn't.
And he says this by choice.
Now, this is where the early Christianswould differ from Augustine and Calvin,
(17:46):
that he doesn't saythis choice was arbitrary,
so they actually believedin predestination.
The early Christians,that is, that God knows
whether you're going to be among the
eventual ones who will be in heaven,and whether, you know,
I will, whether anybody you know inthis room will be or won't be.
(18:07):
God already knows that,
but not because he arbitrarily chose it,but because of his foreknowledge.
He knows what the future holds.
So he's already chosen us long ago.
I mean, we are part of the chosen,assuming we are.
You know, before,you know, Abel was was ever born or,
you know, the world was createdthrough his foreknowledge.
(18:28):
So, yeah, for the early Christians,this was no big deal.
Well, yeah,
he knew what kind of personEsau would turn out to be
and what kind of personJacob would turn out to be.
And then.
And Paul shows will seehis prophecy was correct.
Because when you get to Malachi.
Yeah.
Look how they turned out.
The Edomites were worshiping idols.
(18:50):
They attacked their brothers.
You know, the Israelites,the Israelites are serving God
at that time, not worshiping idolsanymore and all of that.
Okay, so
the greater fulfillment, the point that
and here's whereif you compare with Galatians, Paul uses
a very similar example in Galatianswith regards to Sarah and Hagar,
(19:13):
and he says that you think Sarahwould represent the Israelites.
And Hagar, who was not, you know,
his wife would represent the Gentilesor something.
But Paul reverses itand he says, Hagar represents the Jews
because they're in bondage.
They're serving the law.
They're in bondage to the law.
And Sarahwould represent the Israel of God,
(19:37):
which is made up of Gentilesas well as as Jews.
And he does the same thing here.
So, Esau is the older brother.
He's like fleshly Israel.
They were here for 1500 yearsbefore Christ came.
Jacob would representthe church, would represent
Christians, the Israel of God,who are the younger brother.
(19:59):
They came along later.
And so this is also a prophecyabout the church, about,
the Jews,
that in the end, the greater one would beGod would choose
the Israel of Godmade up of Gentiles and believing Jews.
The younger brother, in other words,
or is going to be the chosen one,not the fleshly Jews.
(20:23):
Now, you’re going to have to think on it.
I mean, I yeah, I was on this for days.
It's like, okay, you guys are seeing thisand let me go over this, okay.
The so the older one.
But then it all it kind of came togetherjust like he said.
Just like Ishmael persecuted.
Isaac.
Yeah.
And it's the same waythe Jews are persecuting the Christians
(20:47):
in the same way here.
You know that it's it's the Christians
who are the faithful ones,and the fleshly Jews are the ones who,
God has hated inthe sense that they've rejected his son.
I mean, the offer was still open to them.
We're just talking about as a nation.
Wow. That's. Yeah.
That's pretty interesting thoughbecause like
if you're just taking a glancingreading at that,
(21:09):
I, I can see likeyou said when we started out, you could,
you could see someone using this to say,oh yeah, predestination right there.
But we're like, you're,
you're trying to like look at the layersthat are here in the story.
What it’sreferring to back in the Old Testament?
You know,
Genesis, Malachi, these are the placesthere's a lot more going on here, right?
I yeah. Wow.
I think it's going to take me a minuteto untangle.
I feel like I need to go dig into thatsome more.
(21:30):
That is really, really interesting. Yeah.
as I mentioned in the,the earlier session, the,
it's one
argument from the middleof the first chapter after he gets past
his, you know, greetings and all that,all the way to the end of chapter 13.
It is one long argument.
It was not divided into chapters,into verses and subheadings.
(21:52):
It's one long thing.
And a big part of that is Godhas not been unfair to the Jews.
He has every rightto pick the Gentiles to be his people.
The Gentiles who believe,because he picked
Jacob beforeJacob had any works or anything,
and before the Gentiles have any works,he picked them.
(22:14):
He prophesied in Hosea that, you know,they would become his people.
But in both cases,Jacob did have godly works later on,
and Christians have to have godly workslater on too.
But as far as his choosing, yeah, he'she did that,
you know, from the outset beforethere was any visible evidence.
But he knew in his foreknowledgehow things were going to be.
(22:38):
Wow. Okay.
So, so let's, let's thenlook at the verse immediately after.
Right.
So if you look at verse 14 back in Romansnine here we see
we're just lookingat the Esau Jacob situation.
And then it says that God shows mercy onwhoever he wills.
And then if you keep going to verse16 says,
it is not of him who runs,but of God who shows mercy.
(23:01):
Yes. So that again, seems likewe're pointing pretty strongly towards
what Calvanism would say. See,there you go.
That'sthat's what we're talking about. Yeah.
And so what, the early Christians,because they're having to respond to the
not to Augustine, but to the,
Gnostics who weresee, we don't have anything to do with it.
It's all predestined for us.
(23:22):
And they said, okay, go to that passagewhere he says that to Moses.
This was rightafter they made the golden calf.
And, you know, God tells Moses,
you know, stand aside,I'm going to destroy this people.
And Moses said, you know, don't do that.
If you're going to do that,blot me out as well.
And Godsays, no, I'm not going to blot you out,
(23:43):
but I'll have mercy on whomI choose to have mercy. And,
I will have compassion on whomever I have.
Compassion.
So all of the Israelitesdeserved to be destroyed,
but he didn't destroy all of them.
He only destroyed, a minority of them,who had worshiped the Golden Calf.
And he doesn't have to explain to ushis reasons
(24:06):
why he had mercy on those peopleand why other ones got destroyed.
I mean, we don't know.
But he doesn'tsay it was arbitrary either.
So he may have read the heartswhere he can read people's hearts.
We know when Jesus was here, he knew whatpeople were thinking and all of that.
So maybe the ones he had mercy onor the ones that he knew
would repent and and change their conduct,at least for a time,
(24:29):
and that the other ones were hopeless.
I mean, you know, he says nothing hereabout being arbitrary.
I just that, hey,I decide who I'm going to have mercy on
and salvation, either as a people groupor as individuals.
Yeah, it's up to God's mercy.
I mean, no one can say, God,I deserved it.
I mean, everyone of us, God,he and Judgment Day,
(24:50):
he could come down with a liston every one of us and say, look,
I've got all these reasonsto cross you off.
But on the other hand, he'snot going to be arbitrary.
He's going to have his reasons,
but he doesn't haveto explain his reasons to us.
So then, is itnot of him who wills, nor of him who runs,
but of God who shows mercy?
(25:11):
And again, this
was one the Gnostics really, really used.
And again,he's talking about the people group.
So he picked Israel.
It had nothing to dowith their righteousness.
They were slaves in Israelwhen he picked them.
They didn't like Moses.
I mean, they started disobeying lost faithbefore they ever crossed the Red sea.
(25:31):
Complained the whole time they weren'tchosen because they were so great.
I mean, God, God was the onewho decided to choose them.
And it's the same with the Gentiles.
When he decided, I'mgoing to include the Gentiles in this,
the Jews can't say, well, that's not fair,because we're godly.
And they weren’t.
It's like, hey, when I chose you,
you know, you were miserable slavesworshiping idols in Egypt.
(25:54):
And you know, I had mercy on you.
And if I want to have compassion on theGentiles, I have every right to do that.
And in the end, it'swhat I decide that's going to
be the deciding factor, not
what you know, those people groupsdo now as an individual.
So he's talking about people groupsand that's how they understood it.
(26:14):
But if we apply it as individuals,it's still true
that again,there's never a thing of arbitrary.
And I choose people without any reason,which is what Augustine is saying.
If there is a reason, then then, then thatmeans we do have a role in our salvation
and all that.
So is real important
to Augustine that nothing to do with God'sforeknowledge is just boom, boom.
(26:37):
I picked this oneand I know he's he's not saying that,
but he is saying that in the end.
it's going to be up to God to show mercy.
And that's going to meanmore than anything we do.
It doesn't mean that how we liveand our faith won't be a deciding factor.
But even with them, as I just mentioned,none of us on Judgment
(27:00):
Day will be able to say, look,I had I lived such a godly life.
My faith was so strong. You owe me heaven.
No, it'sgoing to be up to God's mercy in the end.
But that doesn't meanbecause there's so many other verses
say he is going to look at the fruitwe produce.
He is going to look at how we we run,how we obey him, what our faith is.
(27:22):
So you don't take one verse in the Bible
and then cross off all these other verses.
This is one thing I noticewhen I read the early Christians
for the first time,which is now been nearly 40 years ago.
It's like, oh, they take everything.
I was used to church groupsthat would have these proof text.
They pick here,they pick there, they ignore this.
(27:42):
The early Christians take the totality.
You look at the whole Bibleand particularly the whole New Testament.
And what does the whole thing say?
And then you read every versein the context of the whole message
and the whole message of the New Testamentis, yes, how we live
does play a role in our final salvation.
Our faith does play a role,
(28:05):
but ultimately God'smercy is a bigger factor than either
our faith or our obedience iswhat Paul is saying.
Okay?
And then he continues, for the Scripturesays to the Pharaoh,
for this very purpose, I have raisedyou up, that I may show my power in you,
and that my name may be declaredin all the earth.
(28:25):
Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills,
and whom he wills, he hardens. Okay.
So again, oh, well he hardened Pharaoh.
So he made Pharaoh do all this bad stuff.
And yet the other scriptures say there isno unrighteousness with with God.
And I think that'd be pretty unrighteousto make you do something evil
and then punish you. You know something,Reagan? Why did you do that?
(28:48):
I had no say in it.
You made me do it.
That's it.
Doesn't matter. Boom.
I'm going to punish you anyway.
It's like, well, that's not again.
You're going to take the whole Bible.Look at the character of God.
Is that the character of Godthat he would do that
makes someone do something bad
and then turn around and punish themwhen they had no choice in the matter.
So he doesn't say again
(29:10):
that, this was all arbitrary.
So in his foreknowledge, he could seewhat kind of person Pharaoh was.
Now, there were other kings.
If they had been given the signs Pharaohwas given, they would have repented.
We know that for sure,because think of Nineveh.
He didn't get given any signs.
(29:30):
It just had Jonah preachthat God is going to destroy,
you know, Nineveh and how many daysit was no miracles at all, no nothing.
And yet that king man, he repented.
He told the whole nation, you know,
we're all going to put on sackcloth,even the animals and all of that.
So, yeah,some people respond, Pharaoh should have.
I mean, he got shown all these miraclesthat would have convinced almost anyone.
(29:54):
But God knew ahead of time.
No, he's that hard hearted.
And in some of thewhen you go back to Genesis
and read the account, itsometimes says Pharaoh hardened his heart.
Sometimes it says God hardened his heart.
So God already knew the responseall of this would have.
So if you recall the account in Genesis,you know
(30:15):
God would do one of these miraclesand Pharaoh would say, oh, please,
you know, take away the frogs or whateverit was.
You know, I'm sorry I’lllet the Israelites go.
And so God would remove the plague.
Now he was hardeningPharaoh's heart by doing that,
which sounds counterintuitive,but he knew what kind of person
Pharaoh was that Pharaoh looked at thatas weakness on God's part.
(30:39):
Yeah.
This guy gives in really easy. And so.
Yeah. Then the next one.
Okay, I'll let him go.
Even knowinghe wasn't going to let him go,
because he saw this weekGod, Jehovah, who?
You know, I can just,you know, monkey around with him.
And God played. Yeah.
He he hard every time he did a miracle,it hardened Pharaoh's heart.
(30:59):
He just got more sure that.
Yeah, I'm the guy running the show here.
And I'll make Godtake the the plague away.
And each timeGod took it away until the very end.
But God was doing this for a reason.
He wasn't just playing aroundwith Pharaoh.
A great multitude of Egyptians leftwith the Israelites when they left.
(31:19):
So Pharaoh's heart was being hardenedby these these, plagues.
But there was a great company of Egyptianswhose hearts were softened
by the exact same miracles.
It's like,
wow, there is a genuine God out therewho's more powerful than our God. So?
yeah, the same act can harden one person'sheart and soften someone else's.
(31:39):
Origin’s famous example
that I love is he said, take a piece of,
wet clay
and a piece of waxand put them out in the sun.
Okay?
The very same sun, the very same hour,you know,
put them there togetheron a hot afternoon.
Now that wet clay is going to harden upfrom the heat of the sun,
(32:04):
that very same heatis going to make that wax get very soft.
It's the same action but two differentresults depending on the substance.
And so it's the same way with God.
When he did these plagues, it softenedthe hearts of many, most of the Egyptians.
I mean more Egyptians than it hardened.
And yet Pharaoh, it hardened his heartbecause of what he was inside,
(32:25):
not because God made him that way,but because of his own evil heart.
So we have to keep
you're basically sayingyou have to keep in mind the again,
the broader context of that story and say,well, who was Pharaoh,
what was he, how was he respondingor choosing to respond to these things.
Yeah. That makes yeah, that makes sense.
Now, this is where Paul like we'rewe were saying earlier how he is hard.
(32:50):
Now, another writer might have madethese points a little bit more clear.
You know, he throws it in there together.
And the early Christians I was trying tofind this passage and I couldn't find it,
before this interview.
I think it's in Second Corinthians.
But Paul, when he was writing,you know, said, I'm
not I'm not very skilled at writing. And
(33:13):
and none of us ever notice that.
It's not quoted very much.
But, the early Christians, almostevery one of them quoted that is this is.
Yeah. Paul.
Yeah. He's,
you know, a tremendous apostle, tremendousevangelist, tremendous church planner.
But yeah, when it comes to writing,he doesn't
lay things outquite as clear as, say, James does.
(33:34):
Or I was going to say.
Yeah, you look at someone like like James,it's kind of it feels like,
like you can kind ofjust read it and like, oh, okay, got it.
Whereas the passages we're looking atare like, okay, we're going to have to
there's layers.
There's yeah,there's a lot of pointing back to things,
you know, even the stuff
you're pointing back toin Genesis, in Malachi with the Esau
(33:56):
Jacob thing was justI hadn't thought of that before,
you know, it's like, oh, yeah,you would have to know those passages
for that to make more sense.
Like, what is Paul quoting here?
Yeah.
And think the way an ancient GreekEasterner
thinks, which is differentthan than the way we think.
And it's interesting thatdoesn't get quoted as much as it should,
(34:17):
but, Peter, he says,
and I can't quote him verbatim, but,
there's many things in Paulthat are hard to understand
and that, you know,the wicked and perverse twist.
So that is the Holy Spirit
telling us that in Paulthere are things hard to understand.
(34:37):
So when we jump inand think we can just take proof texts,
we're ignoring the warning.
The Holy Spirit has warned us, be careful.
He didn't say that about James.And when you read James, hey, be careful.
There's things in order to understand.
Or he didn't say that about Peter,
but Paul, he says, yeah, in his lettersthere are things hard to understand.
So the Holy Spirit is tellingus, okay, he's my chosen vessel.
(34:59):
He he writes like a prophet.
He doesn't write like a lawyerwho lays things out, you know, really,
really clear. And so be careful
when you're reading because there arethings hard to understand.
But if you compare themwith the rest of Scripture,
they become clearor it helps to make them clear.
But if you just grab, like Romans nineand you ignore all the rest of Scripture,
(35:21):
yeah, you're going to come to somereally, wrong conclusions.
And would that have beenmaybe this is getting a little off topic,
but back to the context of how we got herewith the predestination Calvinism thing.
Do you feel that is what Augustinewould have been doing?
Like was he taking Romans ninejust this chunk and extrapolating
(35:43):
that into something,or was it part of something else
that caused him to come upwith some of these ideas, and so forth?
Or maybe, maybe that's a bit off topic,but it'd be kind of interesting,
know, like, where's this stuff come from?
yeah, I know a lot of people.
And there's good, cause behind it.
But again, I can't read his heart.
Now, I mentioned, you know, the Gnostics,they were using all of this.
(36:05):
And the early Christians discuss thisbecause,
of how having to counter the Gnosticsnow, I, I did not mention
in the other session that originhad been a Gnostic, not origin.
Augustine, and had been a Gnostic.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
So he had a Christian mother,but he rejected Christianity.
(36:26):
And then he joined a sect calledthe Manichean.
They were a Gnostic sect,
but he was mixed with a bunch of easternreligion from Persia.
The same time, I think he was 11 years
in there as one of their disciples,
and they would have taught predestination.
So that has been one of the questions
(36:46):
that all we can do is ponder,because I can't read his heart
if they left that thinking in him,
you know why he was so comfortablewith grabbing predestination?
Because that's how he had been thinkingall of those years.
It may not have been.
You know, I can't I can't prove that.
But it certainly raises a question now,how did something that was part of
(37:09):
Gnosticism that the church finally, youknow, shut the Gnostics up, defeated them,,
and then it suddenly comes in the churchfrom someone who used to be a Gnostic.
It's yeah, it definitely raisessome strong suspicions, but I don't know.
But like I say, on the other hand, yeah,he went into this crazy thing.
I've got to counter Pelagius.
(37:30):
And even if I go againsteveryone who lived before me, you know,
in fact, somebody pointed that out to him.
Well, no one has ever taught this before.
And Augustine's response was, well,they weren't having to deal with Pelagius.
It's like, well, no, that's a dumbway to come up with doctrine,
you know, that you come up with something.
It's like, well, no one has taught that.
Well, yeah, but they weren't dealing with,you know, one of these megachurch
(37:53):
pastors who's I mean, comeon, Christian faith is a Christian faith.
If a heretic comes along, we don'tchange it in order to shut the heretic up.
I mean, that'sthat's a really dumb approach to
to scripture, but,yeah, he gave himself away.
This is yeah, I'm trying to counter him.
And so, yeah, I'm having to go, you know,
and it's like, well,you've just basically condemned yourself
(38:15):
with your own words and yeah, you,you have ended up corrupting Christianity
because you want to get the betterof the argument against Pelagius.
And then ultimately these ideas continueon through these writings.
And eventually,of course, Calvin comes along
from what I understand
refines, hones these thingsand really builds them well, something
(38:37):
that's obviouslystill talk and used quite a bit today.
But reallythey're just building on each other.
Is that a way of saying it like,
Yeah.
So Augustine like saying
it became the official doctrineof the Roman Catholic Church.
But then during the Middle
Ages, a Catholic churchkind of pulled back because this is like,
(38:57):
yeah, this is a little extreme to say,God predestined everyone
and they haven't even done anything wrong.
And so you're doomed to hell.
And even what gives it away is Augustinesays, now we got to be careful
when we preach this, because, you know,it's going to, discourage people.
Or maybe they'll quit living a godly life.
And it's like, now wait a minute.
(39:18):
If we don't have any say or
if we don't have any part in what we do,then you can preach whatever you want.
Because if they've been
chosen to be the elect,then they're going to do the right thing.
If they're not of the elect,it doesn't matter what you preach.
I mean, you can tell people to go outand do wicked.
They're going to dowhat God has chosen for them to do.
So why are you afraid to preach this?
(39:38):
You know,so yeah, it's funny how Augustine kind of
and this was the other thing people said.
So, you know, so why why do you preachthan the need to live a godly life?
And why do you preach against sinif it's all predestined?
And his answer was, well, Paul did itwell.
Yeah, but you haven't proventhat Paul taught predestination.
(39:59):
Oh, Paul preached against sin.
So I'm just doing what Paul did.
Yeah, but you haven't proven yetthat Paul taught arbitrary predestination.
Again,the early Christians would have said, yes,
the Bible teaches predestinationbased on God's foreknowledge,
but not arbitrary predestination,where God we do something
because God made us do it,but rather God chose us
(40:22):
before we were createdbecause he saw in the future
how we were going to respondto the gospel message.
And that's, that's
something I mean there's a lot
wow. There's a, there's a lot here
because this, this is such a big
theological framework that's used, but,
and there's so many different anglesand so many different opinions on this.
(40:44):
But Romans nine tends to be like thatwould be one of the main passages, right.
That that's used.
It's not the only one, but I would sayit's probably the key chapter.
There's also I think it's the first
chapter of Ephesiansis, is is quoted as, as well.
And yeah, you're asking about Calvin.
So his genius was he took
Augustine what Augustine taught himand built a very nice system.
(41:07):
I mean, his,the Institutes of Christian Religion.
I, you know,I read those years ago and really, that's.
I mean, that's a chunk.That's a lot of work.
Yeah, it's a lot of a lot of words It waswhen I was on a search for what was true,
and I was reading Luther and Calvinand the Anabaptists.
And so when I read the threeand it's like, oh, the Anabaptists fit
(41:27):
what I'm reading.
And the I had read the early Christiansbefore I got that far.
And it's like, this is fitting.
The early Christians, you know,
where Luther and Calvin were both teachingpredestination.
We usually think of Calvin,but actually Luther taught it as well.
Becausethey both were following Augustine.
But what Calvin's geniuswas to take Augustine and build
this systemthat is fairly logical, easy to to follow.
(41:53):
And it's always obviously been successful.
I mean, it's still being taught,you know, today by by a lot of people.
So, you know, I have to give creditto Calvin as a gifted teacher.
I just think he's,you know, he's mistaken.
It's not what he taughtwas not the historic faith.
But, yeah, he was gifted nevertheless.
And putting it together.
(42:15):
So one other question here,
what about the illustrationof the potter in the clay.
So it seems like that's sayingGod molds us however he chooses.
And we really don't have any groundsand we don't have any say in it.
Like,
yeah.
Like what do we dowith what do we do with imagery like that?
Is that extrapolatingtoo much into that imagery?
(42:36):
Is that putting our perspectiveon something else?
Yeah, explain that.
I think reading that again,I think it's reasonable, you know,
if someone reads what Paul says thereand, and, that.
Oh, he's just saying that we're nothingbut clay and God does with with us.
What he wants.
But I'm saying you could conclude that.
(42:57):
But, Paul, it's not what Paul says.You will say then to me.
Why does he still find faultfor who has resisted his will?
No manbut who are you to answer back to God?
So this isn't an Armenianthat, you know, Paul
is talking about and and God is saying,who are you to answer back to me?
These are the Jews.
Okay, so a lot of Romans,one reason it's a hard book to follow.
(43:22):
And part of it,
Paul takes on the
persona of, unbelieving Jew.
Other parts he carries on a dialogwith an unbelieving Jew and,
but he doesn't lay all this out.
It's crystal clear.
I think most people reading itrealizes, you know, in part of it
he's dialoging with a fictional person,you know, but he just he'll be doing that.
(43:45):
And then the next verse,
of course, there weren't verses, butthe next sentence, he's suddenly somewhere else.
Again, origins, illustration of he'she's taking you on this tour of this.
You know, palace andand yeah, he just goes from room to room
and you only see a little bit of it,
and then you're in another roombefore you know it. So.
No. Oh, man.
(44:05):
But who are you to answer back to God?
So the Calvinist would read theoh man that Paul is talking to
is being, well, like, say, an Armenian,someone who believes in free will.
Now he's talking to this unbelieving Jewwho's saying God has been unfair,
you know, and Paul is saying, you know,who are you to answer back to God?
(44:25):
We as
humanscan pry, can ask questions about God.
But there's a limit tohow far any of us are entitled to
to pry into why God does this or that.
I mean, there's a lot of thingsthat as a fallen human,
I would think, well, if I were God,this is what I would do.
And, you know,
we wouldn't have evil on the earthand we wouldn't have this or that.
(44:46):
Yeah, but God's ways are different.
They're higher than ours, so much higherthat we're not going to comprehend
everything he does.
Now, it doesn't mean that we can put
wicked things on God and just say, well,you don't understand,
but we're not going to fully understandall of his ways.
And he's just saying, you know,
who are you to,
(45:07):
you know, form this or that?
So you're complaining as a Jew,that God is
being gracious to the Gentiles,but who are you to complain?
God can be gracious whoever he wants.
He can take these Gentiles.
You know, John's words was he can raisechildren to Abraham from these stones.
You know, in the same way herehe can take these Gentiles
(45:29):
and make them into a vesselthat is worthy.
Now, the key,
thing on this onethat the early Christians point to
is second Timothy two 2321
and this is such an illustration of whyyou never just take one
passage of Scripturewithout looking at the whole picture,
(45:49):
because Paul says something very similarthere.
We're here.
He says, why did you make me like thisout of this same lump of clay?
Makes one vessel for honorand another for dishonor.
And it sounds like, oh, okay.
He just arbitrarily does this.
But then in second Timothy,this is still Paul.
He says now in a large house,they are not only vessels of gold
(46:11):
and of silver, but also of wood and clay.
Some are for honor and some for dishonor.
Almost the same things he’s saying in Romans.
But now listen.
Therefore,if anyone cleanses, cleanses himself
from these,he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified
and suitable for the master's use,prepared for every good work.
(46:32):
So there, he says, if we cleanse ourselves
of the wickedness,then we can be a vessel of honor.
So yeah, the
early church, when they read Romans nine,they also read Second Timothy.
They say, look at the other partthat Paul says
he uses the same illustrationand he's showing.
No, we do play a role in this,that if we cleansed ourselves
(46:55):
from wickedness,we leave those things behind.
God can use us.
Now, the other aspect of that is
we're not going to do all of thaton our own power.
God, you know, plays a key rolein, bringing us to faith.
Jesus said, no one can come to the fatherunless I.
No one can come to meunless the father draws him.
And he said, without meyou can do nothing.
(47:18):
So there's the early Christianswould have seen,
not Monergism, which is what Calvinto say, that there's only one force mono
the the all of the forceenergy comes from God.
We do nothing.
And the early Christian was said,no, it's synergism.
It's God's power,and it's us responding to God's power,
not because it has to be that way.
God could God could do the other.
(47:40):
But it's not God's nature.
He wants people who love him,so he gives us the opportunity.
But he knows in our fallen nature,without his help,
we would never make it without himdrawing us, him giving us power.
On the other hand,he doesn't do it all for us.
We we still have to believe he'snot going to do our believing for us.
(48:00):
He's going to do our obeying for us.
But he will give us the power
to make it possibleto do both the believing and the obeying.
So it's the two things working togetherthat we see when we take the whole Bible
and not just,you know, select verses that it's it's
man has a role and Godplays a role, you know, in our salvation.
(48:22):
wow. So this this is a lot to to untanglecould
because there is so much wrapped upin these frameworks, you know,
with, with Augustine, Luther, Calvin,those are the big names.
But there's others as well.
And obviously what we're seeing in Romansand all throughout Scripture.
So first, as you're bringing this up,so do close someone listening to this.
You know, they're like, wow,this is a lot of material.
(48:43):
I want to look into this more.
What are where some places they can go.
If they want to learn more,they want to study into this more.
Where's a good place they can start.
Okay.
So I mean, without, you know,
you know, I'm going to recommend thecommentary that I've just worked on now,
just none of my brilliance in there.
I mean, I was just
the same boat as everyone else was like,wow, this is a complicated book.
(49:07):
Yeah.
They taking the whole early church,all these different people
who had the apostolic faithhanded down to them by the apostles.
How did they all understand this?
You know, people who spoke the same KoineGreek as Paul,
who lived in his culture, who thoughtlike an Easterner, like like Paul does?
Yeah.
How were they understandingall of these things?
(49:28):
And what other verses did they see?
So, but I wish I could say, yeah,there's another commentary I can recommend
and all that because, yeah, I'm notI mean, I just don't know.
I only did this because there wasn't onealready available.
I don't understand,I mean, to me it's it's crazy.
Why are there's hundredsof commentaries on Romans
and not one that okay,this is the early Christians.
(49:50):
I mean, there is one series,the ancient Christian series,
but they they mix Augustinein with the other early Christians.
It's like, well, it's one or the other.
I mean, you can't just mix them together,you know?
Otherwise it's a good series.
I mean, I use them a lot,but it's always puzzled me
that they don't seem to see thatthere's like a delineation point there.
(50:11):
You're saying, yeah, in particularlyin Romans, you can't mix Augustine
with say, origin or Chrysostomor Clement of Alexander.
Justin Martyr.
I mean, it's like,
hey, they're on two different sidesof the fence and one was before the other.
You know,Augustine came after these people.
And so you got to look atwhat was before Augustine.
So that's what I've tried to do.
(50:32):
I've tried to make it, like I say, user
friendly, but again, it is nothingI can take credit for.
I was as mixed up as anyone else.
What do I do with Romans here?
And I had to like, say, a good yearand a half of work in this, another,
six months to a year ofjust the research of, you know, reading it
for all of it to make sense, to get inmy brain finally, you know,
(50:55):
but, yeah, we can learn so much from
the people who taught and learned itfrom the apostles, you know?
I mean,
it's like we have it it you know,God made sure those writings weren't lost.
It's like, to me, it's just absurdthat Christians don't go there.
I mean, that was my first thoughtwas, well, how did the people who lived
after the apostles,how did they understand it?
You know, and it's really odd to methat people don't go there, you know,
(51:17):
but anyway,so that that might be an option
then for some to startdigging into some of that,
that source material,you know, those early church writings,
you know, and, and even some of the stuffyou were pulling out here in Romans nine,
like the different layersthat you were saying, okay, here's here's
what Paul saying, butit's referring back to this and, oh, yeah,
this Old Testament past like that stuffthat's that's pretty easy to miss.
(51:39):
You know, there's other layers in thereand dig through that.
So mean if you were goingto pick just one person and
you know, I took
a pretty, you know, good sampling.
John Chrysostom, who,
was the well, he was actually an elder
in the Church of Antiochwhen he preached through Romans.
(52:00):
We have his sermons.
He just went through verseby verse there online.
I mean, you know,a person can download those for free.
His sermons on Romans, I was going to say.
Yeah, if you want. Oh,I don't want David Bercot. Okay, fine.
If you're going to just take one source
now, like I say,I wanted to get a broad perspective.
I mean, Chrysostom is a fallen humanlike everyone else.
(52:21):
But, yeah, he's pretty good.
He he sees these things.
There are a few times that it seemedlike most of the other early
Christianswere taking a little different position,
but in general,what he says is what they were saying.
So yeah, that would be a a sourcethat's available for free.
And, and somebody who,like I say, would, would like to leave me
(52:42):
out of the picture. That's that's fine.
Yeah. Yeah. He's, he's up there.
And so that would be another source. Yeah.
Yeah.
Well thanks for thanksfor being willing to tackle this one
because this is a, this is a big topicand I know it gets really controversial
sometimes with people.
And I'm really curiouswhat the comments are going to be like.
On this one. Yeah.
(53:03):
But but it's really important to engagewith this stuff, you know, this this is,
I know like, know,you know, especially as a teen, you know,
I had a lot of questions about thatbecause you read Scripture
and some of it sounds very much like,oh, you were chosen by God.
And then the next part is like,oh, no, free will.
And like,you're trying to put the pieces together
and having people like yourself willing toto dig into it and share what you find,
(53:23):
I think that's really valuableand I appreciate that.
Yeah.
Okay.
Wow. Well, thanks.
Thanks for coming on the podcast,David. You're very welcome.
All right.
Thanks for listening to this episodewith David Bercot.
If you found this interesting,
you should check out the other episodewe did with him on the book of Romans.
You can find thatlinked in the description below.
(53:44):
If you enjoy Anabaptist perspectives,leave a rating and a review
on your favorite podcast app.
It helps more people find this podcast.
Thanks so much for listeningand we'll see you in the next episode.
Yeah, it's up to God's mercy.
I mean, no one can say, God,I deserved it.
I mean, everyone of us, God,He, on Judgment Day,
He could come down with a liston every one of us and say, look,
I've got all these reasonsto cross you off.
But on the other hand, he'snot going to be arbitrary.
But on the other hand, he'snot going to be arbitrary.
He's going to have his reasons,
but he doesn't haveto explain his reasons to us.
(00:26):
David Bercot, welcome back to the podcast.
It's good to have you on again.Good being here Reagan.
So we did a previous episode with youabout the book of Romans.
And like you just finished, compilinga commentary based on the early church
writings about Romans.
And today I want to tackle a topicthat I don't believe
we've ever covered on this podcast,and that is predestination, Calvinism,
(00:48):
that whole package, essentially,because a section of Scripture
that's often used forthat framework would be Romans nine.
And you addressthat quite a bit in your book.
And I would be really curiousto hear your thoughts on this.
So we're going to plow into that and,and we'll see where it takes us.
But before we jump in to the text,
can you first definewhat is predestination, Calvanism, like
(01:10):
what do we meanwhen we're using terms like that?
Okay.
So predestination as it's used inCalvinism and before that from Augustine,
the doctrine says that
before the creation
either of the world or of or of mankind,
that God arbitrarily chose
(01:34):
who he was going to saveand who he was going to eternally.
Damn.
And that that arbitrarily is importantIn other words,
it was not based on his foreknowledgethat he looked in the future.
And oh, Reagan.
Yeah, this guy's living a godly life.
This guy has faith in Christ.
So yes, I'm going to, have him amongthe elect.
(01:54):
Is thatdoesn't have anything to do with you.
It just he just picked you.
You live a godly lifebecause you are of the elect,
not not the other way around.
That he picked youbecause you were living a godly life.
So, the basisand it all comes from Augustine
was this thought that we playno role in our own salvation.
(02:15):
Everything is from God,
our faith,
our initial belief, the godly workswe do, the whole thing.
God does every bit of that.
And yeah, we're basically,yeah, pieces of wood.
You know, they wouldn't say that thatthat he moves around, you know, but,
they wouldn't say that that last part.
(02:37):
But I think the rest would be all languagethat they would be comfortable with,
as in, like thereis there's nothing we can do to, to choose
or to become a Christian, etc.,because God has chosen
all of that for essentially like he's
that, he's the mover,and that makes all this possible.
It's nothing to do with us.
okay, so let's let's get into Romans ninethen a little bit, because this is one
(03:00):
that's going to come upquite a bit in conversation.
So I'm going to pull a couple examples,just as kind of places to start.
And we'll just kind of kind of usethose as launch points.
So for example verses 12 and 13,
it talks about how God loved Jacoband hated Esau.
It says in Romans nine verses 12 to 13,and it says before they were ever
born, before the idea that donegood or bad, you know, that's the claim.
(03:23):
Are people misreading thator they misconstruing that passage
to use that to say therefore that's preyou know, predestination.
Yeah. People are misunderstanding it.
I think to be fair,it's not like people are twisting it.
Like, where do you get that?
I mean, I think somebody reading this, itwould be easy to come to that conclusion.
(03:43):
But the problem is youthen have to ignore all the rest
of the Bible, you know, because everytime God gives a commandment,
the implicationis obvious that we can obey it.
I mean,why would he tell us to do something?
Yeah, well, I can'tI can't do it, you know?
I mean, you have to take the whole Bible
and say, well, there's this God who’sbasically playing games.
(04:05):
He tells the Israelites to do thiseven though he knows they can't do it,
or he tells them to do it,and he knows they will do it
because he's he's going to do it for them,you know?
And then Jesus complimenting like, just,
yesterday in Sunday School,we were talking about this centurion.
And Jesus says,I've never seen such remarkable faith.
Well, if Calvinism is true,God gave him the faith.
(04:25):
So what's remarkable? Why? Why praise him?
He didn't have anything to do with his,with his faith. So.
And like I say, this beganwith Augustine in the fifth century.
And, chapter nine was, you know,one of the ones.
And like I said, I think it's fair to sayjust reading that apart
(04:46):
from the rest of the scripture, you couldreasonably come to that conclusion.
Now, the early Christiansdidn't do that, though.
You know, they read this and they said,well, yeah, this sounds like this
on the surface, but yeah,what about all the rest of the Bible?
And they were having to deal with itbecause the Gnostics, many
of the Gnostic groups who John identifiesas the Antichrist,
(05:08):
they taught predestination that, you know,there's nothing you can do about it.
It's all been decided ahead of time.
You're either part of the elector you're or you're not.
So the early Christiansactually talk about this subject a lot
because they're havingto counter the Gnostics.
So and without the early Christians,
I don't I mean, like I say,this was always a mystery to me.
(05:31):
I knew it couldn't
mean what it says on the face just becauseit contradicts other scriptures.
But I never felt real comfortable.
And the early Christians.
Yeah.
I mean, it'sjust so amazing how they they could follow
Paul's arguments even though they get,you know, sometimes very,
what rearranged.
I mean, Paul doesn'tfollow this logical order
(05:53):
we were just talking aboutin the previous podcast.
So this one, you go back to verse
six and I mentioned just yesterday
I was listing the six, pointsof Paul's great argument.
And one of them isthat God has not been unfair to the Jews
(06:14):
in extending grace to the Gentilesand bringing them in.
And so Paul spends a lot of time on that.
Now, that aspect of those six things,
most of those I would have seen in Romans,I would not have seen that very much,
that God has not been unfairto the Gentiles.
They they recognize.
Okay, Paul, is is bringing this up a lotbecause the Jews are making that argument.
(06:38):
This if what you're sayingis true, then God isn't fair.
Okay.
So andyeah, how can these Gentiles come in?
They don't have the blood of Abraham.
So Paul points out, look,
there are a lot of peoplewho have Abraham's blood
and they're not includedas part of Israel.
(06:58):
So he begins, he says, verse six,but it is not that
the Word of God has taken no effect, forthey are not all Israel who are of Israel.
I think of Israel means of Jacob.
Okay, so just because you'rea descendant of Jacob, Paul is saying
it doesn't mean you're part of the trueIsrael, the the Israel of God.
(07:21):
Okay. And and this is a shocking thingto say to Jews.
Now, it's it should have been no issueto Christian Jews,
but it apparently was the fact that hehe has to explain it so many times.
But to the Jews in general,that would have been,
you know,just almost impossible for them to accept.
Okay.
So it says, nor are they all children
(07:43):
because they are the seed of Abraham,
but in Isaac your seed shall be called.
So his line of argument is okay.
You're saying that,
just because
we are fleshly Jews
doesn'tmean we're part of this Israel of God.
(08:03):
And and they're saying,all right, well, you know, you prove that.
So his argument is okay,think about it now,
there are a lot of people on earth
who are fleshly descendants of Abraham,
but they are not part of Israel.
And you Jews yourselves recognize that.
Look at Ishmael. Okay.
(08:24):
So he was part of the covenantof circumcision.
He's an heir of Abraham,but he's not included in Israel.
All right.
So just because you have Abraham's blood,it gets you nowhere.
Look at the sons of Keturah. Was it 12?
Well, yeah, it's a number of sons.
And they started tribes and all that.
They're not part of Israel yetthey all have Abraham's blood.
(08:47):
So he says. So. Yeah.
You have to agree with me
that just because you have Abraham'sblood, that doesn't get you anywhere.
All right.
That is
those who are the children of the flesh.
Okay.
So just becauseyou are a physical descendant,
a genetic descendant of Abraham,these are not the children of God.
It doesn't make you a child of God,which is what John the Baptist preached.
(09:10):
You know,
he said, God can raise up childrenof Abraham from these from these stones.
So this is all consistentwith what we see in the Gospels.
But the children of the promiseare counted as the seed.
Okay.
And here's where it gets a little bitmore in the Greek reasoning.
They're just a little bit harder to followhis argument, but he's saying, okay,
it has to be people who are part of,the promise of
(09:33):
of course, the Jews would have said,well, well, we are, but okay.
He develops this at this time I will comeand Sarah shall have a son.
Okay.
So so Abraham then had,
I guess, 14 sons,if I count correctly, but
only one of the 14 was a child of promise,and that was Isaac.
Okay, so like I say, the vast majority,all these people with Abraham's blood
(09:57):
who are out there now,you know, make up a lot of the Arab world,
probably who knows
what other people groups would havesome of Abraham's blood in them.
They're not counted because they're not achild with the promise. But,
Isaac was and the promise was,you know that.
Sarah. She'll have a son.
Okay. Now, here'swhere it gets a little bit more confusing.
And not only this,but when Rebecca also conceived.
(10:22):
Now, this says by one manand their understanding it to say by one
act of procreation, which is a lot
more significant even by our father Isaac.
Okay. So.
Ishmael didn't have the same motheras Isaac, nor did the sons of Keturah.
But now when you get to Jacob and Esau,you've got the same father,
(10:45):
the same mother,
the same act of procreation, you know,from one conception or one whatever.
That's how close it is.
But he's saying,even though it's that close, one
is part of the seedand the other one isn't.
And it's like, so his point is,it doesn't mean anything.
You can be that close to Abraham.
(11:07):
You're his grandson.You are a son of Isaac.
You know, your own brother is part of it.
But you aren't.
Even though you're twins, you know, okay,
for the children not yet being born,nor having done any good or evil,
that the purpose of Godaccording to election now
a better rendition today
(11:27):
because election people thinkoh, that means predestination.
Election just means to choose.
Well,I mean, we're going to have an election
here in the United States in two months.
Yeah, we just choose somebody. Elect meanswho do you choose?
You know, but because of Calvinism,you have people today.
Oh, election. That means predestination.
No, it means itjust was an ordinary Greek word.
(11:47):
It means to choose. Okay. So God
has chosen before they did that
according to his choice might standnot of works, but of him who calls.
Okay, now,one of the things that Chrysostom says
quite a few timeswhen he's discussing Romans is
we've got to keep in mindwhat Paul's point is,
(12:10):
because if you don't,you're going to go off
on a lot of strange tangentsand some wrong doctrines.
Okay, so what is the point? He'strying to get across.
The point he's trying to get acrossis that the Gentiles
are part ofthe promised seed through faith.
And the Jews were saying,but how can a Gentile, a filthy Gentile,
(12:30):
who worships stone idols,who probably lives in immorality,
you know, eats all these defiled foodsand everything,
and they can just come inand be saved like that.
And his argument is, you know, we getsaved, we come in, not through works.
Okay. It is, you know, God's choice.
And he's saying, okay, look at these twopeople groups, the Jews and the Gentiles.
(12:54):
They're like Jacob and Esau.
Now he's talking the promise to Rebecca.
He said,
in verse12, the older shall serve the younger.
And before that he doesn't quote it.
He says, there's two nationsinside of you.
So he's talking about two nationsthat are inside of Rebecca.
(13:17):
One would be the Israelites,the descendants of Jacob,
the other would be the Edomites,the the descendants of Esau.
Okay, so it's two nations.
He's not talking about two people.
And this is where people get messed upthat see, God decided to
he hated Esau and he loved Jacobbefore they were ever born and all that.
But he said,there's two nations inside of you,
(13:40):
and the younger shall serve.
The older shall serve the younger.
Now that was never truewith regard to Jacob and Esau.
Esau never served Jacob,if anything, was the other way around.
You remember when Jacob came back,you know, boy, he bows down
before Esau, you know, bringsall these presents and all that.
Esau never bowed down to Jacobor served him in any way.
(14:03):
It was the Edomites and the Israelites,okay, the two nations.
And he's saying that, okay, before these
either nation had done any works,he had already prophesied
that the younger,which was the Israelites,
would be served by the olderthe who would be the Edomites.
Even though we were talkingabout a few minutes apart in birth.
(14:23):
But, you know, you still had a youngerand a and an older.
Okay.
Now, what always tripped me up in that
most people,they don't go and look up these verses.
And so they're thinking that
the scriptures are saying that God says,
I love Jacob before he was ever born,just out of arbitrary.
(14:43):
And I hated Esau before he was ever born.
But Paul, they're the first one.
The older shall serve the younger.
That was the prophecy given to Rebecca.
When he told her, there's two nations now,
that last one is not a prophecy, it’sfrom Malachi.
It's a prophecy only in the sense of Goddeclaring his judgment on Edom.
(15:08):
But this is long after Jacoband Esau are dead.
This is more than a thousand years later.
And he's.
When he says that when you readthe whole passage is from Malachi,
I may have it here in the, the commentary.
He is saying this was the prophecythat the older would serve the younger.
Now here is how it was fulfilled. It.
(15:29):
And then he quotes.
So he quotes Genesisand he turns right around
and he quotes from Malachi.
So let me see.
I think I have it here in there.
So it's in Malachi chapter one, versestwo and three.
Jacob, I have love, but Esau I have hated,and I have made his mountains
to desolation.
(15:50):
And I've given his heritageto the jackals of the wilderness.
So when you read that.
So this is Malachi right at the end,towards the end of the Old Testament.
So Genesis is the first book,and this is in the Protestant Bibles.
Malachi is the last book.So he's saying, okay,
this was the prophecy,and you see how it was fulfilled.
He says,this is how these brothers will be.
(16:12):
But he doesn't say I hated him
one and love the other until the end,until they prove themselves.
And the Israelites,at least at this time, are serving God.
Not very well, but this is after the,
after the Babylonian captivity.
And the Israelites, God loves thembecause they're serving him.
The Edomites are persecuting the,the Israelites.
(16:34):
Well, and so really, you could sayMalachi is not even referring to
Jacob as an individual, Esauas individual,
because he's writing hundredsor a thousand years later.
Exactly. it's the name.
Okay.I missed that too. It wasn't like I say,
yeah, the early Christians, they got thatI mean immediately.
And it's like, And their knowledge ofthe Old Testament is just remarkable.
(16:58):
I mean, they
and they didn't have all the helps,you know,
you know, I've got to go to a commentaryto find it and.
Yeah, and all that.
So okay, so he's saying
but his point was just becauseyou have the blood of Abraham proves
nothing, you know, because with regardto Abraham's very sons,
13 out of 14 had his bloodand that got them nowhere.
(17:22):
Only, you know, only one of the 14
and then you get down to his grandchildren
equally Abraham's blood the same, motherthe same, you know, conception,
and one is chosen and the other one isn't.
And he says this by choice.
Now, this is where the early Christianswould differ from Augustine and Calvin,
(17:46):
that he doesn't saythis choice was arbitrary,
so they actually believedin predestination.
The early Christians,that is, that God knows
whether you're going to be among the
eventual ones who will be in heaven,and whether, you know,
I will, whether anybody you know inthis room will be or won't be.
(18:07):
God already knows that,
but not because he arbitrarily chose it,but because of his foreknowledge.
He knows what the future holds.
So he's already chosen us long ago.
I mean, we are part of the chosen,assuming we are.
You know, before,you know, Abel was was ever born or,
you know, the world was createdthrough his foreknowledge.
(18:28):
So, yeah, for the early Christians,this was no big deal.
Well, yeah,
he knew what kind of personEsau would turn out to be
and what kind of personJacob would turn out to be.
And then.
And Paul shows will seehis prophecy was correct.
Because when you get to Malachi.
Yeah.
Look how they turned out.
The Edomites were worshiping idols.
(18:50):
They attacked their brothers.
You know, the Israelites,the Israelites are serving God
at that time, not worshiping idolsanymore and all of that.
Okay, so
the greater fulfillment, the point that
and here's whereif you compare with Galatians, Paul uses
a very similar example in Galatianswith regards to Sarah and Hagar,
(19:13):
and he says that you think Sarahwould represent the Israelites.
And Hagar, who was not, you know,
his wife would represent the Gentilesor something.
But Paul reverses itand he says, Hagar represents the Jews
because they're in bondage.
They're serving the law.
They're in bondage to the law.
And Sarahwould represent the Israel of God,
(19:37):
which is made up of Gentilesas well as as Jews.
And he does the same thing here.
So, Esau is the older brother.
He's like fleshly Israel.
They were here for 1500 yearsbefore Christ came.
Jacob would representthe church, would represent
Christians, the Israel of God,who are the younger brother.
(19:59):
They came along later.
And so this is also a prophecyabout the church, about,
the Jews,
that in the end, the greater one would beGod would choose
the Israel of Godmade up of Gentiles and believing Jews.
The younger brother, in other words,
or is going to be the chosen one,not the fleshly Jews.
(20:23):
Now, you’re going to have to think on it.
I mean, I yeah, I was on this for days.
It's like, okay, you guys are seeing thisand let me go over this, okay.
The so the older one.
But then it all it kind of came togetherjust like he said.
Just like Ishmael persecuted.
Isaac.
Yeah.
And it's the same waythe Jews are persecuting the Christians
(20:47):
in the same way here.
You know that it's it's the Christians
who are the faithful ones,and the fleshly Jews are the ones who,
God has hated inthe sense that they've rejected his son.
I mean, the offer was still open to them.
We're just talking about as a nation.
Wow. That's. Yeah.
That's pretty interesting thoughbecause like
if you're just taking a glancingreading at that,
(21:09):
I, I can see likeyou said when we started out, you could,
you could see someone using this to say,oh yeah, predestination right there.
But we're like, you're,
you're trying to like look at the layersthat are here in the story.
What it’sreferring to back in the Old Testament?
You know,
Genesis, Malachi, these are the placesthere's a lot more going on here, right?
I yeah. Wow.
I think it's going to take me a minuteto untangle.
I feel like I need to go dig into thatsome more.
(21:30):
That is really, really interesting. Yeah.
as I mentioned in the,the earlier session, the,
it's one
argument from the middleof the first chapter after he gets past
his, you know, greetings and all that,all the way to the end of chapter 13.
It is one long argument.
It was not divided into chapters,into verses and subheadings.
(21:52):
It's one long thing.
And a big part of that is Godhas not been unfair to the Jews.
He has every rightto pick the Gentiles to be his people.
The Gentiles who believe,because he picked
Jacob beforeJacob had any works or anything,
and before the Gentiles have any works,he picked them.
(22:14):
He prophesied in Hosea that, you know,they would become his people.
But in both cases,Jacob did have godly works later on,
and Christians have to have godly workslater on too.
But as far as his choosing, yeah, he'she did that,
you know, from the outset beforethere was any visible evidence.
But he knew in his foreknowledgehow things were going to be.
(22:38):
Wow. Okay.
So, so let's, let's thenlook at the verse immediately after.
Right.
So if you look at verse 14 back in Romansnine here we see
we're just lookingat the Esau Jacob situation.
And then it says that God shows mercy onwhoever he wills.
And then if you keep going to verse16 says,
it is not of him who runs,but of God who shows mercy.
(23:01):
Yes. So that again, seems likewe're pointing pretty strongly towards
what Calvanism would say. See,there you go.
That'sthat's what we're talking about. Yeah.
And so what, the early Christians,because they're having to respond to the
not to Augustine, but to the,
Gnostics who weresee, we don't have anything to do with it.
It's all predestined for us.
(23:22):
And they said, okay, go to that passagewhere he says that to Moses.
This was rightafter they made the golden calf.
And, you know, God tells Moses,
you know, stand aside,I'm going to destroy this people.
And Moses said, you know, don't do that.
If you're going to do that,blot me out as well.
And Godsays, no, I'm not going to blot you out,
(23:43):
but I'll have mercy on whomI choose to have mercy. And,
I will have compassion on whomever I have.
Compassion.
So all of the Israelitesdeserved to be destroyed,
but he didn't destroy all of them.
He only destroyed, a minority of them,who had worshiped the Golden Calf.
And he doesn't have to explain to ushis reasons
(24:06):
why he had mercy on those peopleand why other ones got destroyed.
I mean, we don't know.
But he doesn'tsay it was arbitrary either.
So he may have read the heartswhere he can read people's hearts.
We know when Jesus was here, he knew whatpeople were thinking and all of that.
So maybe the ones he had mercy onor the ones that he knew
would repent and and change their conduct,at least for a time,
(24:29):
and that the other ones were hopeless.
I mean, you know, he says nothing hereabout being arbitrary.
I just that, hey,I decide who I'm going to have mercy on
and salvation, either as a people groupor as individuals.
Yeah, it's up to God's mercy.
I mean, no one can say, God,I deserved it.
I mean, everyone of us, God,he and Judgment Day,
(24:50):
he could come down with a liston every one of us and say, look,
I've got all these reasonsto cross you off.
But on the other hand, he'snot going to be arbitrary.
He's going to have his reasons,
but he doesn't haveto explain his reasons to us.
So then, is itnot of him who wills, nor of him who runs,
but of God who shows mercy?
(25:11):
And again, this
was one the Gnostics really, really used.
And again,he's talking about the people group.
So he picked Israel.
It had nothing to dowith their righteousness.
They were slaves in Israelwhen he picked them.
They didn't like Moses.
I mean, they started disobeying lost faithbefore they ever crossed the Red sea.
(25:31):
Complained the whole time they weren'tchosen because they were so great.
I mean, God, God was the onewho decided to choose them.
And it's the same with the Gentiles.
When he decided, I'mgoing to include the Gentiles in this,
the Jews can't say, well, that's not fair,because we're godly.
And they weren’t.
It's like, hey, when I chose you,
you know, you were miserable slavesworshiping idols in Egypt.
(25:54):
And you know, I had mercy on you.
And if I want to have compassion on theGentiles, I have every right to do that.
And in the end, it'swhat I decide that's going to
be the deciding factor, not
what you know, those people groupsdo now as an individual.
So he's talking about people groupsand that's how they understood it.
(26:14):
But if we apply it as individuals,it's still true
that again,there's never a thing of arbitrary.
And I choose people without any reason,which is what Augustine is saying.
If there is a reason, then then, then thatmeans we do have a role in our salvation
and all that.
So is real important
to Augustine that nothing to do with God'sforeknowledge is just boom, boom.
(26:37):
I picked this oneand I know he's he's not saying that,
but he is saying that in the end.
it's going to be up to God to show mercy.
And that's going to meanmore than anything we do.
It doesn't mean that how we liveand our faith won't be a deciding factor.
But even with them, as I just mentioned,none of us on Judgment
(27:00):
Day will be able to say, look,I had I lived such a godly life.
My faith was so strong. You owe me heaven.
No, it'sgoing to be up to God's mercy in the end.
But that doesn't meanbecause there's so many other verses
say he is going to look at the fruitwe produce.
He is going to look at how we we run,how we obey him, what our faith is.
(27:22):
So you don't take one verse in the Bible
and then cross off all these other verses.
This is one thing I noticewhen I read the early Christians
for the first time,which is now been nearly 40 years ago.
It's like, oh, they take everything.
I was used to church groupsthat would have these proof text.
They pick here,they pick there, they ignore this.
(27:42):
The early Christians take the totality.
You look at the whole Bibleand particularly the whole New Testament.
And what does the whole thing say?
And then you read every versein the context of the whole message
and the whole message of the New Testamentis, yes, how we live
does play a role in our final salvation.
Our faith does play a role,
(28:05):
but ultimately God'smercy is a bigger factor than either
our faith or our obedience iswhat Paul is saying.
Okay?
And then he continues, for the Scripturesays to the Pharaoh,
for this very purpose, I have raisedyou up, that I may show my power in you,
and that my name may be declaredin all the earth.
(28:25):
Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills,
and whom he wills, he hardens. Okay.
So again, oh, well he hardened Pharaoh.
So he made Pharaoh do all this bad stuff.
And yet the other scriptures say there isno unrighteousness with with God.
And I think that'd be pretty unrighteousto make you do something evil
and then punish you. You know something,Reagan? Why did you do that?
(28:48):
I had no say in it.
You made me do it.
That's it.
Doesn't matter. Boom.
I'm going to punish you anyway.
It's like, well, that's not again.
You're going to take the whole Bible.Look at the character of God.
Is that the character of Godthat he would do that
makes someone do something bad
and then turn around and punish themwhen they had no choice in the matter.
So he doesn't say again
(29:10):
that, this was all arbitrary.
So in his foreknowledge, he could seewhat kind of person Pharaoh was.
Now, there were other kings.
If they had been given the signs Pharaohwas given, they would have repented.
We know that for sure,because think of Nineveh.
He didn't get given any signs.
(29:30):
It just had Jonah preachthat God is going to destroy,
you know, Nineveh and how many daysit was no miracles at all, no nothing.
And yet that king man, he repented.
He told the whole nation, you know,
we're all going to put on sackcloth,even the animals and all of that.
So, yeah,some people respond, Pharaoh should have.
I mean, he got shown all these miraclesthat would have convinced almost anyone.
(29:54):
But God knew ahead of time.
No, he's that hard hearted.
And in some of thewhen you go back to Genesis
and read the account, itsometimes says Pharaoh hardened his heart.
Sometimes it says God hardened his heart.
So God already knew the responseall of this would have.
So if you recall the account in Genesis,you know
(30:15):
God would do one of these miraclesand Pharaoh would say, oh, please,
you know, take away the frogs or whateverit was.
You know, I'm sorry I’lllet the Israelites go.
And so God would remove the plague.
Now he was hardeningPharaoh's heart by doing that,
which sounds counterintuitive,but he knew what kind of person
Pharaoh was that Pharaoh looked at thatas weakness on God's part.
(30:39):
Yeah.
This guy gives in really easy. And so.
Yeah. Then the next one.
Okay, I'll let him go.
Even knowinghe wasn't going to let him go,
because he saw this weekGod, Jehovah, who?
You know, I can just,you know, monkey around with him.
And God played. Yeah.
He he hard every time he did a miracle,it hardened Pharaoh's heart.
(30:59):
He just got more sure that.
Yeah, I'm the guy running the show here.
And I'll make Godtake the the plague away.
And each timeGod took it away until the very end.
But God was doing this for a reason.
He wasn't just playing aroundwith Pharaoh.
A great multitude of Egyptians leftwith the Israelites when they left.
(31:19):
So Pharaoh's heart was being hardenedby these these, plagues.
But there was a great company of Egyptianswhose hearts were softened
by the exact same miracles.
It's like,
wow, there is a genuine God out therewho's more powerful than our God. So?
yeah, the same act can harden one person'sheart and soften someone else's.
(31:39):
Origin’s famous example
that I love is he said, take a piece of,
wet clay
and a piece of waxand put them out in the sun.
Okay?
The very same sun, the very same hour,you know,
put them there togetheron a hot afternoon.
Now that wet clay is going to harden upfrom the heat of the sun,
(32:04):
that very same heatis going to make that wax get very soft.
It's the same action but two differentresults depending on the substance.
And so it's the same way with God.
When he did these plagues, it softenedthe hearts of many, most of the Egyptians.
I mean more Egyptians than it hardened.
And yet Pharaoh, it hardened his heartbecause of what he was inside,
(32:25):
not because God made him that way,but because of his own evil heart.
So we have to keep
you're basically sayingyou have to keep in mind the again,
the broader context of that story and say,well, who was Pharaoh,
what was he, how was he respondingor choosing to respond to these things.
Yeah. That makes yeah, that makes sense.
Now, this is where Paul like we'rewe were saying earlier how he is hard.
(32:50):
Now, another writer might have madethese points a little bit more clear.
You know, he throws it in there together.
And the early Christians I was trying tofind this passage and I couldn't find it,
before this interview.
I think it's in Second Corinthians.
But Paul, when he was writing,you know, said, I'm
not I'm not very skilled at writing. And
(33:13):
and none of us ever notice that.
It's not quoted very much.
But, the early Christians, almostevery one of them quoted that is this is.
Yeah. Paul.
Yeah. He's,
you know, a tremendous apostle, tremendousevangelist, tremendous church planner.
But yeah, when it comes to writing,he doesn't
lay things outquite as clear as, say, James does.
(33:34):
Or I was going to say.
Yeah, you look at someone like like James,it's kind of it feels like,
like you can kind ofjust read it and like, oh, okay, got it.
Whereas the passages we're looking atare like, okay, we're going to have to
there's layers.
There's yeah,there's a lot of pointing back to things,
you know, even the stuff
you're pointing back toin Genesis, in Malachi with the Esau
(33:56):
Jacob thing was justI hadn't thought of that before,
you know, it's like, oh, yeah,you would have to know those passages
for that to make more sense.
Like, what is Paul quoting here?
Yeah.
And think the way an ancient GreekEasterner
thinks, which is differentthan than the way we think.
And it's interesting thatdoesn't get quoted as much as it should,
(34:17):
but, Peter, he says,
and I can't quote him verbatim, but,
there's many things in Paulthat are hard to understand
and that, you know,the wicked and perverse twist.
So that is the Holy Spirit
telling us that in Paulthere are things hard to understand.
(34:37):
So when we jump inand think we can just take proof texts,
we're ignoring the warning.
The Holy Spirit has warned us, be careful.
He didn't say that about James.And when you read James, hey, be careful.
There's things in order to understand.
Or he didn't say that about Peter,
but Paul, he says, yeah, in his lettersthere are things hard to understand.
So the Holy Spirit is tellingus, okay, he's my chosen vessel.
(34:59):
He he writes like a prophet.
He doesn't write like a lawyerwho lays things out, you know, really,
really clear. And so be careful
when you're reading because there arethings hard to understand.
But if you compare themwith the rest of Scripture,
they become clearor it helps to make them clear.
But if you just grab, like Romans nineand you ignore all the rest of Scripture,
(35:21):
yeah, you're going to come to somereally, wrong conclusions.
And would that have beenmaybe this is getting a little off topic,
but back to the context of how we got herewith the predestination Calvinism thing.
Do you feel that is what Augustinewould have been doing?
Like was he taking Romans ninejust this chunk and extrapolating
(35:43):
that into something,or was it part of something else
that caused him to come upwith some of these ideas, and so forth?
Or maybe, maybe that's a bit off topic,but it'd be kind of interesting,
know, like, where's this stuff come from?
yeah, I know a lot of people.
And there's good, cause behind it.
But again, I can't read his heart.
Now, I mentioned, you know, the Gnostics,they were using all of this.
(36:05):
And the early Christians discuss thisbecause,
of how having to counter the Gnosticsnow, I, I did not mention
in the other session that originhad been a Gnostic, not origin.
Augustine, and had been a Gnostic.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
So he had a Christian mother,but he rejected Christianity.
(36:26):
And then he joined a sect calledthe Manichean.
They were a Gnostic sect,
but he was mixed with a bunch of easternreligion from Persia.
The same time, I think he was 11 years
in there as one of their disciples,
and they would have taught predestination.
So that has been one of the questions
(36:46):
that all we can do is ponder,because I can't read his heart
if they left that thinking in him,
you know why he was so comfortablewith grabbing predestination?
Because that's how he had been thinkingall of those years.
It may not have been.
You know, I can't I can't prove that.
But it certainly raises a question now,how did something that was part of
(37:09):
Gnosticism that the church finally, youknow, shut the Gnostics up, defeated them,,
and then it suddenly comes in the churchfrom someone who used to be a Gnostic.
It's yeah, it definitely raisessome strong suspicions, but I don't know.
But like I say, on the other hand, yeah,he went into this crazy thing.
I've got to counter Pelagius.
(37:30):
And even if I go againsteveryone who lived before me, you know,
in fact, somebody pointed that out to him.
Well, no one has ever taught this before.
And Augustine's response was, well,they weren't having to deal with Pelagius.
It's like, well, no, that's a dumbway to come up with doctrine,
you know, that you come up with something.
It's like, well, no one has taught that.
Well, yeah, but they weren't dealing with,you know, one of these megachurch
(37:53):
pastors who's I mean, comeon, Christian faith is a Christian faith.
If a heretic comes along, we don'tchange it in order to shut the heretic up.
I mean, that'sthat's a really dumb approach to
to scripture, but,yeah, he gave himself away.
This is yeah, I'm trying to counter him.
And so, yeah, I'm having to go, you know,
and it's like, well,you've just basically condemned yourself
(38:15):
with your own words and yeah, you,you have ended up corrupting Christianity
because you want to get the betterof the argument against Pelagius.
And then ultimately these ideas continueon through these writings.
And eventually,of course, Calvin comes along
from what I understand
refines, hones these thingsand really builds them well, something
(38:37):
that's obviouslystill talk and used quite a bit today.
But reallythey're just building on each other.
Is that a way of saying it like,
Yeah.
So Augustine like saying
it became the official doctrineof the Roman Catholic Church.
But then during the Middle
Ages, a Catholic churchkind of pulled back because this is like,
(38:57):
yeah, this is a little extreme to say,God predestined everyone
and they haven't even done anything wrong.
And so you're doomed to hell.
And even what gives it away is Augustinesays, now we got to be careful
when we preach this, because, you know,it's going to, discourage people.
Or maybe they'll quit living a godly life.
And it's like, now wait a minute.
(39:18):
If we don't have any say or
if we don't have any part in what we do,then you can preach whatever you want.
Because if they've been
chosen to be the elect,then they're going to do the right thing.
If they're not of the elect,it doesn't matter what you preach.
I mean, you can tell people to go outand do wicked.
They're going to dowhat God has chosen for them to do.
So why are you afraid to preach this?
(39:38):
You know,so yeah, it's funny how Augustine kind of
and this was the other thing people said.
So, you know, so why why do you preachthan the need to live a godly life?
And why do you preach against sinif it's all predestined?
And his answer was, well, Paul did itwell.
Yeah, but you haven't proventhat Paul taught predestination.
(39:59):
Oh, Paul preached against sin.
So I'm just doing what Paul did.
Yeah, but you haven't proven yetthat Paul taught arbitrary predestination.
Again,the early Christians would have said, yes,
the Bible teaches predestinationbased on God's foreknowledge,
but not arbitrary predestination,where God we do something
because God made us do it,but rather God chose us
(40:22):
before we were createdbecause he saw in the future
how we were going to respondto the gospel message.
And that's, that's
something I mean there's a lot
wow. There's a, there's a lot here
because this, this is such a big
theological framework that's used, but,
and there's so many different anglesand so many different opinions on this.
(40:44):
But Romans nine tends to be like thatwould be one of the main passages, right.
That that's used.
It's not the only one, but I would sayit's probably the key chapter.
There's also I think it's the first
chapter of Ephesiansis, is is quoted as, as well.
And yeah, you're asking about Calvin.
So his genius was he took
Augustine what Augustine taught himand built a very nice system.
(41:07):
I mean, his,the Institutes of Christian Religion.
I, you know,I read those years ago and really, that's.
I mean, that's a chunk.That's a lot of work.
Yeah, it's a lot of a lot of words It waswhen I was on a search for what was true,
and I was reading Luther and Calvinand the Anabaptists.
And so when I read the threeand it's like, oh, the Anabaptists fit
(41:27):
what I'm reading.
And the I had read the early Christiansbefore I got that far.
And it's like, this is fitting.
The early Christians, you know,
where Luther and Calvin were both teachingpredestination.
We usually think of Calvin,but actually Luther taught it as well.
Becausethey both were following Augustine.
But what Calvin's geniuswas to take Augustine and build
this systemthat is fairly logical, easy to to follow.
(41:53):
And it's always obviously been successful.
I mean, it's still being taught,you know, today by by a lot of people.
So, you know, I have to give creditto Calvin as a gifted teacher.
I just think he's,you know, he's mistaken.
It's not what he taughtwas not the historic faith.
But, yeah, he was gifted nevertheless.
And putting it together.
(42:15):
So one other question here,
what about the illustrationof the potter in the clay.
So it seems like that's sayingGod molds us however he chooses.
And we really don't have any groundsand we don't have any say in it.
Like,
yeah.
Like what do we dowith what do we do with imagery like that?
Is that extrapolatingtoo much into that imagery?
(42:36):
Is that putting our perspectiveon something else?
Yeah, explain that.
I think reading that again,I think it's reasonable, you know,
if someone reads what Paul says thereand, and, that.
Oh, he's just saying that we're nothingbut clay and God does with with us.
What he wants.
But I'm saying you could conclude that.
(42:57):
But, Paul, it's not what Paul says.You will say then to me.
Why does he still find faultfor who has resisted his will?
No manbut who are you to answer back to God?
So this isn't an Armenianthat, you know, Paul
is talking about and and God is saying,who are you to answer back to me?
These are the Jews.
Okay, so a lot of Romans,one reason it's a hard book to follow.
(43:22):
And part of it,
Paul takes on the
persona of, unbelieving Jew.
Other parts he carries on a dialogwith an unbelieving Jew and,
but he doesn't lay all this out.
It's crystal clear.
I think most people reading itrealizes, you know, in part of it
he's dialoging with a fictional person,you know, but he just he'll be doing that.
(43:45):
And then the next verse,
of course, there weren't verses, butthe next sentence, he's suddenly somewhere else.
Again, origins, illustration of he'she's taking you on this tour of this.
You know, palace andand yeah, he just goes from room to room
and you only see a little bit of it,
and then you're in another roombefore you know it. So.
No. Oh, man.
(44:05):
But who are you to answer back to God?
So the Calvinist would read theoh man that Paul is talking to
is being, well, like, say, an Armenian,someone who believes in free will.
Now he's talking to this unbelieving Jewwho's saying God has been unfair,
you know, and Paul is saying, you know,who are you to answer back to God?
(44:25):
We as
humanscan pry, can ask questions about God.
But there's a limit tohow far any of us are entitled to
to pry into why God does this or that.
I mean, there's a lot of thingsthat as a fallen human,
I would think, well, if I were God,this is what I would do.
And, you know,
we wouldn't have evil on the earthand we wouldn't have this or that.
(44:46):
Yeah, but God's ways are different.
They're higher than ours, so much higherthat we're not going to comprehend
everything he does.
Now, it doesn't mean that we can put
wicked things on God and just say, well,you don't understand,
but we're not going to fully understandall of his ways.
And he's just saying, you know,
who are you to,
(45:07):
you know, form this or that?
So you're complaining as a Jew,that God is
being gracious to the Gentiles,but who are you to complain?
God can be gracious whoever he wants.
He can take these Gentiles.
You know, John's words was he can raisechildren to Abraham from these stones.
You know, in the same way herehe can take these Gentiles
(45:29):
and make them into a vesselthat is worthy.
Now, the key,
thing on this onethat the early Christians point to
is second Timothy two 2321
and this is such an illustration of whyyou never just take one
passage of Scripturewithout looking at the whole picture,
(45:49):
because Paul says something very similarthere.
We're here.
He says, why did you make me like thisout of this same lump of clay?
Makes one vessel for honorand another for dishonor.
And it sounds like, oh, okay.
He just arbitrarily does this.
But then in second Timothy,this is still Paul.
He says now in a large house,they are not only vessels of gold
(46:11):
and of silver, but also of wood and clay.
Some are for honor and some for dishonor.
Almost the same things he’s saying in Romans.
But now listen.
Therefore,if anyone cleanses, cleanses himself
from these,he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified
and suitable for the master's use,prepared for every good work.
(46:32):
So there, he says, if we cleanse ourselves
of the wickedness,then we can be a vessel of honor.
So yeah, the
early church, when they read Romans nine,they also read Second Timothy.
They say, look at the other partthat Paul says
he uses the same illustrationand he's showing.
No, we do play a role in this,that if we cleansed ourselves
(46:55):
from wickedness,we leave those things behind.
God can use us.
Now, the other aspect of that is
we're not going to do all of thaton our own power.
God, you know, plays a key rolein, bringing us to faith.
Jesus said, no one can come to the fatherunless I.
No one can come to meunless the father draws him.
And he said, without meyou can do nothing.
(47:18):
So there's the early Christianswould have seen,
not Monergism, which is what Calvinto say, that there's only one force mono
the the all of the forceenergy comes from God.
We do nothing.
And the early Christian was said,no, it's synergism.
It's God's power,and it's us responding to God's power,
not because it has to be that way.
God could God could do the other.
(47:40):
But it's not God's nature.
He wants people who love him,so he gives us the opportunity.
But he knows in our fallen nature,without his help,
we would never make it without himdrawing us, him giving us power.
On the other hand,he doesn't do it all for us.
We we still have to believe he'snot going to do our believing for us.
(48:00):
He's going to do our obeying for us.
But he will give us the power
to make it possibleto do both the believing and the obeying.
So it's the two things working togetherthat we see when we take the whole Bible
and not just,you know, select verses that it's it's
man has a role and Godplays a role, you know, in our salvation.
(48:22):
wow. So this this is a lot to to untanglecould
because there is so much wrapped upin these frameworks, you know,
with, with Augustine, Luther, Calvin,those are the big names.
But there's others as well.
And obviously what we're seeing in Romansand all throughout Scripture.
So first, as you're bringing this up,so do close someone listening to this.
You know, they're like, wow,this is a lot of material.
(48:43):
I want to look into this more.
What are where some places they can go.
If they want to learn more,they want to study into this more.
Where's a good place they can start.
Okay.
So I mean, without, you know,
you know, I'm going to recommend thecommentary that I've just worked on now,
just none of my brilliance in there.
I mean, I was just
the same boat as everyone else was like,wow, this is a complicated book.
(49:07):
Yeah.
They taking the whole early church,all these different people
who had the apostolic faithhanded down to them by the apostles.
How did they all understand this?
You know, people who spoke the same KoineGreek as Paul,
who lived in his culture, who thoughtlike an Easterner, like like Paul does?
Yeah.
How were they understandingall of these things?
(49:28):
And what other verses did they see?
So, but I wish I could say, yeah,there's another commentary I can recommend
and all that because, yeah, I'm notI mean, I just don't know.
I only did this because there wasn't onealready available.
I don't understand,I mean, to me it's it's crazy.
Why are there's hundredsof commentaries on Romans
and not one that okay,this is the early Christians.
(49:50):
I mean, there is one series,the ancient Christian series,
but they they mix Augustinein with the other early Christians.
It's like, well, it's one or the other.
I mean, you can't just mix them together,you know?
Otherwise it's a good series.
I mean, I use them a lot,but it's always puzzled me
that they don't seem to see thatthere's like a delineation point there.
(50:11):
You're saying, yeah, in particularlyin Romans, you can't mix Augustine
with say, origin or Chrysostomor Clement of Alexander.
Justin Martyr.
I mean, it's like,
hey, they're on two different sidesof the fence and one was before the other.
You know,Augustine came after these people.
And so you got to look atwhat was before Augustine.
So that's what I've tried to do.
(50:32):
I've tried to make it, like I say, user
friendly, but again, it is nothingI can take credit for.
I was as mixed up as anyone else.
What do I do with Romans here?
And I had to like, say, a good yearand a half of work in this, another,
six months to a year ofjust the research of, you know, reading it
for all of it to make sense, to get inmy brain finally, you know,
(50:55):
but, yeah, we can learn so much from
the people who taught and learned itfrom the apostles, you know?
I mean,
it's like we have it it you know,God made sure those writings weren't lost.
It's like, to me, it's just absurdthat Christians don't go there.
I mean, that was my first thoughtwas, well, how did the people who lived
after the apostles,how did they understand it?
You know, and it's really odd to methat people don't go there, you know,
(51:17):
but anyway,so that that might be an option
then for some to startdigging into some of that,
that source material,you know, those early church writings,
you know, and, and even some of the stuffyou were pulling out here in Romans nine,
like the different layersthat you were saying, okay, here's here's
what Paul saying, butit's referring back to this and, oh, yeah,
this Old Testament past like that stuffthat's that's pretty easy to miss.
(51:39):
You know, there's other layers in thereand dig through that.
So mean if you were goingto pick just one person and
you know, I took
a pretty, you know, good sampling.
John Chrysostom, who,
was the well, he was actually an elder
in the Church of Antiochwhen he preached through Romans.
(52:00):
We have his sermons.
He just went through verseby verse there online.
I mean, you know,a person can download those for free.
His sermons on Romans, I was going to say.
Yeah, if you want. Oh,I don't want David Bercot. Okay, fine.
If you're going to just take one source
now, like I say,I wanted to get a broad perspective.
I mean, Chrysostom is a fallen humanlike everyone else.
(52:21):
But, yeah, he's pretty good.
He he sees these things.
There are a few times that it seemedlike most of the other early
Christianswere taking a little different position,
but in general,what he says is what they were saying.
So yeah, that would be a a sourcethat's available for free.
And, and somebody who,like I say, would, would like to leave me
(52:42):
out of the picture. That's that's fine.
Yeah. Yeah. He's, he's up there.
And so that would be another source. Yeah.
Yeah.
Well thanks for thanksfor being willing to tackle this one
because this is a, this is a big topicand I know it gets really controversial
sometimes with people.
And I'm really curiouswhat the comments are going to be like.
On this one. Yeah.
(53:03):
But but it's really important to engagewith this stuff, you know, this this is,
I know like, know,you know, especially as a teen, you know,
I had a lot of questions about thatbecause you read Scripture
and some of it sounds very much like,oh, you were chosen by God.
And then the next part is like,oh, no, free will.
And like,you're trying to put the pieces together
and having people like yourself willing toto dig into it and share what you find,
(53:23):
I think that's really valuableand I appreciate that.
Yeah.
Okay.
Wow. Well, thanks.
Thanks for coming on the podcast,David. You're very welcome.
All right.
Thanks for listening to this episodewith David Bercot.
If you found this interesting,
you should check out the other episodewe did with him on the book of Romans.
You can find thatlinked in the description below.
(53:44):
If you enjoy Anabaptist perspectives,leave a rating and a review
on your favorite podcast app.
It helps more people find this podcast.
Thanks so much for listeningand we'll see you in the next episode.
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