I would like to post a response to the post that my friend Randy recently shared with me.  There is a lot that I want to say (in fact, this will likely be a three-part response), so I will get right into it.

In his first paragraph, Randy makes the following claim:

For the most part, when the biblical writers speak of election unto salvation, they are referring to group election, not individual election.

I am confused by Randy’s usage of the phrase “for the most part.”  Is election in Scripture exclusively corporate, or not?  If it is not, and there are instances in which the biblical writers do speak of individuals being elected unto salvation, then I am not sure what Randy’s argument is (since the Perseverance of the Saints, which he seems to be arguing against, would follow by implication).  It seems to me that no matter how common he might believe the election spoken of in Scripture refers to groups only, he would need only one instance of individual election to prove that it too is true, in which case his position that God leaves it up to man to determine whether to be a part of that group would be false.  So I am assuming that regardless of whatever Randy means by “for the most part,” it is not his position that Scripture ever states that individuals are unconditionally elected unto salvation.

Additionally, by “group election” I assume that Randy means that God does not specifically choose individuals, but only chooses the sphere in which individuals can themselves then determine whether or not to be included.  If that is what he means, then I would reject that position, and it would indeed be his position that election unto salvation is always corporate, never individual.

I see several problems with this understanding of election.

First, there may be a false dichotomy between corporate and individual election in Randy’s thinking.  He argues in his first paragraph that we can see in Scripture how “the elect ones” is plural and thus indicates a corporate election.  But no one denies this.  What is up for dispute is the concept of absolute corporate election, the idea that God elects only groups but never the individuals that make up those groups.  This is where the difference between conditional and unconditional election comes into play.  Those who believe in conditional election suggest that God elects corporately, but then it is ultimately up to the individuals to meet certain conditions in order to actually attain and/or maintain individual elect status within the group.  Alternatively, those who believe in unconditional election believe that God elects not only the group, but also individually chooses the members of that group, based solely on His own sovereign will, and not on the members themselves meeting any conditions.

So in order to justify his claim, Randy is obligated to do more than simply point out corporate election in Scripture.  He must also show how the fact that corporate election takes place indicates that individual election does not.  And the attempt to do that is never an exegetical one.  Any attempt would instead be driven by a theological motivation to defend the concept of free will.  Corporate and individual election are two concepts that are in perfect harmony in Scripture.  In fact, I don’t believe you can have one without the other.  If God elects individuals, those individuals make up a collective group of people which He thus necessarily must have chosen to form.  And if He elects a group of people, that group is made up of individuals whom He too must also have chosen, or it would make no sense to say that He elected the group itself.

Corporate and individual election must both exist in harmony, or it follows that the actual target or subject of God’s “electing” action is not man (individuals, or groups) at all.  Randy claims that he believes that God elects a group of people, but in reality it doesn’t seem that he actually believes even that much.  For if Randy holds that God elects a “group” but does not determine the substance that makes up that group, it follows that the actual target of the “electing” action is simply an abstract sphere.  It is not a “people” at all; it is just a concept.  The people come along and determine for themselves whether they actually belong to that sphere.  In other words, they are the ones doing the electing.  So in reality, any talk of “election” or “the elect” in Randy’s theology is a play on words if he denies individual election.  Apparently God isn’t actually “electing” anything.  That is just fancy terminology applied to those who choose to make themselves the recipients of God’s promises.  Randy uses the terminology of election because it is used in Scripture, and so he knows he cannot deny it.  But his view of it doesn’t make much sense of the words, and in fact would imply that Scripture’s usage of the language is quite unnecessary and confusing.

Second, there is too much focus in Randy’s post on the lexical meaning of the term “the elect,” and not enough on the actual concept described in Scripture.  The concept of election is far more abundant in the pages of Scripture than the specific word “elect.”  So the fact that one can simply find a corporate meaning in the semantic range of the word “elect” is not nearly enough to make Randy’s case.  The question he (and the authors he chose to reference) needs to deal with is the question of whether the concept of election described in Scripture is exclusively corporate or if it is individual.  If he would broaden the horizon of his research to take this consideration into account, he would note that individual election is unavoidable in Scripture.  Take as an example Acts 13:48:

And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.

No form of the word “elect” is found here, and yet we clearly see the concept of individuals being appointed to faith in Christ stated.  Notice the way the verse is worded.  It does not say that these Gentiles attained and/or maintained their election by upholding certain conditions.  No honest reading of the text could lead to such a conclusion.  It specifically states the exact opposite:  They believed only because they were appointed to eternal life.  Due to their depravity, they would not, and could not have otherwise desired to believe in Christ (cf. John 6:44; Jer. 13:23).  God is clearly the sovereign agent, and individual recipients are clearly in view.  “The elect ones” make up a chosen group of people, but they are still individuals, chosen by God to be members of that group.

Third, I would suggest to Randy that 2 Peter is not the best text to use when one is trying to argue for one’s view of election, and his choice of it has likely contributed to his misunderstanding of the doctrine.  When you want to be able to define a particular doctrine, you need to first turn to the texts that are most pertinent to that doctrine.  If you’re going through an encyclopedia, and you want to learn something about lions, are you going to flip to the article on lions, or rely on another article that only mentions but doesn’t focus on lions?  Certainly it would be improper to treat the Bible like an encyclopedia, but the point I am making could be argued with any book: There are certain sections or portions of the text that are intended to be used to teach us about certain doctrines, and just because any other passage makes reference to that doctrine does not mean that it can just as well serve as a foundation for our understanding of it.  It's possible you might learn something about election by reading 2 Peter.  But since providing a definition of election is not Peter’s intention, it is not one of the most relevant texts to the topic, and should not therefore be one of our first choices to go to in order to facilitate our understanding of the doctrine.

If Randy wants to argue for an exclusively corporate (or abstract) election in which it is left up to the individual to meet certain conditions in his own power in order to maintain his elect status, he needs to first take us to passages like Ephesians 1:3-14, Romans 8:28-31, and Romans 9:6-24, and demonstrate how he gets that idea out of these texts.  If he cannot do that with the passages that directly deal with election in depth, then he must admit that his intention behind referencing Scripture in the first place is to show how he can attempt to make his opinions fit into the text, rather than to show how he has drawn his opinions out of the text.  Texts that only address an issue tangentially assume an understanding of that issue already, and are not intended to provide the basis of understanding.

Second Peter is a letter written to Christians who were under the threat of a false teaching from within their fellowship (2:1).  It was most likely a kind of early Gnosticism, which was often characterized by blatant immorality (cf. 2:13-19) due to the Gnostic system’s belief that the physical body is evil.  Peter is warning Christians about false teachers creeping in among them who were apparently making excuses to remain in their sinful habits.  That is the purpose of his letter.  So of course he is going to focus on ethics, because he is trying to encourage Christians to make sure they are separated from those who continue to willfully indulge in sin.  But by Randy stating that Peter “pursues the ethical route” in giving us evidence of exclusively corporate election, he is trying to draw from this text something other than what Peter intended to discuss.  There are other passages of Scripture that are focused on defining the doctrine of election specifically, whereas Peter’s second letter is focused more on sanctification.  Randy needs to be able to show his position in the Ephesians and Romans passages before he can make further arguments that deal with other texts.  Otherwise he is abusing Scripture toward his own ends.

I will return to his treatment of 2 Peter in part 2, but first I want to step back and offer a few comments on some of the other claims he made beforehand.  He states the following:

rxb never denies the sovereignty of God in the OT or other Jewish literature. In fact, it affirms it, giving God the ultimate authority to bring his elect into salvation or reject them (2 Kgs 23.27). God still has the power to elect or unelect a group at his choosing. But insofar as his election remains, the freedom to commit oneself to the elect or leave the elect is given to man.

Randy’s usage of 2 Kings 23:27 may be a little misleading here.  Israel was not an elect group that was suddenly “unelected.”  There is no such thing.  The context is God’s threat to send what remained of Israel into Babylonian captivity.  As I’m sure Randy knows, Israel was in captivity for 70 years, but then Jerusalem was restored.  So it is not that God elected Israel for a time, and then “unelected” them later.  Israel was always His chosen people.  But as the apostle says, not all who were descended from Israel are of Israel (Rom. 9:6), just as not all who profess faith in Christ truly belong to Him, which is why all throughout history we see God on numerous occasions punishing or destroying Israel for its idolatry, yet always redeeming and restoring an elect remnant (a remnant that God chose!).  So those who were destroyed by God were never elect to begin with.  Just as the apostates in 2 Peter, they sought fellowship with the true people of God, and thereby managed to gain the appearance of being elect, but not all of them were truly elect to begin with, or they would have persevered with God working in them.  The Scriptures are clear on this matter:

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us – 1 John 2:19

Additionally, Randy makes a contradictory statement in the above quoted paragraph.  Much like his usage of the terminology of election, his affirmation of the sovereignty of God as it relates to this matter is a statement lacking in substance if he believes that man in essence determines for himself whether or not he is “elect.”  I wonder if we really understand here that just because one espouses a position does not necessarily mean that one doesn’t actually operate off of the assumption of another.  I want to challenge Randy to take some time to critically examine his own presuppositions and be open to some self-correction.  He might start by asking himself, does God have absolute knowledge of who will and who will not choose to “commit oneself to the elect”?  Or does he only have knowledge of the possibility, or probability that one may choose and another may not?  Was God surprised when He looked into the future and just discovered an individual’s decision to accept Him?  Or does He know, for absolute certainty, who will and who will not come?

If we can agree that God has absolute knowledge of who will choose to do what, then I wonder if Randy can explain for us how it is still left up to the individual to choose otherwise.  How does a person choose contrary to what God already knows is going to happen?  If God has knowledge of what a man will do (as opposed to just a good guess), then does that not imply that the man’s decision is already determined, in some manner, to take place?  Certainly it does, for God cannot be said to have “knowledge” of the future outcome of something that is only a matter of possibility.

Randy makes the same mistake later in his post, when he says:

The will of the individual—to be part of the group or not—is not predestined (though it may be foreknown).

Yet Scripture does not separate the decrees of God from His foreknowledge:

This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. – Acts 2:23

In this text we see the incredible truth that even when men act of their own will, they are still acting within the sovereign determination of God.  God had always planned that Jesus would be crucified and killed.  And yet at the same time, the blame for His crucifixion and murder falls upon the men who actually carried out the deed.  God ordains the ends as well as the means of human events and decisions, and yet He does not violate human liberty and responsibility in the process.

Continuing on, it was at this point that I really think Randy could have used his space a little more wisely:

For example, Rabbi Akiba states, … Or one can read in Sirach 15.11-17, … an “examination of the usage in the OT and in Judaism shows…”

I mean no offense toward my friend, but is the purpose of our blog swap just to show off our research skills?  Or are we actually seeking to get to the truth of a matter?  What purpose are Jewish sources supposed to serve in helping us to better understand a Christian doctrine?  We need to hear from the Scriptures themselves, not from Jewish theology or Rabbis who are going to be inclined in their sinful rebellion to reject the true message of Scripture on gospel-related topics.

Thus, references in the NT to falling away are in reference to one’s own removal from the group of the elect.

There is no “thus.”  Absolutely no biblical support has been provided for this statement; not even an attempt.  And a few words about the semantic range of a term and the opinion of Jewish theology are not proof of anything.  Can Randy show us, from Scripture, how he determines that apostates were once members of a group elected by God unto salvation?  Can he explain for us, while still retaining the substance of the meaning of the word “elect,” how it even makes sense to say that God elects a group but not the individuals that make up the group? In Randy’s defense, we did agree ahead of time to limiting our posts to about a page, single-spaced.  But it appears that he exceeded that limit anyway, which I don’t at all mind, except that it simply leaves him with less of an excuse for not having providing some exegetical support for his claims instead of only referencing additional claims made by various authors.  He hasn’t even dealt with election in Scripture yet, so pointing out that others agree with him is hardly relevant.  It is great to see that Randy has some research skills, but right now those skills need to be used to show that he is capable of going to the text of Scripture and working through it to demonstrate his position in the first place.  It does not matter how many people he can find that support his point of view if Scripture doesn’t teach it.

But despite my concerns expressed earlier regarding Randy's usage of 2 Peter, I believe that his treatment of it was intended to offer a little bit of his evidence, so I will deal with it in my next post.

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