Idle musings by a once again bookseller, always bibliophile, current copyeditor and proofreader. Complete with ramblings about biblical studies, the ancient Near East, bicycling, gardening, or anything else I am reading (or experiencing). All more or less live from Red Wing, MN
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
Perseverance of the saints?
As we have seen, the motif of “wealth” evokes the superabundance thematized in Romans 5:12-21, and there are statements here that emphasize the priority of God’s call or gift (9:11; 11:2, 35) in a way that supports its lack of correspondence to human worth. If Paul traces here a final singularity in the purpose of God’s mercy (11:32), this is far from a principled insistence that God can only be benevolent: as we have seen, there are multiple references to God’s hardening, wrath, and severity, alongside God’s grace, both in relation to Israel (11:7—10) and in relation to Gentile believers (11:20—22). Paul’s threat that branches may be cut off if they do not remain in God’s goodness (11:17—24) calls into question any dogmatic, Augustinian commitment to “the perseverance of the saints.”—J. M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 557 (emphasis original)
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