Disclaimer: I don’t have time right now to read the whole thread and might not have time to read after this for a while – but in case it hasn’t been mentioned, what about Hosea? In the place where it was said of you, ‘you are not my children,’ I shall call you 'children of a living God." (A very loose quotation from memory.) While the text immediately refers to Israel, God is not a respecter of persons. Clearly He has brought the nations into the fold. Those who WERE ‘not my children’ have BECOME the children of the living God. How is this possible of those who were NOT to BECOME if God has predestined them for NOT? Doesn’t He know what He will do? Doesn’t He know who IS and who IS NOT predestined to be among His children? And if they have been pre-selected, have they not ALWAYS been His?
Although God is talking in Hosea, about rebel Israel being restored after being eschatologically punished, when St. Paul quotes it he gives it the full scope of the Gentiles, too.
However, Jaxxen allows that no sinner starts off as God’s people from our side of things; God chooses to make those who are not His people His people (Israel herself, starting with Abraham, being a prime example).
The problem is that in Hosea, it is God Who says that various rebels are not His people. So from God’s side of things He declared those people not His people.
Jaxxen could (and I expect would) reply that God can declare a group not His people and then save members of their people who come later into being His people. But then the “two separate people” still isn’t as wholly distinct as required.
Hmm . . . yes, I suppose he could. Still the point for me would be that God reserves the right to move a person from this category to that as He pleases . . . and why would He choose to move Joe from X to Y? I’ve just been studying Rom 11 (the middle part – will get to the last bit tomorrow probably).
It’s beastly hard to type with your index finger swathed in a huge wad of gauze, btw – just smashed it in the wood splitter and now have 7 stitches. 
There (in Ro11) it looks to me like God is breaking out and grafting in branches as He pleases; now one, now another. He can break them out and He can graft them in. It all depends on whether they’re putting trust in Him for righteousness or in their ability to keep the law. And if they stop trusting themselves and believe Him, He grafts them back in . . . It doesn’t say so directly, but it looks like it’s an ongoing process – or can go on as long as He likes. Why would He be required to stop? He doesn’t say He’s going to stop at any particular time.
Going to go paint now. That only takes one hand. 
Ouch Cindy - look after your fingers
Just one last thing about this debate –
I think that our new kid Miss Zoolander made some really good points here and that it’s a shame these haven’t been commented on because the conversation was so fast and furious. And I’d like to add something to her observations about unity among Christian Universalists. It’s just that if an Evangelical ECT site existed along the lines of the Evangelical Universalist site that – and it did not ask contributors to subscribe to any rigid dogmatic statement - there would not be sweetness and light all of the time. For starters the Calvinists and Armenians would be bitterly opposed. And if any people from the Orthodox ECT tradition joined up they’d be making very inflammatory comments about it begin a blasphemous notion that their God of love would create a special fire in which to torture his creatures for eternity. Perhaps the Calvinists would stick together against the ‘world’ – but I doubt it. Calvinism that breaks off from the wider Church is notorious for splitting into smaller and smaller groups very acrimoniously over finer and finer points of doctrine and/or epistemology (I know this is true of Scottish and Dutch Calvinism for example); and some of these splits would be reflected on the site. Perhaps there might be a valiant stand from the soft ECT faction adamant that damnation is self chosen rather than due to God’s action – and perhaps these might be accused of creeping universalism.
Also with threads on moral and political issues I would not expect any unanimity – and I guess Theonmist drones might cause much excitement with views others could not endorse because of their extremism. In all honesty I actually cannot imagine such a site existing in this or any parallel world. So I reckon this site is pretty good regarding charitableness in difference – I really do.
Phew! Sorry for the delay–I had most of this composed already a week or so ago, but got distracted doing other things.
I’ll be going through Matt (Jaxxen)'s list of examples supposedly testifying to two separate people in the Calvinist sense that God never even had any intention of saving one of those groups (the non-elect) from their sins. Thus Jaxxen offers these as testimony “that not all human beings are His children, only the Elect–and that through adoption. The whole of Scripture reveals two separate peoples with two different destinies; those who are foreknown, predestined and called of YHWH to be His people in His Kingdom and those who are not.”
This is going to take a while, so I’ll break it up into groups of posts.
Both of whom are the offspring of God. And the same “bronze serpent” (same term from Gen 3:15) shows up eating dust and playing with children on the Holy Mountain of God, as revealed through Isaiah (64:25), along with other ravening animals who attacked God’s people, so he and/or his offspring end up reconciled to God and to other persons later. Not the best examples for two separate people in the sense required.
Both of whom are the offspring of God, also both of whom are the offspring of the woman by the way (one of whom, Cain, she thought would be YHWH, in the Hebrew!); Cain is cared for and provided for and protected by God against the hatred from descendants of the other side of the family. Not the best examples for two separate people in the sense required. (Aside from the question of who exactly Cain married and had children with east of Eden!–but whoever they were, they were part of the Adamic family one way or another, if only by virtue of relation to Cain. If they had rational spirits, and so were actual persons, they got those from God the Father of Spirits or else supernaturalistic theism isn’t true, thus neither is Calvinist Christianity per se.)
Genesis 5 has exactly nothing to do with the line of Cain, unless the Enoch/Methuselah/Lamech/Noah line refers to intermarriage back into the line of Cain from Genesis 4:16-24 somehow. One way or another Genesis 5 doesn’t support two separate people in the sense required.
The unnamed ones destroyed in the flood explicitly included rebel “sons of God” and their offspring the Nephilim (whatever that may mean). The line of Cain is not mentioned; all the explicitly mentioned trouble comes from “sons of God”. Very far from being two separate people in the sense required. (And not even counting whether 1 Peter discusses their post-mortem salvation after all.)
If you’re going to include Noah on one side of the separate people category, then that includes his sons. Trouble certainly came from them, but still not two separate people in the sense required.
Hagar’s son was also a son of Abraham, and God went very far in promising protection and blessings for him. Paul, in the middle of talking about (and grieving over) those descended from Abraham who are not spiritual Israel, reiterates that those who are not currently spiritual Israel still have the promises, the covenants, and the blessings (up to and including the Christ) given to the patriarchs. (Rom 10-11) They may have stumbled and are currently stumbling over the stumbling stone, but not so as to fall.
Paul’s reference to Hagar in Galatians 4 uses her as a metaphor for the covenant of Mount Sinai, being under the Law, which covenant Israel broke and was punished for, but which will be replaced in those who broke it with a superior covenant; Sarah represents the covenant of promise, which only God made, not Abraham (by God’s gracious provenance), so which cannot be invalidated by the misdeeds of Abraham’s descendants. (Similarly the “everlasting” priesthood of Aaron, from the Sinai covenant, is abolished in favor of the priesthood of the Messiah Who is established “not after the law of a carnal commandment but after the power of an endless life”. (Heb 7:12-18)) Thus Paul’s comparison and complaint to the Galatians, about them going back to the covenant of Sinai rather than the covenant of Abraham (through Isaac). Hagar represents the present Jerusalem currently under slavery (Gal 4:25), but those people are not inherently non-elect in the Calvinist sense or no one could be called out of Hagar into the promises of Sarah, the free mother!–yet Paul says this has happened with his audience (and with him as well). It is even more suggestive that Paul reckons Ishamael, the child of Hagar, into the covenant of Sinai and the present Jerusalem, out of whom we are converted into the promises to Sarah. So there is no absolutely utter distinction in Galatians 4 between “the son of the bondswoman and the son of the free woman”: Christ sets us free with the freedom of the free woman, the freedom of the heavenly Jerusalem. But we are set free from the slavery of being immature heirs.
It is in this context that Paul quotes Isaiah 54 at Gal 4:27; which (from back at least as far as Isaiah 49, maybe even Isaiah 47 insofar as Babylon is often mystically identified with rebel Israel) about Israel being a faithless and treacherous wife who slew her husband (the classic Suffering Servant prophecy from Isaiah 53), and who was punished by God for a moment but who shall be saved everlastingly by Him. There is simply no two separate people in this example, in the sense required.
I will also observe that one chapter earlier (Gal 3:6-8), St. Paul argues that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham, but says this in direct citational context of Genesis 18:18 which prophecies that God shall justify the nations by faith: all the nations cannot be blessed in Abraham, the believer, unless all the nations come to have faith in God. By the same token of proportion, “Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the Law, to perform them”–and in fact no one is justified by the Law before God. All nations have sinned: corporately, individually and universally. All nations means everyone in relation to the same context when talking about sin; the prophecy indicates (unless there are good reasons to believe otherwise) all nations means everyone when talking about being saved into faith and becoming sons of Abraham.
Even more importantly, the promise of blessing to all nations is really being offered to Christ, the seed of Abraham (verse 16). Nor can the Law, which came 430 years later, nullify that promise nor invalidate a covenant (actually made with the Son by the Father through Abraham) previously ratified by God. For God grants it to Abraham (and thus to Christ) by means of a promise. Consequently, the failure of both Jews and Gentiles to keep the Law (and Paul recognizes that even Gentiles who do not have the Torah still have a conscience inspired by God to act as Torah within them so that no one has excuse but all are shut up under the Law), does not supercede the promise made to the Son by the Father to bless all nations: a blessing that Paul explicitly identifies as salvation from sin and the reception of the Holy Spirit through faith.
Calvinists would quickly agree and insist that the Father would be shamed by giving up or (worse) being incompetent to fulfill that promise to the Son: that is a standard counter-Arminian argument. But if the promise is given to Christ by the Father, and fulfilled for Christ by the Father, then how would the Father not also be shamed by promising to the Son less than what was achieved through sin: the corruption of all humanity?!
Not a good example; the Calv non-elect have no birthright to even sell, and Esau reconciled with Jacob in one of the most beautiful stories of the OT. While he didn’t get his birthright back (thus found no chance to repent though he wept), he did repent of his murderous hatred of Jacob (just as Jacob repented of being in effect a Satan to Esau!–a comparison explicitly made by God through one of the OT prophets, btw, when criticizing Israel later.)
Isaac also prophetically promised that Esau would be blessed in Jacob and would serve Jacob–promises explicitly called out and referred to by St. Paul in Romans 9, but which would fail in any meaningful way if Esau was never saved from his sins. (The Hebraist in chapter 11:20 also reminds readers that by faith Isaac blessed Esau as well as Jacob!)
The same is true of Esau’s descendants, Edom: as the land of Edom will eventually be healed (after being nuked by God in Isaiah 34) and even become a highway for the righteous to pass through on the way to Jerusalem, while those who have been stricken with blindness, deafness and dumbness shall be healed (Isaiah 35); and as Esau eventually reconciled with Jacob; so Esau’s descendants shall eventually reconcile with Jacob’s descendants, and be blessed thanks to the blessing of Jacob (specifically that Jacob not Esau should be the line of descent to the Messiah), thanks to God.
A Calvinist could admittedly still work with all this and also a “two separate people” soteriology, but not by using Esau (or even Edom) as an example.
And yet Egypt is still slated to be brought into the fold later. One example is Psalm 68, loaded with imagery of God bringing His people out from captivity while only the rebellious remain in parched lands; but this is done so that even the rebellious will (eventually) bring gifts to God so that God will dwell with them, too. (v.18; which Paul in Ephesians 4:8 compares in principle to the descent of Christ for the purpose of leading captive captivity itself!) Egypt and Ethiopia, both pagan nations at the time (and apparently slated to become so again, largely accomplished already in Egypt), shall quickly stretch out their hands and send envoys to God, bringing gifts to His Temple after He scatters them. (vv.28-31)
Relatedly God promises Pharaoh that He will not destroy him, but rather preserve him (despite Pharaoh’s own willing hardening of the heart when he has a choice about it) to give glory to God. The phraseology in Hebrew can refer to God bringing Pharaoh back to life (which is why Paul renders it in Greek as “raise you up”); and rabbis in the day of Paul (and afterward) made that the centerpiece of their theories about how Pharaoh could have given glory to God if he died in the Reed Sea: either God raised him on the Egypt side of the sea and he went back to become the pharaoh who led the monotheistic rebellion soon after Moses’ day; or God raised him on the Sinai side of the sea and he followed the people through the wilderness anonymously, went up the Jordan into Mesopotamia, and became the ruler of Ninevah! “So then [salvation, as of Ninevah] does not depend on the man who wills * or on the man who runs *, but on God Who has mercy.” It was in regard to the obstinate people who did not enter the rest of the Promised Land, that God revealed Himself to Moses not only as one who would by no means leave the guilty unpunished but also “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion”, promising to continue sending His presence to them despite the incident with the golden calf (and despite none but Joshua and one other, not even Moses, being allowed into the rest of the Promised Land after all. But no one thinks Moses was one of the non-elected people!–nor Aaron nor Miriam, etc.)
Again, a Calvinist could accept all this and also* a “two separate people” soteriology, but Egypt ends up not being an example of that principle. The relevant practical distinction between Israel and Egypt is that everyone currently in Egypt (both Gentile and Jew) ought to go into Israel (first the Jew and then the Gentile), whereas in the day of Egypt’s first humiliation they had thought it ought to be the other way around.
Since that isn’t a specific example, I will answer generally that you yourself acknowledge that the righteous start off among the wicked; so again there are not two separate people in the Calvinistic sense required.
(Also, I routinely find it amusing that the term “reprobate” is used of people whom the users don’t expect to be re-probated at all! Strictly speaking it ought to be the elect who are re-probated, and re-tributed, out of the wicked, thus made righteous. If “reprobate” was used of backsliders out of the righteous, that could make sense; but then we are all reprobate in that sense to some extent, and Calv soteriology cannot functionally recognize such a fall from true righteousness in the first place. Come to think of it, if Calv persistence of the elect is true, the only people who should fall are those whom God never intends to save from sin after falling!–and so much for Adam and Eve, whom God promises salvation to, and of whom no Calvinist I have ever heard of thinks are among the hopelessly non-elected.)
God calls false prophets, too, sometimes, like Baalam, to be true prophets. (Abraham himself might count in principle, as a former idolmaker!) Not two separate categories again in the sense required.*
If that parable really illustrated two separate people in the Calvinistic sense required, the apostles and disciples would not have misunderstood the parable so as to need explanation. “Whenever anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it”, they are like the ones on whom seed is sown by the road. All the apostles and disciples ended up having no firm root and fell away immediately (though to various degrees) when persecution arose–and this was after having the parable explained to them! So they were ones on whom the seed was sown in rocky places.
Again, Peter routinely had problems realizing he was supposed to be evangelizing Gentiles not only Jews, and wasn’t called to make converts to Judaism per se. St. Paul had some sharp things to say about him being afraid of the opinion of others!–and that was all well into the post-resurrection ministry! He (if not the others) counts as one on whom the seed was sown among the thorns.
Moreover, Jesus shifted over to parables (as GosMatt makes clearer than the other Synoptics) the afternoon after the Pharisees of Capernaum had charged Him with serving and healing by the power of the devil, when He had healed a man from whom (as Matthew also somewhat clarifies) He had already cast out one demon and who had come back with his latter state worse than his first: the Pharisees are condemned for being willing to contradict their own principles in order to put limits on God’s salvation of people from sin, so I’m loath to interpret Jesus’ parables (and His interpretation of parables) with limits on His salvation of people from sin!
The parable of the wheat and the tares speaks of “sons of the kingdom” being in the group that Calvs would regard as the elect, thus the other group as the non-elect; but the previous time in GosMatt (8:12) Jesus had spoken of “the sons of the kingdom”, He was warning them that they would be wailing and gnashing their teeth about being thrown outside and seeing people they weren’t expecting to be saved entering into the kingdom to dine with the patriarchs at the table of the Lord!
So again, there isn’t two separate people in the sense required by Calvinism. “The sons of the kingdom” may be “sons of the evil one” and punished thereby.
(To which could be added that the parable portrays God being caught by surprise and the tares being something God can do nothing about. So even Calvs must acknowledge the details shouldn’t be held to rigorously: it isn’t as though God graciously transforms the tares into wheat.)
In regard to the wheat and chaff (which comes from Matt 3, not Matt 13, paralleled at Luke 3:9,16-17): Jesus isn’t simply dividing completely separate items from each other, wheat and chaff, but is removing each kernal of wheat from its own chaff by scouring with the winnowing fan. This tends to imply salvation of a person from sin, not separation of different kinds of person.
John the Baptist, in teaching this parable, connects it to Malachi 4:1-3, which features similar imagery attributed as part of the message of the coming Elijah, including burning of the tree (per Luke 3:9 and Matt 3:10). However, God (via Malachi) says this is coming to all sinners on the Day of YHWH to come; but all sinners must include the rebel Israelites (particularly the rebel religious leaders–who are specifically whom JohnBapt is admonishing in GosMatt and GosLuke) from back in Malachi 3, who are set to be purged with fire in the same Day of YHWH to come. This is very far from hopeless for them, as God both intends to save them from their sins thereby (in refining imagery) and prophetically expects full success! This lends great strength to the interpretation of the chaff as being salvation of sinners from sin: the Synoptic saying, in its referential contexts, testifies at least to the salvation of rebel Israel in the Day of YHWH to come, with the implication that this applies to all sinners via Mal 4.
Actually, in the parable the good fish are slated to be thrown into the fire after being stored in containers; the bad fish are thrown away, presumably back in the lake!
Jesus reverses the actual imagery somewhat, with the explanation being that the bad fish are thrown in the fire (where, per Matt 8:12, the sons of the kingdom will also be thrown if they don’t cooperate with God bringing in people whom the sons aren’t expecting to be brought in!) If the lake == hades/Gehenna, which would be typical Jewish poetic imagery, that means the good fish as being saved out of the spirit prison but others thrown back in. That would run rather counter to the notion that the good fish don’t go to spirit prison in the first place, and tends to suggest salvation of penitent post-mortem spirits. Which (as I noted earlier in another thread) could work with Calvinism, too, so long as the Calvinist allows post-mortem salvation of the elect. But the details of the parable subtly undermine any notion of two absolutely separate people in the Calvinistic sense required. Unless Calvinists are saying that God only saves people who are already good enough to be saved to begin with (which Calvs strongly argue against vs. the implications of Arm soteriology).
The most that can be said for sure of the parable is that it teaches punishment of the wicked eventually in fire and with weeping and gnashing of teeth, which is a belief Arms and (purgatorial) Kaths share with Calvs. What it means for them to be so punished has to be established elsewhere. (But mustn’t involve denying that God is able and willing to save those whose latter states are worse than their former.)
The baby-goats are explicitly described as being part of the flock of the shepherd, and so are literally the least of Christ’s flock (although they didn’t think so and weren’t interested in saving who they thought were the least of Christ’s flock).
Any interpretation that involves a hopeless fate for the goats requires that the Good Shepherd and the good flock (since the term there can include goats as well as sheep) will proceed to treat the least of Christ’s flock the way the least of Christ’s flock treated the least of Christ’s flock for which the least of Christ’s flock are being sent into the eonian fire and kolasis prepared for the devil; which is an interpretation of the sort a baby-goat would make! (The baby-goats are explicitly the ones who think in terms of people to be saved and people not to be saved.)
Considering that this parable caps a trio of warnings where the other two parables involve lazy and/or uncharitable servants of Christ (the foolish virgins are not part of some separate group who don’t belong to the bridegroom; the lazy investor who tries to get out of his duty by flattering his master as a chief of brigands isn’t some separate group of person), and considering that Christ counts those among His mature flock who didn’t even know they were serving Christ (while the baby-goats are surprised to hear they weren’t serving Christ), I take that judgment parable very, very seriously: on the basis of that judgment alone, I would be extremely leery about interpreting anything else Christ said to involve hopeless punishment of anyone, on pain of being judged by Christ myself to be only a baby-goat. (Although fortunately the problem appears to be an attitude of the heart on the part of the baby-goats, not a technical misunderstanding. 
)
Jesus promises those people they shall certainly die in their sins, and that they will die in their sins if they do not recognize Him as “I AM”, but also (v.28) that they shall come to know He is “I AM” after (or when) they lift Him up.
Added up, He’s saying that some of them shall certainly die in their sins (after lifting Him on the cross) without believing He is “I AM” and not go where He is going, but shall come to know He is “I AM” later (after lifting Him up as the Son of Man somehow).
Those who come to believe in Him while He is saying such things (v.30) are the ones who end up being rebuked by Him as children of the devil–much as Peter is rebuked like Satan in the Synoptics, and who doesn’t abide in or keep His word! If these are thus taken as examples thereby of a separate group of non-elect, by the same evidence Peter must be of the non-elect, and no Calvinist could ever have true assurance that they are of the elect.
Either way, not an example of two separate classes of people in the Calvinist sense required.
John 8:34-36, by the way, probably refers to the ‘paterfamilias’ concept of ‘son-placement’ (or adoption as it’s translated) mentioned by St. Paul in Galatians 4, where the children of the father are slaves in regard to authority until the father judges they are mature enough to be given the authority and responsibilities of the family name, thus coming into their inheritance. (The original Greek probably didn’t read “slave of sin” at verse 34.) The slave wouldn’t remain in the house forever, because as the child grows older but not more mature the father would put him or her out of the house until when-if-ever the child repented of his or her behavior.
Well, if they aren’t His flock (and the term there is generic and could be translated “goat” just as well as “sheep”), then neither are they the baby-goats of the Matt 25 judgment, who explicitly are His flock!–how many separate groups of non-elect does Calvinism require?!
(Incidentally, this is also the chapter where Jesus contrasts Himself to the bandit who comes to kill and sacrifice the flock for himself: an interpretation that any hopeless punishment of the baby-goats necessarily requires, and for which attempt to flatter his master the lazy servant in Matt 25 gets thrown with the baby-goats, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. Be that as it may.)
Notably, some early manuscripts of 10:29 read “What My Father has given Me is greater than all”; which would void the absolute limit of Calvinistic scope being appealed to in this section. While that reading most likely isn’t original, it does fit with what Jesus says later in GosJohn about everything being given into His hand.
If you mean John 17:9, “I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me”, you had better hope the scope is wider than that, because Jesus was talking from verses 6-8, and from verses 9-26, about the current disciples and apostles! Only the men (and maybe a few women) present at the Last Supper after Judas left are the chosen elect of God, and all the rest of us are among the non-elect, yourself included?!? The disciples and apostles are only supposed to go out into the world afterward to demonstrate that they are of the elect and no one else is?!? Preposterous! At the very least the scope also includes “those who believe in Me through their word” (v.20), for whom Jesus also prays (“I do not ask in behalf of these alone, but also for those…”)
But the scope is explicitly wider even than that, at the start of this same climactic High Priestly prayer, 17:1-2: “Glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You; just as You gave Him authority over every flesh, so that He may give eonian life to everything You have given Him.”
By those explicit terms, the only way that the Son and the Father may glorify each other is if the Father gives all authority to the Son so that the Son may give eonian life to everything over which He has authority. That’s the context in which Jesus says He isn’t praying for the world but for His immediate disciples: He’s asking that they should be preserved as witnesses to the world, but it’s still the same principle because everything the Father gives the Son belongs to both Persons and must not be finally lost.
By the same token, this means that although the “son of perdition” given to the Son to be guarded will perish, so that the Scripture may be fulfilled, he still was also given to the Son and so shall not be finally lost; Judas just isn’t among those whom Christ is praying will stay true for evangelizing the world.
Lots of Rom 9 coming up, so I’ll do some briefer entries first:
True enough, in the sense of sonship being discussed (v.15, that of son-placement, the raising to inheritance of those who are naturally children), but hardly an exclusively non-porous division, since none of us start out as sons in that sense (not being maturely responsible enough to be regarded as ready to enjoy the full rights of sonship, until which we have the status of slaves), whereas all of us start out as sons in the other far more primary sense: we have spirits given to us by the Father of Spirits, and only by His continual self-sacrificial action do we continue to exist. It is because of the far more primary sense of sonship in which we all start out, that we have any hope of being raised to authoritative sonship: if we are children, then also heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ, but only if we cooperate with Him by suffering with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him (8:17). Far from being an exclusive salvation from sin, all creation eagerly waits and anxiously longs for the revealing of the sons of God, having been subjected to vanity in hope that the creation itself will also be set from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (8:19-22), which is itself similar to how even we who have the firstfruits of the Spirit groan within ourselves waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, which is the resurrection of the body (8:23).
It should in any case be sufficiently obvious that the creation cannot be delivered from bondage of corruption into the glory of the children of God, if some of God’s corrupted children, made in His image, are annihilated, much less if some are hopelessly ever after fixed in corruption!
Taking hold of the seed of Abraham cannot only refer to Abraham’s descendants after the flesh (an exclusion which is denied elsewhere in the scriptures), so must refer to the spiritual seed of Abraham (and not to Christ specifically, although He is also known as “the seed of Abraham”, since Christ is the one doing the action). And since no one (not even Abraham!) starts off as being spiritually the seed of Abraham, but rather God can even raise sons of Abraham up out of the stones as He chooses, the category cannot be any simple reference to an exclusive group elected by God to salvation from sin.
However, Paul started off with concern (one way or another, itself a prior topic) for “my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh” whom he directly affirmed “are Israelites” not merely according to the flesh but also “to whom belongs the adoption as sons and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the (temple) service and the promises, whose (promises etc.) are the fathers and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, Who is over all God, blessed into the ages, Amen!” In other words, the same Israel by flesh who are not yet spiritual Israel, who are still stumbling over the stumbling stone, still have the promises! This is Paul’s immediate consolation for his unceasing grief over his kinsmen according to the flesh who are not spiritual Israel (as indeed none of us are to begin with, thanks to sin).
It is in this context (vv.1-5) that Paul goes on to declare and discuss why the Word of God has not failed in regard to them. Their apostasy is explained according to the flesh but their salvation was never intended to be according to the flesh but rather according to the promises: and they are included in the promises! If only the children of the flesh could be inheritors, the scope of salvation would be limited to the descendants of Abraham by the flesh, and then restricted further to descendants of Isaac and descendants of Jacob by the flesh. But since it is rather the children of the promise who are inheritors, then (because of the scope of the promise to Abraham) anyone can be inheritors–including those descendants of the flesh who are currently stumbling over the stumbling stone, for they are the first of people to be included in the promises of God.
Paul quotes from Gen 21:12, “through Isaac your descendents will be named”, which includes Esau as well as Jacob, thus also includes “spiritual Esau” as well as “spiritual Jacob”. This is why Paul can be reassure himself, despite his unceasing grief for them, that to them still belongs the adoption as sons, and the promises, and the glory and the covenants, which being of God shall not fail.
(The covenant made by God with Abraham regarding Abraham’s descendents was made by God alone, Who ensured Abraham would not be able to participate in the covenant ritual (Gen 15); thus Abraham’s descendents, even if they break the covenant and are punished for it, cannot nullify it. It is the Mosiac covenant which is broken and replaced by the superior covenant written in the hearts later–although the end result demonstrates that even breaking this covenant isn’t hopeless!)
This is also why Isaac could be inspired to bless Esau (and thus Esau’s descendants Edom) in Jacob, and why God can promise that Esau’s descendants will serve Jacob’s. Salvation for Esau and his descendants was never predicated on the right of flesh (or Esau would have been included in God’s inheritance through Isaac per 9:7 – but most of us would not, including every non-Jewish Calvinist who has ever lived!), but on the right of God’s promise. Just as God promised Abraham that Sarah would have a son, God promised that Abraham’s descendants would number more than the stars of heaven regardless of the line of descent through which the agent of that promise (God Himself Incarnate) explicitly came, which is why God could promise to protect Ishmael and could promise to bless Esau.
God chooses Jacob instead of Esau so that God’s purposes might stand, not because of works (God’s choice preceded the evil deeds of both brothers) but because of Him Who calls. However, St. Paul goes out of his way to indicate the end result of Esau being hated: “it was said to her (Rebekah/Rebecca, mother of both twins), ‘The older will serve the younger’”. This fits entirely with Jacob’s own prophecy that Esau shall still be blessed in Jacob (which Esau, rightly furious at Jacob’s satanic trickery, wrongly rejected out of a lack of faith in God, selfishly holding a murderous grudge over loss of his birthright–until later when he makes peace with Jacob!) Paul also thereby ties a meaning of ultimate reconciliation to his citation of the coming destruction of the land of Edom via Malachi 1:2f. As the land of Edom will eventually be healed and even be a highway for the righteous to pass through on the way to Jerusalem; and as Esau eventually reconciled with Jacob; so Esau’s descendents shall eventually reconcile with Jacob’s descendents, and be blessed thanks to the blessing of Jacob (specifically that Jacob not Esau should be the line of descent to the Messiah), thanks to God.
The verses cited by Paul are not about contrasting Moses to Pharaoh, but about promising that God will raise up even Pharaoh to be a witness to the nations despite Pharaoh’s own willful obstinacy (which he persisted in, between times when God was hardening his heart); and about God emphasizing His mercy and compassion in His self-existent revelation (to which His promise not to let the guilty go free is subordinate).
It was because of that verse about Pharaoh, that rabbis subsequently couldn’t believe he had actually been killed off permanently while fording the Reed Sea, and so suggested various theories about God raising him from the dead afterward to serve as His evangelist. One such theory was that he was raised on the Sinai side of the Sea, humbly followed Israel up the eastern side of the Jordan in anonymity, became disgusted with their infidelity so continued north, where by God’s gracious calling and power he eventually became king of Ninevah — thus explaining why the king of that city was so quickly willing to lead them to repentance at the ridiculously minimal and hostile preaching of Jonah! The moral of that version of the story being this, that salvation is not up to the man who wills (Pharaoh the rebel pagan leader) nor the man who runs (Jonah the rebel Jewish prophet and evangelist!) but God Who has mercy.
Whether Paul had that particular rabbinic theory in mind I can’t prove, but the context indicates he wasn’t trotting out Pharaoh as an example of someone being hopelessly punished, although certainly as someone chosen to be a vessel for pouring out wrath.
“Vessels of X” in scripture are demonstrably intended to pour out X upon something or someone. In that context, some people are made to pour out wrath and others are made to pour out mercy. The most relevant example being the bowls brimming with and pouring out God’s {thumos} (though not the same term here) in Rev 15-16.
Paul as Saul was certainly among those who had been made to pour out wrath, once upon a time. Moreover, Paul certainly includes himself as a former child of wrath (same term as in Rom 9) by nature, in Eph 2:3. Considering the extremity of his description of such children (into hyperbole?), I do not see any feasible way these cannot be the same class as the vessels of wrath in Rom 9.
The two classes of vessel are consequently not watertight (so to speak); God saves people from one class into the other class, and makes use of both in His purposes.
Otherwise Paul would not have been able to use the term {makrothumia} explicitly about them at 9:22, which everywhere else in scripture when referring to God indisputably indicates God’s intention to save the objects of His “longsuffering”. To deny that it means God intends for the vessels of wrath to be saved, at the very least undercuts any assurance of God’s {makrothumia} in regard to ourselves, if indeed we think God has any for us at all.
Which certainly doesn’t mean that the two classes are impermeable; much the opposite! 2 Cor 6 could not possibly therefore be saying talking about people in the dark whom God refuses to save from their sins. On the contrary, one of the scripture references used by St. Paul here is the promise of God in Hosea that once rebel Israel stops rebelling God will dwell among them and they will be people of God again.
(An extended argument could also be made that the beginning of 2 Cor 6 testifies not only to all things being gathered finally under Christ in loyalty, and even in referential context to post-mortem salvation, but even also as a warning against non-universalism! For sake of relative brevity though I’ll skip over that.)
Hardly a position exclusive to Calvinism; even universalists can agree with that. (Some of us even warn non-universalists about preaching less than the full gospel of salvation. 
) Paul himself once worse than proclaimed a different gospel, so in any case he cannot be talking about an invincibly impermeable group who has no hope in God of salvation.
Galatians 4:1-7, not incidentally, is where Paul talks explicitly about adoption NOT being adoption of those who aren’t already children, but adoption of those who are naturally children. On the contrary, he denounces those who shut out others even so the others may seek the ones who shut them out! v.17 When we mature we are son-placed by the authority of the father into our inheritance; until we mature we remain slaves, though still children of the father.
Declared (Matt 7:22-23) exactly once (in this phraseology) by Jesus to people who thought they had every reason to believe they were among His elect (prophecying, casting out demons, performing many miracles in His name, thus empowered by Him to do so, and who even know to give Him the double “Lord Lord” “ADNY YHWH” reserved for God Most High); so not exactly the best verse for someone who thinks they are elect to quote as evidence of an invincibly hopeless non-elect!
Fortunately, Christ can also say something even stronger to someone with even stronger credentials than that, whom even Calvinists agree Christ intends to save from his sins: “You get behind Me, Satan!”
Considering that Paul explicitly classifies himself and his Christian Ephesian congregation in the same verses as having once been among those sons of disobedience and children of wrath, this is certainly not evidence for a totally separate class of hopelessly non-elected people. On the contrary, their salvation from being sons of disobedience is part of what Paul is talking about when he says they are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus!
This couldn’t mean that pagans are classed among the non-elect, since if that was true God would not even try to save any pagans from their sins! In context it’s a comparison of personal expectations about what comes after death: pagans themselves don’t hope for anything better and so grieve, but Christians at least have hope for themselves and so shouldn’t grieve, since (among other things) that’s a bad witness to the pagans!
Moreover, Calvinists and Arminians grieve over lost ones who have died, having no hope for them, so if the context is going to be ignored this ought to be testimony in favor of Christian universalism and a warning that hopelessness for those who died pagan is itself pagan!
But they had been (1:9), even though they no longer are. Again, not an impermeable separation of groups.
1 Thess 5:3 also happens to be one of those places where Paul uses the term “whole-ruination” (1 Cor 5:5 being the other) in an explicitly hopeful way for those being wholly ruined in the day of the Lord to come. Which along with some referential contexts weighs heavily against Paul meaning that same term to be hopeless punishment at 2 Thess 1:6-10.
Even Christian universalists can agree with that; and Arminians would agree with Calvs that the punishment and destruction is hopeless. It does not involve a specially distinct group of persons whom God never intends to save from their sins.
In fact hard Arminians would point to 2:20 as evidence that even people who have escaped such defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, can again be entangled and overcome, their latter state being worse than their first!–for it would have been better for them not o have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, turned away from the holy commandment given to them.
(Universalists meanwhile might go on to recall that Christ denounced people as sinning against the Holy Spirit in opposing as not of God His salvation of those whose latter state is worse than their first–same phraseology in Greek. So that category is also not impervious to being saved by Christ, and we tread hard on the worst of all sins in claiming otherwise.)
I recall some of all of 1 John 2 saying that if anyone sins, Jesus Christ the Advocate is not only the propitiation for our sins, but also for the sins of the whole world. Definitely no impermeable division there. (On the contrary, “The one who says he is in the light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now”!)
Moreover, 1 John 3:8, “The one who practices sin is of the devil, for the devil sins from the beginning. The Son of God appeared [or manifested] for this purposes, that He may destroy the works of the devil.” By context the work of the devil is the practicing of sin. (e.g. “The children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.” v.10.) We all however were children of the devil in that sense, and in some sense we thus remain until we become perfectly righteous as God is righteous–nothing less than that! (“Little children, let no one deceive you: the one who practices righteousness is righteous just as He [God] is righteous!” v.7) If sin is not eventually completely destroyed, so that no one is doing unrighteousness anymore, then a chief purpose of God in the Incarnation and Passion has been finally and ultimately frustrated, whether by God’s own decree or (worse??) by Satan or other created sinners doing works of unrighteousness stronger than God’s salvation!
This must involve either annihilation of sinners without repentance, or universal salvation of sinners from sin. But to destroy the works of even the devil himself is not necessarily to destroy the person of even the devil himself, or else we all would be annihilated instead of saved from our sins. The question either remains open or, by this testimony, at least slightly in favor of final salvation (not annihilation) of sinners.
Pretty much none of Jude talks about a separate class of persons whom God never intended to save from sin. On the contrary, Christians are exhorted (v.22-23) to have mercy on some who are doubting, save others, and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh. Some of those on whom we are to pour mercy (being vessels of mercy!) were indeed marked out by God for condemnation long beforehand (i.e. written about, prophesied that they would come), but we’re still supposed to have an attitude of mercy toward them. Whereas we shouldn’t have an attitude of mercy toward the Calvinistic non-elect. If we don’t have an attitude of mercy toward someone, though, we’re vessels of destruction.
(Also, Jude is talking about an imprisonment which the prophet Isaiah says will end in the release of those being so punished, Isaiah 24:21-22 and its contexts, especially in regard to how St. Paul directly refers to the contexts of those verses in 1 Cor 15: the point in question being what it means for the rebel angels and kings of the earth who are gathered into the dungeon and confined in prison to be “visited” after many days.)
People can be added back into the Book of Life (Malachi 3:16), as well as blotted out (Rev 3:5), so the categories are again not impermeable. (This is aside from the question of whether being refined night and day into the eons of the eons is a hopeless punishment.)
Moreove, Malachi’s prophecy was about the forthcoming punishment of God (in the day of the Lord to come) being very and repeatedly emphasized as intended for hopeful refining. So in effect, the intended result of the day of judgment will be to add names back to the book, just as God added in the names of penitent rebels in Malachi’s own day. Malachi testifies that it can be done; and, in effect, that it will be done.
Considering that Christ exhorted sinners earlier in RevJohn to conquer and come out of their sins, this is once again not a statement of an impermeably hopeless group.
Moreover, in a flashforward revelation at RevJohn 15, John sees those who have overcome their sins coming out from the glassy sea of fire and out from the beast and out from the mark and the number of the name of the beast. This among other things indicates that those who go into the lake of fire for having the mark of the beast, aren’t permanently stuck there, but can repent and leave behind their sins and idolatries.
Note to myself: I have a misprint in the second post of my reply – there is no Galatians 21! I’ll have to double-check my notes tomorrow to be sure of the fix, but I probably meant Gal 4 (although I’ll try to figure out why I typed 21, as it may indicate I had something else on my mind…)
Speaking of the same entry, I should probably spell out the connections in that large block of Isaiah to Israel as a rebel wife divorced for slaying her husband (paralleled thus with Babylon a couple chapters earlier, who makes Satanic-level claims and refuses to regard herself as a widow).
Jason went to town and nearly wrote a book 
That’s brilliant Jason
I dunno, a typically rushed and slipshod piece of work from Jason .
Seriously Mr Pratt, you are a scholar and a gentleman. I take my hat off to you.
J
Having gotten to the office this morning, I’ve now fixed the relevant paragraph from the 2nd post: the NASB (which was one of my reference tools) marks the start of a new paragraph at verse 21 by bolding the number, and that’s surely where a neuron in my brain misfired, picking up that number as the “chapter” citation. (This transcription phenomenon happens often enough even with professional scribes that textual critics have an obscure Greek name for it! …which… um… I’ve forgotten. )
Also, I cannot reconstruct how it happened, but I wrongly called Paul’s citation Isaiah 51, when I meant 54. So that’s fixed.
It would take a long time to go into detail about how the thematic and narrative threads add up (insofar as there’s a narrative, since Isaiah keeps shifting back and forth in reporting his visions, or God keeps shifting his visions back and forth), but I’ve added a few brief clarifying details to the paragraph. The gist is that Israel is represented as (among other things) a faithless wife divorced by God (maybe even to be mystically paralleled with Babylon in Isaiah 47, a Satanic level sinner who claims ontological self-sufficiency due only to God, and who refuses to acknowledge that she is a widow), who slew the Suffering Servant (to be identified one way or another with her husband), and who after being punished and rejected by God for a moment shall be saved everlastingly by Him.