When Paul writes about God choosing people, many Christians assume he is explaining how one person comes to be saved. Dr. Chad Thornhill, Chair of Theological Studies for the Liberty University School of Divinity, argues that Paul’s main election passages answer a different question: who belongs to God’s people, now that Gentiles are coming in through Jesus the Messiah. This study does not ask you to accept that reading. It asks you to test it against the passages themselves.
You can work through it alone over a week or with a group across one or two meetings. You will need a KJV Bible, a pen, and the patience to read whole chapters rather than single verses. Each section puts a passage in front of you and asks what question it seems to be answering. Then it brings in Thornhill’s argument where his reading helps or where it strains. Faithful Christians read these chapters differently, and Jude 3 Project does not take a house position on election and free will. The goal is to read carefully enough to know what each text can and cannot carry.
Two questions that sound alike
Write these two questions at the top of a page: How does an individual come to belong to God? and Who are the people who belong to God? They overlap, but they are not the same question. The first is about a process in one person’s life. The second is about the identity of a community.
Most of the long argument over predestination works on the first question. The Reformed reading holds that God chose particular persons by his own free decision. Many non-Reformed readers hold that God chose those he foreknew would believe. Thornhill describes his own earlier view as belonging to that second camp: election based on foreknowledge. What changed, he says, came from reading the Jewish literature of Paul’s era and then rereading Paul. He now argues for “a corporate understanding or a collective understanding of election.” He notes that the view is more often held by Wesleyans and Arminians, though he does not call himself an Arminian in the classical sense.
His key claim is about the setting of Paul’s arguments. In the dense election passages, Thornhill sees Paul handling tension between Jewish and Gentile believers, so that election “really becomes a theological question that arises out of ethnic differences.” That is a testable claim. If it is right, the passages should show that tension on their surface. If it is wrong, the ethnic material should look incidental, and the texts should keep returning to the inner sequence of one person’s salvation.
One habit before you begin
Thornhill presses a point about how the first readers met these letters. Most churches did not own personal copies. A letter was read aloud to the gathered church, probably in one sitting or in large sections. In his words, “they’re hearing it in light of what comes before and what comes after they’re hearing the flow of thought.” He applies this directly to Romans: “Paul’s not writing to the Romans to get them saved. They’re already saved.”
That second line matters for this study. If Romans was written to believers, then its chapters on election are not first of all instructions for converting someone. That does not settle what they mean. It does tell you to ask what problem the church in Rome was facing. Keep that habit for every passage below: read the surrounding chapter, notice who is being addressed, and name the problem before naming the doctrine.
Test one: the people Paul inherited
Paul did not invent the language of chosenness. Read Deuteronomy 7:1-11. Moses tells Israel that “the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself” (Deuteronomy 7:6). The next verses say God did not choose them for their size. They were the fewest of all people, and the choice rested on his love and his oath to their fathers (Deuteronomy 7:7-8).
- Is the word “thee” here addressed to one person or to a nation?
- What does the chapter ask of the chosen people in response?
- Does anything in the passage explain how one Israelite came to be counted among the chosen, or is that simply assumed by birth into the people?
Thornhill’s argument depends on this kind of background, along with the Jewish writings of Paul’s own period that he studied. In this conversation he reports where that reading led him rather than walking through those texts. So treat Deuteronomy as a starting point you can check yourself, not as proof of his whole case.
Test two: Romans 9-11 as one argument
Read Romans 9:1-5 first. Paul begins with grief over his own kinsmen, Israel. The problem he raises is whether God’s word to Israel has failed. His answer opens with “For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel” (Romans 9:6). Two chapters later he is still on the same subject: “I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid” (Romans 11:1). In Romans 11:17-24 he pictures Gentiles as branches grafted into an olive tree, and he warns them not to boast against the natural branches.
Now read the hardest section of Romans 9, about Jacob and Esau. Paul notes that the choice was announced before the twins were born or had done good or evil (Romans 9:11). It was said to Rebekah, “The elder shall serve the younger” (Romans 9:12), and Paul adds, “As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” (Romans 9:13).
Here the two readings meet head on, and each deserves a fair hearing. A Reformed reader sees God choosing between two individuals before birth, apart from anything they did, and reads that as a point about the ground of salvation. A corporate reader looks at Paul’s sources. The first line comes from Genesis 25, where the Lord tells Rebekah, “Two nations are in thy womb” (Genesis 25:23). The second comes from Malachi 1:2-3, where Jacob and Esau stand for Israel and Edom. On that reading, the twins are heads of peoples, and Paul is defending God’s freedom to define his people.
- Trace the word “Israel” through Romans 9-11. How many different groups does it seem to name?
- Does the question raised in 9:6 still drive the argument in chapter 11?
- Write one sentence stating the Reformed reading of 9:11-13 so that a Reformed Christian would accept your wording. Then do the same for the corporate reading.
Test three: the text that pushes back
An honest test includes the passage that looks least friendly to the corporate reading. Read Romans 8:28-30. Paul writes, “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29). The next verse continues the chain through called, justified and glorified.
This looks very much like the order of salvation that Thornhill says Paul is not mainly describing. Thornhill does not address this passage in this conversation, so do not assume an answer for him. Work with the text.
- The chain is plural: “whom” and “them.” Can it describe a people as a whole, or does each link seem to happen to individuals?
- The verse ends with a family: the Son as firstborn among many brethren. Does that ending change how you hear the chain?
- How would an individual reading and a corporate reading each explain this verse? Which explains more of Romans 8:28-39?
You may conclude that this passage supports the individual reading better. That is a legitimate result. A test that cannot fail is not a test.
Test four: Ephesians 1 into Ephesians 2
Read Ephesians 1:3-14 and then 2:11-22 in one sitting. Paul praises God, who “hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love” (Ephesians 1:4). The pronoun “us” by itself settles nothing. It can name a body, or many individuals added together.
Watch the pronouns move. In 1:12-13 Paul shifts from “we” who first trusted in Christ to “ye” who also trusted. Some interpreters hear Jewish believers and then Gentile readers. Others hear the apostle and his audience. Then chapter 2 turns to Gentiles who had been strangers to Israel’s covenants, and Paul says of Christ, “For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us” (Ephesians 2:14).
- Who are the “both” in 2:14?
- Does chapter 2 read like a new topic, or like the payoff of chapter 1?
- If Ephesians 1 were mainly about the order of one person’s salvation, what would you expect chapter 2 to discuss?
Test five: where election meets the table
Thornhill says one problem Paul confronts, especially in Galatians, is “Jews that are expecting Gentiles to do the things that Jews do.” Read Galatians 2:11-16. Paul rebukes Peter for withdrawing from table fellowship with Gentile believers and asks him, “why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?” (Galatians 2:14).
Then read 1 Peter 2:9-10: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light” (1 Peter 2:9). In the KJV, the word peculiar does not mean odd. It means belonging to God as his own possession.
Thornhill draws an application from this pattern. The unity Paul calls for, he says, “doesn’t erase ethnic distinctions, but it also expects us, I think, to have a other focused posture.” Notice that this is an application built on his reading. It is worth weighing, but it depends on the interpretation being right.
The practice: read for the question
Set aside about an hour for this, alone or in pairs.
- Read Romans 9-11 aloud, start to finish, without stopping to study. If you are in a group, let one person read while the others listen without Bibles open, the way the first hearers would have.
- Afterward, write down in one sentence the problem these chapters are trying to solve. Do not consult notes or commentaries yet.
- Draw a line down the middle of a page. On the left, list every verse that seems to answer the question about how a person comes to belong. On the right, list every verse that seems to answer the question about who God’s people are. Some verses may belong on both sides. Mark those.
- Count without spinning. Which column is longer? Which verses are the hardest to place?
- Finish by writing a fair two-sentence summary of the individual reading and of the corporate reading. Each summary should be one its holders would sign.
This exercise will not settle the debate. It will show you which question you have been bringing to these chapters, and whether the chapters answer it.
Questions for discussion
- Before this study, which of the two questions did you assume Paul was answering? Where did that assumption come from?
- In the practice, which column was longer for you? Did any verse surprise you by where it landed?
- How does the Jacob and Esau passage read differently once you know its sources in Genesis and Malachi? What does the individual reading still have going for it?
- Which passage in this study gave Thornhill’s reading the most trouble? How would you answer it if you held his view?
- Lisa Fields described learning, in seminary, that “you don’t have to make everything fit” when reading a passage. Thornhill replied that interpretation should precede systematic theology. How would that order change the way you handle Romans 8 and Romans 9 side by side?
- If Paul’s election passages are about who belongs to God’s people, what would it mean for a church to get the doctrine right in practice and not only on paper?
If you are leading a group
Expect people to arrive with settled views on predestination, sometimes strongly held. Name early that this is a question on which faithful Christians differ, and that no one is being asked to switch sides. Your job is to keep the group on the text. When someone offers a conclusion, ask which verse produced it. When two people disagree, have each restate the other’s reading before answering it.
The fifth test can turn personal quickly, because it touches race and belonging in actual churches. Let people speak from their own experience if they choose, but do not require it. Keep the discussion tied to Galatians 2 rather than to any political argument.
A question to keep
Thornhill’s firmest claim concerns method more than conclusion: “we can’t assume that Paul’s concerns are what Luther’s concerns were.” He adds that this is not a claim that Luther got everything wrong. The same caution applies to every reader and every tradition, including the corporate reading itself.
So the question to carry out of this study is not which side won. It is this: the next time you open Romans 9 or Ephesians 1, what question will you bring to it, and how will you know whether the passage was asking it too?