2. For, among other things, the true meaning { 8} of 'election' in these chapters would then have been apparent. St. Paul has been popularly misunderstood to be referring to God's 'election' of some individual men to salvation in heaven, and His abandonment of the rest to hell. Whereas the argument as a whole and its conclusion make it quite certain that what he is speaking of is the election of men in nations or churches (only subordinately of individuals)[4] to a position of special spiritual privilege and responsibility in this world, such as the Jews had formerly occupied, and the Christians were occupying now--an election to be the people of God, and bear His name in the face of the world--the sort of election which carries with it a great joy and a special opportunity, but not by any means a certainty of final personal acceptableness to { 9} God, apart from moral faithfulness. Apart from such faithfulness the 'children of the kingdom shall be cast into the outer darkness,' and the highest shall be put lowest, while the lowest are raised highest.
3. Another cause of misunderstanding has been forgetfulness of the point of view of the opponent with whom St. Paul is arguing. In modern times assertions of divine absoluteness, like St. Paul's, have been made by teachers who were refusing to recognize any such freedom of the will in the individual human being--any such power to control his own personal destiny--as seems to our common sense to be involved in moral responsibility in any real sense. St. Paul has therefore been supposed, like these more recent teachers, to be asserting divine absoluteness, or the unrestricted freedom of divine choice, as against human freedom, or in such a way as to destroy the idea of moral responsibility. But in fact St. Paul is vindicating moral responsibility. His opponent is the Jew, who holds that God had so tied His hands and lost His liberty in choosing Israel once for all for His elect people, that every child of Abraham can at all times claim the privileges of his election for no other reason than because of his { 10} genealogy. Such a doctrine of election does indeed destroy all real moral responsibility in the subject of it, and all freedom of moral choice in God. St. Paul, on the other hand, asserts that God remains free and absolute to elect and to reject, irrespective of all questions of race, where He will and as He will. The absolute reason of God's selections, the reason why certain races and individuals are chosen for special privileges and as special instruments of the divine purpose, lies in a region into which we cannot penetrate. But because God has shown us His moral character and requirement, we can know how, and how only, we may hope to retain any position which God has given us; it is by exhibiting moral correspondence with His purpose--that is faith--or malleability under His hand.