account of their inexcusable opposition to the new institution of salvation; they have through their own guilt fallen under the curse of hardening, and this, according to God's plan, must have the effect of turning the salvation withdrawn from them to the Gentiles (c). Nevertheless, there yet remains a remnant that has attained salvation; and even the temporary preference of the Gentiles has this object as its end, to stir up the Jews to jealousy, and so by God's mercy to lead the whole nation to salvation (d).

(a) What may have appeared the most startling fact in connection with the calling of the Gentiles, was that the casting away of Israel, at least of the greater portion of Israel, went hand in hand with it. The engrafting of the wild branches implied the breaking away of the natural branches (Rom. xi. 19). If Christian missions in the person of their most successful worker turned to the Gentiles, then the blessing of such missions would be withdrawn from the people of Israel: Paul expressly announces it as a judgment to the Jews, that the preaching of the gospel, by which the calling is realized, has been turned away from the Jews to the Gentiles (Acts xiii. 46, xxviii. 28); and the Acts of the Apostles shows on purpose how this came to pass through his missionary activity. By the withdrawal of the preaching of the gospel, however, the way to salvation was shut to them, although xarà púσi kλádoi (Rom. xi. 24). They were yet shut out from the root and fatness of the olive tree (ver. 17), i.e. from the salvation promised to the fathers, in which the Gentiles had obtained a share by their being grafted in (§ 90, c). And yet the promise transmitted from the fathers was the inalienable possession of Israel, and they still continued to be a people beloved of God for the fathers' sake (xi. 28). God could not possibly cast away His people just because they did not behave as they ought to have done, as He had foreknown them before He chose them to be His people (ver. 2). If they were therefore unfit to receive salvation, yet God with such foreknowledge of their unfitness had chosen them to be His people; but if He had once chosen them, their unfaithfulness could not remove God's faithfulness towards His own promise (iii. 3; comp. § 72, d, footnote 6). God could not withdraw gifts of grace given.

them, and His calling in particular (xi. 29).1 The question of which Paul (Rom. ix.-xi.) so fully treats was from his premises a problem not easy to solve; one which much occupied his heart, moved as he was by patriotic sorrow for his fellow-countrymen (ix. 1-3, x. 1).

(b) That many who were descended from Abraham, and seemed on that account to have a claim on the salvation promised to the seed of Abraham, did not yet attain to that salvation, was therefore an undoubted fact. But Paul asserts, that not all those who were naturally descended from the ancestor of the nation (πάντες οἱ ἐκ Ισραήλ) formed the Israel to whom the promise was given (Rom. ix. 6); not all those who are the seed of Abraham according to the flesh have the right of children, which secures them a share in the promise given to Abraham (ver. 7). And so it is by no means to be said that the seed of Abraham, to whom the promise was given, is not to be taken in a special sense, but only that the promise given to the nation as such does not apply without more ado to each single individual who, in virtue of actual descent from the patriarchs, belongs to it, that individuals may even be left empty, if only the nation as such receives the promise.2 Paul

'Beyschlag has evidently overlooked this when he says, p. 42, that it lies in the very idea of free mercy, that there is nothing it gives less ground for than a claim of right for all time coming, that it can be withdrawn again from those who have once received it. But the divine mercy is no doubt free in the selection of its objects (Rom. ix. 15); but to whomsoever God has once bound Himself by a promise, to him He must ever keep it. Paul traces back the mission of Christ to Israel to God's faithfulness, according to which He was bound to keep His promise given to the fathers (xv. 8; comp. Pfleiderer, 314 f. [E. T. ii. 41]). If in the election of the individual no such irrevocableness exists (§ 88, d), that is accounted for in this way, that the free conduct of the individual is simply incalculable, and is not conditioned for all time coming by what is historically known of its quality. Even on this account we will see how even the election of Israel gives no security to the individual members of the nation that they will attain the end of that election.

2 That this is thought quite in the tenor of the Old Testament promise, is clear from this, that the prophets ever keep firm hold of the realization of the promise to the nation, just as they threaten many individuals with destruction in the divine judgments which precede pre-Messianic times (comp. § 42, c ; 44, c). When Beyschlag, p. 29, and Schenkel, p. 273, on the other hand, assert that, according to Paul, the promise is fulfilled to the spiritual Israel (of Jews and Gentiles mingled), that is again only that quid pro quo which would have spared the apostle and us all those reasonings brought forward (§ 90, c, d), had it occurred to him. If Paul says (Rom. ii. 25) the circumcision which does not

proves this by two examples drawn from the early history of the nation. Abraham had two sons of his own body, and yet he only who was born according to the promise was counted as σTéρμa, and received the rights of a child of God (ix. 7–9). And if one were here to say that Isaac is the son of the lawful wife, but Ishmael is not of equal birth, and is thus from his conduct cut off from the inheritance, then Esau and Jacob were heirs of one father and of one mother, and yet God determined even before their birth, before, therefore, they had done anything, that the elder should serve the younger, and the latter alone thus should receive the full rights of a child (vv. 10-12). If even now, therefore, not all who are descended from Abraham obtain the salvation, if God even now reserves to Himself to determine which of the descendants of the patriarch are to receive the rights of children, and if in this determination He does not in the least ask for their good works, but only works faith in individuals from among Israel, and this leads these to obtain salvation, He thus acts only as He acted in the early history of the people, when before the birth of the children, and without reference to their conduct (ver. 11), He determined their fate. Thus far now the early dealings of God is the best interpreter of the sense in which He has given the promise to the seed of Abraham, and thus Paul can rightfully assert that this promise has not come to be without effect (ver. 6), even though many single individuals are excluded from salvation.

(c) It might seem unrighteous if God, without any regard to the unquestionable striving after righteousness (Rom. ix. 31, x. 2) on the part of Abraham's natural posterity, a striving which distinguished them from the Gentiles, yet denied to them the grace effectual to lead to salvation, and called the

keep the law becomes uncircumcision, that does not mean that "the godless Jew is even on that account denationalized;" for then, since all the Jews had not kept the law, the question he had discussed (Rom. ix.-xi.) had lost its importance, as there was no Jew not denationalized, therefore no longer Jews in contradistinction to the Gentiles. Rather the context makes it evident that the question discussed is, whether the circumcised as such had any advantage above the Gentiles in reference to justification before God. And (Rom. xi. 17) it is the ideal theocracy that is thought of, into which the Gentiles are received, but which ever grows from the root o the patriarchs, which is therefore looked at with evident reference to the nationa basis.

Gentiles in their stead, though they were not striving in the least after righteousness (ix. 30). But their guilt consisted in this simply, that they sought after righteousness by works (vv. 31, 32), and so wished to set up their own righteousness, instead of submitting themselves to the new rule of righteousness (x. 3), after that the end of the law had come with Christ (ver. 4), and the righteousness of faith had come in the place of a righteousness by works (vv. 5-13). They could not excuse themselves by saying that they had not heard the message (of this new righteousness), for it had gone into all the world (ver. 18); nor by saying that they had not understood it, for even the unintelligent Gentiles had quite well understood it (vv. 19, 20). Rather they had been disobedient to the gospel, which required their acceptance and faith on the salvation presented thereby (ver. 16), because, as the prophet had already described them (Isa. lxv. 2), they are a disobedient and stubborn people (ver. 21; comp. xv. 31: oi ȧπεLOоûvтES). But the deeper cause of this disobedience was, that they stumbled at the Messiah announced in the gospel (ix. 32), because the crucified One was no Messiah in their view (1 Cor. i. 23). They had not therefore wished to seek salvation by faith on Him (Rom. ix. 32), but had stumbled on the stone of offence (xi. 11), and now hardening had come upon them as a judgment, as the prophets had already described (xi. 7-10), and as Paul sees it foreshadowed in the

* Paul no doubt in the first place, according to § 88, b, simply puts down this thought by saying that it infringes upon the absolute right the Creator has over His creature (ix. 20, 21); but even there he points out that the Jews at least have no occasion to quarrel thus with God, inasmuch as He had by no means availed Himself of that absolute right towards them, but, notwithstanding that they were as vessels of wrath ripe for destruction, had yet with much longsuffering borne with them (ver. 22), in order to lead them to repentance (ii. 4). It was thus there pointed out that the Jews had contracted a heavy load of guilt, by which they were exposed to God's wrath and destruction. The passible interpretation, that Paul (ix. 30 ff.) puts himself suddenly on an entirely different standpoint, and that thus with him "an objective theological and a subjective anthropological mode of viewing the matter proceed irreconcilably side by side" (comp. however, Pfleiderer, p. 248 [E. T. i. 250]), is not therefore confirmed. He rather now proceeds to show what then is the guilt on account of which God has shut out the greater number of the descendants of Abraham from salvation, and then it is proved afresh that this does not in any way lie in a lack of a service of works, as the Gentiles had not confessedly even once tried to win any such.

veil with which Moses hid from the people the fading of the glory on his countenance, i.e. here the transitoriness of the glory of the covenant of the law (2 Cor. iii. 13-15; comp. § 73, d). And now Israel, bound in legal obedience and persecuting Christianity, is shut out from fellowship in the salvation (Gal. iv. 25-31; comp. § 90, d, footnote 2). But this hardening, and the exclusion from salvation connected with it, has come to them through their own guilt; T ȧπioтía éžeкλáo @noav (Rom. xi. 20). The ultimate intention of God, according to note a, in this judgment of hardening cannot possibly be the fall, i.e. the ruin of the nation; rather God has made use of human sin in order to carry out His saving purposes towards the Gentiles: the gospel rejected by the Jews has been brought to the Gentiles, and their deliverance thereby rendered possible (ver. 11: To avтŵν паρаπτώματι ἡ σωτηρία τοῖς ἔθνεσιν). In order to make room for the engrafting of the branches of the wild olive tree, the natural branches were broken off (ver. 19); for the sake of the Gentiles, those who are the beloved of God have come to be the enemies of God (ver. 28; comp. § 80, d, footnote 13); through their disobedience it has come to pass that God's mercy has been turned to the Gentiles (ver. 30). And thus the transgressions of Israel, or rather the divine judgment which is accomplished on Israel by their transgressions, has become the riches of the Gentiles; the loss suffered by the former by their exclusion from salvation has become riches for the Gentiles (ver. 12); the casting away of the one has been the reconciling of the other (ver. 15).

(d) The hardening of Israel which has presently come

"Quite thus does Peter teach that the Israelites, continuing in unbelief, are rooted out from among the elect people, since Messiah has become to them a stone of offence and stumbling (§ 44, c). To be sure, God Himself works faith in those who are coming to believe, but yet only in so far as He foreknew in them the condition suitable for such working of faith, according to § 88, d, and they were elected on the ground of this. And so unbelief remains, even when it is evoked by hardening by way of judgment; yet self-condemned, so far as this happens to the perversity of the present Jewish mode of thinking, because it makes the nation unreceptive of the work of divine grace. God even punishes sin by sin (comp. § 70, d), while in the people, who, according to their whole present nature do not wish, yield to the will of God, the offer of the gospel does not only not work a willingness to believe, it even works opposition, so that finally they cannot believe.