Nobody likes to lose an election, to be “not chosen.” It’s one thing when that has to do with temporal politics; it’s another when it has to do with eternal sorting.
Let’s call this a category mistake. When the church speaks of election, it should refer to mission, not salvation—to the choosing of unlikely people to bear witness to God’s name in the world, not how some are in and others out due to no virtue or vice of their own.
Unfortunately, St. Augustine read St. Paul’s words about God’s foreknowledge and predestination as a choice God made from before the foundation of the world to elect some unworthy sinners to be saved from the rest of the damned masses. John Calvin extended the logic of that divine decision to its shadow side: if God elected some be saved, God also elected some to be damned. Damn free will; only those who were elected for salvation were free to agree with God’s grace.
Theologians too often lose the plot of redemption by reading their own interests into the story. Separating saints and sinners in this life and the next is a favorite theme. But separation is precisely the problem of sin, not its salvation. The redemption of all things is God’s majestic work, and it is this good news that constitutes the mission of the people of God.
~ George A. Mason
4 November 2024
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