Corporate Election

I have long contended that if you want to properly and wholly understand a perspective, you must also properly understand its alternative perspective. If you want to argue for believer's baptism and against infant baptism, for instance, you must have a good understanding of the perspective of infant baptism. (I chose that example because I researched infant baptism so thoroughly that I managed to defend the view against the believer's baptism folks well enough to confuse an infant baptism proponent into thinking I was one, too. I had to explain that I was just explaining, not agreeing.) What most people do, however, is gather a peripheral understanding, just enough to use as ammunition, and then use that ammunition to shoot it down. I've seen it happen so often. Atheists use arguments against theists that demonstrate how badly they have misunderstood theism. Arminians use arguments against Calvinists that only show that they never really understood the view they oppose. Or, to put it succinctly, people routinely oppose views they don't know and consider that sound opposition.

The doctrine of Corporate Election versus Individual Election is one of these. The difficulty with these things, though, is that it's hard to actually find someone to dialog with. I'd like to find someone with an opposing view and sit down and hash out the opposing view. "When you say ____, do you mean ____?" That kind of thing. But this almost inevitably leads to emotional conflict rather than simple dialog. So I'm looking here at the opposing view to mine from as many sources as I can find to see if I understand. The text in question here is Romans 9.

Romans 9 has two basic perspectives available. One is that it is talking about Individual Election. Paul is explaining clearly in this text that God says "'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.' So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy" (Rom 9:15-16). What more do we need? Of course, the other very common perspective on this passage is that it is about Corporate Election. God chose Israel ("Jacob") as a nation, and God has chosen the Church as a group, but who populates these groups is not part of God's election. He simply ordained that these would be and not who would be in them. Well, I suppose there is a very common third perspective as well: "I don't know, but since there's a disagreement I'm not going to bother." Anyone who is under the conviction of God to "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth" (2 Tim 2:15) should not be in that category.

The Corporate Election perspective for Romans 9 is the classic Arminian view. Here is the basic approach to election in general. God's choice of certain individuals for salvation before the foundation of the world was based upon His foreseeing that they would respond to His call. Election was conditioned upon what man would do. The faith was not given the sinner by God but resulted from the man's will. Thus, the sinner's choice of Christ, not God's choice of the sinner is the ultimate cause of salvation. Corporate Election, then, would hold that God ordained there would be a body -- call it "the Church", "the Body of Christ", "the Bride", etc. To be part of that Body, that Elect, you need to be "in Christ". (Now, there are two views on that within that perspective. One claims that you need to be "in Christ" in order to be among the Elect and the other allows that you can be among the Elect because God knows what your choice will be. But both affirm that God's initial Election is group, not individual.)

So, holding to this Corporate Election view of Romans 9, you would need to read all references to people as groups, not people. Now, that's not as crazy as it might sound. I mean, the name of God's chosen people, "Israel", is the name of an individual. Referencing "Jacob" and "Esau" in Rom 9:13 should not, then, be viewed as references to individuals. It comes from Malachi 1 where God is indeed referencing Jacob as the people of Israel and Esau as the people of Edom. And isn't the chapter context talking about what happens to Israel? So clearly this is about the people group of Israel and, by extension, those who are grafted into Israel (Rom 11).

Now, I have all sorts of problems with this view. I can't fit it into the text or the context. I can't make it fit the objections (Rom 9:14, 19) Paul raises. I can't make it fit the fact that every reference is to individuals. Nor can I make it fit into a vision of a Sovereign, Omnipotent, Omniscient God who apparently simply built a Church and then waited for it to be peopled ... by "whosoever will". But all of these would be questions, you see. These would be the kinds of things I'd ask a proponent of the Corporate Election view to explain. Why are there so many references to individuals in the chapter if the view is corporate? How do the objections Paul raises (and answers) to his own arguments make any sense if he is simply speaking of groups, not individuals? How does Romans 9:16 make any sense in a corporate view rather than an individual view? An individual view of the text would include a corporate outcome, but a corporate view excludes the individual -- not the point. So what is the point? That is, "Paul, you're telling us that God has elected a body of people to be His own without actually electing people. So ... what do I do with that?" You see, I've got questions and no one to answer them. This would be much easier if we could just sit down and talk, wouldn't it? Well, I can dream, can't I?