“Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens (makes unresponsive to God, truth, etc.) whom he wants to harden.” Romans 9:18 (NIV)

“Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?  What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath – prepared for destruction?” Romans 9:21-22 (NIV)

From the outset, I must say that I do not at all consider myself a Biblical scholar.  Years of Sunday School lessons combined with my own personal perusal of the Bible are what is being shown here.  That being said, let’s examine the above Bible verses.  The ninth chapter of Romans is possibly the most difficult chapter in the whole of the good Book to swallow.  Paul (the author) is essentially saying that God will, when the urge strikes him, supernaturally cause some people to reject Him.  Whether this God-caused rejection occurs to set an example for others to follow, or whether it is for some other mysterious cosmic purpose, Paul is essentially saying that some people are “prepared for destruction” (I interpret this to mean HELL) from the get-go, through no fault of their own.  This flies not only in the face of most mainstream Christian thought, but of our ideas on free will and moral culpability. 

It also casts serious doubt on the idea of a loving God: if God damns people to Hell for defects He specifically gave to them, and because He made them unable to respond to the Gospel, God is casting himself in a light that is less than loving and just – and more just plain evil.

There are several steps to remedy this concept of a loving God who turns off your “able to be saved” switch and throws you in the furnace.  The first, and probably one of the most widely used, is simply to forget about Romans chapter nine.  It doesn’t exist.  That Paul guy wasn’t exactly on top of things anyway, was he?  I mean, except for when he condemns homosexuality.  (Had to take the jab.  Sorry.) 

Another method is the one Paul dealt with in the second quote: “Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?”  If we are God’s creation, then we are to some extent his artwork, and He the artisan.  It’s not far-fetched to give Him the right to do with his artwork what He will, even if that means destroying the artwork.  A potter is perfectly within his rights to destroy a pot he doesn’t like.  There’s even an old hymn to this effect, drawn from Paul’s illustration in 9:21: “Have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way; thou art the potter, I am the clay.  Mold me and make me after thy will, while I am waiting, yielded and still.”

Is this really a justification of God, though?  It looks good on the surface.  Potter, pots, artistic creations, sure.  But the analogy Paul draws here is flawed.  Yes, a potter can certainly create a pot in any way he wants and then destroy it.  But an inanimate piece of fired clay is a far cry from a living, breathing, feeling, sentient being.  A clay pot cannot feel pain and anguish.  A clay pot has no sensation of being broken or killed.  And if humans have no more control over what God makes them into than the pot can control what the potter does to it, then the human is in no way morally culpable for the sins or lack of faith God pre-ordains them for.  Yet God will send this human to eternal torment in Hell.  Torture and wrath, all directed against a hapless being who cannot help doing what God has made him do.

If Romans chapter nine is legitimate theology, we need a better explanation for why God can still pre-ordain people and be a loving god.  The only ideas I have come up with are a slight modification of Paul’s potter-clay analogy (and, truth be told, they’re probably a little “out there”).

Is it possible to look on God as an artisan knitting a blanket?  The threads he is knitting together represent all of the influences on our lives – our genetics, our upbringings, every single thing we have ever experienced.  Every seemingly unimportant event in our lives as well as the obviously important ones.  What our friends say to us in school.  The movies we watch.  The stranger that comes up to us on the street.  The things we read and do.  All are woven together into the fabric that is our soul.  The soul itself is constantly under construction.  We cannot look on the threads themselves, alone, as our soul; the soul only exists when the threads come together in precisely the right stitches and configurations.  If you think about it, what is your mind anyway?  It is a set of thought processes that go on in your brain.  What influences these processes?  Every memory you have, everything you taste, see, hear, or otherwise perceive around you.  Communication with others.  God weaves them all together, creating you moment by moment.

Unfortunately, this model of the soul omits free will.  (Oh, is that all?)  I have explained this away by saying that what seems to us to be our own choice is simply God adding another layer of stitching onto the blanket.  The stitching is affected by what came before it – you can’t put a stitch where none exists to connect it to the rest of the blanket.  In this way we have the illusion of free will, when in reality the stitching can only go on the way it does, due to the stitching behind it in the past. 

Our souls are not active participants, then, in the world.  We seem to be active participants, but only because we cannot perceive God adding to the blanket.  All illusion of action, thought, and choice comes from a new layer of experiences being added to previous layers.

Of course, that’s only in my model.  If we are not truly sentient, we just seem to be, then God is within his rights to make us any way he wants and then destroy us. 

Goofy analogy ended.

My purpose in this essay was to set out my discomfort with Paul’s statements in Romans chapter nine.  I don’t hold my knitter-blanket analogy in much intellectual esteem, and I’m not trying to claim it is the only way to look at the problem, or indeed that it’s a better way.  I just think that if you honestly look at this passage in the Bible, and look at the idea of a loving and just God, you will run up against huge contradictions.  And I have yet to see them satisfactorily dispelled. 

As an additional disclaimer, though I was raised Christian and have satisfactory Bible-navigating skills, I’m not a believer.  I am agnostic.  I’m not sure whether you would consider this to affect the legitimacy of my essay, but I have simply perceived a contradiction in Christian doctrines and explored the issue.  Comments and ideas are welcome, and also, check out Romans 9 for yourself.  I don’t think I’ve taken my quotes out of context, but outside opinions are always good.