C.H. Dodd, The Epistle to the Romans, Comments on Romans 9:6-16
The position which is being attacked in the first part of the sermon is that God was bound, by His promise to Abraham, to save Israel as a corporate whole, whatever the attitude and behaviour of individual Israelites might be. As we have seen (notes on ii.), this position was actually held, and in fact appears to have been orthodox doctrine, though it was not unquestioned. Paul replies by insisting that full weight must be given to the doctrine of divine sovereignty which he shared with his Pharisaic opponents. On the ground of this doctrine, it must be admitted that no no one has any claim upon God as of right. His mercy is a free self-determination of His sovereign will. His promise to bless ‘Israel,’ His chosen people, certainly holds good; but it is for Him to decide with absolute freedom who shall constitute that chosen people. If He chooses to reject the Jews and to elect Gentiles, then the true ‘Israel’ is composed of those whom He elects. That such might indeed be His plan was actually declared by the prophets. Therefore, even if the entire Israelite nation is rejected, the promise has not been broken. It has been fulfilled by God in His own way; and the rightness of tha way is something which no man dare challenge. The argument starts from the assumption that the Jewish nation, representing historic Israel, has forfeited its ‘inheritance’ of the blessings promised to Abraham. The Jewish objector argues that this is as much as to say that God’s word had failed, which, he implies, is absurd; therefore the premiss from which it is deduced is false; quod erat demonstrandum. Paul denies the inference. The term ‘Israel,’ as used in the terms of covenant, does not mean everyone who belongs to the historic nation of Israel; and the term ‘children of Abraham’ does not mean all who are physically descended from Abraham (see iv.11-17). Every Jew admitted this: Ishmael was a child of Abraham, but no Jew believed that the Arabs, his descendants, were within the covenant. The Scripture said, It is through Isaac that your offspring shall be reckoned. And why? Because, says Paul, the birth of Isaac was not a matter of ordinary physical generation: it was supernatural, the result of a promise of God, accepted by the faith of Abraham (see iv.18-22). Very well then, from the beginning there were ‘children of Abraham’ who were outside the promise, yet that does not mean that God’s word had failed. The present situation is only the same thing on a larger scale. ‘But,’ the Jew will argue, ‘this is beside the point. The choice of Isaac was involved in the original promise; any further selection, such as you postulate at the present time, is not on the same footing. Moreover, we are descendants of Isaac, not of Ishmael, and therefore we are children of the promise.’ Paul rejoins: ‘So are the hated Edomites, of the descendants of Esau. Esau and Jacob were both sons of Isaac. They were actually twins, born under exactly the same conditions. Yet the one was rejected, the other chosen; and this choice took place before their birth, to confirm the divine purpose in election, which depends on the call of God, not on anything a man does.’ (This contrast between the divine call and human action is really necessary to the argment; but Paul cannot get away from his favourite antithesis of faith and works; his point is simply that the divine freedom of choice is limited by nothing in the world or out of it.) Thus, if descent from Abraham gives a title to the ‘inheritance,’ Jew and Edomite are on the same footing. No Jew could admit this. It follows that the status of the Jew rests upon nothing but a free determination of the divine will, and he cannot complain if, by a similar determination, God rejects the descendants of Jacob as He rejected the descendants of Esau. In neither case has God’s word failed. The first objection, therefore, is disposed of. Paul’s position does not imply that the divine purpose has failed. But now a further difficulty arises. If this is how the divine purpose works, must we not say that it was unjust, either in itself or in its method? The question was raised in iii.5. The only answer there given was that the Judge of all the earth must do right, which is logically no answer at all. Not is there a direct answer here. In effect Paul says: ‘It is not a question of justice, for justice would imply an inherent right of the creature over against his Creator. It is a question of the mercy of God upon those who in justice have merited, and can merit nothing at all. The mercy of God, as Scripture declares, is determined by nothing beyond itself; I will have mercy on whom I choose to have mercy.’ This is, indeed, the quality of mercy. If it counts desert, it is not mercy. But there can, in the nature of things, be no desert on man’s part before God. The ‘prevenient grace’ of God is a necessary condition of any salutary activity of man. The mercy of God is an original act of His creative will.
Unfortunately, Dodd cannot maintain this level of clarity and shortly after these comments says some insane things. Yet this section is truly excellent: and indeed, we must all learn that It is not a question of justice, for justice would imply an inherent right of the creature over against his Creator. Even under the terms of the Covenant of Works, it is quite true to say that the Covenant framework was only established through God’s voluntary condescension