I appreciate your consideration.
Snipped for character count.
Like everything else in the Bible, there is a context:
Romans 11:1-2
11 I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, [a]a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel?
Bounce your verses against the context, and you will see the difference.
The elect are exactly what Paul says they are in Ephesians. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+1:1-13&version=NASB1995
Israel Is Not Cast Away - I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah...
www.biblegateway.com
Corporate Election by Dan Wallace
A good friend who is also a pastor wrote to me recently about the nature of election. He wondered if it were possible for Christians to be chosen
in Christ—that is, for Christians not to be elected individually, but only as a corporate entity. The idea was that Christ is the chosen one and if a person is “in Christ,” then he’s chosen too. This is known as corporate election.
Here are some thoughts on the issue of corporate election.
Dear Pastor _______,
Preliminarily, I should address an antecedent issue. Although I will express my opinion, you of course have to come to your own conclusions. Having a good conscience about the text doesn’t require agreement with others; it requires being faithful to pursue truth at all costs to the best of your abilities. To be sure, you want to seek the counsel and input of various experts. But when the day is done, you have to stand before God and tell him how you see your views as in harmony with Holy Writ. In other words, I
never want you to feel any kind of intimidation or pressure from me or anyone else about your handling of the text. I do of course want you to feel a great duty (as you always have) to the Lord in the handling of his word. At bottom, all of us have to give an account of ourselves to the Lord, and any human loyalties will have no standing before him.
Now, on to the issue!
First, allow me to clarify the issue: By corporate election I suppose you mean that only those who will be in Christ are chosen
and that God does not specifically choose individuals but only chooses the sphere (“in Christ”) in which the elective purposes of God can take place. Thus, if one embraces Christ he is chosen.
If that is what you mean by corporate election, then I would reject it. Here are the reasons why:
First, the authors you cited seemed to make a conceptual-lexical equation (i.e., if the word “elect” was used, only groups were in view;
ergo, election is only corporate). That view has been regarded by linguists and biblical scholars as linguistically naïve. James Barr in his
Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford, 1961) makes a lengthy and devastating critique of Kittel’s ten-volume
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament for its numerous linguistic fallacies. Among them is this conceptual-lexical equation. Allow me to unpack this a bit more: conceptual-lexical equation means that one does not find the concept unless he sees the words. That seems to be an underlying assumption in the authors you cited. However, where else do we argue this? Would we not say that the
concept of fellowship occurs everwhere in the New Testament? Yet the word κοινωνία is found only twenty times. Or consider the deity of Christ: If we could only speak of Christ’s deity in passages where he is explicitly called “God,” then we are shut up to no more than about half a dozen texts. Yet the New Testament wreaks of the deity of Christ—via his actions, attributes that are ascribed to him, Old Testament quotations made of him, implicit and explicit statements made about him. Hence, our first question needs to be: Do we see the concept of election as a corporate notion or an individual one?
Second, I think that there may be a false antithesis between corporate and individual election. Proof that God elects corporately is not proof that he does not elect individually (any more than proof that
all are called sinners in
Rom 3:23 is a denial that individuals are sinners). I embrace corporate election as well as individual election. As Douglas Moo argues in his commentary on Romans (pp. 551-52),
Evidence for this can be seen in
Romans 9 itself: the examples that Paul uses to show the meaning of election are individuals: Pharaoh, Jacob and Esau, etc. Yet, these very examples—these very
individuals—also represent corporate groups. If
only corporate election were true, Paul could not have written
Romans 9 the way he did.
Third, going back to the conceptual-lexical equation for a moment: let’s look at the evidence.
Mark 13:20—“but for the sake of the elect whom he chose he has cut short those days.” If we take only a corporate view of election, this would mean “but for the sake of all humanity he has cut short those days.” That hardly makes any sense in the passage; further, election is doubly emphasized: the
elect whom he
chose. It would be hard to make any clearer the idea that election is of individuals.
Luke 6:13;
John 6:70—Jesus chose twelve of his disciples out of a larger pool. True, he chose more than one; but this also was of particular individuals. Jesus
named them individually, indicating that his choice of them was individual. This election was not toward salvation, as we see in
John 6:70.
1 But this election was
entirely initiated by Jesus (“you did not choose me, but I chose you”). Initiation and selection are the prerogatives of the Lord. Corporate election makes absolutely no sense in this context; and further, the elective purposes and methods of God incarnate are the same, whether it is of his apostles for service or of sinners for salvation.
Luke 9:35—“This is my Son, my Chosen One.” Certainly election of Christ is both individual and corporate: Christ as the elect of God (see also at
John 1:34 the textual variant that is most likely original, and is the text reading of the NET Bible) is the vehicle through whom God effects his elective purposes today. That is, God chooses those who would be saved, but he also chooses the means of that salvation: it is in Christ (see also
Eph 1:4).
John 15:16—“You did not choose me, but I chose you.” Again, we see that election is done by the initiative of God. Further,
those who are chosen become what they are chosen for (in this case, apostles). A view of corporate election that allows a large pool of applicants to be “chosen” then permits a self-selection to narrow the candidates seems to ignore both God’s initiative and the efficacy of God’s choice:
all those who are chosen become what they are chosen for.
John 15:19—“I chose you out of the world.” The same theme is repeated: election may have many individuals in view, but the initiative and efficacy belong to the Lord.
Acts 1:2—same idea as above.
Acts 1:24—This text reveals a choice of
one individual as opposed to another. The apostles vote on which of two candidates they had put in the pool would fill Judas’ spot. But even their choice is dictated by the mandate of heaven: “Show us which
one you have chosen.”
Acts 15:7—Peter notes that God had selected him to bring the good news to the Gentiles. Again, though this is not election to salvation, it is election that is initiated by God and effected by God (for, as you recall, Peter was quite resistant to the idea).
Thus, election is seen to be initiated by God and effected by God. Those who are chosen—whether individuals or groups—become what they are chosen for. Corporate election simply ignores this consistent biblical emphasis.
Read the rest at
https://credohouse.org/blog/corperate-election-dan-wallace