Did Pharaoh Get a Raw Deal?

[TULIPed]

Something for us to tackle together - cooperatively. As we discuss, remember - love is patient, love is kind…

Read Romans 9:14-26 (Extra credit for reading the whole chapter! Extra extra credit for reading the whole book!!)

Does Pharaoh have free will? What do you think about the potter and the clay? What does this passage say about God? How can we see God’s love in this passage? How does the Catechism address this passage?

Discuss.

 

[Gorgias]

I’ll address the easy question first:

How does the Catechism address this passage?

The CCC doesn’t cite this passage.

(On the other hand, it does affirm the existence of free will.)

 

[chessnerd321]

I’ve always taken that passage not to undermine God’s mercy but St. Paul throwing his hands up. “Don’t ask me why those who are saved are saved and others aren’t. Just keep your head down and serve God without questioning his choices.”

How can God’s love be seen? Well, that anyone is saved (or frankly even exists) at all is an absolute abundance of mercy and love. I think St. Paul’s point is sort of like “don’t grumble about those God didn’t convert. Rejoice for those he has.” But of course we affirm all receive enough grace to choose God. Some just don’t.

 

[SeriousQuestion]

One of the interpretations was that God withdrew His grace from Pharaoh,

 

[Lee1]

Paul is saying that Pharoah has been raised up by God so that God can show His power in him so that mankind will proclaim His name.

Contemplating the omniscience of God has left me totally stumped. All times are present to God silmultaneously! I knew this but wow.
Using my tablet I noticed the smallest incpsect I’ve ever seen, it was possibly a third of the size of a grain of sand, tiny tiny tiny and I wouldn’t have noticed it if it hadn’t jumped! I took it to the window and blew it off into the wide blue yonder. Now I feel just like that insect.

I’ll get back to reading.

 

[TULIPed]

If memory serves, he got a few chances, no?

 

[midori]

Don’t forget, pharaoh was a god incarnate.

He wasn’t just a political leader. He was a religious leader: a high priest, a god. And therefore, he was in direct opposition to God, just as the ten plagues were each a deliberate attack on one or more of the major gods of Egypt.

It helps me to realize that God’s graces are kind of like pouring out water. He can pour out a bucket of water on a stone, and it won’t absorb a bit of it. He can pour out a bucket of water on a sponge, and it can absorb a lot. But whether we’re a stone or a sponge depends a lot on how open we are to allowing God to work in our lives, and cooperating with him… but without God’s grace, we can’t turn ourselves from a stone into a sponge, although it’s certainly easy enough to reject God’s grace and turn ourselves from sponges into stones!

19 One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” 20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it,‘Why did you make me like this?’”[[h]

21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?

22 What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— 24 even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?

 

[PrisonerOfChrist]

Does Pharaoh have free will? .

Pharaoh always had free will. God’s message to Pharaoh through Moses to let Israel the “first born son” go out to the wilderness to offer sacrifice was an invitation for the Egyptians to follow Israel’s lead, so they may also become the children of God in communion with God’s first born son Israel. First born son may imply more children God intended to have.

Pharaoh’s heart was hardened simply meant God withdrew his grace from Pharaoh but never depriving him of his free will.

 

[TULIPed]

Luther, in responding to Desiderius Erasmus wrote:

“In this, moreover, I give you great praise, and proclaim it – you alone in preeminent distinction from all others, have entered upon the thing itself; that is, the grand turning point of the cause; and have not wearied me with those irrelevant points about popery, purgatory, indulgences, and other like baubles, rather than causes, with which all have hitherto tried to hunt me down, though in vain! You, and you alone saw, what was the grand hinge upon which the whole turned, and therefore you attacked the vital part at once; for which, from my heart, I thank you. For in this kind of discussion I willingly engage…”

The “hinge” Luther was referring to is the concept of free will. Specifically - who has it? Do both man and God have free will? If man has free will, has God surrendered his? How do we hold free will in tension with God’s sovereignty?

I think it’s interesting that Luther himself wasn’t concerned about most of the things we spend a bunch of time debating as Catholics and Protestants. He calls these things “baubles” relative to the question of free will. I don’t think he meant to denigrate these things - rather he tries to put them in perspective relative to the big idea of free will.

When Paul speaks of “working out our salvation with fear and trembling”, I think it’s concepts like this that he had in mind.

 

[runningdude]

God “hardening” Pharaoh’s heart is a Jewish idiom, meaning that the king himself to become cruel and unmerciful.

 

[ZMystiCat]

(Extra credit for reading the whole chapter! Extra extra credit for reading the whole book!!)

I really hope that this is playful and not some subtle way to imply that Catholics are Catholic because they haven’t read Romans.

Anyways, to get to the question:

Does Pharaoh have free will?

In the Exodus story, prior to any mention of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart, we see Pharaoh hardening his own heart (i.e. being stubborn) after the second plague (Ex. 8:11 - NABRE, 8:15 - ESV) and fourth plague (Ex. 8:28 - NABRE, 8:32 - ESV). Other external references to Exodus also reference it as Pharaoh’s doing (e.g. 1 Samuel 6:6). As such, it is reasonable to see Pharaoh as possessing free will.

What do you think about the potter and the clay?

As created beings, it is incredible insolent on our part to judge God as if He were like us. Paul isn’t so much answering the objection directly - how does sin exist if God is sovereign? - but pointing out the underlying arrogance on display, an arrogance that was at the core of much of Rome’s problems at the times. It’s entirely valid to see the comments less as a commentary on how God actually interacts with humans and how arrogant humans tend to be when judging God.

However, even when considering God’s sovereignty over His creation, Molinism is just as compatible with the passage as Calvinism, to provide one example of a non-Calvinist reading.

What does this passage say about God?

Bear in mind one of the core problems facing Rome at the time. Judaizers were professing that they could somehow bring God’s grace upon them through their works, most notably through enforcing circumcision. The problem can also be seen in both Acts 14-15 and the book of Galatians. Of course, such a belief is incompatible with how God offers grace, and the very idea that we can earn God’s favor is actually quite arrogant.

This passage is really attacking that arrogance. We cannot earn mercy, as that is God’s to give and withhold as He pleases. In fact, there are cases where God withholds mercy for some reason (e.g. Pharaoh) or offers it to one over another (e.g. Jacob and Esau). By the time we reach the potter and clay, Paul is practically mocking the Judaizers.

Ultimately, it lays out a couple things about God:

1. God is ultimately sovereign and can do what He wants with His creation.
2. Mercy is God’s to give and God’s to withhold. We cannot force His hand or judge Him for how He gives it out.

What the passage does not discuss about God is how He goes about giving out grace and mercy.

How can we see God’s love in this passage?

Check out verses 23-26.

How does the Catechism address this passage?

The only two verses in Romans 9 cited anywhere in the Catechism are verses 4-5.

 

[TULIPed]

I really hope that this is playful and not some subtle way to imply that Catholics are Catholic because they haven’t read Romans.

Playfully aimed at everyone I assure you

Thanks for your comments - great stuff!

 

[Mary888]

He had free will and he used it to utilise the graces conferred to him by God (actually the Holy Fathers of the Church say we only have access to the gift of the Holy Spirit; not to God directly) to his own interests and then excused himself and blamed God for making him that way.
Here are what I see as rhethorical questions as to why has the creature (here the Pharaoh) turned against the Creator who gave him everything even the power to say no:
9:19. Thou wilt say therefore to me: Why doth he then find fault? For who resisteth his will?

9:20. O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: Why hast thou made me thus?

And here I also read that when man asks God to take full responsibility for creating him “as such” man is unfair to God. Because the existence of free will is proof of God’s fairness.
Further on I see this idea reinstated:
9:22. What if God, willing to shew his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction,

9:23. That he might shew the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he hath prepared unto glory?

So Christ suffered in order to help people make the right choice. His suffering makes no sense in the absence of free will. God wants to salvage that part which He himself put in His creation - free will.
If even a Pharaoh may be excused as having no choice then who does?
I also read the Pharaoh as a metaphor of our conscience, of our inner self. Which God honored as a king or queen with free will but we pretend is powerless because we do not see the right choice which is God’s will.

 

[ZMystiCat]

Playfully aimed at everyone I assure you

OK, thanks for the clarification.

 

[TULIPed]

I like where you’re coming from. I think the Great Commission in Matthew 28 is particularly supportive of your argument. Why do we need to go and make disciples if nobody has free will?

But how do we fold in Ephesians 1:4-5 “even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will.”

 

[Mary888]

The right choice is written within us next to our free will. For our destiny to come into existence we MUST choose God. Otherwise it is a destiny we wastedGalatians)
4:7. Therefore, now he is not a servant, but a son. And if a son, an heir also through God.

4:8. But then indeed, not knowing God, you served them who, by nature, are not gods.
So he says “served” not being enslaved by them who are not gods.
Another question now coming to mind is this - did the saints, after making the right choice to serve God, and having their faith tested, so a human being whose will has being purified to do that which pleases God, do they still have free will? I believe yes. Because then they are sons. And the will of the Father which they do is now also theirs. So they still have free will.