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that He acts consistently on the principle of exercising His divine sovereignty according to His supreme will; but they also furnish another argument to the same effect, by showing that He exercises His sovereignty with long-suffering and mercy. The God who acts with mercy and forbearance cannot be unrighteous. God’s revela- tion to Moses was a display of His great mercy. In it He revealed “the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abund- ant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiv- ing iniquity, transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty ” (Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7). God’s dealing with Pharaoh was marked by forbearance, opportunities for repentance, instruct- ion, and chastisement.
Verses 19, 20, 21 are not properly part of the proof, but are in- troduced by way of rebuke to a presumptuous question or chal- lenge; so that, in the regular line of the argument, we may pro- ceed directly from the close of ver. 18 to ver. 22.
(19.) The objector now catches at the words, “whom He will He hardeneth,” as an opportunity for shifting the responsibility from himself to God. If God hardens, why blame the hardened ? Tf God ordains, who can resist His will?
The fault of interpretation at this point lies in construing Paul’s answer as a counter-argument; whereas Paul does not entertain the objector’s words as an argument at all. He neither admits, denies, nor answers them as an argument. His reply is directed solely at the objector’s attitude as a challenger of God. It is a re- buke of the creature for charging his sin upon the Creator. Paul is not dealing with the objector’s logic, but with the sublime im- pudence of the objector himself. He is not vindicating God against the charge, nor exposing the falsity of the charge itself.
For if this answer of Paul, with the similitude of the potter and the clay, is to be taken as an argument for God’s right to harden men at His arbitrary pleasure, then Paul is open to rebuke quite as much as his opponent. For, in the first place, the answer is a tacit admission of the Jew’s premiss, and, in the second place, re- garded as an answer to an argument, it is a specimen of the most brutal dogmatism, and of the most fallacious and shallow logic, if it can be called logic at all. This is the case, in brief. The Jew. “@od hardens at His arbitrary will and pleasure. If, therefore,
144 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. (Cu. XI
He hardened me so that I could not believe, He is to blame, not I. Why does He find fault with me for not believing? If He is su- preme, who can resist His will?” Paul. “Suppose He did harden you so that you could not believe, what have you to say about it? Shut your mouth! God does as He pleases with you. You are simply a lump of clay in the hands of a potter, and must be con- tent to be what the potter makes you.”
From this point of view it must be said that the objector has the best of it, and that Paul’s answer is no answer. Regarded as an argument, it is an argument from an analogy which is no anal- ogy. Man, on God’s own showing, is not a lump of senseless clay. He is a sentient, reasoning being, endowed by God with the power of self-determination. God Himself cannot and does not treat him as a lump of clay; and to assert such a relation between God and man made in God’s image, is to assert what is contrary to common sense and to God’s own declarations and assumptions in Scripture. The objector might well turn upon Paul and say, ‘“ Well, then, if man is only a lump of clay, and therefore without right or power to reply, who, pray, art thow that repliest for God? Thou art, on thine own showing, a lump of clay like myself. If clay cannot and must not reason nor answer, what is the peculiar quality of thy clay which entitles thee to speak as God’s advocate ?”