Vessels of mercy, vessels of wrath.

[Dave]

Just noting something that may have slipped by you.

The "vessels of wrath prepared for destruction", the verb "prepared" here is passive, meaning God is not the one preparing. Macarthur says that there is a very clear sense in this use of the passive voice to relieve God of the responsibility and to put it fully on man.

However, the "vessels of mercy He prepared beforehand for glory." Here, the Greek verb "prepared" is in the active voice, and the subject doing the action is specifically God. He prepared, "He" is only used before the word "prepared" with the vessels of mercy and is absent from before "prepared" when used with the vessels of wrath.

I believe that God is sovereign over it all. But there is a positive "allowing" in that sovereignty. Foreordained speaks of God's total sovereignty. That context includes predestining, which is when God positively causes something, and God positively allowing things. Emphasis is on the word "positively" when speaking of positively allowing. Meaning God is not reacting in time after looking into the future.

I think that you'll find this definition fits best when reading the older theologians, and will protect you from reading things into what they said that they didn't mean.

Turretin (V1. vii. i) makes the following remark: 'Two extremes are to he avoided. First, that of defect, when an otiose permission of sin is ascribed to God. Second, that of excess, when the causality of sin is ascribed to him. Between these extremes, the orthodox hold the mean, who contend that the providence of God extends to sin in such way that he does not involuntarily permit it, as the Pelagians say, nor actively cause it as the Libertines assert, but voluntarily ordains and controls it'.

 

[Carbon]

Just noting something that may have slipped by you.

The "vessels of wrath prepared for destruction", the verb "prepared" here is passive, meaning God is not the one preparing. Macarthur says that there is a very clear sense in this use of the passive voice to relieve God of the responsibility and to put it fully on man.

However, the "vessels of mercy He prepared beforehand for glory." Here, the Greek verb "prepared" is in the active voice, and the subject doing the action is specifically God. He prepared, "He" is only used before the word "prepared" with the vessels of mercy and is absent from before "prepared" when used with the vessels of wrath.

I believe that God is sovereign over it all. But there is a positive "allowing" in that sovereignty. Foreordained speaks of God's total sovereignty. That context includes predestining, which is when God positively causes something, and God positively allowing things. Emphasis is on the word "positively" when speaking of positively allowing. Meaning God is not reacting in time after looking into the future.

I think that you'll find this definition fits best when reading the older theologians, and will protect you from reading things into what they said that they didn't mean.

Turretin (V1. vii. i) makes the following remark: 'Two extremes are to he avoided. First, that of defect, when an otiose permission of sin is ascribed to God. Second, that of excess, when the causality of sin is ascribed to him. Between these extremes, the orthodox hold the mean, who contend that the providence of God extends to sin in such way that he does not involuntarily permit it, as the Pelagians say, nor actively cause it as the Libertines assert, but voluntarily ordains and controls it'.

I believe it all has to do with God's sustaining grace.
If God removes His sustaining grace, it also is a preparing.

 

[Eleanor]

I believe it all has to do with God's sustaining grace.
If God removes His sustaining grace, it also is a preparing.

prepared (by themselves, passive) for destruction. . .

 

[Carbon]

prepared (by themselves, passive) for destruction. . .

Of course.

In the same way pharoah was prepared.

 

[His clay]

Just noting something that may have slipped by you.

The "vessels of wrath prepared for destruction", the verb "prepared" here is passive, meaning God is not the one preparing. Macarthur says that there is a very clear sense in this use of the passive voice to relieve God of the responsibility and to put it fully on man.

However, the "vessels of mercy He prepared beforehand for glory." Here, the Greek verb "prepared" is in the active voice, and the subject doing the action is specifically God. He prepared, "He" is only used before the word "prepared" with the vessels of mercy and is absent from before "prepared" when used with the vessels of wrath.

I believe that God is sovereign over it all. But there is a positive "allowing" in that sovereignty. Foreordained speaks of God's total sovereignty. That context includes predestining, which is when God positively causes something, and God positively allowing things. Emphasis is on the word "positively" when speaking of positively allowing. Meaning God is not reacting in time after looking into the future.

I think that you'll find this definition fits best when reading the older theologians, and will protect you from reading things into what they said that they didn't mean.

Turretin (V1. vii. i) makes the following remark: 'Two extremes are to he avoided. First, that of defect, when an otiose permission of sin is ascribed to God. Second, that of excess, when the causality of sin is ascribed to him. Between these extremes, the orthodox hold the mean, who contend that the providence of God extends to sin in such way that he does not involuntarily permit it, as the Pelagians say, nor actively cause it as the Libertines assert, but voluntarily ordains and controls it'.

I'll be responding to the following quote. "The "vessels of wrath prepared for destruction", the verb "prepared" here is passive, meaning God is not the one preparing."

The Greek of the last half of 9:22 is the following, "ἤνεγκεν ἐν πολλῇ μακροθυμίᾳ σκεύη ὀργῆς κατηρτισμένα εἰς ἀπώλειαν"
My own translation is "after enduring in much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction." My translation is much the same as most. I took the opening aorist participle in an adverbial way, hence the "after enduring." I also went with a more literal rendering of the next Greek word; I took it as "in" instead of the more common translation "with". My translation of the ending of the verse was much the same as the vast majority of the other translations I viewed.

One point of note was the case, gender, and number of two crucial words. "Case" simply refers to how a word functions in a sentence. In this case it is the accusative case, which typically refers to the object of the sentence. We can see two significant words: "σκεύη ὀργῆς". "Vessels of wrath" is the typical translation, we can see the accusative, neuter, plural parsing of the first word. Another key word is "κατηρτισμένα". The opening post is partially correct about the passive (except for the final 7 words). The parsing is perfect, passive, participle, accusative, neuter, plural. I translated it as most of the others have translated it, it is being used the describe (adjectival) the accusative, neuter, plural word before it. I go this route because of the correspondence in the parsing. In other words, "vessels" is being described by "prepared." And when you tack on the final prepositional phrase we see the "vessels . . . prepared for destruction." I'm taking great pains to point out that the passive participle is describing vessels. The vessels are being passively acted upon; they are being prepared.

We can see this happening in normal English. I was significantly bashed for this during the process of writing a certain academic document in my past. In order to avoid the use of first person, I had developed a bad habit of writing passive sentences. The main problem is that the subject is unknown. Note the following.

1. The ball was thrown. (by who or what it was thrown is left unknown)
2. The coffee was downed while I was at the coffee shop. (but did I drink it or did someone else drink it?)
3. The hungry children gathered together around the candy, and the candy was eaten. (the context makes it highly probable that the children ate it)

I hope that the reader can see the ambiguity that passive voice sentence construction can elicit. One can also see that with a little bit of context (like the third sentence above) the actual subject of the action can become more apparent. (i.e. hungry children + candy was eaten = probably the children ate the candy)

I have left discussion over the potential middle rendering for another post. Let's try to deal with the material above before jumping into that discussion.