Vessels of wrath or mercy?

"What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction," (Rom. 9:22)

From Augustine to Calvin(ism), this text has been extracted from context and made into a theory of sovereign election, predestining a few to glory and the vast majority to damnation.

We must understand that Paul begins Romans 9 with a ‘what if-argument’. What if God has cast away His people, (Rom. 11:1)? What if Israel has stumbled that they should fall, (Rom. 11:11)? What if God…, (Rom. 9:22)? And his ‘what ifs’ are not his theology. It is his hypothetical question that, if left unanswered, makes him wish he would rather be damned. But Paul finally answers his questions. In the following chapters he rejects the ”vessels of wrath” hypothesis, so as to reach a completely different conclusion

Paul points out how God’s pattern of election has always been subversive and scandalous: An elder brother, Esau, loses his birthright to a supplanter, Jacob. A younger son, Joseph, is favored ahead of his elder etc.

But the stories of Esau and Joseph eventually end up in a blessing for the rightful firstborn and, in the case of Joseph, his whole family. Neither Esau nor Joseph’s brothers are completely rejected. They are rather ultimately reconciled. Ultimately both the older and younger brother are elected. There’s no division between the elect and the derelict, rather the opposite: All parties will finally be embraced.

This is why Esau and Jacob provide so apt a typology for Paul’s argument. Esau is not rejected in the story of the two brothers; he and Jacob are reconciled, to the increase of both, as a consequence of their temporary estrangement. When they are reunited, it is Jacob who says to Esau (not the reverse), “Seeing your face is like seeing God’s”. And this is the pattern Paul follows in his argument.

It turns out that the “remnant” of Israel have been elected not as the limited number of the “saved”, but as the earnest through which all of Israel will be saved, (Rom. 11:26); they are the part that makes the totality holy, (Rom 11:16). A part of Israel is hardened, but this will remain the case only until the “full entirety” of the gentiles enter in.

Unbelieving Israel has been allowed to stumble, but God will never allow them to fall. So Paul argues: If their failure now brings enrichment to the world, how much more will they provide when their own “full entirety” enter in? Esau is only temporarily excluded for the sake of “the world’s reconciliation”, but Esau, or unbelieving Israel, will at last be restored; and this will be nothing less than a “resurrection from the dead” (Rom 11:11-12).

Yes, God “has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens”. But in Romans 11 Paul delivers the punchline: God will “have mercy on all”, (Rom. 11:32). This then, as David Bentley Hart put it: "is the radiant answer dispelling the shadows of Paul's grim "what if," clarion negative: There is no final "illustrative" division between vessels of wrath and of mercy...all are vessels of wrath so that all may be made vessels of mercy."