Introduction

In Romans 9:18-23, Paul gives us a very sparse but dense (contextually) metaphor describing God as a potter working on “vessels” that in one case turn out “for blessing” and in others, turn out “for destruction”.  Is Paul saying what traditionally has been believed he is saying?  Let’s see.

Context

In Romans 9 Paul has embarked on his three-chapter exposition on the subject of the future of “Israel”/Israelites in light of Christ – His ministry, death and resurrection – that they have rejected.

As an Israelite, Paul begins by telling us of his “anguish” that (as we learn elsewhere in the Epistles) the vast majority of his brethren had rejected Jesus’ positioning of Himself as their Messiah that ultimately resulted in His crucifixion, as we see in Rom 9:2-3:

2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.

He’s devastated that his brethren have missed not only their own Messiah, but the most significant event in human history.  And he’s going to ask himself how that could possibly happen.  And to answer that question, he’s going to rely on the prophet’s metaphor of the clay and the potter.

In light of what he’s been seeing in the ancient world from the Gentiles to whom he has been preaching for perhaps 10-15 years – that they are giving their allegiance to Israel’s God because of the Gospel of Christ, he rationalizes the situation as in Rom 9:6-8

6 But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, 7 and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” 8 This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.

So the sea change Paul has lived through is that the Israelites (now just the Judahites) who had believed themselves to be the exclusive covenant people of God (the chosen “children of God”), now have rejected their God and His Messiah that the Gentiles are accepting wholesale throughout the Ancient Near East.

Here is the particular passage we’ll be unpacking; Rom 9:18-23

18 So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

19 You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” 20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— 24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

We must note that Staples concludes that v19 is a mistranslation.  The issue is the tense of the verb phrase here rendered “can resist” — τις ανθεστηκεν.  It is not past (gnomic) tense as written (“can”) but perfect tense — “has”.  Paul is asking “who has resisted God’s will?”, not “who has the capability to resist”, as so many expositors (and translators) have held.  The answer is “we have”.

The Traditional (Reformed) Christian View

The way this passage has been primarily interpreted traditionally is as a polemic supporting the Calvinist view of God’s predestination and sovereign right and power to save some and to send others to eternal torment/destruction as He chooses.  Is that view the one Paul has in mind in his clay/potter analogy[i]?

A New Interpretation

Dr. Jason Staples has challenged this traditional interpretation in his paper “Vessels of Wrath and God’s Pathos: Potter/Clay Imagery in Romans 9:20-23”.  In disputing the traditional view, Staples restates the problem:

“Remarkably, Paul’s use of the potter/clay analogy has frequently been read not as a rebuttal of the implied accusation that God is capricious and therefore unjust but rather as a defense of God’s sovereign right to arbitrary choice.  That is, just as a potter has the right to make vessels specifically to be smashed to demonstrate his sovereignty and power, God has a right to define justice however he chooses.”

“The gist of the potter/clay analogy as rendered in all seven translations” (which include the English ESV, NRSV and NIV) ”—and as widely interpreted in modern scholarship—is simple: God has indeed arbitrarily predestined some people for destruction, but this is not unjust, because it is God’s sovereign right to do so.” (Emphasis added)

Staples outlines his issues with the traditional interpretation this way, focusing on the semantics of the terms Paul uses in the passage:

“I contend, however, that such complaints about this passage are the result of reading Paul’s appeal to the potter/clay analogy in Rom 9:20–24 backwards, as interpreters have misunderstood the implications of clay as an analogy, the emphasis Paul places on the patience of the divine potter, and the passage’s function in its larger context.” (Emphasis added.)

So what is Staples seeing in the use of the clay analogy, and its characterization of the patience of the potter, that those interpreting the passage traditionally do not?  And what are the meanings of Paul’s words – to Paul?

Setting the Stage

Paul here is talking (to largely his Jewish brethren) about making clay vessels, as he knows the prophets did before him.  Let’s dig in a bit to this “clay”-working metaphor. 

There is a common understanding among potters that clay resists the intentions of its potter – ‘pushes back’, if you will.  This resistance has been characterized as the clay having “a mind of its own”.  In other words, it doesn’t “want” to be molded in accordance with its potter’s wishes.  It fights back, making its molding into the form desired by the potter problematic.

This is precisely the nature of the potter/clay analogy that Paul has in mind here (and that the prophets also did in employing the same metaphor, as we shall see).  Israel has resisted the molding God has applied to them based on their faithlessness to His covenant, His resulting exilic judgments, and finally their rejection of their Messiah.

We start back with v18 and its allusion to Pharoh’s “hardening” (Ex 14:4) by God.  Turns out, this is also a pottery term, in keeping with the analogy Paul is going to present.  The word is: 4645. σκληρύνω sklērúnō; fut. sklērunṓ, from sklērós (4642), hard. To make hard or stiff, make obdurate.

In the context of pottery, it refers to the baking of whatever has been formed in a kiln.  Whatever the nature of the thing made — whether useful or not, when it’s baked its done — it isn’t going to change. In Pharaoh’s case, a normal person might have given in to God after the frog plague.  But God’s hardening had assured that Pharaoh would resist to the end in order to demonstrate God’s superiority and glory.

Staples notes this about Paul’s allusion to “hardening”:

This contrast between clay still being shaped on the wheel and that which has already been hardened is fundamental to understanding the imagery in Romans as well, as the potter/clay analogy grows out of the “hardening” (σκληρύνω) language in 9:18, which calls back to YHWH hardening Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus. Notably, the nominal form of the σκληρ- root appears elsewhere in Greek literature in reference to clay hardened in a kiln, providing a linguistic link to the potter/clay metaphor in the succeeding verses. The potter/clay metaphor therefore clarifies the sense in which God “hardened” Pharaoh: in the context of clay pottery, hardening (σκληρύνω) does not involve reshaping but instead involves permanently fixing the clay in its final shape and is therefore best understood as the final step of judgment, after which there is no repentance available or reshaping possible.

So Paul is at least making the obvious point that it is God’s prerogative to put vessels into the Kiln to harden them into their permanent form as it suits His purposes.

In Jer 18:5-10 (which Paul would have memorized long ago) we find God declaring (through Jeremiah):

5 Then the word of the LORD came to me: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. 7 If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, 8 and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. 9 And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, 10 and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it.

The idea here is utterly different than the traditional arbitrariness-of-God view.  Here, rather, we see an interacting, merciful, and righteous God.  If the subject repents and follows the Lord, the Lord relents from His threat of punishment.  If the subject, who was once destined for blessing by God devolves into unrighteousness and rebellion, God relents from His blessing and, instead, applies his (just) judgment.  God’s choice in both situations is portrayed as equitable, just.

This is the model/analogy of God’s justice Paul had in mind in Romans 9:18-23.

Continuing in Jeremiah 18 we get an interesting interchange between God and Israel.  Jer 18:11-12:

11 Now, therefore, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: ‘Thus says the LORD, Behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you. Return, every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds.’

12 “But they say, ‘That is in vain! We will follow our own plans, and will every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.’

God here calls out the disobedient Israelites saying “amend your ways and your deeds”.  They respond: “This is in vain!  We will follow our own plans, and will every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.”  In so many words, they’re confessing that it’s hopeless – that they can’t “amend their ways”.

This is the same response we see Paul rhetorically recounting in his v19-20:

19 You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” 20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?”

Paul here has Israel rhetorically throwing up their hands in an attitude of hopelessness and complaining about the apparent unjustness of it all, implicitly disclaiming any responsibility for their continued resistance to God.  The Israelites knew who they were morally (as we all do, or should).  Paul knew who they were morally (as he, himself, laments in Romans 7).  The idea expressed here (and in Jeremiah) appears to be that if Israelites can’t live any more righteously than they do, why is God judging them for not doing what they can’t do?  It’s at this point that we need to dig a bit deeper into the semantics of the words Paul is using. 

Parsing the Words

Let’s try to dissect Paul’s dense analogy in Rom 9:21-23:

21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—

We start with the semantic here (ESV) rendered as “endured”.  However, this translation is defective.  The word is:

1. 5342. φέρω phérō; fut. oísō, aor. ḗnegka, aor. pass. ēnéchthēn, obsolete form oíō (3634a), to bring, carry. To bear, bring.

Staples points out:

But the idea of “enduring” pottery makes little sense—it is unclear what it would mean to “endure” a clay vessel.

He goes on to observe that nearly the same pattern of Greek terms as here from which we get: “has endured with much patience” is found in the LXX of Jeremiah (27:25) (or our English translations in Je 50:25):

25 The LORD has opened his armory

and brought out the weapons of his wrath,

for the Lord GOD of hosts has a work to do

in the land of the Chaldeans.

Staples notes that Paul, in v22’s ἤνεγκεν, removes the prefix ἐξ from the verb translated in LXX Jeremiah “brought out” to result in more of the idea of “produce”.

Paul is apparently using the “bear” sense of the verb here as, e.g., a woman bearing a child.  In his image, she is producing the child.  The sense he’s drawing out is that God has “produced” (or “brought forth”) with much patience the pottery vessels, which makes a lot more sense than “enduring” them. 

Then how about the term our translation renders as “vessels of wrath”.  The language here (as Staples has been telling us) harkens back to that in Je 50:25, above: “weapons of wrath”.  There, the sense is that the “weapons” referred to are God’s instruments of His wrath, typically foreign armies in the OT.  It is not that God is wrathful toward the weapons, but that they are to be the instruments of His wrath.

Paul appears to have used the same (“genitive”) semantic here.  The vessels are not those things upon which God has wrath, but rather they are functionaries in expressing His wrath.

Staples summarizes the point this way[ii]:

“That is, a σκεῦος of something is a vessel or instrument comprised of, filled with, conveying, or for the purpose of something but is not the object on which that thing works.” (Emphasis added)

Perhaps a simple example will help explain this grammatical structure.  If I refer to a “glass of water”, I don’t intend to say that the glass is in someway subject to or operated on by the water.  The glass is the glass whether containing water or not.  The glass conveys the water.

Staples asserts that God doesn’t “hate” the vessels on which He worked, resulting in His judgment to destroy them, but that they have persisted in their resistance to His reforming actions, and so He deems in some way to transmit (or purvey, perhaps) His wrath (e.g. as Judah was deemed subject to His wrath through the instrument of Babylonian armies – ‘armies of wrath’), and that if they don’t accept His reforming, will be subject to the demonstration of His righteousness. 

The fascinating question to answer is: “If the vessels are instruments of God’s wrath, who or what are the objects of that wrath that they are being used in some way to purvey?

It’s possible that, despite the genitive sense, the relationship is ultimately objective but just deferred.  These resistant vessels carry forward God’s pending but as yet deferred wrath during His continued, patient, merciful working on them. These would be the Messiah-rejecting Israelites for Paul.  In Jeremiah’s terminology, they serve “to uproot, tear down, destroy (ἀπολλύειν), and overthrow” (Je 1:10).

In this interpretation, the vessels (us) don’t get “hardened” through the potters firing in His kiln until the judgment on the last day.  It is at that point that we are who we allowed God to make us.

Similarly, some vessels purvey, or carry forward, mercy.  In our current interpretation, these would represent the Messiah-accepting Israelites (which Paul seems to indicate in v24: “even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?”)  It is entirely plausible that Paul saw the Messiah-accepting Jews as those carrying forward God’s mercy (using the same “of mercy” genitive grammar), ultimately to be delivered onto the Gentiles.  In Jeremiah’s terminology by so doing they acted: “to rebuild and to plant” (Je 1:10).  This idea certainly is consistent with Paul’s characterization of “Israel” in ch 11.  (Staples doesn’t offer a clear statement of his interpretation of the object.)

Prepared for Destruction

Now we come to this translation’s “prepared for destruction” phrase.  Is this an accurate rendering?

The Greek word here rendered “prepared” is:

1. 2675. καταρτίζω katartízō; fut. katartísō, from katá (2596), with, and artízō (n.f.), to adjust, fit, finish, from ártios (739), fit, complete. The fundamental meaning is to put a thing in its appropriate condition, to establish, set up, equip, arrange, prepare, mend. Also from artízō (n.f.): exartízō (1822), to accomplish.

This Greek word cannot mean “prepared”(as in ‘produced’) with the prefix of “kata”.  It means, rather, something like “mended” (fixed, repaired, mended [their nets]) over time.  “Reshaped” for destruction is a reasonable translation.  Of this interpretation, Staples says:

…the meaning of the word centers on a concept closer to the English idiom “to fix up,” often with a nuance of repair, restoration, or “making good.” That certainly is the case in every other Pauline usage of the term, such as his exhortation that those who are πνευματικοὶ “restore” (καταρτίζετε) anyone caught in trespass (Gal 6:1) or his desire to “fix” what is lacking in the faith of the Thessalonians (1 Thess 3:10). Elsewhere in the New Testament, the term is used to denote the disciples of Jesus “fixing” their nets (Mk 1:19),…

One of the ideas the term does not convey is that of foreordination or planning, which Staples takes pains to demonstrate:

One nuance that does not appear, however, is that of foreordination; the closest thing to that concept across its use is the idea of “fitting out” ships or fleets (e.g., Polybius, History, 1.21, 29, 36) or “making ready” (= “fixing up”) something in anticipation of a future necessity (e.g., Hdt. 9.66; Heb 10:5). But even in these cases, the concept refers to finishing the “fixing up” process rather than planning or foreordination.

The idea is God is persistently molding and remolding His clay (that has a ‘mind of its’ own) to create a vessel of honor, and nothing He does with some vessels achieves that result.  So all of His work ultimately (because of the clay’s rebellion) will only result in the finished product having to be destroyed since the clay has refused Him its compliance[iii].

Prepared Beforehand for Glory

V23 tells us:

23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—

Isn’t this a Calvinist “proof text”?   If so, I don’t think it works.  Let’s take a minute and see if we can pull it apart into its constituent pieces.

First of all, the verb translated here as “prepared beforehand” actually does mean prepared, unlike the above:

1. 4282. προετοιμάζω proetoimázō; fut. proetoimásō, from pró (4253), before, and hetoimázō (2090), to make ready. To prepare beforehand.

Paul is saying God will demonstrate the “riches of his glory” in His handling of those vessels who ultimately are conformed to the potter’s design.  So what did He prepare “beforehand” for glory?  The object of His glory is the noun phrase “the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy”.  This is what was “prepared beforehand”. 

The vessels that God successfully conforms into the form He desires will elicit God’s “riches of His glory”.  The demonstration of God’s redemptive grace (and His patient mercy in con/re-forming them to the form He seeks) that results in vessels of mercy is that which He has beforehand defined as demonstrating His glory. 

To what is the glory attributed?  To the potter who succeeded in His forming mission.  He gets the glory.  Are those who are conformed into vessels of mercy defined by Him “beforehand”?  That’s not what this text says.  But the glory He specified to be displayed resulting from producing vessels of mercy most assuredly was.

The Patience of the Potter

It seems to me that in order to fully appreciate Paul’s analogy here you must possess an appreciation for the difficulty potters confront in dealing with clay mentioned earlier.  This isn’t intuitive.  We see pictures of potters at their wheels apparently gently forming the seemingly compliant clay by judiciously applying the right amount of pressure of touch at the right place and using the right quantity of softening water.  But according to the testimony of potters themselves, that’s just not the reality.  Their experience is that the clay fights the potter’s intentions to “reform” it into his vision for its final form every step of the way.

In using this analogy, Paul is mindful of the image of the potter we saw in Jeremiah 18 where the potter (God) is described as interacting with His work (people); if they do something counter to His will, He patiently responds with justice to (our Greek word — καταρτίζω katartízō) “fix” or “mend” or “reform” them so that He can turn them into/produce them as “a vessel for honorable use” – something productive for Him.  And similarly, if the people (clay) change from their obstinance to the potter’s forming/reforming, thereby complying with His direction, they become vessels “for honorable use”, or, as Jeremiah tells us, “I” (God) “will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it.”

The interesting thing about this metaphor is that the process it portrays is interactive, and doesn’t mention an endpoint.  The process apparently continues until there is no more clay to work with – it having been either formed into a vessel for honor, or through its resistance, for dishonor.  The potter never stops the reforming.  This is what Paul is telling us through his use of the word “patience”:

1. 3115. μακροθυμία makrothumía; gen. makrothumías, fem. noun from makrothu-méō (3114), to be long-suffering. Forbearance, long-suffering, self-restraint before proceeding to action.

Staples describes this patience this way:

For both Jeremiah and Paul, God is by no means impassive but is impacted and affected by human actions, mercifully and patiently improvising like a potter working with stubborn clay. Indeed, to say that God has demonstrated μακροθυμία inherently implies pathos, since that very word means that one is not simply getting one’s way but must rather interact with and respond to something outside oneself—thus the common rendering “long-suffering.”

Thus, although the divine potter has the final say over the end product, those decisions are not arbitrary but depend in part on interaction with the clay. The clay has no right to complain to the potter precisely because, in seeking to produce the most useful vessel, the potter has improvised as necessitated by the clay’s resistance to the potter’s hand and tendency to become misshapen. (Emphasis added)

He notes that the potter/clay images in the prophets (Je 18:5-12, Is 29:16, Is 45:9) all infer, like Paul, that the clay not only resists its forming but as here, argues with its potter about its form.  Yet the potter continues to work the rebellious clay, showing his patience and mercy.

Takeaways

Far from portraying a petulant, capricious God arbitrarily making some people for destruction/damnation and others for eternal life with Him, Paul here is making a few points concerning God’s relationship with people in general, but primarily with his brother Jews.

1. The first portion of Rom 9 is addressed mainly to these Jewish brethren. In it he explains, using various examples, that God can bless and show mercy to Gentiles (i.e. the “dishonorable”)  if He wants to (e.g. the narrative of Jacob and Esau, etc.), and that nothing the Jews do in carrying out their Jewishness-keeping rituals and festivals and sacrifices bear on God’s choice of His children “of the promise”, saying: “16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.”  Of course, God is sovereign over who He will adopt as His children, be they “Jew or Greek”.  But His approach to doing so, as we’ve seen, is through longsuffering in working with the resistance of His potential family members to “mend” them, eliciting a quality of pathos in His approach that is unmistakable.
2. God did not set out to destroy any.  None were “prepared for destruction.” He patiently and continuously mended and reformed (καταρτίζω) His vessels hoping for them to conform to His will.  Nothing about the term used here carries any sense of “foreordination”, as so many have assigned to it.  Rather the only just action that could be taken on the clay vessels who persisted in their resistance to their rehabilitation was destruction (at their expiration).
3. God has patiently persevered in working with the resistant clay of Israel in attempting to convict them of His love for them and desire for their love and obedience. Sadly, many have resisted His reforming actions and so have not reciprocated that love, nor have they complied with His will for them (the source of Paul’s anguish displayed in Rom 9:3).  (Dt. 28:1).
4. Paul infers that the Potter works with the clay until it is no longer available to be worked (i.e. the one being shaped dies). Whatever the condition of the clay when the work on it stops defines the form of the vessel; either of/for honor/mercy, or not. In other words, if despite God’s best efforts the clay refuses to be “fixed up” to conform to God’s will for it, what must be done with it is to destroy it, as it is not fit for its intended purpose of living faithfully, and eternally, with God.
5. God hasn’t “endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.” Rather, He has patiently ‘born’ or ‘brought forth’ the vessels.  (To “endure” an item of pottery makes no sense.)

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[i] I’ve written elsewhere that the error the Calvinists make in using their “proof texts” to support their dogmas  is they eliminate the context of those texts – in this instance, Paul’s focus on his brethren Israelites who have rejected their Messiah in contrast to the (otherwise ‘dishonorable’) pagan Gentiles accepting Him as their Lord enthusiastically. Calvinists simply ignore such contexts and rather abstract them away leaving only contextless statements; in this case, God acting, but apparently for no reason.

[ii] Staples defines this grammatical structure in the Greek (translated here as ‘vessels of wrath’) as a “genitive of quality”, as distinguished from an objective genitive as many translators assume.  FWIW.

[iii] About this character of the potter’s work Staples notes: “As George Caird explained decades ago, “A vessel may in the end have to be discarded, but the potter does not make vessels for the ghoulish delight of hurling them against a wall,”39 let alone to demonstrate his power over them—nor could an ancient potter have afforded to do so.”