The Millennium: Pre, Post, or Realized? #14

Here is the final post for my preliminary study of Romans 9-11. In a later post I will provide Matthew Henry's comments on this passage, and also what some contemporary theologians have to say about it.

33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 34 "For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?" 35 "Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?" 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

The section of scripture I have addressed in this brief overview of Romans 9-11 began with Paul’s despondent lament over the present brokenness of his brothers in the flesh, and it ends with his praise being offered to God for His riches (He has mercy on all) and His wisdom (He has the foresight to let Israel remain in unbelief for a time) and His knowledge (the future salvation of a people is no mystery to Him). This ending is reminiscent of his confidence in God presented in chapter 8:37-39. At the end of Romans 8 Paul’s adoration follows 8 chapters of building meditation on the utter incapacity of man’s ability due to our deadness in sin and the absolute greatness of God’s love and mercy manifested in his effort to save all those He had planned to give His Son as a bride. And the adoration Paul raises here at the end of chapter 11 follows Paul’s declaration that Israel is beloved because of the promises God has made to their forefathers and that Paul knows that He will never revoke the gifts and the calling.

Much of chapter 11 of Romans is used by pre-millennialists to support their claim that God is not finished with the nation of Israel and they remain the primary eschatological concern for what God is doing in time. Of course their strictly literal interpretation of the nature of the millennium (that it is a literal 1000 years wherein the ethnic Jews will be reestablished in the literal, earthly city of Jerusalem ministering in a physical temple by resuming the performance of Old Covenant rituals) is assumed behind their reading of this passage and it colors their interpretation in such a way as to have “all Israel will be saved” mean that correct Old Covenant Jewishness finally equals justification before God. I am ready to admit that all theological camps have presuppositions that we assume as we interpret any text. For me, as an amillennarian, a few of my presuppositions are that, Paul’s interpretation of an Old Testament text is the interpretation I should have of that text, and that the purpose of God’s revelation of the entire bible has to be in view as we interpret the meaning of texts that point to the larger pictures or underlying structures of God’s intent in time. As we consider eschatological explanations and the hermeneutical structures that back them, we must test our presuppositions to see if they are justifiable. As I come to the end of this particular study of Romans 9-11, I have discovered that, with this text alone, one cannot come to a legitimate position on the timing of the millennium. One conclusion I believe one can come to correctly is this, ultimately, it is the Jews’ belief that is promised, and future, evidence of their ethnic identity and temporal inheritance in the future does not appear in Romans 9-11.