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Many (= All) are Called, But Few (= Not All) are Chosen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Ben F. Meyer
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Extract

The conviction that God is good, that he takes ‘no pleasure in the death of the wicked’ (Ezek 18. 23), that he ‘desires all men to be saved’ (1 Tim 2. 4), and that Christ ‘gave himself as a ransom for all’ (1 Tim 2. 4), belongs to the main thrust of Christian soteriology. Although there have been soteriological pessimists (Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, was an optimist on the salvation of the angels, but a pessimist on the salvation of human beings) and optimists (Karl Barth construed Paul's universalist teleology as a flat guarantee of universal salvation), most Christians have had to content themselves with an affirmation of God's at least antecedently universal salvific will, with the hope for the salvation of many and even of all, and with a straightforward agnosticism respecting whether the finally lost will be ‘any’ or ‘many’ or something in between. But, in the word of Matt 22.14 (l.v. 20. 16), Jesus himself speaks, and he seems (a) to evoke election = predestination = salvation, (b) to reduce the number of the elect = predestined = saved to ‘few’, and (c) to suggest that the differentiation between the called and the elect is not the outcome of human acts but of divine decision. All three factors — final salvation is at stake, few are saved, and this by God's sovereign decision — say why this word has been a crux interpretum.

Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 1990 , pp. 89 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 See, e.g., Sutcliffe, E. F., ‘Many Are Called But Few Are Chosen’, Irish Theological Quarterly 28 (1961) 126–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Meyer, B. F., The Aims of Jesus (London: SCM, 1979) 171–3.Google Scholar

3 See below, note 14.Google Scholar

4 Jeremias, Joachim, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (London: SCM, 3 1966) 207–18, 225–31.Google Scholar

5 In the view of the Qumran community the ‘sons of darkness’ to be defeated in the eschatological war (1QM 1. 1, 7, 10, 16; 3. 6, 9 etc.) were already represented in contemporary Israel (1QS 1. 10). Whereas the ultimate future of empirical Israel was obscure and for the most part inglorious, the Qumran brethren ‘were the faithful “remnant” of their time, and indeed the final “remnant” of all time’. Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975) 35.Google Scholar

6 Boissard, Edmond, ‘Note sur l'interprétation du texte “Multi sunt vocati, pauci vero electi”’, Revue Thomiste 52 (1952) 569–85.Google Scholar

7 See Joüon, Paul, Grammaire de l'hébreu biblique (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1947) 436. Modern Hebrew uses yôtēr (cf. Qoh. 12. 12) and pāhût.Google ScholarAlso: Blass-Debrunner-Funk, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament (Cambridge: University Press; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961) 127–8;Google ScholarBlass-Debrunner-Rehkopf, Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 15 1979) 194–7.Google Scholar

8 This is especially the case when ‘comparative min’ has been used in the Aramaic substratum in an exclusive sense (e.g., Luke 18. 14). A survey of the Greek renderings of this Semitic phenomenon is offered by Jeremias, J., Unknown Sayings of Jesus (London: SPCK, 1957) 78, note 1 (not included in the second edition of 1964). See also Blass-Debrunner-Funk, A Greek Grammar, 128.Google Scholar

9 See Boissard, ‘Note’, 581 for both citations.Google Scholar

10 Boissard, , ‘Note’, 573, note 1.Google Scholar

11 Boissard, Edmond, ‘Many Are Called, Few Are Chosen’, Theology Digest 3 (1955) 46–50.Google Scholar

12 The point is made even more effectively in NEB Num 26. 54, 56: To the larger group (Iārab) you shall give a larger property and to the smaller a smaller… Properties shall be apportioned by lot between the larger families and the smaller (bên rab .’ In The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1955) the last phrase is rendered ‘between the more and the fewer’. This correlates perfectly with LXX Num 26. 56, as we shall see.Google Scholar

13 Jeremias, J., πολλοί, TDNT 6, 536–45, at 541–2.Google Scholar

14 The following NT passages exhibit forms of πολύς, and όλίγος played off against one another: Matt 7. 13–14 (cf. Luke 13. 23–24); Matt 9. 37 = Luke 10. 2; Matt 22. 14 (l.v. 20.16); Matt 25. 21, 23 (cf. Luke 19.17); Luke 7. 47; 2 Cor 8.15. Of them I take the following to exhibit the correlative comparative: Matt 7. 13–14 (the greater part — the lesser part; or, the more numerous — the less numerous); Matt 22. 14 (many = more = all — few = fewer = not all; see below); Matt 24. 21, 23 (a lesser charge — a greater charge); Luke 7. 47c (he who is forgiven less loves less [is less grateful]); 2 Cor 8. 15 (more — less).Google Scholar

15 ‘πολλί’, 542.Google Scholar

16 Jeremias, , ‘πολλί’, put it this way: ‘Formally there is an antithesis between a great and a small number, but materially the many represent the totality’. I would make one change in this sentence: not ‘great’ and ‘small’, but ‘greater’ and ‘smaller’.Google Scholar

17 Jeremias, Joachim, New Testament Theology: The Proclamation of Jesus (London: SCM, 1971) 131.Google Scholar

18 New Testament Theology, 130–1.Google Scholar

19 New Testament Theology, 177.Google Scholar

20 Among recent studies, Knoch, Otto, Wer Ohren hat, der höre (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1983) 143, 147.Google Scholar

21 Aramaic reconstruction proposed by Dalman, Gustaf, Jesus-Jeshua (London: SPCK, 1929) 227, and accepted by Jeremias, New Testament Theology, 25: There are not enough data available to make any confirmatory judgment on the correlative comparative use of (as with and polloi/oligoi).Google Scholar

22 Bultmann, R., The History of the Synoptic Tradition (Oxford: Blackwell, 2 1968) 105, with reference to ‘parallels in Dalman’, (Dalman, Jesus-Jeshua, 228, cites Midr. Sam. 8: ‘There are elect who are rejected and again brought near; but there are also elect who, once rejected, are never brought near again’) entertains the possibility, no more, that it was ‘a traditional saying of Jewish apocalyptic’. That this cannot be apodictically excluded is clear from what is said above about 4 Ezra 8. 3. It does not, however, rule out the probability that the words were spoken by Jesus — a point clearer to Dalman than to Bultmann. Otherwise, in Bultmann's view, the saying would belong to the authentic words of Jesus as ‘teacher of wisdom’.Google Scholar

23 Meyer, B. F., The Aims of Jesus, 86.Google Scholar

24 Jeremias, J., New Testament Theology, 117.Google Scholar