over human beings’ eternal destinies. After one of Paul’s exhortations, Luke writes, “As many as were appointed to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48). Romans 9, likewise, contains one of the most famous, or infamous, statements of God’s foreordination of human beings to either salvation or eternal punishment. “When Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac,” Paul writes, “though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election
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