Saving Romans 9 from the Monstrous View of God

A couple of weeks ago I got this text from a friend: 

"How do you break down Romans 9?"

He was asking because this chapter is notoriously known as the 'Calvinist' chapter of the Bible in which God seems to predestine a whole lot of things and a whole lot of people. After an initial read, you'd be tempted to think that if God likes you then you're in. And if God doesn't like you... well, it's not good.

If you know my theology at all, you'll know that I'm definitely not drawn to this way of making sense of God.

As we prepared to tackle Romans nine in our podcast for The Forest and the Trees, we thought it would be awesome to invite one of my mentors to be a guest with us. In particular, the guy who taught me the opposite view of Calvinism. 

Greg Boyd is one of the most famous living theologians of our day and if you only read his books you might be forgiven for assuming he's likely a stuffy academic type. In person, he's a wild ride. Thankfully, our podcast captured all of it.

You can watch the video above or listen to the audio version. It's an hour and a half and Greg unloads so much theology and history that you might need to work your way through it a second time. But it is SO GOOD and will offer you another way of reading Romans nine without resorting to the seemingly monstrous view of God.