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Salvation: Mechanical or Relational?  /  Predestination and Free Will  /  Discussion Questions
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Question 10
When addressing “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart,” Bercot presents Irenaeus’s foreknowledge explanation and Origen’s clay/wax-in-the-sun analogy (same action, different response based on the subject); how do these approaches change what you think God is doing when people harden under truth, miracles, or hard preaching, and how should that affect how you interpret rejection and resistance in real ministry situations?
Another way to ask: How do the foreknowledge view and the clay/wax-in-the-sun picture change how you see God when people harden their hearts after truth or miracles? How should that affect how you respond to rejection in real ministry?

Direct Answer These approaches frame hardening as God giving people over to what He foreknows they will choose, or as the same divine “light” producing different responses depending on the heart—not as God overriding someone’s will. In ministry, that would mean interpreting resistance as a real moral response to truth, not proof that God is arbitrarily blocking repentance.

Support from Transcript:

  • Irenaeus on Pharaoh: God “foreknows all things” and “has given them over to unbelief… leaving them in the darkness that they have chosen for themselves.”
  • He concludes about Pharaoh: “they would never have believed.”
  • Bercot says such passages “present no difficulty” because foreknowledge allows God to interact in a non-arbitrary way.
  • Origen’s alternative: hardening doesn’t mean God “intruded into Pharaoh’s brain… and made Pharaoh do something.”
  • Clay/wax analogy: same sun action; clay hardens, wax softens “based on their inherent traits.”
  • Pharaoh’s miracles: same miracles hardened Pharaoh but caused “a great multitude of Egyptians to leave Egypt.”
  • He parallels Jesus’ hard sayings: some followers “rejected him,” while disciples stayed and were “softened.”
Discussion Follow-ups If God’s truth can both soften and harden depending on the hearer, how should that shape your patience and expectations when preaching, correcting, or doing evangelism?

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