There are four reasons why it is
unlikely that individual election is also intended when Scripture describes the
election of a group. First, when Paul or other authors want to emphasize an
individual amid a collective group, they can do that. For example, Paul says, “each
of us” (e.g., Rom. 14:12; 15:2) or “each of you” (1 Cor. 1:12; 1 Thess. 2:12;
4:4) at various places in his letters. Paul does this when he wants to
foreground individuals within a collective, but Paul does not do this in any of
the predestination passages. Once we are aware that our biblical authors could
have emphasized individual election amid group election but opted not to do so,
we are left to wonder why advocates of individual election are eager to
emphasize something that Scripture is not interested in highlighting. It is
beyond dispute that if they happened to hold to individual predestination amid
group predestination, Paul and Peter could have stressed it, but they did not.
Second, it is not true that
groups are merely a collection of individuals, so that specific predestined
individuals must be in view within corporate election to populate the group.
Since the Christ is the predestined elect head of the group and the source of
the saving benefits, anyone who is incorporated into his body at any time is
incorporated into his benefits. If a person repentantly swears loyalty to King
Jesus, they become predestined and elect because they have entered the group
that is united to his status and benefits. If they never do this or cease doing
this, they are not part of that group, so that they are not predestined and
elect.
A person can enter the Christ group
at any time, because groups and their benefits persist even when
individuals enter and leave them. Groups have properties that define them beyond
the individual members that constitute the group. Those who lived in the New
Testament era knew this. For example, individuals joined voluntary societies to
obtain benefits associated with group membership, especially ceremonial meals
and burial after death.
Voluntary societies were hugely
popular in the New Testament world. Ancient individauls wjo joined such societies
for burial necessarily understood that group identity—its membership and
benefits—was not reducible merely to its present individual members.
Individuals could join or exist such groups (usually by paying or forsaking
dues), but they had confidence that if they remained in the group, they would
enjoy its benefits. Such groups were valuable precisely because they existed
before individual members joined and perdured beyond them. Otherwise, a person
would not have valued a benefit that only an enduring group could provide after
the individuals who presently populate the group had died, such as burial.
That burial after death was
valued as a personal benefit within voluntary societies in the New
Testament world reminds us that group properties and benefits extend beyond the
individuals who presently constitute the group—a corporate body. Predestining
election can be corporate in the New Testament, because the Messiah is that predestined
and elect kingly head of the body, and he shares that status with whomever
enters and remains within his body at any time.
Third, although to propose that
body corporate and individual election are in view seems reasonable, we must
remember that the biblical cultures are quite different from our own. Many of
us are products of the Western theological tradition, with its emphasis on
individual salvation. However, the cultures of the Bible emphasized group
values and identity more than individual. In short, Christians shaped by the
West ten to force Scripture to answer questions about individual salvation that
it is not interested in answering. Since group identity was normative within the
biblical cultures, it is prima facie improbable that individual election is
intended within its descriptions of group election.
Fourth, and most importantly, we
can test the degree to which Scripture might intend individual election within
the group. The Bible itself is the premier testing group. Yet to help us understand
the Bible and provide a further probabilistic baseline, we have valuable
ancient documents—for example, the Dead Sea Scrolls and portions of the
Pseudepigrapha and the Apostolic Fathers—that were either entirely or mostly unavailable
to Reformation-era theologians. Using these, we can credibly carry out the search
for individual election within group election beyond that was possible during
the Reformation. Numerous studies have been done examining Scripture and
beyond.
The results? Historically based
studies on election agree: out of some hundred possible examples, when it
pertains to salvation, election is exclusively corporate in the New
Testament and related noncanonical literature. Individual election is not a
view of Jews or early Christians can be demonstrated to have held regularly, if
at all, during this era. (Matthew W. Bates, Beyond the Salvation Wars:
Why Both Protestants and Catholics Must Reimagine How We Are Saved [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Brazos Press, 2025], 145-47, emphasis in original)