Corporate or Individual?

This topic reminds me of something Ben Wittherington recently wrote: "Election is a corporate concept, and individuals can opt in or out of the elect group."

This is, of course, nothing more than a ploy to counter the Reformed doctrine of individual election, but this objection is only true if election is exclusively corporate. On the contrary, we are very comfortable affirming that election is both corporate and individual. So, which is it? The Reformed answer is not, contrary to popular thinking, that it is individual and not corporate. Rather, we affirm both. Why?

If you deny individual election in Romans 8:29, 30, then you wind up with the assertion that all those foreknown are predestined, called, justified, and glorified as a class but not as individuals. However, Arminianism denies individual calling. The appeal to corporate election to the exclusion of individuals won't work here. The persons here are a group, that is true, but every individual in the group is included, while others outside the group are excluded. That's the point of the text, that the elect are in possession of a precious and powerful gift that others do not have, by no reason other than God's mercy. What's more, Romans 8 is particularistic and individual. But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.(Romans 8:9). Paul is speaking to and of the elect as a group, because the individuals themselves are elect and have the Spirit of God. God foreknows and predestines individuals, calls individuals, justifies individuals, and glorifies individuals."Who will separate us from the love of Christ?" (Romans 8:35). Is this only corporate or is it also individual?

What of Ephesians 1:4? If election is corporate here, then you have a classic example of the regressive fallacy. The disputant will ground his claim in an explanation which needs, in turn, to be grounded, e.g. his assertion only moves the question at issue back one step. “Us” is made up of individuals. Corporate election is useless unless all the ones in the group are elected. Corporate election presupposes individual election. “Choose” here means to pick out of a group, not pick an abstract group whose members are filled later. The Arminian objection amounts to saying God choose Christ and anybody that chooses Christ is "in Christ." Okay, then why does one choose Christ? The text says that God predestined us – not Christ, but the individuals – to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ.

In both of these examples, the disputant fails to grasp that nations are not described as salvifically called and justified. Nations are not described as adopted and united to Christ. Nations are not described as glorified salvifically. In fact, Paul specifically denies the corporate election of Israel with respect to individual salvation in Romans 9. The consistent Arminian needs to find a text where Paul answers the question about why not all Israel is being saved with something like "because God has chosen to elect Gentiles as a nation." What's more, if universal prevenient grace is evenly distributed, then why does one person not resist it while the other does? Why does one believe and not the other?

The verb (eklego) ordinarily takes a definite object: Christ chose the twelve Apostles (Lk 6:13; Jn 6:70; 13:18; Acts 1:2). The Father chose the Son (Lk 9:35). The church chose Stephen (Acts 6:5). The church chose Silas and Barsabbas (Acts 15:22). There is, then, no presumption that the verb does not take a definite object and/or has a plural, abstract class in view. The common sense notion of choice involves a particular choice, and the word itself is generally construed to mean "to pick out of a group," not "pick a group." Biblical usage merely confirms that common sense notion.

This is not a denial that it can and does take a collective object. However, even when the verb takes a collective object, there is no logical or practical disjunction between a group and its constituent members. A class is composed of individuals. Christ didn't choose the Apostolate as a class, but the individual Apostles, not a null-set to be filled in by anonymous "whosoever wills." Christ said that God gave Him a people (John 6:37), and that no one individual that comes to Him will be turned away (44). He then clearly stated that no one can come unless drawn, and that person will be raised on the last day. These are individuals.The Good Shepherd calls his sheep by name (John 10:3). The Good Shepherd grants eternal life to the sheep (vv10,28).This is not corporate election. The Good Shepherd does not grant eternal life to the reprobate, the goats. Paul was elected as an individual. Peter was elected as an individual. John was elected as an individual. Lydia was elected as an individual. Cornelius was elected as an individual. The Ethiopian Eunuch was elected as an individual. The consistent Arminian must make these all exceptions for a particular purpose. If so, then he has admitted that election is not a corporate concept. You can’t say that salvific election is a corporate concept, and then immediately proceed to make exceptions. We were elected as individuals, and we become that for which we were chosen. Moreover, proof that God elects corporately is not proof that he does not elect individually.

I would ask, is God's love individual or corporate? If the answer is "both" or "individual," then why not say that His election is corporate and not individual? Does the Arminian not take generally the pantos and kosmos passages and apply them to every individual? Is God's love personal or impersonal? God love and calling are extended, according to Arminian theology, to all without exception by way of prevenient grace. Yet, His election, it would seem, is corporate and not individual. That ultimately means God elects initially memberless classes in an impersonal fashion, a plan, not individuals. Apparently, God is not as "omnibenevolent" as we are led to believe. God's act of election was neither impersonal nor mechanistic, but was permeated with personal love for those whom he chose. (Grudem) Is justification corporate? Adoption? Sanctification? Glorification? Regeneration?

Don’t fishermen count the number of fish in their catch? Don't you know your children by name? Don’t shepherds name and number the sheep in their flocks? Don’t tax-collectors add and itemize taxable goods? Examples could be multiplied. A disjunction between corporate and individual election is in out sorts with the inherent individualism of his Arminian soteriology. How do you combine libertarian freewill with a
consistently corporate model of our spiritual, salvific destiny? Personal autonomy and corporate identity are at Antipodes, and if—for the sake of argument—we were to grant that the NT authors did not draw a conscious inference from corporate to individual election, the class/ member relation still remains for the Arminian as well as the Calvinist, so the Arminian objection still fails.

A Calvinist doesn’t deny the corporate dimension of election. We fully acknowledge that a person can know if he is part of "the elect" by way of God's revealed will (viz. faith, repentance, etc.; that 's part of our doctrine of assurance); but this is not a priniciple that means that God elected a plan or God elected Christ and then any anonymous set of volunteers could opt in or out. Rather, God is saving a people—a people comprising his church, the Beloved, those called by God, but this does not authorize you to drive a wedge between corporate and individual election, playing the former off against the latter. Election has means as well as ends. To be chosen in union with Christ is to be personally appointed to salvation, not apart from Christ, but through Christ, as our personal Redeemer. When Paul goes on to say of the elect that they believed the gospel and received the seal of salvation (Eph. 1:13-14), the effect of election and the field of it terminates on elect individuals. Paul uses the plural (“us”) because he is writing to the church of Ephesus. He is addressing his letter to a congregation, but a congregation is made up of individual members.

It is impossible to have a national election without the election of individual units within the national group, because you must still contend with the units in the group. So, to say that Romans 9, for example, has to do only with national election and not with individual election is an impossibility; that is, it is a contradiction in terms. If we say that it is national election, then we have the election of a number of individual units within the corporate, national body, since not everybody in the nation is "elected" salvifically. So, we’re back at the same question that we started with when we talk about election; why is any one person and not another "elect?" We answer: God's personal love and mercy to the one and not the other. We thank our Arminian friends for revealing that they believe salvation is just a matter of impersonal, retributive justice, not absolute, personal mercy.