Aboriginal guilt, predestination ante praevisa merita, the eternal damnation of unbaptized infants, the real existence of “vessels of wrath,” and so on—all of these odious and incoherent dogmatic leitmotifs, so to speak, and others equally nasty, have been ascribed to Paul. And yet each and every one of them not only is incompatible with the guiding themes of Paul’s proclamation of Christ’s triumph and of God’s purpose in election, but is something like their perfect inversion.
