Effectual Calling

CRITICAL: ‘election,’ the key term for this doctrine, has been almost totally captured by its political-voting sense in contemporary English; readers encountering Romans 9’s election language without explicit signposting are highly likely to import a political-campaign frame that has nothing to do with God’s sovereign, prior, unilateral choice. Also relevant: ‘born again’ language (adjacent in American culture, though not itself in Romans) is now strongly coded as an evangelical political/cultural identity marker rather than its plain theological sense of new life (Romans 6:4’s ‘newness of life’).