In the Evangelical world, there are two major schools of thought about predestination.
One is known as Calvinism, and the other is known as Arminianism.
A distinctive claim of Calvinism is that if you ever enter a state of grace, you will never leave it.
They refer to this doctrine as perseverance of the saints—that is, God will cause those who come to him to persevere in grace so that they will unfailingly be saved on the last day.
To support this view, Calvinists sometimes appeal to a passage in Romans that they refer to as “the Golden Chain.”
What is the Golden Chain? What does it mean? And does it really teach what Calvinists claim?
That’s what we’ll talk about today.
Introducing the Golden Chain
Calvinists sometimes appeal to a particular passage in Romans as laying out the steps in salvation. They hold that this passage refers to God unconditionally choosing certain people to be saved—as opposed to others—that it refers to him predestining them to salvation on the last day, and that it refers to their final glorification.
But as we’ll see, all of these claims are false.
This passage is found near the end of Romans 8, and they refer to it as the “Golden Chain of Redemption” or the “Golden Chain of Salvation.” Here are the verses in question:
For those whom [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified (Rom. 8:29-30, RSV).
This is called a chain because of the five elements that these verses speak of: foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification. These are held to be bound together the way links on a chain are.
The same elements are also said to belong to the ordo salutis—a Latin phrase meaning “the order of salvation.” In other words, the process of salvation contains a series of steps that always go in a certain order, beginning with God’s foreknowledge of an individual and ending with that individual’s glorification on the last day. Calvinists commonly hold that these verses name five of the steps in the ordo salutis, and that they always occur in this order in our lives.
Calvinists acknowledge that this does not contain all of the elements in the order of salvation. For example, Paul does not mention sanctification in this passage, and Calvinists commonly understand it to take place between justification and glorification. But he does at least here refer to five of the elements in what they view as the correct order.
Calvinists also draw an implication from the way these verses are phrased—that if you ever have any one of these elements apply to you, then all of the others do as well. Thus, if God foreknows you, then it is certain he will predestine you and carry you all the way forward to glorification on the last day. For example, referring to the final two stages of this process, Calvinist author R. C. Sproul writes:
Are we safe in our salvation? Once we are justified, can we lose our salvation? We cannot if the Golden Chain is true. It tells us that all the justified will be glorified, so if we are saved now, we are saved forever. That is the Golden Chain. It is not a rusty chain, but one made of the precious truth of the gospel (Romans: An Expositional Commentary, 264).
The alleged unbreakability of this sequence of events has led some to refer to this not as the “Golden Chain” but as the “Iron Chain” of Salvation.
But is this understanding correct? Are Calvinists right—or are there other ways to look at this passage? If there are, then the Calvinist cannot simply appeal to this passage as if it proved his views. He might or might not be able to appeal to other passages to do that, but he couldn’t do it with this one alone.
So let’s take a look at this passage in context and see what options there may be.
Reading in Context
Paul’s argument in Romans 8 is very tightly reasoned, which makes it difficult to pull out individual verses for comment. But I don’t have time at the moment to do a full commentary on the chapter, so I’ll only back up a little bit in the context.
Paul has been writing about how “the whole creation has been groaning with labor pains together until now” (v. 22) and how “we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly” (v. 23). He then comments on how the Holy Spirit “helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (v. 26).
So—right now—we and the world are in an agonizing situation. There is suffering in the world today, and it applies even to us Christians. However, as we send up our groans to God, the Holy Spirit helps us in our prayers, interceding with him that things will be put right so that the agony of the world and the agony of its Christians will end.
And there is assurance that this will happen, for Paul writes:
We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose (Rom. 8:28, RSV).
So Paul says that—in all things—God is working along with us for good, for the good that we and the Spirit have been praying for. Everything will, in the end, be put right. God will make sure that our efforts and our prayers will not be in vain.
Now, I should point out that some people take this verse in other senses, but that is not essential to our argument here.
What’s noteworthy for our purposes is that God gives two descriptions of Christians in this verse: He refers to us as “those who love him”—those who love God—and as those “who are called according to his purpose.”
The Nature of Calling
The description of Christians as those who love God is not unexpected, but what does it mean when it says that we are “called according to his purpose”?
In Calvinist teaching, this is understood as an effectual calling to salvation. That is, God irresistibly calls certain people to have a saving relationship with him. However, calls to salvation are not the only type of calls that God gives.
For example, in Isaiah 49, the servant of the Lord says:
Listen to me, O islands, and pay attention, you peoples from afar.
The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. . . .
And now the Lord says, who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him (Isa. 45:1, 5).
So in this passage, the Lord calls his servant not to salvation but to gather Israel back to him. This is a calling to a vocation, not to salvation.
In the same way, in Galatians Paul echoes this passage and says:
The one who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his Son in me in order that I would proclaim the gospel about him among the Gentiles (Gal. 1:15-16, LEB).
So Paul refers to how he was similarly called to a vocation—only this one was directed to the Gentiles instead of Israel in particular.
We thus see that calling in Scripture does not simply refer to being called to salvation, so we can’t simply assume that this is what is happening in Romans 8:28. Could God be calling those who love him to a vocation here?
There is significant evidence in the text that this is the case. Paul has just been speaking of the role of Christians interceding with groans on behalf of themselves and creation. This is a vocation that Christians are called to, and if the translation is correct in saying that God works with us in all things to direct them toward good, that would only further confirm this interpretation.
What is God’s Purpose?
When the text says that we are “called according to his purpose,” we also need to ask, “What purpose?”
On the Calvinist view—which understands the calling as a calling to salvation—God’s purpose would refer to his inscrutable, unknowable purpose in choosing some people for salvation rather than others.
However, does Romans 8 refer to God having any purposes that Paul might be referring to in the passage?
Indeed, it does, for Paul earlier said that:
The creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom. 8:20-21).
So Paul previously said that God subjected creation to futility in hope that it will one day be set free from its bondage to decay through the children of God.
And that would make sense of Paul’s reference to our being called according to his purpose. By being children of God, we receive the vocation to work with God to orient all things toward good so that creation itself will be set free.
We thus see significant reasons in the text to question the Calvinist understanding of what it means to be “called according to his purpose.” Not only does the text not refer to God having an inscrutable, unknowable purpose, the text names a purpose of God that is directly connected with the children of God and their vocation in the world.
The Golden Chain
We now come to the so-called Golden Chain passage:
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified (Rom. 8:29-30, RSV).
On the Calvinist reading, this would be a series of invariable steps that apply to each one of the saved on their way to final, heavenly glory.
However, before we look at the meaning of each element in the sequence, we should consider the question of whether the links between them are as air-tight as Calvinists suppose—that is, whether every person who belongs to one group, such as “those he foreknew,” belong to the next group, such as “those he predestined.”
A Logical Fallacy
The Calvinist argument on this matter is straightforward. It says that “those whom he foreknew he also predestined,” so the language of the text would indicate that everyone in the first group is also in the second group.
A Calvinist might be tempted to say that the two groups are identical, but that’s actually not indicated by the text since the second group might be larger. Speaking from a purely logical point of view, just because everyone in Group A is also in Group B does not mean that everyone in Group B is also in Group A.
For example, just because all women are humans doesn’t mean that all humans are women. Drawing that inference would be a logical fallacy. However, we can set this point aside for our purposes.
The question here is not what the language of the text suggests on its face but what it means. That is, could it contain sufficient flexibility so that the individual links in the chain—or some of them—might be general truths rather than absolute ones? If that’s the case then this golden chain might not be an iron one. There might be people who start down this path but who get off it before the end, and so there might be people who God foreknows who don’t end up saved on the last day.
This kind of reading cannot be dismissed out of hand, because people speak in general terms like this all the time. In fact, it’s comparatively rare that they speak in absolute terms, and there is usually some flexibility or play in what they say. So we have to take seriously here the possibility that Paul has some flexibility in what he says in this passage.
A Remnant Will Be Saved
When we look at what else he says in Romans, we find strong evidence for this. Here in Romans 8, Paul has just spoken of “those whom [God] foreknew,” and the proposal is that they all end up saved on the last day. However, in Romans 11 we read this:
God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” But what is God’s reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace (Rom. 11:2-5).
So Paul says that God foreknew his people Israel, but that doesn’t mean that all of Israel is saved. In fact, a large number of Israelites worshipped other gods, demolished the altars of the true God, and killed his prophets, so that only a remnant of them were saved. And Paul says that the same thing is true of Israel in his own day. So just because you’re in a group that is foreknown by God doesn’t mean you’re saved.
This points to a problem with the Calvinist reading of the text in Romans 8, which is that the Calvinist takes it in an individualistic sense. That is, when the Calvinist reads Paul’s reference to “those whom [God] foreknew,” he takes this as a reference to each and every individual that belongs to that class.
But this is not the only way to read the text. Instead of reading it individualistically, one can also read it corporately. That is, one can understand it in terms of general classes of people, which is how we see Paul using the concept of foreknowledge in Romans 11. Israel—as a corporate people—has been foreknown by God, and so God hasn’t rejected Israel as a whole. However, that doesn’t mean that an individual Israelite can’t be rejected. In fact, many individual Israelites have been rejected.
We see the same kind of language back in Deuteronomy 7, where Moses tells Israel:
You are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love upon you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples; but it is because the Lord loves you, and is keeping the oath which he swore to your fathers. . . .
Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and merciful love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. . . .
You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment, and the statutes, and the ordinances, which I command you this day (Deut. 7:6-11).
So Israel as a whole is holy to the Lord, and he chose them because he loves them and made an oath to their forefathers. And going forward, he will keep his covenant with the Israelites who love him but destroy those who hate him.
In the same way, the people that Paul is discussing in Romans 8, which includes Gentile Christians, are a group that also is said to be foreknown by God, but that doesn’t mean they will all remain in his love and be saved. In fact, in Romans 11, he tells the Gentile Christians that they are in exactly the same boat as the Israelites. Using the image of an olive tree, he writes:
If some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the richness of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. You will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast only through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you too will be cut off (Rom. 11:17-22).
So Gentiles have no advantage over Jews in this matter, and we thus see that just because a people is foreknown by God, that doesn’t mean every individual that belongs to that group will end up saved. If we read Romans in terms of Romans and let the later passages in the book inform and clarify what you might think from reading earlier ones in isolation, this is very clear.
We thus need to read the groups mentioned in the golden chain corporately—as referring to groups of people for which God has particular purposes, but that doesn’t mean that each and every individual in those groups ends up being saved. The Calvinist’s golden chain thus cannot be taken as an iron chain guaranteeing salvation.
And we’ve seen this much before we even look at the elements in the chain. Thus far, we’ve just been assuming that the Calvinist is right in reading this chain as terminating with final salvation on the last day. But now it’s time to look at the individual elements and see what Paul actually has in mind.
Foreknowledge
So let’s begin with foreknowledge. Understood according to its etymology, this would merely refer to God knowing something about the person ahead of time, and this is the way many Protestant Arminians understand the term in Romans 8.
Of course, because God is outside of time, what this understanding would really mean is that God looks at the history of the world, sees what you’re doing, and can make plans at one time for what he sees you freely choosing to do at a later date. I have a whole video about God’s foreknowledge. It’s Episode 2 of the podcast, so you can check it out for more information.
On the Arminian view of this passage, God would see that you freely respond to his grace and then predestine you on that basis. Those he sees freely not responding, he thus would not predestine.
However, many Calvinists propose that Paul isn’t understanding foreknowledge this way in this passage, and I think they have a point. This is in part because we need to read the statement about foreknowledge in context. If we back up to the previous verse, we have this:
We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren (Rom. 8:28-29).
Here Paul introduces the reference to those whom God foreknew with the word “for,” which connects it to the previous statement about God working with those who love him and who are called according to his purpose. This strongly suggests that those whom God foreknew are either those who love him or those who are called according to his purpose—or both.
It so happens that in 1 Corinthians, Paul says something very interesting:
If one loves God, one is known by him (1 Cor. 8:3).
So in Paul’s thought, if you love God, you are known by him. In other words, you have a special relationship with God if you love him. He knows you personally, not just in the abstract. He has a special friendship with you.
And we saw those same two elements side by side in Romans 8. First Paul refers to those who love God in verse 28, and then he refers to those who God knows—or foreknows—in verse 29. So I think that the Calvinist has a point here, that the foreknowledge referred to in this verse is likely not simply abstract knowledge of what someone will do at a particular point in time. It is more likely indicative of a special, chosen relationship that one has with God.
But the news isn’t all good for the Calvinist, because the Calvinist wants to make God’s foreknowledge of someone based on an inexplicable, unknowable choice that God makes for certain individuals over others, and that’s not what we see in Paul’s discussion of these concepts. For Paul, if you love God then he knows you. The Calvinist would like to turn it the other way around and say if God foreknows you then that makes you love him. So it looks like God’s foreknowledge wouldn’t be based simply on a choice God made. It would be based on the fact that you love him, and thus he enters into a special relationship with you.
Of course, because this is foreknowledge, God has this special affection for you before you love him, but that’s how being outside of time works. God sees those in time who love him, and he places them in a special relationship.
Predestination
Now we turn to the next link in the chain, which is predestination. In the Calvinist view, this term is used to refer to predestination to final salvation. After God chooses you, he assigns you the destiny of being saved on the last day.
But that is not what is happening in this verse. Instead, Paul says that God predestines those he foreknew “to be conformed to the image of his Son.” This does not refer to final salvation on the last day. Paul has already told us, earlier in Romans 8, that “all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (v. 14), and he expresses essentially the same thought that he does here in Ephesians, where he says:
In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will (Eph. 1:4-5).
So we have already been adopted as God’s sons, and so sonship is a present reality for Christians. And Romans 8 and Ephesians 1 are the only places in the New Testament where Christians are spoken of as predestined, so this is how the New Testament conceptualizes our predestination. It is not a predestination to final salvation but a predestination to becoming sons of God.
Ephesians also adds that this is done “in love,” in keeping with the mutual exchange of love between God and those who love him. And Romans spells out a purpose for which God predestined us to sonship: “in order that [Jesus] might be the first-born among many brethren.”
Calling
We then move to the next element in the chain, which is calling. Since this is mentioned after predestination to sonship and before justification, it is most naturally taken as the call to become justified sons, though—as we saw earlier—God’s calls often involve the element of vocation, and in context we have the idea of Christians being called to intercede and work with God in “all things” to turn them toward good.
Justification
Moving to the next element, we come to justification, which is also a present aspect of the life of the Christian. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians, “You were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11).
Glorification
Finally, we come to the last element in the chain—glorification. Here the Calvinist typically argues that we have leapt over the present and into the future, for glorification is something that will happen to us on the last day. On his view, the chain thus guarantees the final salvation of all those who have been included in it up to now—from God’s foreknowledge all the way through to the end of final glorification on the last day.
We have already seen that one problem with this is that the language being used in this passage contains more flexibility than that. In fact, Paul explicitly warns Gentile Christians in Romans that they can fall and “be cut off” (Rom. 11:22), so that they are in the same situation as the Jewish people “whom [God] foreknew” (Rom. 11:2).
So in the golden chain passage, Paul is speaking of corporate groups, so that as long as we remain in them—as long as we remain among “those who love him”—our destiny will be assured, but that does not mean each individual member will always remain saved, for—as Paul indicates both for Jews and for Gentiles—only a “remnant” of the foreknown group may remain (Rom. 11:5).
Paying Attention to the Verb Tenses
However, there is another, equally fundamental problem with the way the Calvinist is taking the concept of glorification in the golden chain. He is assuming that it refers to a future reality, and that is not what Paul says. It’s true that all of the things Paul has mentioned up to now—foreknowledge, predestination to sonship, calling, and justification—are all past realities for the Christian.
That is indicated by the verb tenses Paul uses. Each of the verbs is in the aorist tense and the indicative mood in Greek, and this indicates an event taking place in past time. So the verb tenses tell you that each of these things has already happened to those who love God.
It would be possible for Paul to then move to the future for glorification, but he’d need to use the future tense and say that God will glorify those who love him, and that’s not what he says. Instead, he continues to use the same aorist indicative verb form: “glorified.”
This means that Paul presents the glorification of those who love God as a past event just as much as he does justification, calling, predestination, and foreknowledge.
Present Glorification
We thus have to take seriously the idea that Paul is speaking of glorification as an already existing reality in the life of the Christian, and this is exactly how he speaks of it in the parallel passage in Ephesians 1, where he wrote:
[God] predestined us to adoption through Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace that he bestowed on us in the beloved (Eph. 1:5-6, LEB).
So God has already bestowed on us the glory of his grace. It is a present reality for Christians that Paul also mentions in what is essentially a reworking of the same elements that he presents in the golden chain passage.
Furthermore, in 2 Corinthians Paul states:
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18).
So Paul indicates that Christians are already being changed “into his likeness from one degree of glory to another,” which fits with his reference in Romans 8 to us being “conformed to the image of his Son” and thus “glorified” as a present reality.
Future Glorification?
Of course, one could point out that, in the future, we will be transformed to be like Christ in even greater degrees of glory, so there is an aspect of our glorification that is still future. In Romans 8, Paul has already spoken of “the glory that is to be revealed to us” (v. 18) and how creation will “obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (v. 21), so there are definitely future glories that are still coming.
But this doesn’t change the fact that in the golden chain Paul speaks of glorification as a past event, as something that has already occurred to Christians.
The Beginning of a Process?
Could you propose that—even though he is using a past tense verb here—he’s only envisioning that as the beginning of a process that will complete in the future? You could, and by making that proposal for this verb, you’d have to allow it for all the others that Paul uses.
We’d thus be looking at an ongoing call that God gives us, an ongoing justification that God is working out in our lives, and an ongoing predestination to be “conformed to the image of his Son,” because there is also a future aspect of sonship. Paul has already said in Romans 8 that “we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (v. 23).
I’m entirely happy to entertain the proposal that God has begun each of these processes in us and that they will be completed in the future. The grammar doesn’t suggest this. The verb tenses suggest a series of past events. But it’s a possible reading.
But that isn’t a good reading for the Calvinist, because if these are just initiated, ongoing processes then you can’t simply assert that they will all complete for every single person involved. The golden chain is thus not an iron chain, because some may cease to cooperate with God—they may cease to be among “those who love him”—before the end.
And we already know what happens to people like that. As Paul will say later in the book:
You stand fast only through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you too will be cut off (Rom. 11:20-22).
We thus see that the Calvinist can’t use the Golden Chain passage as a proof of his views.
Not only can it be read in other ways, but a straightforward reading indicates that it should be read in another way.
Summing Up
To sum it up, Paul is saying that God has chosen to have a special relationship with those who love him, that he predestined them to become like his Son, he has called them to the vocation of helping put the world right, he has justified them, and he has already given them a share of his glory.
At least that’s what the passage would mean if you give it a straightforward reading and take the past tense verbs seriously.
There is absolutely nothing in here about God choosing people for mysterious, inscrutable reasons that have nothing to do with the people in question. He’s talking about people who love God. Those are the ones this passage is talking about, and those are the people God foreknows and chooses.
And there is nothing here that says—if you ever enter into that class of people—that you can never leave. In fact, just a few chapters later Paul explicitly warns that not all of God’s chosen people are in a state of salvation and that, if we cease to have faith in God, we will also be cut off.
So—as with so many passages—we find Calvinists reading their theology into the text rather than deriving it from the text.
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