Hello and welcome back to Sociology 101.

Today we have a guest with us as you can see there on the screen.

This is Paul Smith.

Paul, welcome to the program.

Thanks, good to be here.

Thanks for having me on.

Paul is one of our Calvinistic interlocutors on social media and has always done a good job of representing his side well.

And so I invited him to come on at, well, actually you, I think initially suggested us having a conversation about Romans 9, kind of talking through that

together and maybe helping each other at least understand where we're coming from. That way we can

maybe iron sharpen iron a little bit and encourage one another, but also challenge each other

to go a little deeper in our understanding of the text. Sound good? Yeah, sounds real good. All right. Well,

I went ahead and just brought the text up. I have it in the NASB,

just because that's the translation I use for my book and what I'm most familiar with.

But if you have a preferred translation, we can always switch over to that if you need to.

But I thought we were just kind of walk through this together.

And you feel free to ask questions, challenge my particular perspective, and vice versa. And we'll just kind of walk through this together and you feel free to ask questions, challenge my particular perspective or vice versa.

And we'll just kind of walk through it together and learn from each other.

Sounds good.

All right.

Well, I don't know if we want to read everything, but I think most people are familiar with Romans chapter 9, especially those who tune into this program.

But it looks like the first really three verses are an expression of Paul's desire and longing for the salvation of his Jewish brethren. And I'm not sure we have much of a disagreement on that particular aspect that, you know, obviously Paul wants them to be saved, but they're currently in unbelief.

And he's in almost a sense saying, I would take their place if possible, be a cursed myself.

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