I totally agree with judicial hardening ... God cuts people off in their rebellion at some points in the Bible, and He remembers His promises and revisits people at some other points in the Bible. Pharaoh is said to harden his own heart in the Bible too.
So I’ve never seen that judicial hardening as being something effectually done to people like a power from on high, it’s not imposed heart hardening.
Rather the creature sends itself on a collision course with God. A course I don’t believe we creatures could sustain nor that God would want to sustain. He wants all to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
I’m not a determinist and I assume you aren’t either.
The overall point of Romans nine, ten and eleven however is that Gods hardening is done for a purpose, namely the ingrafting of the gentiles (you and I.)
In the same way, Gods prophets were some of the instrumental means to harden the heart of the people of Israel, preparing their heart to reject their messiah not so that He can doom them, but rather so He could save.
Paul holds out hope for Israel in Romans despite their own hearts being judicially hardened during Christ’s ministry.
Romans 9 isn’t an easy section of scripture to understand, however, you’re a reasonable man who I wouldn’t think to lecture on what this scripture or that scripture means. You know there are other sincere, scholarly robust views out there.
We’ve all read the Bible, some of us read it annually or on some kind of schedule, so rather than lecture anyone on what the scriptures mean, I’d rather say I hope my understanding of the scripture could someday be more compatible with the beliefs you currently hold.
I have found so often that Dr Thomas Talbott has something useful to say and he says this about the hardening of hearts in "The Inescapable Love of God", chapter 5, basically that, yes, God does effectively “blind” people’s eyes to the truth but only for a while and always for his ultimately salvific purposes:
"By literally shutting sinners up to their disobedience and requiring them to endure the consequences of their own rebellion, God reveals the self-defeating nature of evil and shatters the illusions that make evil choices possible in the first place.
This extract from earlier in the chapter might help to explain this (my emphases):
… Paul explicitly states that God’s severity towards the disobedient, his judgment of sin,
even his willingness to blind the eyes and harden the hearts of the disobedient, are expressions of a more fundamental quality, that of mercy, which is itself an expression of his purifying love. In Romans 11:7 he thus writes: “What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened” (or blinded). He then asks, “have they [the nonremnant who were hardened or blinded] stumbled so as to fall?” and his answer is most emphatic: “By no means!” (11:11). By the end of the following verse, he is already speaking of their full inclusion: “Now if their stumbling means riches for the world, and if their defeat means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!” (11:12). And three verses later he is hinting that their acceptance will mean “life from the dead” (9:15). He then generalizes the whole thing: God blinded the eyes and hardened the hearts of the unbelieving Jews, we discover, as a means by which all of Israel might be saved (Romans 11:25-26) — all of Israel including those who were blinded and hardened. There is simply no way, so far as I can tell, to escape the universalistic implication here. The specific point that Paul makes in Romans 11 is this: Though the unbelieving Jews were in some sense “enemies of God” (11:28), they nonetheless became “disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy” (11:31-NIV). But the general principle (of which the specific point is but an instance) is even more glorious: “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” (11:32— Talbott’s emphasis).
According to Paul, therefore, God is always and everywhere merciful, but we sometimes experience his mercy (or purifying love) as severity, judgment, punishment. When we live a life of obedience, we experience his mercy as kindness; when we live a life of disobedience, we experience it as severity (see 11:22). Paul himself calls this a mystery (11:25) and admits that God’s ways are, in just this respect, “inscrutable” and “unsearchable” (11:33)."
Btw, this chapter and chapters 9 and 11 can be downloaded for free from his website at
Thomas Talbott- The Inescapable Love of God - 2nd Edition
Edited to actually put my emphases in.
