Pauls care for them was alive and active even without their repentance, no? Moses would stand in the space if God would allow for his nation and so too would Paul, and of course Christ died for the sins of the world.
However we read in the climax to the entire argument that by provoking the nation and bringing in the gentiles
“all of Israel will be saved.” During that section there’s a clear distinction being made between Israel as the Jewish people and the gentile world, so it’s not an effort at hyping up and promoting the salvations of an otherworldly
“spiritual Israel,” rather it’s the salvation of the actual nation of Jews.
“All of Israel will be saved” actually occurs in the Bible so far back as Jeremiah and Isaiah, where the only Israel that was known was the people, the literal descendants of the man Israel.
That’s not to write Paul doesn’t make a provision for this category of spiritual descendants, he actually makes it in Romans nine, but even there it’s not in view of God creating people for eternal damnation, rather it’s with a mind to show that the gentiles too have access to salvation. Gentiles too can be the sons of God because there’s a spiritual category of son, but Paul doesn’t write that in an effort to disqualify Jews from the blessing.
Harmonising the verses was done a page or two back when we read how God was hardening for a purpose, namely for the ingrafting of the gentiles. The section you quoted is actually followed by four Old Testament citations where Paul stresses the ingrafting, though just sharing one should be enough. . .
As he says in Hosea: “I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people; and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,”
Since Romans 11 is arguing for hope and salvation in the case of the wicked Jewish nation, there’s no use in you or I thinking that Romans 9 is a judgment passage that’s trying to allude to people created for eternal conscious torment. Rather the
“objects of wrath prepared for destruction,” like in the case of psalms, are about to suffer temporal destruction in the war where the second temple falls.
What is that group’s ignoble purpose, Carl? Not to be doomed from the womb and suffer torment forever, surely not. That’s betraying the whole cultural and historic context. Instead the dishonourable use was that the Jewish people rejected and murdered their own messiah to the advantage of the gentiles.
Now the ingrafting of a wild olive branch can move the natural branches that have been cut off to jealousy. Romans 11 really answers your concerns shared in Romans 9 and gives both you and I a thorough conclusion to the whole line of argument that Paul is going through.
Stopping and making base camp midway through his argument doesn’t do our theology any favours.
That would be the dishonourable use theme and something Paul and God expect or wish to redeem.
Are you a determinist or do you believe in any of the five points of Calvinism?