I recently came upon the below social media post (name withheld):

First Name, Last Name

Them: “All Israel will be saved! Have you not read Romans 11:26?”

Me: “Who is Israel?”

Them: “The nation of Israel!”

Me: “For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants… That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants.” -Romans 9:6-8

Them: …

The post at the time I saw it showed engagement metrics: 147 comments, 2.2K retweets, 36K likes, 5.4M views, with additional interaction numbers at the bottom (75 comments, 95 retweets, 654 likes, 19K views).

The social media exchange above, and many others like it I have seen over the last several days, many with a very antagonistic, condescending, and belittling tone toward dispensationalists reveal a troubling pattern that has become all too common in contemporary theological discourse: the reduction of complex dispensational hermeneutics to simplistic caricatures that either demonstrate genuine unfamiliarity with serious dispensational scholarship or, more concerning, deliberately misrepresent dispensational positions to score rhetorical points.

What we see here is the creation of a false dilemma – as if dispensationalists are unaware of Romans 9:6-8 or have never grappled with Paul’s distinction between ethnic Israel and the Israel of faith. This approach either betrays an honest ignorance of how careful dispensational theologians have nuanced their understanding of Israel’s identity, or it represents a knowing distortion of dispensational views that sets up convenient straw men rather than engaging the actual sophistication of dispensational hermeneutics.

The reality is that thoughtful dispensationalists have long recognized the complexity of Paul’s usage of “Israel” throughout Romans 9-11, and their interpretive framework accounts for both the remnant principle within ethnic Israel and the ultimate restoration of national Israel – a both/and theological synthesis that such reductive social media exchanges entirely miss. Rather than advancing genuine theological understanding, these posts create false dichotomies that prevent serious engagement with the legitimate exegetical and theological questions that Romans 9-11 presents to interpreters of all theological persuasions.

The conversation in the specific social media exchange I cited touches upon one of the most complex and debated passages in Pauline theology – the relationship between Romans 9:6-8 and Romans 11:26, and the question of who constitutes “Israel” in Paul’s argument. To properly understand these texts, we must resist the temptation to proof-text and instead allow Paul’s sustained argument across Romans 9-11 to unfold in its full complexity.

The Structure of Paul’s Argument

Paul’s discussion of Israel in Romans 9-11 forms a carefully constructed theodicy – a defense of God’s faithfulness in light of Israel’s apparent rejection of the Messiah. The argument moves through three distinct but interconnected phases: God’s sovereign election (chapter 9), human responsibility and the inclusion of Gentiles (chapter 10), and God’s ultimate faithfulness to his covenant promises (chapter 11).

In the context of Romans 9-11, Paul is engaging in theodicy by addressing a specific challenge to God’s faithfulness: If God made covenant promises to Israel, but many Israelites have rejected the Messiah (Jesus), does this mean God’s word has failed? Has God been unfaithful to His promises?

This creates what appears to be a contradiction:

• Premise 1: God is faithful and His promises never fail
• Premise 2: God promised to bless and save Israel
• Observed reality: Many Israelites have rejected the Messiah
• Apparent conclusion: Either God’s promises have failed, or God is not faithful

Paul’s theodicy in Romans 9-11 resolves this apparent dilemma by demonstrating that:

• God’s election has always worked through a remnant within Israel (chapter 9)
• Israel’s rejection is due to their own responsibility, not God’s unfaithfulness (chapter 10)
• God will ultimately fulfill His promises to Israel as a nation (chapter 11)

Thus, Paul vindicates God’s character while explaining the current situation of Israel’s unbelief. Now to move onto the heart of the matter.

Romans 9:6-8 – The Distinction Within Israel

When Paul declares in Romans 9:6 that “the word of God hath not taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel,” he is making a crucial distinction that has often been misunderstood. The KJV captures the force of Paul’s Greek here: he is not suggesting that ethnic Israel has been replaced or superseded, but rather that within the nation of Israel, God’s elective purposes have always operated according to promise rather than mere genealogy.

Paul immediately clarifies: “Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed” (Romans 9:7-8).

This is not an argument for replacement theology, but rather Paul’s explanation of how God’s covenant faithfulness has always operated within Israel’s history. From the very beginning – Isaac rather than Ishmael, Jacob rather than Esau – God’s covenant purposes have moved forward through a remnant chosen by grace, not through automatic ethnic succession.

Romans 11:26 – “All Israel Shall Be Saved”

The climax of Paul’s argument comes in Romans 11:26: “And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” The question is whether this “Israel” refers to ethnic Israel or to the church composed of Jews and Gentiles.

The context strongly suggests that Paul is speaking of ethnic Israel, and when you interpret the Bible as a whole this is the conclusion you naturally come to. Throughout chapter 11, Paul has been using the metaphor of the olive tree, where natural branches (ethnic Israel) have been broken off due to unbelief, while wild branches (Gentiles) have been grafted in. Paul’s entire argument depends on maintaining the distinction between Jew and Gentile, not collapsing it.

Moreover, Paul explicitly states his hope that “I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them” (Romans 11:14). The “them” here clearly refers to his fellow Jews according to the flesh. When Paul then speaks of “all Israel” being saved, the natural reading within this sustained argument about ethnic Israel’s temporary hardening and ultimate restoration is that he refers to the nation of Israel.

The Hermeneutical Principle

The mistake made in the social media exchange is precisely the kind of eisegetical error that Paul’s complex argument seeks to prevent. One cannot simply quote Romans 9:6-8 to argue that “Israel” always means “spiritual Israel” and therefore Romans 11:26 must refer to the church. This approach fails to recognize that Paul is making different points at different stages of his argument.

In Romans 9:6-8, Paul is explaining how God’s covenant faithfulness operates within Israel – through election and promise and ultimately salvation by grace through faith, not automatic inheritance. In Romans 11:26, Paul is declaring God’s ultimate faithfulness to his covenant promises to the nation of Israel as a whole, after the “fulness of the Gentiles be come in” (Romans 11:25).

The Canonical Context

We must also remember that Paul’s argument here sits within the broader canonical witness. The Hebrew Scriptures consistently speak of God’s irrevocable covenant with Israel as a nation. Paul himself acknowledges this when he asks, “Hath God cast away his people?” and emphatically responds, “God forbid” (Romans 11:1). Paul’s argument throughout Romans 9-11 is precisely that God has not abandoned his covenant with ethnic Israel, even though that covenant has always operated through remnant and election.

Theological Synthesis

The proper theological synthesis recognizes that Paul maintains both truths simultaneously: within Israel’s history, God’s covenant purposes have always operated through a believing remnant chosen by grace (Romans 9:6-8), and yet God remains faithful to his covenant promises to ethnic Israel as a whole, who will ultimately be saved when Christ returns as Deliverer (Romans 11:26-27).

This is not contradiction but complementarity. God’s covenant faithfulness operates both through remnant free will election within history and through ultimate restoration at the eschaton. To collapse these into a single category – whether “ethnic Israel” or “spiritual Israel” – is to miss the sophisticated theological argument Paul is making about the complex relationship between divine sovereignty, human responsibility, and covenant faithfulness across the sweep of salvation history.

The social media exchange I cited at the beginning demonstrates precisely why careful exegesis matters. Scripture must interpret Scripture, but this means allowing each text to make its own contribution to the larger theological picture, rather than forcing all texts into a single interpretive grid – this is the mistake many make. Paul’s argument in Romans 9-11 is too subtle and too important to be reduced to proof-texting on either side of this debate.