Does God REALLY Harden Hearts?

 

Research Hardening of Hearts and Free Will

• Biblegateway NRSV shows 26 occurrences in Bible
• Exodus has 15 out of the 26
• Pharoah hardened his heart – 9X
• God hardened Pharoah’s heart – 6X
• First 7 plagues: “Pharoah hardened”
• 8th plague and after: “God hardened”
• 9:12; 10:1,20,27; 11:10; 14:8
• (Samuel’s interpretation) 1 Samuel 6:6 – “Why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? After he had made fools of them, did they not let the people go, and they departed?”
• Only 2 other occurrences  of “God hardened”
• Deuteronomy 2:30
• 2 Chronicles 36:13
• 11 out of the 26, “God hardened”

CONCLUSION?

1. Prescriptive vs. Descriptive: We should discern when a passage is Prescriptive or Descriptive.

2. Common Usage vs. Word or phrase Study: Whether or not the language says "God hardened" or "man hardened his heart", the common usage of any of those terms NEVER MEANS that God manipulates the free will of a person. Augustine and John Calvin made that terrible mistake of developing doctrine out of one word rarely used in the Bible, "predestined" and "elect". The early church bishops condemned such teaching as heresy springing forth from Gnosticism. Word study where the meaning is NOT determined by the context is FALSE TEACHING.

3. Hermeneutic: Bible controversies or seeming contradictions are more descriptive than prescriptive. This means you CANNOT, SHOULD NOT invent a theology out of it. The Bible and God's commands are based on free will. If God manipulates free will, his whole revelation is USELESS. 

Based on the overall revelation of God that God NEVER manipulates free will, there should be alternative interpretations that do not contradict the main revelation. GOD WORKS ON PRIDE, NOT FREE WILL. Pharoah's case is descriptive and based on Samuel's interpretation in 1 Samuel 6:6 as stated above, God could work around free will like in the last 3 plagues. God was hammering on Pharoah's pride which reinforced Pharoah's hardening of heart. God must have done the same thing with Judas Iscariot. And these two incidents simply shows God's determination to carry out his divine plan.