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As I've already explained, I can answer this question here only by taking the qualifying phrase, "in today's world," to mean, "from the standpoint of an adequate Christian witness and theology today." On this assumption, and in my own best judgment as a Christian and a theologian, I should say that the term "chosen people," used normatively, rather than merely historically or descriptively, is to be understood as designating any people – which is to say, any group of human personswhopersons – who, having been somehow called by God, have accepted God's call, and have therefore also been chosen by God through their own choosing. This assumes, of course, the scriptural distinction between being "called" by God and being "chosen" by God – as in the hard saying familiar to all of us from Matthew's account of Jesus' own preaching, "Many are called, but few are chosen" (22:14). Whereas the calling of human beings to obey, and thus to submit, to the gift and demand of God's pure unbounded love is, in all its modes, entirely God's work alone, God's choosing of human beings is not solely God's, because it is and must be mediated through each of their own free and responsible decisions to accept God's call. The term "God's 'chosen people,'" then, designates the people who are chosen by God, if they are, only through their own choosing.

Thus – to respond now to the first question – "God's 'chosen people' today" can only mean any and all persons today, here and now, although only such, who, having somehow accepted God's call to obedience, however it may have come to them, have thereby also been chosen by God. Of course, the only way in which God's call can be accepted, whatever the mode of its coming to any of us as an individual person, is through obedient faith – through unreserved trust in God's love and unqualified loyalty to its cause. Simply to believe certain propositions to be true, or to perform certain actions that are good, is not to have faith in the sense required to accept God's acceptance. Therefore – as Jesus' parable of the missing wedding garment, according to Matthew, makes all too clear – it is always possible even for those who earlier responded to God's call to

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fail to accept it anew when it comes to them again, and thus not to be chosen through their own choosing, or, if you prefer, through their failure to choose positively. So the "chosen people" in one sense of the term may very well not be the "chosen people" in another sense – and, from my standpoint, the only sense that really counts, Christianly and theologically.

Two final comments. First, you may have noted that I've expressly allowed for there being plural modes, or ways, of God's calling human beings. In my view, simply to be a human being at all is already to have been called by God in one mode, what I distinguish as the "original," if also only the implicit, mode of God's calling. But, then, any human being who is, in any way, religious, or has a live option to become such, is to be reckoned among the specially called, meaning by that the explicitly called – any and all who have not only received God's original though only implicit call, but also God's explicit call, as represented, more or less adequately, through some religious concepts and symbols. Finally, then, there are those whom God has called not only implicitly, and even explicitly, also, but decisively as well – this being the claim that Christians make or imply for the mode of their own calling and also for that of any and all persons who have ever had a real option of becoming a Christian. Why? Well, because, to be a Christian is to understand oneself and lead one's life decisively through Jesus, and, for Christians, Jesus is, as they confess, the Christ – by which they mean, simply, the decisive re-presentation of God's call to all human beings, and thus of the gift and demand of God's all-encompassing love of everyone.

But – to come now to my second comment – if there are at least these three distinct modes in which human beings may be and have been called by God; and if, accordingly, there are at least three main types of peoples, or groups of persons, who could, in their different ways, be said to be "chosen people," the principle still stands, that no one is chosen, whatever the mode of one's calling, or the group to which one thereby comes to belong, except through one's own choosing. And this means, as Kierkegaard liked to say, that we are chosen, if we are, always and only retail, never wholesale – not as any group, but always and only as single individuals, one at a time, each through

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her or his own free and responsible decision to accept God's calling, whatever the mode or modes through which God may call us.

3. To experience a full and right relationship with God, is it necessary to be part of a religious community? Is there a difference in answering this question as between the Old and the New Testaments?

This double question, which I've taken the liberty of rephrasing slightly to bring out what I understand to be the questioner's intention, is obviously closely related in certain ways to the one I've just responded to. So this seems to be a good place to try to answer it.

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