Salvation by Design or Determination? Re-examining the Potter-and-Clay Metaphor

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This summer I participated in an archaeological dig, unearthing the era of the Judges when the tabernacle rested at Shiloh (Josh 18:1; 2 Sam 6:16–19). As is typical of such excavations, we found thousands of pottery sherds. While on the dig, Old Testament (OT) scholar and archaeologist Dr. Mark Hassler shared about the pottery-making practices of the Ancient Near East ("The Freehand Pottery Manufacturing Technique: Featuring Genesis 2," Annual Lecture Series of the Associates for Biblical Research, Jerusalem, May 27, 2024). In his presentation, he noted Genesis 2:7 as the first example of pottery in Scripture. There, God himself formed the human out of the dust/dirt/clay of the earth. God's creation is evocative of the hand-crafted clay vessels that human potters would later make, a theme developed throughout Scripture (cf. Deut 32:6, Job 10:9; 33:6, Ps 103:14; 119:73, Ecc 3:20, Is 43:7, Zech 12:1, 1 Tim 2:13). 

However, what distinguished God’s creation of humans from all other earthenware is the divine image serving as a template and the divine breath of life within them. By sharing his image and life with the clay, God endued it with power, personality, and prerogatives. No longer a passive clump of dirt, the human dynamically related to God and the rest of creation, particularly the other human who complemented and completed the first.  What was once a passive piece of clay was now an active, relational person (Gen 1:26–28; 2:20–25; 3:1–20). 

Paul picks up this imagery in 2 Corinthians 4:6–7, describing Christians as “jars of clay” in whom the treasure of God’s glory is displayed. This is one of the most stunning metaphors in Scripture, calling to mind pottery lamps carrying light in them. Jesus is the Light of the world (John 8:12; 9:5) and Jesus’ disciples become his light to the world (Matt 5:14).

Scripture is loaded with such metaphors, but like all analogical speech, they inevitably break down. Humans resemble clay lamps in some ways, but in other ways, we are quite different. Contemporary metaphor theorists (e.g., Burke, Eastman, Gaventa, Heim) highlight the ways in which mixed metaphors in Scripture work in a dialectical fashion to emphasize and exclude points of comparison. One metaphor emphasizes one aspect, while the next emphasizes another. Both metaphors are true, so far as they go, but neither fully corresponds to reality. 

For instance, Paul mixes metaphors in 1 Thessalonians 2:7–11, employing the imagery of “young children,” “nursing mothers,” and “a father…with his own children” to illustrate his relationship with his “brothers and sisters”! Rather than force each metaphor to carry the full freight of the relationship, or force them to all convey the same idea, Paul allows each one to express a different aspect of familial intimacy.  

Paul's metaphors draw from the everyday life of Second Temple Judaism and first-century Greco-Roman culture. Yet, he draws most heavily on the Jewish Scriptures to produce his analogies. Paul marshals his considerable knowledge of the OT, re-enlisting and re-imagining stock metaphors from Israelite history. This is particularly the case when Paul is speaking to, and about, his Jewish audience. 

Few such passages have evoked as much debate as Romans 9–11, in which Paul addresses the relationship and destiny of Jews and Gentiles. The passage has provided endless fodder for arguments about election, predestination, free will, and other topics at the center of the historic divide between Reformed-Calvinist and Wesleyan-Arminian perspectives. Both views draw extensively from this passage to support widely varied conclusions. 

The potter-and-clay imagery of Romans 9:20–21 is often enlisted in favor of Reformed-Calvinist understandings of predestination. In such interpretations, the potter (God) is assumed to be the sole active agent, shaping passive clay (humans) according to his deterministic will. In this view, Paul is assumed to be talking about God’s determinative will for people’s salvation. 

However, this interpretation of the metaphor does not do justice to Paul’s imagery or its OT antecedents. Rather than re-examine Romans 9–11 in detail, I note Paul’s explicit and implicit appeal to the OT with his potter-and-clay metaphor. Paul’s use of the analogy highlights similarities of God-and-humans with potter-and-clay. But these similarities are limited; the metaphor breaks down. 

To understand where the metaphor breaks down, we must familiarize ourselves with its source material. In doing so we discover that Paul’s emphasis falls not on determination, but on design. Paul is not inventing this analogy, but drawing on a rich prophetic heritage of stock imagery to describe a relationship between God and humanity that is dynamic, not deterministic. 

Recall the first hint of potter-and-clay imagery in Genesis 2:7 where God transforms mere dust into a living, breathing, image-bearing creature actively relating to God and others. Here God designs a creature of possibility, a creature immediately entrusted with the freedom to obey or rebel (Gen 2:16). This emphasis on design remains consistent in all the OT uses of the potter-and-clay metaphor—both before and after human sin. Every time the potter-and-clay imagery is used (Is 29:16; 45:9; 64:8, Jer 18:1–18), the clay is spoken of as an active agent, capable of responding to the potter's design in either rebellion or repentance. (I recognize that at times, people or nations are compared with broken pottery [P. 2:9; 31:12, Is 41:25, Jer 19:1–15; Lam 4:2, Rev 2:27] but such cases do not refer to God as the potter. Instead, they focus on the comparison of shattered pottery to death, judgment, and destruction).

Paul’s use of the metaphor in Romans 9:20 echoes Isaiah 29:16 and 45:9. Isaiah 29 is an extended woe oracle against Jerusalem in which God threatens to bring his people down to the dust (vv. 4–6). Verse 16 employs the potter-and-clay metaphor, accusing the people of turning things upside down, believing they can hide from God and deceive him (v. 15). 

But just as a pot cannot deny its potter’s creation and awareness, so God’s people cannot deny that he created them and sees their hypocrisy. Ultimately, God calls his people to repentance; a change of mind resulting in a change of action (vv. 17–24). The point of the potter-and-clay metaphor is design, not determination. And it assumes the ability of the clay to respond.

Isaiah 45 is an oracle addressed to Cyrus (v. 1), the future king anointed by God to bring deliverance from the forthcoming Babylonian captivity. The notion of deliverance by way of a foreign king is offensive to God’s people. Nevertheless, God affirms his prerogative to raise up a servant for his purposes (v. 13). God says in vv. 9–11,

Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, “What are you making?” Does your work say, “The potter has no hands”? 

Woe to the one who says to a father, “What have you begotten?” or to a mother, “What have you brought to birth?”

This is what the Lord says—the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker: Concerning things to come, do you question me about my children, or give me orders about the work of my hands?

God defends his prerogative—as creator of all things (vv. 7, 12, 18)—to design according to his will. He created the heavens and the earth. He created the nation of Israel. He created Cyrus to deliver them. God’s prerogative as creator is connected to his design, not determination. As in Isaiah 29, the oracle ends with a call to repentance and promises of attendant salvation (vv. 22–25), with an assumption that the clay can respond. The appropriate response is found in Isaiah 64:8–12—repentance beginning with a recognition of God as Father and potter. 

What is implicit in Isaiah 29 and 45 is explicit in Jeremiah 18:1–12, the most extended and picturesque use of potter-and-clay imagery in Scripture. There, God sends Jeremiah to the potter’s house, where he finds the potter working at the wheel (vv. 1 – 3). Verses 4–10 read,

But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, "Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?" declares the Lord. "Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel. If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down, and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.”

Here God reveals the contingent nature of predictive prophecy. Prophecy, whether looking to the past, present, or future, calls people to covenant faithfulness. In this passage, God states that the future depends, not upon his determination, or even his original design. Rather, the future unfolds in a dynamic and relational way as people respond to God (cf. Jer 26:13). Those formed for destruction can be rescued. Those elected for salvation can be destroyed.

Thus, in Jeremiah 18, God explicitly states the limits of the potter-and-clay metaphor, indicating the capacity of the potter to reform the clay based on the clay’s active response. Yes, God has created all things like an active potter forms an inactive lump of clay. However, unlike a typical potter-and-clay, the human creation does not remain passive or exclusively shaped by God. Rather, the human creation is faced with a choice—live according to God’s design or contrary to it, a metaphor picked up powerfully in Romans 12:2. 

The contingency of prophecy is evident in Romans 11 as Paul discusses the unexpected fate of the natural and wild olive branches (vv. 17–24). Despite their design, their outcomes are not determined by God but dynamically achieved through their response to God's judgment and mercy. The logic of Romans 9–11 relies on the capacity of vessels formed for wrath to receive mercy and those formed for mercy to receive wrath—based on their response (9:22–29).

God’s intent is to save everyone (2 Pet 3:9); to do so he elects some to be messengers to all. But sometimes those who are elected rebel (think of the children of Israel in the wilderness or Judas Iscariot) and some of those who are not elected repent (think of Ruth or the household of Cornelius). Paul highlights this capacity for change on the individual level in 2 Timothy 2:20–21,

In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for special purposes and some for common use. Those who cleanse themselves from the latter will be instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the Master, and prepared to do any good work.

Again, what we see is a dynamic relationship between God and humans, based on the enlivened object’s capacity to respond to God. The OT background of potter-and-clay imagery indicates that whenever this metaphor is used it includes not only God’s providential role in creative design, but also the role of human response to determine outcomes. 

The divine potter’s ongoing formation of the human clay into a living being bearing God’s image and breath implies what Wesleyans call prevenient grace—the God-given capacity to respond in faith or rejection, to the loving offer of God’s salvation. Humans are not simply passive clay shaped by a deterministic potter. Rather, they are God’s created handiwork, endued with life and possibility, and granted the grace to respond to God’s offer of salvation and sanctification. This reality must shape our interpretation of Romans 9–11 and our understanding of human destiny.

Israel Steinmetz is Dean of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of Practical Theology at The Bible Seminary.