“the elect / chosen”

The word

Eklogē (ἐκλογή) is built from ek (out of) + legō (here in its sense of “to pick, choose”). It names the act of choosing one or more from among a larger group. Eklektos — the cognate adjective — means “chosen, selected” and is what English Bibles render “the elect.”

BDAG s.v. eklogē glosses it: “the act of selecting, selection, election, choice.” The lexicon does not specify the basis of the selection, the criteria, or who is included.

The OT background: corporate election

In the Old Testament, the standard verb for divine choosing is bachar (בָּחַר). Its primary object across the canon is Israel as a nation. Deuteronomy 7:6-8 (BSB):

For you are a people holy to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be a people for His treasured possession.

The LORD did not set His affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than the other peoples, for you are the fewest of all peoples. But because the LORD loved you and kept the oath He swore to your fathers…

The election is corporate — Israel as a national body, not Israelites as individual persons elected to salvation. The basis is the LORD’s free love and covenant faithfulness to the patriarchs, not Israel’s individual or collective merit.

Romans 9-11

Paul’s discussion of election in Romans 9-11 takes up this OT corporate-election framework and works through the question of how God’s choosing of Israel relates to the inclusion of Gentiles. The argument is heavily corporate: it concerns peoples — Israel and the Gentile nations — and how God’s faithfulness to Israel is preserved when many Gentiles are included and many ethnic Israelites are not.

Whether Paul’s argument also implies individual election to salvation — particular persons selected, others not — is one of the most debated questions in Pauline scholarship. Calvinist readings extend the corporate framework to individual election. Arminian readings (and many recent corporate-election readings, including N.T. Wright’s) keep the focus primarily corporate. Both readings work with the same Greek text.

What the word does not specify

Eklogē on its own does not tell us:

• Whether the election is based on foreseen faith, foreseen response, or unconditional sovereign choice
• Whether the scope is corporate (a people elected) or individual (specific persons elected)
• Whether the elect can be lost or fall away

These questions — at the heart of the Calvinist-Arminian debate — are interpretive questions about what the word names in any specific NT passage, not questions about the word’s lexical content. The word names the kind of action (choosing); the synthesis answers the further questions.