I think you could argue that God does display partiality explicitly and implicitly in scripture.
Explicitly: pre-flood people are valued less than post-flood people because God killed all the pre-flood people due to their moral character and promised not to kill any post-flood people (regardless of their moral character?).
Implicitly: God seems to value the ancient Israelites more than the people in the millions of years before this era a few thousand years ago because he intervenes much more and seems to care much more about what they do.
This is an interesting one. Deuteronomy 10:17, Acts 10:34 and Romans 2:11 explicitly say God is impartial - the last two are in the context of the Jews-Gentiles division. But in the passages you point to, God obviously acts in different ways towards different people and chooses some but not others. Whether this counts as partiality depends on whether there is a meaningful difference in the circumstances or the character and actions of the people involved.
St. Paul has an interesting take on partiality towards Israel in the Epistle to Romans. He thinks the people of Israel indeed had an advantage (Romans 3:1-2) but at the same time, he seems to insist that they were not better than anyone else and that ultimately this "favouritism" was for the salvation of the whole world. (Romans 9–11)
To supplement this, many Christians are pro-life, and standard pro-life views point in the direction of longtermism https://open.substack.com/pub/wollenblog/p/pro-life-let-me-tell-you-about-longtermism?r=2248ub&utm_medium=ios
I think you could argue that God does display partiality explicitly and implicitly in scripture.
Explicitly: pre-flood people are valued less than post-flood people because God killed all the pre-flood people due to their moral character and promised not to kill any post-flood people (regardless of their moral character?).
Implicitly: God seems to value the ancient Israelites more than the people in the millions of years before this era a few thousand years ago because he intervenes much more and seems to care much more about what they do.
This is an interesting one. Deuteronomy 10:17, Acts 10:34 and Romans 2:11 explicitly say God is impartial - the last two are in the context of the Jews-Gentiles division. But in the passages you point to, God obviously acts in different ways towards different people and chooses some but not others. Whether this counts as partiality depends on whether there is a meaningful difference in the circumstances or the character and actions of the people involved.
St. Paul has an interesting take on partiality towards Israel in the Epistle to Romans. He thinks the people of Israel indeed had an advantage (Romans 3:1-2) but at the same time, he seems to insist that they were not better than anyone else and that ultimately this "favouritism" was for the salvation of the whole world. (Romans 9–11)
Great article, Vesa! I like how you brought up Luke 17.
Good thoughts! But: Who wrote? Here in app I never know...
Ah sorry, forgot to add that – this one is by Vesa Hautala. Updated it now but that won't show for the email recipients unfortunately