The rise of the evangelical church in the majority world has elicited the need to study and research the evolving tradition (Lewis & Pierard, 2014; Stiller, Johnson, et. al, 2015; Pardue, 2023). This has allowed western-centric scholars to recognize their cultural limitations, e.g. that some theological insight may be applicable to their context but might not be the case for a Christian on the other side of the globe in very different circumstances. Global Evangelicalism, then, provides an opportunity to broaden our hermeneutical horizons, to recognize the short-sighted ways we have internalized our 21st century hermeneutic upon a 1st century text.
In this paper I argue that the study of Global Evangelicalism presents an opportunity to reconsider Paul’s doctrine of election in Ephesians. First I will show how contemporary research on the state of the global evangelical movement has recognized its interpretive presuppositions, drawing application for properly understanding the function of “we” as the subjective group and “you” as the objective group. Then I argue that this understanding of plural pronouns assists us to recognize two distinct groups in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (e.g. “we” and “you” groups). Finally, textual clues will be identified to deduce who those groups are, leading to its application for contemporary doctrinal discussions.