Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

The true sense of Rom. IX. is declared.

« In the Epistle to the Romans, chapter IX, the discourse is not about predestination to glory before foreseen merits; for it is evident that the Apostle, whether in the whole discourse or in its individual clauses, does not speak of predestination of glory considered per se, but of the gratuitous grace of the Christian faith, through which and in which God willed both the Gentiles and individual sinful men to be reckoned among the elect people and to attain to true justice (no account being taken of carnal descent or of legal justice). »

To declare and demonstrate the sense which underlies this chapter of Romans IX, we shall try to grasp it first from its connection with the Apostle's treatment in the whole epistle; then from a certain general consideration of the chapter itself; and finally by examining the individual more difficult clauses.

I. Chapters IX, X and XI of this Epistle to the Romans constitute the final part of the whole treatment, which the Apostle undertook from chapter I, 16 to chapter XI, 36, concerning supernatural justification both of Jews and of Gentiles through faith in Jesus Christ. It helps, therefore, to keep before the eyes the connection of these three chapters with the argument of the whole epistle, in order to grasp the aim which the Apostle proposed in them and the genuine sense of the individual sentences.

1. After the exordium, more lengthy than usual, there is set forth the principal proposition of the whole treatment, embracing the argument, in Rom. I, 16–17: « The Gospel ... is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and to the Greek. For in it the justice of God is revealed from faith unto faith, as it is written: the just man lives by faith. » Here four propositions are comprehended in one: a) the Gospel, that is, the new economy with all its teachings, institutions and charisms, is the power of God unto salvation (both begun, which is supernatural justice and holiness, and complete, where justice will be crowned with eternal beatitude). b) It is unto salvation for Jews and Gentiles. c) Therefore no account is taken of carnal descent from Abraham, or of legal justice according to the Mosaic economy; for to this salvation and justification before God no right arises from those legal privileges. (This proposition is implicitly contained in the others.) But d) the condition of attaining salvation is faith: through faith, through the reception of the new economy and through its application to individuals, which becomes more perfect from day to day, the justice of God is obtained, preserved and perfected: « for the justice of God is revealed in it (the Gospel) (not by mere announcement but by real exhibition) from faith unto faith. »

The Apostle proceeds to the demonstration and elaboration of the proposition.

2. He first shows that both Gentiles and Jews are destitute of the justice of God and in need of justification. As to the Gentiles, the demonstration was not laborious, and he completed it with a summary description of public and private life, I, 18–32. He pursues the same more lengthily concerning the Jews, who were placing their justice in the privileges of their race, in the letter of the law, in circumcision, and in the external economy according to Pharisaic decrees. Yet Paul brings the matter to this point, even from the testimonies of Scripture themselves, that « every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become subject (καὶ ὑπόδικος γένηται, that is, be found guilty) to God » II. 1-III.19.

3. Having demonstrated the gravity of guilt both in the Gentiles and likewise in the Jews, the Apostle descends to declare the way by which true justice before God is acquired. He namely repeats and confirms the three chapters of doctrine comprised in the first proposition: a) that justification is to be derived from the redemption and merits of Jesus Christ, and so is obtained through faith in his blood and through the reception of the sanctifying economy of Christ; b) that the works of the law confer no right whatever; therefore c) that this justification pertains to all believers, to Gentiles as much as to Jews, III.20-31.

4. The threefold proposition set forth is demonstrated from the very history of faith, of justice, and of the promises made to Abraham, father of all believers, IV. 1-25.

5. There follows a brief description of the happiness, the most firm hope and the exultation of those justified in faith through the merits of Jesus Christ. Here a comparison is drawn between the first Adam, author of sin by whom all human nature was infected, and the second Adam, author of grace and justification; and the efficacy and universality of the merit of Christ are declared, V. 1-21.

6. The state of grace, of faith, and of justice in the new economy of Christ is by no means lawless; rather the faithful, who from slaves of sin have now become slaves of justice, are bound by the most grave duties of pursuing true holiness, VI. 1-23.

7. Connected with the preceding chapter VI is a manifold comparison between the economy of the Mosaic law, which, considered per se, was weak for true justification, and the efficacy and happiness of grace in the Christian faith, chapters VII, VIII.

II. We have come to chapter IX, whose interpretation concerns us. The description given above of the happiness and spiritual goods with which God has enriched the sons and heirs of the New Testament turns the Apostle's mind and thought to consider the condition of the people of Israel, his brethren according to the flesh, who are cut off from this happiness and holiness. The people to which the divine promises were first directed, and to which, as the Jews indeed thought, they were solely directed, was at length found to be for the most part excluded from them; this fact, I say, Paul declares in these three chapters, IX. X. XI. He refutes the error of the Jews, by which, on the ground of descent from the patriarchs and on the ground of works of the law, they claimed for themselves the goods promised by God and justice; and thus he teaches that the manner and causes of insertion into the elect people of the New Testament, and the manner of justification before God, are from the gratuitous grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, without distinction between Jews and Gentiles and without regard to works of the law. This very declaration of justification and of the New Testament inheritance the Apostle had already proposed at the outset (I. 16. 17.) as the argument of his treatment, and he afterwards began to elaborate it at III. 20-IV. 25. Whence it is clear that this chapter IX and the two following are intimately connected with chapters III and IV; the remaining chapters (V-VIII.) may be regarded as interposed for a fuller explanation of the economy of grace through the Redeemer Jesus Christ. If this connection is kept clearly before the eyes, it cannot be doubted that the aim of chapter IX is the same as that of chapters III and IV: namely, the declaration of the gratuitous grace of faith and of justification through faith, in opposition to the privileges and rights which the Jews claimed for themselves from patriarchal descent and from works of the law. The course of the discourse in these chapters (IX-XI.) is, however, as follows.

1. It is declared that the sons and heirs of God's promises are not so by the natural right of blood or of works, which lie on this side of and outside faith¹; but that sonship and the right of inheritance to the promised goods come from supernatural vocation and gratuitous grace. This double order, of nature and of grace, is set before our eyes in the types of the Old Testament. Isaac, indeed, before the other sons of Abraham, and Jacob before his brother Esau, were constituted by gratuitous election the patriarchs of the people of God, IX. 6-13.

2°. That this election of one over another to grace is undue is further explained. Men are considered not only before grace; but, for greater clarity, it is supposed, as the Apostle had set down as the foundation in c. I. 18-III.19, that all are sinners and guilty before God (cf.Chrysost. in Rom. IX. hom.XVI. n.4.²). Hence, those whom he has mercy on, he has mercy on not from debt of justice but from mercy; and those whom he punishes, he punishes for their sins according to justice: and thus, by his consequent will, which presupposes sins, he also orders the evil wills of men to the manifestation of his justice in punishing and of his mercy in sparing. In this sense men, insofar as they are sinners and insofar as they are unworthy of mercy and deserving of penal judgment (Aug. Enchirid. c. 98.), are compared to lumps of clay in the hand of the potter. By his undue grace God prepared from among sinners vessels of mercy (all of whom, called effectively, from among Jews and Gentiles) for glory³; yet he did not himself fit out vessels of wrath for destruction; but he endured with much patience men (Gentiles, and above all unbelieving Jews) who had fitted themselves out (leading them to repentance by his kindness, II. 4-5.), and at last, by his consequent will, willed to show his wrath in them and to make known his power, IX. 14-29. From these things it now appears most true, what St Chrysostom observes (Rom. IX. hom. XVI. n. 5.), that by Paul, in the whole chapter, the antecedent will of God that all be saved is presupposed, even where he does not express it. For it is one truth that God owes his grace to no one, and that no right to it arises either from carnal descent or from human works, which truth Paul teaches in the first part of chapter IX; and it is another question whether God offers his undue grace to all and by his antecedent will wills to give it to all.

3°. As to this second point: after declaring the gratuitousness of grace, the Apostle asks the cause on the part of men, why some, namely those who according to the flesh were sons of the patriarchs, were cast out from the register of the elect people of God and from the good things promised to it; while others, namely for the most part Gentiles, were adopted into the people of God and attained those promises, especially justification. He says the cause is that the Gentiles laid hold of the justice which is from faith, while the Jews were unwilling to embrace the faith of Christ, and so, pursuing justice as if from works (of the law), stumbled at the stone of stumbling IX. 30-X. 13.

4°. Hence arises the last question: whether God, on his part, has offered to all, and specifically also to the Jews, the faith through which there is adoption into the people of God, and by which the way opens to justice and to the good things promised in the New Testament. Here, therefore, the question concerns the antecedent will of God, and Paul answers by affirming its universality, both generally (« but not all obey the gospel... but I say, have they not heard? Indeed into all the earth their sound has gone out » etc.), and specifically as regards the Jews, of whom chiefly the discourse was. « But I say, has Israel not known?... I will provoke you to emulation by a non-people (I will provoke you to faith through the faith of those who were not my people)... But to Israel he says: all the day I have stretched out my hands to a people not believing and contradicting » X. 14-21.

If the matter is taken concerning the people in common: « God has not rejected his people; » for many of the faithful, and the Apostles themselves, came to faith from among the Jews, while the rest indeed fell through their own unbelief and obstinacy. And so, when they had rejected the gospel which by his antecedent will had been destined for them before the Gentiles, the Gentiles first came to the Church: « by their fall (παραπτώματι lapsu) salvation has come to the Gentiles, so that they may emulate them » (εἰς τὸ παραζηλῶσαι αὐτοὺς to provoke them to salutary emulation). Finally, however, when the fullness of the Gentiles has entered, all Israel will be saved XI. 1-16. 24-32.

If the comparison is made between individual unbelieving Jews and the faithful called from the Gentiles: « the branches were broken off because of unbelief; but you stand by faith: do not be high-minded, but fear ... See therefore the goodness and severity of God: toward those indeed who fell, severity (of the will not antecedent but consequent), but toward you the goodness of God (of the will both antecedent and consequent), if you continue in his goodness, otherwise you too will be cut off. And they too, if they do not persist in unbelief, will be grafted in. » Here the will of God is most manifestly conditional, both as regards those who have followed the call and as regards those who through their own fault have not followed; and so faith, and the works of faith, and perseverance unto the attainment of eternal life, are the work of divine grace, yet not without regard to the free will, and not without the free cooperation of that very will; but unbelief is not only not the work of God, but is against the prevenient working of grace XI. 17-23.

You have therefore from the Apostle himself the declaration of how God prepared vessels of mercy unto glory IX. 23, and how all that is said of the stirring up and hardening of Pharaoh, of the showing of wrath on vessels of contumely, of blinding, of the spirit of compunction and the darkening of eyes, so that they do not see, etc. IX. 17-22; XI. 7-10, is to be understood partly of permission, partly of the operation of the divine consequent will. (Read St Chrysostom in h.l. hom. XVI. n.8.9.)

III. It remains that we investigate singly the sense of the things said in cap.IX. 6-23., which, after the aim of the Apostle and the context have been declared in general, no longer has great difficulty.

Great sorrow is Paul's, that the Israelites, to whom nevertheless the privileges, the benefits of God and the promises are so remarkable, for the most part do not belong to the people of God of the New Testament v. 1-5.

Yet this rejection of the Jews does nothing whatever to harm the promises made to the seed of the patriarchs: « not, however, that the word of God has fallen. » Paul explains this in order thereby to confirm more and more that which is the chief argument of the whole dogmatic part of this epistle: namely, the dignity by which someone belongs to the chosen people, and that justice before God is not from any right of carnal descent or of human works, but a gratuitous benefit owed by no right of this kind, such as the Jews imagined for themselves. Thus the word of God has not fallen, although those who according to the flesh were sons of the patriarchs have for the most part fallen from the promises made to the Israel of God. For to belong to Israel of the promises, to the sons of Abraham the father of believers, carnal generation from the patriarchs is not sufficient—indeed it is not even required (cf. IV. 16.); what is demanded is supernatural generation through the word of God. This, however, is not owed by any right of carnal generation or of works, but is pure grace.

1°. This is manifest from the very history of the election of the patriarchs. He had already spoken of Abraham in c. IV; now he builds the argument on the manner of election of Abraham's son and grandson. None of the sons of Abraham, who were born according to natural laws, was reckoned in that seed to which the promises were made, none was taken as progenitor of the elect people of the Old Testament; but Isaac alone, born by miracle and according to a supernatural promise, is the elect seed. Evidently, therefore, this adoption into the people of God is not from a right of blood, but from a supernatural and undue benefit v. 6-9. (Chrysost. hom. XVI. n. 4. ).

2°. What is still more evident is in the election of Jacob. « Not only she (Sarah), but also Rebecca, conceiving from one union, of our father Isaac. For when they were not yet born, or had done anything good or bad (so that the purpose of God according to election might remain), it was said to her, not from works but from him who calls, that the greater would serve the lesser, as it is written: Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. » They are two sons of one father and one mother, conceived at the same time: by a right of blood, therefore, Jacob is in no way preferable to his brother Esau; rather, the elder in the estimation of men, and of Jacob himself (cf. Gen. XXV. 31.), and of their father Isaac (cf. Gen. XXVII.), seems to have the better right. Nevertheless God takes Jacob to the dignity of patriarch of the elect people, and does not take Esau. Moreover, this dignity was conferred on Jacob and denied to Esau while they were still in their mother's womb; for then it was said to the mother: « two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be divided from your belly; and one people shall overcome the other, and the greater shall serve the lesser » (the people represented in his elder father shall serve the people represented in his younger father).

That oracle, indeed, referred to future nations is prophetic; therefore the Apostle immediately adds the fulfilment of the promise from history: « as it is written (Mal. I. 3.), Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. » God in Malachi, h. 1., rebukes the people of Israel for the benefits by which he heaped them above the Idumaean posterity of Esau, namely that he restored them again from exile, though they were ungrateful, while Idumaea still lay waste, and the Idumaeans, because of their sins, were doomed to perpetual extermination. « I have loved you, says the Lord; and you said: wherein have you loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother? And I loved Jacob, but Esau I hated, and I made his mountains a wilderness ... and I will destroy, and they shall be called the borders of impiety, and the people against whom the Lord is angry for ever. And your eyes shall see, and you shall say: the Lord is magnified (magnificus est)⁴ over the border of Israel. »

Referred, however, to the fathers of the two peoples themselves those words said to Rebecca: « two nations are in your womb... and the greater shall serve the lesser, » already contain the execution of the election and the conferral of dignity accomplished on one before the other. Whence Paul calls what is established by that word of the Lord the calling of Jacob (« from him who calls it was said to her »), an expression used very frequently in the New Testament, especially in the epistles of Paul, never of predestination, as it is regarded in eternity; but always of the execution in time. Therefore no works can be the foundation of any right by which this patriarchal dignity is owed to Jacob, either absolutely or in comparison with Esau: not works, I say, already done, which are as yet nothing; not foreseen works, which, being still future, cannot have the character of merit, to which the reward would be rendered in the very execution before they are done. It remains, therefore, to say that Jacob was taken up to the dignity of patriarch, whose posterity would be the elect people of the Old Testament, not on account of generation from the patriarch Isaac, nor on account of any works of his own; as the comparison with Esau manifestly demonstrates, who was equal to him in all these things and in a way even superior by birth, and yet was not elected to this benefit. Jacob, therefore, was taken up to the patriarchal dignity from the mere gratuitous will of God (προθέσεως), which love is at the same time election, insofar as it is regarded as the taking of Jacob before his brother Esau: « according to the election, the purpose » ἡ κατ᾽ ἐκλογὴν πρόθεσις v. 10-13.

The sense, therefore, of these verses 10-13 is this. As Abraham and Isaac, so Jacob was constituted patriarch of the elect people of the Old Testament not by a right of blood or of works, but by the gratuitous benevolence of God, before his brother Esau. That this office was not owed to him by any right is still more manifest from this: that Esau, without any violation of right, was not elected to the same dignity, although he was equal in all things, at least at the time when Jacob was set before him as patriarch. The benefit for which Jacob is said to have been gratuitously elected, and Esau not elected, is indeed immediately an external economy, and not in itself grace pertaining to sanctification, much less eternal life. This is clear from the very words in which the election was made manifest: « the greater shall serve the lesser, » and from the way in which Paul shows, in both peoples, the Israelites and the Idumaeans, that the prediction was historically fulfilled by the words of Malachi: « Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. » For in the first part of these words, Jacob I loved, there is signified in the prophet the love shown through external benefits proper to and conferred upon the elect people, insofar as it is the peculiar people of God; in the other part, Esau I hated, there is signified the denial of these benefits to the posterity of Esau, and indeed severity in inflicting temporal punishments for sins committed, even to extermination; whereas, on the contrary, the elect people, notwithstanding its sins, has always been preserved and heaped with benefits.

Yet the Apostle brings this gratuitous election, which pertains to the economy of the Old Testament, forward as an argument, from which he concludes, arguing from type to antitype, that election also to the new economy, and to the good things promised in it, especially to justice before God, is not owed to a right of blood or of human works, but is a gratuitous supernatural benefit, which God wills to confer through faith in Jesus Christ, just as he conferred election to the people of the Old Testament by his word, through supernatural promise and calling.

Therefore « according to the election, the purpose of God » v. 11, as referred to the type, is the benevolent and gratuitous will of God to elect Jacob as father of a people peculiar to God; as referred to the antitype, and according to the principal aim of Paul, it is the gratuitous will, owed by no right, to confer the benefits of the New Testament and justice both on Jews and on Gentiles through faith in Jesus Christ.

The words: « not from works, but from him who calls, it was said to her (Rebecca), that the greater shall serve the lesser » v. 12, signify immediately and historically the equally gratuitous execution of a gratuitous plan, namely the election of Jacob and his posterity to be a people peculiar before Esau and his posterity; mediately, and by the chief intention of Paul, they signify the antitype, that is, the gratuitous election, through faith, of Gentiles who merited nothing of the kind, to the people of God of the New Testament, in preference to the unbelieving Jews, to whom origin from the patriarchs and the works of the law grant no right, with no regard whatever to blood and to legal works.

It follows: « as it is written: Jacob I loved, Esau I hated » v. 13. Gonetus (disp. I. §. 3.) quotes as the text of the Apostle in this way: « when they were not yet born, nor had done anything good or bad, it was said, not from works but from him who calls: Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. » But the text does not read so, and it is altogether false that these words were said to the mother Rebecca while the sons were still in her womb. For many centuries afterwards God said these things to the Jews returning from exile, so that, as they murmured, he might reproach their ungrateful spirit from the very history of his benefits and special protection, the comparison being instituted also with the history of the Idumaeans, whom God, though they too were according to the flesh sons of the patriarchs Abraham and Isaac, punished far more severely. That which immediately preceded: « not from works but it was said to her from him who calls, that the greater shall serve the lesser, » which indeed was declared in the mother's womb concerning Jacob as patriarch of the elect people, while this benefit was not conferred on Esau, the Apostle confirms by this other testimony of Scripture: « as it is written: Jacob I loved, Esau I hated; » in which testimony of Malachi, as in a summary, is contained the whole history of the singular providence and protection of God toward the posterity of Jacob, and of benefits toward a people often rebellious, and likewise of justice and severity in punishing the sins of the Idumaeans. Now this very history clearly proves what Paul intends: namely, that the posterity of Jacob was gratuitously chosen to be the people of the Old Testament, « to whom belong the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the legislation, and the worship (ἡ λατρεία, the Mosaic cult), and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever » (IX. 4.). In the immediate sense, therefore, v. 13 says that the election of Jacob and his posterity to be a peculiar people, as opposed to the non-election of Esau and his sons to this benefit, appears from sacred history; in the mediate sense is signified the different condition in which the Gentiles in the New Testament, through the gratuitous gift of faith, have become the people of God, and the Jews who, by their own fault, refuse faith have ceased to be the people of God.

Consider further, as I have already admonished, that both in Malachi and in the citation of the Apostle, in these words: « Jacob I loved, Esau I hated, » the discourse is immediately about the order of execution. If, therefore, love is understood of purely gratuitous benefits, the words cannot be transferred in a typical sense (much less in a historical sense) to the reward of eternal life considered in itself; for in the execution it is certain that eternal life is given to adults as a crown for preceding supernatural merits. The typical sense therefore necessarily refers to those gifts of the New Testament which in the execution too are gratuitous, with no preceding merits; and so to grace, or to the whole series of benefits, that is, to grace and glory taken together. But from the gratuitous gift it is certainly concluded also to the eternal « purpose, » or to predestination, in which the gifts are predestined in the same order in which they are conferred in the execution, whether with preceding merits or without them (see th. LVII. and there n. 3° the explanation of Paul's words from St Augustine).

Just as the love of Jacob, so also the hatred of Esau is said of the order of execution. If the word is considered in itself, biblical usage does not oppose taking hatred comparatively for a lesser love or lesser largesse of benefits (Gen. XXIX.30. 31; Deut.XXI.15; Luc.XIV.26; Matth.X.37; cf. Prov. XIII. 24; Io. XII. 25.). In truth, however, in Malachi it signifies positively justice and severity in punishing sins; nor is there any reason why, in the typical sense by which the Apostle institutes his argument, the punishment of the Jews who refused to accept the faith of Christ should not be understood with the same meaning. This divine justice, however, cannot be understood except with sins presupposed by the consequent will. There is therefore no trace in these words either of the positive antecedent reprobation of the Calvinists, or of that negative reprobation from eternal glory which some Catholic theologians have asserted.

Whether, moreover, in Malachi and in Paul you understand love and hatred immediately of the peoples themselves, represented by each progenitor, or whether with St Jerome you think these things said immediately of the progenitors in relation to their posterity, it is altogether the same. But then St Jerome explains: « the love and hatred of God arise either from the foreknowledge of future things or from works (already done)⁵ ; otherwise we know that God loves all things and hates none of those things which he has made » (in Mal. I. T. VI. p. 946.).

St Augustine refers love and hatred (v. 13) to the conferral and the denial of grace not only in the antitype, as regards the faithful on the one side and the unbelievers on the other, but also as regards the typical persons themselves, Jacob and Esau. And so the gratuitousness of grace, which the Apostle teaches most clearly throughout the epistle and especially in this chapter IX, St Augustine demonstrates also in the example of Jacob and Esau, who, though both were equally unworthy, one nevertheless received grace through mercy, while the other was punished according to justice, though by the consequent will. « Jacob loved through gratuitous mercy, Esau he hated through a debt of judgment; and since judgment was owed to both, the one recognized in the other that he should not glory in his own merits (against the Pelagians), since he had not incurred the same judgment in the same cause, but in the bounty of divine grace » Enchirid. c. 98. (See I. B. Faure on Enchirid. Aug. c. 98. note 3.). But St Augustine never understood either the love of Jacob as predestination to glory considered apart and antecedently to the preparation of grace, and therefore before foreseen merits, or the hatred of Esau as reprobation from glory, which arises from the antecedent will of God.

Admirably, also in accordance with the sense of St Augustine, the African bishops exiled in Sardinia discuss this passage of Paul in their synodal letter to Peter and his fellow monks, cc. 6 and 7 (It is also found in the Appendix to T. X. Aug., ed. Maurin.). « Since it is certain, they say, that Esau was a vessel of wrath and Jacob a vessel of mercy, it must most certainly be held that the one, that he might be condemned, justly deserved wrath... and the other, that he might be saved, freely received the gift of anticipating mercy... Esau, indeed, having received the sacrament of circumcision..., was free of the guilt of original sin; but through the wickedness of heart he remained in the old state of earthly man (having relapsed by his own sins into the mass of damnation, and therefore never freed from it by that discrimination which is full according to foreknowledge (cf. supra p. 646.)... For just as he, circumcised, perished because he loved darkness rather than light; so everyone who has not put off the old man, who is corrupted according to the desires of error, will be condemned by judgment, because he has not used the sacrament of baptism worthily » Ib. c. 7.

3°. That which the Apostle had proved by the examples of the calling of Isaac and Jacob, namely that adoption into the people of the New Testament and justification through faith in Jesus Christ are purely gratuitous and owed by no right, could not but create a great difficulty for the prejudices of the Jews. « What then shall we say? Is there injustice with God? » v. 14. Whence the Apostle proceeds to confirm by words of Scripture what he had already proved by typical examples. Far be it that injustice should be thought to be with God; for both the prerogative of the elect people of the Old Testament and the adoption into the people of God and the justification of the New Testament are a benefit undue to Jews and Gentiles alike, who have moreover all been shown to have fallen from the glory of God (III. 23.); and this benefit God, to whomever he confers it, confers from mere mercy. This supernatural dignity is not the fruit of human contention and labour.

This most free mercy of God toward men who merit nothing of the kind is shown by the authority of the divine testimony. « For to Moses he says: I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I shall show mercy » v. 15. The sentence is taken from Exod. XXXIII. 19, where, at the request of Moses, who sought a grace freely given, namely a special and extraordinary manifestation of the glory of God in confirmation of the promise that the Lord himself would be present in the midst of the people as leader and guardian, God assented to the petition, promising an appearance of his glory of this kind within certain limits. « He answered: I will show you all my good, and I will call upon the name of the Lord before you. » In the Hebrew text: « I will make all my beauty (my majesty) pass before you, and I will proclaim the name יהוה before you, » not so much by a sensible voice as by internal illumination, bestowing upon you a more sublime knowledge of my essence. To this promise God adds an epiphonema: « for I have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I give mercy to whom I give mercy »⁶ So in the Hebrew, in the Greek LXX, in the Syriac, in Targum Onkelos, and so the Apostle himself cites it. In the Latin Vulgate it is rendered according to sense rather than to the letter: « and I will have mercy on whom I will, and I will be merciful to whom it shall please me. » The sentence is not particular, to be referred to the grace granted to Moses alone, or, as the opinion of others has it (Chrysost. hom. XVI. n. 7.), to the mercy by which God spared the Israelites after the sin of the adored golden calf; it is general, comprehending under itself both the grace granted to Moses, on whose occasion it was uttered, and every supernatural and purely gratuitous benefit. Whence Paul, taking it in a wholly immediate sense, was able to confirm by it his preceding doctrine. The Apostle infers from these things: « therefore (if grace comes from God himself and is granted altogether gratuitously to those who do not merit it) it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs (apart from grace, by the powers of nature alone), but of God who has mercy » v. 16.

4°. Although in the verses just declared it is directly enunciated only that undue mercy is shown to men who are unworthy of it, yet in this very reasoning, that the benefit is undue and conferred out of mere mercy upon the unworthy, there is already included the point that God can freely and without any injury even not have mercy on the sinner. Therefore God owes nothing either to man or to himself and his own perfections, so that he should show mercy to the unworthy rather than justice to the worthy. For although God, infinitely holy, cannot will the sins of men, he can nevertheless permit sins, and direct and order them by his just and holy consequent will; not indeed in such a way that sins are directly for the glory of God, but so that he himself, on the occasion of sins, may nevertheless manifest his justice and mercy, his power and providence (cf. Rom. III. 6-8. ).

With these things noted, it is understood for what purpose the Apostle brings in the history of Pharaoh. « For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: because for this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show my power in you, and that my name may be declared in all the earth » v. 17. The Apostle, by this clause, proves what is implicitly contained and co-signified in v. 15: that God, as he gratuitously has mercy on the unworthy, so can also not have mercy on the sinner, because there is no lack of means by which he may make good out of evil (cf. th. XLIII. n. II.2. ). The reason by which this is done the Apostle supposes from his whole treatment, namely the guilt of the sinner; the other he expressly indicates: that God, even by the consequent will, in not showing mercy and in punishing, can glorify himself. The conclusion is: « therefore on whom he wills (the undeserving, and without debt) he has mercy, and whom he wills (by the very fact that all are unworthy of mercy) he hardens » (by not imparting mercy) v. 18.

These things may suffice for understanding summarily the sense of this clause, vv. 17-18; nevertheless the individual phrases have their own difficulties still to be cleared up. The words: « for this very purpose I have raised you up, that » etc. In Exod. IX. 16 the Hebrew text reads thus: « for this cause I have set you (Vulg. I have placed you), that I may make you to show my strength » (that I may make you a demonstration and clear proof of my strength)⁷. Concerning the sense of this word « I have raised you up » in the citation of the Apostle, the holy Fathers and the interpreters hold diverse opinions. For some: « I have appointed you king; » others: « I have kept you alive; » others, as the Predestinarians, certainly falsely: « I created you; » others interpret otherwise. To us it seems simply to be signified that God himself placed and raised up Pharaoh for this, that by the punishments inflicted on him through multiplied prodigies he might show to all the earth his omnipotence and his singular protection toward the people of Israel. But Pharaoh was set up for such a manifestation of divine glory in no way by the antecedent will of God, but by the consequent will, his sins being presupposed, and by his free hardening and obstinacy against God.

This being collated especially with chapters XI and XII of the book of Wisdom, it is plainly evident from the history itself, as it is described in the book of Exodus, not to say anything of the rest of the analogy of faith. God, by his legates Moses and Aaron, manifestly demonstrating the divine mission, exhorts and commands the king to dismiss the people of Israel; the commandment of God is accompanied by prodigies which at first contain nothing of punishment, but then turn out more grievous day by day. Internal aids, which would correspond to the external ones, and by which Pharaoh was stirred to obey, were not lacking; whence, when the prodigies were seen, his heart was also inclined to the counsel of dismissing the people. Nevertheless, when the plague ceased, he hardened his heart again, as the sacred text clearly notes after each of the first five portents: « the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, » « Pharaoh hardened his heart. » By the antecedent will, therefore, God willed that the king should acknowledge God and obey him, without there being need to come to the most grievous plagues; but these God decreed consequently upon his free hardening, and therefore he willed this mode of manifesting his omnipotence not by the antecedent but by the consequent will: he therefore placed not Pharaoh as a man, but Pharaoh in the composite sense, together with his free hardening, for this mode of manifesting his glory. The consequent will, therefore, which alone the Apostle here considers, is indeed of just severity; the antecedent will, however, is wholly of benignity, even toward Pharaoh himself.

The Holy Spirit himself describes this property of each will, explaining the same history of Pharaoh in Sap.XI. Regarding the consequent will, « you condemned them (the Egyptians) as a stern king, questioning them » XI. 11; but in the manner of punishing, in that God, « chastising by parts, » proceeded from lighter to heavier punishments, the Sage marvels at the benignity of the antecedent will toward these very sinners. Since God could have destroyed them together and at once, he nevertheless willed to send plagues upon them by parts and gradually. For « you have mercy on all (by this antecedent will), because you can do all (and there is no fear lest by chance the order of justice be subverted, for the wicked, if they are not converted, will not be able to escape punishment under almighty God), and you overlook the sins of men for the sake of repentance. For you love all things that are… and you hold nothing in loathing of what you have made… for you would not have made anything if you hated it… You spare all things, since they are yours, O Lord, lover of souls. O how good and sweet, Lord, is your spirit in all things. And so you correct those who go astray by degrees, and admonish them through the things in which they sin, that, leaving their wickedness, they may believe in you, Lord »⁸ XI. 21-XII. 2. Let it be noted, I beg, that all these things are said of the same Pharaoh and of the same plagues of which the book of Exodus and St Paul speak: « for this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show my power in you… whom he wills, he hardens. » But in Wisdom the discourse is about what God wills of himself and antecedently, before Pharaoh's free obstinacy, and so about the antecedent will; whereas the words the Apostle cites, in Exodus (IX. 16.), are said of Pharaoh, now hardened, after the fifth plague already, and therefore can be understood only of the consequent will. Compare Sap. XII. 3-26., where you have most evidently distinguished the antecedent will of saving the impious Canaanites and the consequent will of punishing them.

There remains the difficulty that hardening itself seems to be called by the Apostle a work of God: « whom he wills, he hardens. » Hardening, in objective signification, is resistance against grace, especially continuous resistance against manifold graces, whence a certain habit and unhappy facility arises of rejecting divine inspirations. In the active sense, therefore, hardening is the efficiency of this obstinacy. Wherefore from the analogy of faith, that is, from the other chapters of doctrine which we know and believe concerning the divine attributes, of holiness, goodness, and justice, it is wholly evident that God directly hardens no one, since this would be nothing other than directly effecting resistance against grace, and thus at the same time stirring a man to good through grace and fortifying him against the same good through hardening, which is a manifest contradiction, and which cannot without impiety be ascribed to the holy and good God.

Nevertheless, the hardening of a sinner can be referred to God, and in the Scriptures is so referred, in three ways. a) In that God permits it; in this sense to have mercy and to harden are opposed to each other not contrarily but contradictorily, so that to harden is the same as not to have mercy, as St Augustine says: God « does not harden by imparting malice, but by not imparting mercy » ep. 194. n. 14. ad Sixt. Nor is it unusual in biblical language that expressions signifying an action are used of mere permission, since this too is a part of divine providence: 2. Reg. XII. 11; XVI. 10; 3. Reg. XXII.22.; Is.LXIII.17; Ps. CIV. 25. etc. This manner of speaking appears most clearly from 2. Reg. XXIV. 1, compared with 1. Paral. XXI. 1. For in the former place it is said that God stirred up David to institute the numbering of the people, which was against the will of God; in the other place, as a cause of the declaration, it is said that Satan stirred up this very census. Nevertheless it must be conceded that in expressions of this kind something more is signified, at least for the most part, than mere permission. For b) active hardening is said to be a divine action which, of itself and by the antecedent will of God, is not ordered to the objective hardening of man, but from which that hardening nevertheless follows, and which God foresees and permits to follow, so that man hardens himself. Thus St Jerome interprets this passage of Paul. « The patience and infinite clemency of God are not to be blamed, but the hardness of those who have abused the goodness of God to their own perdition. Otherwise, there is one heat of the sun, and according to the underlying substances it melts some things, hardens others, loosens others, binds others. For wax is melted and clay is hardened; and yet the nature of the heat is not diverse. So also the goodness and clemency of God hardens the vessels of wrath which are fitted unto destruction, that is, the people of Israel; but the vessels of mercy which he has prepared unto glory... he does not save irrationally and without truth of judgment, but by preceding causes: because some (by their own fault) did not receive the Son of God, while others (by prevenient and helping grace) were willing of their own accord to receive him » St Jerome, ad Hedib. ep. 120. q. 10. (T. I. p. 835). God indeed permits man to do evil from the very occasion of the good which God does, because he is able to make good from the occasion of the evil which man does. Therefore c) to these two is added another reason, on account of which hardening too is attributed to God: namely, that by the consequent will he directs and orders it to good ends.

This second and third reason, by which God is said to harden, is wondrously expressed in the history of Pharaoh, Exod. VII ff. In the first five plagues it is never said that God hardened, but constantly that Pharaoh himself hardened his heart, or that his heart was hardened (Exod. VII. 13. 22; VIII. 15. 19. 32; IX. 7.). When, however, his voluntary obstinacy had already been increased through such impious resistance against manifest miracles, then at last, in the signs that follow from the sixth⁹, God, by working prodigies before Pharaoh, now hardened by his own malice, is said to have « hardened his heart, » so that it may be manifest that what is indicated is not an antecedent intention of God to harden, but the effect of man's malice following upon the divine miracles (Exod. IX. 12; X. 1. 20. 27; XIV. 4. 8. 17.). Accordingly, in these later signs also, it is said not only that God hardened Pharaoh, but that Pharaoh himself still hardened himself: Exod. IX. 35; XIII. 15. This diversity in the manner of speaking of hardening in the earlier and the later portents, which seems to us most worthy of attention, does not lose the force of the argument from the fact that God already says in Exod. IV. 21; VII. 3: « I will harden the heart of Pharaoh; » for there the discourse is not about the individual prodigies but about all of them together and as a whole. Just as, therefore, God is said only to foreknow the hardening of Pharaoh (Exod. III. 19), so he is also said to effect it, in that under this foreknowledge he works prodigies which, although by the antecedent will they are ordered to the softening of the king (see Sap. l. c.), are nevertheless foreseen as the future occasion of greater hardening. But by the consequent will God wills in that hardening, and through it, to manifest his majesty: « and I will harden his heart, and he shall pursue you; and I will be glorified in Pharaoh and in all his army, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord » Exod. XIV. 4. 17. cf. X. 1.

5°. There follows, with Paul, the last part of the passage we are explaining. As from the comparison of Jacob and Esau, and from the election of one before the other without any regard to kind or to legal works (v. 14), the difficulty arose: « Is there injustice with God? » so the solution of this difficulty, drawn from the testimonies of Scripture, did not yet seem complete, but rather to introduce a new difficulty. If God gratuitously has mercy on one sinner, but hardens the other, though he could also have mercy on this one: « why does he still find fault (μεμφεται, he complains, he punishes; cf. III. 5-7.); for who resists his will? » v. 19. The question, therefore, concerns the justice of punishment: how God justly punishes him on whom he does not have mercy by justifying, when the other, on whom through the gift of faith and through justification in faith he has mercy, is of himself no less unworthy of mercy? Therefore the question is not about the antecedent will of God, but about the consequent will of punishing: how is it just?

The Apostle answers a) by checking the presumption of a man who demands that God render an account of his providence, when it ought above all to be settled for the rational creature that all the works of God are holy and just: « O man, who are you that answer back to God? » This is declared by the similitude of the potter: « Will the thing formed say to him who formed it (τὸ πλάσμα τῷ πλάσαντι¹⁰) "Why have you made me thus?" » v. 20. This likeness of the potter, which is quite frequent in the books of the Old Testament (Is. XLV. 9; Ier. XVIII. 4-6; Ecclesi. XXXIII. 13. 14.), immediately expresses the absolute power of God and the subjection of the creature; but in the artificer, who is not a human but God the provider, there is presupposed infinite holiness, goodness, wisdom and justice. « In the potter (says Ambrosiaster on this passage) there is only will; but in God the will is with justice. » Moreover, let it be carefully noted that, from the very nature of the question, the Apostle does not compare human nature, insofar as it is created by God, to the clay or the molded material; he compares man, insofar as either he gratuitously obtains mercy, or on account of sins is justly punished by the consequent will. « Beware lest you think these things were said by Paul with reference to the reason of creation or to the necessity of our will, but (they were said) according to the power and the diversity of the divine dispensations » St Chrysostom, hom. XVI. n. 8.

Hence b) Paul, pursuing the comparison, answers in such a way that from the comparison itself the gratuitous grace and the just punishment of the sinner are made clear. The comparison is not to be extended to the way in which clay is merely passive in the potter's hand, nor to the way in which a rational and free creature stands under the action of grace¹¹; but the comparison is drawn between the natural requirement, which clay has none of, that a price be added to it by some notable art rather than that it be left, according to its nature, unskilled in a cheap jar; and the right of the sinner, which is none, that through God's mercy he may obtain, as if by art, supernatural grace¹² and glory, rather than be left in sin and destined to punishment on account of sin. « Has not the potter power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honour and another for dishonour » (one precious through the added art, another cheap according to the nature of the material of clay) v. 21.

c) There follows the application of the similitude: « but if God, willing to show wrath and to make known his power, endured with much patience (ἐν πολλῇ μακροθυμίᾳ) vessels of wrath fitted (κατηρτισμένα) unto destruction, that he might show the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy, which he prepared unto glory » (ἃ προητοίμασεν εἰς δόξαν) v. 22.¹³. Here, as to the individual expressions, « vessels of honour, vessels of mercy which he prepared unto glory » are, by the Apostle's own declaration, those whom God has called from Jews and Gentiles to the Christian faith: « whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles. » Those from the Gentiles are those of whom it was said before: not my people, and those who are now called sons of God; those who believe from the Jews are those of whom it was said: a remnant has been saved, and the Lord of hosts has left us seed (that is, « even if the multitude does not believe, nevertheless a few will believe » St Jerome, ad Hedib., l. c.). These are prepared through grace unto the glory of holiness, and through this unto consummated glory. « The riches of glory are the manifold dignity prepared for believers, » says Ambrosiaster on this passage. Those, therefore, who here find an absolute predestination to eternal glory, considered apart from all foreseen merits, certainly say something far other than what St Paul wrote.

Further, « vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction » are manifestly sinners. These vessels, moreover, must be regarded as they are worthy of wrath and destruction; for the genitive « vessels of wrath » cannot be taken actively, as if the wrath of God had made them such, but passively, as vessels to which wrath is owed. Hence Paul also speaks in a very different manner of vessels of wrath and of vessels of mercy: the former are not said to be prepared by God unto destruction, but fitted, namely of themselves, unto destruction; the latter, however, God himself has prepared by his own operation unto glory. Now these vessels, worthy of wrath and destruction, are said by Paul to be subject to the divine will under a twofold and different aspect.

α) For they are sustained in much patience or long-suffering (μακροθυμία), which in the Scriptures is always the merciful will toward sinners, tending of itself to this, that they may be converted and cease to be vessels of wrath: Rom. II. 4. 5; 2. Pet. III. 9; Sap.XI. 24; XII. 2. 10.11. 18–20; cf. Matth. XVIII. 26. (see above p. 554. sq.). This is the antecedent will, since « the long-suffering and kindness of God leads you to repentance, but according to your hardness and impenitent heart you treasure up wrath for yourself » Rom. II. 4. 5. You see now that the cause from which they are vessels of wrath is not in God but in the free wills of men themselves. This cause the Apostle explains more distinctly in the following chapters, X and XI. Cf. 2.Tim.II. 20. 21.

St Chrysostom's interpretation of verses 22 and 23 is as follows. « Which he prepared unto glory. The Apostle does not say that this is wholly of God; for if it were, nothing would hinder all from being saved (cf. supra p. 604.): but again he shows foreknowledge.... Just as Pharaoh became a vessel of wrath through his own iniquity, so also these became vessels of mercy through their uprightness. For although what is more is of God (through grace), we too have contributed something, a little (by freely working through grace). Therefore he did not say vessels of right deeds, nor vessels of confidence (παρρησίας, by which they trust in themselves), but vessels of mercy, showing that the whole is of God... When he says, it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, he does not take away free power; but he shows that it is not wholly his, but that he needs the superior grace. For it is necessary to will and to run, but to trust not in one's own labours, but in the kindness of God; as he also said elsewhere: yet not I, but the grace of God with me (1. Cor. XV. 10.)... Whence, then, are these vessels of wrath, and those of mercy? From the proper purpose of the will. But God, since he is most good, in both showed the same kindness (antecedent). For he had mercy not only on those who were saved, but also on Pharaoh, as far as in him lay (that is, antecedently); for both these and those experienced the same long-lasting patience. But if he was not preserved, it is from the purpose of his own will that the whole came about. For as far as God is concerned, he had no less than those who were saved » Chrys. hom. XVI. n. 9.

β) Consequently, on account of hardness and impenitence, God « wills to show wrath and to make known his power » (cf. what was said on v. 17.). Hence the participle « willing to show wrath, » by the very fact that it expresses the consequent will, cannot be resolved by a causal particle: « because he willed to show wrath..... therefore he endured in much patience; » but this resolution must be: « although he wills (by the consequent will, on account of the impenitence of the heart) to show wrath..... yet he endured (by the antecedent will, by which he wills their repentance and salvation) in much patience. » Similar is the manner of speaking in Sap. XII. 10: « judging by parts, you gave place for repentance, not ignoring (that is, although you did not ignore), since the nation of them is wicked and their natural (ἐμφυτος) malice, and since their thought could not (by consequent impotence) be changed for ever. » By this consequent will, therefore, God directs the very manifestation of wrath to display the riches of his glory. « For God, says St Chrysostom, omitted nothing of those things which would serve the correction of Pharaoh; nor did he omit anything of those things which would destroy him and deprive him of all pardon. But although God knew these things, nevertheless with much patience he endured him, willing to lead him to repentance..... But since he was unwilling to use this patience for repentance, but fitted himself for wrath, God used him for the correction of others, making others more zealous through his punishment, and thus showing his power. For that God does not will (antecedently) to show his power in this way, but in another way through benefits and through liberality, this Paul himself has already declared throughout in all things above » Chrysost. l. c. n. 8. Specifically, God, as St Augustine warns everywhere, and as is expressly said in the very text of the Apostle, ordains judgment upon the vessels of wrath in order to demonstrate his gratuitous goodness upon the vessels of mercy, who are not vessels of glory and honour by their own nature or by their natural merits, but are prepared by God unto glory. Whence, since they are of the same lump (that is, since before grace sinners are equally unworthy of mercy), the vessels of mercy must acknowledge, by comparison with the vessels of wrath, that their whole supernatural worth is not by reason of the lump, that is, not by reason of natural dignity or merit, but from the divine art and undue grace; although in receiving grace they too freely do something. This cooperation the Apostle declares not in this place, but in the following chapters, IX. 30. — XI. 23.

As is manifest from all that has been said, the Apostle in chapter IX teaches the gratuitousness of grace and of the calling to the Christian faith, and of justification through faith, in order to exclude the error of the Jews of that age, who, by reason of their kin and of the privileges of the Mosaic law, claimed the right to the promised Messianic kingdom, either for themselves alone or at least in preference to the Gentiles. He treats, indeed, immediately of the gratuitousness of the gifts of grace in the very giving and in their execution, which indeed coheres with the gratuitous predestination of these gifts. But from the doctrine of the gratuitousness of grace it does not follow that grace is not offered to all on the part of God and by his antecedent will; rather, the Apostle expressly declares that the reason why not all attain to grace is to be found in the fault and sins of men. Concerning an absolute antecedent predestination to eternal life before foreseen merits of faith and grace, there is in the whole treatment of Paul no mention, not even the slightest trace.