Commentary on Romans 7.16–7.19

“What then shall we say? Is there injustice with God? Far from it. For he says to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will show compassion to whom I will have mercy. So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: For this very purpose I raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. So then he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens. You will say to me, then: Why then does he still find fault? For who resists his will?” It is fitting for one who reads these things to remember more attentively that comparison which we set down in the earlier books concerning the dispensation of the apostolic discourse: that, as in a royal house marked out by many entrances and exits, one passes from one chamber into another in such a way that the traces of one entering or leaving scarcely appear; so too Paul seems to half open the secrets of divine things a little, yet not to lay them out plainly and openly. Indeed, for the things he had said above about Isaac and Jacob, that through election and from the purpose of God, before they had done any work good or evil, God said either of the one, “At this time I will come, and Sarah will have a son,” or of the other, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated”: when in the present passage he had brought in a certain person as if contradicting him and raising a question, and saying, “Is there injustice with God?”, and had answered, “Far from it”: if it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy; and if he chose Pharaoh for this purpose, to show in him the might of his power; and if he has mercy on whom he wills and hardens whom he wills, why, he says, does he find fault with men? And why is he who sins blamed, when such is his will concerning each? To one who stirs up these and similar things, and thrusts himself boldly and importunately into the chamber of this mystery, he meets him with the rebuke of a most worthy exclamation and says: “O man, who are you to answer back to God?” As if he said: Who are you, who plunge into the king’s hall and dare to penetrate the secrets of the inner chamber? For this reason, then, we too, in such matters, placed as in a royal hall, let us pass with hesitant step, few things in speech, more in silence, the apostle Paul himself being made our master and guide on this journey.

In the person, then, of one contradicting him the Apostle says, “Is there injustice with God?”, and at once at the beginning answers, “Far from it”; so that to all the other things which are to be objected in the person of the one contradicting, the Apostle may always be seen to answer, “Far from it.” This contradicter, then, also uses the words of Moses, in which the Lord says to him: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will show compassion to whom I will have mercy.” And if this is so, he says, then salvation is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of him on whom God has mercy. For to Pharaoh too, he says, it is said: “For this very purpose I raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth”; so that from this it seems to be shown that, if Pharaoh was chosen for this, that through him the power of God might be declared to men, it was not in his own power that he perished. And he adds after all: “So then he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens.” This is what you assert, he says, you who contradict: that God complains and rebukes men without cause. For if he himself chooses whom he wills and casts off whom he wills, who resists the will of him through whom are all things? Without doubt this contradiction contrives this: that there is no freedom of choice in man, and that each one does not have it in his power either to be saved or to perish. Of these things each point has been discussed by us, as far as we could, more fully in that little book where we treated of freedom of choice, and they suffice more than enough for instruction. Yet now too we shall recall a few of the things said there.

What he said, “It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy,” is to be taken as David too says in the Psalm: “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, he watches in vain who guards it.” In this he shows not that he who builds a house does nothing and is idle, and so the Lord builds it; but that he spends as much care and labor as lies in man, while it belongs to God that, all obstacles being removed, the work comes to its effect. Since, then, it is taught by this that man spends labor and care, but God grants success and effect to the work, it is certainly pious and religious, since both God and man do what is in them, to ascribe the sum of the work to God rather than to man. So too, when Paul planted and Apollos watered, God is said to give the increase; and it is added: “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but God who gives the increase.” So in the present place too we can say: So neither he who runs is anything, nor he who wills, but God who gives the effect. For he who wills and he who runs seem to be what he who plants and he who waters are; but the Apostle says that he who plants and he who waters are nothing, not that they do nothing, but that in comparison with God, who gives the work its increase or effect, they are said to be nothing.

And let us see what is meant by what is said to Pharaoh: “For this very purpose I raised you up, that I might show my power in you.” It is certain that God not only knows but also foreknows the purpose and will of each one. And knowing and foreknowing, as a good and just steward, he uses the movements and purpose of each to accomplish those works which the mind and will of each has chosen. As if, for example, we say: if there is a householder who is wise and just and has many servants, will he not consider, with all the shrewdness possible, which of them has a mind fit for farming the land, and assign them to the country; whose is fit for trading, whose too for feeding the cattle, and whose talent he finds fit for household service and attending his chamber; and so, being wise, assign each to fitting duties? But since it does not escape him, whether he is a householder or a king, that subjects must sometimes rebel and break the rules of discipline, and for this need correction and stripes, he must therefore choose from all, as fit also for this, such dispositions, if there are any more fiercely stirred, as are carried by their own movements yet bring the correction necessary for wrongdoers. Let us suppose, then, that this householder, or king, saw the time when those must be corrected who have committed many things against morals and discipline, and chose some very harsh man, much harsher than those very ones who are to be corrected, who for his crimes is no longer worthy of correction but of death. And wishing his destruction to profit the correction of the others, he sends him to those whom he wishes to be corrected by his death, and says to him: “For this very purpose I raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” For see that he did not say, “For this very purpose I made you”; otherwise the fault would seem to be referred to the Creator; but he says, “For this very purpose I raised you up”; that is, so that through the wickedness of your mind, which you acquired for yourself by living unbridled and without the fear of God, a useful and fruitful correction may be applied to others, and in you yourself a most notorious destruction may be set as an example to posterity.

And as to his saying, “So then he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens,” he seems to take it from what is written in Exodus. For there he says: “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, so that he does not let the people go.” And Pharaoh’s heart was hardened in this way. God did not wish to inflict sudden and full punishment on him. For although he was of consummate wickedness, yet God by his patience had not shut out even from him the possibility of conversion; and therefore he uses on him at first gentler, then gradually heavier, stripes. But what God did through patience, from this he was hardened to contempt, storing up greater wrath for himself, so that what the Apostle writes may fittingly be said to him: “Or do you despise the riches of his goodness and patience and long-suffering, not knowing that the patience of God leads you to repentance? But according to your hardness and impenitent heart you store up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath.” It is not, then, that God hardens whom he wills, but he who has not been willing to obey patience is hardened. It is superfluous, then, what you say to the Apostle, you who oppose him: “Why then does he still find fault? For who resists his will?” That no one withstands the will of God is certain; but it befits us to know that his will is just and right. For that we are good or evil is of our own will; but to what kind of stripes the evil man, and to what kind of glory the good man, is appointed is of the will of God.

“[O] man, who are you to answer back to God? Will what is formed say to him who formed it: Why have you made me thus? Or does the potter not have power over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?” We read in the Gospels too that those who insolently and faithlessly asked the Lord by what authority he did the things he did, and who had given him this authority, were not even held worthy of an answer. Likewise in the present place too we see the Apostle stirred against insolent questions, and by what he answered he confounded the stubbornness of the questioner. For he says: “O man, who are you to answer back to God?” For man before God is what clay is before the potter. And as with a worthless servant: if perhaps it seems good to his master that some work should be done which is full of reason and use, and he, unwilling to work, begins to discuss what the master commands and to ask the master, “Why do you order this work to be done? Whom does it profit? To whom is it necessary?”, what answer will be so fitting for the stubborn servant as to say to him: “Who are you to answer back to your master? So it pleases; so it seems good to the master”? But I do not think that, if a faithful and prudent servant asks, wishing to understand and to marvel at his master’s wisdom, it is said to him: “Who are you?” Indeed, when Daniel the prophet had desired to know the will of the Lord, for which he was also called “a man of desires,” it was not said to him, “Who are you?” but an angel was sent to instruct him about all the dispensations and judgments of God. We too, then, if we desire to know something of the secret and hidden things of God, if we are men of desires and not of contentions, let us seek faithfully and humbly the judgments of God set more covertly in the divine writings. For this reason the Lord too said, “Search the Scriptures,” knowing that these things are opened not to those who, busy with other affairs, hear or read in passing, but to those who with an upright and simple heart, with unbroken labor and continual vigils, search the divine Scriptures more deeply; of whom I know well that I am not one. Yet if there is anyone who seeks thus, he will find.

But let us too, as far as we can, turn to the things in hand. “Will what is formed,” he says, “say to him who formed it: Why have you made me thus? Or does the potter not have power over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?” And in Jeremiah the prophet we read something of this kind, where he is commanded by God to go into the potter’s house and see him forming; and indeed, gathering up a vessel that had collapsed in his hands, he formed it again according to his will. “And the word of the Lord came to him,” it says, “saying: Can I not do with the house of Israel as this potter?” And Wisdom says: “The furnace tests the potter’s vessels, and temptation just men.” God, then, has power over us as the potter has over the clay, to make from the same lump vessels for honor and vessels for dishonor. For you, then, who answer back insolently to God, let it suffice to have heard this. But let him who desires to behold the works of God’s wisdom in his dispensations hear Paul, who knows the divine secrets, discussing these very things in another place. “But in a great house,” he says, “there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earthenware, and some for honor, some for dishonor. If then anyone cleanses himself from these, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful to the Lord, prepared for every good work.” Do you hear how Paul, in these words in which he had no insolent contradicter, opened the differences of the vessels? For there, where the hearer was not worthy but was a contradicter, he mentions only earthen vessels; but here he says there are both golden and silver and wooden and earthen ones, and some, he says, are for honor and others are made for dishonor. Likewise the reason why some are made for honor and others for dishonor he kept silent there, but opened here. “For if anyone cleanses himself,” he says, “from these,” without doubt from the filth of sin, “he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful to the Lord, prepared for every good work.” It remains, then, that he who has not cleansed himself, nor washed away the stains of sin through repentance, is a vessel for dishonor. And if he has also increased his wickedness and through hardness of mind and an impenitent heart has wholly despised being converted, he will now be not only a vessel of dishonor but a vessel of wrath.

So, then, the reason which there he shuts to those who demand it unworthily, here he opens to those who desire it worthily; through which that too which he set forth a little before about Jacob and Esau is explained more plainly. For, so that Jacob might be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful to the Lord, prepared for every good work, his soul had cleansed itself; and God, seeing its purity, and having power to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor, made Jacob, who, as we said, had cleansed himself, a vessel for honor; but Esau, whose soul he did not see so pure nor so simple, he made from the same lump a vessel for dishonor. And so that you may know that Jacob was made a vessel for honor because of the purity and simplicity of his soul, hear what testimony of simplicity divine Scripture bears him: “And Jacob,” it says, “was a simple man, dwelling in a house.” Therefore, then, the Apostle says of them that before they were born it is said of them: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

“But if God, wishing to show his wrath and to make known his power, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, so that he might make known the riches of his glory in the vessels of mercy, which he prepared for his glory: even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles; as he says in Hosea: I will call not my people, my people; and not beloved, beloved; and her who had not obtained mercy, her who has obtained mercy. And it will be: in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, there they will be called sons of the living God.” We have often pointed out the Apostle’s unarranged expressions and their defects, which is found no less in the present place. For what he says at the beginning of the passage, “But if God, wishing,” is not answered by anything. For instance, as he also said elsewhere, “But if the firstfruits are holy, so is the lump”; here he answers nothing of the kind, but left this conjunction as it were idle; and even if it is not taken in, the understanding will be given more clearly without it: for example, if we read thus: “God, wishing to show his wrath and to make known his power, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, so that he might make known the riches of his glory in the vessels of mercy.” In this it seems to be understood that, while God endures and bears patiently with the unbelieving and faithless, he makes known to men both his patience and his power: his patience, while he endures long, if perhaps they may come to their senses and be converted; his power, while at some time he punishes and does not leave crimes wholly unavenged. And again “in the vessels of mercy,” that is, those who have cleansed themselves from all filth of sin, from which no one is clean, even if his life has been one day, he makes known the riches of his glory; which vessels he prepared for glory, not by some irrational or chance grace, but because they had purged themselves from the aforesaid filth.

And as to his adding, “even us, whom he also called,” it is as though he had said: “as us, whom he called not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles.” For he seems to have pursued the earlier things as about Pharaoh, who was a vessel of wrath, and about the sons of Israel, who were vessels of mercy. Here, then, what he adds, “even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles,” seems to take up a comparison; that is, so that it seems to be said thus: “As we too are vessels of mercy, whom he called not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles.” Let these things be said as far as concerns the order of the apostolic discourse itself and the explanation of the words.

Now, going over it briefly, let us inquire something too about the inner understanding. How, then, does God make known his wrath? Through the vessels of wrath, he says, fitted for destruction. I am astonished within myself as I behold the counsel of the Holy Spirit in the divine books. For it says that the wrath of God, which is foreign to his nature, is made known to men, as this present place of the Apostle indicates; but his goodness and sweetness, which is proper to his nature, it records to be hidden and concealed, as David says: “How great is the multitude of your sweetness, Lord, which you have hidden for those who fear you!” What reason, then, shall we give that God manifests his wrath to men and hides his sweetness? Without doubt he knows that the human race is frail and prone to fall through negligence, for whom it is more expedient to be under the fear of wrath than to be loosened by the hope of God’s kindness and sweetness; as the Wisdom of God also says: “He who spares the rod hates his son. For if you strike him with the rod, he will not die; but you will save his soul from death.” God, then, makes known his power while he chastises and corrects the ungodly, so that, according to the sentence of Scripture, “while the pestilent man is scourged, the innocent becomes wiser.” But he also makes known the riches of his glory in the vessels of mercy, which he prepared for glory. The riches of God become known when his mercy is shown toward those who are despised among men and are lowly, who hope not in their riches nor in their power but in the Lord. And as then the nation of the Hebrews, despaired of among men and cast off, obtained mercy from God, so now the people of the Gentiles, which was despised and despaired of by those who glory in circumcision, has obtained mercy.

But this is what we ought to attend to more keenly: that they too obtained mercy and were called the people of God and were beloved of God; but since they did not know how to keep the grace they had received, it is said to them: “Because the dwelling of Israel committed adultery, I sent her away and gave her a bill of divorce into her hands”; and again elsewhere: “You have become a weariness to me; I will no longer forgive your sins.” And through Jeremiah the Lord says: “My inheritance has become to me like the den of a hyena.” Lest perhaps we too, who were not the people of God, but through the riches of his glory he called us his people, and who were not beloved but have been made beloved and sons of the living God, if we do not walk as sons of light and sons of God, if we do not act as the people of God, so that men seeing our good works may glorify our Father who is in heaven, it is to be feared lest we fall under that word of the Apostle in which he says: “For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you.”

“As he says in Hosea: I will call not my people, my people; and not beloved, beloved; and her who had not obtained mercy, her who has obtained mercy. And it will be: in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, there they will be called sons of the living God.” This testimony which the Apostle takes from Hosea does not seem, as far as the place of the prophet itself goes, to be said of the Gentiles, but of the people of Israel itself. But, as we said above, Paul takes an example from a like case, to show that, as it was once said to them when they had been cast off and despaired of, first, “You are not my people, and I am not your God”; and after this is added, “And it will be: in the place in which it was said to them, You are not my people, they too will be called sons of the living God”; so, he says, we too whom he called not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles, who before were not his people, he has now called his people; and her not beloved, beloved; and in the place where it was said to us, “You are not my people,” there we shall be called sons of the living God. But perhaps those who are of the circumcision may ask us and say: “Where, then, was it said to you that you are not the people of God, so that there you should be called sons of the living God?” For they will assert that God spoke these things in Judea (for in it alone is God known), and that none of these things concern us, because the law speaks to those who are under the law. But I will show a far worthier place, where it was both fitting and possible for God to speak. For it will not consistently be said that God speaks in mountains and rocks and any earthly places; but God speaks in the mind of man, in the rational sense, and in the governing part of the heart; and there, when deeds unworthy and estranged from God are blamed by the conscience that convicts them, there, I say, it is declared, there it is said to each one, “You are not my people.” But if someone amends himself from these things and purifies himself, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, begins to guard his heart, there, that is, in the secret of the heart, made a peacemaker, he will be called a son of that God, his conscience agreeing.

“But Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved. For he is completing and cutting short the word in equity, because the Lord will make a shortened word upon the earth. And as Isaiah foretold: Unless the Lord of hosts had left us seed, we would have become like Sodom and been made like Gomorrah. What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have laid hold of righteousness, but the righteousness that is from faith; but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at the law. Why? Because it was not from faith, but as from works; they stumbled at the stone of stumbling, as it is written: Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense; and he who believes in him will not be put to shame.” After he had set out, through the wisdom of God which Paul speaks among the perfect, the secret and hidden things of the divine dispensation, and had shown by what reason or order God shows either his wrath in the vessels of wrath or the riches of his glory in the vessels of mercy; and had taught that each one becomes a vessel of wrath from this, that by his hardness and impenitent heart he stores up wrath for himself on the day of wrath, while the vessels of mercy are those who have cleansed themselves from these and prepared themselves for every good work: now, to confirm these very things with greater authority, he teaches that they were written beforehand in the prophets too. “Isaiah,” he says, “cries out concerning Israel: Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved.” For the prophet, foreseeing the future, saw that very many of Israel, and especially those who are compared to the sand of the sea, through their hardness and impenitent heart would be vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, not believing in their life, but crucifying the Lord of majesty. If, then, he says, they are as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved. Those who are not saved are as the sand of the sea; but the remnant that will be saved are as the stars of heaven. For the word of the promise made to Abraham contains both: “Your seed,” it says, “will be as the sand of the sea and as the stars of heaven.”

And this is what he says: “For he is completing and cutting short the word in equity, because the Lord will make a shortened word upon the earth.” The word is shortened where many are called, few … [the scan has lost text here] … “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and your whole soul and your whole strength, and your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments the whole Law and the Prophets hang”; in which he plainly shortened the Prophets and the Law into these two sayings. The faith of the creed too, which is handed on to believers, can be called a shortened word, in which the sum of the whole mystery is contained, joined together in a few words.

“And as Isaiah foretold,” he says: “Unless the Lord of hosts had left us seed, we would have become like Sodom and been made like Gomorrah.” What seed does Isaiah say was left by the Lord? Without doubt that which the same Apostle explains elsewhere, when he says it was said to Abraham: “To you I will give this land, and to your seed. He did not say, and to seeds, as of many, but to your seed, as of one, who is Christ.” This, then, is what Isaiah says: “Unless the Lord had left us seed,” that is, unless he had given us Christ to be born from us, “we would have been as Sodom,” as far as the greatness of impiety goes; except that something even graver was done among the Israelites. For the Sodomites are related to have been incestuous and shameless toward strangers; but the people of Israel showed itself sacrilegious toward him who, though he is the Lord of majesty, willed both to be called and to be their brother. Unless, then, the Lord had left this seed, through which the remnant would be saved and the vessels of mercy saved, that people would have perished like Sodom. And yet not idly did Isaiah name what was left “seed.” For seed is what is sown in the earth and returns manifold fruit: teaching by this that Christ too was to be sown, that is, buried in the earth, and rising thence would bring forth the abundant fruit of the whole multitude of the Church; as the Lord himself also says: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it bears no fruit; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”