The Calling of All Nations 1.9–1.16

This faith, then, being fixed in our hearts and immovably founded, by which we most wholesomely believe that all good things, and especially those that carry us forward to eternal life, are had by God’s gift, increased by God’s gift and kept by God’s gift, I think that a pious mind ought not to be disturbed in the question that arises concerning the conversion of all men and not of all, if we do not obscure what is clear by what is hidden, and, while we press boldly on closed things, shut ourselves out of open ones; since it ought to suffice that we walk in that to which we have attained. For what wonder is it if some do not come to the sacraments of life, when many who seemed to have come depart, of whom it is said, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us”? Like them are those who profess that they know God but deny him by their deeds. For though it is written, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,” yet the Lord says of some: “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he will enter the kingdom of heaven”; and: “Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? And then I will say to them, I never knew you; depart from me, workers of iniquity.” Such men do not call on the name of the Lord, because they do not have the Spirit of the adoption of sons, in whom we cry, Abba, Father. And no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit; and: “All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” These come to God through God, and, wishing to be saved, are wholly saved, because they conceive the very desire of salvation by God’s inspiration and come to the knowledge of the truth through the enlightening of the one who calls. For they are the children of the promise, the reward of faith, the spiritual seed of Abraham, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, foreknown and foreordained to eternal life, as the Holy Spirit testifies through the prophet Jeremiah, saying: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in my covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no one shall teach his neighbour and his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest, for I will be merciful to their iniquities and will remember their sins no more. And I will give them another way and another heart, that they may fear me all their days, for their own good and that of their children after them; and I will make with them an everlasting covenant, which I will not turn away after them; and I will put my fear in their hearts, that they may not depart from me, and I will visit them to make them good.” Through Isaiah too the Lord foretells the same things of his grace, by which he makes a new creature out of all men, saying: “Behold, I will do new things, which shall now spring forth, and you shall know them; I will make a way in the desert and rivers in the dry land. The beasts of the field will bless me, the sirens and the daughters of the ostriches, because I have given water in the desert and rivers in the dry land, to give drink to my chosen race, my people whom I have acquired for myself, that they may declare my mighty deeds”; and again: “By myself I swear: righteousness shall go out of my mouth, and my words shall not be turned back, that to me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess to God.” If, then, it is impossible that these things should not happen, because God’s foreknowledge is not uncertain, nor his counsel changeable, nor his will ineffective, nor his promise false, all those of whom these things were foretold are saved without any exception. For he puts his laws into their minds and writes them in their hearts with his finger, so that they receive the knowledge of God not by the work of human teaching but by the instruction of the supreme teacher. For neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but God who gives the growth. All these, from the least to the greatest, know God, because, to come to Christ, they have heard and learned from the Father; all are led out of error and directed into the way of life; to all, their heart changed, it is given to think rightly and will rightly; into all is put the fear by which they are trained in God’s commandments. A way is made in the desert, and the dry land is watered with rivers, so that those who before did not open their mouths to confess God, and, like dumb and irrational animals, had passed into the savagery of beasts, being cleansed by the fountains of the divine words, may bless and praise God, declaring the mighty deeds and wonders of the mercy of him who chose them, adopted them as sons and made them heirs of the New Testament. But if, as the Apostle says, no one despises or adds to a man’s ratified testament, how can it happen that God’s promise is in any part annulled? What the Lord promised to Abraham without condition and gave without law remains entirely and is fulfilled daily. For though some to whom these things were preached did not believe, their unbelief has not nullified the faithfulness of God. For God is true, but every man a liar. And those who, having heard the Gospel, refused to believe were made more inexcusable than if they had heard no proclamation of the truth; but it is certain that in God’s foreknowledge they were not sons of Abraham, nor counted in the lot of those of whom it was said: “In your seed all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed.” For he promised that they would believe who said: “And no one shall teach his neighbour and his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” He promised that they would be reconciled who said: “I will be merciful to their iniquities and will remember their sins no more.” He promised that they would obey who said: “I will give them another way and another heart, that they may fear me all their days.” He promised that they would persevere who said: “I will put my fear in their hearts, that they may not depart from me; and I will visit them to make them good.” Finally, he promised all without any exception who said: “By myself I swear: righteousness shall go out of my mouth, and my words shall not be turned back, that to me every knee shall bow and every tongue confess to God.” Here, if we say that what God swore would be done is not done, we ascribe falsehood to God (God forbid) and a lie to the truth. But if, as piety and faith persuade us, God’s words do not fail and what he has decreed is done entirely, how will the firmness of the truthful promise appear to us, when many thousands of men still serve demons and bend the knee to idols? Only if we recognize that such declarations of God were made according to that unchangeable knowledge in which the whole human race is already sorted out before him, and that whether he speaks of the good or of the bad, he so mentions one part as though he passed over no one. For when the Apostle says, “The old things have passed away; behold, all things are made new,” does he not seem to have said that all men are renewed? Or when he says, “Because in him it pleased all the fullness to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself,” does he not speak as though he wished no one to be understood as excluded from this reconciliation? Or when he says, “In these last days he has spoken to us in his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things,” does the form of the sentence sound anything other than that all men were made over by the Father into Christ’s inheritance, according to the prophecy of David, saying, “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession”? And when the Lord says, “If I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to myself,” does not the conversion of all seem to be promised? Or when it is prophesied of the Church and said, “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill brought low, and the crooked shall become straight and the rough ways plain,” does any man seem omitted who is not signified as one to be made subject to Christ? What of the saying, “And all flesh shall come before me to worship in Jerusalem, says the Lord”? Or this: “And it shall be in those days, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh”? Or this: “The Lord lifts up all who fall and raises up all who are cast down”? Is it not so stated as though no one were excluded from this gift of God? The people of God, then, has its fullness; and though a great part of men either reject or neglect the grace of the Saviour, yet in the elect and foreknown, set apart from all in general, a special totality is reckoned, so that the whole world seems to be freed out of the whole world and all men taken up out of all men. For just so, when the discourse is about the wicked, the divine pen so orders its speech that what is said of a certain part seems to pertain to all men: as is what John the Baptist says, “He who comes from heaven is above all; what he has seen and heard he testifies, and no one receives his testimony”; or that of the Apostle, “All seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ”; or what the psalm of David sings, “The Lord looked down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there is any who understands or seeks God. All have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, not even one.” By these and other proofs, which those who seek can bring forward in greater number, it is shown beyond doubt that sometimes the whole earth is named for a part of the earth, the whole world for a part of the world, and all men for a part of men. Yet Scripture often quickly reveals the distinction, so that the reader’s understanding is carried from the name of the whole to the part that is to be understood. Such is the saying of the Apostle: “We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Is Christ power to those to whom he is a stumbling block, or wisdom to those to whom he is foolishness? But since some of them were justified by faith and others hardened by their impiety, he distinguished one race of believers and unbelievers under the name of the called, so that those whom he signified as strangers to faith, even though they had heard the Gospel, he might show to be strangers to the calling.

By this rule the divine word promises through Isaiah, saying: “I will lead the blind in a way they have not known, and they shall tread paths they do not know; and I will turn darkness into light before them and the crooked into straight. These things I will do and will not forsake them.” But what follows, “But they have turned back,” must be referred to a certain part of their race, not to those of whom he says, “I will not forsake them.” Again the Lord says to Jacob: “Do not fear, for I am with you. From the east I will bring your seed, and from the west I will gather you. I will say to the north, Bring them, and to the south, Do not hold them back; bring my sons from a far land and my daughters from the ends of the earth, all who are called by my name. For I have prepared him for my glory, and formed him and made him.” But what follows, “And I brought out a blind people, and their eyes are blind, and they have deaf ears,” can in no way fit those whom he says he has prepared for his glory. For in all these words, which are said of one race of men, the former suit some persons and the latter others. In the Apostle too, what happens in a part of the people is told under the name of the whole people, and the fullness is reckoned in the remnant. For when he was discussing the blinding of the Jews and showing that some of them were saved by grace, he says: “I say then, has God rejected his people? By no means. For I too am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin; God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.” The people foreknown, then, the people not rejected, are those who have been justified in Christ. And what seems to be said of all Israel is shown to hold only in those whom the election of grace makes a remnant for itself, as the words that follow in the Apostle set out. For he goes on to say: “Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have dug up your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life. But what does the divine answer say to him? I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. So then, he says, at this present time too a remnant has come to be according to the election of grace. And if by grace, it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace.” Not all Israel, then, was rejected, nor all chosen; but voluntary blindness turned a part away, and free illumination kept a part for itself; and yet the discourse about them is so framed that, between those who perish and those who are saved, no division of the whole race seems to be made. For when one reads, “As regards the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but as regards election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers,” the wording sounds as though he called the same men beloved whom he had called enemies. But the Apostle himself wiped away this obscurity by saying, “For blindness has come upon Israel in part,” so that we might understand one race to be divided into two kinds, and that ‘every man’, ‘all the fullness’, ‘all Israel’ are not always to be referred to the whole, but often to a part.

Among these forms of speech we must also notice that manner of expression in the Scriptures by which what concerns men of different times is so expressed as though it were said of one generation of the same age. Such is what the holy apostle Peter says, writing to the gentiles of his own time and of the future: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, that you may proclaim the virtues of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; who once were not a people, but now are the people of God; who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.” When this was preached, were those men still alive, all of whom God in past generations had let walk in their own ways; and were the same men who had earlier been handed over to their own wills now being called out of darkness into marvellous light? Had they not already perished in their ignorance, were they not already gone from this world, and was no return from error to truth open to men long dead? And yet what grace was doing after many ages in the descendants of the impious he expressed, by the custom of speaking, in such a way that the very men who had once been abandoned seem now to be chosen. But these things pertain not to the same men, but to men of the same race; and the calling that shone out near the end of the world does not run back to past ages. So in a certain way they both are and are not the same of whom and to whom these things are said, while in some respects the special are not divided from the general and in others they are separated from what is common.

But when those who love quarrelsome contests read or hear these things, they will say that by such arguments we contradict the Apostle, who declares that God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. This portion of the Apostle’s words we receive so wholly and fully that we take away from it nothing of what precedes or follows it that belongs to it. For, to set aside the other testimonies of the divine words, this passage suffices both to empty what they slanderously object and to defend what they impiously deny. Writing, then, to Timothy, the apostle Paul says: “I urge, then, first of all, that supplications, prayers and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high position, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all piety and chastity. For this is good and acceptable before God our Saviour, who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.” Concerning this rule of apostolic teaching, then, with which the universal Church is imbued, lest we wander by our own judgment into a different understanding, let us ask what the universal Church itself holds: for nothing can be doubtful in the precept if obedience agrees in practice. The Apostle, then, or rather the Lord through the Apostle, who spoke in the Apostle, commanded that supplications, prayers and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and for those in high position. This law of supplication the devotion of all priests and all the faithful keeps so harmoniously that there is no part of the world in which such prayers are not celebrated by Christian peoples. Everywhere, then, the Church supplicates God, not only for the saints and those already regenerated in Christ, but also for all unbelievers and enemies of the cross of Christ, for all worshippers of idols, for all who persecute Christ in his members, for the Jews, on whose blindness the light of the Gospel does not shine, and for heretics and schismatics, who are strangers to the unity of faith and charity. And what does she ask for them but that, having left their errors, they may be converted to God, receive faith, receive charity, and, freed from the darkness of ignorance, come to the knowledge of the truth? Since they cannot provide this for themselves, oppressed by the weight of evil habit and bound by the devil’s chains, nor overcome their deceptions, to which they have clung so stubbornly that they love falsehood as much as truth ought to be loved, the merciful and just Lord wills that supplication be made to him for all men; so that, when we see innumerable men rescued from such deep evils, we may not doubt that God has granted what he was asked to grant; and, giving thanks for those who have been saved, we may hope that those also who are not yet enlightened will be rescued by the same work of divine grace from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God before they leave this life.

But if, as we see happen, the grace of the Saviour passes some men by, and the Church’s prayer for them is not accepted, this must be referred to the hidden judgments of divine justice, and we must acknowledge that the depth of this secret cannot be open to us in this life. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, and we see now through a mirror, in an enigma. Nor are we wiser or more knowing than the most blessed Apostle, who, when he was discussing the power of grace and had entered the secret of great mysteries, gave way before what it was impossible to tell. For when he had said: “I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, lest you be wise in your own sight: that blindness has come upon Israel in part, until the fullness of the gentiles should come in, and so all Israel would be saved; as it is written, The deliverer will come from Zion and turn away ungodliness from Jacob, and this will be my covenant with them, when I take away their sins. As regards the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but as regards election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance. For as you once did not believe God, but now have obtained mercy because of their unbelief, so they too have not believed now, in your mercy, that they too may obtain mercy. For God has shut up all things in unbelief, that he may have mercy on all”: when, then, he had poured out, in a kind of ecstasy of his mind, these mysteries of the divine works that surpass the measures of human understanding, he turned the whole account of his exposition into amazement and, marvelling at what he had uttered, exclaimed and said: “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments and unsearchable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor, or who has first given to him, that it should be repaid to him? For from him and through him and in him are all things. To him be glory for ever. Amen.” For the teacher’s statement just set out gave room to a manifold question: the cause of God’s grace, varying through so many peoples and times, might be sought. Why, namely, in earlier ages all the nations were allowed to walk in their own ways, Israel alone excepted, to be taught by the divine words and chosen for the knowledge of the truth, whose unbelief at last made room for the gentiles to be saved, as though, if one people remained in the faith of its race, the mercy of God could not be extended to the other nations? Why, finally, those whose diminution is the salvation of the gentiles are not freed from their blindness before the fullness of the gentiles comes in: why cannot they be enlightened together with all, they who, once all the nations have been adopted, are all to be saved? Or how is all Israel to be saved when the blindness is removed, when an innumerable multitude of it, failing in its unbelief, does not reach the times promised to those to be saved? Or how is the fullness of the nations themselves, whose calling was not made before, said now to come in, when so many thousands of men of every age and condition in all the nations under heaven die without the justification of Christ? But the pious and learned teacher preferred to hang the causes of these mysteries and judgments on the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God rather than to discuss by rash inquiry the secret of most just truth and most merciful goodness withdrawn from human knowledge, omitting nothing of what must not be unknown, and touching nothing of what may not be known.

For there are many things in the dispensation of the divine works whose causes are hidden and only their effects shown, so that, while what is done is plain, why it is done is not plain; the deed is brought into the open and the reason withdrawn into hiding, so that in the same matter both presumption about what is unsearchable is checked and falsehood about what is manifest is refuted. For if I do not know why this man is created a Greek and that one a barbarian, why this one is born into riches and that one into poverty; why the strong beauty of a tall body exalts one, while the cramped thinness of weak limbs deforms another; why one, born of Catholics, is nursed in the cradle of truth, while another, the offspring of heretics, drinks in the poison of error with his mother’s very milk; if, in short, I cannot judge a thousand other differences in the condition of bodies, in the qualities of minds, in the circumstances of times, in the customs of regions, I am not therefore ignorant that God is the creator and orderer of all these. He indeed created the bodies and spirits of individual men in such a way that, besides the voluntary diversity that would follow from each one’s pursuits, he varied the very beginnings of their condition with a most dissimilar multiplicity. And we would be troubled and pulled in different directions by the many opinions of vain talkers, who have presumed to define unfitting things about the unknowable and have ascribed these original inequalities to the fates (which are nothing) and to the stars, did we not hold with most certain knowledge that God the Creator forms each vessel from the original elements as he wills, and tempers the one nature of souls and the one nature of bodies by measures that please him. These works of God would not be withdrawn from human understanding if they had been meant to become known; and it would be revealed why each thing was done thus, if it were not enough to know that it was done thus. The Lord says to Moses: “Who gave man a mouth, and who made the dumb and the deaf, the seeing and the blind? Was it not I, the Lord God?” And through Isaiah: “Have I not made the fruitful and the barren? says the Lord.” In the book of Ecclesiasticus we read: “Good things and bad, life and death, poverty and riches are from God.” And Job says: “The tents of robbers abound, and they boldly provoke God, though he has given all things into their hands.” And the same, discussing the rise and fall of all human affairs and referring all changes to the judgments of God, says: “With him are wisdom and strength; he has counsel and understanding. If he tears down, there is no one to build; if he shuts a man in, there is no one to open. If he holds back the waters, all things dry up; if he sends them out, they overturn the earth. With him are strength and wisdom; he knows both the deceiver and the deceived; he leads counsellors to a foolish end and judges to stupor; he loosens the belt of kings and girds their loins with a rope. He leads priests away without glory and overthrows the nobles, changing the lips of the truthful and taking away the teaching of the elders, pouring contempt on princes and raising up those who were oppressed. He reveals deep things out of darkness and brings the shadow of death into the light. He multiplies nations and destroys them, and restores the overthrown to wholeness. He changes the heart of the princes of the earth and deceives them, so that they go in vain through a pathless way. They will grope as in darkness and not in light, and he will make them stagger like drunkards.” And again the same, saying that God’s will cannot be made void: “For he alone is, and no one can turn back his thought; and whatever his soul wills, that will be done.”

Part of mankind is set free while part perishes; and if we wish to ascribe this to the merits of wills, so that grace seems to have neglected the bad and chosen the good, the case of innumerable peoples will resist us, on whom through so many ages no proclamation of heavenly teaching shone. Nor can we say that their descendants were better, of whom it is written, “The people of the gentiles who sat in darkness have seen a great light; and to those who sat in darkness and the shadow of death a light has risen”; and to whom the apostle Peter says, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, that you may proclaim the virtues of him who called you out of darkness into his so marvellous light; who once were not a people, but now are the people of God; on whom once he had no mercy, but now he has mercy.” What the elders did not merit is not, then, given for the merits of the younger. For an equal impiety accused fathers and sons, and the same blindness of ignorance plunged all together into the same errors. But why God did not have mercy on those and had mercy on these, what knowledge can comprehend, what wisdom investigate? The reason for this distinction is hidden, but the distinction itself is not hidden. We do not understand the one who judges, but we see him working. Why do we slander a hidden justice, we who owe thanks to a manifest mercy? Let us praise and venerate what is done, because it is safe not to know what is covered.

Look also at the whole multitude of little children, in whom, apart from that sin with which the human race is born into condemnation, neither past nor future merits can be reckoned. For all of whom we are now speaking, before any use of understanding, before any free choice of the will, pass on, some regenerated to eternal blessedness, others not reborn to everlasting misery. If you confess original guilt, the whole number is guilty; if you look for moral innocence, the whole sum is without fault. Human justice finds nothing by which to distinguish them, but the unspeakable grace of God has whom it may choose. The counsel is hidden, but the gift is not hidden; mercy shows the work, power veils the cause. But what is not seen is as beyond doubt as what is seen; for to the author of a manifest work one cannot deny the acknowledgment of a fairness, even an unknown one.