The following comes from:
Ali Bonner, The Myth of Pelagianism (British
Academy Monographs; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 191-92
Ambrosiaster on merit and reward
Ambrosiaster used the language of ‘merits’ (merita) and
‘rewards’ (praemia) to sell his brand of Christianity to his readers
just as freely as Evagrius and Jerome did. He advertised a direct equation
between virtue and reward just as they had done.281 He compared David and Saul
in order to illustrate how their autonomous decisions determined their merit,
which in turn determined God’s judgement:
[Saul] was furious because twice his prayers were not heard, since
he was unworthy. But rather than persist with prayer so that he would have
created merit in himself, through which he would have become worthy, instead
impatient and indignant at God’s judgement, he sought help from idols that he
had previously condemned as worthless. See then how it is clear that the
judgement of God’s foreknowledge is just, even to those who do not want it.282
Ambrosiaster’s interpretation of the simile of the potter shaping
pots at Rom. 9:21 made God’s justice paramount, and this justice referred back
to God’s foreknowledge of autonomous human decisions.283
This is a very brief survey of the
extent to which the author known as Ambrosiaster took the same interpretative
standpoint as Pelagius did later. It serves to illustrate the typical content
of ‘vulgate’ doctrine in circulation in the Latin West in the late 4th century.
It also shows how far interpretation of the Bible was an unsupervised arena in
which individuals were free to express themselves and to think creatively in
writing. This presumption of free discussion was the norm inherited from
classical traditions of philosophical enquiry and the rhetorical educational
system.284
Notes for the Above:
(281) Ambrosiaster, In epistolas Paulinas, on Rom. 5:3 (ed.
Vogels, CSEL 81/1, p. 153), Ambrosiaster stated that virtue, in the form of
steadfast hope: ‘Has great merit with God’; ‘Magnum meritum est apud Deum.’
(282) Ambrosiaster, In epistolas Paulinas, on Rom. 9:16
(ed. Vogels, CSEL 81/1, p. 323), ‘[Saul] furens, quia semel et iterum non sit
auditus, cum esset indignus, nec in prece perstitit, ut meritum sibi faceret,
per quod esset dignus, sed inpatiens et de Dei iudicio indignatus ab idolis,
quae prius uelut nullius momenti damnauerat, auxilium requisiuit. Ecce iustum
esse iudicium praescientiae Dei etiam nolentibus manifestum est.’
(283) Ambrosiaster, In epistolas Paulinas, on Rom. 9:21
(ed. Vogels, CSEL 81/1, p. 329), ‘For as I said earlier, he knows who ought to
be shown mercy’; ‘Scit enim cuius debeat misereri, sicut supra memoraui.’
(284) Cameron, Christianity and the
Rhetoric of Empire, p. 222.