The Fourth
Century in the Latin West
But what of the Latin West? Some early
western writers—such as Tertullian in the third century—engaged extensively
with the Pauline corpus, although their writings engage questions which clearly
have a Pauline provenance. It is not, however, until the second half of the
fourth century that a sudden and intense more general interest developed in the
letters of Paul. The earliest known Latin commentary upon the Pauline epistles,
dating from the late fourth century, was once ascribed to Ambrose, but is now
attributed to the author (thought to have been a Roman presbyter) who has been
known since the sixteenth century as ‘Ambrosiaster’. In this commentary on
Romans, Ambrosiaster insists that Christians are justified, like Abraham, sola
fide sine operibus legis—in other words, solely on the basis of faith, and
not with reference to the ‘works of the law’, which Ambrosiaster—like other commentators
of this period—understands in terms of the cultic requirements of Judaism.
Ambrosiaster affirms that we are
justified sola fide—in other words, by faith, and not by fulfilling the prescriptions
of the Mosaic law, such as circumcision or new moon festivals or reverence for
the Sabbath. Ambrosiaster thus does not criticize boasting of good works in
general, but rather a specifically Jewish boasting based on obedience to the
Mosiac law. In his commentary on Romans 4:5, Ambrosiaster appeals to the
example of Abraham, whose faith in God predated the giving of the cultic law. (CESL
81/1, 131) ‘How then do the Jews believe themselves to be justified through
works of the law (per opera legis) in accordance with Abraham, when they
see that Abraham was justified not by the works of the law but by faith alone (non
opera legis sed sola fide iustifacatur)?’ Ambrosiaster, like many Christian
theologians of this period, sees faith as a free human response to God’s
promises of salvation. While Augustine embraced such a traditional view of
human freedom in his early writings, his later anti-Pelagian writings advocated
the idea that humans were unable to believe until God graciously gives grace,
thus creating such a capacity to believe.
Ambrosiaster notes an exegetical issue
which does not appear to have been regarded as troublesome by earlier writers
in the Latin West—the apparent tension between Romans 2:13, which affirms that ‘it
is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of
the law who will be justified’; and the rather different point made in Romans
3:20, which insists that ‘no one will be justified by the works of the law’.
Although Ambrosiaster’s comments on this issue are brief, they nevertheless
highlight a potential Christological solution to this issue: since Christ is
the fulfilment of the Mosaic law, faith in Christ on the part of the believer
can be said to fulfil the law. For this reason, Ambrosiaster glosses Romans 2:13
as follows: ‘Paul says this because those who hear the Law are not justified
unless they believe in Christ, whom the Law itself has promised. That is what
it means to keep the law.’ (Ambrosiaster, Commentary on the Pauline
Epistles: Romans, 18)
There is no hint in Ambrosiaster’s
commentary of a supposed Pauline contrast between human achievements and faith;
rather a faith in Christ is being opposed to a dependence upon Jewish cultic
observances. A rejection of justification by the ‘works of the law’ is
understood to refer specifically to the Jewish cult, and not to some
de-historicised and generalized ethos of human achievement. If any perspective on
Paul can be characterised as ‘classic’ or an ‘old perspective’, it is what has
been set out in this section, not those which emerged during the sixteenth
century.
In his comments on passages relating to
justification in this commentary, Ambrosiaster does not appear to treat this soteriological
metaphor as possessing special privilege or significance. Indeed, his comments on
Romans 5:1 often display a subtle transposition of the metaphor of justification
into other concepts—such as salvation or reconciliation which were perhaps more
familiar to his readers. For the sake of clarity I shall quote the Pauline text
itself in italics, followed by Ambrosiaster’s comments: (Ambrosiaster, Commentary
on the Pauline Epistles: Romans, 89. Note that Ambrosiaster’s old Latin text
of Romans 5:1 uses the verbal form habeamus [‘let us have’] rather than habemus
[‘we have’])
Therefore, since we have been
justified by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Faith, not the law, makes it possible to have peace with God. Faith reconciles
us to God, once the sins that have made us enemies of God have been taken away.
Because the Lord Jesus is the agent of this grace, we are reconciled to God through
him. Indeed, faith is greater than the law.
Other fourth-century western Pauline
commentators picked up on the Pauline emphasis on faith being the sole means of
justification, rather than works of the law. Hilary of Poitiers affirmed that ‘only
faith justifies (fides sola iustificat)’, using this as a hermeneutical
tool primarily to clarify the relation of Christianity to Judaism. Marius
Victorinus likewise insisted that ‘it is faith alone that brings justification
and sanctification’. (Victorinus, Commentarius ad Galatos ii.15-16)
Victorinus is unclear about how justification and sanctification might be
related; he is, however, quite clear about the fundamental detachment the Christian
hope of salvation from a Jewish cultic milieu, and attending observances. In
using phrases such as fides sola or sola fide, such early
Latin-speaking Pauline commentators were not anticipating either Luther’s notion
of faith, or his generalized interpretation of ‘law’; they were simply summarizing
Paul’s core theme that Christians, like Abraham before them, are justified only
on account of placing their trust in God.
By the end of the fourth century, some
fundamental building-blocks of the western church’s view on justification had
been set in place, including increasing sensitisation towards its vocabulary of
justification, and a settled conviction that the concept of justification by faith—as
opposed to opera legis—offered a firm foundation for clarifying the relation
of the church to its Jewish origins. A ‘right’ relationship with God was the
consequence of faith, not observance of Jewish cultic norms and conventions.
Jerome can be seen as having solidified this latter point, particularly in his
comments on the question posed in Galatians 3;2, ‘Did you receive the Spirit by
works of the law’ with ‘observance of the Sabbath, the superstition of circumcision
and new moons’. (Jerome, Commentary on Galatians 3:2) (Alister E.
McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification
[4th ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020], 38-42, emphasis in bold added)