3.3–7. For we ourselves were once foolish,
disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our
days in malice and envy, hated, hating one another. But when the goodness and
humanity of God our Savior dawned, he saved us, not because of works of justice
that we did; but in accordance with his own mercy, by the washing of
regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out upon us richly
through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that having been justified by his grace, we
might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Someone may ask
how Paul was “foolish, unbelieving, led astray,” and “enslaved to various
desires and pleasures” in malice and “envy, hated, and hating,” before the
“goodness” and clemency of our “Savior by the washing” of the second “rebirth
saved” him, “not because of works of justice that he had done, but from his own
mercy,” when the “Holy Spirit” was abundantly and “generously poured out” upon
the apostles and believers “through Jesus Christ,” so that, having obtained the
inheritance of grace, they took possession of the “hope of life” forever. And
certainly we read that according to the “justice that is in the law,” he was
“without fault, circumcised on the eighth day, a Hebrew of Hebrews, according
to the law a Pharisee, from the tribe of Benjamin.” He was educated at the feet
of Gamaliel and instructed from infancy in the sacred literature.
The following response is given to this. The Jews who
before the Savior’s advent and his suffering and resurrection lived in the law,
although they did not have full justice, nevertheless had some measure of
justice, just as both Simeon and Anna the prophetess were found serving in the
temple of God. But after the people shouted out together, “Crucify him, crucify
him; we have no king but Caesar”; and, “His blood is upon us and upon our
children”; and, “the kingdom of God” was “taken away from them and given to a
nation bearing its fruit”; from that time he who has not believed in Christ has
become “foolish, led astray, unbelieving” and “enslaved to various pleasures.”
Or does Paul not seem to us to have been “foolish”
when he had “zeal for God but not according to knowledge”? And when he
“persecuted the church” and kept watch over the clothing of those who stoned
Stephen? When he was goaded on and burned with such great hatred of the Savior
that he received letters from the priests to go to Damascus to lock up those
who had believed in Christ? Or could he have had any virtues without the virtue
of Christ Jesus? Or could he have extinguished the burning flame of “pleasure”
when he was not God’s temple? But what greater malice and ill will can there be
than to take letters against those who are not present and to lay waste to the
disciples of Christ everywhere? To be unwilling to be saved himself, and to
envy others who could have been saved? To hate the Christians and, as a
consequence, to earn everyone’s hatred? And what greater error and senseless
disobedience is there than, after the day has expired and the shadows have
passed, to want to preserve the law that has been abolished and to say, “Do not
handle, do not touch, do not taste,” and when solid food for adults has
appeared, to long to drink the milk of infancy?
Let us pay more careful
attention, and we will find in the present section the clearest manifestation
of the Trinity. For the “kindness and clemency of God our Savior,” none other
than of God the Father, “by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy
Spirit that he poured out upon us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior,”
has “justified” us unto “eternal life.” The salvation of believers is the
mystery of the Trinity. Some understand this passage as follows: they think the
statement is not about Paul and the apostles, but about others under the
persona of the apostles. Thus, just as he spoke about dissention and schism
under his own persona and Apollos’s and Cephas’s, which he proved to be in
existence among the Corinthians, so likewise in the present text, by naming
himself and the apostles, he is pointing to all who had believed in Christ,
what sort they were before the regeneration of the life-giving washing. But at
the same time his humility is also to be admired, because he who despised all
humility (humilitatem) and justice of the law as worthless offscourings,
rightly relates that he was enslaved to all vices when he was without Christ. (St.
Jerome’s Commentaries on Galatians, Titus, and Philemon [trans. Thomas P.
Scheck; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010], 337-39)
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