The following comes from:
Ali Bonner, The Myth of Pelagianism (British
Academy Monographs; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 129-32
Jerome’s Commentary on Isaiah is a storehouse of explicit
stress on effective human free will. He published the Commentary in AD
410, just a few years before he attempted to alter his position, so it is
important evidence for the ‘before’ stage prior to his apparent switch to a
different perspective. In Book 1 of his commentary concerning Isa. 1:19–20: If
you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you
refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword, he wrote: ‘He
preserves free will, so that for either direction taken, not derived from a
prior judgement made by God, but derived from the merits of individual people,
there should be either punishment or reward.’46 This is a clear statement of
free will to virtue as well as sin, and an assertion that the reason this
principle was essential to Christianity was because it preserved the justice of
the Christian system.47 In this passage, Jerome clearly rejected predestination
as preordaining (non ex praeiudicio Dei) and asserted that ‘merit’
determined ‘reward’ (merita and praemium).
In his frequent references to human free will, Jerome regularly
specifically appended the assertion that free will was dual—that is, to good as
well as evil. Speaking initially in the persona of God about how some of the
Jewish people did not acknowledge Christ, he wrote:
‘This is why I was unable to hold on to your adulterous mother any
longer, but permitted her to go away willingly’. For each one is sold to his
own sins, so long as we are left to our own judgement and we are led by our own
will either to good or to evil.48
Jerome went on to quote from the Pauline Epistles; it seems that
he did not see anything in them to contradict his teaching on free will when he
wrote his Commentary on Isaiah. According to him, humans were always
able to choose virtue through the exercise of their own free will:
This must be said, that evils need to be turned into goods, and
virtues should be born from vices . … What the Gospel says: A good tree
cannot make bad fruit [Matt. 7:18] does not refer to the peculiar property
of its nature, as the heretics want, but to the choice of the mind. After all,
he adds: Either make a tree good, and its fruit is good [Matt. 12:33].
From this it is very clear that it is by one’s own will (propria uoluntas)
that each person makes his own soul a good or an evil tree, whose fruit are
different.49
For Jerome, free will was inherently binary; it could not function
in one direction only.50 When he discussed Jerusalem (here representing for him
the Jewish people), he emphasised that the option to act virtuously was always
present; the Jewish nation could have chosen to recognise Jesus:
You bowed down by your own will . … Let this be said in accordance
with the history that Jerusalem, if she should be willing to be lifted and to
arise, she will in no way drink the cup of the fury of the Lord . … Here one
should equally take note that they did not bow it down by force, so that what
had formerly been raised erect was made to stoop toward the earth, but they
left it to its own judgement, but that soul by its own will laid down its neck.51
The only potential problem Jerome saw in his assertion of human
dual free will lay in how it could be reconciled with the omnipotence of God,
since it meant that God willed something that did not come about because humans
disobeyed his commands. Jerome wrote in the person of Jesus questioning God
about this:
‘How is it Father, that you have been glorified in me, one who has
laboured in vain, and who was unable to call the majority of the Jewish
people back to you?’ But all this is said in order that man’s free will (liberum
arbitrium) may be demonstrated. For it is God’s to call, and ours to
believe; and God is not immediately powerless, if we ourselves do not believe,
but he leaves his power to our judgement so that our will justly obtains its
reward.52
This stated the whole of Pelagius’ argument for free will: that
humans had dual free will, that this was necessary in order to preserve God’s
justice, that it did not diminish God’s omnipotence, and that the process of
achieving virtue was a co‑operative one in which both God and man were agents.
Jerome used the same terminology as Pelagius later did: ‘free will’ (liberum
arbitrium), ‘will’ (uoluntas) and ‘reward’ (praemium). Since
human dual free will did not diminish God’s omnipotence, it was therefore not a
disrepectful or arrogant attitude to Him to assert that God gave man free will.
Jerome was uncompromising in his argument that God willed that everyone should
believe:
This therefore was the Father’s will, that the wicked vinedressers
should have received the Son who had been sent and should have rendered the
fruit of the vineyard, who instead killed him.53
Jerome repeated his statement of the universality of God’s
salvific will later in his Commentary on Isaiah when he directly asked
the question why, if God wanted all men to be saved, were some people not
saved:
Why are many not saved? . … A clear
reason is supplied: But they did not believe, and they provoked his Holy
Spirit . … Consequently, God willed to save those who desire salvation, and
he summoned them to salvation, so that their will would have its reward; but
they refused to believe . … And he is not immediately at fault if the majority
refused to believe, but the will of the one who came was that everyone should
believe and be saved.54
Thus the transparency of the justice of the Christian God and the
permanence of the invitation to come to God, perceived as an integral part of
the justice of the Christian God, were explicitly canvassed by Jerome in AD
410.
Furthermore, concerning this same passage in Isaiah, Jerome
explained Paul’s comment at Eph. 2:8: For by grace you have been saved
through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, cited
by Augustine to argue that God brought about all virtue in man, as referring
instead to Jesus’ advent which brought the possibility of salvation to those
who chose of their own free will to believe. God wanted to save his people:
Not by angels and prophets and other holy men, but He himself came down to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel [cf. Matt. 15:24] . … Therefore, not as an ambassador,
nor as an angel, but he himself saved those who have received salvation,
not by the merit of works, but by the love of God. For God so loved the
world that he gave his only begotten Son, that everyone who believes in him may
not perish, but may have eternal life [John 3:16].55
Jerome’s explanation of the phrase
‘not by the merit of works’ was that this referred to the fact that humanity in
general did not deserve the gift of Christ’s advent. He did not read it as
saying that individual people did not have their own merits, and possessed only
merits created in them by God; nor that man did not have the strength of will
to choose virtue unaided and that God’s grace was prevenient and caused all
human virtue. In Jerome’s analysis the grace of salvation was offered to all by
Christ’s coming, and God willed all to take it up; nevertheless, some people
chose not to take up the gift offered. By contrast, in Augustine’s analysis,
God exercised all control, and determined who was saved and who was not; God
was responsible, not man. Ultimately the argument was about where control lay.
The evidence of Jerome’s Commentary on Isaiah shows clearly on which
side of this argument Jerome stood in AD 410. It is not relevant to the
argument of this book either whether Jerome was engaged in anti‑gnostic polemic
in his Commentary on Isaiah or whether he was recycling Origen’s
exegesis; the relevant point is that this position concerning free will was
accepted among Christian commentators and was not something that Pelagius
invented.
Notes for the Above:
(46) Jerome, In Esaiam 1.26, on Isa. 1:19–20 (ed. Gryson et
al., p. 171), ‘Liberum seruat arbitrium, ut in utramque partem non ex
praeiudicio Dei, sed ex meritis singulorum uel poena uel praemium sit.’
(47) Jerome considered justice the cardinal virtue: Jerome, In
Esaiam 15.18, on Isa. 56:1 (ed. Gryson et al., p. 1591), ‘Under the name of
justice every area of morality appears to me to be signified; for the one who
does a single justice is shown to have fulfilled all the virtues’; ‘In nomine
iustitiae omnis moralis mihi uideatur significari locus, quod qui unam
iustitiam fecerit, cunctas uirtutes implesse doceatur’.
(48) Jerome, In Esaiam 13.26, on Isa. 50:1 (ed. Gryson et
al., p. 1444), ‘“Vnde adulteram matrem uestram ultra tenere non potui, sed
uolentem abire permisi”. Quod autem peccatis suis unusquisque uendatur, dum
proprio arbitrio derelicti nostra uoluntate uel ad bonum, uel ad malum
ducimur’.
(49) Jerome, In Esaiam 15.17, on Isa. 55:12–13 (ed. Gryson
et al., pp. 1588–9), ‘Hoc dicendum est, quod mala uertantur in bona, et pro
uitiis nascantur uirtutes . … Ergo illud quod in Euangelio dicitur: Non
potest arbor bona facere fructus malos [Luke 6:43, Matt. 7:18], nequaquam
refertur ad naturae proprietatem, ut haeretici uolunt, sed ad mentis arbitrium.
Denique infertur: Aut facite arborem bonam et fructus eius bonos [Matt.
12:33]. Ex quo perspicuum est unumquemque propria uoluntate facere animam suam
bonam uel malam arborem, cuius fructus uarii sunt.’
(50) Other examples of his assertion of dual free will are Jerome,
Ep 49.021.4 (ed. Hilberg, CSEL 54, p. 387), ‘It lies in our judgement
whether we follow either Lazarus or the rich man’; ‘In nostro arbitrio est uel
Lazarum sequi uel diuitem’; Jerome, In Esaiam 16.4, on Isa. 57:6 (ed.
Gryson et al., p. 1633), writing of those who worshipped false gods in the time
of Moses: ‘They did this by their own will, because to choose good or evil lies
in our judgement’; ‘Hoc fecerunt propria uoluntate, quia in nostro consistit
arbitrio bonum malumue eligere.’ Jerome repeated the phrase ‘free will is left
to man’ (‘liberum homini relinquatur arbitrium’) twice in his Commentary on
Ecclesiastes: Jerome, In Ecclesiasten, on Eccles. 4:9–12 (ed.
Adriaen, CCSL 72, p. 287); on Eccles. 7:15 (ed. Adriaen, CCSL 72, p. 306), see
n. 23.
(51) Jerome, In Esaiam 14.14, on Isa. 51:21–3 (ed. Gryson
et al., pp. 1488–9), ‘Voluntate propria incuruata es . … Hoc iuxta historiam
dictum sit, quod Hierusalem, si eleuari uoluerit atque consurgere, nequaquam
bibat calicem furoris Domini . … In quo pariter adnotandum quod non eam
incuruauerint nec uim fecerint, ut prius erecta inclinaretur in terram, sed
proprio arbitrio dereliquerint, illa autem uoluntate sua posuerit ceruices’.
(52) Jerome, In Esaiam 13.19, on Isa. 49:1–4 (ed. Gryson et
al., p. 1420), ‘“Quomodo in me glorificatus es, pater, qui in uacuum
laboraui, et magnam partem populi Iudaeorum ad te reuocare non potui?” Haec
autem uniuersa dicuntur, ut liberum hominis monstretur arbitrium; Dei enim
uocare est, et nostrum credere. Nec statim si nos non credimus, impossibilis
Deus est, sed potentiam suam nostro arbitrio derelinquit, ut iuste uoluntas
praemium consequatur.’ Jerome argued that Isaiah’s words should be understood
as Christ speaking.
(53) Jerome, In Esaiam 13.20, on Isa. 49:5–6 (ed. Gryson et
al., p. 1422), ‘Haec igitur uoluntas Patris fuit, ut pessimi uinitores missum
susciperent Filium, et fructus uineae redderent, qui interfecerunt eum’.
(54) Jerome, In Esaiam 17.29, on Isa. 63:8–10 (ed. Gryson
et al., p. 1790), ‘“Quare multi non sunt saluati?” . … Infertur causa
perspicua: Ipsi autem non crediderunt et exacerbauerunt Spiritum Sanctum
eius . … Voluit itaque Deus saluare cupientes, et prouocauit ad salutem, ut
uoluntas haberet praemium; sed illi credere noluerunt . … Nec statim in culpa
est, si plures credere noluerunt, sed uoluntas uenientis haec fuit, ut omnes
crederent et saluarentur.’
(55) Jerome, In Esaiam 17.29,
on Isa. 63:8–10 (ed. Gryson et al., pp. 1789–90), ‘Non per angelos et
prophetas et alios sanctos uiros saluare uoluit populum suum, uerum ipse
descendit ad oues perditas domus Israhel [cf. Matt. 15:24] . … Nequaquam igitur
ut legatus, nec ut angelus, sed ipse saluauit eos qui receperunt
salutem, non operum merito, sed caritate Dei. Sic enim dilexit Deus mundum,
ut Filium suum unigenitum daret, ut omnis qui crediderit in eum non pereat, sed
habeat uitam aeternam [John 3:16].’
