The Anti-Reformed Theology and Presuppositions in Jerome’s Commentary on Isaiah

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].’

 

J. Christopher Edwards on the Six Books Dormition Apocrypha

  

The Six Books is the oldest exemplar of a literary family of Dormition traditions called the Bethlehem traditions, due to the amount of narrative occurring in Bethlehem. The text of the Six Books is originally composed in Greek, although no Greek manuscripts of the text survive. The earliest extant manuscripts are preserved in Syriac and date from the fifth and sixth centuries. Shoemaker notes at least five Syriac manuscripts, two of which are complete, and three sets of palimpsest fragments. There are two major English translations of these earlier Syriac texts, each undertaken in the nineteenth century. William Wright translated one of the complete Syriac manuscripts, and A. Smith Lewis translated a fragmentary palimpsest codex. Shoemaker is now producing a much-needed critical edition and translation of the Six Books Narrative.

 

The Six Books must have been written sometime before the middle of the fifth century, since the extant Syriac manuscripts are from the late fifth century, and they were translated from an earlier Greek text. The Six Books must have been written sometime after Constantine, since the tradition about the relic of the True Cross and Mary’s practice of praying at Jesus’s tomb are only conceivable after Constantine’s mother, Helena, journeyed to the Holy Land. Shoemaker argues that the Greek original and its traditions can be more specifically dated “almost certainly to the middle of the fourth century, if not perhaps even earlier. The reasons for this more specific dating are somewhat complicated, but can be summarized in the following two points:

 

First, the Six Books is dependent on the Doctrina Addai. After 400 CE, this text begins to include a story of the discovery of the True Cross, known as the Protonike legend, which is derivative of the Helena legend. Because the Six Books includes a story of the True Cross that is different than the Protonike legend, it must be dependent on a version of Doctrina Addai that lacked this legend—that is, a version existing before the year 400 CE.

 

Second, among the heresies addressed by the fourth-century writer Epiphanius of Salamis, in his Panarion are the so-called “Kollyridians.” This group offered Mary a degree of veneration that Epiphanius finds unacceptable. Shoemaker demonstrates the high likelihood that Epiphanius obtained his understanding of the Kollyridians from his acquaintance with the Six Books. Shoemaker conjectures that “Epiphanius encountered the Six Books traditions in Palestine, where he lived prior to becoming metropolitan of Cyprus in 367.”

 

Finally, although this is not a rationale for dating the Six Books in the mid-fourth century provided by Shoemaker, Richard Bauckahm argues for a date “from the fourth century at the latest, but perhaps considerably earlier,” because of the position of the dead in the Six Books as “waiting for the last judgment and resurrection,” which he says can be found in “no other apocalypse [. . . ] later than the mid second century.”(J. Christopher Edwards, “The Departure of My Lady Mary From This World (The Six Books Dormition Apocryphon),” in Early New Testament Apocrypha, ed. J. Christopher Edwards [Ancient Literature for New Testament Studies 9; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Academic, 2022], 308-10)

 

Jerome’s Non-Reformed Understanding of the Hardening of Pharaoh’s Heart and Predestination

The following comes from:

 

Ali Bonner, The Myth of Pelagianism (British Academy Monographs; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 124-28

 

The hardening of Pharoah’s heart and predestination

 

Two biblical episodes in particular became the focus of the debate over the nature of predestination: the stories of Jacob and Esau and the hardening of Pharoah’s heart. Because predestination and prevenient grace were, as Augustine said, two parts of the same process, these episodes touched directly on the free will debate, which was itself tied to to the anthropology of Christianity because it involved the question of whether or not man’s nature was such that he was able to make an autonomous choice to be virtuous without God’s prior causation.32

 

In his Commentary on Eccclesiastes of AD 388–9, Jerome explained the biblical assertion that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart using an analogy with the different effects of the sun’s heat which he borrowed from Origen’s interpretation of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart:

 

On this subject we must take evidence from Psalm 17 where God is addressed: With the pure you will be pure, and with the crooked you will be perverse [Ps. 17:27], as in Leviticus: If they walk contrary to me, I too will walk contrary to them in my fury [Lev. 26:27–8]. That will also be able to explain why God hardened Pharaoh’s heart: just as one and the same working of the sun liquefies wax and dries mud, the wax liquefying and the mud drying according to their own nature, so the single working of God in the signs of Egypt softened the heart of the believers and hardened the unbelievers. They, through their hard‑hearted impenitence, were: Storing up wrath for themselves on the day of wrath [Rom. 2:5] from the miracles which they did not believe, despite seeing them happen.33

 

Also in his Commentary on Ecclesiastes, Jerome referred implicitly to Rom. 9:20 and explained that it did not mean that human decisions were predetermined:

 

Some think that this passage at that point means that God already knows the name of all those who will exist and are to be clothed in a human body; and that man cannot answer back to his maker about why he was made this way or that. For the more we seek, the more our vanity and superfluous words are displayed; and it is not that free will (liberum arbitrium) is removed by God’s foreknowledge, but that there is an antecedent cause for each and every thing being as it is.34

 

In the light of the previous passage in his exegesis, ‘antecedent cause’ must refer to autonomous human action. This reading of biblical references to the hardening of Pharoah’s heart led Jerome to choose to refer to God’s ‘foreknowledge’ (praescientia) rather than his ‘predestination’ (praedestinatio). In the same commentary, he explained how sin caused anxiety in the sinner, and how God was not the cause of this distress. This passage too should be referred back to his explanation of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart and confirms that Jerome’s view was that man brought about his own punishment, which was not caused by divine predetermination of human decisions.35

 

In around AD 406 in his Commentary on Malachi, Jerome discussed Paul’s reading of the story of Jacob and Esau at Rom. 9:11–13. Jerome’s ‘spiritual interpretation’ affirmed dual free will:

 

And the Lord replies that Esau and Jacob were produced from one stock, which is to say: vices and virtues proceed from the one source, the heart, while we go in either direction as we wish because of our free will; but earlier vices are born during infancy, childhood, and youth, which the stronger age that follows reproaches and overthrows. The older brother is rough and bloodthirsty for hunting [cf. Gen. 25:27], he delights in forests and wild beasts. The younger brother is gentle and simple, and dwells at home innocently . … Moreover God’s love and hatred is born either from His foreknowledge of future events, or from their works; besides we know that God loves everything, nor does he hate anything that he has created; but he protects with his love in particular those who are the enemies of sins and who fight against sins. And conversely he hates those who wish to rebuild what God has destroyed.36

 

Jerome’s interpretation of the meaning of the Jacob and Esau story rejected any notion of predestination as being God’s preordaining of events. Instead his explanation of the story was that it propounded effective human free will (‘we go in either direction as we wish’, in utramque partem ut uolumus declinamus).

 

Jerome wrote his Letter to Hedibia (Letter 120) in around AD 406–7, and in it he answered 12 questions Hedibia had put to him. Her tenth question asked for an explanation of Rom. 9:14–29, and in response Jerome gave his longest account of the question of human free will and the related issues of the stories of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, and of Jacob and Esau. It is important to study Jerome’s explanation of the passage in detail because of the date when it was composed, and because of its fullness. With regard to the date, it is clear from what Jerome wrote that he was aware of the sensitivity of this question. He described Paul’s letter to the Romans as difficult and mysterious, and mentioned a commentary he had read that made Paul’s response to his own question entangle the matter more rather than resolve it. In a reference to the idea of reincarnation, he asserted that the desire to preserve God’s justice led some into heresy through the suggestion that preceding causes led to God’s choice to love Jacob and hate Esau; he himself, however, only wanted to express the consensus view: ‘But nothing pleases me except what the Church states and what we are not afraid to say in public in church’.37 With this comment Jerome showed, first, that he felt a need for caution in interpreting this subject and, second, that he believed that what he went on to expound was the Church’s view and represented the mainstream.

 

Jerome’s interpretation was that this passage in Romans was, in fact, an assertion of effective free will in humans. According to him, Paul raised an objection in order to then counter it:

 

In his usual way, he proposes a question that comes in from the flank, and discusses it, and when he has resolved it, he returns to the point with which he began the discussion. If Esau and Jacob were not yet born and had not done anything either good or evil such that they either deserved well of God or offended him, and their election and rejection shows not the merits of individuals but the will of the one choosing and rejecting, what then shall we say? Is God unjust? . … If we interpret this, says the Apostle, as saying that God does whatever he wants and either chooses someone or condemns him without merit and works: Then it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy [Rom. 9:16], especially when in the same Scripture the same God says to Pharaoh: I have raised you up for the very purpose of showing my power in you, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth [Rom. 9:17, cf. Exod. 9:16]. But if this is so, and if God shows mercy to Israel and hardens Pharaoh’s heart as he pleases, therefore it is in vain that He complains and blames us for not doing what is good or for doing evil, when it lies in His power and will, without reference to good or bad human actions, either to select someone or to cast him aside, especially when human weakness is unable to resist His will. This strong argument, woven from Scriptural authority and almost insoluble, the Apostle in a brief sentence: O man, who are you to answer back to God? [Rom. 9:20]. And this is the meaning: the fact that you answer back to God and accuse Him and make such a search through the Scriptures so that you can speak against God and search for grounds to accuse His will, shows that you have free will and you do what you want, either to be quiet or to speak. For if you think that you were created by God in the likeness of a clay vase and cannot resist His will, consider this, a clay vase does not say to the potter: Why did you make me like this? [Rom. 9:20] For a potter has the power to make from the same clay and: From the same lump of clay one vase for honorable use but another for discredit [Rom. 9:21]. But God made all men with the same condition and he gave them freedom of the will so that each person might do what he wants, whether good or bad; but he gave this power to all mankind to such an extent that the impious speaker argues against his Creator and scrutinises the reasons for his Creator’s will.38

 

So, according to Jerome, Paul’s answer to his own question was that the fact that man answered God back and accused Him of injustice showed that God gave man the free will to be able to show impiety by answering Him back, and Paul’s intention in the passage was to reject the idea that man was moulded by God as a potter shapes clay. Jerome explained that Paul said that God’s patience hardened Pharaoh’s heart. God allowed Pharaoh free will, and Pharaoh chose to abuse His forebearance. This passage therefore showed how particularly just God was:

 

If God’s patience, says the Apostle, hardened Pharoah’s heart and God’s patience put off punishment of Israel for a long time so that he might more justly condemn those whom he had sustained for a long time, God’s patience and infinite mercy should not be criticised, but the stubbornness of those who abused the benevolence of God for their own destruction should be criticised.39

 

Jerome then used once again Origen’s interpretation of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart to explain it by analogy with the twofold effects of the sun: hardening mud and melting wax. God’s forbearance caused men who were good to love God more, and men who were bad to be stubborn. Jerome concluded that man had free will and that God’s justice was transparent:

 

He does not save randomly and without true discernment, but on the basis of preceding causes, namely because some did not receive the son of God, and others of their own free will wanted to receive him.40 But this vessel of mercy represents not only the Gentiles but also those of the Jewish people who wanted to believe, and one people of believers was created; from which fact it is demonstrated that it is not races that are chosen, but the wills of men.41

 

In his final paragraphs on the question, Jerome repeated a further three times his assertion that the will to believe was the effective agent of salvation or punishment, referring to ‘those who wanted to believe’. He ended with an injunction to be silent and not to disturb God with this question. Clearly, he thought his explanation of Rom. 9—namely, that Paul’s letter asserted effective human free will—should be the end of the matter. So instead of using this passage to argue that God controlled man, Jerome interpreted it as showing that He did not control man. And he considered this interpretation to be mainstream: the sort of thing he would not be afraid to say in public in church; it was ecclesiasticus.

 

In the same letter to Hedibia, in answer to another of her questions, Jerome repeated his assertion of effective free will. Dealing with the question of how there could still be people who did not believe after all Paul’s work, Jerome replied that this happened because of human free will:

 

Because men are left to their own judgement, for they do not do good by necessity but voluntarily, so that those who believe may receive a crown and the unbelievers are delivered up to punishments. Therefore sometimes the aroma that we spread, though intrinsically good, is transformed into either life or death, depending on the virtue or the vice of those who receive or reject the Gospel.42

 

For Jerome, the story of the hardening of Pharoah’s heart could not signify that God caused Pharoah’s stubborness. Thomas Scheck referred to Jerome’s ‘strong defence of the freedom of the human will in the process of salvation and damnation’, and identified Jerome’s position as ‘reminiscent of Origen and the Greek theological tradition’.43 Commenting on Isa. 63:17: O Lord, why do you make us stray from your ways, and harden our heart so that we do not fear you?, Jerome explained that God did not actually harden any human heart but his patience made it seem that He did so, because he stayed His hand from punishment; those uttering this prayer: ‘Refer to God what is their own fault.’44 As Scheck noted, Jerome always read divine foreknowledge as foreknowledge of autonomous human action, not as a causal agency founded on divine predetermination of events.45

 

Notes for the Above:

 

(32) For Augustine’s statement that prevenient grace and predestination were two parts of the same process, see Chapter 1, n. 42.

 

(33) Jerome, In Ecclesiasten, on Eccles. 7:14 (ed. Adriaen, CCSL 72, pp. 305–6), ‘Sumendum est in hoc loco testimonium de septimo decimo psalmo, in quo ad Dominum dicitur: Cum sancto sanctus eris et cum peruerso peruerteris [Ps. 17:27]. Et dicendum sanctum Dominum esse cum eo, qui sanctus est et peruerti apud eum, qui sua uoluntate fuerit ante peruersus. Iuxta illud quoque, quod in Leuitico scriptum est: Si ambulauerint ad me peruersi et ego ambulabo ad eos in furore meo peruersus [Lev. 26:27–8]. Quod quidem et illud poterit exponere, quare indurauerit Deus cor Pharaonis. Quomodo enim una atque eadem solis operatio liquefacit ceram et siccat lutum, et pro substantia sua et liquescit cera, et siccatur lutum; sic una Dei in Aegypto signorum operatio molliebat cor credentium et incredulos indurabat, qui iuxta duritiam suam, et impaenitens cor: Thesaurizabant sibi iram in die irae [Rom. 2:5] ex his mirabilibus, quae cum uiderent fieri, non credebant.’

 

(34) Jerome, In Ecclesiasten, on Eccles. 6:10 (ed. Adriaen, CCSL 72, p. 300), ‘Nonnulli illud in hoc loco significari putant, quod omnium, qui futuri sunt, et hominum corpore circumdandi, iam Deus uocabulum nouerit; nec possit homo respondere contra artificem suum, quare ita uel ita factus sit. Quanto enim amplius quaesierimus, tanto magis ostendi uanitatem nostram et uerba superflua; et non ex praescientia Dei liberum tolli arbitrium, sed causas ante praecedere, quare unumquodque sic factum sit.’

 

(35) Jerome, In Ecclesiasten, on Eccles. 2:24–6 (ed. Adriaen, CCSL 72, p. 272), ‘It is not to be wondered at that he said: To the sinner he has given anxiety, etc; this is to be referred to the sense that I have repeatedly discussed: the reason anxiety or distress has been given to him is that he was a sinner, and the cause of the distress is not God, but the man who, of his own volition, sinned beforehand’; ‘Nec mirandum, quod dixerit: Peccatori dedit sollicitudinem, et cetera. Ad illum enim sensum de quo saepe tractaui, hoc referendum est: Propterea datam ei esse sollicitudinem siue distentionem, quia peccator fuerit, et non esse causam distentionis in Deo, sed in illo qui sponte sua ante peccauerit.’

 

(36) Jerome, In Malachiam, on Mal. 1: 2–5 (ed. Adriaen, CCSL 76A, pp. 905–6), ‘Dominusque respondit, Esau et Iacob de una stirpe generatos, hoc est uitia atque uirtutes ex uno cordis fonte procedere; dum ex arbitrii libertate in utramque partem ut uolumus, declinamus; sed priora nascuntur uitia per infantiam, pueritiam, iuuentutem, quae postea aetas firmior corripit atque supplantat. Maior frater hispidus est et sanguinarius uenationibus [cf. Gen. 25:27], siluis et bestiis delectatur. Minor leuis et simplex, et innocenter habitans domum . … Porro dilectio et odium Dei uel ex praescientia nascitur futurorum, uel ex operibus; alioquin nouimus quod omnia Deus diligat, nec quicquam eorum oderit quae creauit; sed proprie eos suae uindicet caritati, qui uitiorum hostes sunt et rebelles. Et econtrario illos odit, qui a Deo destructa cupiunt rursum exstruere.’

 

(37) Jerome, Ep. 120.10.2 (ed. Hilberg, CSEL 55, p. 500), ‘Nobis autem nihil placet, nisi quod ecclesiasticum est et publice in ecclesia dicere non timemus’. In his Letter 124 To Avitus, Jerome explained how in order to preserve God’s justice, Origen hypothesised that ‘preceding causes’ for God’s love of Jacob and hatred of Esau lay in their actions in previous lives. Jerome translated Origen’s On First Principles, and borrowed from Origen frequently.

 

(38) Jerome, Ep. 120.10.6–11 (ed. Hilberg, CSEL 55, pp. 502–3), ‘Venientem e latere quaestionem more suo proponit et disserit, et hac soluta reuertitur ad id, de quo coeperat disputare. Si Esau et Iacob necdum nati erant, nec aliquid egerant boni aut mali, ut uel promererentur Deum uel ofenderent; et electio eorum atque abiectio non merita singulorum, sed uoluntatem eligentis et abicientis ostendit, quid ergo dicimus? Iniquus est Deus? . … Si hoc, inquit, recipimus, ut faciat Deus quodcumque uoluerit, et absque merito et operibus uel eligat aliquem uel condemnet: Ergo non est uolentis neque currentis, sed miserentis Dei [Rom. 9:16], maxime cum eadem Scriptura, hoc est idem Deus loquatur ad Pharaonem: In hoc ipsum excitaui te, ut ostendam in te uirtutem meam, et adnuntietur nomen meum in uniuersa terra [Rom. 9:17, cf. Exod. 9:16]. Si hoc ita est, et pro uoluntate sua miseretur Israheli et indurat Pharaonem, ergo frustra queritur atque causatur nos uel bona non fecisse, uel fecisse mala, cum in potestate illius sit et uoluntate, absque bonis et malis operibus, uel eligere aliquem uel abicere, praesertim cum uoluntati illius humana fragilitas resistere nequeat. Quam ualidam quaestionem Scripturarum ratione contextam, et paene insolubilem, breui Apostolus sermone dissoluit, dicens: O homo! Tu quis es qui respondeas Deo? [Rom. 9:20]. Et est sensus: ex eo quod respondes Deo et calumniam facis et de Scripturis tanta perquiris, ut loquaris contra Deum et iustitiam uoluntatis eius inquiras, ostendis te liberi arbitrii, et facere quod uis, uel tacere uel loqui. Si enim in similitudinem uasis fictilis te a Deo creatum putas, et illius non posse resistere uoluntati, hoc considera: quia uas fictile non dicit figulo: Quare me sic fecisti? [Rom. 9:20] Figulus enim habet potestatem de eodem luto et: De eadem massa, aliud uas facere in honorem, aliud uero in contumeliam [Rom. 9:21]. Deus autem aequali cunctos sorte generauit, et dedit arbitrii libertatem, ut faciat unusquisque quod uult, siue bonum siue malum. In tantum autem dedit omnibus potestatem, ut uox impia disputet contra Creatorem suum, et causas uoluntatis illius perscrutetur.’

 

(39) Jerome, Ep. 120.10.12 (ed. Hilberg, CSEL 55, p. 504), ‘Si, inquit, patientia Dei indurauit Pharaonem et multo tempore poenas distulit Israhelis, ut iustius condemnaret, quos tanto tempore sustinuerat, non Dei accusanda patientia est et infinita clementia, sed eorum duritia, qui bonitatem Dei in perditionem suam abusi sunt.’

 

(40) That is, ‘preceding causes’ that were not reincarnation but were instead autonomous human decisions.

 

(41) Jerome, Ep. 120.10.13–14 (ed. Hilberg, CSEL 55, p. 504), ‘Non saluat inrationabiliter et absque iudicii ueritate, sed causis praecedentibus, quia alii non susceperunt Filium Dei, alii recipere sua sponte uoluerunt. Haec autem uasa misericordiae non solum populus gentium est, sed et hi qui ex Iudaeis credere uoluerunt, et unus credentium effectus est populus. Ex quo ostenditur non gentes eligi, sed hominum uoluntates’.

 

(42) Jerome, Ep. 120.11.10 (ed. Hilberg, CSEL 55, p. 509), ‘Quia homines suo arbitrio derelicti sunt, neque enim bonum necessitate faciunt sed uoluntate, ut credentes coronam accipiant, increduli suppliciis mancipentur. Ideo odor noster, qui per se bonus est, uirtute eorum et uitio, qui suscipiunt siue non suscipiunt, in uitam transit aut mortem.’

 

(43) Scheck, St Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah, pp. 41–2.

 

(44) Jerome, In Esaiam 17.32, on Isa. 63:17–9 (ed. Gryson et al., p. 1798), ‘It is not that God is the cause of human straying and obstinacy, but that his patience, which waits for our salvation, while he does not correct those who transgress, appears to be the cause of error and obstinacy’; ‘Non quo Deus erroris causa sit et duritiae, sed quo illius patientia, nostram exspectantis salutem, dum non corripit delinquentes, causa erroris duritiaeque uideatur’; ‘Suam culpam referre in Deum.’

 

(45) For example, Jerome, In Esaiam 5.74, on Isa. 16:13 (ed. Gryson et al., p. 597), ‘It is not that the foreknowledge of God offered the cause of the devastation, but that the coming devastation was foreknown by the majesty of God’; ‘Non quo praescientia Dei causam uastitatis attulerit, sed quo futura uastitas Dei maiestati praenota sit.’

 

W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison Jr., on Matthew 28:19

  

εἰς τὸ ὄνομα κ.τ.λ. can mean ‘in the name of the Father and the name of the Son and the name of the Holy Spirit’ (cf. Justin, 1 Apol. 61). The difficulty with this, however, is that one might then expect τὰ ὀνόματα. The alternative is to suppose that the one divine name—the revealed name of power (Exod 3:13–15; Prov 18:10; Jub. 36:7)—has been shared by the Father with Jesus and the Spirit, and there are early texts which speak of the Father giving his name to Jesus (Jn 17:11; Phil 2:9; Gos. Truth 38:5–15). But we are unaware of comparable texts regarding the Spirit.

 

We see no developed Trinitarianism in the First Gospel. But certainly later interpreters found in the baptismal formulation an implicit equality among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; so for instance Basil the Great, Hom. Spir. 10:24; 17:43. (W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary According to Saint Matthew, 3 vols. [International Critical Commentary; London: T&T Clark International, 2004], 3:685-86)

 

Sang-Won (Aaron) Son on 1 Corinthians 15:42-49 and Differing "degrees of glory of the body"

  

After further defending the resurrection of the dead by mentioning the practice of baptism for the dead (15:29-34), Paul begins another major section of the chapter with hypothetical questions (15:35): “But someone may ask, ‘how are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?’” Verses 36 through 57 are basically Paul’s answers to these questions. Paul’s answer involves (1) the analogy of nature (15:36-41), (2) a transitional summary statement that leads into the Adam-Christ typology (15:42-44), and (3) the Adam-Christ typology (15:45-59).

 

The analogy of nature is drawn from plants (15:37-38), animals (15:39), and planets (15:40-41). By this analogy Paul basically argues 91) that there is a difference between what is sown in the ground (seed) and what is raised from it (plant), (2) that God gives a different kind of body to different types of species as He chooses, and (3) that there are different kinds of bodies and degrees of glory of the body. (Sang-Won (Aaron) Son, Corporate Elements in Pauline Anthropology: A Study of Selected Terms, Idioms, and Concepts in the Light of Paul’s Usage and Background [Rome: Pontificio Instituto Biblico, 2001], 47-48, emphasis in bold added)

 

Who Refuses to Do Debate? LDS Apologists or Secular Critics?

 I got a laugh out of this:

Mike (LDS Discussions) "there's a reason why you don't see someone like Daniel C. Peterson go out and do, like, a public debate against say, someone, like Dan Vogel or John Hamer . . . " (Joseph Smith's Failed Prophecies | LDS Discussions Ep. 37)

It should be noted that Dan Vogel was approached by our mutual friend Stephen Murphy ("Mormonism with the Murph") to debate me on whether early LDS Christology was a form of Modalism (e.g., Mosiah 15; the 1832 account of the First Vision; JST Luke 10, etc). He refused, saying he was "too busy." Working one day a week at a grocery store, commenting non-stop on the Mormon Discussions youtube channel, appearing with Kerry A. Shirts to discuss Method Infinite, etc., prohibits him from defending his bogus claims about early LDS Christology for the past few decades (yeah, right . . . ). In reality, Vogel, who is not trained in biblical exegesis, would not do well in a debate with someone with formal training in exegesis and theology, and he knows it. For more, see:

Early Mormon Modalism? A Dialogue with Stephen Murphy

Most recently, Vogel has been pulling another stunt: claiming I mumble and talk too fast:

Also, Dan Peterson (as well as John Gee and Bill Hamblin) have literally debated Dan Vogel and Brent Lee Metcalfe See the following from a Sunstone Conference:

And I Saw the Stars: The Book of Abraham and Ancient Geocentric Astronomy

As an aside, this Mormon Stories episode was on the topic of allegedly false prophecies. On this, including a discussion of Deut 18 (no exegesis of the passage was offered), see:

Resources on Joseph Smith's Fulfilled Prophecies

Sang-Won (Aaron) Son on the Believer's Union with Christ Through Baptism

  

There are two instances in which Paul relates εις Χριστον to baptism (Rom. 6:3, Gal. 3:27). Significantly, he connects βαπτιζειν with εις Χριστον and not with εν Χριστω. While in Rom. 6:3 “to be baptized into Christ” is “to be baptized into Christ’s death,” in Gal. 3:27 it is identified as “putting on Christ.” Similar expressions occur elsewhere in Paul’s letters. In 1 Cor. 10:2 the phrase is “to be baptized into Moses” and in 1 Cor. 12:13, “to be baptized into one body.” The expression of “putting on the Lord Jesus Christ” in Rom. 13;14 is apparently equivalent to “putting on the new man” in Eph. 4;22, 24 and Col. 3:9-10 where the “new man” Jesus Christ is contrasted with the “old man” Adam. These two instances, therefore, have special significance for Paul’s understanding of the relationship between Christ and believers. (Sang-Won (Aaron) Son, Corporate Elements in Pauline Anthropology: A Study of Selected Terms, Idioms, and Concepts in the Light of Paul’s Usage and Background [Rome: Pontificio Instituto Biblico, 2001], 22-23)

 

1 Cor. 12:13 provides the basis for the idea expressed in verse 12. Paul states, “For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body (εις εν σωμα εβαπτισθημεν), Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink one Spirit.” A similar expression occurs in Rom. 6:3 and in Gal. 3:27-29, but there Paul says that believers are baptized into Christ (εις Χριστον), which he further defines as “baptism into his death” (Rom. 6:3) and as “putting on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). In view of these verses, “baptism into one body” must mean basically the same as “baptism into Christ” or “putting on Christ.” If so, “one body” in verse 13 signifies nothing other than Christ himself. Furthermore, verse 13 says that “in one Spirit (εν ενι πνευματι) we were all baptized into one body . . . and all were made to drink one Spirit (εν πνευμα).” The statement probably signifies that believers are incorporated into the body of Christ by baptism in the Spirit rather than by water baptism. (Ibid., 85-86)