Commentary on Romans 3.1

"But if our iniquity commends the justice of God, what shall we say? Is God unjust who inflicts wrath? I speak according to man. Far from it! Otherwise how will God judge this world? For if the truth of God has abounded to his glory through my lie, why am I still judged as a sinner? And why not (as we are blasphemed, and as some say that we say) let us do evil that good may come? Their condemnation is just."

The order of speaking will perhaps seem very inconsistent throughout almost the whole texture of this Epistle composed by the apostle Paul, while his word is now against … is also set down on behalf of the Jews; and of these he says that some are worthy of praise, while others he censures. This variety of meanings, in turn, will be thought to have drawn him outside the lines of the case he set out to argue, as when he uses that exclamation where he says, "But let God be true, and every man a liar"; or also that which he adds next, when he says, "But if our iniquity commends the justice of God," and the rest, so that by this he seems to have slipped from one digression into another. But we who believe him when he says that he has made us competent ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter but of the Spirit, find his meaning far loftier than the method of human art is believed to possess. For through the whole text of this Epistle he wishes to teach what salvation there was for those living according to the law before the coming of Christ, or how through the Savior's coming, in turn, salvation is conferred on the Gentiles from the unbelief of Israel; and again, that neither do the Gentiles come to salvation as a whole, but only those who have believed, nor is Israel rejected as a whole, but a remnant of believers is saved. And therefore, as I said, the order of speaking seems confused, while he follows up the differences between believers and unbelievers on each side. In these he necessarily turns his word to God too, so as to teach that in all these differences of acceptance and rejection the judgments of God are true and just, but that much falsehood abounds among men. And therefore he says: "But let God be true, and every man a liar; as it is written: That you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged"; about which we have spoken above as we could.

To this, then, seeing now that a plausible objection could be raised against him: that if, for God to be true, every man must be a liar, and if the justice of God is commended through the injustice of men, God will seem unjust in inflicting wrath on men, since he sees his own justice approved through the injustice of men; for if our, that is, men's, injustice commends the justice of God, men will surely not seem worthy of punishment, through whom the justice of God is held more proven and more glorious. "But far from it," he says, "that we should accept it thus, that God seems unjust who brings wrath against men. For how will he be thought unjust who judges the world, since by the very name of judge it is shown that he does nothing without judgment? And where there is judgment, there is certainly justice; for both judge and judgment are named from justice. If, then," he says, "as unjust men falsely make us affirm, 'the truth of God has abounded through my lie,' I am judged as a sinner for nothing." But that will rather seem to be the point in which they blaspheme us, he says, as if we seem to say this: that if the truth of God is shown more in the lie of men, and his justice is proved through the injustice of men, let us therefore do evil, that good may come from evil; and let us lie, that from our lie the truth of God may shine out. But these things they falsely invent about us when they blaspheme us, as if they seemed then to be said or to follow as a consequence of our own assertion; which the principle of our doctrine does not admit at all, since we understand God to be a just and true judge.

It must be known, indeed, that in some Greek copies too it is found thus: "Is God unjust who inflicts wrath against men?" And according to this sense what we have said will seem to fit better. But according to what we find in the Latin copies and in some of the Greek, "Is God unjust who inflicts wrath? I speak according to man. Far from it," it seems it should be understood thus: the saying "God is unjust who inflicts wrath," because our injustice commends the justice of God, is said not according to God nor according to the wisdom of God but according to man, and according to the saying "every man is a liar." We have said these things while still treating the very order of the words and the consequence of the sayings, so that the very division of the words might make the way of understanding more open for us.

But now let us inquire what meaning these words hold according to the dignity of the Apostle. Every discipline consists of favorable things and of adverse or contrary things. For example, medicine professes a knowledge not only of health but also of sickness; and although it pursues health, it cannot be ignorant of what belongs to sickness. Likewise prudence consists in the knowledge of good and evil; and temperance knows what is to be chosen and what avoided; and courage is not ignorant of what pertains to fear. So too justice. If we wish to know what justice is, we must know what injustice is; and when we have grasped a full knowledge of injustice, from it we will also know what justice is; for when it has become clear what is unjust, what is just will consequently appear. And since justice is in God, whose nature is inaccessible to human perception, while injustice is found in us men, or also in every rational creature, from this injustice of ours, which is known to us, the justice of God, which is as it were inaccessible and incomprehensible to us, is known and commended, and the contrary is disclosed, as it were, from its contrary. The apostle Paul, then, censures the unskillfulness of those who raise an inconsequent question, thinking God unjust in bringing wrath on men because his justice is commended from our injustice; not knowing that it comes about not as a benefit of our sins but by the consequence of reason itself that contraries are proved from contraries. That is why the Apostle speaks thus: "But if our injustice commends the justice of God, what shall we say? Is God unjust who inflicts wrath? I speak according to man. Far from it! Otherwise how will God judge the world?"

God, then, is not proved unjust in this, if the principle of a discipline proves contraries from contraries and commends justice from injustice; but since by a necessary consequence injustice is, deservedly and rightly, hostile and opposed to justice, as life is hostile and opposed to death and light to darkness. And therefore God, in whom justice is, is said to inflict wrath on men in whom injustice dwells; for these are by nature opposed to each other. And how will God seem unjust from the very fact that he opposes injustice? And perhaps for this reason the Apostle did not say that we unjust men commend the justice of God, but said, "If our injustice commends the justice of God," to show that it is not God who is contrary to men but justice to injustice; and that wrath is brought on men because they have given place in themselves to injustice. God, then, who is justice, will not seem unjust when he is angry against injustice, to which it does not befit him to be favorable; but this wrath reaches also to men who have offered themselves as ministers of the injustice with which God is angry. For neither injustice nor justice can subsist in nothing; but just as justice is the disposition of just and right work, which is found first in God and then also in those who imitate him, so injustice is the disposition of unjust and perverse work, which is detected first in the devil and then also in those who wish to imitate him. And therefore wrath is rightly said to be brought on them, even though from their injustice, as from its contrary, the justice of God seems to have shone out. For just as they received into themselves the disposition of unjust and perverse work, they could much more have received that of just and right work.

Justly, then, wrath is said to be brought by God upon all men. For those in whom wrath has no place are to be called no longer men but above men. And perhaps for this reason the same apostle Paul pronounces of all men, saying that "we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest." For he did not say, "We were children of wrath," but added, "We were by nature children of wrath, like the rest." For all men have been made by nature children of wrath, from the fact that they were gods and sons of the Most High and through this came to be called men. For note more carefully how he says: "I have said: You are gods, and sons of the Most High"; and he added, "all of you." This addition signifies the whole human race joined together under this title. Then he says next: "But you will die like men." Hence also what is written, "And God considered that he had made man on the earth, and he repented in his heart; and God said: I will blot out man whom I have made from the face of the earth," I think was said not only of the destruction of the flood, but that something about the future was also foretold in it as a mystery: so that "I will blot out man" may be understood in the way in which God also says through the prophet, "For behold, I blot out your iniquities like a cloud"; so that he may be seen to blot him out in so far as he is man, and after this to make him a god, when God will be all in all. To this sense can also be applied what is said in Genesis: "The time of every man has come before me"; so that it may be thought to be said not only of that time of the flood but also of the mystery of baptism; just as the apostle Peter says that, as Noah was then saved from the flood, so now in a similar way believers are saved through baptism. And so what he says, that the time of every man has come, can be understood of salvation, so that through the grace of baptism believers may be understood to be changed from men into a higher order when the day of resurrection comes, when all the saints will be like the angels of God. Let these things be said, as far as could occur to us, on what is said: "Is God unjust who inflicts wrath," either "against men," as we said is read in some copies, or, as we have it, "I speak according to man. Far from it."

As for what he says, "Otherwise how will God judge the world?": in this place by "the world" he means the men who are in this world, as we also read elsewhere that "the whole world is placed in the evil one," which certainly shows that the men who live in this world are placed in wickedness. After this let us now see how it is said: "For if the truth of God has abounded to his glory through my lie." There are many kinds of religions in this world, many schools of philosophers, many doctrines handed down with false assertions and written with lying arguments, whose authors, though under the false name of wisdom, are yet held to be men of no small or contemptible authority; by whose prestige false things have been received for true, so that they have occupied almost the whole world with lying opinions about religion, so that even the elect, if it may be said, were led into error. Since, then, the truth of God, and his wisdom and his Word, came and refuted and confounded every lie and cut away all the assertions of false doctrines by the faith of truth, the truth of God abounded through every lie that had previously been asserted by men, by refuting their stealthy plausibilities and handing down in each doctrine the simple truth of the faith; and in this way the Apostle says that the truth of God has abounded in the lie of men.

But to make what we say still clearer, let us bring forward some examples. There was a doctrine among men that declared the highest good to be pleasure; in which it is also consequently asserted that there is no Providence, since one must live not by laws but by pleasure; and these things are set out in a rich and elaborate style, and with very strong arguments, in innumerable volumes. But see now how one who defends the truth of God, and who is a philosopher according to Christ, who is the truth of God and the wisdom of God, teaches men that the highest good is eternal life, and that this is eternal life, that men know the one only true God and his Son Jesus Christ; and how with all confidence he asserts the providence of God, which says: "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny, and one of them does not fall to the ground without the Father's will?" and that he himself orders his sun to rise on the good and the evil, and rains on the just and the unjust. By each of these, while those doctrines of false knowledge are refuted, the truth of God abounds in the lie of men. There are others again who say that there are three kinds of good: one concerning the soul, another concerning bodies, and the third external; when each of these is held profitably, they affirm that the highest good consists of them. These also, cutting short the providence of God, contend that it reaches as far as the sphere of the moon, but that below, that is, to men, it does not descend at all. There are others again who say that nothing is invisible and incorporeal, but assign everything that exists to bodies; hence they said that God, the Father of all, is a body. But since the consequence of their reasoning pressed them, by which it is established that every body is corruptible, so that if they assert that God too is a body they must without doubt confess him corruptible, they turned their words with a trick and said that he is indeed corruptible by nature, yet is not corrupted, because there is nothing higher than he by which he could be corrupted or dissolved. There are also innumerable other fictions of men, composed by dialectical subtleties and the fraud of sophisms. When the truth of God convicts each of these through churchmen learned in the divine wisdom, and refutes the snares of their arguments, the truth of God is said to abound in the lie of men; and not only to abound, but to abound to his glory.

This I think should be understood thus: if a teacher of the Church teaches simple hearers, not yet occupied by false doctrines, and opens to them the principle of the divine truth on each point, the truth of God will be seen to abound in teaching of this kind. But if the word is addressed to those who resist the truth, who contradict the words of sound doctrine, and the contradictors are refuted and convicted, so that, leaving the darkness of their errors, they come to the light of truth, then the truth of God will not only abound but will abound to his glory. For God is glorified through one who, snatched from the error of the lie, has beheld the light of truth. One who has understood these things thus will certainly not say what is brought forward next by a foolish objection, "Why am I still judged as a sinner?" but will notice that he is rightly to be judged if he remains in the lie of men; and one who, according to what we have explained above, convicted by the truth of God, perceives that he has erred, turns from his error and glorifies God, having recognized the truth, and no longer blasphemes those who preach the truth as if they said, "Let us do evil that good may come," knowing that in this saying the condemnation of the blasphemer is just. It must also be observed that he has put it that those who preach the truth are not so much reviled, which pertains to men, as blasphemed, which pertains to God.