The Calling of All Nations 1.24–2.3

It has been shown abundantly, as I think, by these testimonies (though other proofs could have been added), that the faith by which the impious is justified is had only by God’s gift and is given for no preceding merits, but is given for this purpose, that it may be the beginning of merits, and that, when it has been given without being asked, the other good things may follow through its prayers. Hence a few testimonies out of many are to be taken that may show the bounty of grace in the diversity of its gifts. That it is from God, then, that a man chooses God’s way and rises from a fall, the psalm of David sings, saying: “The steps of a man are directed by the Lord, and he will delight in his way. When he falls, he will not be crushed, because the Lord puts his hand under him.” Likewise the same, that one comes to God with God as leader: “Send out your light and your truth; they have led me and brought me to your holy mountain and to your tabernacles.” Likewise, that man’s strength is in the Lord, and that God’s will goes before the one who is to be set free: “I will guard my strength for you,” he says, “for God is my upholder; my God, his will shall go before me.” In Proverbs too we read of wisdom and understanding: “For the Lord gives wisdom, and from his face come knowledge and understanding.” Likewise in the same book, of the dispensations of God’s wisdom, without which no actions are right, it is said: “Counsel and safety are mine; I am prudence, and strength is mine. By me kings reign, and by me tyrants hold the earth.” Likewise elsewhere, that no one can walk rightly unless the Lord directs him: “A man’s steps are set right by the Lord; how then can a mortal understand his ways?” Again elsewhere: “Every man seems righteous to himself, but the Lord directs the hearts.” And below: “The will is prepared by the Lord.” Likewise in the same place, of thought and counsel: “Many are the thoughts in a man’s heart, but the counsel of the Lord prevails.” In the book of Ecclesiastes it is written that both to have the necessities of life and to use them well is God’s gift: “There is no good for a man,” he says, “except that he eat and drink and show his soul good in his labour. And indeed I saw this, that it is from the hand of God. For who will eat or feed without him?” Likewise in the same book we read that the hearts and works of the righteous are in God’s hand, and that they advance in their pursuits only as far as he has given: “However much a man labours in seeking, he will not find; and whatever the wise man says that he knows, he will not be able to find. For all this I laid to my heart, and my heart saw all this, that the righteous and the wise and their works are in the hand of God.” In the book of Wisdom it is said thus of the same work of grace: “For he is both the guide of wisdom and the corrector of the wise. For in his hand are both we and our words, and all wisdom and knowledge of works and discipline.” Of continence too, that it is had by God’s gift, the same Scripture speaks thus: “As I knew that I could not otherwise be continent unless God gave it, and this very thing was part of wisdom, to know whose gift it was.” With this sentence agrees the teaching of the apostle Paul, who writes thus in the first to the Corinthians: “I wish all men to be as I myself am; but each has his own gift from God, one in this way, another in that.” And the Lord in the Gospel according to Matthew is related to have hinted at this concerning the gift of continence. For when his disciples said, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry,” Jesus said to them, “Not all receive this word, but those to whom it has been given.” Of the fear of God and wisdom we read thus in Ecclesiasticus: “The fear of the Lord is the crown of wisdom”; and both are gifts of God. Likewise in the same: “The fear of the Lord has set itself above all things; blessed is he to whom it is given to have the fear of the Lord.” Isaiah too speaks thus of spiritual riches, whose author is the Lord: “Our salvation has come in treasures; wisdom and piety and discipline are from the Lord: these are the treasures of righteousness.” Likewise of the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, whose goodness is anticipated by no one’s merit, he says this: “Who has measured the water with his hand and heaven with his span and the whole earth with his fist? Who has set the mountains in scales and the rocks in a balance? Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor to instruct him? Or whom did he consult, and who instructed him? Or who showed him judgment, or who showed him the way of prudence, or who first gave to him, that it should be repaid him?” Hence in the book of Job too we read, in the same sense, the words of the Lord saying: “Who has first given to me, that I should repay him? All that is under heaven is mine.” Jeremiah declares thus that true wisdom comes to man from God: “I know, Lord, that a man’s way is not his own, nor is it in a man to direct his steps.” Likewise that the conversion of the heart to God is from God, the Lord testifies through him, saying: “I will restore them to this land, and I will build them up and not tear them down, and I will plant them and not pluck them up; and I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.” Baruch too preaches that to know God is from God: “And they shall know,” he says, “that I am the Lord their God, and I will give them a heart to know me and ears to hear.” That every good word and every holy work is the supply of the Holy Spirit, without whom nothing is done rightly, the apostle Paul teaches in the first to the Corinthians, saying: “Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking in the Spirit of God says ‘Jesus is accursed’, and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and varieties of ministries, but the same Lord; and varieties of workings, but the same God who works all in all. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one through the Spirit is given the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing in the one Spirit, to another prophecy, to another discernment of spirits, to another kinds of tongues, to another interpretation of words. But all these the one and same Spirit works, dividing to each as he wills.” That each has as much grace as the Lord has given, the same apostle says to the Ephesians: “One body and one Spirit, as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and over all and in us all. But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of the gift of Christ; therefore it says: Ascending on high he led captivity captive, he gave gifts to men.” Likewise the same says in the second to the Corinthians that we are not fit even to think what is spiritual except through God’s grace: “Such confidence we have through Christ toward God: not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who has also made us fit ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the spirit. For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.” And again in the same Epistle, saying that the effect and sufficiency of good works are supplied by God’s grace: “God is able,” he says, “to make all grace abound in you, so that, having all sufficiency in all things, you may abound in every good work; as it is written, He has scattered, he has given to the poor, his righteousness endures for ever. And he who supplies seed to the sower will also provide bread to eat and will increase the harvest of your righteousness, so that, enriched in all things, you may abound in all simplicity.” And writing to the Ephesians the Apostle teaches that all the good things by which God is pleased are gifts of God, and that they must be asked of him so that they may be given to those who lack them: “For this reason,” he says, “I bend my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named, that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell through faith in your hearts; rooted and grounded in love, that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length, height and depth, and to know also the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do all things more abundantly than we ask or understand, according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus for all ages of ages. Amen.” That God is the author of every good, whose gifts are neither uncertain nor changeable but come from an eternal will, the apostle James says thus: “Do not err, my beloved brothers. Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change nor shadow of alteration. Of his own will he begot us by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of beginning of his creatures.” With him the prophet Zechariah too agrees, saying: “The Lord saved his people on that day like sheep, for holy stones are rolled upon his land. For if anything is good, it is his, and if anything is best, it is from him.” In the Gospel according to Matthew it is said thus that knowledge and understanding are gifts of God, which he bestows on whom he will: “Then his disciples came and said to him, Why do you speak to them in parables? And he answered and said to them, Because to you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.” John the Evangelist too declares that no one has anything good except what he has received from above, saying: “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven.” In the Gospel of the same is the teaching of the Truth himself, that no one comes to the Son unless drawn by the Father, because God makes the one who comes both understanding and obedient: “No one,” he says, “can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. For it is written in the prophets, And they shall all be taught of God. Everyone who has heard from the Father and learned comes to me.” And below: “For this reason I told you that no one can come to me unless it has been given him by my Father.” That to advance in faith and good works and to persevere to the end is of divine gift and help, the authority of the holy Scriptures confirms. For the apostle Paul, writing to the Philippians, says: “Being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.” But someone, wishing to turn the force of this testimony to the perversity of his own opinion, wanted what was said, “He who began in you,” to be understood as though it had been said, “He who began from you,” so that both the beginning and the completion of the work would be referred not to God but to man, as though he had willed both to begin and to complete it. But this most insane pride the most excellent preacher of grace crushes in the same Epistle, saying: “Be terrified in nothing by your adversaries, which is to them a cause of perdition, but to you of salvation, and this from God. For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake not only to believe in him but also to suffer for him.” And again: “With fear and trembling,” he says, “work out your salvation. For it is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish for his good will.” Likewise in the first to the Thessalonians he teaches that the beginning, progress and completion of virtues are from God, saying: “Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you. And may the Lord multiply you and make you abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, to establish your hearts blameless in holiness before God and our Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.” Writing to the Corinthians too and commending as God’s gift the advancing perseverance of all virtues, he says: “I thank my God always for you for the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in all things you were made rich in him, in all speech and wisdom, as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you lack nothing in any grace as you await the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end without reproach, until the day of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Likewise to the Romans, of the love of Christ by which he makes those whom he loves unconquerable, that is, persevering to the end (for what else is it to persevere than not to be conquered by temptation?): “Who,” he says, “will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword? As it is written, For your sake we are put to death all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. But in all these things we overcome through him who loved us.” Likewise to the Corinthians, of the victory that Christ accomplishes: “The sting of death,” he says, “is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who has given us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Likewise to the Thessalonians, of the perseverance that God grants: “May the God of peace himself,” he says, “sanctify you wholly, that your spirit and soul and body may be kept whole and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he who called you, who will also do it.” Likewise to the Thessalonians he preaches thus that all our good things, whether in working or in speaking, and perseverance in them, are gifts of God: “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal consolation and good hope in grace, exhort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. Finally, brothers, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may run and be glorified, as it is also among you, and that we may be delivered from troublesome and evil men; for not all have faith. But the Lord is faithful, who will establish you and guard you from evil.” Let us hear the apostle Peter too, as he teaches whence the strength of perseverance comes: “But the God of all grace,” he says, “who called us to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, after we have suffered a little, will himself perfect, confirm and establish us; to him be power and dominion for ages of ages. Amen.” And the apostle John speaks thus, that the victory of the saints is the work of God who dwells in the saints: “You are from God, little children, and you have overcome the world; for greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.” Likewise the same: “Everything that is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.” In the Gospel according to Luke it is set out thus that God grants perseverance in faith: “And Jesus said to Peter: Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned, strengthen your brothers, and pray that you do not enter into temptation.” In the Gospel of John too we read that the Truth says this of Christ’s sheep, which no one snatches from his hand: “But you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, nor shall anyone snatch them out of my hand.” Likewise in the same Gospel, of those whom the Father gives to the Son, who all come to the Son and none of whom perishes, these things are said by the mouth of the Lord himself: “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and him who comes to me I will not cast out; because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the Father who sent me, that of all that he has given me I should lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.”

There are many other passages in the series of the canonical Scriptures that we pass over out of a desire to avoid prolixity, since those we have taken are neither few, nor obscure, nor slight, and by them it is most fully declared that all that pertains to meriting eternal life can be neither begun, nor increased, nor completed without the grace of God; and that against every elation that glories in free choice that sentence of the Apostle stands most invincibly: “For who distinguishes you? And what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” Therefore the depth of that question, which, following the Apostle’s wonder, we confess to be impenetrable, is not solved through the willing and not-willing of free choice. For though a man has in him the not-willing of good, yet unless it is given him he does not have the willing of good: the former nature contracted through guilt, the latter nature receives through grace. But why this same nature, guilty in all men before reconciliation, wretched in all, is not justified in all, and is distinguished in a certain part of itself from those who perish by him who came to seek and save what was lost, cannot be tracked out at all by human sense. For however much the malice of the impious is accused for resisting God’s grace, will it be proved that those on whom it was conferred deserved it? Or could that power of grace, which subjected to itself whom it willed, not have converted those who remained unconverted? Those who were drawn were such as those who were left in their hardness. But to the former grace, to our amazement, gave what it willed; to the latter just truth repaid what it owed; so that God’s judgment is more unsearchable in the election of grace than in the retribution of justice. Nevertheless, lest that part of the faith by which we piously believe that God wills all men to be saved through the knowledge of the truth should seem weakened by what is plainly shown about the effects of grace, we must strive, with Christ’s help, to make the firmness of this definition plain to us. But since the work of a necessary inquiry demands that no slight effort be spent on it, let us begin the discussion that follows at the opening of another book.

When all the contentions that the animosity of intemperate disputes breeds have been put away and renounced, it is clear that there are three things to which one must hold fast in this question, on which we are beginning a second book. One, by which it must be professed that God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth; the second, by which it must not be doubted that no one comes to the knowledge of the truth and the receiving of salvation by his own merits, but by the help and work of divine grace; the third, by which it must be confessed that the depth of God’s judgments cannot be penetrated by human understanding, and that it ought not to be inquired why he who wills all men to be saved does not save all men. For if what cannot be known is not sought, no cause of strife will remain between the first and the second definitions, but both will be preached and both believed with secure and tranquil faith. For God, with whom there is no iniquity and all of whose ways are mercy and truth, the good creator of all men, is a just orderer, condemning no one undeservedly, freeing no one deservedly, punishing what is ours when he punishes the guilty, giving what is his when he makes men just, so that the mouth of those who speak iniquity may be stopped, and God may be justified in his words and prevail when he is judged. Neither is the complaint of the condemned just, nor the arrogance of the justified truthful, if either the one says that he did not deserve punishment, or the other asserts that he deserved grace.

And just as the things brought forward from the divine words to show forth grace cannot be violated by any art of argument, so that such clear and harmonious statements, so many in number, should be dragged into some uncertainty of perverse interpretation; so also what is found in the same body of the Scriptures concerning the salvation of all men must not be profaned by any contrary reasoning, so that the harder this is to grasp with the understanding, the more praiseworthy the faith with which it is believed. For great is the strength of assent for which authority suffices to follow the truth, even when the reason is hidden. Let us therefore consider attentively what is commanded by the Lord to the preachers of the Gospel. According to Matthew he says this: “All power has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you all days until the consummation of the age.” According to Mark it is said to the same apostles: “Go into the whole world, preach the Gospel to every creature; whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” In this command was any distinction made between any nations or any men? He excepted no one for merit, set no one apart by race, distinguished no one by condition. The Gospel of the cross of Christ was sent to absolutely all men. And lest the ministry of the preachers should seem to be carried out by human work alone, he says: “Behold, I am with you all days until the consummation of the age.” That is: when you have gone like sheep into the midst of wolves, do not tremble at your own weakness, but trust in my power, for I will not abandon you in all this work until the consummation of the age; not to ensure that you suffer nothing, but, what is far greater, that you are overcome by no cruelty of the raging. For you will preach in my power, and through me it will come about that among those who contradict and those who rage, sons of Abraham are raised up from stones. I will instil what I have taught; I will do what I have promised. “For they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues, and you will stand before kings and governors for my sake, as a testimony to them and to the gentiles. But when they hand you over, do not think how or what you will speak. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you. For brother will hand over brother to death, and father son, and children will rise against parents and put them to death, and you will be hated by all men for my name’s sake. But whoever perseveres to the end will be saved.” So, as the Apostle says, “the grace of God our Saviour has appeared to all men”; and yet the ministers of grace were hated by all men. And though some were those who hated and others those who were pressed by the hatred of their persecutors, neither part was deprived of the name ‘all men’: the one indeed bore the loss of salvation as the share of the rebels, but the other kept the full reckoning by the dignity of the faithful. For the apostle John says: “But if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for those of the whole world.”

It is the mystery of a great and unspeakable sacrament that the preachers to whom it was said, “Go into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature,” had been told earlier, “Do not go on the way of the gentiles, and do not enter the cities of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” For though the Gospel was directed to the calling of all men, and the Lord willed all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, he had not taken from himself the power of his dispensations, so that the order of his counsel should run otherwise than he had decreed by his hidden and just judgment. Hence the murmurs of stubborn complaints have no place, for it is clear that what God willed to be done ought not to have been done otherwise than he willed. And at a later time, when the Lord Jesus was already seated in the glory of God the Father and the preachers of the word were devoting themselves to the work they had undertaken, the apostles, wishing to preach the word in Asia, were forbidden by the Holy Spirit, and, planning to go into Bithynia, were prevented by the Spirit of Jesus: certainly not because grace was denied to those peoples, but, as far as appeared, because it was delayed. For afterward the Christian faith grew strong among them too. What the cause of postponing the calling was he did not disclose; and yet we are taught by the example of what happened that, among general promises, works or precepts, God knows how to order certain things, excepted from the common causes, by a more hidden reason. I believe this is so that, when some shadows are set between, the things that shine more secretly may become known more wonderfully, lest the eye grow careless through the ease of seeing and, in a way, doze over familiar things if it is not roused by unfamiliar ones. And these unknowable delays of enlightenment, during which many die in unbelief, we know to occur not only among the remoter peoples of the impious but also in the cities of the faithful, in very many houses and families, while even those who are to become Christians oppose the Christian faith. For many will love what they hated and preach what they do not now accept. And amid all this, who will make known to the querulous or the curious why the Sun of righteousness does not yet rise on certain nations, and why the truth, which is to be revealed, even now withholds its rays from darkened hearts? Why those who are to be corrected are allowed to wander so long, and what is to be granted to old men at the end is not given through so long a life? Why parents are spared who do not yet believe, while their children already believe in Christ? And again, why depraved offspring are at odds with religious parents? Though supplication is made daily for all to God, who is the giver of the beginnings and the growth of faith, according to his own precept, so that, if he hears, the grace of his mercy may be known, and if he does not hear, the judgment of his truth may be understood.