Questions on the Old and New Testament

Ambrosiaster

Questions on the Old and New Testament

Quaestiones veteris et novi testamenti

Reading pages: 1.1–6.2 · 7.1–22.1 · 23.1–41.2 · 42.1–45.3 · 46.1–55.1 · 56.1–69.5 · 70.1–82.1 · 83.1–90.1 · 91.1–94.3 · 95.1–96.1 · 97.1–97.21 · 98.1–102.8 · 102.9–102.32 · 103.1–105.5 · 106.1–107.8 · 108.1–109.21 · 110.1–111.21 · 112.1–113.7 · 114.1–114.31 · 115.1–115.15 · 115.16–127.7 · 127.8–127.36

1.1God exceeds every mind; each rank of creature, from humans to seraphim, knows him only according to its capacity, and none comprehends him fully.
1.2God is described as simple spirit, infinite, eternal, and almighty, good in creating, just in giving free will and law, merciful in bearing with sinners, and severe so that his patience is not despised.
1.3Since God made all things good, evil is no nature but the will’s transgression of good, doing what is not allowed or doing what is allowed out of order, as with a prostitute rather than a wife.
1.4Human beings have free choice, so that they deserve honor or blame; without it they would be like beasts, without merit or guilt.
1.5Because we can do either good or evil and cannot always be on guard, one who sins once is not yet condemned if he recovers and does not sin again; the one who strives not to sin is crowned.
1.6Things called evil, like poison, darkness, or lead, are evil only relative to us or by comparison, and each is good in its place.
1.7One who resists sin and falls deserves encouragement, but one who consents easily sins gravely; small sins creep up on the diligent, while great ones are deliberate.
1.8Sin arises when we see or hear things contrary to the law, as in worshiping the sun or coveting; the fault lies not in beautiful or useful things but in our negligence.
2.1God made the world from nothing; there was no prior space for it, since, as Paul says, all things are in God, who is everywhere and before all.
2.2The world was made because the devil, the most brilliant of the angels, drew many powers into rebellion, wanting to be called God, as usurpers do with their soldiers.
2.3God refuted the devil by reason, making an ordered world from confused matter and creating one man, of heavenly and earthly parts, whose image proclaims the one God.
2.4The devil, seeing that man was made to condemn him, led him into the same sin by promising deity; his names describe his will, not his nature.
2.5Christ came to free man and undo the devil’s works; the devil cannot be evil by nature, or punishing him would be unjust.
2.6The devil discriminates among people, attacking God’s servants above all, which shows that his evil lies in his will.
2.7If the devil acted by nature, like a madman, he could be neither praised nor condemned; so his evil must be voluntary.
2.8Scripture condemns the devil to Gehenna because he knew and could do good yet chose evil; so no nature is evil, and all evil comes from the will.
3.1Moses wrote the creation account only when Egyptian teaching, later followed by Marcion and the Manichees, ascribed the world or man to a lesser maker; his miracles confirm that God made both.
3.2Moses’ order of creation shows that nothing is coeternal with God: earlier things are weaker, stronger things later; the first heaven is the spiritual one and the earth is matter.
3.3“God saw that the light was good” was written to refute those who called creation evil.
3.4The line from Seth to Abraham, David, and Christ shows that all who believed in the one God were Christians from the beginning; Christ’s coming revealed the persons within the one God and completed the law.
4.1The written law was not needed at first, since the natural law was known; it was given through Moses when habitual sin had obscured that law, to restore its authority.
4.2Because the law is flouted with impunity in this life, justice requires a future judgment in which the oppressed are rewarded and the powerful wicked punished.
5.1The text itself shows why Abel’s offering was accepted: he chose the best for God, while Cain, earthbound, offered whatever came to hand.
5.2Like the Jews rebuked by Malachi for blemished sacrifices, Cain offered unworthily, and God told him he had sinned by not dividing rightly.
5.3Cain was not condemned for his poor offering but told to amend it; instead, from envy, he killed Abel and so incurred guilt.
5.4Like the unforgiving servant, Cain was spared for a time to give him room for repentance, and God’s sevenfold threat against his killer made him the more aware of his crime.
5.5The sevenfold vengeance was a law that any later murderer, having Cain’s example, would be seven times more guilty; this law was the sign set on Cain.
6.1Lamech, five generations after Cain, confesses his own murder; his “seventy-sevenfold” means that each later murderer who does not repent incurs a heavier penalty, while Christ commands forgiving the repentant seventy times seven.
6.2Lamech speaks of vengeance as already done because every crime carries its sentence, as Adam’s death was announced as immediate; the young man he killed cannot have been Cain.
7.1The “ten words” are ten commands; the first tablet holds the four that concern God: no other gods, no images, not taking his name in vain, and keeping the sabbath.
7.2The second tablet holds six commandments beginning with honoring parents, which Paul calls the first commandment with a promise.
8.1Moses’ face shone after he received the law again, and the sinful Israelites, Aaron included, could not look on it, showing that sinners are unworthy of God’s glory.
8.2The veil is removed when one turns to the Lord; the broken tablets signify the rejected Jewish people and the renewed law another people.
9.1Words have several meanings, as “common” and “not from faith” show, so they must be read in context.
9.2Things called unclean are so only by comparison or by evil use; no substance is evil, and all things are good in their nature.
10.1God’s “fourth generation” and Moses’ “fifth generation” agree: God counted the four generations born in Egypt, Moses added the generation that went down there.
10.2Four generations were born in Canaan (Isaac to Kohath) and four in Egypt (Amram to Phinehas); adding the generation that went down gives Moses’ fifth.
11.1Isaac meant to bless Esau, but God directed the blessing to Jacob, showing that blessing comes from God through the priestly office, not from the minister’s will.
11.2Caiaphas prophesied because of his office, which shows that the Spirit’s grace attends ordination, not personal worth, and only the ordained can bless.
12.1Abraham received circumcision in the organ of generation because of the promised holy offspring; far from a disfigurement, it was a glory, as Achior’s voluntary circumcision and the scars of confessors show.
12.2Circumcision was a sign of Abraham’s faith and spiritually signified the removal of fleshly darkness from the heart through faith in Christ, his promised descendant.
13.1The children of Sodom died for their parents’ crimes, but are free of Gehenna; their deaths, like those of Egypt’s firstborn, were the parents’ punishment and a warning.
13.2The children’s death punished their parents only in this life; the children themselves are neither glorified nor guilty, and were spared a long punishment and a corrupt upbringing.
14.1God visits the fathers’ sins on the children only on those who hate him, who continue their fathers’ idolatry and so multiply wickedness.
14.2The threat to the third and fourth generation warns any descendant who imitates an ancestor’s faithlessness, even after a faithful generation between.
14.3The law aimed to deter idolatry through concern for children; when people twisted it into the sour-grapes proverb, God declared that the soul that sins shall die.
14.4God’s mercy to thousands of generations far exceeds his punishment to the third and fourth, so that a descendant of David benefits from David’s love of God.
14.5The heavier punishment of imitators reflects the added guilt of sinning after the law; the view that the Babylonian exile fulfilled the threat fails because the righteous were exiled too.
15.1Righteousness must be tempered with mercy, as God’s is; one who is “overly righteous,” punishing every fault, sins.
16.1The angel threatened Moses because, sent by the God of Abraham, he had left his sons uncircumcised, a grave fault in so prominent a man.
16.2Zipporah circumcised her son because Moses, understanding the cause, told her to; Scripture often leaves such things implied, as in Christ’s brief words on the corban rule.
17.1The curse of childlessness applied to those who abandoned God; Isaiah corrected the error that the celibate or the infertile are guilty before God, provided they keep his law.
17.2Holy people who were long childless were kept by God’s providence for special children; spiritually, the curse falls on those who leave no one taught to fear God.
18.1God accepted David’s confession and rejected Saul’s because he saw David’s contrite heart and Saul’s lack of repentance.
18.2Christ too judged by the heart, refusing the scribe and calling Levi; David humbled himself, while Saul wanted another humbled for him.
19.1Adam was mortal by nature but kept from death by the tree of life while he obeyed; immortality depended on his own choice.
20.1The “bread of angels” is the manna, so called because it came from heaven, made by the power by which angels live.
20.2Spiritually, the manna is Christ, the bread now offered in the church; Christians, given greater grace, are the “angels” whose bread the Jews ate in figure.
21.1Man is God’s image because all humanity comes from one man as all things from one God; woman, made from man, is not the image of God, and so is veiled and does not teach.
22.1“Solomon’s” counsel to justify one’s soul before death urges timely conversion; David’s “no one living is justified” means that no one’s righteousness is complete until death.
23.1Souls are not generated from souls with the body, since only God, being simple, can beget the simple, as in the Son’s generation, which Photinians and Arians reject.
23.2Scripture shows the soul is created and given to the formed body in the womb, as the law on miscarriage distinguishes formed from unformed fetuses; otherwise souls would perish with lost seed.
23.3Adam’s body was formed before it received a soul, which shows the order God follows; deriving the soul from either parent leads to absurdities.
24.1Man and woman share one substance; the man is greater only in rank, because woman was taken from him.
25.1Joseph ordered his bones carried from Egypt so that the Egyptians would not worship him as a god after death, as Paul and Barnabas refused sacrifice at Lystra.
26.1Elisha’s request for a double portion was too bold, since the disciple is not above the master, but because it came from zeal for good, God did not deprive him of what he deserved.
26.2Elisha cannot have exceeded Elijah, who equals John the Baptist, the greatest of prophets; Elisha could part the Jordan only by invoking the God of Elijah.
27.1The figure raised by the witch of Endor was not Samuel, since a righteous man cannot be summoned by magic, but Satan in disguise, pretending to hold the righteous dead in his power.
27.2The prediction of Saul’s death does not prove the apparition was Samuel, since the devil, once a great angel, can foresee approaching death; Saul in his folly turned to what he had banned.
27.3The narrative reports what Saul perceived, not what was true: Saul worshiped the devil thinking it Samuel, and the real Samuel, at rest with Abraham, would neither accept worship nor promise Saul his company.
27.4Satan betrayed himself by accepting worship and by promising the sinner Saul the company of righteous Samuel; only without Samuel’s name was the promise true.
28.1The world cannot be eternal, since it is composite, changeable, and subject to decay, whereas the eternal is simple and unchanging.
28.2An eternal world makes no sense, since man had a beginning, the eternal cannot produce the mortal, and the visible, changing world cannot be eternal.
29.1Circumcision on the eighth day, which is the first day after the sabbath, prefigured the salvation by faith confirmed by Christ’s resurrection on the Lord’s day.
30.1The righteous man accuses himself first because confessing the truth about one’s sin is righteousness; the saying also fits the catechumen who seeks to be changed.
31.1The tempter was a real serpent, wiser than other beasts, and its sentence to crawl merely confirmed its natural place beneath man, which it had overturned as Satan’s instrument.
31.2The devil spoke through the serpent as through an instrument, so the bodily curse on the serpent falls spiritually on Satan, who now grovels on the earth.
31.3The devil spoke to Eve with the serpent’s mouth, and she, newly created, could understand its hissing, as some today understand animal sounds.
32.1That God made both rich and poor means they share one nature; neither is to be despised or honored for wealth, but for their conduct toward God.
32.2The rich should share with the poor, since God gave the earth to all, so as to be rich in heaven; the godly poor will be rich there when the worldly rich are in want.
33.1The saying about the impious refers to Israelites who knew God’s law yet worshiped idols, for the law speaks to those under it.
34.1“Good and evil, life and death are from God” means that God judges: punishment is “evil” to those who suffer it, and death is from sin, God being its judge, not its author.
34.2God makes poor and rich in that his law rewards the disciplined and generous with plenty and brings want on its despisers.
35.1David honored Saul because royal office comes from God: the king bears God’s image as the bishop bears Christ’s, so even pagan rulers are to be honored for their office.
36.1The soldiers killed at Ai did not suffer the second death for Achan’s sin; they simply lacked God’s help, which God owes no one, so his justice is untouched.
37.1“Jacob” here is fleshly, idolatrous Samaria and “Israel” Jerusalem with its temple; when Jerusalem imitated Samaria, the same judgment reached it.
37.2Death sent on Samaria came also on Jerusalem when Jerusalem took up the same idolatry, for punishment follows the sin, not the person.
38.1Mute creation “blesses” God by moving those who see it to praise the maker; spiritually, the “earth” called to bless is man.
39.1“A living dog is better than a dead lion” means a pagan is in a better state than an apostate from Christianity, the strongest of all sects.
40.1The barren woman told to rejoice is the heavenly Jerusalem, our mother, who is Life, deserted by Adam; Father, Son, and Spirit are one life, in faith in which we are reborn.
41.1The “spirit of God” over the waters (Gen 1:2) need not be the Holy Spirit, since Scripture often uses “my spirit” for the life-breath of humans and animals.
41.2Only the Spirit who is from God and consubstantial with him is God; other spirits are creatures, and the spirit over the waters was a created spirit of a lower rank.
42.1God appeared on a mountain in fire because he is exalted, and in an unburned thorn-bush because the law came to reveal sins, not to punish past ones, and sin is no part of nature.
43.1Abraham, lawfully born, righteous and proved, cannot be compared with Jephthah, a prostitute’s son and robber chief.
43.2God commanded Abraham to offer Isaac to display his faith that God could raise the dead; God never wanted the boy’s blood but Abraham’s greater righteousness.
43.3Jephthah’s rash vow, kept from foolish faith, made him his daughter’s murderer and was turned on himself; God ignored the sacrifice, and the innocent daughter gained by dying.
43.4Jephthah’s victory was not his merit but God’s defense of his own name, as the Spirit’s coming on Samson was for the Philistines’ ruin, not a sign of Samson’s worth.
44.1If Isaiah’s “house of prayer for all nations” meant only proselytes joining the synagogue, it would say nothing new, since proselytes were always admitted.
44.2Isaiah spoke of something new: God would open his house to the nations in place of the unrepentant Jews, who would lose the promised grace.
44.3The promise is the new covenant of forgiveness foretold by Isaiah and Jeremiah, needed because Israel broke the first covenant with the golden calf.
44.4God promised a new covenant removing the heavy and figurative precepts, such as sabbath and circumcision; the nations and the faithful remnant receive it, while the faithless Jews forfeit both covenants.
44.5Under the new covenant, sealed by blood like the old but with few precepts, believers keep no sabbath, new moons, circumcision, or food laws, being justified by faith like Abraham.
44.6Enoch, Noah, and Abraham were righteous without the law; Abraham was justified by faith before circumcision, which marks only his physical descendants.
44.7Circumcision of the flesh is worthless without circumcision of the heart, which alone makes one a child of God and heir of Abraham’s righteousness.
44.8Believing gentiles are better than the circumcised Jews, and Abraham recognizes as his children those who share his faith, not his flesh.
44.9Israel’s ceremonial precepts were “not good” commands imposed as punishment for rebellion (Ezek 20); the new covenant abolishes them, though not the natural law, and justifies by faith as in Abraham’s time.
44.10Circumcision, though older than Moses, belonged to its time; the new covenant has its own sign and name, so that believers are called Christians after Christ as Hebrews were named after Abraham.
44.11The Scriptures belong to the gentiles too, since David and Jeremiah speak expressly of the nations, which Scripture distinguishes from Israel.
44.12Jeremiah, appointed prophet to the nations, foretold the new covenant, which now gathers churches of the nations while believing Jews are rare, as Hosea foretold.
44.13The law belongs to all who will, and Jesus fulfilled every sign it foretold: birth from a virgin in Bethlehem of David’s line, the new covenant, the passion, and resurrection on the third day.
44.14Daniel’s seventy weeks (490 years) from Darius were fulfilled in Christ’s birth and passion and Jerusalem’s fall under Vespasian, as Tertullian also reckoned.
44.15Some three hundred years beyond Daniel’s number, it is shameless for the Jews to deny that Christ has come.
44.16Once Daniel’s time has passed, denying Christ’s coming makes God a liar; the Jews refuse out of shame and forget the coming judgment.
45.1Unlike Babel’s “let us go down,” addressed to angels, “let us make man in our image” cannot be addressed to angels, since God and angels share no common image; the same God spoke and made.
45.2“Let us make” shows distinct persons in one God: the Father speaks, the Son makes through the Spirit, and the image of all three is one; man is God’s image as the one source of all humanity.
45.3The image of God cannot consist in dominion, since that would make the Son’s co-creators mere angelic powers and would make woman God’s image, which Ambrosiaster rejects since she has no authority.
46.1Samuel was not a priest: under the old law priests were born from Aaron’s line, and Korah and Uzziah were punished for usurping priestly duties.
46.2To say Samuel acted as priest without being born one makes him a usurper, which is unthinkable for a man God commended and who knew that God does not change his decrees.
46.3Balaam, a soothsayer, wrongly treated God as changeable; Samuel, dear to God, knew God’s decrees are fixed and would never have presumed to be a priest.
46.4Samuel did not replace Eli’s dead sons as priest, for God, who foresaw all, had provided Aaron’s line until Christ; under the old law priests were born, under the new they are made.
46.5Since Samuel was neither born of Aaron nor made a priest, which the old law did not allow, he was not a priest.
46.6Samuel “offered sacrifice” as kings did, through priests, for one is said to offer whose gift it is; a non-priest can no more act as a priest than a deacon or a private citizen can act as magistrate.
46.7Holiness does not confer the priesthood; Scripture calls Samuel a prophet, distinguishing him from the priests Moses and Aaron, and priests were not lacking in his day.
46.8Wearing an ephod did not make Samuel a priest, since David also wore one and the word means both a garment and the priests’ oracle-case, just as deacons now wear dalmatics like bishops.
46.9Had Samuel been of Aaron’s line his father and sons would have been priests; but Elkanah went up to sacrifice through Eli’s sons, and Samuel’s sons were judges.
46.10Elkanah, a Levite with two wives, which priests could not have, brought offerings through the priests; the Levites’ courses were organized only later by David.
46.11Hannah’s vow to give Samuel to the Lord would be pointless if he had been born a priest; as a Levite in a lawless age, like Jonathan who usurped the priesthood for Dan, he was dedicated so as not to stray.
46.12Elkanah, though a landless Levite, could pay tithes from his wife’s or a purchased property, since Levites and priests married into other tribes, as Jehoiada did.
47.1The seven women of Isa 4:1 are the churches, one church with sevenfold members including the heavenly powers, all one body under Christ the head.
47.2The heavenly powers learn God’s wisdom through the earthly church, so the seven churches represent all; they come to Christ made man to have their reproach removed.
47.3The seven women, already fed by the law and clothed with God’s name, still ask Christ to take away their reproach, the sins the law could not remove.
47.4Even the faithful under the law needed cleansing from personal and ancestral sin; through faith in Christ they are freed from the underworld and enter paradise, and the heavenly powers too need Christ’s name.
47.5Isaiah’s cleansing of the sons and daughters is the forgiveness revealed in Christ, which all need: sinners for their own sins, the righteous for Adam’s.
48.1Before creating, God begot from himself a Son equal to him in every way, the Word hidden in him from eternity, called Son to show that he is from the Father and consubstantial with him.
49.1Christ, anointed and purified by the Spirit in the womb, needed no baptism, but was baptized to fulfill righteousness and show believers the gift of the Spirit they receive in baptism.
49.2Christ was baptized to confirm by example that people become God’s children through rebirth, by which they receive power.
50.1Circumcision was the sign of the promised seed, Christ; he received it to show he was the promised one, and after him only circumcision of the heart remains.
51.1The Spirit sanctified Mary and formed a holy body in her, while the “power of the Most High,” Christ, overshadowed her, dwelling in her womb as much as human nature could hold.
52.1The house that Wisdom built is the church, bought with Christ’s blood, or his body; though the Spirit formed the body, the works of Father, Son, and Spirit are one.
53.1Christ was born when the days begin to lengthen after the winter solstice, signifying that he leads humanity from death’s shadow into growing life.
54.1Christ is Son of God eternally and by birth in the flesh; the voice at his baptism was for believers, and his reception of the Spirit there confirmed in him the sacrament by which the baptized become God’s children.
55.1Christ suffered on 25 March, the Roman equinox and the day of creation, so that the world was renewed on the day it was made.
56.1Matthew traces Joseph’s descent through Solomon to his father Jacob, Luke through Nathan to Heli, a kinsman; Christ is called son of all these as he was of Joseph, and Luke’s line ends in God to show he is God’s Son before all flesh.
56.2Ambrosiaster rejects the explanation that Heli fathered Joseph by levirate marriage to Jacob’s widow.
56.3Luke’s phrase “as was supposed, of Joseph, of Heli … of Adam, of God” calls Christ the son of each ancestor in the same sense, and the true Son of God before them all, refuting Photinus.
56.4Read as a chain of fathers and sons, Luke’s list would make Adam the son of God; read as Ambrosiaster proposes, it calls Christ the Son of God before all his ancestors.
57.1Mark ascribed the combined quotation of Malachi and Isaiah to Isaiah because Isaiah first expressed the thought and both prophets say one thing.
58.1John knew Jesus from the womb, but learned only at the baptism that he was the one to fulfil the promise to the fathers and baptize in the Spirit.
59.1In baptism the visible water cleanses the body, but the unseen Spirit cleanses the soul through faith.
59.2Jesus used the wind, heard but not seen, as an earthly example to show Nicodemus that the Spirit’s work in baptism is heard and believed but not seen.
59.3Jesus’ “earthly things” were the wind example; as human sonship helps us believe in God’s true Son, so the wind makes credible the incomprehensible work of the Spirit.
59.4Acts compares the Spirit’s coming to a mighty wind, and Scripture calls the wind “spirit,” but the Holy Spirit comes from heaven to enlighten believers.
59.5“The spirit blows where it will” refers to the wind, not the Holy Spirit, since it is an example and every creature acts freely within its law.
60.1Jesus sent the healed leper to offer the Mosaic sacrifice, though that time was past, as a testimony against those who called him an enemy of the law; Paul circumcised Timothy for the same reason.
61.1Jesus answered the charge of sabbath-breaking with examples from the law: Joshua at Jericho, the Maccabees, the priests in the temple, and David eating the consecrated bread.
61.2Ritual laws such as the sabbath and fasts yield to necessity, while what is criminal is never lawful; Jesus refuted his accusers from the law’s own past rather than from its fulfillment.
62.1Rachel weeps for her own sons of Benjamin, destroyed for the outrage at Gibeah without hope, when she sees the innocents of Leah’s tribe, Judah, killed for Christ and given eternal life.
63.1The magi, following Balaam’s prophecy of a star from Jacob, recognized an extraordinary star as the sign of the Jewish king, so that astrologers, usually enemies of truth, bore witness to Christ.
64.1As Moses’ forty days and nights are counted by parts, so Christ’s “three days and three nights” count part of a day or night as a whole.
64.2Christ’s passion begins with night, the image of death, so that the Lord of light might enter death’s domain and destroy it; the reversal of day and night marks the Jews’ crime as a deed of darkness.
64.3Counting from the night of his arrest through the Lord’s day, with each night joined to its day, Christ rose after three days and three nights.
65.1Mark’s “third hour” for the crucifixion makes the point that not Pilate, who found Jesus innocent, but the Jews passed sentence on him.
65.2The sentence was in effect passed by the crowd’s cry at the third hour, though carried out at the sixth, showing that Jesus died by the Jews’ malice, not a judge’s sentence.
66.1The “rulers of this age” who did not know Christ are the spiritual powers, not the Jewish leaders; but then how did the demons recognize him?
66.2The demons recognized Jesus as the promised Messiah but did not know the mystery of his divinity, as the devil’s uncertain “if you are the Son of God” shows.
67.1Christ’s prayer for his killers’ forgiveness does not excuse culpable ignorance; they will be pardoned only if they repent.
68.1The martyrs’ souls “cry out” for vengeance as Abel’s blood did, not from impatience but to show that God will avenge them, warning persecutors and consoling sufferers.
68.2God will avenge his servants who cry to him; a Christian who seeks moderate redress without bloodshed does not sin, but does better to leave it to God.
69.1Christ fulfilled the law and prophets by doing all that was written of him; prophecy of this kind ceased with him because its subject had come.
69.2The law’s ritual burdens ended for ever, while its condemning sentence ends only for those who keep the forgiveness received in baptism; those who relapse fall under it again.
69.3Circumcision and sabbath were temporary, ceasing with the law of faith as Daniel foretold; God, who is spirit, is now served in spirit, and the law is not abolished but succeeded.
69.4The moral commandments remain, while ritual laws have ceased; Christ fulfilled the law by adding a higher righteousness, such as turning the other cheek instead of just retaliation.
69.5Christ fulfilled the law by making its disciples more righteous; he suspended its sentence to allow repentance, which falls more heavily on those who do not amend.
70.1The “adversary” with whom one must agree on the way is the law, hostile to sinners; one must be reconciled to it by good conduct before it accuses one at the judgment.
71.1God, Father or Son, has never been seen in his nature, only in images, as emperors are known by their portraits; John 1:18 explains this.
71.2Only the Son has seen the Father; the God who appeared to the patriarchs was the Son, so God is both seen and unseen.
72.1“The law through Moses, grace and truth through Christ” means that Moses’ precepts were true but his history was veiled until Christ revealed its meaning and fulfilled its promises.
73.1Jesus’ will is always fulfilled; in the region of Tyre he wanted to stay hidden because the time for preaching to the gentiles had not come.
73.2Jesus did not want his disciples to announce him, but welcomed those who sought him out, like the Canaanite woman, so his will was done.
74.1Jesus told his unbelieving brothers he was not going up to the feast, then went up later; the full narrative resolves the apparent contradiction.
74.2Jesus went up not to celebrate but to contend; his true feast was the day of his passion, when he conquered death.
75.1“No one comes unless the Father draws him” does not deny free will: the Father draws people by the miracles he works through Christ, which show that God is his Father.
75.2God’s drawing is testimony, not force, and his hardening (Rom 9) justly gives the willfully malicious what they choose; so free choice is confirmed.
76.1Scripture is bitter to the faithless and heretics: Photinus, Sabellius, Arius, Marcion, and the Manichees, who reject marriage, are all refuted by the Gospel of John.
76.2The scroll John ate in Revelation is his Gospel, written after his exile on Patmos under Domitian: sweet to the orthodox, bitter to heretics, like Ezekiel’s scroll.
77.1Christ is the fall of those proud of their learning in the law and the rising of the lowly believers, as the fishermen who followed him show.
77.2The sword passing through Mary’s soul is the doubt that touched her and all the disciples at Christ’s death but passed away at his resurrection.
78.1Isaiah says Christ did no sin; Paul says the Father made him sin, meaning that he took sinful flesh and was offered as a sin offering, called “sin” in the law.
78.2The Father offered Christ by letting his enemies kill him, which let him descend to strip the underworld and made the devil guilty; so he was made a curse for us, and his sign frees us from the second death.
79.1The didrachma was a poll tax, for Christ owned nothing; Christians should hold their goods without trusting in them, ready to give them up for the faith.
79.2The devil moved the collectors to demand a tax Jesus did not owe, hoping to shame him, but the coin in the fish’s mouth turned the scheme into a sign of his power.
79.3Paying for himself and Peter, Jesus paid for all, because after him all the disciples are contained in Peter, whom he made their head and shepherd of the flock.
79.4The discussion of the didrachma’s weight and value breaks off.
80.1Children who “do not know good or evil” are in natural, guiltless ignorance; one becomes a child of the devil by learning evil and a child of God by turning to the Creator.
80.2No one is born a child of God or of the devil; people become one or the other by their works and confession, since God made us able to learn good or evil.
81.1Answering why Jews are born Jews but Christians are not born Christians, Ambrosiaster says Jewishness passes by birth under devotion to the Creator, while one becomes a Christian only by faith, which adds a real dignity to nature.
82.1Pagans worship the elements, but the Jews served God “under the elements” through visible observances commanded by God, while also having a spiritual law.
83.1No one may complain against a benefactor about when or how much he chooses to give.
83.2Christ came not by our merits but when help was needed and would be most gratefully received.
83.3God first left humanity to its will with the witness of creation, then chose Abraham, then gave the written law, and finally, when all had failed, sent his Son to die and descend to the underworld.
83.4Christ came hidden in human form so that the devil, killing him as a man, found him God in the underworld and lost all his captives.
83.5The objection that the righteous before Christ suffered loss by his late coming is met: the loss was real but just.
83.6Christ did not come at the beginning, because the devil had justly won his victory over Adam, who sinned grievously and did not repent.
84.1Christians keep the lunar reckoning for Easter without worshipping the moon, celebrating within the fourteenth to twenty-first day of the moon so that the resurrection falls on the first day of the week.
84.2The week of creation measures all time, and the resurrection on the first day shows that the world was renewed in Christ’s body.
84.3The devil set up pagan spring rites with expiation by blood at the time of Easter so that the Christian mysteries would look like an imitation, but Christian miracles show where the truth is.
85.1Matthew omits Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah from the genealogy because their wickedness was unbroken and unredeemed by any father’s merit.
86.1Mary is of David’s line because the angel calls David the father of her child.
87.1Faith in three persons is faith in one God, revealed after it had been preached, and the author illustrates it by number speculation on three and nine.
88.1Isaiah saw the Lord seated as a ruling king, but Stephen saw him standing as an advocate pleading a case at the judge’s right hand.
89.1The Spirit convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment by proving, through Christ’s ascension and the release of souls from the underworld, that he came from God.
89.2The miracles worked through the apostles in Christ’s name after Pentecost were the Spirit’s public conviction of the world.
90.1In John 8:44 “devil” is a name for a kind of work, so the father of the Jews there is Cain, the first murderer and liar, whose own father is the devil.
91.1Against Photinus, John the Baptist and Christ’s own words show that Christ came from heaven and existed with the Father before his birth from Mary.
91.2Christ’s words about coming from and returning to the Father cannot refer merely to his teaching or power, which remained in the world after his departure.
91.3If the power at work in Christ is God’s Son, it is Christ himself; otherwise there would be two sons, contrary to Scripture’s “only Son.”
91.4No one doubted that Christ’s miracles were from God; the question was always about his person.
91.5The apostles’ confession that Christ came from God, approved by him, shows that he is the true Son who alone was with God and knew him.
91.6Christ alone is called the true and only Son of God and accepts worship, which belongs to God alone, so he is not a mere man as Photinus held.
91.7Paul’s apostleship and gospel came “not from a man” but from Jesus Christ, which shows that Christ is God as well as man.
91.8Rom 9:5 calls Christ “God over all,” and since every knee bows to him in heaven and earth he must be God, not a mere man.
91.9The Word who was in the beginning with God and is called the Son became flesh from Mary, so he existed before Mary.
91.10Christ is called the Word, power, and wisdom of God to show that he is from God and not a second god.
91.11Photinus’s punctuation of John 1:1 (“and God was”) is rejected; the Gospel teaches that the Word, who was with God in the beginning, was God.
91.12God promised that no man would equal Solomon, yet Christ claimed to be greater than Solomon, which is only consistent if Christ is God.
91.13Christ’s words “before Abraham I am,” and the curse on hoping in a man, refute Photinus’s claim that Christ is only a man who began with Mary.
92.1Christ’s peace sets a person at odds with the world and differs from the world’s peace, being freely given by one who needs and fears nothing.
92.2The world gives peace for its own advantage, Christ for the good of those who receive it, and his peace leads to a good life and eternal life.
93.1The Spirit was with the apostles before the passion by his divine nature, shared with Christ, but was given to believers only after Christ was glorified.
93.2Ambrosiaster distinguishes three gifts of the Spirit: the grace of ordination given when Christ breathed on the apostles, the general gift to all believers at Pentecost, and the temporary power of miracles given to the apostles.
94.1The chief priests and elders were busy with Jesus’ trial and crucifixion all day, so Judas cannot be shown to have returned the money to them in the temple before the crucifixion.
94.2Scripture sometimes narrates events out of order, as John mentions Mary’s anointing before it happened, so Matthew’s order does not prove when Judas died.
94.3Even after the ninth hour the priests were busy with the Pascha and could not handle money on the Sabbath, so the time of Judas’s death cannot be established.
95.1The events of the old law prefigure the Christian faith, and the origin of Pentecost is to be sought in them.
95.2Pentecost always falls on the Lord’s day, the first day, on which the world was made and renewed, and the law given at Sinai fifty days after the Passover prefigured the gift of the Spirit fifty days after Easter.
95.3The law was given fifty days after the Passover, the fiftieth psalm speaks of forgiveness, and the manna, given on a first day, prefigured the Eucharist.
95.4Ambrosiaster calculates from the quails, the manna, and the Sabbath in Exodus 16 that both the first Passover and the giving of the law fell on the fourth day of the week.
95.5A short version of the calculation: fifty days separate the Passover from the giving of the law, both on the fourth day of the week, so Pentecost is the feast of the law’s dedication.
96.1Pascha means the sacrifice, not the “passing over,” for the blood of the lamb, not the angel’s passing, brought salvation.
97.1Against the Arians, Christ is called the true Son of God, which means he was born from God’s substance; God’s power does not make false things true.
97.2Christ is God’s own Son, born of his substance, and therefore equal to him, as Paul and John testify.
97.3Christ’s sayings that he speaks and acts from the Father do not lower him but show that he is consubstantial with the Father and has his origin from him.
97.4Everything Scripture ascribes to the Father it also ascribes to the Son, so the Arians misread the passages that show Christ’s true sonship.
97.5Father and Son differ only as unbegotten and begotten; the one image in Gen 1:26, the Jews’ charge against Jesus, and Isaiah 45 show that they share one nature.
97.6Isaiah’s words show that the Son, in whom God is and who is himself God, shares one substance with the Father.
97.7The prophetic text “This is our God; no other shall be compared with him … he was seen on earth” refers to the Son, who is therefore the one God, equal to the Father.
97.8Father and Son are two by birth but one God by nature; since all things were made through Christ, he is not made but born, and the Arian “there was when he was not” is condemned.
97.9The Arian claim that God “made” Christ to be a true Son would replace birth with will and begetting with making.
97.10If God made Christ his true Son, Christ must be what God is and of one substance with him, which the Arians do not mean.
97.11To call Christ the true Son while denying his equality with the Father is a deceit, for true sonship implies equality.
97.12The Arian objection that a simple nature cannot beget is answered by God’s power, which also gave the virgin birth, Jonah’s survival, and the resurrection.
97.13The Arian argument that a Son begotten by will must come after the will fails, because in God will and begetting are one.
97.14The Arian dilemma that God must either beget always or never is rejected as an irreverent law imposed on God, contrary to Christ’s word that he is the only Son.
97.15Christ calls the Spirit “another Paraclete” and “the Spirit of truth,” titles that are also his own, which shows that Son and Spirit share one nature.
97.16The Lord of hosts in Isaiah 6 is identified by John with Christ and by Paul with the Holy Spirit, which shows that the three are one God.
97.17The Spirit is not inferior for being named third; in Isaiah 48 the Son says he was sent by God and his Spirit, as the Spirit is sent by Father and Son.
97.18Paul calls the Spirit “Lord” and says only the Spirit knows what is in God, which shows that the Spirit is of God’s own divinity.
97.19In 1 Cor 12:4–11 Paul names Spirit, Lord, and God in reverse order and ascribes one work to all three, showing their one divinity, while the Spirit distributes gifts by his own will, which is God’s.
97.20The Spirit works all things as the finger of God, calls and appoints apostles and bishops, and is called God in the story of Ananias and in Paul’s language of the temple.
97.21Scripture preaches one God yet shows the Son and Spirit to be God, so that the Trinity, in which salvation lies, is worshiped as one divinity.
98.1In a homily on John 8:44, Ambrosiaster teaches that the devil had no one who led him into apostasy and that his names describe his deeds, not his nature.
98.2Cain, who killed his brother out of envy and lied to God, is the “devil” whose father is the devil in John 8:44.
98.3Ambrosiaster says the Jews, imitating Cain, killed the Lord and called his blood down on their children.
98.4The devil was not created evil, for he “did not stand” in the truth, which means he was once in it and fell by his own will, and so is justly punished.
98.5To say that the devil was made evil by God, or that he has an origin independent of God, both offend against God’s goodness or his lordship.
99.1“Human temptation” is being tested by people for God’s sake, which is wholesome; “divine temptation” is putting God to the test, which brought death on the Israelites in the wilderness.
99.2Believers are tested by persecutors, doubters are corrected by God through suffering, and the righteous, like Abraham, Job, and Tobit, are tested so that they may grow.
100.1In a homily on Matt 11:25, Ambrosiaster says God reveals saving truth to the humble who submit to his law, not to the worldly wise.
100.2God rewards faith and right living rather than learning or eloquence, which is why he chose unlettered fishermen as apostles and why Paul relied on power, not rhetoric.
100.3The unlearned need not think themselves unworthy of grace, for God rests on the humble and loves those who keep his commandments.
101.1Ambrosiaster explains that love obliges him to answer a foolish claim, so that its author may be corrected.
101.2Against a Roman deacon who made deacons equal to presbyters, Ambrosiaster argues from the levites’ subordinate service to Aaron that deacons are ministers of the priests.
101.3Even Roman deacons do not sit in church, and like deacons everywhere they should serve the priest as Elisha served Elijah.
101.4If Rome’s greatness raised its deacons, it would raise its priests still more; in fact each order keeps its proper honor everywhere, and the higher order includes the lower.
101.5Ambrosiaster argues that a bishop is the first among presbyters, who share his priesthood, while deacons are far below them; in Egypt presbyters even give the seal when no bishop is present.
101.6Caiaphas prophesied because he was high priest, and in Acts the apostles, not the deacon Philip, gave the Spirit to the Samaritans, which shows how far priests stand above deacons.
101.7Korah’s rebellion and Uzziah’s leprosy warn deacons not to usurp priestly functions, as some do at meals and in prayer.
101.8The Roman deacons’ influence in the bishop’s household, and the flattery it attracts, has made them forget the proper limits of their order.
101.9Deacons’ part as witnesses and escorts at the ordination of presbyters gives them no superiority: lay people testified for the first deacons, and an escort serves the one it escorts.
102.1Against Novatian, Ambrosiaster contrasts the severity with which the law of Moses began and the mercy with which Christ’s preaching began, as when he spared the woman taken in adultery.
102.2The old law began in severity but later showed mercy; the new began in mercy but sometimes punished, as with Ananias, Elymas, and Herod, so that mercy would not be despised.
102.3If the old law, with lesser grace, pardoned the penitent, the new law must too; Novatian’s use of “whoever denies me” to exclude the lapsed is rejected.
102.4Christ forgave Peter’s denial after his bitter tears; Novatian, by equating denial with the sin against the Holy Spirit, offers penance in name only.
102.5David was forgiven murder and adultery and restored, Ahab was spared, and Nineveh was saved, all through repentance, which shows that repentance brings real pardon.
102.6If murder and adultery can be forgiven, Novatian’s refusal to forgive sexual sin collapses; the remaining question is idolatry, and sins must be loosed in this life if at all.
102.7Jeremiah’s promises of forgiveness to idolatrous Israel show that God forgives even apostasy and idolatry when people return to him.
102.8The warning to Nineveh, the long building of the ark, the Wisdom books, and Christ’s lament over Jerusalem all show that God wants sinners to repent and live.
102.9In baptism God forgives all sins freely without penance; sins committed afterward can still be forgiven, but through the groans and tears of penance.
102.10Since no one lives without sin, John promises forgiveness to Christians who confess, and God, who had mercy on his enemies, will not refuse it to his friends attacked by the devil.
102.11Since no one is free of sin, denying repentance would mean no one could be saved, contrary to the joy in heaven over a penitent sinner.
102.12Christ said all sins except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will be forgiven, so Novatian cannot exclude sexual sin and idolatry, which are forgiven through penance or baptism.
102.13The unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit was the knowing malice of those Jews who ascribed Christ’s works to the devil against their own conscience.
102.14Sins against God or Christ often come from grief or ignorance and can be pardoned on conversion, unlike the knowing malice of those who blasphemed the Spirit.
102.15No one has any reason to blaspheme the Spirit, whose works are only healings and wonders, so those who called them demonic did so from pure malice.
102.16Novatian holds that serious sins after baptism cannot be forgiven, but that would make the New Testament less merciful than the Old and contradict Christ, who came to save and commands us to forgive seventy times seven.
102.17From 2 Cor 12:21 Ambrosiaster argues that penance for sexual sin is completed in this life and that those who complete it are readmitted to communion.
102.18In the letter to Pergamum the risen Christ commands penance for idolatry and sexual immorality, so those sins can be repented of within the church.
102.19The letters to Pergamum and Thyatira promise a reward to those who repent of idolatry and sexual immorality.
102.20The letter to Thyatira refutes Novatian twice: it offers penance for idolatry, and it shows that the wicked and the good coexist in one church without the good being defiled.
102.21The parables of the net and of the wedding garment show that the wicked remain with the good in the church until the judgment without defiling them.
102.22The “great house” with vessels of honor and dishonor is the church, not the world as Novatian claims, for the world does not share one name and profession.
102.23Novatian’s claim that he allows penance for idolatry but leaves forgiveness to God is a deception, since he holds that such a sin can never be forgiven.
102.24Peter’s guarded answer to Simon Magus concerned deliberate malice; those who sin from error or under pressure can be forgiven through penance, which the church is authorized to grant.
102.25The church may not exclude secret sinners from the Eucharist without accusation and proof, as Christ gave his body to Judas and Joseph would not publicly expose Mary; only those who consent to sin are defiled.
102.26The Corinthians were rebuked for tolerating the man living with his stepmother, because his sin was public and needed no accuser.
102.27Novatian denies that Catholics are Christians, yet they share his baptismal faith and confession, which alone makes a Christian.
102.28Even if some Catholic clergy were sinful, the truth they hand on is still true, and persecutors themselves recognize Catholics as Christians by their confession, so Novatian’s schism has no just cause.
102.29The benefit of the faith handed on in the sacraments does not depend on the merit of the minister, for God gives the growth.
102.30A believer who comes in faith to God’s minister receives what God gives, whatever the minister’s life, as the believer could rightly plead before God.
102.31Like an advocate whose private life does not affect his client’s case, a bishop only performs his office, while God judges the faith of those who come for baptism.
102.32Salvation comes by each person’s faith, and Novatian, by making his own name the mark of Christians, has set himself above Christ.
103.1God’s statement that he did not command the fathers to offer sacrifices refers to voluntary offerings, which were left to choice but should have been worthy.
103.2Like Cain, Israel offered God unworthy voluntary sacrifices while living wickedly, though sin is redeemed by repentance and mercy, not by offerings.
103.3David, Samuel, and the prophets teach that God values a contrite heart, obedience, and mercy above sacrifice.
104.1In a homily on Luke, Ambrosiaster asks why Christ told the disciples to get swords and then condemned Peter for using one.
104.2The puzzle extends to why Christ, who earlier sent the disciples out without bag or staff, now told them to take a purse and a sword.
104.3Christ had swords brought so that his passion would be seen as foreknown and willed, not suffered from weakness, and by healing the servant’s ear he showed his power undiminished.
104.4Peter was allowed to wound but not to kill, for only a judge may put to death with the sword and Christians may not kill; the earlier command to take nothing suited a time of peace.
105.1The darkening of the sun at the crucifixion fulfilled Amos and prefigures the darkening of sun and moon at Christ’s second coming foretold by Christ and Joel.
105.2Isaiah’s day when sun and moon shine brighter is the day of redemption hailed by Zechariah, and the fallen “towers” are the Jewish leaders who rejected Christ.
105.3Those who seemed to see were blinded by unbelief, while the unlearned and tax collectors who believed were healed, as Isaiah foretold.
105.4Redemption in the passion freed both the living and the dead; since sun and moon are darkened at both comings, Isaiah’s brighter sun and moon must stand for the saints.
105.5Those who leave everything for Christ receive sevenfold now and greater glory in the resurrection, shining like the sun and moon of Isaiah, with differences of glory among the saints remaining.
106.1Ambrosiaster begins his discussion of Genesis 1:1 by noting the problem of “heaven” and the firmament, and explains that Moses wrote to correct false views of the world’s origin current in Egypt.
106.2“Heaven and earth” in Gen 1:1 means the upper and lower substances from which the world was made, created so that matter would not be thought eternal alongside God.
106.3The elements were created first, then light, and day and night together make one day, the night being counted under the day because darkness is only the absence of light.
106.4Ambrosiaster dates creation to the spring equinox, 22 March, and ties the reckoning of the Passover moon to the days of creation.
106.5Christ suffered on the fourteenth day of the moon and rose on the first day of the week, the day of creation, and Easter’s date varies with the moon.
106.6The earth was “invisible” because covered by water and “unformed” because still fluid and unfit for cultivation.
106.7The abyss is the boundless water over which darkness lay.
106.8The spirit borne over the waters lit their surface, while darkness remained over the depths below.
106.9Ambrosiaster holds that the “spirit of God” over the waters in Gen 1:2 is not the Holy Spirit but a created spirit governing matter, called God’s because all things are God’s.
106.10On the second day God made the firmament out of water, a vault set amid the waters like a secure house for the world’s inhabitants.
106.11On the third day the waters were gathered into a basin so that the dry land appeared, and the earth brought forth plants.
106.12On the fourth day God made sun, moon, and stars for the life of creatures, the marking of times, and the world’s adornment; the moon was made full.
106.13The lights were made after the plants so that no one would think the plants owed their origin to the heavenly bodies.
106.14God’s seeing that the creatures were good refutes those who call them evil, and does not imply that he learned something he did not know.
106.15On the sixth day the earth brought forth the land animals, all good because all are necessary.
106.16Man was made last, by God’s own hands and in the image of Father and Son, to enjoy the finished world.
106.17Ambrosiaster defines the image of God as the man’s rule as God’s representative, from whom all others descend, and so holds that the woman, made from the man, is not in God’s image though she shows his likeness.
106.18God created in six days, not all at once, so that creatures would recognize that they had a beginning and none would think itself eternal.
106.19The six days of creation prefigure six thousand years of history, with Christ coming in the sixth millennium and the seventh bringing rest; the tree of life is the Lord’s body and the tree of knowledge the law.
107.1Water, earth, and darkness, the materials of the world, were themselves created by God, as Wisdom, Isaiah, the Psalms, and the apostles attest.
107.2Darkness is mentioned first only in the order of the narrative; “day” and “night” are names of the world’s time and will cease in eternity.
107.3Darkness precedes light in the narrative but not in rank, just as earlier creatures are not superior to later ones.
107.4In Gen 1:5 night follows day, so the day, the superior, comes first and night is subordinate to it.
107.5Scripture and ordinary speech always count by days and name day before night, which shows that night is part of and subordinate to the day.
107.6The day always takes precedence over the night, and the Jewish practice of beginning the Sabbath at evening is only a practical arrangement; Roman reckoning also runs from morning to morning.
107.7Spiritually understood, light is prior to darkness, which is only the fading of light, as earth is the settling of water.
107.8God alone has light without failing; he is everywhere and contains all things, yet shows himself only where he wills, as Christ did at the transfiguration.
108.1Names come from origins: human beings are named from the soil from which the first man was made.
108.2Ambrosiaster argues that the Hebrews were named after Abraham, not Eber, since Scripture first calls his descendants Hebrews and he was the founder of a renewed people.
108.3Those who give Eber the honor of the name slight Abraham, though Eber’s descendants were idolaters.
108.4Abraham, in whom God restored true worship and knowledge after humanity’s fall, is the fitting source of the name of the people that began with him.
108.5The form “Hebraei” does not favor Eber, for names are often altered for euphony; both people and language are named after Abraham.
108.6Hebrew was the original language given to Adam, which at Babel was broken up and mingled into many languages.
108.7Since Hebrew has no homeland but the Jews and Abraham was a Syrian, it must be either the original language or one assembled from many.
108.8Hebrew is most likely the original language, which allowed Moses to record the first names in the very speech in which they were given.
109.1Hebrews says the lesser is blessed by the greater, which points not to the dignity of a priestly office but to the greatness of Melchizedek himself.
109.2Melchizedek blessed Abraham by his own nature, not, like human priests, by pronouncing a formula entrusted to them.
109.3Melchizedek’s blessing was always effective because it came from his nature and will, whereas a human priest’s blessing takes effect according to God’s judgment of the recipient, as with Hannah.
109.4No mere man could surpass Abraham, who obeyed God’s call at once and was ready to sacrifice his son, so Melchizedek, who is greater, must be more than human.
109.5Abraham’s hospitality, faith in the promise of descendants, ready circumcision, and trust in the promise of a son by Sarah show his unequalled obedience.
109.6Abraham obeyed the command to sacrifice Isaac at once, without telling Sarah or the boy, regarding it as a holocaust commanded by a just God.
109.7Unlike Moses, Jonah, and even Job, Abraham never resisted or grieved at God’s command, so no man could surpass him.
109.8Melchizedek can surpass Abraham only by nature, since a human being gains blessedness by struggle, and a sinless human would, absurdly, outrank God.
109.9God is blessed by nature and untouched by suffering, while human beings reach blessedness through struggle and bear its scars.
109.10Hebrews 7 describes Melchizedek as without father, mother, or end of life and greater than Abraham the patriarch, which confirms that he is more than human.
109.11As “king of righteousness and peace,” Melchizedek rules over the very virtues that teach human beings, and so is greater than any man.
109.12Melchizedek, as king of righteousness and peace, is their author, and Psalm 85 shows that righteousness and peace came together in the incarnation of Christ.
109.13A “king of peace” is no different from the “God of peace,” and Melchizedek, unlike earthly kings who are subject to righteousness, rules over it as one who cannot sin.
109.14Hebrews says plainly that Melchizedek had no beginning of days or end of life, and those who explain this away do violence to Scripture.
109.15The view that “without father, without mother” means only that Melchizedek’s foreign ancestry is unrecorded fails, since Scripture omits many mothers without saying so.
109.16“Neither beginning of days nor end of life” cannot mean merely that his birth went unrecorded or that he was taken up like Enoch.
109.17One should yield to the plain sense of Scripture rather than force one’s own meaning on it, for truth conquers all.
109.18Melchizedek’s bread and wine prefigured the Eucharist, and if he had been a human priest he would have had a people of God before Abraham, which would make Abraham’s calling pointless.
109.19Deuteronomy 32 shows that God had no people but Abraham’s descendants, so Melchizedek was not a human priest but a forerunner of the Son, “made like the Son of God.”
109.20Ambrosiaster concludes that Melchizedek, “made like the Son of God,” is of the same nature as the Son and is the third person of the Trinity appearing in human form.
109.21Son and Spirit are called priests of the Father because, though of one substance with him, they are sent as his image and envoys, the Spirit ranking after the Son.
110.1In a reading of Psalm 1, Ambrosiaster calls blessed the one who does not join the counsel of the ungodly, a conspiracy begun by the devil, whose ungodliness is the gravest of sins.
110.2Ungodliness began with rebellion against the one God and issued in idolatry, from which further crimes followed, even against parents, as with Reuben and Absalom.
110.3Refusing help in danger and abetting wicked schemes are also ungodliness, and falling into it after knowing God is especially ruinous.
110.4Since no one can avoid all sin, the blessed person is the one who does not persist in it but repents; ungodliness is deadly, while sin admits amendment.
110.5The “chair of pestilence” is a seat of judgment not ordained by God, unlike the chair of Moses and the authorities God establishes.
110.6Lawful authority comes from God, while the “chair of pestilence” is the seat of those who reject the one God, as pagan priests who persecute Christians and Jezebel’s judges of Naboth.
110.7Rival bishops who set up seats outside or against the church, breaking the succession that began with Peter, also sit in the chair of pestilence and will be punished like Korah and Uzziah.
110.8The blessed man, having turned from the ungodly, sinners, and the chair of pestilence, sets his will on God’s law.
110.9The blessed man gives his days to good works and his nights to prayer, meditating on God’s law.
110.10One who meditates on God’s law is like a well-watered tree and will not be fruitless.
110.11The fruit of keeping God’s law will be given at Christ’s judgment.
110.12The unfading leaf signifies life: protected by God, the one devoted to his law gains salvation through trials.
110.13Whoever keeps God’s law prospers in all he does, as Joseph did.
110.14The repeated “not so” stresses that the ungodly will have no prosperity, only ruin.
110.15The ungodly will be scattered like dust, cast out by the angels from the presence of God, without whom there is no life.
110.16The ungodly will not rise to be judged by a law they never accepted, but only to see the truth they rejected and to perish.
110.17Psalm 1 distinguishes the ungodly, who are not judged but perish, sinners, who are judged and corrected, and the righteous, who are rewarded.
110.18God “knows” the righteous who do good works, but disowns the negligent.
110.19The psalm begins and ends with the ungodly to show that their path, outside God’s law, ends in perdition.
111.1The title of Psalm 24 (23 in the Greek and Latin), “for the first day of the week,” points to Christ and his resurrection, but the psalm begins with God the Father as the origin.
111.2The psalm opens by confessing that the earth and all in it belong to God.
111.3All the world and its inhabitants belong to God, against heretics who deny his lordship over part of creation.
111.4God founded the earth on the waters, separating them from the original confusion of matter.
111.5The earth is “prepared upon the rivers” because waters flowing within it keep it firm and fertile.
111.6Confessing God as Creator is not enough without a good life; the “mountain of the Lord” is heaven, and his holy place is where he appears.
111.7Those innocent in deed and pure in faith ascend to heaven at death and return with the heavenly Jerusalem at the judgment, while the ungodly and sinners cannot bear the sight of the Lord in glory.
111.8Not taking one’s soul “in vain” means above all keeping free of idolatry.
111.9The psalm’s two requirements, purity toward God and honesty toward the neighbor, correspond to the two great commandments on which all the law depends.
111.10Whoever is faithful to God and neighbor in great matters receives God’s blessing and mercy for lesser failings.
111.11Seeking God and seeking his face are two steps; those who seek him are the “generation” of faith and love, like Abel, as opposed to the line of Cain, and “the God of Jacob” stands for the face no mortal can see.
111.12The pause marks the turn from the Father to the Son; the law prepared the faithful to receive Christ, who would bring mercy for their sins.
111.13The angels command the hostile powers to lift up the gates of their prince the devil, which are the unbelief and deceit of idolatry.
111.14The eternal gates are faith, hope, and love, which replace the temporary gates of idolatry when the one God is made known in Christ.
111.15Christ the king of glory enters only where the devil’s presumption and the idolatry modeled on it have been cast out.
111.16The question “Who is this king of glory?” is put so that Christ’s title may be confirmed.
111.17Christ is shown to be king of glory by the power with which he overcame the devil.
111.18Having seen Christ’s power, the powers are told to put away their error.
111.19Only those cleansed of idolatry and renewed can receive Christ and the Spirit.
111.20The question is repeated because something unheard of must be said twice to be grasped.
111.21Christ, Lord of the heavenly powers, is rightly the king of glory, the “Lord of glory” whom the rulers crucified in ignorance.
112.1Psalm 51 (50 in the Greek and Latin) is placed fiftieth not by date but because fifty is the number of remission in the law, from Pentecost to the year of jubilee.
112.2David, knowing his sin was grave, appeals to God’s great mercy, which pardons great sins.
112.3David calls his sin iniquity and excuses nothing, for genuine grief at sin moves the judge to mercy, while prayer without it mocks him.
112.4David asks to be cleansed completely, so that no trace of sin remains.
112.5David confesses his sin with tears and keeps it before his eyes, knowing that confession leads to being justified.
112.6“Against you alone” means that David, though he sinned against a fellow man, never betrayed God by idolatry, so he was a sinner, not ungodly, and could hope for pardon.
112.7David asks God to prove true to his promise of mercy and so prevail over those who, by their sinning, treat his promises as false.
112.8David pleads human weakness, inherited from Adam, whose transgression made all his descendants liable to sin.
112.9The sin inherited from Adam, which the author identifies with the devil working in the flesh, makes sinning easy, which is why God shows mercy to those who grieve over sin.
112.10David appeals to God’s love of truth to help one who honestly confesses, as God had long purposed to help sinners.
112.11The “hidden things” revealed to David are God’s plan of salvation in Christ, made known to those who confess their sins, and David asks to receive that gift in advance.
112.12David asks to be cleansed with hyssop, as the Israelites’ doorposts marked with blood by hyssop were spared from death.
112.13God’s washing makes the soul whiter than snow, the visible sprinkling of hyssop signifying an invisible cleansing.
112.14The message of forgiveness brings joy, since those God forgives are secure now and hereafter.
112.15David was humbled both by his sin and by his penance, and was lifted up with joy when pardoned.
112.16Though already pardoned, David prays at length because he seeks restoration for himself and speaks for the whole people who await forgiveness in Christ.
112.17David asks for a clean heart and a righteous spirit to keep him from future sin; since no one is wholly pure, the essential purity is unbroken faith toward God, which David kept.
112.18David asks not only for pardon but to remain in God’s presence and keep the prophetic Spirit, which he did.
112.19David asks for the joy of salvation and to be kept in his kingdom by the “princely” Spirit, through whom kings reign.
112.20David’s forgiveness will teach sinners and even the ungodly that God receives those who turn to him.
112.21Confessing that his sin deserved death, David proclaims the greatness of God’s mercy.
112.22God’s righteousness is his faithfulness to his promise of mercy, in which David rejoices.
112.23Forgiveness frees the mouth that guilt had shut, so that the forgiven sinner praises God openly.
112.24As Samuel told Saul, sacrifice cannot replace repentance; God is appeased by a soul that grieves over its sin.
112.25In sins like David’s, outward offerings cannot substitute for the mind’s own penitent sorrow.
112.26God accepts a contrite heart as the sacrifice for sin, for as wounds heal only through pain, so sin is healed only through sorrow.
112.27“Zion” is the church, and David prays for the fulfillment in Christ of full forgiveness, including freedom from Adam’s inherited sin.
112.28The walls of Jerusalem are the church built of faithful people, as in Revelation, and David prays for its building in Christ.
112.29The acceptable “sacrifice of righteousness” in the church is the spiritual offering of ourselves to God, greater than the carnal sacrifices of old.
112.30The “calves” on God’s altar are the new people reborn in Christ, whose devotion is the church’s daily spiritual offering.
113.1Faith comes first, but it is strengthened when the believer, helped by the Spirit, comes to understand the reasons for what God has done.
113.2Paul labors to give believers an understanding of their faith, since those who know the greatness of Christ will not be turned from him.
113.3Ambrosiaster asks why the Son himself, rather than an angel, came to earth to defeat the devil.
113.4Since David sent servants against rebels and Michael defeated the devil, it seems an angel could have conquered Satan.
113.5The Son came because the world had been made through him and because the devil had usurped the Son’s own place as second after the Father.
113.6Christ came to defeat the devil and to reveal himself to all creation as the Son, God from God and head of all, whose place the devil had usurped.
113.7The devil, seeking to be worshiped as god, spread idolatry on earth after his fall, and Christ came to earth to crush him and reveal the truth.
114.1In a treatise against the pagans, Ambrosiaster argues that their worship has no warrant, since their gods never claimed divinity or gave commands, and their rites were instituted by men.
114.2Worship of the elements is not commanded by the supreme God whom the pagans themselves acknowledge, and it insults him as treason insults an emperor.
114.3Neither the elements nor the deified men worshiped as gods ever commanded such worship, and both will accuse their worshipers at the judgment.
114.4The Christian God proved his claim to be the only God by mighty works, while pagans worship gods who gave no signs, and with shameful rites.
114.5Christians believed only because God proved himself by mighty works and gave a holy law.
114.6Christian worship is open because it is honorable, while pagan mysteries are held in darkness to hide their shameful rites.
114.7Ambrosiaster attacks pagan rites that require castrated, effeminate priests, contrasting them with the Christian law of chastity.
114.8Pagans call their shameful rites prudence and the Christian law folly, yet their rites and divinations fall silent before the sign of the cross.
114.9Pagans worship many gods and goddesses, some of disreputable origin, while Christians worship the one Creator alone, as an emperor permits no one else to share his honors.
114.10Worshiping the creature instead of the Creator is folly, like calling servants masters in one house, and God will avenge the insult.
114.11Ambrosiaster contrasts the Christian requirement of blameless clergy with pagan priesthoods of eunuchs and the rites of Isis and of the cave cult, which he describes with scorn.
114.12The Christian preaching exposed the secret shameful rites of the pagans, such as those of Liber, and many abandoned them for the faith.
114.13Satan lent pagan inventions an air of power, and long custom, especially among the nobility, made shameful practices seem acceptable.
114.14Now that the gospel has exposed pagan rites as crimes, pagans should at least stop calling themselves wise.
114.15Pagans who mock Christian faith accuse not only Christians but Christ himself, so the defense must show both that Christians believed wisely and that Christ is trustworthy.
114.16Christians once followed pagan rites on the strength of mere custom, but came to faith because of the miracles they saw.
114.17It would be folly to believe pagan words without proof and then refuse the Christian faith confirmed by deeds.
114.18Pagans call the Son of God and the resurrection irrational, yet their own philosophers never settled anything by argument alone.
114.19God confirmed the gospel with miracles, which silence the endless disputes that words alone cannot settle.
114.20The same Scriptures that speak of the cross record the resurrection, which shows that the cross was a mystery of providence, not foolishness.
114.21Christ died willingly, having power to lay down his life and take it up again, as the same Gospel that records his death testifies.
114.22Seeds that die and spring up make the resurrection credible, and even now demons and pagan oracles are silenced by the name of Christ’s cross.
114.23The demons’ terror at the name of the cross shows that it is no disgrace but a sacrament, and that they know their guilt in Christ’s death.
114.24Antiquity is no proof of truth, for crimes are ancient too; what is shameful cannot have priority over what is holy.
114.25The Christian law, unlike pagan tradition, was given by God himself at Sinai after the wonders in Egypt, recorded in the books Ptolemy placed in the Alexandrian library.
114.26God revealed himself openly and gave a law with nothing unjust or shameful in it, unlike the secret rites of the pagans.
114.27When knowledge of God had been lost, he revealed himself to the six hundred thousand Israelites at Sinai in unmistakable glory and by many signs.
114.28The God of Israel’s deeds were known everywhere, while the pagan gods never showed glory, worked signs, or spoke.
114.29Pagan worship of shades, demons, and images rests on custom, but truth comes from the eternal God, who is prior to all the works the pagans worship.
114.30The worship of the true God began with Adam and was renewed in Abraham, so pagan claims to be older than Christianity are false.
114.31Christ is named from the anointing of Israel’s kings, but is King by his birth from the Father; those who come to know him love him, and daily pagans, even learned and noble ones, abandon Jupiter for Christ.
115.1Astrology contradicts God’s law, for if people were born good or bad, the law would be pointless and God unjust in punishing.
115.2Because God is just, his law presupposes that people can obey it, and so his punishments are just.
115.3Astrology is the devil’s invention for insulting God and leading people to break the law and suffer the second death.
115.4The faithful study and keep God’s law, while those who want to sin use fate as an excuse, having given up hope of the life to come.
115.5Fatalism, Satan’s device, removes both guilt and merit, contradicting the baptismal renunciation of Satan and making praise and blame meaningless.
115.6Praising good nature like good wine does not answer the problem, since Scripture promises real rewards and punishments, which would be unjust if conduct were fixed by nature.
115.7If conduct were fixed by nature, the bad would deserve praise as much as the good, and blame would fall on the Creator.
115.8Reward and punishment concern the will, which chooses, not nature, which acts necessarily like the sun or water and earns neither praise nor blame.
115.9Since no one always does good or always evil, character is formed by what people set their minds on, not fixed at birth.
115.10Sinners hide their sins and the good choose when to do good, which shows that conduct comes from will and judgment, not from fate.
115.11Abraham, Zacchaeus, Paul, the martyrs, and many converts were changed from unrighteous to righteous, which shows that character is not fixed at birth.
115.12Wives began to divorce their husbands freely only after Julian’s edict permitted it, which shows that law, not fate, governs conduct.
115.13The law of Moses, unknown for thousands of years and then kept by Jews in every climate, cannot be explained by the stars, whose courses never change.
115.14Jews everywhere keep their law and pagans sometimes become Jews, which fate cannot explain.
115.15The simultaneous destruction of Sodom, of the world in the flood, and of Pharaoh’s army cannot be explained by individual horoscopes but only by God’s judgment.
115.16Arguing against fate, Ambrosiaster points out that Roman law now lets wives put away their husbands, though God's law forbids even husbands to do so except for sexual immorality, and that this change in custom shows that fate does not rule.
115.17Roman law forbids castration and so it is done only secretly, which shows that fear of law, not fate, controls behavior.
115.18The Persians’ earrings and the castrated priests of the Great Mother, who are lured by rewards, show that such customs come from choice and inducement, not fate.
115.19Unions forbidden by law, practised by Persians and occasionally by others, are restrained by punishment, which shows that law addresses free choices, not fated acts.
115.20Moorish women abandon their nose rings in Rome, which shows that customs depend on place and choice, not on fate.
115.21The elements and the planets are the same everywhere, so if fate came from the stars, customs would be the same everywhere too.
115.22Customs differ from nation to nation because they were made by lawgivers like Solon and Lycurgus, not decreed by the stars.
115.23Different peoples’ rulers ride different animals, an example of customs that vary by choice.
115.24Our tastes and opinions change over time, which shows they come from will and habit rather than fixed fate.
115.25The astrologers’ recurring cycles cannot account for customs, which change through discipline and habit.
115.26Early Roman women abstained from wine through discipline and custom, which lapsed when the custom was abandoned, not because fate changed.
115.27The ancient Romans’ integrity came from discipline, not fate, since it neither existed before nor survives now.
115.28Whatever “fate” there is gives way to discipline, custom, chance, and fear of the law, and so has no real authority.
115.29A good life under God’s law overcomes so-called fate; those who live badly blame fate for what they and the demons who aid them have done.
115.30Sin enters through the senses at the prompting of demons, sweet at first and bitter afterward, and so cannot be blamed on fate.
115.31Temptation fades when the mind is absorbed in divine things, which shows it can be overcome; the tempters are demons, the gods of the pagans.
115.32Constant meditation on God’s law and work protects the soul from demons, who stir up the desires of the flesh.
115.33Demons work in different ways, some disturbing minds and bodies, some stirring desires, some only causing illness, like the bent woman Christ healed.
115.34What pagans call good or bad fate is the result of bodily temperament and of the demons’ various contrivances.
115.35Even if temperament differs, human beings, unlike animals, can govern their bodies by reason guided by God’s law, which unmasks the tempter.
115.36A body inclined to passion is to be tamed by restraint in food and drink, as a fire dies without fuel.
115.37The mind must rule the body, and God’s help must be sought against the demons who inflame its desires; without them the flesh is easily controlled.
115.38Astrological predictions come true for those who believe them because demons bring them about, but God does not let them harm those who trust in him.
115.39God, who set the courses of the heavenly bodies, can command them otherwise, sending or withholding rain in answer to prayer or sin, as in the days of Elijah and Elisha.
115.40As the oppressed appeal to the emperor over governors, so people should appeal to God, who rules over the stars.
115.41Astrologers hold that the stars’ decrees are fixed and that prayer can change nothing.
115.42Astrology denies miracles such as the virgin birth, Aaron’s rod, and Sarah’s child, which God, the world’s author, worked beyond the world’s order.
115.43The laws God gave the world do not bind him, and his works beyond them show that they are his.
115.44God, who set the sun’s course, can also stop it.
115.45As the emperor can pardon what judges cannot, God can do what the world’s order cannot, as Christ’s miracles show; so fate cannot hinder those who trust in God.
115.46God changes his decrees at prayer, as when the sun stood still for Joshua and went back for Hezekiah, whose life was lengthened against the astrologers’ claims.
115.47Slavery did not exist from the beginning but began with war under Ninus, which shows it is not the work of the unchanging stars.
115.48Since wealth was once unknown but the stars are unchanged, riches and poverty cannot come from the stars but are the devil’s work.
115.49Famines striking whole provinces at once, and the ruin of Pannonia, cannot be explained by individual fates.
115.50Christians who envy the prosperous or listen to astrologers show weak faith, since God made the world a testing ground and promised Christians their reward in heaven, not on earth.
115.51Christians told not to love the world should not envy others’ worldly fortune, which may be a misfortune before God.
115.52Worldly prosperity makes people careless of divine things and anxious for more, so the world is really the enemy of those it seems to bless.
115.53Christians oppressed for doing right should rejoice, for the coming judgment will exalt them and humble their unjust oppressors.
115.54Belief in fate denies the coming judgment and makes praise and blame meaningless, yet no criminal in court dares plead fate.
115.55Those who evade human justice will not escape God’s judgment, of which earthly law is only an image.
115.56God, who gave the world a law and appointed leaders, must judge whether rulers and people kept it.
115.57Astrologers who deny judgment and say character is fixed at birth nevertheless punish their own slaves, contradicting themselves.
115.58Astrologers who punish those they say were fated to do wrong are themselves unjust, and so their theory refutes itself.
115.59The existence and necessity of law, given because of the wicked, refute the idea that everything happens by fate.
115.60If fate produced the law that forbids fated acts, fate contradicts itself and, by dooming people to condemnation, is unjust.
115.61If the law cannot change the fated, fate produced something useless and acts against itself, which is incoherent.
115.62Law and fate cannot cooperate, because the law holds the wicked guilty by their own will while fate denies that will is responsible.
115.63The pagan Romans’ banishment of astrologers from the city, an act against fate, shows that fate does not exist.
115.64If fate determined murders and adulteries, laws punishing murderers and adulterers would be unjust, and even the victims would share the guilt.
115.65Since God gave the law and the law punishes what fate is said to cause, fate cannot come from God.
115.66If some souls were born to do evil, it would be the fates, not the souls, that are unjust; so fate comes from the devil, not God.
115.67Unique deaths like those of Anaxagoras and Sisera, and the abolition of crucifixion, show that the manner of death is not fixed by fate.
115.68A handsome Etruscan who disfigured himself to avoid suspicion shows that choice can overcome what nature or fate seems to give.
115.69The birth of quintuplets and a friend’s self-castration to guard another’s wife show events and choices that fate cannot account for.
115.70If learning depended on fate, whole classes such as senators or slaves would share one fate, which is absurd.
115.71What is gained by deliberate effort cannot be attributed to fate.
115.72Eunuchs born and made, a woman with eleven husbands and a man with twelve wives, and a girl in Campania changed into a male are cases fate cannot explain.
115.73The mind, with judgment over itself, can resist nature and make itself better or worse, so not everything should be ascribed to fate.
115.74The unique history of the Amazons, who ruled without men, contradicts the idea of fate, including the claim that events recur in great cycles.
115.75Crassus who never laughed, Brutus who feigned stupidity, and a courtier who played the fool for thirty years show that people act by choice, not fate.
115.76Believers in fate contradict themselves by praying and consulting about marriages, journeys, and purchases.
115.77The claim that one prays not to change fate but to ward off things near it implies that fate can be changed after all.
115.78If prayer itself were fated, fate would be either foolish or ignorant, so the pagans’ teaching on fate is incoherent.
115.79Christians who claim Christ’s “hour” was fixed by fate are refuted by his saying that he had power to lay down and take up his life.
115.80Christ is Savior because he revealed the way of salvation, and faith in what was previously unknown cannot be the work of fate.
115.81What is called fate is the work of evil spirits who tempt each person according to their own tastes, but the will remains free and the fear of God overcomes them.
115.82Christ’s promises to those who ask and believe show that the will is free; faith, present in human nature only as a seed like fire in flint, must be roused and exercised, and astrology destroys it.
115.83Christians should shun astrology and live simply, trusting God’s protection and knowing that trials endured lead to the crown.
116.1In a homily on Easter, Ambrosiaster explains that Pascha is named from Christ’s passion and that God justly destroyed death through death’s own act in killing the Savior.
116.2God rescued humanity justly, not by force: the devil, man’s accuser, was provoked into killing the sinless Son of God and so became guilty himself.
116.3By killing the sinless Christ the devil, identified with death, forfeited all humanity, as through Adam he had gained them, and Christ’s blood restored human nature to a better state.
117.1Abraham, father of all believers because of his faith in things beyond belief, was granted to see Christ’s day in advance.
117.2Abraham was justified for believing God’s promise of countless descendants, something the world thought impossible and foolish.
117.3Abraham’s faith was great because he believed the impossible, trusting not the appearance of things but the God who promised, whom it is folly not to believe.
117.4Faith is reasonable because it trusts God, not nature, to do what nature cannot, and so gives the Creator due honor.
117.5Abraham, a Chaldean skilled in astrology, put faith in God above human knowledge before any miracles had been seen, and so became father of the faithful and judge of unbelievers.
117.6Abraham obeyed without hesitation when told to sacrifice Isaac, the son of the promise, concealing it from Sarah, and so taught all to keep God’s commands.
117.7If Abraham obeyed in so hard a matter, we should obey commands that are bearable, for faith in God is sweeter than family love.
117.8As a prophet Abraham anticipated Christ’s command to love God above family, being willing even to sacrifice his son.
118.1In a homily on Job, Ambrosiaster says God’s love saves those who understand it and wants its gifts to bear fruit.
118.2God gave Job as an example of righteousness for all to follow.
118.3Job, living before the written law, kept God’s law by the natural seeds of righteousness implanted in him.
118.4Job is unequalled because he had no example to follow but became the pattern for others, as God himself testified.
118.5Job’s goodness was original, not copied, and so could not be pretense; hence God called him a true worshiper.
118.6Job’s goodness had not yet been tested by suffering, so the tempter asked to try him with many afflictions, as torturers do to force a confession.
118.7Stripped of all his possessions and children, Job remained devoted to God, showing before the law how it was to be kept: by loving God above all.
118.8When Satan struck Job’s body with sores and still could not make him curse God, he tried, as with Adam, to deceive him through his wife.
118.9Job’s patience taught his wife and others to bear God’s will, so Satan’s attack doubled Job’s reward on earth and in heaven and turned to the devil’s own loss.
119.1In a homily on Tobit, Ambrosiaster says God gave written law and living examples so that people might know clearly what to do and avoid.
119.2Tobit is an example of how to keep the law and trust God alone in trials.
119.3God permits trials out of love, to increase our merit and reward, as Paul learned that power is perfected in weakness.
119.4Tobit stayed faithful in captivity, blindness, and poverty, burying the dead against the king’s ban and giving alms from his little, like the widow praised by Christ.
119.5Tobit’s steadfastness, like the apostles’ joy under beatings, shows that unjust sufferings borne for God are signs of future reward.
119.6Tobit was rewarded both with restored sight and wealth through an angel and with the kingdom of heaven, showing God’s care for the faithful now and hereafter.
119.7Tobit’s glory grows through those who imitate him, and we too can live so as to be examples for others.
120.1In a homily before Easter, Ambrosiaster exhorts his people to keep the Lenten fasts, reminding them that regular reading of Scripture keeps the soul from sin.
120.2Fasting is a medicine for the soul, effective when joined with prayer and works of mercy.
120.3Fasting curbs the passions that food and drink inflame and lets the soul see itself clearly and serve its Redeemer.
120.4Esther’s people, the Ninevites, David, and Christ himself show the power and necessity of fasting.
120.5Fasting makes prayer acceptable when joined with almsgiving and righteousness, as with Cornelius, whose fasting was commended by his feeding of the poor.
121.1A hymn of praise to Easter day, recounting the victory over death and the devil and all the blessings won by Christ’s resurrection and ascension.
121.2The faithful should celebrate Easter with modest living and joy, to share in its fruit through Christ.
122.1“In the beginning was the Word” means that the Word did not begin but already existed, unlike heaven and earth, which God made first “in the beginning.”
122.2The Word existed before all creation began and so always existed.
122.3Being “with God” before all things, the Word is subject to no beginning.
122.4Because the Word did not begin to exist, he is not a creature but is rightly called God.
122.5The Son is called “the Word of God” because, as God is never without his word, the Son is always with God and is from God, and so is God.
122.6“God with God” does not mean two gods, since the Word is God from God, sharing one nature and will, and honored in the Father’s glory.
122.7John begins with the Word because questions concern the Son, not the Father; since God is simple and undivided, what is from God is rightly called God.
122.8Human sonship and human speech illustrate the Son’s divine origin only in part, since he is born simply from the simple God and is a living reality, not a passing sound.
122.9Words like “make” and “speak” are used of God and of us, but God makes and speaks in a way wholly unlike ours.
122.10The Son is called Son, Word, Wisdom, and Power of God according to what he is, how God speaks, teaches, and works through him.
122.11Word, power, and wisdom are titles of God himself, and they belong to Christ because he is wholly God from God.
122.12John states plainly that Christ is God and was always with God, showing that the one God is not solitary, while Son and Spirit, being from the one, do not divide his unity.
122.13What proceeds from God’s substance, the Son and Spirit, has no beginning, unlike creatures made from nothing by his will; only the Trinity is without beginning.
122.14By revealing the mystery plainly, Scripture lessened the merit of believing and increased the guilt of disbelief.
122.15Christ’s calling God his own Father should have sufficed, but because of heretics John states openly that the Word was with God and is God.
122.16Since all things were made through the Word, he cannot himself be one of the things made.
122.17“Without him nothing was made” rules out the idea that the Word was made, since he would then have been made without himself.
122.18“What was made in him is life” means that the Word himself is life, as the Son has life in himself just as the Father does.
122.19Human language falls short in describing the Son’s generation, but John’s words point to a generation that has life in itself.
122.20To “have life in himself” means that the Son, like the Father, can give life and create, as Paul says that all things were created through him.
122.21John and Paul agree that the Son, begotten before all creation, is the one in whom all things were made.
122.22Creation “through him” reflects the Son’s oneness of substance with the Father, and “unto him” the power to create and give life that the Father gave him in begetting him.
122.23As the image of God, the Son fully resembles the Father and can do all the Father does, so that the Father is seen in him.
122.24The Son is invisible by nature like the Father, but in heaven the saints will see the Father in the Son, God in his image.
122.25The Son is the perfect image of the Father and shares it with the Spirit; only the true Son is worthy to see the Father directly.
122.26The Son is equal to the Father in substance but second in rank and cause, as Christ said, “the Father is greater than I.”
122.27Paul distinguishes Father, Son, and Spirit as “from whom,” “through whom,” and “in whom” all things are, yet includes all three within the one God.
123.1Ambrosiaster takes up the view of some that Adam was created with the Holy Spirit, lost it by sin, and that believers regain it.
123.2Man, like every creature, was made perfect in his own kind, as a rational being, without needing to have received the Holy Spirit.
123.3Human beings are not born knowing everything; they do not even know the nature of their own soul or whether it exists before the body.
123.4To have the Holy Spirit is beyond human nature, just as speech was beyond the nature of Balaam’s ass.
123.5Every creature is perfect in its own rank and purpose, even if inferior to others.
123.6Creatures are perfect for their purpose but imperfect compared with God and in their need of one another, like hands and feet.
123.7Bodies, animals, fire, and water are each perfect in their own function while lacking other abilities.
123.8Believers are perfect compared with unbelievers but imperfect in what they yet know; Ambrosiaster now asks whether salvation only restores what Adam had.
123.9Adam was placed on earth to work and live on food, but Christ grants a resurrection life needing no food and a dwelling in heaven.
123.10Paul’s contrast of Adam, a living soul, with Christ, a life-giving spirit, shows that Adam did not have the Holy Spirit, who now makes believers sons of God.
123.11Christ not only restored human beings by washing away sin but improved them, giving the Spirit as the sign of adoption as God’s sons when the Trinity was revealed.
123.12The Spirit promised by Joel was poured out only after Christ’s glorification, in the washing of regeneration, and is the pledge of eternal life.
123.13Those who die with the Spirit go to heaven, not the underworld, which shows that the Old Testament saints, who went to the underworld, did not have the Spirit as Christians do.
123.14The Spirit was with prophets and righteous men like Simeon for particular purposes, but sonship by the Spirit began only after Christ’s victory over death.
123.15If the ancients had the Spirit as Christians do, Christ’s coming would have brought nothing new, contrary to his words that prophets longed to see what the disciples saw.
123.16To deny that Christ gave something new would dishonor him; John says he gave believers the power to become sons of God, born spiritually of God.
123.17Adam, made from earth, could not call God Father, which only those who receive the Spirit can do; to think Adam had the Spirit is to undervalue the gift Christians have received.
124.1Almsgiving is more praiseworthy in the poor, like the widow with her two coins, because they give trusting in God rather than in their wealth.
124.2Theft is worse in the rich, who steal from abundance and often from the poor, than in the poor, who steal from need.
124.3Righteousness is more admirable in the poor, who keep it under the pressure of need.
124.4Pride is worse in the poor than in the rich, since it has no ground at all.
124.5Humility is more praiseworthy in the rich and powerful, who could claim honor.
124.6Study is more praiseworthy in the rich, who pursue it by choice, than in the poor, who are driven to it by need.
124.7Lust is worse in the poor, who lack the means to indulge it, while chastity is more praiseworthy in the rich, and most of all in a king, who could sin with impunity and abstains only for fear of God.
125.1Ambrosiaster rejects Eusebius’s claim that the Holy Spirit does not know the mystery of Christ’s birth, since the Spirit shares God’s substance and so knows what is God’s.
125.2If the Spirit shares God’s substance, he must share God’s knowledge; only creatures learn, God knows by nature.
125.3In God knowledge is not acquired but is identical with his substance.
125.4Being consubstantial with the Son, the Spirit knows the Son’s birth by his very substance, as the Son does.
125.5The Spirit proceeds from the Father and receives from the Son, sharing their one substance, and so cannot be ignorant of the Son’s birth.
125.6As the Son came from God, the Spirit proceeds from the Father and receives from the Son, so the Father’s substance and divinity are in him.
125.7To deny the Spirit’s knowledge is to disparage the Son from whom he receives, for receiving from Christ means proceeding from God.
125.8Since the Son knows all that is God’s and the Spirit receives from the Son, the Spirit knows what is in God.
125.9Paul says that only the Spirit of God knows what is in God, just as Christ says only the Son knows the Father; both statements express the shared divine nature.
125.10The Son reveals the Father to his own Spirit, who receives from the Son; no creature could receive such knowledge, since God dwells in inaccessible light.
125.11The objection that the Spirit “searches” and so does not know is answered by Scripture’s use of “search” for God’s own perfect knowledge.
125.12The Spirit’s “searching the depths of God” means that nothing in God, not even his hidden will, is unknown to him.
125.13As only a person’s own spirit knows his mind, only God’s Spirit, who is God himself, knows what is in God.
125.14Only one who is himself God can know God’s secrets, so the Spirit who knows them is God.
125.15God does not deliberate but knows by nature, and the Spirit, sharing God’s one substance, shares his one mind and will.
125.16Father, Son, and Spirit have one will, which is why the Spirit is called both the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ.
125.17Since God dwells in us by his Spirit, the Spirit is God.
125.18Believers become sons of God by adoption through receiving the Spirit, who comes from God and so is a sign of deity within them.
125.19Unlike human adoption, which gives only a name, God’s adoption gives the Spirit as a real pledge.
125.20God’s judgments are unsearchable to creatures but searchable to the Spirit, which shows that the Spirit has the divine nature.
125.21Since salvation is given in the name of Father, Son, and Spirit, the Spirit must share their divinity; a creature could not be counted with the Creator.
125.22The Spirit is third in order and rank but equal in divine substance, as the Son is second but not lesser.
125.23The Spirit, like the Son, is called Paraclete, advocate, and truth, and is sent as the Son is sent; the three have one power.
125.24Ambrosiaster ends by referring to his fuller treatment of the Trinity against the Arians.
126.1Scripture teaches that turning back to God undoes past sin and that believers do not come under condemnation.
126.2Faith in Christ brings forgiveness of all sins, but true knowledge of God must show itself in a changed life.
126.3At the judgment the faithful, despised in this world, will be glorified with Christ, and unbelievers, now prosperous, will be humbled and repent too late.
126.4A Christian must fight against sin; if defeated, his grief shows he wanted to win and gives hope of recovery.
126.5Deliberate sin by one who professes God is worse than the sin of one who does not know him.
126.6Baptismal forgiveness must be followed by a life of struggle in the fear of God to win the reward.
126.7Those who put off baptism to the deathbed so as to sin freely in life are mocking God, who abhors sin and is not mocked.
126.8Some ask to be baptized only when unconscious and dying, lest they recover as Christians, and so fall under Christ’s warning against those ashamed of him.
126.9Baptism benefits only those who consciously believe and confess, since God sees the heart; one who receives it unconscious does not truly receive the faith.
126.10Some delay baptism out of reverent fear of sinning after it, but others to keep sinning and then secure forgiveness at death.
126.11To sin deliberately while planning a deathbed baptism is to “do evil that good may come,” and such people can hardly expect pardon.
126.12Sins are forgiven by the gift of baptism or, for sins after baptism, by penance with tears.
126.13A pagan who believes sincerely on his deathbed is forgiven and spared the underworld, but without the reward of those who served Christ through life.
126.14Those who live as soldiers of Christ will be crowned, while those who believed only at death will regret not having lived as Christians.
126.15A deathbed believer who hedges his bets has not amended his life, which should have been done in this life where the sins were committed.
126.16Faith must show itself in a changed life, for Christians are known by their works, and calling Christ Lord without obeying him is mockery.
127.1Ambrosiaster begins his defense of marriage by noting that God made the world for man and gave every living kind the power to reproduce.
127.2God blessed human beings, male and female, to increase and multiply, with the same blessing he gave to the rest of creation.
127.3Since all increase comes from God’s blessing, marriage cannot be wrong; the synagogue and now the church join husband and wife under God’s blessing.
127.4If human procreation ceased, the rest of creation, made for man, would lose its purpose.
127.5Those who call marriage defiled are really accusing God, who instituted and blessed it.
127.6As Balaam could not curse those God blessed, no one can condemn marriage, which God blessed, without denying God or Scripture.
127.7Ambrosiaster argues that Christ's presence at the wedding at Cana and his answer on divorce show that the new teaching agrees with the old: God is the author of marriage, which must be neither forbidden nor separated.
127.8Christ’s care for his mother at the cross and the commandment to honor parents show that birth, and so marriage, is good.
127.9Since both Testaments favor marriage, those who forbid it are, as Paul says, people of seared conscience who attack God’s law.
127.10Those who condemn marriage and foods feign holiness and abstinence to win esteem and lead people astray, as the Jewish leaders falsely ascribed Christ’s works to Beelzebul.
127.11The condemnation of marriage is a trick of Satan, who poses as a lover of holiness to lead people into worse sin and so gain companions in his punishment.
127.12Scripture plainly says that God made and blessed human beings, so no one should treat as cursed what God has blessed.
127.13Moses’ miracles, Paul’s typology, and Christ’s own words show that the law of Moses comes from the same God as the gospel, so it cannot be dismissed as error.
127.14Since the God of the Old Testament is the true God, his word must be believed even against our own judgment, and all the more on marriage, which he plainly instituted.
127.15Since knowing God is good and comes only to those who are born, birth is good, and through faith it leads to a greater paradise than Adam’s.
127.16If the dedication of the temple was celebrated, a person’s birthday, the making of God’s living temple, is all the more worth celebrating; guilt lies in the will, not in birth.
127.17Against Marcion, who forbade marriage, Ambrosiaster argues that the soul’s liberation through knowledge requires birth, so opposing birth is opposing souls.
127.18Manichaeans, who reject marriage, need bodily birth for their own scheme of the soul’s liberation, and their show of holiness hides impurity condemned by imperial edicts.
127.19Simeon was kept alive until he saw the infant Christ, which shows that being born and living are a benefit from God.
127.20If birth were evil, God would promise only punishment, not eternal life, and begetting children would be forbidden.
127.21The kingdom is promised to those who are born and live well, so guilt comes from bad living, not from birth.
127.22Birth is like a tree that bears good or bad fruit depending on what is grafted onto it, and it is necessary as the ground for growth in goodness.
127.23Rebirth in baptism does not condemn birth but renews it, washing the body stained by the soul’s sin so that it may rise again.
127.24Adam’s sin came from the soul’s ambition, not bodily desire; the mortality it brought is outweighed by the greater glory God gives the faithful, so being born is a gain.
127.25God forbade one tree among many so that Adam and Eve, rulers of all else, would remember they were subject to their Creator.
127.26The punishment of Adam and Eve does not reveal what their sin was, for the same sentence falls on different sins and different sentences on the same sin.
127.27Each received a sentence fitted to their part; the serpent, which had subjected man by deceit, was cast down and cursed below all the beasts.
127.28The woman’s sentence did not begin procreation, already blessed in “increase and multiply,” but added pain to it as punishment.
127.29God could not have condemned intercourse and then imposed it as punishment; the sentence rather restored the woman’s original subjection to her husband, with added pain.
127.30The woman’s sentence increased pains that already existed rather than creating procreation, which God had blessed before the fall.
127.31Adam was returned to his original task of working the ground, now with toil, showing that God’s purpose stands and that he provides for his work better than any other.
127.32God gave sons to Abraham, Hannah, and Zechariah as rewards, and Samuel had sons without loss of holiness, so begetting children cannot be blameworthy.
127.33Peter was married with children and yet received the primacy among the apostles, so marriage does not hinder holiness.
127.34Paul allows married men to become priests, has no command against marriage, and, when asked about marrying and divorcing, forbade a wife to leave her husband rather than forbidding marriage.
127.35Ordained clergy abstain from marital relations because some lawful things are forbidden to certain persons or at certain times, as lay Christians also abstain for prayer on holy days.
127.36Bishops and deacons, who daily act in Christ’s place at prayer, the offering, and baptism, must keep a purity beyond that of lay people, as courtiers do in the emperor’s presence.

About this work

Author: Ambrosiaster
Attribution: disputed · Transmitted under Augustine's name (Pseudo-Augustine); since the 1900s generally ascribed to the same unknown author as the commentary on Paul called Ambrosiaster.
Standing: Not honoured as a saint or in a church calendar by the Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant traditions. An anonymous Roman commentator, honoured in no church calendar; not rejected by any tradition.
Date: ca. 370–384 (approximate) · The first recension was written at Rome under Damasus; the work was transmitted under Augustine's name.
Written at: Rome, Italy (probable)
Language: Latin
Genre: treatise
Reference system: question.section (Souter's numbering in CSEL 50; the questions are numbered 1–127, each divided into sections).
SBL abbreviation: Quaest.Not yet checked
Text from: A. Souter, ed., Pseudo-Augustini Quaestiones Veteris et Novi Testamenti CXXVII, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 50 (Vienna, 1908) (Printed edition in the public domain; digital text CC BY-SA 4.0)

Questions on the Old and New Testament

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About this work