The Calling of All Nations

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.8 · 1.9–1.16 · 1.17–1.23 · 1.24–2.3 · 2.4–2.14 · 2.15–2.25 · 2.27–2.37

1. 1.1The author sets out the question how God wills all to be saved while grace, which is a gift and not a debt, is not given to all, and proposes to begin with the stages of the human will.
2. 1.2The human will is by nature either sensual or animal; grace adds a third, spiritual will.
3. 1.3The sensual or carnal will, seen in infants, follows the bodily senses until reason matures.
4. 1.4The animal will can rise to virtue and even to knowledge of God through creation, but without grace and gratitude it earns only temporal glory and falls back through pride into vice.
5. 1.5Though Scripture says God chose Israel and let the nations go their own ways, God’s providence never abandoned any nation, for creation itself spoke to them and left them without excuse.
6. 1.6Only grace kept Israel from complete apostasy; the fallen will left to itself is unstable and inclines to evil, and a good will is God’s own planting, by which the soul cleaving to God becomes one spirit with him.
7. 1.7Through Adam all lost the soundness of nature, and without the worship of the true God even apparent virtue is sin; conversion does not create a new will or substance but heals the will and removes its fault.
8. 1.8Only Christ’s grace overcomes the evils inherited from Adam; free choice is healed, not removed; all virtue is God; no one comes to faith by learning or reason, but grace moves the heart through the preached word, as the Church glorified God for Paul’s conversion.
9. 1.9Not all who seem to come to faith are of the elect; God’s promises to make a new covenant and that every knee will bow are fulfilled without exception in the foreknown elect, for Scripture often speaks of ‘all’ and ‘the world’ meaning a part, as in the call of Jews and Greeks.
10. 1.10Isaiah’s promises to the blind and to Jacob’s scattered children apply to one part of Israel and his rebukes to another; Paul likewise shows that the remnant chosen by grace is ‘Israel’, while blindness has come on Israel in part.
11. 1.11Scripture also speaks of men of different ages as if they were one generation: Peter tells the gentiles of his day that they ‘once were not a people’, though those abandoned in past ages had long died.
12. 1.12The author accepts 1 Tim 2:1–6 in full and interprets it by the Church’s universal practice of praying for all, unbelievers, Jews, persecutors, heretics and schismatics, that they may be converted by grace.
13. 1.13When grace passes some by, the cause lies in God’s hidden judgments; Paul himself, faced with the mystery of Israel’s blindness and the gentiles’ calling, did not explain but cried out at the depth of God’s wisdom.
14. 1.14Many of God’s works show their effects but hide their causes, such as the unequal births and conditions of men, which Scripture refers to God, not to fate or the stars, as Job and others testify.
15. 1.15That some are saved and others perish cannot be ascribed to merits, since whole peoples were long without the gospel and their descendants were no better; the reason for God’s distinction is hidden, but we should thank him for his manifest mercy.
16. 1.16Infants, equal in original guilt and without personal merit, are some regenerated and saved and others not; the distinction is God’s hidden but just choice.
17. 1.17Lifelong sinners baptized at death enter the kingdom without good works, showing that grace is free and not owed to merit; as in the parable of the workers in the vineyard, God may give the last the same as the first, and we must not question his justice.
18. 1.18God’s will alone is the cause of grace for all kinds of men; true life and justice begin in the sacrament of regeneration, for Jew and Greek alike are under sin and wrath until saved by grace, as Paul repeatedly testifies.
19. 1.19Jude and the song of Zechariah show the darkness of human nature without grace, from which the Dayspring from on high rescues God’s people.
20. 1.20Christ died to gather God’s scattered children from all nations and calls all to come to him, yet reveals the Father to whom he wills; the elect from Jews and gentiles receive his testimony and so prove God true to his promise to Abraham.
21. 1.21Though no one is wholly without the help of grace, why Christ does not give saving understanding to all is as hidden as why God once chose Israel alone; what God has hidden must not be searched, and those who claim to explain it profane the Apostle’s teaching.
22. 1.22Those who explain election by the merits of the will cannot account for infants, some of whom are reborn and saved and others not, without falling into pagan fatalism or the Pelagian denial of original sin.
23. 1.23Paul’s thanksgivings for the faith of the churches, Peter’s and John’s letters, the healing at the temple gate, Lydia’s opened heart, Peter’s confession and Eph 2:8–10 show that faith, from its beginning to its perseverance, and the good works that follow, are God’s gift.
24. 1.24A long chain of texts from the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom, Sirach, the prophets, the Gospels and the apostles shows that every good gift, including wisdom, continence, the fear of God, conversion, good works and perseverance to the end, comes from God’s grace.
25. 1.25Book 1 concludes that everything needed for eternal life is begun, increased and completed by grace; why grace saves some of an equally guilty mass and not others is unsearchable; Book 2 will show how God nonetheless wills all to be saved.
26. 2.1Book 2 sets three rules: God wills all to be saved; no one is saved by his own merits but by grace; and why God does not save all is beyond human understanding and must not be pried into.
27. 2.2As Scripture’s teaching on grace cannot be undermined, neither can its teaching on God’s will to save all: Christ sent the Gospel to all nations without distinction and promised to be with the preachers, and he is the propitiation for the whole world.
28. 2.3Christ first forbade the apostles to go to the gentiles and the Spirit kept them from Asia and Bithynia; such delays of grace, also seen in families and cities, have hidden causes, though the Church prays daily for all.
29. 2.4Even before Christ, God never withdrew his care from the nations: creation itself, its beauty and its gifts of rain and harvest, bore witness to him as a public law written in the elements, though most did not understand it.
30. 2.5Since even in Israel no one was justified except by grace, those of any nation who pleased God were set apart by the same grace, sparer and more hidden before Christ but never absent.
31. 2.6Even now grace is given in different measures: the preachers plant and water, but God gives the growth, and as in a building or a body each part has its own place by God’s will.
32. 2.7Paul’s list of the Spirit’s gifts ends ‘dividing to each as he wills’, not ‘as they deserve’; so the differences in gifts are not due to unequal merits, while reward follows labour.
33. 2.8In the parable of the talents each receives according to his natural ability, not his merit, the material for work, not a reward; the third servant and those on the left at the judgment are condemned for not increasing the gift, so that grace given unasked must be used to seek more.
34. 2.9God has given his gifts in different measures to different ages and peoples: to the nations through creation, to Israel through law, prophets and miracles, and to all through the incarnation, now scarcely to the Jews until the fullness of the gentiles; the reasons are hidden.
35. 2.10God’s mercy and justice have always fed men’s bodies and taught their minds; before the flood the sons of God were led by his Spirit until they married the reprobate and he withdrew his Spirit, for even their good will had been inspired by God.
36. 2.11Grace prepares the will in different degrees: some, like Levi, Isaac, Jacob, Jeremiah and John the Baptist, receive everything at once, but most grow little by little in faith, understanding and above all love, which is God himself and makes them persevere; those who prefer the world lose what they received.
37. 2.12God abandons none of the faithful unless they depart, and decrees no one’s ruin; those who persevere freely have merit, though the will can do good only with grace, while it can do evil by itself.
38. 2.13The godly line kept apart from the wicked until they too were corrupted and perished in the flood; even Cain was counselled by God to repent before he killed Abel, and his descendants received God’s patience and benefits, so that their ruin came from their own will.
39. 2.14The ark prefigures the Church and baptism; after the flood God renewed his blessing; at Babel he scattered the proud into seventy-two languages, foreshadowing the gathering of all tongues in Christ; and the promise to Abraham, justified by faith before circumcision, pointed to the calling of all nations.
40. 2.15A hidden grace always witnessed to all men; the later age was not better but worse, as the Jewish leaders’ rage against Christ and his apostles shows, yet out of such hearts grace made a holy people, and the love poured out by the Spirit made the martyrs conquer the persecuting emperors.
41. 2.16Christ died for all, since all were sinners; his redemption was made known to all nations at Pentecost, and God prepared the Roman empire to unite the nations for the Gospel, though grace has gone beyond Rome’s borders, and Rome is greater by its apostolic primacy than by its power.
42. 2.17Nations not yet reached by the Gospel will have their appointed time of calling; meanwhile they are not without God’s general help, though only the true light can bring fallen nature to know God, as the mystery once hidden is now revealed.
43. 2.18The prophets foretold the calling of the nations (Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Isaiah, Hosea), as Peter, James and Simeon confirmed; the mystery was hidden not from the prophets but from the nations until God willed to reveal it.
44. 2.19Why the Gospel was revealed only now cannot be known, but God’s will to save all is perpetual, working through general gifts to all and special gifts to some.
45. 2.20The fate of unbaptized infants is the hardest case: God wills all to be saved, yet infants equally without personal guilt are some reborn and saved, others lost, and it is not lawful to believe the unbaptized are among the blessed.
46. 2.21We must trust God’s justice in the deaths of unbaptized infants of every people; their condemnation shows the gravity of Adam’s sin, and early death is no injustice, since mortality makes every moment of life liable to death.
47. 2.22God measures out the common yoke of mortality with mercy and justice; the unequal lengths and conditions of human lives are inscrutable, and they would be less bitter if those who die unbaptized did not fall into eternal misery.
48. 2.23Infants share in the general grace given to all through their parents, believing or not believing through others’ faith or neglect; God’s special election is also shown in infants brought to baptism, sometimes by strangers when their own families fail them.
49. 2.24God does not ensure baptism for every dying infant, lest believers grow careless and the Pelagian view that grace follows merit be strengthened; that unbaptized infants perish shows that the saved are saved by grace and that all share Adam’s grave sin.
50. 2.25God has always willed all to be saved, as his general gifts to every generation show; special grace, given more abundantly now, is powerful but not coercive: it moves and enlightens, and the human will consents and cooperates, so that no virtue exists without both grace and consent.
51. 2.27Consent is also produced by the fear of God, which does not destroy reason but frees the will; grace opens the eyes of the will, and the Father draws men to Christ by giving them faith, so that those who come come willingly, led by love.
52. 2.28Grace gives the will to obey without removing its changeableness, so that even saints must watch and pray, as Peter’s denial and his fear before martyrdom show; those who persevere stand by God’s help yet have merit, and those who refuse grace resist by their own obstinacy.
53. 2.29Despite those who reject or abandon the light, God’s promise stands: the fullness of the nations comes in, none given to the Son is lost, God foreknew both the lost and the saved, and his care for all leaves the lost without excuse and the saved without boast.
54. 2.30The author restates his three definitions: God wills all to be saved; all who are saved are saved by grace; and many of God’s reasons are hidden in this life, to be understood later, as we hope for what we do not yet see.
55. 2.311 Tim 4:10, ‘the Saviour of all men, especially of the faithful’, sums up the whole argument: God’s goodness is general to all, and special benefits lead the faithful to eternal salvation.
56. 2.32Even among believers God gives unequal gifts before any merit, as parents and masters may favour some; since all good comes from God, the differences cannot be traced to merits, for grace is the cause of every merit.
57. 2.33No one perishes who ought not to; the Gospel now reaches the whole world, even through war, as fear drives people to baptism, captives convert their masters and barbarian auxiliaries carry the faith home; God’s timeless knowledge has chosen the full number of the elect before the foundation of the world.
58. 2.34To those who say election makes good works and prayer pointless, the author answers that God’s knowledge is outside time and imposes no necessity of sinning: God made all things good, evil arose from free wills, and grace now heals the ruin.
59. 2.35Grace destroys the devil’s works through the labour of those it helps; the elect are chosen without merits in order to do good works, and every gift of virtue, continence, wisdom, love, patience, must be exercised in struggle and temptation.
60. 2.36Tobit shows that election does not make prayer pointless: Sarah was destined for Tobias before the ages, yet they were told to pray; God’s purpose is fulfilled through prayer, works and virtues, and the saved are crowned also for their merits.
61. 2.37The work ends: no one can be declared elect before death, so all must fear and none despair; the Church must keep praying for believers’ perseverance and unbelievers’ conversion, for God, who wills all to come to the truth, rejects no one unjustly.