AUGUSTINE'S INTERPRETATION OF ROMANS

CA. D. 394-396)

1.

Augustine's career, including both the twists and turns of his personal
quest for wisdom and the gradual deepening and strengthening of his
theological reflection, has by now been traced so many times that there
seems, prima facie) to be no point in taking up the task anew. Yet the
decade following Augustine's conversion remains something of an un-
charted field, a period in his intellectual evolution which has failed to
attract the intense scholarly attention that has been devoted to other
aspects of his life and thought.' That period includes at least one decisive
event in the shaping of both Augustine's ecclesiastical career and his
theological development, namely, his ordination to the priesthood in
Hippo Regius in 391. Ordination came upon Augustine unexpectedly
and against his will; 2 and it had the effect of wrenching him from the
life-context which he had chosen for himself and thrusting him into a
context which he had neither chosen nor desired. It tore him from
the leisured pursuit of God in the community of servi Dei which he had
assembled in Thagaste after his return to Africa from Rome; and it forced
him into the turbulent milieu of Mrican Christianity where the Christian
life was at least as much a matter of violent ecclesiastical partisanship
as it was of philosophic approach to divine Truth. In short, Augustine's
ordination compelled him to depart the Christianity of the philosophic
elite and to enter the Christianity of the North Mrican crowd.
It is noteworthy that Augustine's reaction to the transition was
first of all, to turn to the study of scripture; 3 and, in fact, the entire
1 See the comments of Peter Brown in Augustine of Hippo: A Biography
(Berkeley, Calif., 1967), p. 146, n. 1. Alberto Pincherle, La formazione teologica
di Sant'Agostino (Rome, 1947), appears to remain the basic work on this period in
Augustine's intellectual development. Eugene TeSelle's Augustine the Theologian
(London, 1970), pp. 90-182, provides a more recent and most helpful account of the
chief themes and movements in Augustine's theology from 387 to 396.
2 Augustine gives accounts of his enforced ordination in Ep. 21.1-3 and Serm.
355.2; see also Possidius Vito Aug. 4. There is no reason, I think, to believe that
Augustine was merely feigning his dismay at finding himself ordained.
3 Ep. 21, written shortly after his ordination, is a request to his bishop for
time to study the scriptures so that he might learn how to perform his clerical duties
William S. Babcock 56

period of his priesthood (391-396) was marked by an urgent interest

in the meaning of the Biblical text. It was during this time that
Augustine began his massive. work on the Psalms, that he attempted a
literal commentary on Genesis, that he produced his exposition of the
Sermon on the Mount and, in the years from 394 to 396, that he cultivated
an intensive study of the Pauline episdes, especially Romans and Galatians.4
Prior to 391, Augustine had written only a single work which might be
considered a commentary on scripture; 5 now Biblical commentary, in
one style or another, established itself as one of the basic forms in his
literary repertoire. 6 Beyond that, one may add, it was precisely his study
of and writing on the Pauline text that became the vehicle for a funda-
mental shift in his views on the interaction between God's grace and
man's freedom.

II.

In turning to Paul, Augustine was not, in fact, doing anything

unusual for his age and time. Peter Brown has remarked that the "last
decades of the fourth century in the Latin chprch could well be called
'the generation of S. Paul;' " 7 and he has more than adequate justifica-
tion for doing so. From Marius Victorinus, from 'Ambrosiaster,' from
or, at least, how to live the Christian life inter manus iniquorum (Ep. 21.4). It is
a measure of how sharply Augustine felt the enforced change in his life-context that
the last phrase must refer to the catholic congregation in Hippo (whatever other
and more general references it may also have). Here, at least, Augustine's new
interest in scripture is clearly correlated with his move from one milieu to another.
4 Augustine's brief verse-by-verse comments on the first thirty-two psalms, the
start of what was to become the Enarrationes in Psalmos, were written in the year
392. The De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus tiber was produced in 393, and the
De sermone Domini in monte in 394. To the years 394-396 belong the Expositio
quarundam propositionum ex epistola ad Romanos, the Expositio epistolae ad Gala-
tas, the Epistolae ad Romanos inchoata expositio, as well as questions 66-74 in the
De Diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII, all of which deal with passages from the
Pauline epistles, and the Ad Simplicianum de diversis quaestionibus, the first book
of which considers two key' passages from Romans.
5 The De Genesi contra Manichaeos, written in 388/389.
6 Actually the Biblical commentary per se (if defined as a continuous exposition
of a single scriptural book) does not seem to have been a literary form with which
Augustine felt particularly at ease (note that he left unfinished both the De Gen. op.
imp. and the Exp. ep. ad Rom. inch. and abandoned the first form in which he
attempted an interpretation of the Psalms). He seems to have found far more
appealing a kind of quaestio-format which allowed him to deal with individual pas-
sages of particular significance rather than forcing him to discuss each text in the
scriptural book uncler consideration.
7 Brown, p. 151.
Augustine's Interpretation of Romans (A.D. 394-396) 57

Jerome, from Pelagius, there came large-scale commentaries on Paul's

letters either in whole or in part; 8 and in the occasional literature of
the period, too, questions about Paul's meaning and significance are
particularly prominent.9 Nor was Augustine turning to Paul for the first
time. As a Manichee, he had belonged to the group which Brown calls
"the most radical and self-confident of Paul's expositors;" 10 and he con-
tinued to find that, in developing his own later interpretations of Paul's
writings, he had often to deflect views which, to all appearances, were
of Manichaean origin. ll Furthermore Augustine himself reports that,
immediately following his reading of the famous "Platonic books» in
Milan, he had avidly seized upon the scriptural writings and, above all
the rest, upon the aposde Paul. I2 It was in Paul, he says, that he
discovered both that no man is to boast as if he had not received from
God the very ability to return to God-i.e., I Cor. 4: 7: quid habet quod
non accepit?-and that man can overcome the internal resistance which,
holding him captive to the law of sin, keeps him from enacting the law
of God only through God's grace and not through any power of his own-
i.e., Rom. 7:22-25.13 Thus, when Augustine again took up the study
of Paul during the final years of his priesthood, he was presumably
returning to a portion of scripture which had already exercised a decisive
influence at critical points in his development.
Nevertheless there is a peculiar disjunction between the Pauline
discoveries reported in the Confessions and Augustine's actual use of the
Pauline writings in his early works. The dialogues written at Cassiciacum,
immediately following his conversion, contain almost no citations of Paul.
Neither do the works which he produced at Milan during the period of

8 For a brief account of these Latin commentators on Paul, see Maurice F.

Wiles, The Divine Apostle (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 10-13. A more extensive study
is Alexander Souter,rThe Earliest Latin Commentaries on the Epistles 0/ St. Paul
(Oxford, 1927). To the list given in the text may be added Rufinus' Latin transla-
tion of Origen's commentary on Romans, which is to be dated c. 405.
9 In addition to the relevant passages (see above, n. 4) in Augustine's De div.
quaest. and Ad Simpl., we may note, for instance, the famous correspondence be-
tween Augustine and Jerome on the encounter of the apostles Peter and Paul at
Antioch as reported in Paul's letter to the Galatians (for discussion' and references,
see J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome [New York, 1975], pp. 217-219) or Paulinus of Nola's
request that Jerome provide explanation of two scriptural difficulties, both of which
were related to texts in the Pauline epistles (see Jerome, Ep. 85).
10 Brown, p. 151.
11 See, for example, De div. quaest. q. 66.6, q. 68.1; Prop. ad Rom. 49; Ad
Simpl. 1, q. 1.16.
12 Conf. 7.21.27. In C. Acad. 2.2.5, Augustine also says that he seized the
apostle Paul after reading "certain books." But there he neither refers to nor
makes use of any particular Pauline texts.
13 Ibid.
William S. Babcock 58

his baptism. And of his WrItIngs at Rome, just prior to his return to
Africa, it is only the De moribus ecclesiae catholicae that makes extensive
use of Paul's letters. Yet even in the De moribus neither of the two texts
singled out in the Confessions makes an appearance. Far from dominat-
ing Augustine's arsenal of Pauline texts at this point, I Cor. 4: 7 and Rom.
7: 22-25 are conspicuous for their absence from it. Only in the treatises
written during Augustine's stay in Thagaste-i.e., during the years 389
and 390--<ioes the situation change and Augustine's use of Paul begin to
converge with the report in the Confessions. Now, almost suddenly,
Augustine seems to have discovered that the human will is not entirely
at its own disposal, that the dispositions of the self are not fully under
the self's control. 14 Instead there is a resisting force, the force of habit
understood as the past disposition of the self, which prevents the self
from enacting changes in the orientation and direction of its own moral
life. In this connection, the sixth book of Augustine's treatise De musica
is especially important; and it is precisely in this treatise that he seems
first to have used Rom. 7: 22-25 in a way that is recognizably similar to
(although not yet identical with) the discovery reported in the Confes-
sions. Paul's text depicts, for him, the profound internal struggle of the
self against itself, the struggle of old disposition against new inclination,
which prevents a person from simply doing the good that he may wish
to do. lS Yet Augustine still has not drawn the conclusion that man
lacks the resources of will and feeling to overcome the inertial force of
his own habits of thought and action, has not yet drawn the conclusion
that the new self can vanquish the old only by the intervention of God's
grace.

III.

The vehicle by which Augustine reached this conclusion and began

to sketch out its implications for his understanding of both man's action
and God's grace was the intensive study of Paul which he undertook
during the final years of his priesthood. At this time, Augustine was
preoccupied, in particular, with the central portion of Paul's letter to the

14 For a brilliant sketch of this change in Augustine's thought as it gradually

worked itself out during the ten years that separate his conversion from the writing
of the Confessions, see Brown, pp. 146-157.
15 See De mus. 6.5.14 and 6.11.33. The two passages show two different ways
in which Augustine could understand and interpret the resistance of the old self to
the new. But in each case he found it apt to quote Rom. 7:7:24-25 in 6.5.14 and
7:25 in 6:11-33.
Augustine's Interpretation of Romans (A.D. 394-396) 59

Romans (cc. 7-9); 16 and it was in relation to these chapters that he now
developed a new scheme for depicting and describing man's moral progress
toward God. Previously he had been able to picture man's movement
towards God as more or less a linear continuum, a steady progression
from the recognition of God as the eternal good to the willing of God
as one's own highest good. By the time he came to write De musica VI,
it is true, he had developed an acute sense of the difficulties involved
in what he had earlier considered a relatively simple transition from seeing
the good to willing and doing the good. But now he found himself
compelled to abandon the notion of linear progress altogether. Under
the impact of--or, at least, in immediate relation to--his study of the
Pauline text, Augustine produced a significantly different scheme for
understanding the transformation whereby a person comes not only to
recognize but also to will and to do the good.
That scheme has four stages (grad us) or four characteristic actions
(actiones) which reflect both (1) the stages of human history as perceived
in relation to the law of Sinai and the coming of Christ and (2) the
various dispositions of the human person in relation to the morally evil
and the morally good.17 In the first stage-before the law (ante legem)--
the person (or mankind) is ignorant of sin (i.e., both of the meaning
of sin and of the fact that he is acting sinfully). Therefore he simply
follows wherever his carnal desires may lead and experiences no conflict
between an inclination to the good and an habitual orientation of thought
and will toward the evil. In the second stage-under the law {sub
lege)--the person (or mankind) knows that sin is prohibited and acknow-
ledges the demand of the good (Le., recognizes and approves that demand);
yet he is finally unable to resist his own desires and so, vanquished by
the inertial force of his habitual orientation of thought and will (con-
suetudo), he is drawn by his desires in spite of his wishes to the contrary.
In the third stage-under grace (sub gratia)--a person, although still
subject to the desires of the "flesh» and therefore still experiencing the
conflict between new inclination and old disposition, is no longer
vanquished by delight in his disposition toward the evil (delectatione con-
suetudinis malae) and is thus able to resist his desires by withholding his
consent. In the fourth and final stage-in peace (in pace )-the conflict
itself is dissolved. Their mortal bodies revivified by the Spirit (Rom.
8: 11), men are no longer held by the bond of mortality and no longer
required to do battle against the persistent intrusions of the desires of
16 See De div. quaest. qq. 66-68; Prop. ad Rom. 36-65; Ad Simpl. 1. One
can deduce nothing of Augustine's chief concerns within Romans from his Exp. Ep.
ad Rom. inch. since it stops short at Rom. 1: 7.
17 The scheme is elaborated both in De div. quaest. q. 66.3 and in Prop. ad
Rom. 13-18. It is reflected, without being explicitly repeated, in Ad Simpl. 1, q. 1.
William S. Babcock 60

the flesh. This stage is the eschatological consummation of human exist-

ence which is not and cannot be achieved in this life, but which already
belongs to the believer in hope if not in fact.
The new and critical feature of this scheme, the point which dis-
tinguishes it from Augustine's earlier depiction of the moral life as a
linear progress toward God, lies in his understanding of the transition
from the second stage to the third. We can approach Augustine's view
here by noting a subtle, but decisive, change in his exegesis of Rom. 7: 24-
25; for it is precisely in these verses, between 7: 25a and 7: 25b, that
he himself locates Paul's presentation of the shift from the situation of
man under the law to that of man under grace. 18 In De musica VI
Augustine was already citing Rom. 7: 24-25a separately from Rom. 7: 25b,
but he nevertheless regarded the situation of the speaker as fundamentally
the same in each case. The first, the cry for liberation from the body
of this death (Rom. 7: 24-25a), represented the longing of the Christian
believer for that end of the internal conflict with the old disposition of
the self which will come when the mortal body, vivified by the Spirit
(Rom. 8: 11), shall at last recover its pristine stability in perfect sub-
mission to the rule of the sou1. 19 It represented, then, a cry of longing
for the eschatological fulfilment of the life of faith. The second text
(Rom. 7: 25b) described the present condition of the same Christian
believer in his struggle against the inertial force of previous habit, serv-
ing the law of God with his mind even though, with his flesh, he may
continue to serve the law of sin.1D Thus the two texts display two dif-
ferent aspects of a single condition, the condition of the believer striving
to do the good which he already wills.
In the writings of 394-95, however, Augustine drives a wedge be-
tween the two. The first, since it belongs to the second stage in the
new scheme of man's progress towards God, no longer represents the
believer's longing for eschatological fulfilment. Rather it represents the
desperate cry of one who is unable to defeat his own disposition, his
own habitual orientation toward the evil.21 This habitual orientation of
the self (rather than the "mortal body") is now the "body of this death"
from which he yearns to be liberated-and from which he cannot liberate
himself. For liberation comes only with "the grace of God through Jesus

18 See De div. quaest. q. 66.5-6; Prop. ad Rom. 45-46. Since Augustine locates
the shift between 7:24-25a and 7:25b, it is perhaps significant that, in Ad Simpl.
1, q. 1, where he treats Rom. 7:7-25 as a description of one sub lege positum
(q. 1.1), his discussion does not include Rom. 7:25b.
19 De mus. 6.5.14. For indications of how Augustine interprets Rom. 8: 11
(and certain other passages) as the answer to this cry, see De mus. 6.15.49, 16.51.
1D De mus. 6.11.13.
21 De div. quaest. q. 66.3,5; Prop. ad Rom. 13-18, 45-46.
Augustine's Interpretation of Romans (A.D. 394-396) 61

Christ our Lord.» 22 For the first time, then, Augustine has pictured
a human state in which a person must struggle against a self which is not
merely resistant to the will, but is actually beyond his own control, which
conquers him rather than being conquered by him. Furthermore the
second text (Rom. 7: 25b), which belongs not to the second but to the
third stage, also acquires a new significance.23 Again for the first time
Augustine has portrayed the successful struggle of new inclination against
old disposition as the result, not of man's own striving for God, but
rather of the specific intervention of God's grace in the life of the will.
What makes it possible for a person to serve the law of God with the
mind even while serving the law of sin with the flesh is no human effort,
no human act of willing, but rather "the grace of God through Jesus
Christ our Lord.» Here then is the break in the linear continuum of
man's moral progress toward God: the recognition of the good-which
comes in the second stage, i.e., sub lege-is no longer the basis for the
transition to willing and doing the good-which come in the third stage,
sub gratia. Instead God's grace must intervene, must enable the will to
will the good. Without that intervention, there is no transition from
seeing the good to willing the good, for there is no liberation from the
body of this death apart from the grace of God. 24

IV.

To all appearances, then, it was not Augustine's reading of Paul in

Milan, but rather his intensive study of Paul during the years of his priest-
hood in Hippo, that led him to the understanding of God's grace and
man's action which was to be characteristic of his mature theology. For
it was in Hippo rather than Milan or Cassiciacum that he reached the
conclusion that the new self, oriented toward the good, can defeat the
old self, oriented toward the evil, only by the intervention of God's
grace. But this conclusion itself raised new and important questions,
questions about the way in which God's grace operates and about the
God whose grace operates in that way.1S

22 Thus it is Rom. 7: 25a rather than Rom. 8: 11 that now functions as the
answer to the cry.
23 De div. quaest. q. 66.6; Prop. ad Rom. 45-46.
24 It should be noted that I have said nothing about how, in Augustine's view,
God's grace work upon man's will. That is another-highly complex-question.
1S In this section I am essentially repeating the analysis and conclusions already
worked out in my "Augustine and Paul: The Case of Romans IX," a paper read
at the Seventh International Conference on Patristic Studies and due to appear in a
forthcoming volume of Studia Patristica in the series Texte und Untersuchungen.
William S. Babcock 62

Why does God's grace, the grace which enables the transition from
the second gradus (sub lege) to the third (sub gratia), come to some and
not to others? The question is of critical significance because, if men
cannot finally will or do the good apart from grace (no matter how much
they may wish to do so), then the moral goodness of some cannot explain
why they receive grace nor the moral evil of others why they do not;
On this point there is no effective distinction between one person and
another; all are equally bound to the old disposition of the self which,
apart from grace, they cannot overcome. But if grace is given without
regard to man's moral goodness or evil-i.e., without regard to human
merit-what reason is there for God to bestow his grace on some and
withhold it from others? And if there is no reason, if there is no relevant
human distinction between those who do and those who do not receive
grace, then is not God's action utterly arbitrary and whimsical? Is not
his justice finally thrown into complete and impenetrable darkness? Again
the vehicle for Augustine's consideration of these questions--questions
forced upon him by his new understanding of man's progress toward God
as worked out under the impact of his new interpretation of Romans 7-
was his study of the Pauline writings and, in particular, of Romans 9.
The text most central to the development of Augustine's views in
this respect was Paul's declaration that Jacob had been loved and Esau
hated before either had yet been born (Rom. 9: 11-13); and it is precisely
in relation to this text that we can see Augustine first resisting and then,
at last, accepting the conclusions to which he was forced by his own
understanding of grace. During the years 394-396, Augustine gave care-
ful and sustained attention to the ninth chapter of Romans on at least
three occasions. What is probably the first of the three appears in De
diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII which contains, in question sixty-eight
(written probably in 394), a discussion specifically of Rom. 9: 20 and more
generally of the whole context in which that verse appears. The problem
is, obviously enough, the suggestion in the Pauline text that God's mercy
functions in entirely arbitrary fashion and that men are no more to call
it into question than the clay is to call into question the ways of the
potter. Augustine's response to the difficulty is complex and defies brief
summarization. But it is noteworthy that he still seeks to retain some
correlation between God's grace and man's merit. Despite his conviction
that men cannot love or will the good apart from grace, he appeals to
the "most hidden merits of souls" (occultissimis meritis) 26 in order to
eliminate the appearance of arbitrariness in God's action and to establish
a principle of distinction according to which God's mercy comes to some
and not to others. All men, without regard to merit, receive a divine

26 De div. quaest. q. 68.3; note also q. 68.1 and q. 68.4.

Augustine's Interpretation of Romans (A.D. 394-396) 63

call (vocatio), but not all respond to it. Those who do respond receive
the further grace which enables them to love and to do the good; those
who do not do not. 27 Here then, in the human response to the divine
call-a response which may remain "most hidden" to human eyes-there
lies a form of human merit according to which the grace which transforms
the will is either bestowed or withheld. In this case, however, Augustine
leaves the problem of Jacob and Esau as a question dangling at the end
of his exposition, a question which he is prepared to raise but is not yet
ready to incorporate into his interpretation of Paul.23 He is not yet
willing to allow this passage to throw doubt on the notion that, deep
beneath the ordinary levels of human perception, God's grace does operate
in response to human merit after all; or perhaps he has not yet seen that
it does throw doubt on this notion.
In the Expositio quarundam propositionum ex epistola ad Romanos,29
in contrast, Augustine moves the passage on Jacob and Esau from the
margin to the center of his work on Romans 9. Apparently some inter-
preters had appealed to these verses (Rom. 9: 11-13) to support the view
that Paul had, in fact, denied free will (liberum arbitrium) and had made
the divine election of some and rejection of others wholly independent
of any moral worth on man's part.30 In reply to this misreading of
Paul-as he regards it-Augustine now resorts to a concept which had
played no role in the discussion in De diversis qttaestionibus LXXXIII:
divine foreknowledge. 3! Even before Jacob and Esau were born,
Augustine claims, God knew what sort of person each would be and thus
could justly love the one and hate the other before either had actually
done good or evil. At the same time, however, Augustine is careful to
restrict the range within which he is willing to allow divine foreknowledge
to function as an explanation for God's election of Jacob and rejection
of Esau. He will not allow that God's foreknowledge is a foreknowledge
of works. For this, there are two reasons. In the first place, he believes
that Paul's text explicitly denies that Jacob was loved and Esau hated
on the basis of the moral character of their respective works.32 Further-
more, he contends, good works are themselves a gift from God and thus
'II Ibid. q. 685.
23 Ibid. q. 68.6: Quo pertinet etiam illud ... Jacob dilexi, Esau autem odio
habui (Mal. 1:2-3): cum dictum sit antequam nascerentur. Nec comprehendi potest,
nisi forte ab eis qui diligunt Deum ex toto corde et ex tota anima et ex tota mente
sua ...
29 I presume that the Prop. ad Rom. was written after De div. quaest. q. 68.
But the two were written at about the same time; and the relative dating is not
secure.
30 Prop. ad Rom. 60.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
William S. Babcock

follow rather than precede the grace which transforms the human will
from the evil to the good.33 Consequently human actions, whether good
or evil, are not and cannot be the grounds on which, in his foreknowledge,
God elects some and rejects others. But if man's actions do not provide
the basis for God's election, what does? What principle of distinction
between Jacob and Esau remains?
Here, reaching back to a set of ideas which had previously appeared
(so far as I am aware) only inDe ordine,34 Augustine achieves the formula-
tion of the problem which he will consider correct and decisive: between
equal things there can be no choice and thus "where there is no merit,
there is no election.» 3S In the Expositio) however, Augustine does dis-
cover a way in which Jacob and Esau are not equal, a sense in which there
is a difference in merit between the two. What God chose in his fore-
knowledge, when he chose Jacob, was not Jacob's future good works
but Jacob's future faith; 36 and faith, unlike good works, is not a divine
gift, but is rather man's free response to the divine call (vocatio) which
God addresses to all. 37 Thus the distinction between Jacob and Esau,
as yet unborn, is that one, using his free will, will believe in response
to God's calling and the other, also using his free will, will not; and this
distinction provides a basis for the divine election of the one and rejection
of the other. Augustine has carefully excluded the merit of works from
his theology of grace, but has replaced it, in effect, with the merit of
belief.38 In the Expositio, as in the De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII,
he has maintained at least this minimal correlation between God's grace
and man's merit as a safeguard against the spectre of an arbitrary God
whose grace is given to some and withheld from others for no discernible
reason at all.
This solution to the problem of why God's grace comes to some
and not to others had its advantages: it preserved the unmerited char-
33 Ibid.
34 De ord. 1.7.19. Here Augustine has his pupil Licentius declare that God
is just in distributing to each his own (the classical definition of distributive justice)
and then ask the rhetorical question: "How can there be any distribution where
there is no distinction" (Quae autem distributio dici potest) ubi distinctio nulla est)?
3S Prop. ad Rom. 60: Quid ergo elegit Deus? Si enim cui vult donat Spiritum
sanctum . .. quomodo elegit cui donet? Si enim nullo merito) non est electio; aequa-
les enim omnes sunt ante meritum, nee potest in rebus omnino aequalibus electio
nominari.
36 Ibid.
j ] Ibid. 60,62.

38 In Prop. ad Rom. 62, Augustine speaks of the prima merita fidei or the
prima merita impietatis according to the character of man's free response to the
divine vocatio. The scheme of divine call and human response permits him to retain'
just enough merit on man's part to vindicate the choice of some and rejection of
others on God's part.
Augustine's Interpretation of Romans (A.D. 394-396) 65

acter of grace in the sense, at least, that God's call comes to all mankind
without regard to human worth; it preserved man's freedom in the sense,
at least, that man's free response to God's call remains the basis for
election or rejection; and it preserved God's justice in the sense that
election and rejection rest not upon arbitrary whim but upon human
merit (even though the very restricted merit of belief rather than of
works). As a solution satisfying to Augustine himself, however, it was
destined to be short-lived. The third occasion on which Augustine turned
his attention to Romans 9 came early in .396, just after his consecration
to the episcopacy. Writing in response to certain questions sent to him
by Simplicianus, the priest in Milan who had played an important role
in his conversion ten years earlier /9 Augustine produced a new inter-
pretation which was clearly shaped in deliberate opposition to his own
previous understanding of Paul's text. 4O It amounts to a systematic rejec-
tion of the position which he himself had occupied, shattering all his
efforts to sustain even the most minimal correlation between God's grace
and man's moral worth; and the most obvious instance is precisely his
interpretation of Jacob and Esau.
In the Ad Simplicianum, Augustine ruthlessly excludes any and
every moral distinction, no matter how slight, which might serve as the
basis for God's election of Jacob and rejection of Esau. In particular,
he excludes the idea that God chose Jacob because he foreknew Jacob's
faith. The thin line of demarcation between foreknowledge of faith
and foreknowledge of works had proved too fine, too fragile, for Aug-
ustine to wish to maintain it any longer: "If election is by foreknowledge,
and God foreknew Jacob's faith, how do you prove that he did not elect
him for his works?» 41 And with the collapse of this distinction, the
usefulness of the idea of foreknowledge also disappears; Augustine will
no longer admit that Paul had the idea in mind at all: "The apostle,
therefore, did not want us to understand that it was because of God's
foreknowledge that the younger was elected to be served by the elder.» 42
Thus election is a function neither of divine foreknowledge nor of any
human distinction whatsoever between Jacob and Esau. In effect, Aug-

39 Con/. 8.1.1-5.12.
40 Ad Simpl. 1, q. 2. Here Augustine often repeats the arguments-and some-
times the very phrases-that he had used in Prop. ad Rom., but only to deny them.
41 Ibid. 1, q. 2.5 (trans. ]. H. S. Burleigh, Augustine: Earlier Writings [Philadel-
phia, n.d.], p. 389).
42 Ibid. Augustine adds that Paul "could have said, if he wished to, that God
already knew what each was going to do." But Paul did not; and so Augustine could
draw the conclusion that election "was not of works, because being not yet born
they had done no works. But neither was it of faith, because they had riot faith
either" (ibid. [trans. Burleigh, p. 390]).
William S. Babcock 66
ustine has simply dismantled the apparatus of his earlier interpretation
of Paul.
Augustine's rejection of his own previous position is associated with
and the result of two critical changes in his views. The first is that
he now construes even faith itself as a gift from God rather than an
exercise of human freedom. It, too, is now one of those works of
which men cannot boast: "If anyone boasts that he has merited com-
passion by his faith, let him know that God gave him faith. .. 'What
have you that you did not receive?'" 43 I Cor. 4: 7 has suddenly and
decisively entered the Augustinian equation: man has nothing that he
has not received, and that includes even the initial belief whereby he
responds to God's call. The second change, which goes hand in hand
with the first, has to do with Augustine's understanding of the divine
calling itself. Since he now considers faith to be God's gift rather than
man's act and since he nevertheless continues to believe that faith is
evoked by God's calling, Augustine is faced with a dilemma concerning
Esau. Esau's failure to believe can mean only one of two things: either
he was not called at all or he was not called in the same way, with the
same effectiveness, as Jacob. Augustine selects the second alternative.
He affirms that God calls some congruenter, i.e., in ways that suit their
situations and evoke their belief, and others he does not.44 The latter
are those who are called but not chosen; and they are not chosen because
the call that comes to them is "such that they cannot be moved by it
and are not fitted to receive it." 45 Ultimately, then, the distinction be-
tween Jacob and Esau--or more generally between those who believe
and those who do not-is not a distinction between Jacob and Esau
at all. It is rather a distinction between two ways in which God calls,
congruenter or not. Since no relevant difference between Jacob and Esau
remains to explain why one was loved and the other hated, the difference
must lie with God himself.
At one point, however, Augustine did not change his views. He
continued to frame the problem of election just as he had framed it in
the Expositio: "How can election be just, indeed how can there be any
kind of election, where there is no difference?" 46 The reappearance
of this way of putting the question is important. It shows that Augustine
was aware of the theological cost of his new conviction that grace-the
grace which transforms the will from the evil to the good, enabling the
new self to defeat the old-is in no sense a reward for merit, not even
the minimal merit of belief. If, apart from grace, there is no relevant
43 Ibid. 1, q. 2.9.
44 Ibid. 1, q. 2.13.
45 Ibid. (trans. Burleigh, p . .395).
46 Ibid. 1, q. 2.4 (trans. Burleigh, p. 388).
Augustine's Interpretation of Romans (A.D. 394-396) 67

moral difference between Jacob and Easu, how can election be just?
Augustine has literally left himself without response. At best, he can
only-and does only-appeal to a "certain hidden equity" 47 on God's
part to replace his earlier appeal to the «most hidden merits of souls"
on man's part. This shift in the locus of "hiddenness" speaks volumes.48
Under the impact of Paul's text and in keeping with his own conviction
that the movement from discerning the good to willing the good depends
on divine grace rather than human action, Augustine has, in effect, sacri-
ficed both man's freedom and God's justice on the altar of the sheer
gratuity of God's grace, unqualified by even a residual correlation with
man's merit. Why does God's grace come to some and not to others?
Augustine can no longer discern an answer to the question, can no longer
delineate a God who is gracious but not arbitrary, can no longer define
a sphere of man's action (even the minimal "action" of belief) which
affects the outcome of man's destiny. All is engulfed in the impenetrable
darkness of the "hidden equity" with which God elects some and rejects
others.

v.
What are the sources from which these developments in Augustine's
theology derive? What were the influences at work in his thinking
during the critical final years of his priesthood at Hippo Regius? The
most immediate as well as the most obvious answer is the Pauline text
itself. But other influences may also have been at work, particularly
as Augustine formulated his crucial reply to Simplician. It is known,
for instance, that Augustine had read or was reading Tyconius' Book
of Rules at roughly the time he was writing the Ad Simplicianum; 49 and
it has been suggested that Tyconius may actually have been the one who
sparked Augustine's new view of faith as itself a gift of God and of
election as a sheer act of grace utterly independent of any merit on man's
part.so How plausible is the suggestion?
Tyconius' Liber Regularum is a treatise on exegesis, an effort to

41 Ibid. 1, q. 2.16 (trans. Burleigh, p. 397).

48 The fact that Augustine now looks for his "hidden" principle of explanation
in God rather than among men is perhaps the single most striking indication of how
sharply his view has changed.
49 See the argument in Pincherle, pp. 185-188, and in TeSelle, pp. 180-182.
Probably the strongest evidence is that of Ep. 41.2, dated to 396 or 397. Here,
writing to Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, Augustine says that he still awaits, sieut
saepe iam scripsi, Aurelius' opinion of Tyconius' seven rules.
so Pincherle, pp. 186-188; Te Selle, pp. 180-181.
William S. Babcock 68

specify the rules which are to govern the interpretation of the Biblical
text and to show how those rules function in relation to particular pas-
sages or sets of passages from scripture.51 Four our purposes, the relevant
portion of the Liber is the so-called "Third Rule." As Paul Monceaux
has noted, however, the Regula Tertia is not continuous with the other
exegetical rules and, in fact, is not really a rule at all. 52 It amounts
rather to "a long digression" designed to deal with a particular problem
in the interpretation of scripture, namely, the problem of the relation
of promise and law (hence its title: de promissis et lege). Tyconius'
chief concern here is to demonstrate that God's promise to Abraham
generated an unbroken and unending succession of spiritual sons of
Abraham-a succession which, precisely because it does depend on a
divine promise received in faith, does not depend on man's doing of
the law. This view, however, faces an apparent difficulty in the scriptural
record itself. On the one hand, scripture asserts that no one can be
justified by doing the works of the law; on the other, it indicates that
there has never been a time when there were no people who did enact
the law and were justified.53 But how can the law justify when its role,
the end for which it was given, is not to free from sin but rather to
multiply sin (Rom. 5: 20)? 54 Tyconius' response is to argue, first, that,
since the spiritual seed of Abraham springs from faith, it cannot also
come from the law (law and faith being quite different things) and,
second, that the giving of the law in no way interfered with the gen-
erating of sons of Abraham by faith according to the divine promise.55
Therefore, he concludes, neither the law nor the promise pertains to or
impinges on the other; rather each operates in its own sphere, and neither
impedes the other.56
But this argument leaves two questions unanswered.57 If law and
promise belong to separate orders, then how is it that there are those
who both do the law and are justified? And, furthermore, if the law
does not pertain to the ptomise, why was it given at all-i.e., what
role does it have in the economy of salvation? Tyconius' answer is
that the law, precisely because it does not justify, serves as the demon-
stratrix fidei; 58 it functions, that is, as a "minister of death" (minister
51 The only critical edition of the difficult text of the Liber Regularum is that
by F. C. Burkitt (Cambridge, 1894).
52 Paul Monceaux, His/Dire litteraire de ['A/rique chretienne, 7 vols. (Paris, 1901-
23), 5: 182, 184-185.
53 Burkitt, p. 12.
54 Ibid., p. 13; also p. 15.
55 Ibid., pp. 13-14.
56 Ibid., p. 14.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid., p. 18.
Augustine's Interpretation of Romans (A.D. 394-396) 69

mortis), showing persons that they cannot hope to win life by performing
the works of the law and thus driving them to seek another way to life
(in the conviction that God, who made man for life, would not abandon
him to death), namely, the way of faith.59 Thus those who do the law
and are justified are those who, prompted by the impossibility of ful-
filling the law on their own, have turned to God in faith and have
received the Spirit of God. No longer in the flesh, these people are no
longer under the law; and the Spirit of God performs the law in them. 6O
In effect-to supply the summary that Tyconius does not himself pro-
vide-the spiritual sons of Abraham are not justified because they do
the works of the law, but rather do the works of the law because they
are justified.
In constructing this position, Tyconius clearly speaks of the law
in ways that stand very close to Augustine's characterization of the law
in such writings as the De diversis quaestionibtts LXXXIII and the Ex-
positio quarttndam propositionum ex epistola ad Romanos. For him, as
for Augustine, the law-in its function as minister mortis-provides the
occasion for sin to work all concupiscence (Rom. 7: 8); and it is the law
that both arouses the sinful passions at work in our members (Rom.
7: 5) and imposes on man the condition in which, held captive by the
law in his members (Rom. 7: 2.3), he does the evil that he does not want
and does not do the good that he wants. From this state, man can be
set free only' by grace received in faith (sola gratia per fidem).61 Again
Tyconius anticipates Augustine in latching onto Paul's declaration that
the flesh is not and cannot be subject to God (Rom. 8: 7) in order to
support his conclusion that those who do the law are not those who
remain in the flesh, but those who have given themselves to grace.62
Consequently, in his view, the glory of those who do the law comes not
from the law and its works, but from faith. Citing I Cor.I:.3I, Tyconius
asserts that it is impossible for anyone to have glory apart from God's
grace and concludes-with obvious reference to I Cor. 4: 7-that we
have nothing from ourselves in which to glory since we have nothing
that we have not received. 63
S9 Ibid., pp. 15-16.
60 Ibid., pp. 16-17.
61 Ibid., p. 15; see De div. quaest. q. 66.5 and Prop. ad Rom. 13-18, 37, 45-46.
So far as I am aware, there has been no study of the possibility that Tyconius might
have influenced Augustine's interpretation of Romans 7 and, in particular, his view
(first expressed in De div. quaest. q. 66 and Prop. ad Rom.) that the transition from
the stage sub lege to the stage sub gratia takes place only through grace received
in faith. Nevertheless there seems, to me at least, to be more similarity between
the two in relation to the seventh than in relation to the ninth chapter of Romans.
62 Ibid., pp. 16-17; see De div. quaest. q. 66.6 and Prop. ad Rom. 49.
63 Ibid., p. 19; see Ad Simpl. 1, q. 2.9.
William S. Babcock 70

Here, then, is a place at which Tyconius' work could have exercised

an important and perhaps even a decisive influence on Augustine and,
in particular, on Augustine's crucial reference to I Cor. 4: 7 in presenting
his own interpretation of Romans 9 in his reply to Simplician's questions.
Yet it is quite clear that the context to which Tyconius' citation of I Cor.
4: 7 belongs is far from identical to the one in which Augustine employs
the same verse. In Tyconius' case, the citation is framed by a discussion
of the way in which the just of Israel are called from glory to glory
(II Cor. 3: 18), i.e., from the Old Testament version of faith to the New
Testament version of the same faith. 64 His chief concern is to show that
the glory is the same in each case, since, in each case, it comes from God's
grace received in faith and not from doing the law. Consequently, in
neither case does man have any occasion to glory in his own right; for,
in neither case does he possess anything which he has not received (I Cor.
4: 7). And the function of this argument is to provide further support
for Tyconius' central claim that the law and the promise belong to quite
separate spheres by indicating, once again, that "no flesh can ever be
justified by the law, that is, by works, so that every just man has his
glory from God" (whether under the Old Testament or under the New).65
To exclude justification by the works of the law is not, however, to deny
that faith itself· is man's own act. At most, then, Tyconius may have
prompted Augustine to resort to a particular text in Paul; for he certainly
did not anticipate Augustine's use of that text as the scriptural center-
piece in an argument making even faith a gift of God and so removing
even the last vestiges of the concept of human merit from his under-
standing of the workings of God's grace.66 The Pauline text is the same;
but the conceptual context in which it appears varies radically from
Tyconius to Augustine.67
An even sharper divergence between the two appears in the fact

64 Ibid., pp. 19-20.

65 Ibid., p. 20.
66 In fact, as we shall see, Tyconius is committed to quite the opposite point
of view.
67 Pincherle, who rightly notes that Tyconius uses both I Cor. 1:31 and I
Cor. 4: 7 in a sense in cui erano adatti a far riflettere Agostino e ad avviare il suo
spirito in una nuova direzione (p. 187), fails to call attention to the significantly
different contexts in which I Cor. 4:7 appears in the Liber Regularum and in the
Ad Simplicianum. In particular, he does not indicate that it is only Augustine-not
Tyconius--whose argument has the aim of including even faith among the things
given to men by God (but see Pincherle's own qualification of his view on p. 188).
Augustine himself (as Pincherle notes), writing some thirty years after the Ad Simpl.,
signaled precisdy this point about Tyconius' third rule (De doct. chr. 3.33.46). In
426, at any rate, he was aware that Tyconius had not claimed that etiam ipsam . ..
fidem donum illius esse, qui eius mensuram unicuique partitur.
Augustine's Interpretation of Romans (A.D. 394-396) 71

that Tyconius allows neither the specific text of I Cor. 4: 7 nor his more
general notion of the separation of promise and law to keep him from
using the concepts of divine foreknowledge and human freedom to
delineate the idea of divine election.68 The question arises when Tyconius
confronts a view opposed to his own conviction that the law and the
promise are fully distinct, neither depending on the other. Some inter-
preters, he reports, have claimed that, while God did promise all the
nations to Abraham, he did so in a conditional sense; that is, in order
to protect and preserve the freedom of the human will, God promised
the nations to Abraham on the condition that they kept the law.69 To this
interpretation, Tyconius objects that it has the effect of undermining both
the certainty of God's promise and the security of Abraham's faith. If
the promise is to be reliable, he argues, it cannot be conditional upon the
free will of those who were promised to Abraham since they would then
be the ones who determined whether God's promise were kept or not
(in effect, God would have made a promise which it was not in his
power to keep); and, in that case, neither would God's promise be sure
nor would Abraham's faith be firmly grounded in the reliability of God
himself.70 But Tyconius does not go on to secure the certainty of God's
promise by denying the freedom of man's will.
It is noteworthy that, faced with this question about the character
of the divine promise, Tyconius envisages only two possibilities: either
God foreknew the outcome of his promise or God would not have made
the promise in the first place (or would have made it only in conditional
form). Nowhere does he suggest that God himself might determine the
outcome of his promise by intervening in the freedom of will of those
he had promised. In fact, he insists that what God foreknew was pre-
cisely whether, by free will (de libero arbitrio), there would or would
not emerge those whom he promised to Abraham.71 It is clear, then,
that Tyconius disagrees with his opponents not at the point of the free:..

68 Here, it seems to me, Pincherle's claim that there is a striking affinita ideale
between the Liber Regularum and Ad Simpl. 1, q. 2 begins seriously to break down.
69 Burkitt, p. 22.
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid.: Manifestum est praescisse Deum futuros de libero arbitrio quos Abrahae
promisit aut non futuros. alterum est duorum: si futuros finita quaestio est, si non
futuros fidelis Deus non promitteret. Pincherle interprets Tyconius' alternatives as
follows: In altri termini, questa promessa divina non pUD essere condizionata da un
atto libero dell'uomo; se Dio l'ba latta, e percbe sapeva che l'avrebbe mantenuta:
e cbe spazio rimane allora alla libera iniziativa dell'uomo (p. 186)? Pincherle's view
does not take due account of the fact that Tyconius has built human freedom into
both of his alternatives. It is not the absence of "man's free initiative" but the
presence of divine foreknowledge that makes God's promise unconditional in Tyce-
nius' theology.
William S. Babcock 72

dom of the human will, but in his insistence that God's promise-since
it rests on foreknowledge of what men will do in their freedom-is an
absolute and not a conditional promise. Thus, by basing the reliability
of God's promise entirely on divine foreknowledge of human action, he
is able both to preserve man's freedom and to avoid the problem of God's
justice in his interpretation of the promise delivered to Abraham.
It is also true, of course, that scripture does contain conditional
divine promises-such as Is. 1: 19: "if you hear me and are willing ... " -
which seem to throw doubt on the reliability of God's promises in
general.72 .But those promises are to be interpreted with reference to the
bipartite character of the body of Christ (in accordance with Tyconius'
second exegetical rule: De Domini corpore bipertito), i.e., with reference
to the church as a mixed community containing both the evil and the
good. 73 The conditional form appears to be directed to the body of
Christ as a whole; but, in fact, it is to be understood as addressed only
to the portion of the body containing those of whom God did not fore-
know that they would freely and willingly perform what the law required.
In the case of those who would freely serve God, on the other hand,
there was no need for the conditional form since God already knew that
they would enact the good. 74 Thus the conditional promises in scripture
can be understood in such a way that they do not call God's unconditional
promise to Abraham into question; and the unconditional promise can
be interpreted without endangering the freedom of the human will. By
relying on his own exegetical rule, Tyconius clearly believes that he can
maintain both the justice of God's action and the reliability of God's
promise while specifically excluding the notion that "it is not hy free
will but rather by God's disposition that some are made for death and
some for life:" hoc enim dictum, si me audisses Israhel (Is. 48:18,19),
commemoratio est iustitiae Dei et conformatio promissionum, ne quis pu-
taret non libero arbitrio sed dispositione Dei quosdam factos ad mortem
quosdam vero ad vitam. 7S
Strikingly enough, Tyconius continues precisely this line of inter-
pretation even in dealing with the case of Jacob and Esau as it appears
in Romans 9. I t is perhaps obvious that he should see Jacob and Esau
as symbols of two peoples fighting against each other in the one womb

72 Ibid., p. 24: Invenimus autem et conditiones ut: Si me audieritis et volueritis

(Is. 1:19). ubi praescientia Dei, ubi firmitas promissionis in huiusmodi conditionibus?
Note, once again, the critical link between foreknowledge and reliability in Tyconius'
understanding of the divine promise.
73 Ibid., for the regula secunda, see ibid., pp. 8-11.
74 Ibid., pp. 24-27.
7S Ibid., pp. 26-27.
Augustine's Interpretation of Romans (A.D. 394-396) 73

of their mother, the church.76 It is highly unusual, however, and perhaps

unique in the history of early Christian exegesis, that he should see Jacob
himself as a twofold symbol, a bipartite character containing both the
evil and the good. 77 What allows him to do so is a reference to Hosea
12: 2-4 where, according to Tyconius, Jacob is characterized both as good
'and as evil, both as one who prevailed with God and as one who deviously
supplanted his brother in the womb. This double characterization, then,
shows that Jacob himself is a double figure (duo in uno corpore) and that
what is said of him must be interpreted according to the particular element
in the duality to which it applies. Furthermore Tyconius finally destroys
all attempts to treat Jacob as a straightforward symbol of the good and
Esau as a straightforward symbol of the evil by remarking that "for the
rest, due to free will (de libero arbitrio), neither [does] Jacob [represent]
all the good seed nor Esau all the evil; but rather both [seeds] come
from both [figures]." 78 In effect, then, Tyconius has obliterated the
separation between Jacob and Esau upon which the Pauline text seems
to depend and which Augustine never questions in his own interpreta-
tion of Paul. By treating the passage in terms of his own exegetical
rule concerning the bipartite character of the church as the body of Christ,
he has made room for human freedom, the freedom of the will, as the
true determinant of the fate of both Jacob and Esau, both the one loved
and the one hated. As a result, he can maintain that the one is loved
according to election from foreknowledge and that the other is evil due
to the election of his own will (unus est secundum electionem de prae-
scientia dilectus, alter electione suae voluntatis iniquus).79 That is, he can
occupy precisely the position which Augustine deliberately and specifically
rejected in his reply to Simplician: the position that divine election takes
place according to God's foreknowledge and is determined by the exercise
of man's freedom.so
To see Tyconius' influence at work in the way in which Augustine
finally formulated his theology of grace in the Ad Simplicianum is, then,
highly implausible. At most it can be said that Augustine is known to
have read Tyconius at or about the time of his response to Simplician's
questions and that Tyconius may have prompted him to make use of
76 Ibid., p. 28.
77 Ibid.
78 Ibid., p. 29: ceterum de libero arbitrio nee Iaeob omne semen bonum nee
Esau omne malum, sed ex utroque utrumque.
79 Ibid., p. 28.
so Thus, it seems to me, Pincherle is mistaken in his belief that Tyconius is
opposed alla dottrina ehe fa eonsistere IJ elezione nella semplice prescienza ehe Dio
avrebbe avuto della fede degLi eletti, determinantisi in virtu del lora Libero arbitrio
(p. 186). It is noteworthy, in this respect, that Pincherle does not discuss Tyconius'
interpretation of Jacob and Esau.
William S. Babcock 74
certain texts from scripture-most especially I Cor. 4: 7-which were
to playa critical role in Augustine's own theology. Of common patterns
of thought and doctrine (except possibly the description of the law as
that which increases rather than reduces sin), however, there are no signs.
Instead of looking to Tyconius, we must conclude that the primary factor
in Augustine's development at this stage in his theological and ecclesiastical
career was also the obvious one: the encounter with Paul's own text
which preoccupied him during the period from 394 to 396. It is to
this encounter that we owe the double problem which Augustine's thought
has fathered on Western theology: how is God's grace, understood as
sheer grace operating without regard to merit and transforming the human
will from the evil to the good, to be rendered compatible either with
God's justice or with man's freedom?
If Augustine's ordination is one decisive event from this relatively
uncharted period of his life, the outcome of his study of Paul must be
reckoned as another. One would like to know how the two events go
together; for they mark the beginning and the end of Augustine's priest-
hood in Hippo Regius, and together they produced the man who became
bishop in 396.
William S. Babcock
Perkins School of Theology
Southern Methodist University