Introduction

This article is the third of a series that seeks to provide evidence of the antiquity of a now uncommon understanding of Ephesians 2:8-9. The argument here is that Jerome (342-420), the prominent linguist and translator of much of the Vulgate, in his commentary on Ephesians also held that the referent of ‘this’ (τοῦτο) in Ephesians 2:8-9 is ‘faith’ (πίστεως). He did so decades before the Pelagian controversy and as a matter of exegesis, having consulted Greek exegesis and exegetes before him. For ease of reference, here again is the key text, Ephesians 2:8-10:

8For [it is] by grace[1] you[2] have been saved[3] through faith[4], and this [thing][5], [is] not from you[6], [it is] the gift[7] of God, 9not from works, so that no-one may boast. 10For we are his handiwork, being created in Christ Jesus for[8] good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that in them we might walk. (my translation)

8Τῇ γὰρ χάριτί[9] ἐστε σεσῳσμένοι[10] διὰ πίστεως[11]· καὶ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐξ ὑμῶν, θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον· 9οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων, ἵνα μή τις καυχήσηται[12]. 10αὐτοῦ γάρ ἐσμεν ποίημα[13], κτισθέντες[14] ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ ἐπὶ ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς οἷς προητοίμασεν[15] ὁ θεός, ἵνα ἐν αὐτοῖς περιπατήσωμεν. (NA28)[16]

About Jerome (342-420) [17]

Jerome was appointed in AD 382 by Damasus, the Bishop of Rome, to translate an authorized Latin translation of the four gospels, and to improve and standardize the text of the Old Latin versions that had been circulating for centuries. Jerome was a linguist, understanding Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, also being able to read Aramaic competently and having some familiarity with Syriac and Arabic. Jerome wrote of his secular education that his youth was spent with philosophers, grammarians and rhetoricians. After the death of Damasus in 384, Jerome settled in Bethlehem. By AD 386, in addition to the gospels, Jerome had also produced a Latin translation of the Psalms. Jerome would later tell Augustine that his opinions on the Psalms were not really his own, but the interpretations of the old Greek Commentators.[18] Jerome in his earlier period admired Origen as a biblical scholar and exegete, but it appears that he never followed him in matters of doctrine, particularly his more speculative and controversial teachings.[19]

Jerome’s Latin translation of the Hebrew for the Old Testament brought him criticism from Augustine, who would have preferred that Jerome simply translated the LXX, because Augustine desired a standard version of the Old Testament for both the Greek and Latin churches. Jerome disagreed, and was not afraid to point out the differences between the LXX and the Hebrew, especially when the Hebrew text made better sense of the New Testament and the Hebrew seemed to underlie the New Testament against the LXX. Over the next 15 years, Jerome completed a Latin translation of the whole Hebrew Bible. Jerome agreed with the Rabbis, and against Augustine, that the apocryphal books found in the LXX but not the Hebrew manuscripts should not be included in the church’s canon, and so should not be used for the establishment of doctrine. Protestants, including the Anglican church, have followed Jerome in that judgment, while Roman Catholics have followed Augustine, who preferred the LXX.

In addition, and alongside his translation work, in AD 387,[20] Jerome also composed four commentaries on the Pauline Epistles (Philemon, Galatians, Ephesians, Titus). These commentaries were written in Latin. Regarding his commentaries on these four Pauline letters, Jerome admits that he is indebted to others before him, particularly Greek exegetes. Most (in)famously, Jerome used Origen’s three volume commentary on Ephesians, a fact concerning which his former friend Rufinus took particular issue. Freemantle et al gives the following account of Jerome’s self-acknowledged indebtedness to Origen and others.

Jerome […] declares that he has been, in the main, his own instructor, but yet that he has constantly consulted others as to Scriptural difficulties, and that he had, not long before, been to Alexandria to consult Didymus. ‘I questioned him about everything which was not clear to me in the whole range of Scripture.’ As to his indebtedness to Origen, he speaks as follows, certainly not blaming his doctrines: ‘I remark in the Prefaces, for your information, that Origen composed three volumes on this Epistle, and I have partly followed him. Apollinaris and Didymus also published some commentaries, and, though we have gleaned a few things from them, we have added or omitted such as we thought fit. The studious reader will, therefore, understand at the outset that this work is partly my own, and that I am in part indebted to others.’[21]

Consequently, Jerome was familiar with the best available Christian Greek scholarship, and used those who had gone before him, even to the point of being accused of plagiarism. Moreover, Jerome was also aware of the normal rules of concordance and agreement. For example, on Ephesians 2:5, he comments:

Those who think that the statement in the books of the Kings refers to the devil when David numbered the people of Israel and provoked the wrath of God among them, when the Scripture says, ‘And the wrath of the Lord being inflamed was applied to Israel, and incited David saying’ (2 Kings 24:1), do so because according to the particular nature of the Greek language he did not use the feminine participle λεγοῦσα, that is which (feminine) says, in agreement with (the feminine) wrath of God, but the masculine participle λεγῶν, that is the wrath of God who (masculine) says, since the Lord sends his wrath and fury by evil angels (Ps. 77:49): Ronald E Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St Paul's Epistles to the Ephesians: Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 125.

As to the influence of Augustine’s theology on Jerome, Jerome was 8 years Augustine’s senior. Jerome’s work as a commentator on Paul occurred in AD 387, the year after Augustine was converted, while the Pelagian controversy was breaking out from around AD 412. Therefore, it is very difficult to see that the polemics of the anti-pelagian movement had a great influence on Jerome’s commentaries or exegetical decisions. Augustine and Jerome corresponded with one another, commencing from AD 394 or 395, and with some heat, the more junior Augustine initiating contact, and being more tactful and diplomatic but none the less prepared to challenge his senior, and Jerome, in response, being somewhat dismissive, direct and forceful, sometimes even short tempered and annoyed, but with at least reputed affection. Jerome felt that the challenge he received from the new younger bishop from North Africa was that of a young man wanting to make a name for himself by criticizing a well-known and respected elder of the church. In AD 394 or 395, around the time he was consecrated a bishop, Augustine had written to Jerome encouraging him ‘to devote care and labour to the translation of the books of those who have written in the Greek language most able commentaries on our Scriptures’.[22] Jerome and Augustine had different views about the authority of the LXX.[23] Moreover, Augustine quite rightly bids Jerome by letter in 394/5 and again in 397 to correct Jerome’s published view that Paul and Peter had piously dissembled and staged the confrontation in Antioch reported in Galatians 2. Augustine rightly pointed out that such a view would bring into question the trustworthiness of the Scriptures and the honesty of the Apostles.[24] In AD 397 Augustine writes to Jerome and says that though he has never met Jerome, he feels he knows him through his writings.[25] In AD 403, Augustine urges Jerome to make his translation of the Latin Vulgate from the Greek LXX and not from the Hebrew manuscripts, for the sake of having a consistent biblical text for both the Greek and Latin churches.[26] This, of course, Jerome would not countenance.

Nevertheless, there seems to have grown between them a genuine mutual and fond regard (at least for the sake of the unity of the Catholic church), despite these initial tensions. By AD 415, Augustine is addressing his treatise on the origin of the soul to Jerome, praising Jerome’s published view of original sin in Jerome’s refutation of Jovian and his Job Commentary, and asking him clearly sincere questions concerning the Traducian/Creationism issue, which relates to the generation of the human soul and its implications for the doctrine of original sin. While both held to a strong doctrine of original sin, Jerome was a creationist, understanding that each human soul was created ex nihilo at conception, while Augustine held to a form of Traducianism, the theory that the human soul is transmitted by the parents to the children.[27]

For his part, Jerome in AD 416 writes to Augustine of his decision to ‘reverence and admire’ the younger bishop and ‘to defend your (Augustine’s) opinions as my own’,[28] though the two Doctors have clear theological differences. In AD 418, two years before his death, Jerome in a letter to Augustine, praised Augustine in the following terms: ‘You are renowned throughout the whole world; Catholics revere and look up to you as the restorer of the ancient faith, and— which is a token of yet more illustrious glory— all heretics abhor you’.[29] In his work Against the Pelagians, Jerome describes Augustine as ‘That holy man and eloquent bishop’ whose existing anti-Pelagian works Jerome eulogises, and continues:

And he [Augustine] is said to have others [anti-Pelagian works] on the anvil with special regard to you [the Pelagians], which have not yet come to hand. Wherefore, I think I must abandon my task, for fear Horace’s words may be thrown at me, ‘Don’t carry firewood into a forest.’ For we [Jerome] must either say the same as he [Augustine] does, and that would be superfluous; or, if we wished to say something fresh, we should find our best points anticipated by that splendid genius. (Jerome, Against the Pelagians, Bk 3 Ch 19).[30]

As to Jerome’s character, Freemantle et al offers the following:

He was vain and unable to bear rivals, extremely sensitive as to the estimation in which he was held by his contemporaries, and especially by the Bishops; passionate and resentful, but at times becoming suddenly placable; scornful and violent in controversy; kind to the weak and the poor; respectful in his dealings with women; entirely without avarice; extraordinarily diligent in work, and nobly tenacious of the main objects to which he devoted his life.[31]

The following table gives Jerome’s exposition of Ephesians 2 verses 8-10:

The following is from Heine's Translation.

Eph. 2:-9 for You Have Been Saved by Grace by Means of Faith, and This Is not from Yourselves, for It Is the Gift of God, not from Works, That No One May Glory.

'He says, therefore, that he will show the abundant riches of his grace in kindness in the ages to come because you have been saved by grace by means of faith, not by means of works. And this faith itself is not from yourselves but is from him who has called you. Now so that the secret thought, "If we have not been saved by means of our works, perhaps we have been saved by means of faith, and it is in another manner that we are saved of ourselves', not sneak into our thinking by chance in reference to this, he thus goes on and says that faith itself is also not of our will but is the gift of God. It is not that human free will is removed. In accordance with what the apostle says to the Romans, 'It is not of him who runs, or of him who wills, but of God who shows mercy' (Rom. 9:16), the very freedom of the will has God as its author, and all things are referred to his benefaction, since it is he himself who permits us even to will the good. But all of this has been said so that no one might glory as if he has been saved by himself and not by God.

Eph 2:10 for We Are What He Has Made, Created in Christ Jesus in Good Works, Which God Has Prepared That We Should Walk in Them.

He has related the reasons why we have been saved by grace by means of faith, and this itself is not from ourselves but is from the gift of God, when he says, 'For we are what he has made'. That means that the fact that we live, breath, understand, and can believe comes from him because he is our creator.

And not carefully that he has not said, "We are his fashioning and forming" but, "We are what he has made". A "forming", indeed, has its origin from the mud of the earth but a "making" takes its beginning in accordance with the likeness and image of God. What has been written in the one-hundred and eighteenth Psalm points to different things, "Your hands made me and formed me" (Ps. 118:73).

What has been made holds the first position, then comes what is formed. And because the terms "creating" and "founding" are normally always joined with great works (for example, that city has been founded, and the world has been created from the beginning), and each saint is a complete world in himself by means of the various teachings and virtues, for this reason we say now that we are created in Christ and created in good works, whether those are works which ourselves have done or will do, or those in other creations to which our citizenship (c. Phil. 3:20) is to be transferred, that we may walk in those things which God has prepared. We are recipients of this great hope now during the time which we are to walk in these things which God has prepared with great difficulty.'

Ronald E Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St Paul's Epistles to the Ephesians: Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 129-130.

Jerome reports that he was familiar with ancient Greek Christian exegetical traditions, particularly Origen, Apollinaris and Didymus. He claimed that his commentary on Ephesians was indebted to others, as well as being his own composition. Thus, while he writes in Latin, he is conversant with the history of Eastern exegesis and Greek grammar and syntax. And as a matter of exegesis, he takes the neuter demonstrative (hoc) to be referring to feminine noun faith (fidem). He expressly changes the gender of the demonstrative (from ‘hoc’, neuter, to ‘haec’, feminine) in his own exposition to ensure that the reader is clear that it is specifically fidem, ‘faith’ (the gender of which in Latin is feminine) is the referent of the demonstrative: ‘And this faith itself (haec ipsa fides) is not from yourselves, but from him that called you’. Like Theodoret after him, Jerome locates the origin of faith not from the believer but from the one who calls.

But Jerome goes further. He gives a reason why Paul has isolated faith as the specific thing that is not from ourselves.

This [he] also [says], lest perhaps the secret thought might creep up on us, that if we have not been saved by our own works (per opera nostra), at any rate we have actually been saved by faith (per fidem), and in this way by a different method we are saved by ourselves.

In other words, someone might deceive himself by thinking that while salvation is not from himself and not from works, faith is from ourselves. At back of this reasoning is that it is self-evident that an individual actually believes and has faith. Faith can only be exercised by an individual exercising his human will, and thus it might be thought to come from oneself and to be generated by oneself. Jerome considers that Paul anticipates such thinking and excludes even faith from being sourced from within the believer. Jerome also specifically deals with the issue of free will and seeks to preserve a place for free will.

Accordingly, he [Paul], said in addition, and asserted, that even faith is not by our own will (non nostrae voluntatis esse) but is God’s gift (sed Dei muneris). Not because he would remove free will (liberum […] arbitrium) from humanity, and according to that [statement] of the Apostle to the Romans, ‘it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs; but by the mercy of God’ (Romans 9); the very freedom of will itself (arbitrii ipsa libertas) has God as its originator (auctorem), and all things should refer us back to his kindness, seeing that actually he himself has permitted (permiserit) us to will (velle) the good (bonum).[36]

It is clear that for Jerome here, faith is not from our own will, but is God’s gift. God gives the very freedom of will to believe in Christ as a gift. God is the ‘author’ or the ‘originator’ of human good will which issues in faith in Christ. He permits the believer to have the good will that results in saving faith. That is, God must go before and permit the very freedom of will required to believe, and that belief itself is a divine gift. This seems to be very close to the idea of prevenient grace, for example, in the tenth Anglican article, whereby God must go before and give the good will. I do not think that Jerome is saying that the grace of God is the gift of free will to choose either the good or the bad. This is because he firstly says faith is ‘not by our own will’, and secondly because he says God has permitted us to will the good. It is unclear what Jerome means by saying that ‘the very freedom of the will itself has God as it’s author’. I suspect he does not mean that freedom to choose the bad is a gift. Perhaps he means that the freedom to have faith is a gift. I suspect Jerome is attempting to find (to my mind, not very successfully) a way to preserve free will, and yet to point out the passage clearly says that faith is a gift.

Jerome finds another reason to say that faith is a gift from God in verse 10. We are God’s workmanship (factura) and created in Christ Jesus for good works. Jerome believes that not only our creation and our sustenance and intelligence, but also our very ability to believe comes from God the creator.

For we are his workmanship (factura), that is, that we live, (vivimus), that we breathe (spiramus), that we understand (intelligimus), and that we are able to believe (credere possumus), is from him, for He is our Creator.

The Christian is called one who is created in Christ, not meaning the physical and material creation of the world and the human race at the beginning of time, because Jerome says that ‘being created’ certainly does not mean that previous to our being created in Christ we did not exist, but because we have been transformed in our behaviour and renewed by grace. In other words, what Paul means by ‘created in Christ Jesus’ is actually a ‘recreation’ or ‘renewal’ in Christ, a transformation of behaviour with the ability to walk in good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to walk in. All this Jerome concluded in 387, a quarter of a century before the Pelagian controversy broke out.

Jerome’s Wider Soteriology

It thus seems clear that Jerome wrote against the Pelagians not so much from being under the influence of Augustine, but because of his exegetical labours on the gospels decades before. In the mid 380s, he translated the gospels from Greek to Latin. We can assume that he made his own conclusions from that work, when he says:

‘No one,’ He says, ‘can come unto Me except the Father Who sent Me draw him.’ When He says, ‘No one can come unto Me,’ He shatters the pride of free will; because, even if a man will to go to Christ, except that be realized which follows—‘unless My heavenly Father draw him’—desire is to no purpose, and effort is in vain.[37]

Jerome is continually wrestling with the reconciliation of his acceptance of free will, and what he sees as the clear teaching of scripture, that God gives the gift of faith. As Jerome holds grace and free will together, towards the end of his life he gives the dominant note to grace. Thus Jerome writes against the Pelagians:

All that the saints say is a prayer to God; their whole prayer and supplication a strong wrestling for the pity of God, so that we, who by our own strength and zeal cannot be saved, may be preserved by His mercy. But when we are concerned with grace and mercy, free will is in part void; in part, I say, for so much as this depends upon it, that we wish and desire, and give assent to the course we choose. But it depends on God whether we have the power in His strength and with His help to perform what we desire, and to bring to effect our toil and effort.[38]

Jerome makes free will ‘in part void’ because of the necessity of grace and mercy. He acknowledges that we must wish and desire and give assent to our course. That is the part Jerome leaves for free will. Jerome seems to leave the wish or desire to us, and the ability to actuate and fulfill that wish to God. For Jerome, it seems that there needs to be at the beginning the human wish or desire, and probably needs to be maintained, and this he attributes to human free will. However, the strength to perform that will and bring to effect that desire, remains with God. How this is consistent with his view that God gives the gift of faith in his Ephesians Commentary is unclear.

In his commentary on Ephesians 1:11, written in AD 387, Jerome specifically attempts to integrate human free will with the predestinating purpose of God.

In AD 387, Jerome is keen to protect God’s goodness and justice. So he asserts that not everything in this universe happens in accordance with God’s will. Jerome’s intention is to ensure that evil cannot be attributed to God. Rather, God’s decision and will is what is prudent and reasonable. Jerome asserts human freedom of will, and that God would have us will the good. And God wishes all to be saved. But he also holds to God’s omnipotence, so that anything God wishes, God does. The nature of how these two things, God’s wish for all to be saved, and that all God wishes, he does, are to be reconciled is not clear in Jerome.

In his early polemical work, Against Jovinianus (Book 2), written in AD 393, Jerome holds that free will is given to humans at creation. Unless free will is given, God is unjust to give rewards. But while humans start the process of good works with created free will, God helps and assists to bring them to fruition, just as wicked impulses within us are brought to fruition by the devil.

God created us with free will, and we are not forced by necessity either to virtue or to vice. Otherwise, if there be necessity, there is no crown. As in good works it is God who brings them to perfection, for it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that pities and gives us help that we may be able to reach the goal: so in things wicked and sinful, the seeds within us give the impulse, and these are brought to maturity by the devil.[39]

This passage seems inconsistent with his understanding of Ephesians 2:8-9, that God gives the gift of faith. For if faith is a gift from God, it comes from God at the beginning of salvation. But in this passage, the image of seed requires that the beginning and initiation of salvation lies with human free will. It would seem probable that he took over this image from Origen, where Origen says, ‘So also our own perfection is brought about, not as if we ourselves did nothing; for it is not completed by us, but God produces the greater part of it.’ (On First Principles, 3:1:18).[40] I conclude that Jerome’s thinking at this stage is unclear and inconsistent. And I conclude that this is the result of Jerome’s commitment to human free will, in the face of what he sees Ephesians 2:8-9 is saying, that faith is a gift from God, and not from ourselves.

Twenty two years later, Jerome’s commitment to retaining a conception of free will is evident in his letter to Ctesiphon, written in AD 415.

It is in vain that you misrepresent me and try to convince the ignorant that I condemn free will. Let him who condemns it be himself condemned. We have been created endowed with free will; still it is not this which distinguishes us from the brutes. For human free will, as I have said before, depends upon the help of God and needs His aid moment by moment, a thing which you and yours do not choose to admit. Your position is that, if a man once has free will, he no longer needs the help of God. It is true that freedom of the will brings with it freedom of decision. Still man does not act immediately on his free will, but requires God’s aid who Himself needs no aid.[41]

Again, Jerome’s notion of free will seems to involve that humans in some way choose and decide (perhaps at the beginning, perhaps in possessing the germ of a good will), but that God must immediately and thereafter continue to supply his aid to bring that free choice to fruition. God’s assistance must be provided to the separate acts, even if the decision to purpose the good lies in free will. Two years later, in AD 417, Jerome wrote his three books Against the Pelagians. Again, his position is that both free will and God’s grace exist together, and that humans have free will, but each good action is assisted by God.

The bestowal of the grace of free will is not such as to do away with the support of God in particular actions (Book 1 section 4)[42]

From this we understand that to will and to run is ours, but the carrying into effect our willing and running pertains to the mercy of God, and is so effected that on the one hand in willing and running free will is preserved; and on the other, in consummating our willing and running, everything is left to the power of God. (Book 1 section 5)[43]

Jerome, it appears, like Theodoret and Chrysostom, was a synergist, and this persisted even in his last and final polemical work, Against the Pelagians. Freemantle comments on it that, ‘it was impossible for Jerome, as a “Synergist,” or believer in the co-operation of the human will with the divine, to throw himself into the fray with the eagerness of a convinced Predestinarian’.[44] In this extended quote below, Scheck makes the following comment which affirms that Jerome held to conditional predestination, or predestination according to foreseen merits or faith.

Even St Jerome, in his Dialogue against the Pelagians 1.5, 2.6, 3.18 aligns himself with the Greek understanding of predestination against the views that St Augustine would develop in the late 420’s. When in this Dialogue, Critobulus, the spokesman for Pelagianism, complains that Atticus’s emphasis on the need for divine help in everything a man does seems to abolish free will, Atticus responds that while God foreknows whatever men will do, his foreknowledge in no way determines their actions; rather, he leaves them free to act by the exercise of their free will [Dial 3:5; cf Jerome, Comm in Jer 26:103 (CCL 74:1025)]. W Freemantle, Jerome’s nineteenth century English translator, commented: “It cannot fail to appear that Jerome is not like Augustine, a thorough-going predestinarian, but a ‘synergist,’ maintaining the coexistence of free will, and that he reduces predestination to God’s foreknowledge of human determination [see “Hieronymus,” in W Smith and H Wace, A Dictionary of Christian Biography (London, 1887) Vol 3 p46. J N D Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings and Controversies (New York: 1975), agrees with this assessment]. Likewise, John Ferguson assesses St Jerome’s interpretation of predestination in the Dialogue against the Pelagians as follows:

“But Jerome does not hold the extreme predestinarian views of Augustine. He is rather a synergist, holding that God’s grace and man’s free will come together in the work of salvation, and equating predestination with prescience, that is to say, interpreting the doctrine not in terms of an arbitrary fiat of the Almighty that A shall be saved and B damned, but to mean that God having in His Almighty perfection complete knowledge of past, present and future, foreknows that A will so live as to be saved, and B will so live as to be damned. [J Ferguson, Pelagius pp 79-80]”[45]

Jerome acknowledged the impossibility of sinful humans to fulfill the law, even after baptism. While Jerome believes that Christians can avoid sin for a time, they cannot do so perpetually this side of glory:

In this place we must consider how many are the precepts of the law which no one can fulfill. And it must also be said that some works of the law are done even by those who do not know it. But those who perform it are not justified because this happens without faith in Christ.[46]

From the many proofs I have adduced you have learnt that no one has been able to fulfill the law. And if the Apostle, in comparison with the grace of Christ, reckoned those things as filth which formerly, under the law, he counted gain, so that he might win Christ, how much more certain ought we to be that the reason why the grace of Christ and of the Gospel has been added is that, under the law, no one could be justified? (Against the Pelagians Book 3:13)[47]

Jerome argues strongly against sinless perfectionism in the Christian life:

[P]erpetual freedom from sin is reserved for God only, and for Him Who being the Word was made flesh without incurring the defects and the sins of the flesh. And, because I am able to avoid sin for a short time, you cannot logically infer that I am able to do so continually. […] And therefore we have but the shadow and likeness of thepure heart, which hereafter is destined to see God, and, free from spot or stain, to live with Abraham. (Against the Pelagians, Book 3:12)

The perfection required to see God is now but a shadow, and will only be experienced on the other side of glory. And consistent with the lack of perfection found in regenerate humanity is Jerome’s acknowledgment that there are in Scripture two types of righteousness, the perfect righteousness required by God, and the relative righteousness of humans.

All this makes it clear that in Holy Scripture there are two sorts of perfection, two of righteousness, and two of fear. The first is that perfection, and incomparable truth, and perfect righteousness and fear, which is the beginning of wisdom, and which we must measure by the excellence of God; the second, which is within the range not only of men, but of every creature, and is not inconsistent with our frailty, as we read in the Psalms: ‘In Thy sight shall no man living be justified,’ is that righteousness which is said to be perfect, not in comparison with God, but as recognized by God. Job, and Zacharias, and Elizabeth, were called righteous, in respect of that righteousness which might some day turn to unrighteousness, and not in respect of that which is incapable of change, concerning which it is said, ‘I am God, and change not.’ (Against the Pelagians, 1:15)[48]

Jerome, as was typical, held that water baptism washed away the stain of original and actual sin. ‘But they are free from all sin through the grace of God, which they received in their baptism’ (Against the Pelagians, Book 3:17). Indeed, it is kind that infants be baptized because they inherit the stain of the their forefather Adam, from which baptism cleanses them (Against the Pelagians, Book 3:18). Baptism remits past sins, both original and actual, but it ‘does not preserve righteousness in the time to come; the keeping of that is dependent on toil and industry, as well as earnestness, and above all on the mercy of God.’ (Against the Pelagians, Book 3:1). Indeed, such is the efficacy of baptism, that ‘[i]f it were possible for us to be always immersed in the waters of baptism, sins would fly over our heads and leave us untouched. The Holy Spirit would protect us.’ (Against the Pelagians, Book 3:1) Jerome asserts that the baptized, though they are regenerated thereby and forgiven of past sins, still sin.

No sooner do they rise from the baptismal font, and by being born again and incorporated into our Lord and Saviour thus fulfill what is written of them, ‘Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered,’ than at the first communion of the body of Christ they say, ‘Forgive us our debts,’ though these debts had been forgiven them at their confession of Christ; […] However thorough the conversion of a man may be, and however perfect his possession of virtue after a time of sins and failings, can such persons be as free from fault as they who are just leaving the font of Christ? And yet these latter are commanded to say, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors” […] Oh, man, now thou hast been made clean in the laver, and of thee it is said, “Who is this that cometh up all white, leaning upon her beloved?” The bride, therefore, is washed, yet she cannot keep her purity, unless she be supported by the Lord. How is it that you long to be set free by the mercy of God, you who but a little while ago were released from your sins? The only explanation is the principle by which we maintain that, when we have done all, we must confess we are unprofitable. (Against the Pelagians, Book 3:15)

Jerome also does not confine the meaning of ‘works of the law’ merely to ceremonial law or ethnic boundary markers.

“by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified.” And to show that it is not only the law of Moses that is meant or all those precepts which collectively are termed the law, the same apostle writes: “I delight in the law of God after the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am: who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Jerome, Letter 133, To Ctesiphon, 8)[49]

It seems that Jerome’s view of Romans 7:14-25 was not clearly articulated until his anti-Pelagian works. Against Jovianus, in 393, Jerome quotes extensively Romans 7-8 as a castigation of the married: ‘If the wisdom of the flesh is enmity against God, and they who are in the flesh cannot please God, I think that they who perform the functions of marriage love the wisdom of the flesh, and therefore are in the flesh’ (Against Jovianus, Book 1:37).[50] Little does Jerome seem to realize that such a crass identification of sarx as the use of sex within marriage dooms all marriage as displeasing to God and unchristian. He has, however, moderated his approach by AD 414, still in the context of his promotion of ascetism and virginity. So he prefaces his extensive quote from Romans 7 with the words, ‘Heated with the violence of sensual passion he [Paul] made himself the spokesman of the human race’ (Jerome, Letter 130, To Demetrias).[51] This may indicate an understanding that Paul is speaking autobiographically, though also for all humanity. It also indicates a more controlled approach to scriptural application. But in the midst of the Pelagian controversy in AD 417, Jerome specifically holds that Paul’s autobiographical comments in Romans 7:14-25 are the Apostle speaking of his normal Christian experience when he says, ‘You see that neither an Apostle, nor any believer can perform what he wishes’ (Against the Pelagians, Book 2:6).[52] Moreover, in AD 415, Jerome applies Paul’s ‘wretched man’ discourse directly to himself:

I am the hapless being against whom you ought to direct your insults, I who am for ever reading the words: “by grace ye are saved,” and “blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” Yet, to lay bare my own weakness, I know that I wish to do many things which I ought to do and yet cannot. For while my spirit is strong and leads me to life my flesh is weak and draws me to death. And I have the warning of the Lord in my ears: “watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Jerome, Letter 133, To Ctesiphon, 9).[53]

In Letter 85, to Paulinus, in AD 400, Jerome answers the question of ‘why God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and why the apostle said, “So then it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy” (Romans 9:16), and other things which appear to do away with free will’ simply by referring Paulinus to Origen’s First Principles. [54] Perhaps Jerome was too busy to think it through himself. Perhaps Jerome had forgotten everything that Origen had said when he referred his inquirer to Origen. But the fact is, despite Jerome’s denunciation of certain of Origen’s doctrines and distancing himself from his notoriously heretical notions, Jerome regarded Origen’s defence of free will and his explanation of predestinarian passages as an adequate treatment to refer to a friend, at least in AD 400 and prior to the outbreak of Pelagianism and the rise of Augustine’s influence. Neither do Jerome’s anti-pelagian writings in any way do away with free will, certainly not in Jerome’s mind, although it does become clear that by his anti-Pelagian period, Jerome is reserving only a very limited element, perhaps the initial movement toward God, to human free will, but is attributing the greater part to God’s grace, both the bringing to completion of that which is purposed by human free will, and its strengthening and enablement moment by moment. But in AD 400, it seems Jerome cannot do any better than cite Origen, and that is to repel absolute predestination and provenience to protect God’s just judgment. So the following is an analysis of Origen’s On First Principles, as it relates to human free will and grace, given Jerome’s incorporation by reference to it.

In Origen’s On First Principles (De Principiis), Book 3[55] Chapter 1 is an exposition and defence of the freedom of the human will, and an interpretation of those statements of Scripture which appear to nullify free will (eg Exodus 7:3; Isaiah 6:9-10; Ezekiel 36:26; Mark 4:12; Romans 9:15-24, esp 16; Galatians 5:8; Philippians 2:13). Origen regards such passages as ‘sufficient of themselves to trouble the multitude, as if man were not possessed of free will, but as if it were God who saves and destroys whom He will’ (On First Principles, 3:1:7). Incidentally, Origen indirectly provides testimony to the popularity of the position he opposes – absolute predestination – by his frequent references to the ‘many’ who take those troublesome passages at face value, for example, those who suppose that the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart had been produced by God himself (On First Principles, 3:1:11).

Origen defends the proposition that external causes of virtue and vice are of such a nature that it is possible to resist them (On First Principles, 3:1:4). This is ‘free will’ for Origen. A denial of free will involves someone saying ‘that we are moved from without’. This is to be rejected because puts the blame away from ourselves, makes us like pieces of wood and stone, does not conform to reason, and ‘is the statement of him who wishes to destroy the conception of free-will’ (On First Principles, 3:1:5). Instead, Origen reasons that ‘it is our business to live virtuously, and that God asks this of us, as not being dependent on Him nor on any other, nor, as some think, upon fate, but as being our own doing’ (On First Principles, 3:1:6). In other words, the virtuous living is not dependent on God, but on us. It is hard to see that this is any different to the Pelagianism which would later appear.

Origen takes the numerous scriptural exhortations to obedience and repentance (especially Romans 2:4, On First Principles, 3:1:11), and the fact that God justly distinguishes between the wicked and righteous, as establishing the existence of the freedom of the human will (On First Principles 3.1.6). Origen argues that God cannot be a just judge if he hardens the heart of a person to disobedience and destruction (On First Principles 3.1.9). That is, Origen cannot conceive of a compatibilism juxtaposing God’s absolute justice and goodness and his absolute sovereignty and control of creation, including the human will.

So in the case of Jacob and Esau, Origen concludes that ‘the cause of each one's actions is a pre-existing one; and then every one, according to his deserts, is made by God either a vessel unto honour or dishonour. Therefore every individual vessel has furnished to its Creator out of itself the causes and occasions of its being formed by Him to be either a vessel unto honour or one unto dishonour’ (On First Principles, 3:1:20).

Similarly, Origen considers that God’s hardening of Pharaoh ‘follows as a result of the inherent principle of wickedness in such persons’ (On First Principles, 3:1:10). On the other side and with logical consistency, Origen explicitly argues against any reasoning from Ezekiel 36:26, that it is God who gives the power to walk in His commandments, and to keep His precepts, by His withdrawing the hindrance of the stony heart, and implanting a better heart of flesh (On First Principles, 3:1:7). Thus, he says:

And if God promises to do this [take away the heart of stone and give a heart of flesh], and if, before He takes away the stony hearts, we do not lay them aside, it is manifest that it does not depend upon ourselves to put away wickedness; and if it is not we who do anything towards the production within us of the heart of flesh, but if it is God's doing, it will not be our own act to live agreeably to virtue but altogether (the result of) divine grace. Such will be the statements of him who, from the mere words (of Scripture), annihilates free will.

Here Origen is running out the logic of the position he opposes. First, Origen by this quote provides a somewhat reluctant confession that the words of scripture, on their face, teach a prior divine regeneration or enablement is required.

Second, as Origen acknowledges the opinion that he opposes asserts that God goes before to remove the heart, he is opposing what later would be entitled prevenient grace, the grace that goes before human response and enables it. This position would become Augustinian orthodoxy. It is ironic that Jerome recommends Origen in AD 400, eulogises Augustine from 415, but in reality agrees with neither, for Jerome himself leaves some part to the human will, possibly the initial willing and desire, to humans (against Augustine), but attributes the moment by moment empowering and actuating of virtue to God (against Origen). That is, in his work Against the Pelagians, Jerome argued the very opposite to prevenient grace, a position that Jerome’s commentary on Ephesians 2:8-9 seems on its face to support. In Against the Pelagians, the human will, it would seem, goes first, and God enables and brings to fruition that will. But for Augustine, prevenient grace goes before the human will to enable both the willing and the acting to occur.

Third, Origen rightly sees that God’s enablement beforehand, or prevenient grace as it would later be called, would render all our good works a result of grace. Origen anticipates Augustine, only to reject it. Yet Jerome recommended Origen, and praised Augustine!

Fourth, Origen adopts an either/or approach. Either humans are commanded to act and thus have free will, or God acts and we do nothing. But a compatibilistic approach, acknowledging both God’s sovereignty and concursus over human will, and human responsibility held in tension (though not human free will such that God is contingent) would assign the primary causation to God’s enablement, and a true free agency to the human actor, who experientially and consciously experiences and identifies with the faith he phenomenologically outworks and exercises, though the explanation for his faith is the enablement of God. This would compromise absolute human free will because humans are not so free as to resist God’s grace if God’s eternal purpose is to change that particular sinner’s heart. Thus, human free agency or human responsibility for making decisions might still be held in tension with divine sovereignty. Origen, however, does not seem to see such concursus or compatibilism as possible.

As an aside, perhaps it is anachronistic and unfair to measure Origen against such a standard as the mature Augustine, or indeed Reformed orthodoxy. Origen had very little previous detailed reflection on scripture to assist him; certainly he didn’t have the theological resources that we, two millennia later, have at our fingertips. Subtle nuances and theogical distinctions and categories had not been developed. Origen’s mistakes and false teachings demonstrate that it takes time to develop sound and coherent theology. The best extant Christian thinkers of the early centuries only had limited philosophical and theological resources at their disposal. Christian history is somewhat unfair to Origen, which excoriates him as a heretic for his untrue and dangerous teachings, and yet makes Jerome a Saint and Doctor, who depended so heavily on him for his exegesis, and moreover recommended his works on free will to colleagues as basically sound.

Returning to his treatment of Ezekiel 36:26, Origen’s solution is that God removes the heart by giving true teaching and instruction, which someone of themselves either assents to or rejects. Thus the scriptural statement of God’s removal of the heart is strictly hyperbolic overstatement. Thus, Origen explains ‘[a]nd it is not absurd to soften down such expressions agreeably to common usage: for good masters often say to their slaves, when spoiled by their kindness and forbearance, “I have made you bad, and I am to blame for offenses of such enormity”.’ (On First Principles, 3:1:11).

Unfortunately for his orthodoxy and influence, Origen shows definite signs of the universalism of his doctrine of apokatastasis, driven as it is by his understanding of God’s goodness and love to all his rational creatures, together with Origen’s curative view of punishment and the limitation of its duration in view of the immortality of the soul (On First Principles, 3:1:13). Thus, Origen says:

For God governs souls not with reference, let me say, to the fifty years of the present life, but with reference to an illimitable age: for He made the thinking principle immortal in its nature, and kindred to Himself; and the rational soul is not, as in this life, excluded from cure. (One First Principles, 3:1:13).

Origen thus opens the door to probation after death for the immortal soul. Indeed, Pharaoh is a case in point, suggesting the possibility of the rehabilitation of Pharaoh’s soul post-death when he says:

By this [Pharaoh’s] drowning, however, it is not to be supposed that God's providence as regards Pharaoh was terminated; for we must not imagine, because he was drowned, that therefore he had immediately completely perished (On First Principles, 3:1:14)

Origen’s conclusion (On First Principles, 3:1:22) shows that his treatise has been an exercise in reading scripture consistently.

But since the apostle in one place does not pretend that the becoming of a vessel unto honour or dishonour depends upon God, but refers back the whole to ourselves, saying, ‘If, then, a man purge himself, he will be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto every good work;’ and elsewhere does not even pretend that it is dependent upon ourselves, but appears to attribute the whole to God, saying, ‘The potter has power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour and another to dishonour;’ and as his statements are not contradictory, we must reconcile them, and extract one complete statement from both. Neither does our own power, apart from the knowledge of God, compel us to make progress; nor does the knowledge of God (do so), unless we ourselves also contribute something to the good result; nor does our own power, apart from the knowledge of God, and the use of the power that worthily belongs to us, make a man become (a vessel) unto honour or dishonour; nor does the will of God alone form a man to honour or to dishonour, unless He hold our will to be a kind of matter that admits of variation, and that inclines to a better or worse course of conduct. And these observations are sufficient to have been made by us on the subject of free-will. (On First Principles, 3:1:22)

However, once it is understood that by ‘the knowledge of God’, Origen means to the subjective human knowledge about God, and thus it means ‘the teaching of God’ or ‘the revealed will of God’ in Scripture, and not the secret or enabling will of God, then Origen’s position seems very similar to the Pelagians, who held that the grace of God was the creation of a free will that could purpose and bring to fruition the good and the knowledge of God’s revealed will. Origen’s arguments would later be excoriated as Pelagianism. But Origen’s defence of free will was essential for his view of the justice of God and the dignity of the human, as well as his reconciliation of scripture with scripture, and Jerome, either carelessly or knowingly, in AD 400 takes Origen as sufficiently orthodox to refer his correspondent to it for guidance.

Conclusion

Whatever we might conclude about Jerome’s theological synthesis of free will and grace, or on any other aspect of his theology, we cannot deny that Jerome was probably the most able and noted linguist of his generation. He understood Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic well enough to translate almost certainly the whole of the Vulgate from Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic. He was familiar with the old Greek commentators, particularly Origen, Didymus and Apollinaris. He wrote detailed commentaries on Galatians, Ephesians, Titus and Philemon. His letters and other writings evince both a prodigious knowledge of both Old and New Testament, most likely quoting extended passages from memory, though his application of the scriptures was sometimes skewed by the polemics at hand (particularly concerning virginity and marriage). As he grew older, Jerome’s application of scripture became more moderate, and he applied Romans 7:14-25 to himself and his own present experience. His exegesis of Ephesians 2:8-10 was determined long before the Pelagian controversy, in 387, and indeed sits in significant tension with his own determination to establish human free will in salvation. So we cannot say that Jerome is interpreting the passage through an Augustinian grid. He died in AD 420, before Augustine produced his most mature reflections on predestination and perseverance in AD 427-8. But no one can say that Jerome was ignorant of Greek grammar and syntax.

And, as a matter of grammar and syntax, in Ephesians 2:8-9, Jerome takes the neuter demonstrative (hoc) to be referring to feminine noun faith (fidem). In his own exposition in his Ephesians commentary, Jerome expressly changes the gender of the demonstrative (from ‘hoc’, neuter, to ‘haec’, feminine) to ensure that the reader is clear that it is specifically fidem, ‘faith’ (the gender of which in Latin is feminine) is the referent of the demonstrative: ‘And this faith itself (haec ipsa fides) is not from yourselves, but from him that called you’. Further, Jerome gives a rationale why Paul has isolated faith as the specific thing that is not from ourselves: ‘This [he] also [says], lest perhaps the secret thought might creep up on us, that if we have not been saved by our own works (per opera nostra), at any rate we have actually been saved by faith (per fidem), and in this way by a different method we are saved by ourselves.’ Moreover, despite his life-long commitment to free will and predestination according to divine prescience, Jerome says as a matter of applying Ephesians 2:8-9, ‘Accordingly, he [Paul], said in addition, and asserted, that even faith is not by our own will (non nostrae voluntatis esse) but is God’s gift (sed Dei muneris).’

Given these facts, we have good grounds for doing as Jerome did, and teach that the referent of ‘this’ (τοῦτο) in Ephesians 2:8-9 is expressly, explicitly and exclusively, ‘faith’ (πίστεως), no matter whatever might be the universal consensus of the grammars and commentaries of the current generation.

[1] Feminine singular noun.

[2] Plural pronoun.

[3] Masculine plural participle in periphrastic construction.

[4] Feminine singular noun.

[5] Demonstrative, Neuter.

[6] Plural pronoun.

[7] Neuter noun.

[8] ἐπὶ with the dative ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς can signify both the purpose and the result or destination. Compare Galatians 5:13, Ὑμεῖς γὰρ ἐπ’ ἐλευθερίᾳ ἐκλήθητε || ‘For you were called for the purpose of freedom’: M J Harris, ‘Prepositions and Theology in the Greek New Testament’, in C Brown (ed), New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1971), 3:1193.

[9] Instrumental Dative with post-positive γὰρ, feminine singular noun.

[10] PAI2P εἰμί, I am + PfPPtcpNMP σῴζω, I save; constituting perfect periphrastic construction.

[11] διὰ + genitive, instrumental.

[12] ἵνα + Aorist subjunctive purpose clause.

[13] ποίημα, ατος, τό, anything made or done, a work, deed, act.

[14] APPtcpNMP κτίζω I found, build, create, bring into being, make.

[15] AAI3S προετοιμάζω I prepare beforehand.

[16] https://www.academic-bible.com/en/online-bibles/novum-testamentum-graece-na-28/read-the-bible-text/

[17] Some of this biographical information is adapted from http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/Sep1997/feature2.asp. Fuller introductory treatments are available in W H Freemantle, G Lewis, W G Martley (trs), P Schaff & H Wace (eds), Jerome: The Principal Works of St Jerome in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Second Series Vol 6 (NPNF2-06) (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co, 1893), available at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.toc.html; and W H Fremantle, ‘Hieronymus, Eusebius (Jerome), saint’, in H Wace and W C Piercy, Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century (London: John Murray, 1911), available at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/wace/biodict.html?term=Hieronymus,%20Eusebius%20(Jerome),%20saint accessed on 10 September 2016.

[18] J G Cunningham (trs), ‘Letters of St Augustine’, Letter 72, Ch 3, in P Schaff (ed), J G Pilkington, J G Cunningham (trs), The Confessions and Letters of St Augustine: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol 1 (NPNF1-01) (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co, 1887), 329, revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102072.htm on 6 September 2016.

[19] NPNF2-06, xvii-xviii accessed at http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/206/2060006.htm on 1 October 2016.

[20] NPNF2-06, 497-8 accessed at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.vii.iv.v.html on 1 October 2016. Cain takes the year as 386: A Cain, ‘Jerome’s Pauline Commentaries between East and West: Tradition and Innovation in the Commentary on Galatians, in J Lossl & J W Watt (eds), Interpreting the Bible and Aristotle in Late Antiquity: The Alexandrian Commentary Tradition Between Rome and Bahgdad (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 91.

[21] NPNF2-06, 497-8, ‘Note to Preface to Ephesians’ at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.vii.iv.v.html accessed on 10 September 2016.

[22] Letters of St Augustine, Letter 28 ‘From Augustine to Jerome’, Ch 2 in NPNF1-01, 251, at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102028.htm accessed on 6 September 2016.

[23] ibid.

[24] Letters of St Augustine, Letter 28, ‘From Augustine to Jerome’, Ch 3 in NPNF1-01, 251-2, at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102028.htm; also Letter 40, ‘From Augustine to Jerome’, Ch 3 in NPNF1-01, 273 at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102040.htm accessed on 6 September 2016.

[25] Letters of St Augustine, Letter 40, ‘From Augustine to Jerome’, Ch 1, in NPNF1-01, 272, at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102040.htm accessed on 6 September 2016.

[26] Letters of St Augustine, Letter 71, ‘From Augustine to Jerome’, Ch 2.4, in NPNF1-01, 327, at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102071.htm accessed on 6 September 2016.

[27] Letters of St Augustine, Letter 166 ‘A Treatise on the Origin of the Human Soul, Addressed to Jerome’, in NPNF1-01, 523ff, at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102166.htm accessed on 6 September 2016. See respective entries in F L Cross & E A Livingston, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2^nd Ed: Oxford: OUP, 1993).

[28] Letters of St Augustine, Letter 172 ‘Jerome to Augustine’ in NPNF1-01, at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102172.htm accessed 6 September 2016; Augustine quotes this in AD 420, in ‘Letters of Jerome’, Letter 144, ‘From Augustine to Optatus’ in NPNF2-06 at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001144.htm accessed on 7 September 2016.

[29] Letters of St Augustine, Letter 195 ‘From Jerome to Augustine’ in NPNF1-01 at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102195.htm accessed on 1 October 2016.

[30] NPNF2-06, 482 at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/30113.htm, accessed on 30 September 2016.

[31] NPNF2-06, xxxiii at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.iv.VI.html accessed on 10 September 2016.

[32] J –P Migne, Patrologia Latina (Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Latina) Jerome Vol 26 Col 470A-B [577]- Col 471A-C [579] at http://books.google.com/books?id=UfkUAAAAQAAJ accessed on 1 October 2016.

[33] This translation can be compared to that of Edwards: ‘Paul says this in case the secret thought should steal upon us that ‘if we are not saved by our own works, at least we are saved by our own faith, and so in another way our salvation is of ourselves.’ Thus he added the statement that faith too is not in our own will but in God’s gift. Not that he means to take away free choice from humanity … but that even this very freedom of choice has God as its author, and all things are to be referred to his generosity, in that he has even allowed us to will the good.’: M J Edwards, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians: ACCS NT 8 (Downers Grove: IVP, 2005), 126, citing Jerome (c 347-420), Epistle to the Ephesians, 1.2.8-9.

[34] Compare this published translation: ‘We are his creation. This means that it is from him that we live, breathe, understand and are able to believe, because he is the One who made us. And note carefully that he did not say “we are his fashioning and molding” but “we are his creation.” Molding starts with the mud of the earth, but creation from the outset is “according to the image and likeness of God.” Jerome Epistle to the Ephesians 1.2.10 PL 26:470B-C [577] M J Edwards, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians: ACCS NT 8 (Downers Grove: IVP, 2005), 127.

[35] Hebrew Psalm 50 = LXX/EVV Psalm 51.

[36] This translation can be compared to that of Edwards: ‘Paul says this in case the secret thought should steal upon us that ‘if we are not saved by our own works, at least we are saved by our own faith, and so in another way our salvation is of ourselves.’ Thus he added the statement that faith too is not in our own will but in God’s gift. Not that he means to take away free choice from humanity … but that even this very freedom of choice has God as its author, and all things are to be referred to his generosity, in that he has even allowed us to will the good.’: M J Edwards, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians: ACCS NT 8 (Downers Grove: IVP, 2005), 126, citing Jerome (c 347-420), Epistle to the Ephesians, 1.2.8-9.

[37] Jerome, ‘Against the Pelagians’, Book 3 in NPNF2-06, 477, accessed at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/30113.htm on 10 September 2016.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Jerome, Against Jovinianus, Book 2 Section 3 in NPNF2-06, at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/30092.htm accessed on 12 September 2016.

[40] Accessed at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04123.htm on 17 September 2016.

[41] Letters of St Jerome, Letter 133, ‘to Ctesiphon’, 10 in NPNF2-06, at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001133.htm accessed 12 September 2016.

[42] NPNF2-06, Accessed at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/30111.htm on 13 September 2016.

[43] Ibid.

[44] W H Fremantle et al, ‘Prolegomena to Jerome’ in Schaff & Wace, Jerome: NPNF2 6, xxiv.

[45] T P Scheck, ‘Pelagius’s Interpretation of Romans’ in S Cartwright (ed), A Companion to St Paul in the Middle Ages (Leidon/Boston: Brill, 2013), 79-114 at 102.

[46] Jerome, Epistle to the Galatians 1:2:16 in M J Edwards, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians ACC 8, 29 translated from PL 26:344A-B [413].

[47] NPNF2-06, accessed at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/30113.htm on 13 September 2016.

[48] NPNF2-06, accessed at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/30111.htm on 17 September 2016.

[49] NPNF2-06, accessed at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001133.htm on 13 September 2016.

[50] NPNF2-06, accessed at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/30091.htm on 15 September 2016.

[51] NPNF2-06, accessed at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001130.htm on 15 September 2016.

[52] NPNF2-06, accessed at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/30112.htm on 13 September 2016.

[53] NPNF2-06, accessed at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001133.htm on 13 September 2016.

[54] NPNF2-06, accessed at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001085.htm on 15 September 2016.

[55] Origen, De Principiis (On First Principles), F Crombie (trs), A Roberts, J Donaldson, & A C Coxe (eds), Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol 4 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co, 1885), revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight, at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04123.htm accessed on 16 September 2016.