Father Noel Alexandre's Literal and Moral Commentary on Romans Chapter 11

Translated by Qwen. 

At present this post only contains the literal commentary.

 

Rom 11:1. "I say then: Has God cast away His people?" The Apostle anticipates an objection. Has God, on account of the unbelief and obstinacy of the Jews foretold by the Prophets, rendered void the promises made to Abraham? Has He utterly rejected, despised, and cast aside His people, so previously beloved? Has He decreed that they should not be partakers in Christ of the promised blessings? By no means! Far be it! This does not follow from what Isaiah foretold and what we now see fulfilled. "For I also am an Israelite, not of proselytes added [to the nation], but of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin, the last and least of all; and yet I have not been cast away by God, but called to the grace of the Gospel and made a partaker of the promises, nay, even chosen by Christ for the apostleship and the preaching of the Gospel."

Rom 11:2. "God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew." God has not cast away or rejected from the people of Israel those whom He foreloved, chose, and willed to be properly His people, concerning whom it is written: "For the Lord has taken pleasure in His people, and He will exalt the meek unto salvation." And: "For the Lord will not cast off His people, neither will He forsake His inheritance." By the word "foreknew," the Apostle did not understand a mere foreknowledge of faith or future works, by reason of which they were called and chosen—for he had already condemned that Semipelagian error in verse 6 with these words: "But if by grace, it is not now by works." Rather, he understood the decree or purpose of the divine will, most efficaciously predestinating them to eternal salvation, as St. Augustine explains: "Sometimes," he says, "predestination is also signified by the name of foreknowledge, as the Apostle says: 'God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew.' Here, what he says, He foreknew, is not rightly understood unless it means He predestined, which the context itself of the passage shows. For he was speaking of the remnant of the Jews which has been saved, while the rest perished. This is that election by which He chose in Christ, before the foundation of the world, those whom He willed, that they might be holy and immaculate in His sight in charity, predestinating them unto the adoption of children. No one, therefore, who understands these things is permitted to deny or doubt that when the Apostle says, 'God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew,' he meant to signify predestination. For He foreknew the remnant which He Himself was to make according to the election of grace. Therefore, it means He predestined; for undoubtedly He foreknew if He predestined. But to have predestined is to have foreknown what He Himself was to do. What, then, prevents us, when we read in certain exegetes of the Word of God concerning the foreknowledge of God and the calling of the elect is treated, from understanding the same predestination? Perhaps they preferred to use this word in that matter because it is more easily understood and does not contradict, but rather agrees with, the truth which is preached concerning the predestination of grace. This I know: that no one has been able to dispute against this predestination which we defend according to the Holy Scriptures, except by erring."

Rom 11:3–4. "Do you not know what Scripture says in Elijah?" You certainly cannot be ignorant of what Sacred Scripture recounts concerning Elijah, how he complains before God about the people of Israel of the ten tribes, as if the whole nation had fallen away from the worship of God: "Lord, they have killed Thy prophets, they have dug down Thy altars, and I am left alone, and they seek my life." By the command of the impious Jezebel, the Israelites who had fallen away to the worship of Baal have killed Thy prophets. The altars erected in Thy honor by the pious in the high places—since the kings of Israel, by tyranny, had forbidden them to go to the Temple of Jerusalem to offer sacrifices to Thy Divine Majesty—these altars, I say, in hatred of Thy holy name and worship, they have overthrown. And I am left alone, O my God, as Thy worshiper, and they lie in wait for my life to utterly extinguish Thy worship. But what does the divine response say to him? What does God answer him? "I have left for Myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed their knees before Baal." I have saved for Myself many thousands of men, besides women and children, who have not worshipped the idol of Baal, but remain constant in My worship. The Apostle does not say "They have been left to Me" or "They have left themselves to Me," but "I have left for Myself seven thousand," to show that the remnant of Israel was saved by God's grace, not by their own merits.

Rom 11;5–6. "So then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace." Just as formerly God by His grace preserved for Himself seven thousand men who faithfully and constantly retained the purity of His worship, although unknown to the Prophet Elijah, so in the present time, by God's gratuitous election, a few Jews have been preserved from the whole nation to embrace the faith of Christ and be led to eternal salvation. The word "saved" is redundant according to the Greek text and its commentators, and the Syriac version, but was added by St. Jerome in the Latin version he adorned for greater clarity, without injury to the sense. "But if by grace, it is not now by works." If by grace, that is, by gratuitous predestination, those few are saved whom God chose from among the Jews and called to faith that through Christ they might obtain eternal life, therefore they were not chosen and predestined by reason of good works. Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. Therefore, grace—not owed but gratuitous—precedes, so that through it good works may be done; lest if good works preceded, grace should be rendered as due to works, and thus grace would no longer be grace. "Grace is in no way grace unless it is gratuitous in every way," says St. Augustine elsewhere. "Eternal life itself is called grace, not for any other reason than that it is given freely; not because it is not given for merits, but because the very merits for which it is given have been given." Nothing is more salutary for faith to believe this, nothing truer for understanding to discover. Moreover, the Apostolic saying "A remnant according to the election of grace has been saved" is to be understood of election to eternal life.

Rom 11:7. "What then? That which Israel sought, it has not obtained; but the election has obtained it, and the rest have been blinded." What, then, shall we gather from this except that the Jews did not obtain the righteousness which they sought, because they did not seek it nor do they seek it as they ought? For they sought it from the works of the law, whereas it is to be sought solely from grace and faith in Christ. But that portion of the people which God gratuitously chose has obtained righteousness. The word "election" is used for "the elect" according to the Hebrew manner of speaking, just as elsewhere "circumcision" is used for "the circumcised," "righteousness" for "the righteous," "calling" for "the called." But the rest have been blinded by their own malice, that they may not see the light of the Gospel.

Rom 11:8. "As it is written: God has given them the spirit of compunction, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear, unto this present day." In Isaiah, according to the Hebrew truth, it is written: "For the Lord has mingled for you the spirit of deep sleep." The LXX Interpreters translated it κατάνυξιν, that is, compunction. Theodotion translated it ἔκστασιν, that is, ecstasy or mental alienation. Aquila translated it καταφοράν, that is, heavy sleep or lethargy, from which men are accustomed to be aroused by being pricked or goaded. The Syriac here translates: "God has given them a spirit of stupidity." The Ethiopic: "God has given them a spirit of torpor." St. Jerome, following St. Chrysostom, translates it "spirit of compunction," capturing the force of the Greek word κατάνυξις. St. Cyprian, in Epistle 55 to Cornelius, reads "spirit of transpunction." But by the word "compunction" the Apostle signifies here a certain disposition of the soul immedicably and immutably fixed toward that which is worse. Since David elsewhere says: "That my glory may sing to Thee, and I may not be compunct"—that is, I may not be changed, I may not desist. For just as he who is compunct in piety is not easily turned to something else, so he who is compunct in malice is not easily changed. For to be compunct is nothing else than to be fixed upon something as if by a driven nail, and to be compressed. Therefore, to express significantly the incurable disease and immutability of their mind, he placed "spirit of compunction." Moreover, what the Apostle said, "God gave them," does not signify God's operation but His concession or permission. He gave them not by inspiring malice or withdrawing grace, but "eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear." Thus they were abandoned by God that, although they had eyes with which they saw the miracles of Christ and the Apostles, and ears with which they heard the admirable doctrine of the Gospel, yet they did not use them as they ought, and through astonishment of mind did not attend to them. Therefore, God did not make it so that they did not believe. For how could it be that He both infused unbelief into them and Himself exacted punishment from them for it? This very Prophet teaches more openly: "The heart of this people is grossed, and they have heard heavily with their ears, and they have closed their eyes." Therefore, not another blinded them, but they themselves closed their eyes and were unwilling to behold the light, as Theodoret says.

Isidore of Pelusium, in Book 4, Letter 101, likewise interprets "spirit of compunction" as "spirit of stupor and striking." He says it is proved that the word "compuncting" in this place is the same as "stupefying" from the following words: "Eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear." For this usually happens to those seized by stupor: when the mind is disturbed, the senses deny their functions and actions. He confirms this from Ecclesiasticus 14:1: "Blessed is he who is not pricked/compunct in the sorrow of sin," where the Wise Man does not pronounce blessed the one who is not afflicted with sorrow according to God, which works repentance unto salvation, but the one who has not been given over to stupor by grief, nor has betrayed his own salvation—which happened to Judas, who took his own life by hanging. Paul also, fearing this might happen to the one who committed fornication at Corinth, ordered that he be received back into the assembly of the faithful after profound repentance, lest he be swallowed up by excessive sorrow. Finally, these words "unto this present day" signify that what was foretold by Isaiah has been fulfilled and is fulfilled daily. The Apostle prudently added this, for not all whom God hardens does He harden forever, but He allows some to fall into grave sins and to be hardened in them for a time, that, awakening them as from sleep, He may more clearly show the triumph of His grace. For among those concerning whom Christ used this passage from Isaiah (Matthew 13:14; Mark 4:12) were those who, moved by conscience for the parricide committed against Christ, received the Gospel previously rejected (Acts 2:37). Speaking of the same obduracy, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:14–16: "But their senses are blinded. Until this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. But when they shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away." Compare with Deuteronomy 29:2–4: "You have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land, the great temptations which your eyes have seen, those signs and great wonders. And the Lord has not given you a heart to understand, and eyes to see, and ears that might hear, unto this present day."

Rom 11:9–10. "And David says concerning this kind of men: Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling block, and a recompense unto them. Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see; and bow down their back always." The gall and vinegar which they offered as food and drink to the Lord hanging on the cross shall bring upon them ruin, punishment, and destruction, so that in the Word of God and the preaching of the Gospel, which ought to have been for them as food and delicacies, they may find, according to their merits, a snare by which they are caught, and a stone at which they stumble. That this is the genuine sense of the Prophet and the Apostle is clear from the preceding verse of the same Psalm: "And they gave gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." In this passage, Paul follows the LXX version and expresses the sense, though he does not scrupulously render each word, as is customary for those who quote from memory. For in the Psalm it is read: "Let their table be before them for a snare, and for a recompense, and for a stumbling block." According to the Hebrew text: "Let their table be before them for a snare, and for a recompense, and for a stumbling block." St. Augustine's interpretation pleases above others: "What kind of trap did they set for me by giving me such a drink? Let such a trap become theirs." Moreover, the word "let it be made" is not of one wishing, but of one prophesying. Let their table, therefore, become a snare for them. And is this unjust? It is just. Why? Because it is "for a recompense." For nothing would happen to them that was not due. Let it be for recompense and for a stumbling block, because they themselves are a stumbling block to themselves. "Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see": let their mind be darkened by the withdrawal of divine light, to which they have closed their inner eyes, that they may not see the present truth. "And bow down their back always": that is, permit their affections to be bowed down to earthly things and to be void of heavenly things, so that they may not be able to behold that same truth abiding with God and shining from heaven.

Rom 11:11. "I say then: Have they so stumbled that they should fall?" I ask, then, whether God has permitted the Jews to fall so that the whole nation should remain in their fall, or that their fall should be total and irreparable? Or whether God permitted them to stumble at Christ Jesus as at a stone placed in their way, intending merely their fall and no other utility to follow from it? By no means! Far be it from the divine goodness, which permits no evil except on account of the good which it brings forth from it. "But through their offense, salvation is to the Gentiles, that they may emulate them." Their offense has become the occasion of salvation for the Gentiles, when the Apostles, seeing the Gospel rejected by them, preached it to the Gentiles (Acts 13): "It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you, but seeing you put it from you... lo, we turn to the Gentiles." Moreover, the calling and faith of the Gentiles has been mercifully ordained by God for the conversion and salvation of the Jews themselves, that they may imitate the Gentiles—which the Church rejoices to see happening in the few who are converted to the faith of Christ and holy emulate the faith of the Gentiles—and shall be entirely fulfilled at the end of the world, when "all Israel shall be saved," when the fullness of the Gentiles shall have entered into the Church.

Rom 11:12. "Now if the offense of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fullness?" If the lapse and unbelief of the Jews has redounded to the spiritual riches of the world, that is, to the salvation of the Gentiles dispersed throughout the whole earth, God so ordaining it; and if the rejection and casting away of the Jews was the occasion of the calling of the Gentiles, upon whom the grace of Christ has been copiously poured out, how much more shall the fullness of the Jews, who shall believe in Christ until the end of the world, be profitable to the Gentiles themselves for the confirmation of faith and the increase of spiritual riches! For Christ and the Church everywhere have testimony from the books of the Jews for the Christian faith, to convert the Gentiles who might have suspected that the prophecies concerning Christ, which the preachers of the Gospel brought forward, were fabricated, unless they were proved by the testimony of the Jews. And many of them, convinced by the truth and fulfillment of those prophecies, would acknowledge Jesus to be the Christ promised by God to their fathers, believe in Him, and become members with the Gentiles in the Church, of which He is the one head, mutually encouraging one another by example to His worship and love.

Rom 11:13–14. "For I speak to you Gentiles. As long indeed as I am the Apostle of the Gentiles, I will honor my ministry, if by any means I may provoke to emulation them who are my flesh, and might save some of them." St. Paul turns his address to the Christians gathered chiefly by his own labors from among the Gentiles, and warns them not to exalt themselves on account of the gifts received from God, nor to despise the Jews as utterly hopeless, showing that their fall is not irreparable, and revealing the zeal he employs as Christ's minister to procure their conversion. Therefore, the sense of the whole passage is this: I appeal to you, O Gentiles. As long as I shall be your Apostle—that is, as long as God grants me life—I will render illustrious and celebrated the ministry of the apostleship and preaching to the Gentiles, entrusted to me by Christ's choice and mission, and confirmed to the Church by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, for the glory of Christ; that I may try whether I can stir up my kinsmen according to the flesh by some stimulus of holy emulation, that, by the example of the Gentiles, they may believe in Christ Jesus and receive the Gospel, and thus procure the salvation of some of them.

Rom 11:15. "For if the loss of them be the reconciliation of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?" If the stubborn unbelief of the Jews, on account of which they were rejected by God, was the occasion of the reconciliation of the Gentiles with Him through faith in Christ, what shall their salvation be but a return from death to life? For spiritually dead, they shall be endowed with the life of grace and faith. Or their conversion to the faith shall bring so much joy as if the world, dead in another part of itself, were revived. Or what shall finally follow their full reception to the grace of the Gospel and to salvation at the end of the age, but the general resurrection of the dead? Compare with the words of Christ, Matthew 24:14: "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all nations, and then shall the end come."

Rom 11:16. "But if the firstfruits be holy, so is the whole lump; and if the root be holy, so are the branches." The first metaphor is taken from what was done according to the prescription of the Mosaic Law. From the first flour ground from the new harvest, a portion was taken to bake two loaves of firstfruits which were offered to God. By this offering and oblation, the remaining mixture or lump of dough, sprinkled with oil, was considered to have received divine blessing, so that from it bread might be baked for human nourishment. The sense, therefore, of the Apostolic saying is this: If the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are as it were the firstfruits offered to God from the whole lump of the Jewish people, are holy, then the lump itself, or the whole people, is in a certain way sanctified in them and dedicated to God, or destined for holiness, and consequently ought not to be despised by the Gentiles. And if Abraham, the first father of the Jews and the root of the whole nation, is holy, and the branches, that is, the children descended from him, are holy—that is, can become partakers of the promises and grace of God by a special reason, if God in His mercy inclines their hearts toward their fathers, or toward imitating the faith and piety of their parents. Thus our Apostle teaches that an unbelieving husband is sanctified by a believing wife, and an unbelieving wife by a believing husband; otherwise, he says, your children would be unclean, but now they are holy—that is, destined for holiness, which they do not obtain, however, unless they are reborn in Christ through baptism.

Rom 11:17–18. "And if some of the branches be broken off, and you, being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them, and with them were made partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree, glory not against the branches." Although far the greater part of the Jews have fallen away from the justice and faith of the Patriarchs, like branches broken and torn from a good tree, you, a Gentile, though you were like a wild olive tree—namely, springing from profane and unfaithful stock, sterile and neglected, having only the form and shadow of an olive tree, but destitute of its rich sap and fruits, that is, the grace of the Holy Spirit—have been grafted among the branches that remain in the tree, that is, the Apostles and other Jews converted to Christ, in the place of the broken branches, and have been made a partaker of the sap and nourishment flowing from the root, that is, of the promises which God made to Abraham, a sharer in faith and manifold grace, with God grafting you into the holy society of the faithful. Do not despise the Jews, nor proudly exalt yourself against them. For it is utterly unjust to wish that grafted branches be preferred to natural ones, as if they were more worthy. Here, moreover, it must be observed with Origen that the Apostle has reversed the order of things in the likeness of the olive and the wild olive. For husbandmen graft a shoot from a fruitful tree into a barren one, not the other way around; they do not graft an olive into a wild olive so that it may bear fruit. But the Apostle adapted things more to causes than causes to things. He did this to commend more magnificently the power and benefit of Christ’s grace, who, contrary to the laws of agriculture, grafted a branch of a wild and fruitless tree into the trunk of a fruit-bearing tree, that it might bear fruit even contrary to nature. Therefore, St. Paul suppresses the pride of the Gentiles and keeps them in modesty and humility. "Do not," he says, "glory against the branches. But if you glory, you do not bear the root, but the root bears you." The holy root owes you nothing; neither the Patriarchs, nor the Prophets, nor the Apostles. On the contrary, you owe them very much, through whom faith was handed down to you. Since you have been built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, you also owe Christ Jesus, the divine flower, to the root of Jesse; and the preaching of the Gospel and the Church began at Jerusalem, and salvation is from the Jews. Do not, therefore, exalt yourself, but let this thought suppress your pride.

Theodoret and other Greeks interpret the firstfruits as Christ the Lord according to His human nature, the root as the Patriarch Abraham, the branches of the olive as the Jewish people (since they sprang from him), the fatness of the olive as the doctrine of piety, the broken branches as the unbelieving Jews, and the wild olive grafted into the olive as the Gentiles called to the grace of the Gospel.

Rom 11:19–20. "You will say then: The branches were broken off that I might be grafted in." From what I have said, you will seize an occasion to glory against the Jews and will say: "The branches were broken off that I might be grafted in." The natural branches were broken from the tree that I might be grafted in their place. Therefore, I do not despise the holy root, but I consider myself more worthy than the broken branches, since I have been made a grafted branch through faith, now nourished by the sap of the root. "Well," says the Apostle, "it is true that the branches were broken off by God’s permission that you might be grafted in their place. They were broken and torn from the tree because of unbelief; but you stand by faith, not by your own merits, but by the grace of Christ and the faith by which you were grafted. You stand and remain in the olive, joined to the root, and a partaker of its fatness, namely, the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Do not be high-minded, but fear." Do not proudly exalt yourself, but fear lest at some time you fall away from faith and grace, and your lot become like that of the broken branches.

Rom 11:21–22. "For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest perhaps He also spare not you." If God did not spare the Jews, who by natural origin sprang from the holy root of the Patriarchs, and from whom they also received the sap of faith through tradition, but cut them off on account of their unbelief and pride, fear lest perhaps He does not spare you if you are unfaithful to His grace. If kinship of nature availed them nothing because they did not have the same will, much more will you, if grace is not preserved, become alienated from the root. "Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God." Diligently consider here the goodness of God showing mercy, and there the severity punishing—or, as the Greek word ἀποτομίαν signifies, cutting off—a metaphor taken from surgeons who cut away putrid members to the quick. On those who fell by their own fault, that is, on the Jews, [He showed] severity; but on you, a Gentile, [He showed] the goodness of God, "if you continue in His goodness"—that is, in the faith and justice with which you have been mercifully endowed by God. "Otherwise you also shall be cut off." From this the Catholic dogma concerning the loss of grace is confirmed. Hence it is irrefutably proved that a justified man can fall from the state of grace and justice, and that no one can be certain of his perseverance without a special revelation from God.

Rom 11:23–24. "And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in; for God is able to graft them in again." Namely, the Jews, if they do not persist in unbelief—but that they may not persist, but return, God mercifully invites them (Jeremiah 3:1)—they shall be grafted in again into the olive from which they were cut off, and restored to their former life by the faith of Christ. For God is able to graft them in again through the victorious efficacy of His grace. "For if you were cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?" For if you, a Gentile, cut from your natural wild olive tree—that is, from Gentility serving idols, from whose natural stock you sprang—were by God’s mercy torn away and grafted, contrary to nature, that is, contrary to the custom of nature and beyond all hope, into the good olive tree of Abraham’s faith, and you glory in having this root and father, not by the law of nature but by God’s mercy separating you from impious parents and kinsmen, how much more shall those who are according to nature—that is, who by natural origin sprang from the Patriarchs—be grafted into their own olive tree, joined to their fathers by faith in Christ! The Apostle says this is contrary to nature because it is contrary to the custom of nature, which human knowledge comprehends, so that a wild olive grafted into a cultivated olive bears not the berries of a wild olive, but the fatness of the olive tree. Moreover, God, the Creator and Author of all natures, does nothing contrary to nature; for that will be natural to each which He makes, from whom is every mode, number, and order of nature. But we say not improperly that God does something contrary to nature when He does it contrary to what we know in nature. But neither does man do anything contrary to nature except when he sins, says St. Augustine.

Rom 11:25–26. "For I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own conceits." I wish you to know, my brethren, who are called from the Gentiles to the faith of Christ—I wish, I say, to reveal to you that hidden counsel of God, lest you attribute too much to yourselves. "Because blindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in." That a part of the Israelite people—not a small part, but the greatest part—has been blinded by God’s just judgment, until that time when a vast multitude of Gentiles from all parts of the world, according to the oracles of the Prophets, shall be called to the faith of Christ and enter the Church. "And so all Israel shall be saved," with a few exceptions who will remain obstinate in unbelief. For just as the fullness of the Gentiles will not enter the Church in such a way that no Gentile is to be excluded from this grace, so all Israel will not be saved in such a way that no Jew will be excluded from salvation at the end of the world. Whence St. Gregory the Great says: "When Enoch and Elias preach," he says, "many of those who then remain among the Jews in unbelief shall return to the knowledge of the truth, as it is said of the same Elias: Elias shall come, and he shall restore all things." This is the oracle of the Prophet Zechariah.

Grotius explains this passage of St. Paul as referring to the true Israel, that is, to the Jews who will imitate the patience of Jacob or Israel in evils, to the Israel of God, as he speaks in Galatians 6:16. He also intimates that the time is at hand when not a few, as before, but a certain great multitude of Jews would embrace Christ. This, says Grotius, first happened when the Jews saw fulfilled what Christ had said: the idols of the Romans, that is, the military standards, would appear in sight of the Temple. Then many embraced Christianity and, together with those already Christians, were spared the coming evils. After this, when the City was destroyed and the Temple razed, and the truth of Christ’s prophecies appeared much more clearly, and the burden of personal servitude had broken the ferocity of many, quite a few Jews embraced Christ, with Vespasian and Titus not preventing it. But this commentary of Grotius is plainly contrary to the Apostle’s sense and to Tradition. For in what way would the Apostle call it a mystery which was plainly fulfilled in his own time, and concerning which no faithful person could doubt, that the whole spiritual Israel, that is, the number of the elect, would be saved? 2. The Jews converted to the faith of Christ at that time were very few, and scarcely to be called a remnant in comparison with the whole unbelieving people; but Paul is not speaking of a remnant, but of the conversion of the whole people: "And so all Israel shall be saved." 3. Throughout this whole chapter, the Apostle had been speaking of Israel according to the flesh, nor can the antithesis between these two—"Blindness in part has happened to Israel" and "All Israel shall be saved"—be understood otherwise. Therefore, these words must be referred to the general conversion of the Jews to take place at the end of the world, according to the unanimous exposition of both Greek and Latin Fathers. See St. Hilary on Psalm 58, n. 11; St. Jerome on Hosea 3, Habakkuk 3; St. Chrysostom, Homily 19; St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei Bk. 20, ch. 29; Quaest. Evangel. Bk. 2, Quest. 33; De octo Quaestionibus Dulcitii, last question; Theodoret on this place, etc. Only one Greek, Caesarius, in Dialogue 4, went to the contrary opinion. St. Jerome seems to some to have varied, who in Bk. 4, Commentary on Isaiah ch. 11, says: "In that day," that is, at that time, "when the root of Jesse shall stand as an ensign of the peoples," or that He may rule the Gentiles, "the Lord shall set His hand again the second time"—not, as our Judaizing interpreters think, at the end of the world, when the fullness of the Gentiles enters, then all Israel will be saved, but let us understand all this in the first advent. But he only impugns the restoration of the Jewish people insofar as it is hoped for by the Jews through Elias restoring the ceremonies and sacrifices of the Old Law and the whole apparatus of Mosaic worship. Compare his Commentaries on Malachi 4 and Matthew 17. Hence, at the end of his Commentary on Isaiah 11, he clearly shows that he is only attacking the gross fancies of the Jews and Judaizers, who contend carnally for future events predicted by the Prophets concerning the restoration of the Jewish people. Let the prudent and Christian reader hold this rule of prophetic promises: what the Jews and our own, nay, not our own but Judaizing, interpreters contend will happen carnally, let us teach has already passed spiritually, lest on occasion of such fables and, as the Apostle says, unanswerable questions, we be compelled to Judaize.

Rom 11:26–27. "And as concerning this, that our Apostle said that all Israel shall be saved, when the fullness of the Gentiles shall have come in, he immediately confirms it from the prophecy of Isaiah, chapter 59, verse 20, according to the version of the LXX Interpreters: 'As it is written: There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. And this shall be My covenant with them, when I shall take away their sins.'" Out of Sion, that is, from the Jewish nation and from the very royal stock of David, or on account of Sion, as the Sixtine Edition has it, conformably to the Hebrew truth, the Redeemer shall come, who shall deliver men from the slavery of sin and the devil, and shall turn away iniquities from the posterity of Jacob—that is, shall blot out and pardon their sins. And this covenant which I made with their fathers shall be fulfilled in every respect when I shall take away their sins through Baptism and Penance, at the general conversion of the whole people. St. Jerome rendered the Hebrew text of Isaiah thus: "And the Redeemer shall come to Sion, and to them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord. This is My covenant with them, saith the Lord: My spirit that is upon thee, and My words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever." The version of the LXX has: "And he shall come for Sion's sake, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. And this shall be My covenant with them: My spirit that is upon thee..." Whence, then, are these words which the Apostle cites immediately afterward: "when I shall take away their sins"? They seem to be taken from another place of the same Prophet, namely Isaiah 27:8, where the LXX version reads: "Therefore iniquity shall be taken away from Jacob, and this shall be his blessing when I shall take away his sin." But our Vulgate, according to the Hebrew, reads: "Therefore by this shall the iniquity of the house of Jacob be purged, and this is all the fruit that the sin thereof should be taken away." Others think they are fetched from Jeremiah 31:31–34, where we read in our Vulgate: "Behold the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah... I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." Nor should this seem strange, since St. Paul sometimes combines several passages of the Prophets into one, as learned men before me have observed.

Rom 11:28–29. "As concerning the gospel, indeed, they are enemies for your sake; but as touching the election, they are most dear for the sake of the fathers." Therefore, as far as the Gospel is concerned, which they stubbornly contradict, they are hated by God, which has turned to your salvation, O Gentiles, whom God has taken in their place. But as far as the election is concerned, of that people above the other nations, to be as it were God's peculiar possession, as a flock to a shepherd, as servants to a master, as children to a father, they are most dear on account of the holy Patriarchs and the promises made to them and to their descendants. Which promises indeed shall be fulfilled when their far greater part shall be converted to the faith of Christ and saved. "For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance." For God’s promises are absolute, and the calling according to purpose—that is, which arises from predestination and eternal election to salvation—is immutable, and of such a kind that God cannot repent of them.

"As concerning the gospel, indeed, they are enemies for your sake." For the price of our redemption is the blood of Christ, which could only be shed by enemies. Here is that use of evils for the advancement of good. And what he adds, "but as touching the election, they are most dear for the sake of the fathers," shows from this that they are not enemies, but elect and beloved. But it is the custom of Scripture to speak of a part as if it were the whole, just as he praises the Corinthians in the first parts of his Epistle as if all were such, and later in some places of the same Epistle reproves them as if all were blameworthy on account of some who were such. Whoever diligently observes this custom of the Divine Scriptures, very frequently scattered throughout the whole body of his letters, resolves many things which seem to be contradictory. He therefore calls some enemies, others beloved, but because they were in one people, he seems to speak of the same persons as if they were the same. Although even from those very enemies who crucified the Lord, many were converted and appeared as elect. They were elect when converted, as far as the beginning of salvation is concerned; but as far as God’s foreknowledge is concerned, they were not then elected, but before the foundation of the world. He added "for the sake of the fathers," because what was promised to the fathers had to be fulfilled. Whence in chapter 15 of this Epistle he says: "For I say that Christ Jesus was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers."

"For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance," that is, without change, firmly fixed. To this calling belong all who are taught of God; all come to the Son; none of these perish, because whatever the Father has given Him, He shall lose nothing of it.

Rom 11:30–31. "For as you in time past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief: even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy." For you, once called from the Gentiles, did not believe God; nay, you formerly served false gods. Now, however, you have obtained mercy because of their unbelief—that is, on the occasion of their unbelief and obstinacy against the Gospel of God, you have been efficaciously called by God’s mercy and endowed with faith in Jesus Christ. So you, who once did not believe, have now obtained mercy; so also the Jews, after they fell away from the faith of Abraham, refused to receive Christ, and crucified Him, did not believe that God’s mercy through Christ pertained to you. God permitting and ordaining this unbelief, that they themselves too, by the example of the mercy shown to you, may flee to implore it through faith and repentance, at least at the end of the age, when they shall realize they have waited in vain for another Messiah, and thus obtain mercy. Neither should they despise you and exalt themselves against you as aliens from the promises, nor should you insult them as broken branches and despair of their salvation.

Rom 11:32. "For God has concluded all in unbelief, that He might have mercy on all." God has permitted all, that is, Jews and Gentiles, or by far the greatest multitude of both peoples—Gentiles for many ages before Christ’s advent, Jews after Christ’s preaching—to be shut up in unbelief as prisoners in a dungeon, from which they cannot escape by their own strength, that in His own time He might exercise His mercy upon both peoples, and that all might acknowledge that calling, justification, and salvation come not from merits, but from God’s gratuitous mercy, as altogether unowed, and given to those in whom He found no merits before faith, but to whom He gave faith and merits. "God has concluded all in unbelief." Theodoret interprets this as: He convicted all, both Jews and Gentiles, of unbelief.

Rom 11:33. "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!" O the profundity of the hidden and immense knowledge and wisdom of God, by which He from eternity foreknew all things, and administers and orders the things created by Him in a most wonderful and most just manner to the end of His glory! "How incomprehensible are His judgments," or, as the Greek word signifies, "inscrutable," choosing some, reprobating others, "and His ways past finding out!" The impervious and hidden reasons of divine providence. The operations of divine mercy and justice are secret and utterly impervious to human reason. "All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth," says the Royal Prophet. Therefore, His mercy and truth are unsearchable, because He has mercy on whom He will, not by justice but by the grace of mercy, and whom He will He hardens, not by iniquity but by the truth of vengeance. Yet this mercy and truth so meet together, because it is written: "Mercy and truth have met each other," so that neither mercy hinders the truth by which the deserving is punished, nor truth hinders the mercy by which the undeserving is delivered.

Rom 11:34–35. "For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who has first given to Him, and recompense shall be made him?" Who has the mind of the Lord thoroughly known and explored, unless He has revealed it? Or who is conscious of His counsels? For earthly kings have counselors who know their innermost thoughts, but God does not admit men to His counsels. Or who has first given to Him, and it shall be repaid to him? Who has anticipated God’s beneficence and grace by his own merits, so that God may repay him? This saying tends to the same end as that in Matthew 20:14: "Take what is yours and go..." As if the Apostle were to say: If anyone is not satisfied with the reasons of divine dispensation which I have hitherto brought forward, let him consider that it is not a matter of paying a debt or returning a favor, but of a mere gift; and everyone is the arbiter of his own gift. This question, "Who has known the mind of the Lord?" corresponds to knowledge; this, "Or who has been His counselor?" to wisdom; that last, "Or who has first given to Him?" to riches, says Theodoret.

Rom 11:36. "For of Him, and through Him, and in Him, are all things: to Him be glory forever. Amen." From Him, as the operating and first Author; through Him, as preserving and administering; in Him, or, as the Greek text signifies, unto Him as the ultimate end, are all things that are in heaven and on earth, and especially whatever good is in the elect, which leads them to salvation. "To Him be glory forever. Amen." So be it. For the end of all God’s works is His glory.

"For of Him, and through Him, and in Him, are all things." All things are of Him, as from the first operative power. All things are through Him, inasmuch as He makes all things through His wisdom. All things are in Him, as in the preserving goodness. These three, namely, power, wisdom, and goodness, are common to the three Divine Persons, but nevertheless power, which has the character of a principle, is specially attributed and appropriated to the Father, who is the principle of the whole Divinity; wisdom to the Son, who proceeds as the Word or as begotten Wisdom; goodness to the Holy Spirit, who proceeds as Love, whose object is goodness. And therefore, specially attributing these three to the individual persons, or appropriating them—if it is lawful to speak thus with the Scholastics—we can say: Of Him, namely, of the Father; through Him, namely, through the Son; in Him, namely, in the Holy Spirit, are all things. St. Augustine brings forward this passage against Maximinus the Arian. "If therefore," he says, "it is most truly said both of the Father and of the Son that of Him and through Him and in Him are all things, without doubt the equality of the Father and the Son is demonstrated. But if, because He did not name the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, but God and Lord, which can also be said of the Trinity itself, he wished to refer each of these three to each individual person, saying 'Of Him' on account of the Father, 'Through Him' on account of the Son, and 'In Him' on account of the Holy Spirit, why do you refuse to acknowledge this Trinity as one Lord God? Since He did not say 'Of them and through them and in them,' but said 'Of Him and through Him and in Him are all things,' nor did he say 'To them be glory,' but 'To Him be glory forever and ever. Amen.'"