Annotation CCXXX

”Separated unto the gospel of God.” — Romans 1:1

On the cause of predestination.

Origen, in the first book of the commentaries on the epistle to the Romans, inquiring into the causes of this separation, is thought to assert that the foreknowledge of merits is the cause of eternal predestination — which indeed seems to furnish an occasion to the Pelagian error. His words run thus: “BUT WE say that Paul was chosen neither by chance, nor by a natural difference, but that He — who knows all [things] before they come to be — gave to him the causes of his own election in himself. Therefore Paul, [in] that he is said [to be] ‘separated unto the gospel,’ and separated from the womb of his mother — the causes and merits, by which he ought to have been separated, He saw, from whom the heart is not hidden. For he foresaw that [Paul] would labor more abundantly than all the rest in the gospel; that he would preach the gospel in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness — lest perhaps, while he preached to others, he himself should be made reprobate. These [things], therefore, and [things] like these, and many others concerning him, Jesus, foreseeing [them] in the womb of [his] mother, separated him for these [reasons] unto the gospel. Which also Paul himself, discoursing more fully in what follows, says:¹ ‘Because whom he foreknew, he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of his Son,’ etc. — evidently showing that those whom God foreknew would be such [as] to conform themselves to Christ in [his] sufferings, those same [ones] he also predestinated [to be] conformable and like to his image, and to [his] glory. The foreknowledge of God, therefore, precedes — by which they are known who are going to have in themselves labors and virtues; and thus predestination follows. Nor, again, will the foreknowledge be thought the cause of predestination. For [that] which, among men, the merit of each is weighed from past deeds — this, with God, is judged from future [deeds].” See below, Annotation 251.