Annotation CCLXXXVII
”He chose us in him before the constitution of the world.” — Ephesians 1:4
Whether souls [were] created before the world, and afterward cast into bodies for their [own] faults.
Rufinus chides Jerome with a long and bitter invective, because in the commentaries on the epistle to the Ephesians he followed the error of Origen — affirming that all souls were created before this corporeal world, in the invisible world, and, after the founding of this visible world, were cast down into that vale of tears, and thrust into bodies — some indeed for the punishment of the sins which they had committed before, but others not on account of their offenses, but for the erudition and mastership of the sinful souls. And the passages, in which Rufinus complains that Jerome wrote these [things], are these:
The FIRST, upon those words of Eph. 1, “He chose us before the constitution of the world.” The SECOND, upon that [text] of Eph. 1, “According to the good pleasure of his will.” The THIRD, upon that [text] of Eph. 1, “Unto the praise of the glory of his grace.” The FOURTH, upon that [text] of Eph. 1, “That we may be unto the praise of his glory, who before hoped.” The FIFTH, upon that [text] of Eph. 1, “The eyes of our heart illumined in the knowledge of him.” The SIXTH, upon that [text] of Eph. 3, “For this cause I, Paul, [am] bound in the Lord.”
The SEVENTH, upon that [text] of Eph. 6, “For which I perform an embassy in a chain.” The EIGHTH, upon that [text] to Philemon, “Epaphras, my fellow-captive, salutes thee.”
In all these passages Rufinus asserts that Jerome cunningly taught an error of this kind under the figure of another, unnamed person, in imitation of the rhetoricians — who, when they either fear to offend some, or desire to decline [avoid] odium, then, by a certain rhetorical artifice, bring forth their own opinion under the person of another. And he builds this up by four indications: first, that he does not name the author of that opinion, but only says, “Another,” he says, etc. Secondly, because he does not express whether that “other” is contrary to himself, or concordant [in agreement]; nor shows whether he himself is discordant or concordant with him. Thirdly, because he does not destroy his sayings, nor impugn [them], nor reprehend the author himself; but praises him, and calls [him] “diligent.” Fourthly, because the opinion set forth under another’s person he not only does not refute, nor condemn; but fortifies [it] with strong reasons, and with many testimonies of the divine scripture.
THIS accusation of Rufinus, Jerome, confuting [it] in the first Apology against him, answers: to the first conjecture, that he did not put down the names of the authors of that error, because it was superfluous to put, at each of the Apostle’s sayings, the names of those expositors, whom he had already named abundantly in the preface of the whole work. To the second suspicion he satisfies, saying that at the end of the chapter he showed sufficiently openly that he disagreed [was discordant] with that opinion which he had reported under another’s person, and had in that same place refuted [it]. The third conjecture he thus dissolves, [saying] that he refrained, out of zeal for modesty and Christian shamefastness, from reprehending those authors — because, since he was performing the office of a commentator, he ought not to carp at those whom he was partly imitating, and whose opinions he was translating into the Latin tongue; and that, if he praised them for diligence, calling [them] “diligent,” this matters little: since even thieves are wont to be called “diligent.” To the fourth conjecture he says that, together with the Origenist errors, he also brought forward the reasons and arguments upon which those errors leaned — that, opening to the readers all the opinion of Origen, and omitting nothing said by him, he might avoid the calumnies of the malevolent: lest they should say that Jerome had kept silent [the things] which had been forcibly said by Origen, and that he [Origen] argued more robustly in the Greek.