Does God, then, not will to punish sinners? Yet he punishes them in very fact, and assuredly he punishes willingly, not unwillingly. In what manner, therefore, is he said not to will to punish sinners? Namely, because a) he does not exercise his rigor before, through the greatness of mercy and by setting threats before them, he has striven that sinners should not collide with the severity of justice; because b) even when he obeys severity and punishes sinners in the present life, by the penalties inflicted he seeks salvation rather than vengeance; and because c) he is not angry with them from himself and of his own accord, but as though compelled by the atrocity of their sins. For he is angry with them and takes punitive notice by that will which is stirred by an extrinsic cause and which for this reason is called the second and consequent will.
Indeed, by the first will, which derives its origin from intrinsic goodness, God is angry with no one and loves all; and by this will, as Jerome writes1:
The Creator of all has care not only of Judah and Israel, but of all the nations; and according to the Apostle2, those who have sinned without the law perish without the law, and those who committed offenses under the law are judged by the law of the Lord.
For the Lord3:
Regards all men equally, and all the tribes of Israel… . Because the Lord, without any acceptance of persons, regards both the faith of the nations and the faithlessness of the Circumcision, and is equally the God of all: placing the grave weight of his sentence upon some and resting in the seat of others.
Jerome teaches this much more illustriously when, having set before himself this inquiry4, “It is therefore asked how God has made known to us in all wisdom and prudence5 the mystery of his will,” he responds with these words6 in their entirety:
And indeed this must first be understood simply: that the mystery of his will is our redemption through the blood of his Son and the remission of sins according to the riches of his grace, in which7 he abounded toward us.
Altogether eminent are the things which Chromatius has concerning this mystery of the divine will in his commentary upon the Lord’s Prayer8, writing:
Next he says, “Thy will be done, as in heaven and on earth.” Here also the rationale of understanding is the same. For there is no one who can resist and contradict God, so that he should not do what he wills, since by his will all things subsist both in heaven and on earth; but we pray that his will may be done in us. And the will of God is that, believing in him with the whole heart, we should fulfill these things which he commands to be done. Concerning this will of God the Apostle testifies9, saying: “The will of God is your sanctification, that you abstain from carnal concupiscences.” Concerning this also the Lord spoke in the Gospel10, saying: “But this is the will of my Father who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life.” When, therefore, we say, “Thy will be done11, as in heaven and on earth,” we pray this: that just as his will is faithfully kept by the angels in heaven, so too by us the aid of his favor may be entreated with religious and faithful devotion.
To the same mystery of the divine will must be attributed “that,” as Paulinus of Milan testifies12, “God the Father awaited the nations unto repentance for so long, that through the advent of his Son he might recall them from the worship of idolatry to knowledge of himself.” Nor is it lawful to refer to any other source the innumerable benefits, as much natural as supernatural, by which God has at no time failed to enrich the human family and which Zeno of Verona—an eminent doctor of the fourth century, distinguished by the praises of Ambrose13, Gregory14, the Anonymous Writer of Pepin15, and Ratherius16—embraced in these words17:
Now, therefore, let us see whence true charity comes, where it subsists, and to whom it is owed above all. Certainly to him who made man; who delivered to him his own likeness as the gift of perpetual charity; who gave him the globe of the earth; who subjected to his power all the elements of the world together with their living creatures; who commanded the years, seasons, months, nights, days, and the two most brilliant chariots of the royal orbs always to serve him, as a gift, by the delight of their alternation; who, when he had been killed by the evilly sweet poisons of the aforesaid love and submerged in the infernal seat, gave him life through the mystery18 of his majesty and enriched him besides with participation in the heavenly kingdom. O charity, how pious and how opulent! O how powerful! He who does not have you has nothing. You were able to change God into man19. You caused him, made small, to journey for a little while away from the immensity of his majesty. You bound him for nine months in the virginal prison. You restored Eve in Mary. You renewed Adam in Christ. You provided the sacred cross unto salvation for a world already lost. You emptied death by teaching God to die. It is yours that, when the Son of almighty God is killed by men, neither of the two is angry… . You—
—make men diverse in morals, ages, and dominion, from one nature, into one spirit, one body. You permit glorious martyrs to be separated from the confession of the Christian name by no torments, no novelty of death, no rewards, no friendships, no affections—things surely worse, through the biting force of piety, than every torturer. You are content to be naked so that you may clothe the naked. To you hunger is fattening. If the needy and hungry man has eaten your bread, it is your wealth to possess as wholly for mercy whatever you possess. You alone do not know how to be asked. You immediately rescue the oppressed who are placed in any distress, even with loss to yourself. You are the eye of the blind. You are the foot of the lame. You are the most faithful shield of widows. You are a better parent of orphans than both parents together. Either mercy or joy never permits your eyes to be dry. You so love your enemies that no one can discern what difference there is between them and those dear to you. You, I say, join heavenly mysteries to human things, and human mysteries to heavenly things. You guard divine things. You command in the Father20. You obey yourself in the Son21. You exult in the Holy Spirit. Although you are one in three, you are divided in no way and are moved by no calumny of human curiosity. From the paternal fountain you are poured forth entire in the Son22, and you do not depart. Rightly are you called God, because you alone turn the power of the Trinity23.
Footnotes
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Commentary on Amos, book I, chap. II, col. 240, works, vol. VI. ↩
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Rom. II. ↩
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Commentary on Zechariah, book II, chap. IX, col. 857, works, vol. VI. ↩
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Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians, book I, chap. I, col. 554. ↩
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These are Paul’s words, Eph. I.9. ↩
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Ibid., col. 555. ↩
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Another reading: “which.” ↩
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Tractate XIII, n. IV, p. 348, in Gallandius, vol. VIII. ↩
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I Thess. IV.3. ↩
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John VI.40. ↩
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Matt. VI.10. ↩
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On the Blessings of the Patriarchs, chap. II, n. 5, p. 36, in Gallandius, vol. IX. ↩
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Epistle V to Syagrius, bishop of Verona, n. 1. ↩
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Dialogues, book III, chap. X. ↩
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In the rhythm On the Praises of Verona. ↩
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On Contempt for the Canons, part I, p. 952, vol. I of Acherius’s Spicilegium, and in the Synodical Letter to the Presbyters, p. 377. ↩
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Book I, tractate II, § IX, pp. 24–25, Verona edition, 1739. ↩
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Just as it is all one to the Fathers to say either sacrament or mystery, so it is customary for them to signify the Incarnation of the Only-begotten by the name both of sacrament and of mystery. In this matter they had Paul going before them, I Tim. III.16. ↩
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Although these things seem Eutychian in outward appearance, they are nevertheless orthodox in Zeno, who willed nothing else to be signified there than that the Son of God was truly made man. For it was enough for him, as we understand from book II, tractate VIII, n. 2, and tractate IX, n. 2, that “the Only-begotten Son of God, preserving what he was, meditated becoming what he was not.” ↩
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The Catholic sense in which the Father is said to command and the Son to obey is found in Zeno, book III, tractates I–VI. ↩
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The Father is said to obey himself commanding in the Son insofar as, according to John XIV.10, the things which the Son does, the Father also works. ↩
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I would more gladly read “into the Son,” when the things contained in book II, tractate XVI are compared. ↩
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“This passage,” write the Ballerini brothers, “appears corrupt and obscure. That God indeed is named from power actually operative is clear from several opinions of the Fathers, which you may see in Denis Petau, vol. I, On Theological Dogmas, book VIII, chap. VIII. But why charity is called God by reason of the power which charity alone turns, one cannot plainly understand unless one explains it thus: namely, that charity alone, by which God loves himself and us, brought it about that he, intending to communicate himself outwardly, exercised power in the creation of the world, so that, namely, there might be those in whom the divine perfections would shine forth and whom he might make participants in his goodness.” ↩