While almost all of the works in this vault use Victorian translations, due to the English translations of this commentary being in copyright, it was machine-translated (by Claude, 2026) from the public-domain Latin. It has not been checked by a human translator.
Commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, long printed among the works of Ambrose. Its author, whom Erasmus first called “Ambrosiaster”, wrote at Rome while Damasus was bishop there (366–384). Chapter 9 of the Epistle; the verse numbers are the Benedictine editors’.
(Verses 1–3.) I say the truth in Christ Jesus, I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I myself did wish to be accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites. Since above he seems to speak against the Jews, who think they are justified by the Law, now, to show his good will and affection towards them, he says, with his conscience as witness, that he speaks in Christ Jesus and in the Holy Spirit, so that he may not be disbelieved as though he were their enemy. That is why he calls as witnesses Christ and the Holy Spirit, from whom nothing is hidden: witnesses whose testimony cannot be rejected, and who bear witness to the Apostle in this way, by commending him through the power of the signs which they worked through him. For since the protection of Christ is so great, and He showed a singular love towards the human race, and glorious and immortal rewards have been promised by His favour, he grieves for his own race, which is his according to the flesh, because by their unbelief they have deprived themselves of this everlasting and saving benefit. So he says, “I did wish”, not “I wish”; for he knows that it cannot happen that so honourable a member, with no fault going before, should be cut off from the Christian body. Yet he shows his affection and love towards his race.
(Verse 4.) To whom pertaineth the adoption of sons. He proves that he grieves with good reason, when he proclaims the praise of their race: because those who were once adopted sons have made void the affection and grace of God the Father. He adds still more, so as to make others too grieve for them, saying:
(Verse 5.) And the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom Christ came according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. He recounts so many glories of the nobility and dignity of the Jewish race and of its promises, as to strike everyone with grief for them: because by not receiving the Saviour they have lost the prerogative of the fathers and the merit of the promise, and have become worse than the Gentiles, whom formerly they abhorred because they were without God. For it is a heavier evil to have lost a dignity than never to have had it. Meanwhile he says of the Saviour: Who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. For when no mention is made of the Father’s name, and the discourse is about Christ, there can be no putting off calling Him God. For Scripture often, for the sake of confessing one God, when it speaks of God the Father and joins the Son to God, calls the Father God and the Son Lord. But if anyone thinks that who is God is not said of Christ, let him name the person of whom it is said: for in this place no mention has been made of God the Father. But what wonder is it if in this place he should declare with open voice that Christ is God over all, when in another epistle he confirmed this sense in these words, saying: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, things on earth, and things under the earth (Philippians 2:10)? These are all the things over which Christ is God. For apart from these there is nothing else, so as to prevent Christ being God over all; nor can every creature bow the knee except to God. Thus when the apostle John, unaware, wished to worship an angel as God, he heard from him: See thou do it not, for I am thy fellow servant. Worship God (Revelation 19:10). And the Lord would certainly not have allowed Himself to be worshipped unless He were God; otherwise He would have to be said to have usurped it and to have sinned — which God forbid — since He Himself, rebuking the devil, showed that the Lord God is to be worshipped and He alone served (Matthew 4:10). Nothing, then, is taken from God the Father when Christ is worshipped as God; because, when it is said that God alone is to be served, Christ too is served. For he says in another place: He that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God (Romans 14:18). What then remains, but that the Father be believed God and the Son God, and both none the less one God? For whether anyone worships the Father or the Son, he is said to worship one God; and in serving the Father or the Son, service is rendered to one God. There is, then, no distinction: because he who worships the Son worships the Father also, and he who serves the Father serves the Son also. And to teach that this confession of His deity is made without flattery, he put Amen at the end, that is, “truly”, to show that Christ is in truth God over all, blessed for ever.