Chosen Before the Foundation of the World

To begin. In the first book I take the words of Paul: “As he has chosen us before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and spotless before him.” I interpreted this as referring not, as Origen holds, to a choosing of those who had existed in an earlier state, but to the foreknowledge of God. And I close the discussion with these words: [a] “His statement that we were chosen before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him, that is, before God, belongs to the foreknowledge of God, to whom all things that are to be are already made, and are known before they come into being. So Paul was predestined in his mother’s womb; and Jeremiah, before his birth, is sanctified, chosen, strengthened, and, as a type of Christ, sent as a prophet to the nations.” [b]

Surely there is no crime in this explanation of the passage. Origen explained it in an unorthodox sense, but I followed the sense of the church. And since it is the duty of a commentator to record the opinions of many others, and I had promised in the preface that I would do this, I set down Origen’s interpretation as well, though without mentioning his name, which stirs up ill will. “Another,” I said, “who wishes to defend the justice of God, and to show that he does not choose people according to a prejudgment and foreknowledge of his own but according to the merits of those chosen, thinks that before the visible creation of sky, earth, sea, and all that is in them, there existed an invisible creation. Part of it consisted of souls, which, for certain causes known to God alone, were cast down into this valley of tears, this place of our affliction and our pilgrimage. “He thinks that the psalmist’s prayer applies to this, since the psalmist was in this low condition and longing to return to his former dwelling: ‘Woe is me that my stay is prolonged; I have lived in the dwellings of Kedar; my soul has had a long pilgrimage.’ And also the words of the apostle: ‘Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?’ and ‘It is better to return and to be with Christ’; and ‘Before I was brought low, I sinned.’ He adds much more of the same kind.” [c]

Now notice that I said, “Another who wishes to defend”; I did not say, “who succeeds in defending.” But perhaps you find a stumbling block in the fact that I condensed a very long discussion of Origen’s into a brief statement, so as to give the reader a glimpse of his meaning. If you declare me to be a secret follower of his because I left out nothing he said, I would ask you whether it was not necessary for me to do this in order to avoid your quibbles. Otherwise would you not have declared that I had kept silent on matters on which he had spoken boldly, and that in the Greek text his statements were much stronger than I made them out to be? So I put down everything I found in the Greek text, though in shorter form, so that his disciples would have nothing they could press on the ears of the Latins as something new. For it is easier for us to make light of things we know well than of things that catch us unprepared. But after I had set out Origen’s interpretations of the passage, I concluded this section with words to which I ask your attention: “The apostle does not say, ‘He chose us before the foundation of the world because we were then holy and without blemish,’ but, ‘He chose us that we should be holy and without blemish’; that is, that we who were not holy and without blemish before might become so afterward. This expression will apply even to sinners who turn to better things. And so the words remain true, ‘In your sight no one living will be counted righteous,’ that is, no one in his whole life, in the whole time he has existed in the world. “If the passage is understood in this way, it tells against the opinion that before the foundation of the world certain souls were chosen because of their holiness, and that they had none of the corruption of sinners. It is clear that Paul and those like him were not chosen because they were holy and without blemish, but were chosen and predestined so that in their later life, through their works and their virtues, they would become holy and without blemish.” [d]

After this statement of my opinion, does anyone dare to accuse me of agreeing with the heresy of Origen? It is now almost eighteen years since I composed those books, at a time when the name of Origen was highly esteemed in the world, and when his work On First Principles had not yet reached the ears of the Latins. And yet I clearly stated my belief and pointed out what I did not agree with. So even if my opponent could have pointed out anything heretical in other places, I should be held guilty only of carelessness, not of the perverse doctrines I have condemned both in this place and in my other works. [e]