Voices and influences
Ambrosiaster
The anonymous Roman commentator on Paul whom the church read for a thousand years believing he was Ambrose.
Summary
This site quotes Ambrosiaster 37 times across 7 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived died 384.
- Quoted here most in 2 Corinthians: 14 of 37.
Ambrosiaster
- Lived
- died 384
- Tradition
- Patristic
- Portrait
- None held under a licence this site can print
5 of 37 quotations
Own words
Quoted at 50 words or fewer, because Ambrosiaster's works are in copyright.
God is no respecter of persons. Even Saul and Judas had been good at one time. How could someone who was not good have a share in the Savior's ministry? In the plan of God it was decided that we would be considered worthy for …
Commentary (church-history corpus), 384
Acts 1:17 He was one of our number and shared in this ministry.” BSB
These things are true, because this is the task of the law: to teach the ignorant, to subject the wicked to God, to provoke those who by the worship of idols are ungodly to trust in a better hope by the promise which is given …
COMMENTARY ON PAUL'S EPISTLES, 384
Romans 2:20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— BSB
"Forgive," "cover," "not reckon"—all amount to one and the same thing. For all three are given and received in the same way.Paul has three categories to cover the different types of sin. The first category is that of wickedness or ungodliness, in that the Creator …
COMMENTARY ON PAUL'S EPISTLES, 384
Romans 4:8 Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.” BSB
What did Abraham believe? He believed that he would have a descendant, a son, in whom all the nations would be justified by faith while they were still uncircumcised, as Abraham then was.
COMMENTARY ON PAUL'S EPISTLES, 384
Romans 4:10 In what context was it credited? Was it after his circumcision, or before? It was not after, but before. BSB
The quotation is from Deuteronomy [30:12], but the last phrase is the apostle's own addition. He says that someone who does not doubt about the hope which is in Christ has the righteousness of faith.
COMMENTARY ON PAUL'S EPISTLES, 384
Romans 10:7 or, ‘Who will descend into the Abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).” BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Ambrosiaster 37 times across 7 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Ambrosiaster is a nickname for a man whose name was lost. It was coined by Erasmus in the sixteenth century, and it means roughly "the pseudo-Ambrose" — because for a thousand years the church read this author's commentary on Paul believing it was the work of Ambrose of Milan. It is not. What can be said with confidence comes from the text itself. He wrote at Rome. He wrote during the pontificate of Damasus, which fixes him between 366 and 384. He used the Old Latin Bible, not Jerome's new Vulgate, which is one reason his commentary matters: it preserves the Latin text of Paul as it stood before Jerome revised it. He knew Roman law and Roman civic life well, and he wrote for readers who did too. His achievement is the first complete Latin commentary on the thirteen letters of Paul. It is not allegorical and not showy. He explains what the apostle is saying, sentence by sentence, in ordinary Latin, with attention to the historical situation of each church Paul was writing to. Where a passage is hard, he says so and gives his best reading. Augustine used him. Pelagius used him. The medieval schools used him constantly, believing all the while that they were reading Ambrose. A second large work, the Questions on the Old and New Testament, is generally credited to the same hand. It travelled under Augustine's name, which is the same accident happening twice. His reading of Romans 5:12 became one of the most consequential sentences in Western theology. The Old Latin rendered Paul's Greek as "in whom all sinned," referring the phrase to Adam, and Ambrosiaster read it that way. Augustine took the reading from him and built on it, and the doctrine of original sin in the West carries the mark of a Latin translation that an anonymous Roman commentator explained without fuss. Guesses at his identity have included Isaac the converted Jew, the Roman official Decimius Hilarianus Hilarius, and others. None has held. What is left is the work: clear, sober, unmistakably the product of a trained mind, and completely anonymous. Sources: Ambrosiaster, Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 81); Alexander Souter, A Study of Ambrosiaster (1905); The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), s.v. "Ambrosiaster".
37 quotations across 7 books
Where this voice is quoted
Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,
“Paul begins this epistle differently, because his subject matter is different. He writes that he is an apostle by the will of God, alluding to those false apostles who had not been sent by Christ and whose teaching was not true.”
Or don’t you know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”
“For, as it is said, the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her. Sexual immorality joins them together as one, just as in nature, two become one. As it is written, 'They shall become one flesh' (Genesis 2:24).”
But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.
“A woman may not marry if she has left her husband because of fornication or apostasy, if he wishes to have sexual relations with her.”
Even if I am not an apostle to others, surely I am to you. For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.
“Those Jewish believers who nevertheless continued to observe the law of Moses denied that Paul was an apostle because he taught that it was no longer necessary to be circumcised or to observe the sabbath.”
Do I say this from a human perspective? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing?
“Paul indicates here that his position corresponds to the teaching of Scripture and that his refusal to accept any payment from the Corinthians was with good reason.”
We should not test Christ, as some of them did, and were killed by snakes.
“The Jews were putting Christ to the test, because it was he who spoke to Moses. Paul is warning us here not to do the same as they did.”
If I partake in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks?
“Paul is saying that an idolater can have it both ways. On the one hand, he can glory in his idols, and on the other hand he can attack the apostle for eating what has been sacrificed to them, even if the latter does so…”
Don’t you have your own homes in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?
“The false apostles had sown divisions among them so that they were possessive of their offerings. Although they were all blessed with one and the same prayer, those who had not offered or who had nothing to offer were covered with shame and did not…”
whereas our presentable parts have no such need. But God has composed the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it,
“We do not have to add anything to those whose eagerness for expertise and respectability is obvious—the honor due to them is given already.”
And if it is advisable for me to go also, they can travel with me.
“Paul is saying that if the collection is generous, he can go too. For if a bishop is going, he ought to take a large amount with him.”
My love be with all of you in Christ Jesus. Amen.
“Because the Corinthians did not love one another, Paul gives them this teaching from himself, in order that they might learn to love each other with the same love with which they were loved by the apostle, not with carnal emotion but in Christ Jesus.”