Prior Book | Prior Chapter | Prior Verse | Next Verse | Next Chapter | Next Book | Viewing NASB and Amplified 2015 | |
NASB | Romans 9:16 So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Romans 9:16 So then God's choice is not dependent on human will, nor on human effort [the totality of human striving], but on God who shows mercy [to whomever He chooses--it is His sovereign gift]. |
Subject: Reformation Light in the Middle Ages |
Bible Note: "I was at one time, while still a student of philosophy, a vain fool, far from the true knowledge of God, and held captive in opposing error. From time to time I heard theologians’ treating of the questions of Grace and Free Will, and the party of Pelagius appeared to me to have the best of the argument. For I rarely heard anything said of grace in the lectures of the philosophers, except in an ambiguous sense; but every day I heard them teach that we are the masters of our own free acts, and that it stands in our own power to do either good or evil, to be either virtuous or vicious, and such like. And when I heard now and then in church a passage read from the Apostle which exalted grace and humbled free-will,—such, e.g., as that word in Romans ix., ‘So then it is not in him that willeth, nor in him that runneth, but in God that showeth mercy,’ and other like places,—I had no liking for such teaching, for towards grace I was still unthankful. I believed also with the Manicheans, that the Apostle, being a man, might possibly err from the path of truth in any point of doctrine. But afterwards, and before I had become a student of theology, the truth before mentioned struck upon me like a beam of grace, and it seemed to me as if I beheld in the distance, under a transparent image of truth, the grace of God as it is prevenient both in time and nature to all good deeds—that is to say, the gracious will of God which precedently wills that he who merits salvation shall be saved, and precedently works this merit of it in him, God in truth being in all movements the primary Mover. Wherefore, also, I give thanks to Him who has freely given me this grace." --Thomas Bradwardine (1290-1349) (AKA Doctor Profundus) |