I gotta have my orange juice.

I wrote previously:

Earlier, when Paul says that “none is righteous” (Rom. 3:10), he is obviously using it in a different sense. He is quoting Psalm 14, where David applies this statement to “the fool,” to “evildoers” and to the “children of man,” but takes comfort because “God is with the generation of the righteous” (i.e., the children of God). It is possible that Paul is applying Psalm 14 in a new direction, to all people everywhere. But there are better passages he could have used if he had wanted to make that point (e.g., Ps. 51:5). It seems more likely to me that he is saying something more subtle. Paul is not saying that no one anywhere is righteous; rather, he is making the provocative application of Psalm 14 to the Jews. They have ceased to be God’s righteous people and have become boastful evildoers, enemies of Jesus and his church.

Augustine agrees:

When, therefore, we look for the city of God in these seventy-two nations, we cannot affirm that while they had but one lip, that is, one language, the human race had departed from the worship of the true God, and that genuine godliness had survived only in those generations which descend from Shem through Arphaxad and reach to Abraham; but from the time when they proudly built a tower to heaven, a symbol of godless exaltation, the city or society of the wicked becomes apparent. Whether it was only disguised before, or non-existent; whether both cities remained after the flood, — the godly in the two sons of Noah who were blessed, and in their posterity, and the ungodly in the cursed son and his descendants, from whom sprang that mighty hunter against the Lord, — is not easily determined. For possibly — and certainly this is more credible — there were despisers of God among the descendants of the two sons, even before Babylon was founded; and worshippers of God among the descendants of Ham. Certainly neither race was ever obliterated from earth. For in both the Psalms in which it is said, They are all gone aside, they are altogether become filthy; there is none that does good, no, not one, we read further, Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? Who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the Lord. There was then a people of God even at that time. And therefore the words, There is none that does good, no, not one, were said of the sons of men, not of the sons of God. For it had been previously said, God looked down from heaven upon the sons of men, to see if any understood and sought after God; and then follow the words which demonstrate that all the sons of men, that is, all who belong to the city which lives according to man, not according to God, are reprobate.

—Augustine, City of God, Book XVI

Augustine the patriarch stan:

There [Abraham] called his wife his sister, and told no lie. For she was this also, because she was near of blood; just as Lot, on account of the same nearness, being his brother’s son, is called his brother. Now he did not deny that she was his wife, but held his peace about it, committing to God the defense of his wife’s chastity, and providing as a man against human wiles; because if he had not provided against the danger as much as he could, he would have been tempting God rather than trusting in Him. We have said enough about this matter against the calumnies of Faustus the Manichæan. At last what Abraham had expected the Lord to do took place. For Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who had taken her to him as his wife, restored her to her husband on being severely plagued. . . .

[Isaac] wished to bless the elder son, and instead of the elder, who was hairy, unwittingly blessed the younger, who put himself under his father’s hands, having covered himself with kid-skins, as if bearing the sins of others. Lest we should think this guile of Jacob’s was fraudulent guile, instead of seeking in it the mystery of a great thing, the Scripture has predicted in the words just before, Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a simple man, dwelling at home. Some of our writers have interpreted this, without guile. But whether the Greek ἄλαστος means without guile, or simple, or rather without reigning, in the receiving of that blessing what is the guile of the man without guile? What is the guile of the simple, what the fiction of the man who does not lie, but a profound mystery of the truth? But what is the blessing itself? See, he says, the smell of my son is as the smell of a full field which the Lord has blessed: therefore God give you of the dew of heaven, and of the fruitfulness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine: let nations serve you, and princes adore you: and be lord of your brethren, and let your father’s sons adore you: cursed be he that curses you, and blessed be he that blesses you. The blessing of Jacob is therefore a proclamation of Christ to all nations. It is this which has come to pass, and is now being fulfilled. . . . So, when the elder son claims the promised blessing, Isaac is greatly afraid, and wonders when he knows that he has blessed one instead of the other, and demands who he is; yet he does not complain that he has been deceived, yea, when the great mystery is revealed to him, in his secret heart he at once eschews anger, and confirms the blessing. Who then, he says, has hunted me venison, and brought it me, and I have eaten of all before you came, and have blessed him, and he shall be blessed? Who would not rather have expected the curse of an angry man here, if these things had been done in an earthly manner, and not by inspiration from above?

—Augustine, City of God, Book XVI

I’m not surprised at Augustine’s inerrantism, but I am impressed and surprised at the great blend of caution and conviction in his interpretive maximalism:

But we have not now time to pursue this subject; and, indeed, we have already dwelt upon it in the work we wrote against Faustus the Manichean, who denies that there is anything prophesied of Christ in the Hebrew books. It may be that one man’s exposition excels another’s, and that ours is not the best; but all that is said must be referred to this city of God we speak of, which sojourns in this wicked world as in a deluge, at least if the expositor would not widely miss the meaning of the author. . . .

Now any one may object to this interpretation, and may give another which harmonizes with the rule of faith. . . Or any better interpretation may be given, so long as the reference to this city is maintained. And the same statement I would make of all the remaining particulars in this passage which require exposition, viz., that although different explanations are given, yet they must all agree with the one harmonious Catholic faith.

Yet no one ought to suppose either that these things were written for no purpose, or that we should study only the historical truth, apart from any allegorical meanings; or, on the contrary, that they are only allegories, and that there were no such facts at all, or that, whether it be so or no, there is here no prophecy of the church. For what right-minded man will contend that books so religiously preserved during thousands of years, and transmitted by so orderly a succession, were written without an object, or that only the bare historical facts are to be considered when we read them? . . .

[Here Augustine launches a lengthy and skillful attack on those “who contend that these things never happened, but are only figures setting forth other things.”]

. . . But none but a contentious man can suppose that there was no prefiguring of the church in so manifold and circumstantial a detail. For the nations have already so filled the church, and are comprehended in the framework of its unity, the clean and unclean together, until the appointed end, that this one very manifest fulfillment leaves no doubt how we should interpret even those others which are somewhat more obscure, and which cannot so readily be discerned. And since this is so, if not even the most audacious will presume to assert that these things were written without a purpose, or that though the events really happened they mean nothing, or that they did not really happen, but are only allegory, or that at all events they are far from having any figurative reference to the church; if it has been made out that, on the other hand, we must rather believe that there was a wise purpose in their being committed to memory and to writing, and that they did happen, and have a significance, and that this significance has a prophetic reference to the church, then this book, having served this purpose, may now be closed, that we may go on to trace in the history subsequent to the deluge the courses of the two cities — the earthly, that lives according to men, and the heavenly, that lives according to God.

—Augustine, City of God, Book XV