Ambrose of Milan

Overview

Ambrose (c. 339-397) was the Roman provincial governor of Aemilia-Liguria before he was acclaimed bishop of Milan in 374, an office he held until his death.¹ He is remembered chiefly as the teacher who instructed and baptized Augustine of Hippo, and as a bishop who held that a question of Christian faith belonged before the church rather than the emperor’s court, a stand he made good against an Arian-leaning imperial court and, later, against Emperor Theodosius himself.² Herman Bavinck counts him, alongside Tertullian, among the Latin fathers whose teaching on sin, grace, and merit passed into Augustine’s own theology.³

Life and Ministry

Ambrose was still a layman, serving as governor, when factional rioting broke out in Milan over the choice of a successor to the city’s Arian bishop; the emperor sent him to the church to keep order during the election.⁴ According to the traditional account preserved in Britannica, the crowd acclaimed Ambrose himself bishop on the spot, and, though he was still an unbaptized catechumen, he was baptized and consecrated within the week.¹

As bishop, Ambrose presided over the Council of Aquileia in 381, which deposed two Arian bishops and issued the judgment Calvin later quoted approvingly: “Poverty in the priests of the Lord is glorious.”⁵ In 386 the Arian-sympathizing empress-regent Justina demanded a Milan basilica for Arian worship and tried to force Ambrose from his see when he refused. Ambrose occupied the basilica with his congregation rather than hand it over, telling the emperor’s officers, in a sermon Calvin cites, “I will not desert the post committed to me, but, if forced, I will not resist: prayers and tears are our weapons.”² He argued in a letter from the same standoff that “in a question of faith… bishops are wont to judge Christian emperors, not emperors to judge bishops,” and that he would not bring the church’s own faith before the emperor’s civil tribunal.² The court backed down.

The following year, 387, Ambrose baptized Augustine, whose conversion is traditionally linked to Ambrose’s preaching in Milan.¹ In 390, after Theodosius ordered the massacre of thousands of civilians at Thessalonica in reprisal for a riot, Ambrose excommunicated the emperor. Theodosius submitted: he laid aside the imperial insignia and publicly did penance in the church at Milan before Ambrose restored him to communion.⁶ Ambrose died in Milan in 397.¹

Theological Contribution

Ambrose’s writings on sin and grace fed directly into Augustine’s mature theology. Bavinck groups Ambrose with Tertullian as sources from which Augustine drew “the doctrine of humanity, sin, grace, faith, satisfaction, and merit,” alongside Cyprian’s ecclesiology and a strand of Neoplatonism that also reached Augustine partly through Ambrose’s preaching.³ Charles Hodge cites Ambrose, alongside Athanasius and Cyprian, among the fathers who taught that humanity sinned “in Adam… as in a mass,” corrupted through him so that all who are born of him are born under sin, a patristic antecedent to the doctrine of original sin.⁷

He read Old Testament narrative as a witness to justification by faith rather than works. In arguing against a merit-based reading of justification, Calvin approvingly cites Ambrose’s comment on Isaac’s blessing of Jacob: interpreting the “smell” of Jacob’s garments (Gen. 27:27) as the covering of sin by faith rather than by works, Ambrose wrote that “carnal infirmity is an impediment to works, but errors of conduct are covered by the brightness of faith, which merits the pardon of faults.”⁸

His own corpus, cited widely by later Reformed writers, ranged across pastoral, sacramental, and trinitarian subjects. The Particular Baptist theologian John Gill drew on more than twenty-five separate works of Ambrose in his own writing: De Officiis Ministrorum on the church’s offices, De Virginibus for a historical anecdote, two sermons on Lenten fasting, a sermon on the feast days of Peter and Paul, and De Spiritu Sancto on the Holy Spirit’s deity.⁹ Gill also noted what he judged a “loose expression” in Ambrose’s De Initiandis (De Mysteriis) touching the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist.⁹

Historical Significance

Ambrose’s resistance to Justina and his excommunication of Theodosius became, for later Reformed writers, a standing example of the church’s independence from civil power in matters of faith and discipline. Calvin cites both episodes at length in the Institutes, using Ambrose’s “singular moderation… prudence, magnanimity, and boldness” to argue that a Christian magistrate is subject to the church’s discipline like any other member, and that questions of doctrine belong to the church’s own tribunal rather than the state’s.²⁶ The same episode, in Calvin’s telling, illustrates why bishops resisted imperial encroachment only “to prevent irreligious princes from impeding the Church,” not to claim a general immunity from civil authority.²

Ambrose’s influence on later theology also runs through Augustine: the preaching that first drew Augustine to Milan’s church, the baptism that received him into it, and the patristic material on sin and grace that Augustine absorbed into his own doctrine of grace.³

Related Doctrines

External links

References

“Saint Ambrose,” Encyclopædia Britannica, accessed 2026, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Ambrose. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Calvin, Institutes, book 4, chap. 11, secs. 15-16. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 2, “The History and Literature of Dogmatic Theology.” ↩ ↩² ↩³
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 4, chap. 4, sec. 13. ↩
Calvin, Institutes, book 4, chap. 5, sec. 17. ↩
Calvin, Institutes, book 4, chap. 12, sec. 7. ↩ ↩²
Charles Hodge, “Chapter VIII. Sin,” in Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 128-276. ↩
Calvin, Institutes, book 3, chap. 11, sec. 15. ↩
Steven Tshombe Godet, “John Gill: Patristic Scholar,” in “The Trinitarian Theology of John Gill (1697-1771): Context, Sources, and Controversy” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2015), 147-148. ↩ ↩²