First, that Scripture distinguishes terror from repentance.
First, that Scripture distinguishes terror from repentance.
Let us see the arguments with which Bellarmine expunges it from the number of parts. He gives four reasons: (I) “Scripture distinguishes terror from repentance: ‘Sorrow that is according to God works repentance, steadfast unto salvation’ (2 Cor. 7[:10]).”
We respond. (1) We understand the terrors produced in a sinner’s conscience by the Law as the grief over sins committed. But now, Bellarmine is denying that the word “sorrow” in these words of the apostle means grief over sins committed. Thus, on the basis of his hypothesis, this statement is foreign to the present question.
(2) But it neither should nor can be denied that, in this statement, “sorrow according to God” means grief over sins committed, because the context shows that it cannot be understood in any other way. For the apostle is setting up two sorrows: one, according to God, that is, one which is born of the Spirit of God moving hearts toward spiritual things so that we grieve over our loss of them and over our sins; the other is a sorrow of this world, which is born of the spirit of the world and is proper to the children of the world, because of which they grieve immoderately over the loss of temporal power, or are grieved and rage out of their impatience with reproach, or feel the constant biting of conscience without any comfort of the Word. Ambrose comments on this passage: “It is obvious that he who is sad because he has sinned is sad according to God, for he is grieving because He has done what God hates, and this pertains to the firmness of salvation. But as sorrow according to God works life (for he repents and hopes for God’s mercy), so also sorrow according to the world works death.”
Bellarmine retorts: “Should this grief over sins committed be contrition or repentance itself, how, then, could it be distinguished from repentance?”
We respond. This salutary sorrow according to God is understood as united with the life-giving comfort of the Spirit, for those who sorrow according to God in a salutary way experience life-giving comfort from God, because God, who is “the God of all comfort” (2 Cor. 1:3), dwells “with a humble and contrite spirit to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite” (Isa. 57:15). Thus the apostle declares in regard to this “sorrow according to God”: “It works repentance, steadfast unto salvation,” namely, by reason of the life-giving comfort of which we become partakers in no other way but by faith in Christ the Mediator, and also which alone causes salutary repentance. Hence Ambrose correctly adds: “Consequently, sorrow according to God works life because it repents and hopes for God’s mercy.”
Bellarmine does not yet allow himself to be satisfied, but presses this which the apostle says in the same Epistle ([2 Cor.] 2:4): “I wrote to you with much affliction and anguish not to sadden you but so that you would know what love I have for you.” And: “I rejoice, not because you were saddened, but because you were saddened unto repentance” ([2 Cor.] 7:9). But [Bellarmine thinks] that surely the apostle would not say these things if he understood grief to mean the sadness that anguishes a person because he has offended God. For he would not say, “I wrote to you not that you would grieve over sin,” since he desired this thing very intensely. Nor would he say, “I do not rejoice because you were saddened,” since sinners becoming sorry that they have sinned is something that must be rejoiced over.
We respond. The reality of the situation shows that the grief of the world described above must be understood to mean both things. Therefore the apostle is excluding only the former but not that salutary sorrow according to God, for he clearly adds in the latter passage: “I rejoice, not because you were saddened, but because you were saddened unto repentance,” that is, because you were rebuked by this salutary sorrow according to God, which works salutary and unregretted [ἀμεταμέλητον] repentance. Ambrose comments on the aforementioned passage: “Thus he says that he rejoiced because they were saddened with shame and not with wrath; because a person who has felt judgment and suffers shame promises to correct himself, but someone who is angry demonstrates that he will become worse.” On the basis of all this it is clear that sorrow according to God, or this salutary grief over sins committed, is different from repentance but is not totally separate from it.
(3) Someone may say: “Because the efficient cause is extrinsic, it is not part of the essence of the thing. But the apostle has already established sorrow according to God as the efficient cause of repentance. Therefore it is not a part of the same essence.”
We respond. In no way does the apostle claim that godly grief works repentance simply and absolutely. Rather, he adds that it works “repentance, unregretted unto salvation.” Therefore he is drawing a distinction between true, salutary repentance and fruitless, destructive grief. He says that the former is “performed” (ἀπεργάζεσθαι) or established by sorrow according to God, which always has the life-giving comfort of the Spirit connected with it; but the latter springs from the sorrow of the world, to which, consequently, he attributes the working of death antithetically.