ACC ~ Acts 4 v12

HE EXTENDS THROUGHOUT HISTORY. AUGUSTINE: For “there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,” since “there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved,” and “in him God has defined to all men their faith, in that he has raised him from the dead.”Now without this faith, that is to say, without a belief in the one Mediator between God and humankind, the man Christ Jesus; without faith, I say, in his resurrection by which God has given assurance to all people and which no one could of course truly believe were it not for his incarnation and death; without faith, therefore, in the incarnation and death and resurrection of Christ, the Christian truth unhesitatingly declares that the ancient saints could not possibly have been cleansed from sin so as to have become holy and justified by the grace of God. And this is true both of the saints who are mentioned in holy Scripture and of those also who are not indeed mentioned therein but must yet be supposed to have existed—either before the deluge or in the interval between that event and the giving of the law or in the period of the law itself—not merely among the children of Israel, as the prophets, but even outside that nation, as for instance Job. For cleansing from sin was by the self-same faith. The one Mediator cleansed the hearts of these too, and there also was “shed abroad in them the love of God by the Holy Spirit,” “who blows where he wills,” not following people’s merits but even producing these very merits himself. For the grace of God will in no wise exist unless it be wholly free. ON ORIGINAL SIN 2.24.28.

SALVATION IS NOT IN ANY OTHER. BEDE: If the salvation of the world is in no other but in Christ alone, then the fathers of the Old Testament were saved by the incarnation and passion of the same Redeemer, by which we also believe and hope to be saved. For although the sacramental signs differed by reason of the times, nevertheless there was agreement in one and the same faith, because through the prophets they learned as something to come the same dispensation of Christ which we learned through the apostles as something which has been done. For there is no redemption of human captivity [to sinfulness] except in the blood of him who gave himself as a redemption for all. COMMENTARY ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 4.12.