Ambrosiaster And Sola Fide

It has recently been brought to my attention that some Protestants are under the impression that the Church Father commonly called Ambrosiaster (due to his works having been mistaken for Ambrose’s up until the seventeenth century) was a proto-Lutheran in that they claim he taught the doctrine of salvation by Faith Alone (Sola Fide). 

Now, did Ambrosiaster use the phrase, Sola Fide? Sure. Did he mean by the phrase, Sola Fide, what Martin Luther and these Protestants mean by Sola Fide? I would argue in the negative.
 

I think the best place to show this would be to examine the verse in Scripture that Luther based his whole doctrine around—Romans 3:28:

“For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart

from the works of law.”

Luther took this verse and argued that what Paul is saying here is that man is justified (saved) by Faith alone and not at all by any kind of works (including good works, which includes upholding the Moral Law, i.e. the Ten Commandments, and upholding Christ’s commandments in the Sermon on the Mount. More will be said on this later).  I would argue that Ambrosiaster understands Paul correctly and Luther does not.

Ambrosiaster was a master of the Old Testament and the Jewish Laws. He had a keen insight on how the New Testament fulfills the Old, which enabled him to be an exegete of Paul that rivals the likes of Chrysostom, Augustine, and the Tyconius the Donatist. So if we want to understand how Ambrosiaster interprets Paul, we must look at the context of what Paul is saying here in and around Romans 3:28.