Tag: Scripture

Creation is full of images that point to God

If, therefore, Holy Scripture, providing for our need, ever putting before us what is intangible, clothes it in flesh, does it not make an image of what is thus invested with our nature, and brought to the level of our desires, yet invisible? A certain conception through the senses thus takes place in the brain, which was not there before, and is transmitted to the judicial faculty, and added to the mental store. Gregory, who is so eloquent about God, says that the mind, which is set upon getting beyond corporeal things, is incapable of doing it. For the invisible things of God since the creation of the world are made visible through images. (Rom. 1.20) We see images in creation which remind us faintly of God, as when, for instance, we speak of the holy and adorable Trinity, imaged by the sun, or light, or burning rays, or by a running fountain, or a full river, or by the mind, speech, or the spirit within us, or by a rose tree, or a sprouting flower, or a sweet fragrance.

St. John Damascene
Apology Against Those Who Decry Holy Images
Part I

The Lord is the Word and the Spirit of God

But if we turn to the Lord, where also is the word of God, and where the Holy Spirit reveals spiritual knowledge, then the veil is taken away, and with unveiled face we shall behold the glory of the Lord in the holy Scriptures.

Origen
On First Principles, Book I
Chapter I

Some works were known but not included as “ecclesiastical books”

The term ἀσώματον, i.e., incorporeal, is disused and unknown, not only in many other writings, but also in our own Scriptures.  And if any one should quote it to us out of the little treatise entitled The Doctrine of Peter, in which the Saviour seems to say to His disciples, “I am not an incorporeal demon,” I have to reply, in the first place, that that work is not included among ecclesiastical books; for we can show that it was not composed either by Peter or by any other person inspired by the Spirit of God.

Origen
On First Principles, Book I
Preface

The Scriptures are not clear to all

Then, finally, that the Scriptures were written by the Spirit of God, and have a meaning, not such only as is apparent at first sight, but also another, which escapes the notice of most.  For those (words) which are written are the forms of certain mysteries, and the images of divine things.  Respecting which there is one opinion throughout the whole Church, that the whole law is indeed spiritual; but that the spiritual meaning which the law conveys is not known to all, but to those only on whom the grace of the Holy Spirit is bestowed in the word of wisdom and knowledge.

Origen
On First Principles, Book I
Preface

John 1:1 can only be interpreted to mean one thing — Christ is God but distinct from the Father

…first of all there comes at once to hand the preamble of John to his Gospel, which shows us what He previously was who had to become flesh.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God: all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made.” Now, since these words may not be taken otherwise than as they are written, there is without doubt shown to be One who was from the beginning, and also One with whom He always was: one the Word of God, the other God (although the Word is also God, but God regarded as the Son of God, not as the Father); One through whom were all things, Another by whom were all things.  But in what sense we call Him Another we have already often described. In that we called Him Another, we must needs imply that He is not identical—not identical indeed, yet not as if separate; Other by dispensation, not by division.

Tertullian
Against Praxeas
Chapter XXI

Praxeas’ heresy mistakenly uses a few passages against a great many

For, inasmuch as only a few testimonies are to be found (making for them) in the general mass, they pertinaciously set off the few against the many, and assume the later against the earlier. The rule, however, which has been from the beginning established for every case, gives its prescription against the later assumptions, as indeed it also does against the fewer.

Tertullian
Against Praxeas
Chapter XX

Christ rose again in the same body and so will we

How then did Christ rise again? In the flesh, or not? No doubt, since you are told that He “died according to the Scriptures,” and “that He was buried according to the Scriptures,” no otherwise than in the flesh, you will also allow that it was in the flesh that He was raised from the dead. For the very same body which fell in death, and which lay in the sepulchre, did also rise again; (and it was) not so much Christ in the flesh, as the flesh in Christ. If, therefore, we are to rise again after the example of Christ, who rose in the flesh, we shall certainly not rise according to that example, unless we also shall ourselves rise again in the flesh.

Tertullian
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter XLVIII

The soul and body are both realities, neither can be allegorized

Since, however, things which belong to the soul have nothing allegorical in them, neither therefore have those which belong to the body. For man is as much body as he is soul; so that it is impossible for one of these natures to admit a figurative sense, and the other to exclude it.

Tertullian
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter XXXII

Allegory is sometimes valid, but often is used to avoid an obvious literal interpretation

Who would prefer affixing a metaphorical interpretation to all these events, instead of accepting their literal truth? The realities are involved in the words, just as the words are read in the realities.  Thus, then, (we find that) the allegorical style is not used in all parts of the prophetic record, although it occasionally occurs in certain portions of it.

Tertullian
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter XX

Heretics use the Scriptures to try and deny that God was actually born of a woman

But whenever a dispute arises about the nativity, all who reject it as creating a presumption in favour of the reality of Christ’s flesh, wilfully deny that God Himself was born, on the ground that He asked, “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?”

Tertullian
On the Flesh of Christ
Chapter VII