{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-4258","native_reference":{"book_number":560,"chapter_from":2,"chapter_to":2,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":20,"verse_to":20},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Ambrosiaster</b>: This means that the household of God is built upon both the old and the new covenants. For what the apostles preached had been foretold by the prophets. In his words to the Corinthians, that \"God placed in the church first apostles then prophets,\" he is concerned with the order of the church. But in this case he is speaking of the foundation in the prophets of old.<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE Ephesians 2.20</i></p><p><b>Clement of Alexandria</b>: Understand now for me the mystery of the truth, granting pardon if I shrink from advancing further in the treatment of it, by announcing this alone: \"All things were made by Him, and without Him was not even one thing.\" Certainly He is called \"the chief corner stone; in whom the whole building, fitly joined together, groweth into an holy temple of God,\" according to the divine apostle.<br/><i>— The Stromata Book 6</i></p><p><b>Cyprian</b>: You have written also, that on my account the Church has now a portion of herself in a state of dispersion, although the whole people of the Church are collected, and united, and joined to itself in an undivided concord: they alone have remained without, who even, if they had been within, would have had to be cast out. Nor does the Lord, the protector of His people, and their guardian, suffer the wheat to be snatched from His floor; but the chaff alone can be separated from the Church, since also the apostle says, \"For what if some of them have departed from the faith? shall their unbelief make the faith of God of none effect? God forbid; for God is true, but every man a liar.\" And the Lord also in the Gospel, when disciples forsook Him as He spoke, turning to the twelve, said, \"Will ye also go away? \"then Peter answered Him, \"Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the word of eternal life; and we believe, and are sure, that Thou art the Son of the living God.\" Peter speaks there, on whom the Church was to be built, teaching and showing in the name of the Church, that although a rebellious and arrogant multitude of those who will not hear and obey may depart, yet the Church does not depart from Christ; and they are the Church who are a people united to the priest, and the flock which adheres to its pastor. Whence you ought to know that the bishop is in the Church, and the Church in the bishop; and if any one be not with the bishop, that he is not in the Church, and that those flatter themselves in vain who creep in, not having peace with God's priests, and think that they communicate secretly with some; while the Church, which is Catholic and one, is not cut nor divided, but is indeed connected and bound together by the cement of priests who cohere with one another.<br/><i>— Epistle LXVIII</i></p><p><b>Gaius Marius Victorinus</b>: Jesus Christ and his teachings are the foundation for the apostles. The edifice built on this foundation consists in life and character and one's conduct and discipline. The primary foundation is for life; the rest of the edifice is for its adornment and edification. The primary foundation, I say, is to believe in Christ, hope in him and trust in God. This foundation is the teaching of the apostles, which is also heard in the word of the prophets. Note the order of this distinction, first apostles and then prophets. The apostles beheld [God incarnate]; the prophets received the Spirit. These are the saints mentioned above: those who saw and those who were inhabited by the Spirit. Hence the teachings of the apostles and prophets are indeed the teachings of Christ, which proclaim the foundation of all eternal hope.<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE Ephesians 1.2.20</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: Observe how he blends all together, the Gentiles, the Jews, the Apostles, the Prophets, and Christ, and illustrates the union sometimes from the body, and sometimes from the building: \"built,\" saith he, \"upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets;\" that is, the Apostles and Prophets are a foundation, and he places the Apostles first, though they are in order of time last, doubtless to represent and express this, that both the one and the other are alike a foundation, and that the whole is one building, and that there is one root. Consider, that the Gentiles have the Patriarchs as a foundation. He here speaks more strongly of that point than he does when he speaks of a \"grafting in.\" There he rather attaches them on. Then he adds, that He who binds the whole together in Christ. For the chief corner-stone binds together both the walls, and the foundations.<br/><i>— Homily on Ephesians 6</i></p><p><b>Origen of Alexandria</b>: These are fitting words to cite against those who would divide the Godhead and think that the prophets belong to one God and the apostles to another.<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS</i></p><p><b>Origen of Alexandria</b>: And the earth was shaken and the rocks were split and the tombs were opened and many bodies of the saints who were sleeping rose again; and going out from the tombs after his resurrection they entered into the holy city and appeared to many (27, 51ᵇ—53).</p><p>And the earth was shaken, that is, all flesh, when the new word and new things according to the new covenant, and the new song, and all things new and heavenly came upon it, as the prophet too says in a certain place about this very thing: \"all who saw them were confounded\", that is, the disciples of Christ, \"and every man feared\". Likewise through another prophet the Lord says: \"yet once more I will move the heaven and the earth and the sea and the dry land\". But having said a little about the shaking of the earth, let us not unprofitably speak again also about the rocks split in the passion of the Lord the Savior, which were a mystery (as I think) of the prophets; for the law and the prophets were made manifest at the coming of Christ; and for this reason, when men \"turn to the Lord\" \"while Moses is read, the veil which had been placed over their heart is taken away\", and because \"in the reading of the old covenant a veil had been placed, in Christ it is abolished\". Now therefore the rocks have been opened and split, that we may see the spiritual mysteries placed in their depths. And we prove that the rocks then split are the prophets, first indeed from the fact that \"Christ\" is called the spiritual \"rock\", and it stands to reason that all imitators of Christ are likewise called rocks.</p><p>Just as they are also called \"the light of the world\" from the fact that their Lord himself is the \"light\" of the \"world\", and next from the fact that Peter too was called a rock by the Lord himself, when it is said to him: \"you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it\". But this is shown most of all from the fact that all those against whom the \"gates of hell\" do not prevail, who have in themselves the work of the name of rock (that is, the apostles and the prophets) are themselves also rocks, and are the foundations of those who are built upon them, according to what the apostle says: \"built up upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ our Lord himself being the highest cornerstone\".</p><p>But those are built up upon the apostles and prophets most of all who are of the immaculate Church and who admire the apostles of Christ and do not despise the prophets, but examine also their scriptures.<br/><i>— COMMENTARY ON Matthew 139</i></p><p><b>Shepherd of Hermas</b>: \"And the stones, sir,\" I said, \"which were taken out of the pit and fitted into the building: what are they?\" \"The first,\" he said, \"the ten, viz, that were placed as a foundation, are the first generation, and the twenty-five the second generation, of righteous men; and the thirty-five are the prophets of God and His ministers; and the forty are the apostles and teachers of the preaching of the Son of God.\" \"Why, then, sir,\" I asked, \"did the virgins carry these stones also through the gate, and give them for the building of the tower?\" \"Because,\" he answered, \"these were the first who bore these spirits, and they never departed from each other, neither the spirits from the men nor the men from the spirits, but the spirits remained with them until their falling asleep. And unless they had had these spirits with them, they would not have been of use for the building of this tower.\"<br/><i>— Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: For \"the Lord of Sabaoth hath taken away, among the Jews from Jerusalem,\" among the other things named, \"the wise architect\" too, who builds the church, God's temple, and the holy city, and the house of the Lord.<br/><i>— An Answer to the Jews</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: In short, as he says, \"they roll as sacred stones,\" and not like soldiers fight. Stones are they, even foundation stones, upon which we are ourselves edified-\"built,\" as St. Paul says, \"upon the foundation of the apostles,\" who, like \"consecrated stones,\" were rolled up and down exposed to the attack of all men.<br/><i>— Against Marcion Book IV</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: When, therefore, He came and preached peace to them that were near and to them which were afar off, we both obtained \"access to the Father,\" being \"now no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God\" (even of Him from whom, as we have shown above, we were aliens, and placed far off), \"built upon the foundation of the apostles\"-(the apostle added), \"and the prophets; \" these words, however, the heretic erased, forgetting that the Lord had set in His Church not only apostles, but prophets also. He feared, no doubt, that our building was to stand in Christ upon the foundation of the ancient prophets, since the apostle himself never fails to build us up everywhere with (the words of) the prophets. For whence did he learn to call Christ \"the chief corner-stone,\" but from the figure given him in the Psalm: \"The stone which the builders rejected is become the head (stone) of the corner? \"<br/><i>— Against Marcion Book V</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"1ab7b7766c36169a13e24d219c7f114718aa45b3a12b05f70ba7f3c50a32ba4c","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":4258,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"a4ea10913324a688bad1b6d490c6cbd9b8f5a2bf2e921cbceece93715cfdeb5f","translator":null,"work":null}