{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-2152","native_reference":{"book_number":680,"chapter_from":1,"chapter_to":1,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":4,"verse_to":4},"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>Ambrose of Milan</b>: Why should I add further, carrying you, as it were, through the whole course, that God made man partaker of the Divine nature, as we read in the Epistle of Peter? Whence one says not improperly, We also are His offspring, for He made us akin to Himself, and we are of a rational nature, that we might seek for that Godhead Which is not far from each one of us, in Whom we live and move and have our being.<br/><i>— Letter 43 to Horontianus, 10</i></p><p><b>Andreas of Caesarea</b>: God has blessed us abundantly—that is the meaning of this passage. We have received thousands of good things as a result of Christ's coming, and through them we can become partakers of the divine nature and be turned toward life and godliness. Therefore we must behave in such a way as to add virtue to faith, and in virtue walk along the way which leads to godliness until we come to the perfection of all good things, which is love.<br/><i>— CATENA</i></p><p><b>Bede</b>: By which He has given us exceedingly great and precious promises. By which means, through the knowledge of Him, because the more perfectly one knows God, the more profoundly one feels the greatness of His promises.<br/><i>— Commentary on the Catholic Epistles</i></p><p><b>Bede</b>: That through these things you may become partakers of the divine nature. He suddenly changes the person, and who had previously spoken about himself and his own things: He has given us precious promises, immediately turned to those to whom he was speaking: That through these, he says, you may become partakers of the divine nature. This he does not by chance, but providentially. Therefore (he says) the Lord has revealed to us, who by nature are Jews, who are born under the law, who are even physically instructed by his teaching, all the secrets of his divine power, therefore to us, that is, to his disciples, he has given the greatest and most precious promises of his Spirit, that through these even you who are from the Gentiles, who were not able to see him physically, might be made partakers of his divine nature by us who teach you what we have heard from him, by us consecrating you through his mysteries. Hence, very rightly he said above: May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, how all things of his divine power which have been given to us for life and piety, can also be taken as said: May grace and peace be multiplied to you in this, that you may know our Lord Jesus Christ, even you, just as to us through him all the promises or gifts of his divine power, which lead to life and piety, have been given. So that just as we have received the promised gifts from him, or we confidently trust without any doubt that we will receive them, so also may you not doubt about his gifts.<br/><i>— Commentary on the Catholic Epistles</i></p><p><b>Bede</b>: Fleeing from the corruption of lust that is in the world. He rightly says that the lust of the world has corruption, and therefore must be fled from, according to him who says: \"Flee from sin as from the face of a serpent\" (Ecclesiasticus 21), because there is also incorruptible lust, about which it is sung: \"My soul has desired and fainted after the courts of the Lord\" (Psalms 83). About which also in the book of Wisdom through a figure of speech called in Greek κλῖμαξ, in Latin gradation, it is very beautifully reported: \"The beginning,\" he says, \"of wisdom is the most true desire for discipline\" (Wisdom 6). Therefore, care for discipline is love, and love is the keeping of its laws. But keeping of the laws is the completion of incorruption. And incorruption makes one to be near to God. Therefore, the desire for wisdom leads to the eternal kingdom.<br/><i>— Commentary on the Catholic Epistles</i></p><p><b>Clement of Alexandria</b>: And as, if one devote himself to Ischomachus, he will make him a farmer; and to Lampis, a mariner; and to Charidemus, a military commander; and to Simon, an equestrian; and to Perdices, a trader; and to Crobytus, a cook; and to Archelaus, a dancer; and to Homer, a poet; and to Pyrrho, a wrangler; and to Demosthenes, an orator; and to Chrysippus, a dialectician; and to Aristotle, a naturalist; and to Plato, a philosopher: so he who listens to the Lord, and follows the prophecy given by Him, will be formed perfectly in the likeness of the teacher—made a god going about in flesh.<br/><i>— The Stromata Book 7</i></p><p><b>Cyril of Jerusalem</b>: When Christ's body and blood become the tissue of our members, we become Christ-bearers and \"partakers of the divine nature,\" as the blessed Peter said.<br/><i>— MYSTAGOGICAL LECTURES 4.3</i></p><p><b>Hilary of Arles</b>: Just as God stepped out of his nature to become a partaker of our humanity, so we are called to step out of our nature to become partakers of his divinity.<br/><i>— INTRODUCTORY COMMENTARY ON 2 PETER</i></p><p><b>Hilary of Poitiers</b>: And again, though he be aware that he is partaker of the Divine nature, as the holy apostle Peter says in his second Epistle, yet he must not measure the Divine nature by the limitations of his own, but gauge God's assertions concerning Himself by the scale of His own glorious self-revelation. For he is the best student who does not read his thoughts into the book, but lets it reveal its own; who draws from it its sense, and does not import his own into it, nor force upon its words a meaning which he had determined was the right one before he opened its pages. Since then we are to discourse of the things of God, let us assume that God has full knowledge of Himself, and bow with humble reverence to His words. For He Whom we can only know through His own utterances is the fitting witness concerning Himself.<br/><i>— ON THE TRINITY 1.18</i></p><p><b>Hippolytus of Rome</b>: But if thou art desirous of also becoming a god, obey Him that has created thee, and resist not now, in order that, being found faithful in that which is small, you may be enabled to have entrusted to you also that which is great.<br/>wasted by disease. For thou hast become God:<br/><i>— Hippolytus Refutation of All Heresies Book X</i></p><p><b>Leo the Great</b>: Christian, acknowledge thy dignity, and becoming a partner in the Divine nature, refuse to return to the old baseness by degenerate conduct. Remember the Head and the Body of which thou art a member. Recollect that thou wert rescued from the power of darkness and brought out into God's light and kingdom. By the mystery of Baptism thou wast made the temple of the Holy Ghost: do not put such a denizen to flight from thee by base acts, and subject thyself once more to the devil's thraldom: because thy purchase money is the blood of Christ, because He shall judge thee in truth Who ransomed thee in mercy.<br/><i>— SERMONS 21.3</i></p><p><b>Novatian</b>: The word of Christ bestows immortality. But immortality is the companion of divinity, because divinity is immortal, and so immortality is the result of partaking in the divine nature.<br/><i>— ON THE TRINITY 15.7</i></p><p><b>Origen of Alexandria</b>: What is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit? Peter describes this by calling it \"sharing in the divine nature.\"<br/><i>— SERMONS ON Leviticus 4.4.2</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"bb6468282fec22043a4edd9a85eca58fb356be0a06747fc3a7c67e0a3d2085cd","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":2152,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"12d43320a850bb24cc08e5464dbb06c212a109668575bd17651bdd35709f723e","translator":null,"work":null}