{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-307","native_reference":{"book_number":530,"chapter_from":3,"chapter_to":3,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":2,"verse_to":2},"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>: Although they had been born again in Christ, they were not yet fit to receive spiritual things. Although they had received the faith which is the seed of the Spirit, they had produced no fruit worthy of God, but like babies, they were eager for the sensations of imperfection. But Paul, who was a man of God and a spiritual physician, gave to each of them according to his strength, so that no one should suffer scandal where spiritual matters were concerned because of imperfection or inexperience. Paul is also arguing strongly against those who were complaining that they had not heard anything spiritual for a long time, when in fact they were not worthy to hear it. The false apostles conveyed their message indiscriminately to anyone who would listen, but it is generally agreed that our Lord and Master spoke one way in public and another way to his disciples in private, and that even among the latter a distinction was made, for he displayed his glory on the mountain to only three disciples and told them to say nothing about what had happened until he should rise again from the dead.<br/><i>— COMMENTARY ON PAUL'S EPISTLES</i></p><p><b>Caesarius of Arles</b>: Not unfittingly, dearly beloved, do elders seem to bear a likeness to cows. Just as a cow has two udders to nurse her calf, so also elders ought to feed the Christian people with two udders: both the Old and the New Testaments.<br/><i>— SERMON 4.4</i></p><p><b>Clement of Alexandria</b>: And we have still to explain what is said by the apostle: \"I have fed you with milk (as children in Christ), not with meat; for ye were not able, neither yet are ye now able.\" For it does not appear to me that the expression is to be taken in a Jewish sense; for I shall oppose to it also that Scripture, \"I will bring you into that good land which flows with milk and honey.\" ... So that the whole matter may be conceived thus: As nurses nourish new-born children on milk, so do I also by the Word, the milk of Christ, instilling into you spiritual nutriment.<br/>...<br/>And since the Word is the gushing fountain of life, and has been called a river of olive oil, Paul, using appropriate figurative language, and calling Him milk, adds: \"I have given you to drink;\" for we drink in the word, the nutriment of the truth.<br/>...<br/>Wherefore the Holy Spirit in the apostle, using the voice of the Lord, says mystically, \"I have given you milk to drink.\" For if we have been regenerated unto Christ, He who has regenerated us nourishes us with His own milk, the Word; for it is proper that what has procreated should forthwith supply nourishment to that which has been procreated. And as the regeneration was conformably spiritual, so also was the nutriment of man spiritual.<br/><i>— The Instructor Book 1</i></p><p><b>Irenaeus</b>: If, however, any one say, \"What then? Could not God have exhibited man as perfect from beginning?\" let him know that, inasmuch as God is indeed always the same and unbegotten as respects Himself, all things are possible to Him. But created things must be inferior to Him who created them, from the very fact of their later origin; for it was not possible for things recently created to have been uncreated. But inasmuch as they are not uncreated, for this very reason do they come short of the perfect. Because, as these things are of later date, so are they infantile; so are they unaccustomed to, and unexercised in, perfect discipline. For as it certainly is in the power of a mother to give strong food to her infant, [but she does not do so], as the child is not yet able to receive more substantial nourishment; so also it was possible for God Himself to have made man perfect from the first, but man could not receive this [perfection], being as yet an infant. And for this cause our Lord in these last times, when He had summed up all things into Himself, came to us, not as He might have come, but as we were capable of beholding Him. He might easily have come to us in His immortal glory, but in that case we could never have endured the greatness of the glory; and therefore it was that He, who was the perfect bread of the Father, offered Himself to us as milk, [because we were] as infants. He did this when He appeared as a man, that we, being nourished, as it were, from the breast of His flesh, and having, by such a course of milk nourishment, become accustomed to eat and drink the Word of God, may be able also to contain in ourselves the Bread of immortality, which is the Spirit of the Father.</p><p>And on this account does Paul declare to the Corinthians, \"I have fed you with milk, not with meat, for hitherto ye were not able to bear it.\" That is, ye have indeed learned the advent of our Lord as a man; nevertheless, because of your infirmity, the Spirit of the Father has not as yet rested upon you. \"For when envying and strife,\" he says, \"and dissensions are among you, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?\" That is, that the Spirit of the Father was not yet with them, on account of their imperfection and shortcomings of their walk in life. As, therefore, the apostle had the power to give them strong meat-for those upon whom the apostles laid hands received the Holy Spirit, who is the food of life [eternal]-but they were not capable of receiving it, because they had the sentient faculties of the soul still feeble and undisciplined in the practice of things pertaining to God; so, in like manner, God had power at the beginning to grant perfection to man; but as the latter was only recently created, he could not possibly have received it, or even if he had received it, could he have contained it, or containing it, could he have retained it. It was for this reason that the Son of God, although He was perfect, passed through the state of infancy in common with the rest of mankind, partaking of it thus not for His own benefit, but for that of the infantile stage of man's existence, in order that man might be able to receive Him. There was nothing, therefore, impossible to and deficient in God, [implied in the fact] that man was not an uncreated being; but this merely applied to him who was lately created, [namely] man.<br/><i>— Against Heresies (Book IV, Chapter 38)</i></p><p><b>Origen of Alexandria</b>: In spiritual matters, \"solid food\" means the teaching about the Father and the Son. In the Old Testament, solid food appears under the guise of typology, as, for example, when we read about the serpent which Moses lifted up in the wilderness. This serpent was a picture, or type, of Christ, which explains why it was that the people were saved when they looked at it.<br/><i>— COMMENTARY ON 1 CORINTHIANS 1.12.17-23</i></p><p><b>Severian of Gabala</b>: By \"milk\" Paul means moral teaching and miracles. Solid food, by contrast, is the proclamation of the doctrines of God.<br/><i>— PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: What was the subject-matter which led the apostle to write such (words)? The inexperience of a new and just rising Church, which he was rearing, to wit, \"with milk,\" not yet with the \"solid food\" of stronger doctrine; inexperience so great, that that infancy of faith prevented them from yet knowing what they were to do in regard of carnal and sexual necessity.<br/><i>— On Monogamy</i></p><p><b>Theodoret of Cyrus</b>: Paul is saying that he adjusted the level of his teaching to their lack of understanding.<br/><i>— COMMENTARY ON THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS 179</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"63eddafd166d5111cb5666af2278a996754ca63cad096edcc25459db4a34d829","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":307,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"c277745ab2045309d0bea17615e9a925ee7684d59f46c9785c5340cae3d95f6a","translator":null,"work":null}