{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-308","native_reference":{"book_number":530,"chapter_from":3,"chapter_to":3,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":3,"verse_to":3},"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>Clement of Alexandria</b>: So also may we take the Scripture: \"And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ;\" so that the carnal may be understood as those recently instructed, and still babes in Christ. For he called those who had already believed on the Holy Spirit spiritual, and those newly instructed and not yet purified carnal; whom with justice he calls still carnal, as minding equally with the heathen the things of the flesh: \"For whereas there is among you envy and strife, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?\" \"Wherefore also I have given you milk to drink,\" he says; meaning, I have instilled into you the knowledge which, from instruction, nourishes up to life eternal.<br/><i>— The Instructor Book 1</i></p><p><b>Irenaeus</b>: 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 4</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: \"For whereas there is among you jealousy and strife.\"</p><p>At this point he prepares himself to wrestle with those whose part was obedience: for in what went before he hath been casting down the rulers of the Church, where he said that wisdom of speech is nothing worth. But here he strikes at those in subjection. And he points out that this, so far from helping them at all or causing them to acquire any thing, had even become an obstacle to their profiting in the greater things. For this it was which brought forth jealousy, and jealousy had made them \"carnal;\" and the having become \"carnal\" left them not at liberty to hear truths of the sublimer sort.<br/><i>— Homily on 1 Corinthians 8</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: But these words were written to the Corinthians in regard of the circumstances of that particular time; seeing that schisms and dissensions were agitated among them, while one attributes everything to Paul, another to Apollos. For which reason the \"peace-making\" apostle, for fear he should seem to claim all gifts for himself, says that he had been sent \"not to baptize, but to preach.<br/><i>— On Baptism</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"bdeabce8b0d162bd6162ebc6239db55a6c2009784c613ff11e7e91b56d1087db","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":308,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"cd61b024b8a869d252f6b54491c6419511d0b62633e1d55ed2eabab757c75276","translator":null,"work":null}