{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-4344","native_reference":{"book_number":560,"chapter_from":5,"chapter_to":5,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":31,"verse_to":31},"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>Augustine of Hippo</b>: If Christ cleaved to the church so that they became one flesh, in what way did he \"leave\" his Father? In what way did he \"leave\" his mother? He left his Father in the sense that, when he was in the form of God he … emptied himself, assuming the form of a slave. … That means that he left the Father, not by deserting him or withdrawing from him but by coming to humanity in a lowly form in which he temporarily divested his glory with the Father.<br/><i>— TRACTATE ON THE GOSPEL OF John 9.10</i></p><p><b>Clement of Rome</b>: Above all, with His holy and undefiled hands He formed man, the most excellent [of His creatures], and truly great through the understanding given him — the express likeness of His own image. For thus says God: \"Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness. So God made man; male and female He created them.\" [Genesis 1:26-27] Having thus finished all these things, He approved them, and blessed them, and said, \"Increase and multiply.\" [Genesis 1:28] We see, then, how all righteous men have been adorned with good works, and how the Lord Himself, adorning Himself with His works, rejoiced. Having therefore such an example, let us without delay accede to His will, and let us work the work of righteousness with our whole strength.<br/><i>— Letter to the Corinthians (Clement)</i></p><p><b>Cyprian</b>: Moreover, that Nicostratus, having lost the diaconate of sacred administrations, because he had abstracted the Church's money by a sacrilegious fraud, and disowned the deposits of the widows and orphans, did not wish so much to come into Africa as to escape thither from the city, from the consciousness of his rapines and his frightful crimes. And now a deserter and a fugitive from the Church, as if to have changed the clime were to change the man, he goes on to boast and announce himself a confessor, although he can no longer either be or be called a confessor of Christ who has denied Christ's Church. For when the Apostle Paul says, \"For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the Church; \" -when, I say, the blessed apostle says this, and with his sacred voice testifies to the unity of Christ with the Church, cleaving to one another with indivisible links, how can he be with Christ who is not with the spouse of Christ, and in His Church? Or how does he assume to himself the charge of ruling or governing the Church, who has spoiled and wronged the Church of Christ?<br/><i>— Epistle XLVIII</i></p><p><b>Jerome</b>: The same allegorical interpretation applies both to Christ and to the church, that Adam is to prefigure Christ and Eve the church. For \"the last Adam was made a lifegiving spirit.\" Just as the whole human race is born from Adam and his wife, so the whole multitude of believers has been born of Christ and the church.<br/><i>— Commentary on Ephesians 5:31</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: \"For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and the twain shall become one flesh.\"</p><p>Behold again a third ground of obligation; for he shows that a man leaving them that begat him, and from whom he was born, is knit to his wife; and that then the one flesh is, father, and mother, and the child, from the substance of the two commingled. For indeed by the commingling of their seeds is the child produced, so that the three are one flesh. Thus then are we in relation to Christ; we become one flesh by participation, and we much more than the child. And why and how so? Because so it has been from the beginning.</p><p>Now why did he not say of the wife also, She shall be joined unto her husband? Why, I say, is this? Because he was discoursing concerning love, and was discoursing to the husband. For to her indeed he discourses concerning reverence, and says, \"the husband is the head of the wife\", and again, \"Christ is the Head of the Church.\" Whereas to him he discourses concerning love, and commits to him this province of love, and declares to him that which pertains to love, thus binding him and cementing him to her. For the man that leaves his father for the sake of his wife, and then again, leaves this very wife herself and abandons her, what forbearance can he deserve?<br/><i>— Homily on Ephesians 20</i></p><p><b>Methodius of Olympus</b>: For thus will it be most certainly agreed that the Church is formed out of His bones and flesh; and it was for this cause that the Word, leaving His Father in heaven, came down to be \"joined to His wife; \"<br/><i>— Methodius Discourse III. Thaleia</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: For, inasmuch as Adam straightway predicted that \"great mystery of Christ and the church,\" when he said, \"This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they two shall become one flesh,\" he experienced the influence of the Spirit. For there fell upon him that ecstasy, which is the Holy Ghost's operative virtue of prophecy.<br/><i>— A Treatise on the Soul</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: But why enlarge on such a subject? When the very apostle whom our heretics adopt, interprets the law which allows an unmuzzled mouth to the oxen that tread out the corn, not of cattle, but of ourselves; and also alleges that the rock which followed (the Israelites) and supplied them with drink was Christ; teaching the Galatians, moreover, that the two narratives of the sons of Abraham had an allegorical meaning in their course; and to the Ephesians giving an intimation that, when it was declared in the beginning that a man should leave his father and mother and become one flesh with his wife, he applied this to Christ and the church.<br/><i>— Against Marcion Book III</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: I shall now endeavour, from my point of view, to prove that the same God is (the God) of the man and of Christ, of the woman and of the Church, of the flesh and the spirit, by the apostle's help who applies the Creator's injunction, and adds even a comment on it: \"For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, (and shall be joined unto his wife), and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery.\" In passing, (I would say that) it is enough for me that the works of the Creator are great mysteries in the estimation of the apostle, although they are so vilely esteemed by the heretics. \"But I am speaking,\" says he, \"of Christ and the Church.\" This he says in explanation of the mystery, not for its disruption. He shows us that the mystery was prefigured by Him who is also the author of the mystery.<br/><i>— Against Marcion Book V</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: What kind of yoke is that of two believers, (partakers) of one hope, one desire, one discipline, one and the same service? Both (are) brethren, both fellow servants, no difference of spirit or of flesh; nay, (they are) truly \"two in one flesh.\" Where the flesh is one, one is the spirit ton.<br/><i>— To His Wife Book II</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: Finally, \"there shall be,\" said He, \"two in one flesh,\" not three nor four. On any other hypothesis, there would no longer be \"one flesh,\" nor \"two (joined) into one flesh.\" These will be so, if the conjunction and the growing together in unity take place once for all. if, however, (it take place) a second time, or oftener, immediately (the flesh) ceases to be \"one,\" and there will not be \"two (joined) into one flesh,\" but plainly one rib (divided) into more. But when the apostle interprets, \"The two shall be (joined) into one flesh\" of the Church and Christ, according to the spiritual nuptials of the Church and Christ (for Christ is one, and one is His Church), we are bound to recognise a duplication and additional enforcement for us of the law of unity of marriage, not only in accordance with the foundation of our race, but in accordance with the sacrament of Christ. From one marriage do we derive our origin in each case; carnally in Adam, spiritually in Christ.<br/><i>— On Exhortation to Chastity</i></p><p><b>Theodoret of Cyrus</b>: You are to respect the first law [of creation], he says in effect, which was laid down along with the fashioning of the woman and implanted in human nature.… This is the fruit of marriage: One child comes of two partners. The apostle, having recalled the holy requirement of marriage [that the two shall become one flesh], shows that this is illustrated also in the spiritual marriage. He not only demonstrates it but virtually shouts it out.<br/><i>— Interpretation of the Epistle to the Ephesians 5.31</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"652e2f064d076e3278b4e0886e0c5f55ddbc8efc10956e4dd273c4dd4df2c393","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":4344,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"f625dd3fe13e95ab7addafe1155b7f4212298f8ed4594904b6b6513b4847fcb8","translator":null,"work":null}