{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-4241","native_reference":{"book_number":560,"chapter_from":2,"chapter_to":2,"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>Ambrosiaster</b>: He is speaking of a great deception when he brings to mind the \"passions of the flesh.\" For the pleasure of the flesh means being delighted by the visible, so that it gives the name of gods to the elements that God appointed as his means of ordering the world. But this name [God] belongs rightly to the one and only God, from whom everything derives.… If anyone imagines that the \"passions of the flesh\" mean anything else, let him reflect on how the apostle led a pure life. He lived without blemish according to the righteousness of the law. But because he had persecuted the church he includes himself in the \"we\"—\"we lived in the passions of our flesh.\" For every sin, according to Paul, has something to do with the deception associated with living according to the flesh, which is the mother of all corruption.<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE Ephesians 2.3.1-3</i></p><p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: Of nature itself we speak in one sense, when we properly describe it as that human nature in which man was created faultless after his kind; and in another sense as that nature in which we are born ignorant and carnally minded, owing to the penalty of condemnation, after the manner of the apostle, \"We ourselves likewise were by nature children of wrath, even as others.\"<br/><i>— ON NATURE AND GRACE 81</i></p><p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: Accordingly, the Apostle Paul, in a certain passage, having both conditions in view,—even the wrath of God with which we are born, and the grace whereby we are delivered,—says: \"Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ; by whose grace we are saved.\" What, then, is man's \"natural malice,\" and \"the seed cursed from the beginning;\" and what are \"the natural brute beasts made to be taken and destroyed,\" and what the \"by nature children of wrath\"? Was this the condition of the nature which was formed in Adam? God forbid! Inasmuch as his pure nature, however, was corrupted in him, it has run on in this condition by natural descent through all, and still is running; so that there is no deliverance for it from this ruin, except by the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ.<br/><i>— ON MARRIAGE AND CONCUPISCENCE 2.20</i></p><p><b>Gregory of Nyssa</b>: The divine Scripture knows how to use the word \"Son\" in both senses, so that in some cases such an appellation is derived from nature, in others it is adventitious and artificial. For when it speaks of \"sons of men,\" or \"sons of rams,\" it marks the essential relation of that which is begotten to that from which it has its being: but when it speaks of \"sons of power,\" or \"children of God,\" it presents to us that kinship which is the result of choice. And, moreover, in the opposite sense, too, the same persons are called \"sons of Eli,\" and \"sons of Belial,\" the appellation of \"sons\" being easily adapted to either idea. For when they are called \"sons of Eli,\" they are declared to have natural relationship to him, but in being called \"sons of Belial,\" they are reproved for the wickedness of their choice, as no longer emulating their father in their life, but addicting their own purpose to sin. In the case, then, of this lower nature of ours, and of the things with which we are concerned, by reason of human nature being equally inclined to either side (I mean, to vice and to virtue), it is in our power to become sons either of night or of day, while our nature yet remains, so far as the chief part of it is concerned, within its proper limits. For neither is he who by sin becomes a child of wrath alienated from his human generation, nor does he who by choice addicts himself to good reject his human origin by the refinement of his habits, but, while their nature in each case remains the same, the differences of their purpose assume the names of their relationship.<br/><i>— AGAINST EUNOMIUS 3.1.116</i></p><p><b>Jerome</b>: So that he would not appear to have exempted himself through pride when he said \"your sins in which you walked,\" he now adds \"in which we also lived.\" However, the one who says he has lived confesses past, not present, transgressions.<br/><i>— Commentary on Ephesians 2:1-5</i></p><p><b>Jerome</b>: There is a difference between sin of the flesh and sin of the mind. The sin of the flesh is indecency and profligacy and whatever might act as instrument to its lusts. The transgression of the mind pertains to doctrine contrary to truth and to the baseness of heretics.<br/><i>— Commentary on Ephesians 2:1-5</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: \"In the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh, and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.\" That is, having no spiritual affections. Yet, lest he should slander the flesh, or lest it should be supposed that the transgression was not great, observe how he guards the matter, \"Doing,\" he says, \"the desires of the flesh and of the mind.\" That is, the pleasurable passions. We provoked God to anger, he saith, we provoked Him to wrath, we were wrath, and nothing else. For as he who is a child of man is by nature man, so also were we children of wrath even as others; i. e., no one was free, but we all did things worthy of wrath.<br/><i>— Homily on Ephesians 4</i></p><p><b>Pseudo-Augustine</b>: Undoubtedly the will passes for nature—for it is from their will, not their nature, that people are judged. Similarly all the martyrs and the justified are upright not because they were born faithful but because they were reborn so.<br/><i>— QUESTIONS ON THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS 115.11</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: As a Jew Paul had been one of the \"children of unbelief\" in whom \"the devil was at work,\" especially when he persecuted the church and the Christ of the Creator. On this account he says, \"We were by nature children of wrath.\" But he says \"by nature\" so that a heretic could not argue that it was the Lord who created evil. We create the grounds for the Creator's wrath ourselves.<br/><i>— AGAINST MARCION 5.17.9-10</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: \" In perfect agreement with reason was that indignation which resulted from his desire to maintain discipline and order. When, however, he says, \"We were formerly the children of wrath,\" he censures an irrational irascibility, such as proceeds not from that nature which is the production of God, but from that which the devil brought in, who is himself styled the lord or \"master\" of his own class, \"Ye cannot serve two masters,\" and has the actual designation of \"father: \"\"Ye are of your father the devil.<br/><i>— A Treatise on the Soul</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: \" And if so, the apostle too was in error when he said in his epistle, \"Ye were at one time darkness, (but now are ye light in the Lord: )\" and, \"We also were by nature children of wrath; \" and, \"Such were some of you, but ye are washed.<br/><i>— A Treatise on the Soul</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: But the apostle, too, had lived in Judaism; and when he parenthetically observed of the sins (of that period of his life), \"in which also we all had our conversation in times past,\" he must not be understood to indicate that the Creator was the lord of sinful men, and the prince of this air; but as meaning that in his Judaism he had been one of the children of disobedience, having the devil as his instigator-when he persecuted the church and the Christ of the Creator.<br/><i>— Against Marcion Book V</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: But the apostle, too, had lived in Judaism; and when he parenthetically observed of the sins (of that period of his life), \"in which also we all had our conversation in times past,\" he must not be understood to indicate that the Creator was the lord of sinful men, and the prince of this air; but as meaning that in his Judaism he had been one of the children of disobedience, having the devil as his instigator-when he persecuted the church and the Christ of the Creator. Therefore he says: \"We also were the children of wrath,\" but \"by nature.\" Let the heretic, however, not contend that, because the Creator called the Jews children, therefore the Creator is the lord of wrath.<br/><i>— Against Marcion Book V</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: For when (the apostle) says,\" We were by nature the children of wrath,\" inasmuch as the Jews were not the Creator's children by nature, but by the election of their fathers, he (must have) referred their being children of wrath to nature, and not to the Creator, adding this at lasts\" even as others,\" who, of course, were not children of God.<br/><i>— Against Marcion Book V</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: Similarly, too, (when writing) to the Ephesians, while recalling past (deeds), he warns (them) concerning the future: \"In which we too had our conversation, doing the concupiscences and pleasures of the flesh.\" Branding, in fine, such as had denied themselves-Christians, to wit-on the score of having \"delivered themselves up to the working of every impunity,\" \"But ye,\" he says, \"not so have learnt Christ.<br/><i>— On Modesty</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"7e725776bcef91bcd1d313d3998d5be9f2ad1f1e967c0abceba5f0fd600ad97f","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":4241,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"55f24e1ea62703c410de04ff2eb9c8c14ccb1717f954ce3d51352e0d07998557","translator":null,"work":null}