{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-2729","native_reference":{"book_number":510,"chapter_from":17,"chapter_to":17,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":28,"verse_to":28},"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>Bede</b>: For in Him we live and move and have our being. This verse, because it is difficult to understand, should be explained by the words of blessed Augustine. \"The Apostle shows,\" he says, \"that God works unceasingly in the things He has created. For indeed we do not exist in Him as in His substance, as it is said that He has life in Himself; but certainly, since we are something other than Him, we exist in Him only because He works this. And this is His work by which He contains all things, and which His wisdom extends from end to end mightily and orders all things sweetly. Through this arrangement, we live, move, and exist in Him. From this it is inferred that if He withdrew this work from things, we would neither live, nor move, nor exist.\" And a little later: \"For neither heaven nor earth, and all things in them, namely the whole of spiritual and bodily creation, remain in themselves, but surely in Him of whom it is said: For in Him we live and move and have our being. For although each part can exist in the whole, which it is a part of, the whole itself does not exist except in Him by whom it was made.\" The same blessed Augustine elsewhere says: \"This, if the Apostle were speaking according to the body, could also be understood of this corporeal world. For in it according to the body we live, move, and exist.\" Hence, according to the mind which is made in His image, this should be taken in a certain more excellent and not visible but intelligible mode. For what is not in Him, of whom it is divinely written: For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things (Rom. XI)?<br/><i>— Commentary on Acts</i></p><p><b>Bede</b>: As some of your poets have said. This is what he says elsewhere: I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. For to those who did not accept the faith of the prophets, not Moses, not Isaiah, or any of the prophets, but he speaks by the testimonies of their own authors, citing the verse of Aratus, confirming his truth from their falsities, which they could not contradict. Indeed, it is of great knowledge to give food to fellow servants at the right time, and to consider the persons of the hearers.<br/><i>— Commentary on Acts</i></p><p><b>Bede</b>: For we are indeed his offspring. We are most rightly called the offspring of God, not born of His nature, but voluntarily created through His spirit, and recreated by adoption.<br/><i>— Commentary on Acts</i></p><p><b>Clement of Alexandria</b>: It is clear that by using poetic examples from the Phaenomena of Aratus [Paul] approves the best statements of the Greeks. Besides, he refers to the fact that in the person of the unknown god the Greeks are indirectly honoring God the Creator and need to receive him and learn about him with full knowledge through the Son. \"I sent you to the gentiles for this purpose,\" says Scripture, \"to open their eyes, for them to turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, for them to receive release from sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in me.\" So these are the \"opened eyes of the blind,\" which means the clear knowledge of the Father through the Son, the direct grasp of the thing to which the Greeks indirectly allude.<br/><i>— The Stromata Book 1</i></p><p><b>Gregory of Nazianzus</b>: He is called Son because He is identical with the Father in Essence; and not only for this reason, but also because He is Of Him. ...And He is called the Word, because He is related to the Father as Word to Mind; not only on account of His passionless Generation, but also because of the Union, and of His declaratory function. ...For every thing that is begotten is a silent word of him that begat it. And if any one should say that this Name was given Him because He exists in all things that are, he would not be wrong. For what is there that consists but by the word? ...And He is called Life, because He is Light, and is the constituting and creating Power of every reasonable soul. For in Him we live and move and have our being, according to the double power of that Breathing into us; for we were all inspired by Him with breath, and as many of us as were capable of it, and in so far as we open the mouth of our mind, with God the Holy Ghost.<br/><i>— Oration 30, The Fourth Theological Oration</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: \"As certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also His offspring.\" This is said by Aratus the poet. Observe how he draws his arguments from things done by themselves, and from sayings of their own.<br/><i>— Homily on Acts 38</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: \"In him;\" to put it by way of corporeal similitude, even as it is impossible to be ignorant of the air which is diffused on every side around us, and is \"not far from every one of us,\" nay rather, which is in us. For it was not so that there was a heaven in one place, in another none, nor yet a heaven at one time, at another none. So that both at every \"time\" and at every \"bound\" it was possible to find Him. He so ordered things, that neither by place nor by time were men hindered. For of course even this, if nothing else, of itself was a help to them - that the heaven is in every place, that it stands in all time. See how he declares His Providence, and His upholding power; the existence of all things from Him, from Him their working, from Him their preservation that they perish not. And he does not say, \"Through Him,\" but, what was nearer than this, \"In him.\"<br/><i>— Homily on Acts 38</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: That poet said nothing equal to this, \"For we are His offspring.\" He, however, spake it of Jupiter, but Paul takes it of the Creator, not meaning the same being as he, God forbid! but meaning what is properly predicated of God: just as he spoke of the altar with reference to Him, not to the being whom they worshipped. As much as to say, \"For certain things are said and done with reference to this true God, but ye know not that they are with reference to Him.\" For say, of whom would it be properly said, \"To an Unknown God?\" Of the Creator, or of the demon? Manifestly of the Creator: because Him they knew not, but the other they knew. Again, that all things are filled with the presence - of God? or of Jupiter - a wretch of a man, a detestable impostor! But Paul said it not in the same sense as he, God forbid! but with quite a different meaning. For he says we are God's offspring, i.e. God's own, His nearest neighbors as it were.<br/><i>— Homily on Acts 38</i></p><p><b>Oecumenius</b>: \"For in him we live and move and have our being.\" Just as, in a bodily example, it is impossible to be unaware of the air poured everywhere, and of its not being far from any one of us, indeed even being within us, so likewise is the creator God of all. For from him is our being, our activity, our not perishing. [CHRYSOSTOM]<br/><i>— Commentary on Acts</i></p><p><b>Oecumenius</b>: Then he even brings in a use for them from Aratus, one of their poets, in the construction of his own discourse. \"For we too are his offspring,\" he says. And this passage he takes about the Creator himself, although some say that this was said about Zeus, not meaning the same as that Zeus, but saying that this expression most properly fits him. For something has been said and is directed to him, but the Greeks do not know this, for they have conceived these things of another, just as also the phrase \"To the Unknown God,\" and something different. But Paul says that we are of the race of God, not as those say, but in another sense of mind, that is, relatives, nearest, as one might say, dwellers nearby or neighbors. [CHRYSOSTOM]<br/><i>— Commentary on Acts</i></p><p><b>Origen of Alexandria</b>: \"Being as one outside the law to those outside the law.\" He came to Athens, he found philosophers, and he did not use the words of the prophets or from the law, but as one perhaps recalling this pagan teaching from a school of rhetoric he spoke to the men of Athens. For [Paul] said, \"Just as some of your poets have said, 'For we are his offspring too.' \" In this place, he was as one outside the law to those outside the law, in order to gain the lawless. It is as if he were to say \"I was doing nothing contrary to the law in making this concession to them, but I was keeping myself bound by the law of Christ, in order to gain the lawless.\"<br/><i>— COMMENTARY ON 1 CORINTHIANS 43</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"cf846fc2a3e29b20cf8dc0b6988c61a8131eca64bd5da8448a062322e637a416","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":2729,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"ca5d85e83a6e45187c8c5b58df8c67072a220340c5f920ba1193ace291750908","translator":null,"work":null}