{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-3987","native_reference":{"book_number":50,"chapter_from":32,"chapter_to":32,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":39,"verse_to":39},"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>Aphrahat the Persian Sage</b>: We are sure that he causes to die. We see it. Just so also is it sure and worthy of belief that he makes alive. And from all that I have explained to you, receive and believe that in the day of the resurrection your body shall arise in its entirety, and you shall receive from our Lord the reward of your faith. And in all that you have believed, you shall rejoice and be made glad.<br/><i>— DEMONSTRATIONS 9.25</i></p><p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: He is God, so he also takes pity. He gets angry, and he takes pity. He gets angry and strikes; he takes pity and heals. He gets angry and does to death; he takes pity and brings to life. In one person he does this. It's not that he does some people to death and brings others to life, but in the same people he is both angry and gentle. He is angry with errors; he is gentle with bad habits put right. \"I will strike and I will heal: I will kill and I will make alive.\" One and the same Saul, afterward Paul, he both laid low and raised up. He laid low an unbeliever; he raised up a believer. He laid low a persecutor; he raised up a preacher.<br/><i>— SERMON 24.7</i></p><p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: [Paul's conversion] fulfilled in him what was written in the prophet, \"I will strike, and I will heal.\" What God strikes, you see, is that in people which lifts up itself against God. The surgeon isn't being heartless when he lances the tumor, when he cuts or burns out the suppurating sore. He's causing pain; he certainly is, but in order to restore health. It's a horrid business; but if it wasn't, it wouldn't be any use.<br/><i>— SERMON 77.3</i></p><p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: So the apostle was petrified, knocked down and laid low, raised up and patched up. The words, you see, were realized in him: \"It is I that will strike and I that will heal.\" You see, it doesn't say, \"I will heal, and I will strike,\" but \"I will strike, and I will heal.\" I will strike you and give myself to you. Thus being laid low, he was horrified at his own justice, in which he was certainly without reproach, praiseworthy, great, even glorious among the Jews. He reckoned it was waste, he thought it was loss, he counted it dung, \"that he might be found in him, not having his own justice, which is from the law; but that which is through the faith of Christ, which is,\" he says, \"from God.\"<br/><i>— SERMON 169.10</i></p><p><b>Basil of Caesarea</b>: He himself permits the suffering which he again restores. The One who strikes is the One who heals. The afflictions precede in order that the graces may be lasting. Only then do we exert ourselves exceedingly for the preservation of what has been given.<br/><i>— HOMILY ON Psalms 29:4</i></p><p><b>Gregory of Nyssa</b>: It is not possible for the good to exist in me unless it is made to live through the death of my enemy. As long as we keep grasping opposites with each of our hands, it is impossible for there to be participation in both elements in the same being. For if we are holding evil, we lose the power to take hold of virtue.<br/><i>— ON PERFECTION</i></p><p><b>Hilary of Poitiers</b>: The true method of our enquiry demands that we should begin with him, through whom God first manifested Himself to the world, that is, with Moses, by whose mouth God the Only-begotten thus declared Himself; See, see that I am God, and there is no God beside Me. That godless heresy must not assign these words to God, the unbegotten Father, is clear by the sense of the passage and by the evidence of the Apostle who, as we have already stated, has taught us to understand this whole discourse as spoken by God the Only-begotten. The Apostle also points out the words, Rejoice, O ye nations, with His people as those of the Son, and in corroboration further cites this:—And there shall be a root of Jesse, and One that shall arise to rule the nations; in Him shall the nations trust. Thus Moses by the words, Rejoice, O ye nations, with His people indicates Him Who said, There is no God beside Me; and the Apostle refers the same words to our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Only-begotten, in Whose rising as a king from the root of Jesse, according to the flesh, the hope of the Gentiles rests. And therefore we must now consider the meaning of these words, that we, who know that they were spoken by Him, may ascertain in what sense He spoke them.<br/><i>— ON THE TRINITY 5:36</i></p><p><b>Origen of Alexandria</b>: What then do the divine Scriptures intend to say, for example, here: \"Before Me there was no God, and after Me there shall be none,\" and \"I am, and there is no God besides Me\"? Do not suppose that in these utterances the unity is applied to the God of the universe … apart from Christ, and, of course, not to Christ alone apart from God. But let us speak of this as Jesus Himself taught: \"I and the Father are one.\"<br/><i>— DIALOGUE WITH HERACLIDES</i></p><p><b>Origen of Alexandria</b>: There is also something deeper to be understood against those especially who bark against the Creator, and, gathering together from here and there out of the Old Testament testimonies which they do not understand, \"deceive the hearts of the simple\". For they say: behold, the God of the Law and the Prophets, see what sort he is. \"I\", he says, \"will kill, and I will make alive; I will strike, and I will heal, and there is none who can deliver out of my hands\". They hear: \"I will kill\", and they do not hear: \"I will make alive\"; they hear: \"I will strike\", and they disdain to hear: \"and I will heal\". On occasions of this kind they slander the Creator. Therefore, before I interpret what sense there is in: \"I will kill and make alive, I will strike and heal\", I will set against them a testimony of the Gospel and will say against the heretics — for there are countless heresies which receive the Gospel according to Luke —: If the Creator is bloodthirsty and only a judge and cruel because he says: \"I will kill and make alive, I will strike and heal\", it is most manifest that Jesus too is his son; for the same things are written of him: \"behold, this one is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel\", not \"for the rising\" only, but also \"for the fall\". … But I, who desire to be of the Church and to be named and to bear a name not from any heresiarch, but from the appellation of Christ, and to have a name that is blessed upon the earth, and long to be and to be called a Christian both in work and in thought, seek an equal principle both in the old and in the new law. God speaks: \"I will kill\"; I am glad that God kills. For when the old man is in me and I still live as a man, I long that God may kill in me the old man and make me alive from the dead. For, he says, \"the first man was of the earth, earthly; the second man from heaven, heavenly. As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of the heavenly\".<br/><i>— HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF Luke 16</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"587d7bc1027cfa947fb45ba7411ff8f0b3eb759652b114f501d01d4ea8e0b1dd","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":3987,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"8b3d8f258d4a4ce319a443f623d6378346934c9eb77302e5bb30c8dad2425ec5","translator":null,"work":null}