Early Church Fathers Scripture Index : Texts
Genesis 3:6
There are 22 footnotes for this reference.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 650, footnote 11 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Anti-Marcion. (HTML)
Appendix: Against All Heresies. (HTML)
Ophites, Cainites, Sethites. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 8355 (In-Text, Margin)
To these are added those heretics likewise who are called Ophites: for they magnify the serpent to such a degree, that they prefer him even to Christ Himself; for it was he, they say, who gave us the origin of the knowledge of good and of evil.[Genesis 3:1-7] His power and majesty (they say) Moses perceiving, set up the brazen serpent; and whoever gazed upon him obtained health. Christ Himself (they say further) in His gospel imitates Moses’ serpent’s sacred power, in saying: “And as Moses upreared the serpent in the desert, so it behoveth the Son of man to be upreared.” Him they introduce to bless their eucharistic ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 651, footnote 3 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Anti-Marcion. (HTML)
Appendix: Against All Heresies. (HTML)
Ophites, Cainites, Sethites. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 8366 (In-Text, Margin)
... spark; excited whereby, he was through prudence to grow wise, and be able to understand the things above. So, again, the Ialdaboath aforesaid, turning indignant, had emitted out of himself the Virtue and similitude of the serpent; and this had been the Virtue in paradise—that is, this had been the serpent —whom Eve had believed as if he had been God the Son. He plucked, say they, from the fruit of the tree, and thus conferred on mankind the knowledge of things good and evil.[Genesis 3:1-7] Christ, moreover, existed not in substance of flesh: salvation of the flesh is not to be hoped for at all.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 688, footnote 22 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Ethical. (HTML)
On Prayer. (HTML)
Answer to the Foregoing Arguments. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 8900 (In-Text, Margin)
... those virgins whom their childhood defends, for from the first a virgin was named “female.” This custom, in short, even Israel observes; but if Israel did not observe it, our Law, amplified and supplemented, would vindicate the addition for itself; let it be excused for imposing the veil on virgins also. Under our dispensation, let that age which is ignorant of its sex retain the privilege of simplicity. For both Eve and Adam, when it befell them to be “wise,”[Genesis 3:6] forthwith veiled what they had learnt to know. At all events, with regard to those in whom girlhood has changed (into maturity), their age ought to remember its duties as to nature, so also, to discipline; for they are being transferred to the rank ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4, page 79, footnote 15 (Image)
Tertullian (IV), Minucius Felix, Commodian, Origen
Tertullian: Part Fourth. (HTML)
On Modesty. (HTML)
Examples of Such Offences Under the Old Dispensation No Pattern for the Disciples of the New. But Even the Old Has Examples of Vengeance Upon Such Offences. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 770 (In-Text, Margin)
... have had—if the Psychics please—even a right of (indulging) every immodesty; grant that, before Christ, the flesh may have disported itself, nay, may have perished before its Lord went to seek and bring it back: not yet was it worthy of the gift of salvation; not yet apt for the office of sanctity. It was still, up to that time, accounted as being in Adam, with its own vicious nature, easily indulging concupiscence after whatever it had seen to be “attractive to the sight,”[Genesis 3:6] and looking back at the lower things, and checking its itching with fig-leaves. Universally inherent was the virus of lust—the dregs which are formed out of milk contain it—(dregs) fitted (for so doing), in that even the waters themselves had not ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4, page 627, footnote 8 (Image)
Tertullian (IV), Minucius Felix, Commodian, Origen
Origen. (HTML)
Origen Against Celsus. (HTML)
Book VII (HTML)
Chapter XXXIX (HTML)
... only you will be able to see God.” He is not aware that this reference to the two eyes, the eye of the body and the eye of the mind, which he has borrowed from the Greeks, was in use among our own writers; for Moses, in his account of the creation of the world, introduces man before his transgression as both seeing and not seeing: seeing, when it is said of the woman, “The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise;”[Genesis 3:6] and again not seeing, as when he introduces the serpent saying to the woman, as if she and her husband had been blind, “God knows that on the day that ye eat thereof your eyes shall be opened;” and also when it is said, “They did eat, and the eyes ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 8, page 510, footnote 3 (Image)
Twelve Patriarchs, Excerpts and Epistles, The Clementina, Apocryphal Gospels and Acts, Syriac Documents
Apocrypha of the New Testament. (HTML)
The Acts of Philip. (HTML)
Addition to Acts of Philip. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2211 (In-Text, Margin)
... life and knowledge? for the Lord said to us in His teaching, Every one who shall look upon a woman, and lust after her in his heart, has completed adultery. And on this account our brother Peter fled from every place in which a woman was, and yet there was scandal on account of his own daughter; and he prayed to the Lord, and she had paralysis of her side, that she might not be deceived. Thou seest, brother, that the sight of the eyes brings gainsaying, and the beginning of sin, as it is written,[Genesis 3:6] She looked, and saw the tree, that it was pleasing to her eyes, and good for food, and she was deceived. Let the hearing, then, of the virgins be holy; and in their going out let them walk two and two, for many are the wiles of the enemy. Let their ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 2, page 276, footnote 3 (Image)
Augustine: The City of God, Christian Doctrine
City of God (HTML)
Of the punishment and results of man’s first sin, and of the propagation of man without lust. (HTML)
Of the Nakedness of Our First Parents, Which They Saw After Their Base and Shameful Sin. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 744 (In-Text, Margin)
... were naked and were not ashamed,” —not that their nakedness was unknown to them, but because nakedness was not yet shameful, because not yet did lust move those members without the will’s consent; not yet did the flesh by its disobedience testify against the disobedience of man. For they were not created blind, as the unenlightened vulgar fancy; for Adam saw the animals to whom he gave names, and of Eve we read, “The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes.”[Genesis 3:6] Their eyes, therefore were open, but were not open to this, that is to say, were not observant so as to recognize what was conferred upon them by the garment of grace, for they had no consciousness of their members warring against their will. But ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 3, page 161, footnote 8 (Image)
Augustine: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises
Doctrinal Treatises of St. Augustin (HTML)
On the Holy Trinity. (HTML)
After premising the difference between wisdom and knowledge, he points out a kind of trinity in that which is properly called knowledge; but one which, although we have reached in it the inner man, is not yet to be called the image of God. (HTML)
There is a Kind of Hidden Wedlock in the Inner Man. Unlawful Pleasures of the Thoughts. (HTML)
... respecting that part of reason to which knowledge belongs, that is, the cognizance of things temporal and changeable, which is necessary for managing the affairs of this life. For as in the case of that visible wedlock of the two human beings who were made first, the serpent did not eat of the forbidden tree, but only persuaded them to eat of it; and the woman did not eat alone, but gave to her husband, and they eat together; although she alone spoke with the serpent, and she alone was led away by him:[Genesis 3:1-6] so also in the case of that hidden and secret kind of wedlock, which is transacted and discerned in a single human being, the carnal, or as I may say, since it is directed to the senses of the body, the sensuous movement of the soul, which is common ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 5, page 37, footnote 1 (Image)
Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings
A Treatise on the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants. (HTML)
Book I (HTML)
No One is Reconciled to God Except Through Christ. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 408 (In-Text, Margin)
... profane novelties: that every man is separated from God, except those who are reconciled to God through Christ the Mediator; and that no one can be separated from God, except by sins, which alone cause separation; that there is, therefore, no reconciliation except by the remission of sins, through the one grace of the most merciful Saviour,—through the one sacrifice of the most veritable Priest; and that none who are born of the woman, that trusted the serpent and so was corrupted through desire,[Genesis 3:6] are delivered from the body of this death, except by the Son of the virgin who believed the angel and so conceived without desire.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 5, page 265, footnote 6 (Image)
Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings
On Marriage and Concupiscence. (HTML)
On Marriage and Concupiscence (HTML)
The Censuring of Lust is Not a Condemnation of Marriage; Whence Comes Shame in the Human Body. Adam and Eve Were Not Created Blind; Meaning of Their 'Eyes Being Opened.' (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2074 (In-Text, Margin)
... marriage? Or was it, forsooth, as some hold (who give little heed to what they read), that human beings were, like dogs, at first created blind; and—absurder still—obtained sight, not as dogs do, by growing, but by sinning? Far be it from us to entertain such an opinion. But they gather that opinion of theirs from reading: “She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat: and the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.”[Genesis 3:6-7] This accounts for the opinion of unintelligent persons, that the eyes of the first man and woman were previously closed, because Holy Scripture testifies that they were then opened. Well, then, were Hagar’s eyes, the handmaid of Sarah, previously ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 5, page 266, footnote 6 (Image)
Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings
On Marriage and Concupiscence. (HTML)
On Marriage and Concupiscence (HTML)
The Censuring of Lust is Not a Condemnation of Marriage; Whence Comes Shame in the Human Body. Adam and Eve Were Not Created Blind; Meaning of Their 'Eyes Being Opened.' (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2080 (In-Text, Margin)
... them. How, too, could the woman herself have been beheld so clearly by him when he said, “This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh”? If, indeed, any one shall be so determined on cavilling as to insist that Adam might have acquired a discernment of these objects, not by sight but by touch, what explanation will he have to give of the passage wherein we are told how the woman “saw that the tree,” from which she was about to pluck the forbidden fruit, “was pleasant for the eyes to behold”?[Genesis 3:6] No; “they were both naked, and were not ashamed,” not because they had no eyesight, but because they perceived no reason to be ashamed in their members, which had all along been seen by them. For it is not said: They were both naked, and knew it ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 7, page 332, footnote 3 (Image)
Augustine: Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies
Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John. (HTML)
Again on the Same Passage. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1309 (In-Text, Margin)
... offense;” and if so, with offense to man, how much more so if to God, to whom it was no light offense, on the part of the Israelites, to reject what wisdom was supplying, and ask for that which lust was craving: although they would not actually make the request, but murmured because it was wanting. But to let us know that the wrong lies not with any creature of God, but with obstinate disobedience and inordinate desire, it was not in swine’s flesh that the first man found death, but in an apple;[Genesis 3:6] and it was not for a fowl, but for a dish of pottage, that Esau lost his birthright.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 7, page 496, footnote 6 (Image)
Augustine: Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies
Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John. (HTML)
1 John III. 19–IV. 3. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2314 (In-Text, Margin)
... righteous, his prayer would not have been heard by God.” The instance I am about to allege is of one, of whose iniquity and impiety none can doubt. The devil himself: he asked for Job, and received. Have ye not here also heard concerning the devil, that “he that committeth sin is of the devil”? Not that the devil created, but that the sinner imitates. Is it not said of him, “He stood not in the truth”? Is not even he “that old serpent,” who, through the woman pledged the first man in the drink of poison?[Genesis 3:1-6] Who even in the case of Job, kept for him his wife, that by her the husband might be, not comforted, but tempted? The devil asked for a holy man, to tempt him; and he received: the apostle asked that the thorn in the flesh might be taken from him, ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 8, page 301, footnote 5 (Image)
Augustine: Expositions on the Psalms
Expositions on the Book of Psalms. (HTML)
Psalm LXIX (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2915 (In-Text, Margin)
... that is, God. What is then, “there is no substance”? After this interpretation of substance, how shall we be able to understand this passage of the Psalm, “Fixed I am in the clay of the deep, and there is no substance”? God made man, He made substance; and O that he had continued in that which God made Him! If man had continued in that which God made him, in him would not have been fixed He whom God begot. But moreover because through iniquity man fell from the substance wherein he was made[Genesis 3:6] (for iniquity itself is no substance; for iniquity is not a nature which God formed, but a perverseness which man made); the Son of God came to the clay of the deep, and was fixed; and that was no substance wherein He was fixed, because in the ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 8, page 309, footnote 5 (Image)
Augustine: Expositions on the Psalms
Expositions on the Book of Psalms. (HTML)
Psalm LXIX (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3000 (In-Text, Margin)
... been redeemed. This thing was done in the case of Judas. But when we see that there is a sort of measure of requital in all men, and that not any one can be suffered to rage more than he hath received power to do: how have they “added,” or what is that smiting of the Lord? Without doubt He is speaking in the person of him from whom He had received a body, from whom He had taken unto Him flesh, that is in the person of mankind, of Adam himself who was smitten with the first death because of his sin.[Genesis 3:6] Mortal therefore here are men born, as born with their punishment: to this punishment they add, whosoever do persecute men. For now here man would not have had to die, unless God had smitten him. Why then dost thou, O man, rage more than this? Is it ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 8, page 368, footnote 4 (Image)
Augustine: Expositions on the Psalms
Expositions on the Book of Psalms. (HTML)
Psalm LXXVIII (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3546 (In-Text, Margin)
... it is thus with the sayings of God which make their way to us through our bodily sense. The Creator moveth the subject creature by an invisible working; not so that the substance is changed into anything corporal and temporal, when by means of corporal and temporal signs, whether belonging to the eyes or to the ears, as far as men are able to receive it, He would make His will to be known. For if an angel is able to use air, mist, cloud, fire, and any other natural substance or corporal species;[Genesis 3:1-16] and man to use face, tongue, hand, pen, letters, or any other significants, for the purpose of intimating the secret things of his own mind: in a word, if, though he is a man, he sendeth human messengers, and he saith to one, “Go, and he goeth; and ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 8, page 496, footnote 3 (Image)
Augustine: Expositions on the Psalms
Expositions on the Book of Psalms. (HTML)
Psalm CII (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 4588 (In-Text, Margin)
... whence but from him is this hereditary poverty? Let him then, who in his own body was at one time in despair, now that he is set in Christ’s body, say with hope, “My heart is smitten down, and withered like grass” (ver. 4). Deservedly, since all flesh is grass. But how did this happen unto thee? “Since I have forgotten to eat my bread.” For God had given His commandment for bread. For what is the bread of the soul? The serpent suggesting, and the woman transgressing, he touched the forbidden fruit,[Genesis 3:6] he forgot the commandment: his heart was smitten as it deserved, and withered like grass, since he forgot to eat his bread. Having forgotten to eat bread, he drinketh poison: his heart is smitten, and withered like grass.…Now eat that bread which ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 6, footnote 2 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)
To Rufinus the Monk. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 50 (In-Text, Margin)
5. What snares, think you, is the devil now weaving? What stratagems is he preparing? Perchance, mindful of his old trick,[Genesis 3:1-6] he will try to tempt Bonosus with hunger. But he has been answered already: “Man shall not live by bread alone.” Perchance he will lay before him wealth and fame. But it shall be said to him: “They that desire to be rich fall into a trap and temptations,” and “For me all glorying is in Christ.” He will come, it may be, when the limbs are weary with fasting, and rack them with the pangs of disease; but the cry of the apostle will repel ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 7, page 210, footnote 16 (Image)
Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen
Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen. (HTML)
In Defence of His Flight to Pontus, and His Return, After His Ordination to the Priesthood, with an Exposition of the Character of the Priestly Office. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2611 (In-Text, Margin)
25. This is why the heathen rage and the peoples imagine vain things; why tree is set over against tree, hands against hand, the one stretched out in self indulgence,[Genesis 3:6-23] the others in generosity; the one unrestrained, the others fixed by nails, the one expelling Adam, the other reconciling the ends of the earth. This is the reason of the lifting up to atone for the fall, and of the gall for the tasting, and of the thorny crown for the dominion of evil, and of death for death, and of darkness for the sake of light, and of burial for the return to the ground, and of resurrection ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 7, page 340, footnote 2 (Image)
Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen
Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen. (HTML)
On the Words of the Gospel, 'When Jesus Had Finished These Sayings,' Etc.--S. Matt. xix. 1. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3819 (In-Text, Margin)
VII. How then dost thou demand Chastity, while thou dost not thyself observe it? How dost thou demand that which thou dost not give? How, though thou art equally a body, dost thou legislate unequally? If thou enquire into the worse—The Woman Sinned, and so did Adam.[Genesis 3:6] The serpent deceived them both; and one was not found to be the stronger and the other the weaker. But dost thou consider the better? Christ saves both by His Passion. Was He made flesh for the Man? So He was also for the woman. Did He die for the Man? The Woman also is saved by His death. He is called of the seed of David; and so perhaps you think the Man is ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 10, page 424, footnote 4 (Image)
Ambrose: Select Works and Letters
Selections from the Letters of St. Ambrose. (HTML)
Epistle XX: To Marcellina as to the Arian Party. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3445 (In-Text, Margin)
17. So, then, we are prepared by the imperial commands, but are strengthened by the words of Scripture, which replies: “Thou hast spoken as one of the foolish.” That temptation then is no light one, for, we know that those temptations are more severe which arise through women. For even Adam[Genesis 3:6] was overthrown by Eve, whereby it came to pass that he erred from the Divine commandments. And when he recognized his error, feeling the reproach of a guilty conscience, he would fain have hidden himself, but he could not be hidden, and so God said to him: “Adam, where art thou?” that is, what wast thou before? where hast thou now begun to be? Where ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 13, page 365, footnote 3 (Image)
Gregory the Great II, Ephriam Syrus, Aphrahat
Selections from the Hymns and Homilies of Ephraim the Syrian and from the Demonstrations of Aphrahat the Persian Sage. (HTML)
Aphrahat: Select Demonstrations. (HTML)
Of Monks. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 874 (In-Text, Margin)
3. For it was through Eve that he came in upon Adam,[Genesis 3:6] and Adam was enticed because of his inexperience. And again he came in against Joseph through his master’s wife, but Joseph was acquainted with his craftiness and would not afford him a hearing. Through a woman he fought with Samson, until he took away his Nazariteship. Reuben was the first-born of all his brethren, and through his father’s wife, (the adversary) cast a blemish upon him. Aaron was the great high-priest of the house of Israel, and through Miriam his ...