Early Church Fathers Scripture Index : Texts
Psalms 8:5
There are 18 footnotes for this reference.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 2, page 71, footnote 7 (Image)
Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria
Tatian (HTML)
Address to the Greeks (HTML)
Chapter XV. Necessity of a Union with the Holy Spirit. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 469 (In-Text, Margin)
... apprehend the superior. On this account the nature of the demons has no place for repentance; for they are the reflection of matter and of wickedness. But matter desired to exercise lordship over the soul; and according to their free-will these gave laws of death to men; but men, after the loss of immortality, have conquered death by submitting to death in faith; and by repentance a call has been given to them, according to the word which says, “Since they were made a little lower than the angels.”[Psalms 8:5] And, for every one who has been conquered, it is possible again to conquer, if he rejects the condition which brings death. And what that is, may be easily seen by men who long for immortality.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 2, page 410, footnote 3 (Image)
Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria
Clement of Alexandria (HTML)
The Stromata, or Miscellanies (HTML)
Book IV. (HTML)
Chapter III.—The True Excellence of Man. (HTML)
... and again, to believe the lie and to disbelieve the truth hurries to destruction. The same is the case with self-restraint and licentiousness. To restrain one’s self from doing good is the work of vice; but to keep from wrong is the beginning of salvation. So the Sabbath, by abstinence from evils, seems to indicate self-restraint. And what, I ask, is it in which man differs from beasts, and the angels of God, on the other hand, are wiser than he? “Thou madest him a little lower than the angels.”[Psalms 8:5] For some do not interpret this Scripture of the Lord, although He also bore flesh, but of the perfect man and the gnostic, inferior in comparison with the angels in time, and by reason of the vesture [of the body]. I call then wisdom nothing but ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 172, footnote 4 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Apologetic. (HTML)
An Answer to the Jews. (HTML)
Conclusion. Clue to the Error of the Jews. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1448 (In-Text, Margin)
... aspect comely. For “we have announced,” says the prophet, “concerning Him, (He is) as a little child, as a root in a thirsty land; and there was not in Him attractiveness or glory. And we saw Him, and He had not attractiveness or grace; but His mien was unhonoured, deficient in comparison of the sons of men,” “a man set in the plague, and knowing how to bear infirmity:” to wit as having been set by the Father “for a stone of offence,” and “made a little lower” by Him “than angels,”[Psalms 8:5] He pronounces Himself “a worm, and not a man, an ignominy of man, and the refuse of the People.” Which evidences of ignobility suit the First Advent, just as those of sublimity do the ... honourable mien, and a grace not “deficient more than the sons of men;” for (He will then be) “blooming in beauty in comparison with the sons of men.” “Grace,” says the Psalmist, “hath been outpoured in Thy lips: wherefore God hath blessed Thee unto eternity. Gird Thee Thy sword around Thy thigh, most potent in Thy bloom and beauty!” while the Father withal afterwards, after making Him somewhat lower than angels, “crowned Him with glory and honour and subjected all things beneath His feet.”[Psalms 8:5-6] And then shall they “learn to know Him whom they pierced, and shall beat their breasts tribe by tribe;” of course because in days bygone they did not know Him when conditioned in the humility of human estate. Jeremiah says: “He is a human ... ... His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.” Then indeed He shall have both a glorious form, and an unsullied beauty above the sons of men. “Thou art fairer,” says (the Psalmist), “than the children of men; grace is poured into Thy lips; therefore God hath blessed Thee for ever. Gird Thy sword upon Thy thigh, O most mighty, with Thy glory and Thy majesty.” For the Father, after making Him a little lower than the angels, “will crown Him with glory and honour, and put all things under His feet.”[Psalms 8:5-6] “Then shall they look on Him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, tribe after tribe;” because, no doubt, they once refused to acknowledge Him in the lowliness of His human condition. He is even a man, says Jeremiah, and who shall ... ... Vineyard sends even His Son to the labourers to require fruit, as well as His servants. Yet the Son will not therefore be counted as one of the servants because He undertook the office of a servant. I may, then, more easily say, if such an expression is to be hazarded, that the Son is actually an angel, that is, a messenger, from the Father, than that there is an angel in the Son. Forasmuch, however, as it has been declared concerning the Son Himself, “Thou hast made Him a little lower than the angels”[Psalms 8:5] how will it appear that He put on the nature of angels if He was made lower than the angels, having become man, with flesh and soul as the Son of man? As “the Spirit of God,” however, and “the Power of the Highest,” can He be regarded as lower than ... ... is not by way of diversity that the Son differs from the Father, but by distribution: it is not by division that He is different, but by distinction; because the Father is not the same as the Son, since they differ one from the other in the mode of their being. For the Father is the entire substance, but the Son is a derivation and portion of the whole, as He Himself acknowledges: “My Father is greater than I.” In the Psalm His inferiority is described as being “a little lower than the angels.”[Psalms 8:5] Thus the Father is distinct from the Son, being greater than the Son, inasmuch as He who begets is one, and He who is begotten is another; He, too, who sends is one, and He who is sent is another; and He, again, who makes is one, and He through whom ... ... Him. Nevertheless, in the Economy or Dispensation itself, the Father willed that the Son should be regarded as on earth, and Himself in heaven; whither the Son also Himself looked up, and prayed, and made supplication of the Father; whither also He taught us to raise ourselves, and pray, “Our Father which art in heaven,” etc., —although, indeed, He is everywhere present. This heaven the Father willed to be His own throne; while He made the Son to be “a little lower than the angels,”[Psalms 8:5] by sending Him down to the earth, but meaning at the same time to “crown Him with glory and honour,” even by taking Him back to heaven. This He now made good to Him when He said: “I have both glorified Thee, and will glorify Thee ... ... In short, they would regulate the limit of their repentance, because they would reach (a limit) in sinning too—by fearing God, I mean. But where there is no fear, in like manner there is no amendment; where there is no amendment, repentance is of necessity vain, for it lacks the fruit for which God sowed it; that is, man’s salvation. For God—after so many and so great sins of human temerity, begun by the first of the race, Adam, after the condemnation of man, together with the dowry of the world[Psalms 8:4-8] after his ejection from paradise and subjection to death—when He had hasted back to His own mercy, did from that time onward inaugurate repentance in His own self, by rescinding the sentence of His first wrath, engaging to grant pardon to His own ... ... their authors. Further, since God is best, the devil on the contrary worst, of beings, by their own very diversity they testify that neither works for the other; so that anything of good can no more seem to be effected for us by the Evil One, than anything of evil by the Good. Therefore I detect the nativity of impatience in the devil himself, at that very time when he impatiently bore that the Lord God subjected the universal works which He had made to His own image, that is, to man.[Psalms 8:4-6] For if he had endured (that), he would not have grieved; nor would he have envied man if he had not grieved. Accordingly he deceived him, because he had envied him; but he had envied because he had grieved: he had grieved because, of course, he had ... ... flesh, but of not marrying nor being married, but being henceforth incorruptible. And He speaks of our being near the angels in this respect, that as the angels in heaven, so we also in paradise, spend our time no more in marriage-feasts or other festivities. but in seeing God and cultivating life, under the direction of Christ. For He did not say “they shall be angels,” but like angels, in being, for instance, crowned, as it is written, with glory and honour; differing a little from the angels,[Psalms 8:5] while near to being angels. Just as if He had said, while observing the fair order of the sky, and the stillness of the night, and everything illumined by the heavenly light of the moon, “the moon shines like the sun.” We should not then say that He ... ... deigned to become our friend in the fellowship of death, to which because he came not, the enemy thought himself to be better and greater than ourselves. For our Redeemer says, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Wherefore also the devil thought himself superior to the Lord Himself, inasmuch as the Lord in His sufferings yielded to him; for of Him, too, is understood what is read in the Psalm, “For Thou hast made Him a little lower than the angels:”[Psalms 8:5] so that He, being Himself put to death, although innocent, by the unjust one acting against us as it were by just right, might by a most just right overcome him, and so might lead captive the captivity wrought through sin, and free us from a ... ... the question of food, and are confronted by our third difficulty. “All things were created to serve for the use of mortal men.” And as man, a rational animal, in a sense the owner and tenant of the world, is subject to God, and worships his Creator, so all things living were created either for the food of men, or for clothing, or for tilling the earth, or conveying the fruits thereof, or to be the companions of man, and hence, because they are man’s helpers, they have their name jumenta.[Psalms 8:5] ‘What is man,’ says David, ‘that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him but little lower than the angels, and crownest him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of ... 23. Would that I might mortify my members that are upon the earth, would that I might spend my all upon the spirit, walking in the way that is narrow and trodden by few, not that which is broad and easy. For glorious and great are its consequences, and our hope is greater than our desert. What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?[Psalms 8:5] What is this new mystery which concerns me? I am small and great, lowly and exalted, mortal and immortal, earthly and heavenly. I share one condition with the lower world, the other with God; one with the flesh, the other with the spirit. I must be buried with Christ, arise with Christ, be joint heir with Christ, become the son of ... 55. man is “crowned with glory and honour,”[Psalms 8:5] and “glory, honour and peace” are laid up by promise “to every man that worketh good.” There is moreover a special and peculiar glory for Israelites “to whom,” it is said “pertaineth the adoption and the glory…and the service,” and the Psalmist speaks of a certain glory of his own, “that my glory may sing praise to Thee;” and again “Awake up my glory” and according to the Apostle there is a certain glory of sun and moon and stars, and “the ministration of condemnation is ... ... fleeter than bird. If then comparisons are made between things of the same species, and the Father by comparison is said to be greater than the Son, then the Son is of the same substance as the Father. But there is another sense underlying the expression. In what is it extraordinary that He who “is the Word and was made flesh” confesses His Father to be greater than Himself, when He was seen in glory inferior to the angels, and in form to men? For “Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,”[Psalms 8:5] and again “Who was made a little lower than the angels,” and “we saw Him and He had neither form nor comeliness, his form was deficient beyond all men.” All this He endured on account of His abundant loving kindness towards His work, that He might ... 63. Moreover, to the end that we might know Him to have been “made lower,” by taking upon Him a body, David has shown that he is prophesying of a man, saying: “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, but that Thou visitest him? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.”[Psalms 8:5-6] And in interpreting this same passage the Apostle says: “For we see Jesus, made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honour because that He suffered death, in order that apart from God He might taste death for all.” ... the previous night belongs, and to the night on which He rose again, the coming day; and so when there is added the night which preceded the day belonging to it, and the day which followed the night belonging to it, we see that there is nothing lacking to the whole period of time, which is made up of its portions. The holy Scriptures abound in such instances of ways of speaking: but it would take too long to relate them all. For so when the Psalm says, “What is a man that Thou art mindful of Him,”[Psalms 8:5] from the part we understand the whole, as while only one man is mentioned the whole human race is meant. So also where Ahab sinned we are told that the people sinned. Where—though all are mentioned, a part is to be understood from the whole. John ...Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 172, footnote 12 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Apologetic. (HTML)
An Answer to the Jews. (HTML)
Conclusion. Clue to the Error of the Jews. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1456 (In-Text, Margin)
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 326, footnote 22 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Anti-Marcion. (HTML)
The Five Books Against Marcion. (HTML)
Book III. Wherein Christ is shown to be the Son of God, Who created the world; to have been predicted by the prophets; to have taken human flesh like our own, by a real incarnation. (HTML)
Prophecy Sets Forth Two Different Conditions of Christ, One Lowly, the Other Majestic. This Fact Points to Two Advents of Christ. (HTML)
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 534, footnote 2 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Anti-Marcion. (HTML)
On the Flesh of Christ. (HTML)
Christ Took Not on Him an Angelic Nature, But the Human. It Was Men, Not Angels, Whom He Came to Save. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 7142 (In-Text, Margin)
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 604, footnote 3 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Anti-Marcion. (HTML)
Against Praxeas. (HTML)
The Catholic Rule of Faith Expounded in Some of Its Points. Especially in the Unconfused Distinction of the Several Persons of the Blessed Trinity. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 7864 (In-Text, Margin)
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 619, footnote 7 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Anti-Marcion. (HTML)
Against Praxeas. (HTML)
More Passages from the Same Gospel in Proof of the Same Portion of the Catholic Faith. Praxeas' Taunt of Worshipping Two Gods Repudiated. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 8081 (In-Text, Margin)
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 657, footnote 4 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Ethical. (HTML)
On Repentance. (HTML)
True Repentance a Thing Divine, Originated by God, and Subject to His Laws. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 8424 (In-Text, Margin)
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 709, footnote 21 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Ethical. (HTML)
On Patience. (HTML)
As God is the Author of Patience So the Devil is of Impatience. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 9052 (In-Text, Margin)
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 6, page 367, footnote 4 (Image)
Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius the Great, Julius Africanus, Anatolius and Minor Writers, Methodius, Arnobius
Methodius. (HTML)
From the Discourse on the Resurrection. (HTML)
Part I. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2875 (In-Text, Margin)
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 3, page 78, footnote 6 (Image)
Augustine: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises
Doctrinal Treatises of St. Augustin (HTML)
On the Holy Trinity. (HTML)
Augustin explains for what the Son of God was sent; but, however, that the Son of God, although made less by being sent, is not therefore less because the Father sent Him; nor yet the Holy Spirit less because both the Father sent Him and the Son. (HTML)
The Death of Christ Voluntary. How the Mediator of Life Subdued the Mediator of Death. How the Devil Leads His Own to Despise the Death of Christ. (HTML)
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 391, footnote 14 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
Treatises. (HTML)
Against Jovinianus. (HTML)
Book II (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 4719 (In-Text, Margin)
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 7, page 237, footnote 14 (Image)
Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen
Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen. (HTML)
Panegyric on His Brother S. Cæsarius. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2987 (In-Text, Margin)
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 8, page 35, footnote 9 (Image)
Basil: Letters and Select Works
De Spiritu Sancto. (HTML)
Proof of the absurdity of the refusal to glorify the Spirit, from the comparison of things glorified in creation. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1188 (In-Text, Margin)
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 8, page 118, footnote 5 (Image)
Basil: Letters and Select Works
The Letters. (HTML)
To the Cæsareans. A defence of his withdrawal, and concerning the faith. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1814 (In-Text, Margin)
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 10, page 231, footnote 11 (Image)
Ambrose: Select Works and Letters
Dogmatic Treatises, Ethical Works, and Sermons. (HTML)
Exposition of the Christian Faith. (HTML)
Book II. (HTML)
Chapter VIII. Christ's saying, “The Father is greater than I,” is explained in accordance with the principle just established. Other like sayings are expounded in like fashion. Our Lord cannot, as touching His Godhead, be called inferior to the Father. (HTML)
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 11, page 603, footnote 4 (Image)
Sulpitius Severus, Vincent of Lerins, John Cassian
The Works of John Cassian. (HTML)
The Seven Books of John Cassian on the Incarnation of the Lord, Against Nestorius. (HTML)
Book VI. (HTML)
Chapter XXIII. That the figure Synecdoche, in which the part stands for the whole, is very familiar to the Holy Scripture. (HTML)