Early Church Fathers Scripture Index : Texts
Isaiah 41
There are 22 footnotes for this reference.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, page 7, footnote 11 (Image)
Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus
Clement of Rome (HTML)
First Epistle to the Corinthians (HTML)
Chapter X.—Continuation of the above. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 45 (In-Text, Margin)
Abraham, styled “the friend,”[Isaiah 41:8] was found faithful, inasmuch as he rendered obedience to the words of God. He, in the exercise of obedience, went out from his own country, and from his kindred, and from his father’s house, in order that, by forsaking a small territory, and a weak family, and an insignificant house, he might inherit the promises of God. For God said to him, “Get thee out from thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, into the land which I shall show thee. And I will make ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, page 63, footnote 9 (Image)
Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus
Ignatius (HTML)
Epistle to the Magnesians: Shorter and Longer Versions (HTML)
Chapter X.—Beware of Judaizing. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 703 (In-Text, Margin)
... leaven, and be ye changed into the new leaven of grace. Abide in Christ, that the stranger may not have dominion over you. It is absurd to speak of Jesus Christ with the tongue, and to cherish in the mind a Judaism which has now come to an end. For where there is Christianity there cannot be Judaism. For Christ is one, in whom every nation that believes, and every tongue that confesses, is gathered unto God. And those that were of a stony heart have become the children of Abraham, the friend of God;[Isaiah 41:8] and in his seed all those have been blessed who were ordained to eternal life in Christ.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 2, page 133, footnote 3 (Image)
Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria
Athenagoras (HTML)
A Plea for the Christians (HTML)
Chapter IX.—The Testimony of the Prophets. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 723 (In-Text, Margin)
... zeal for knowledge, and your great attainments in learning, cannot be ignorant of the writings either of Moses or of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the other prophets, who, lifted in ecstasy above the natural operations of their minds by the impulses of the Divine Spirit, uttered the things with which they were inspired, the Spirit making use of them as a flute-player breathes into a flute;—what, then, do these men say? “The Lord is our God; no other can be compared with Him.”[Isaiah 41:4] And again: “I am God, the first and the last, and besides Me there is no God.” In like manner: “Before Me there was no other God, and after Me there shall be none; I am God, and there is none besides Me.” And as to His greatness: “Heaven is My ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 152, footnote 14 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Apologetic. (HTML)
An Answer to the Jews. (HTML)
The Law Anterior to Moses. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1149 (In-Text, Margin)
... subsequently to train, who had before resolved to form, righteous creatures. For what wonder if He extends a discipline who institutes it? if He advances who begins? In short, before the Law of Moses, written in stone-tables, I contend that there was a law unwritten, which was habitually understood naturally, and by the fathers was habitually kept. For whence was Noah “found righteous,” if in his case the righteousness of a natural law had not preceded? Whence was Abraham accounted “a friend of God,”[Isaiah 41:8] if not on the ground of equity and righteousness, (in the observance) of a natural law? Whence was Melchizedek named “priest of the most high God,” if, before the priesthood of the Levitical law, there were not levites who were wont to offer ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 324, footnote 9 (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)
Sundry Features of the Prophetic Style: Principles of Its Interpretation. (HTML)
... literal description. For we both read of “the mountains dropping down new wine,” but not as if one might expect “ must ” from the stones, or its decoction from the rocks; and also hear of “a land flowing with milk and honey,” but not as if you were to suppose that you would ever gather Samian cakes from the ground; nor does God, forsooth, offer His services as a water-bailiff or a farmer when He says, “I will open rivers in a land; I will plant in the wilderness the cedar and the box-tree.”[Isaiah 41:18-19] In like manner, when, foretelling the conversion of the Gentiles, He says, “The beasts of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls,” He surely never meant to derive His fortunate omens from the young of birds and foxes, and from the ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 480, footnote 11 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Anti-Marcion. (HTML)
Against Hermogenes. (HTML)
The Shifts to Which Hermogenes is Reduced, Who Deifies Matter, and Yet is Unwilling to Hold Him Equal with the Divine Creator. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 6189 (In-Text, Margin)
... safe to Him, of being the only God, and the First, and the Author of all things, and the Lord of all things, and being incomparable to any—qualities which he straightway ascribes to Matter also. He is God, to be sure. God shall also attest the same; but He has also sworn sometimes by Himself, that there is no other God like Him. Hermogenes, however, will make Him a liar. For Matter will be such a God as He—being unmade, unborn, without beginning, and without end. God will say, “I am the first!”[Isaiah 41:4] Yet how is He the first, when Matter is co-eternal with Him? Between co-eternals and contemporaries there is no sequence of rank. Is then, Matter also the first? “I,” says the Lord, “have stretched out the heavens alone.” But indeed He was not ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 497, footnote 7 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Anti-Marcion. (HTML)
Against Hermogenes. (HTML)
A Presumption that All Things Were Created by God Out of Nothing Afforded by the Ultimate Reduction of All Things to Nothing. Scriptures Proving This Reduction Vindicated from Hermogenes' Charge of Being Merely Figurative. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 6500 (In-Text, Margin)
... For even as a vesture shall He change them, and they shall be changed.” Now to be changed is to fall from that primitive state which they lose whilst undergoing the change. “And the stars too shall fall from heaven, even as a fig-tree casteth her green figs when she is shaken of a mighty wind.” “The mountains shall melt like wax at the presence of the Lord;” that is, “when He riseth to shake terribly the earth.” “But I will dry up the pools;” and “they shall seek water, and they shall find none.”[Isaiah 41:17] Even “the sea shall be no more.” Now if any person should go so far as to suppose that all these passages ought to be spiritually interpreted, he will yet be unable to deprive them of the true accomplishment of those issues which must come to pass ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 614, footnote 15 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Anti-Marcion. (HTML)
Against Praxeas. (HTML)
The Son in Union with the Father in the Creation of All Things. This Union of the Two in Co-Operation is Not Opposed to the True Unity of God. It is Opposed Only to Praxeas' Identification Theory. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 8001 (In-Text, Margin)
... one with His Son. The utterance, therefore, will be in like manner the Son’s, “I have stretched out the heavens alone,” because by the Word were the heavens established. Inasmuch, then, as the heaven was prepared when Wisdom was present in the Word, and since all things were made by the Word, it is quite correct to say that even the Son stretched out the heaven alone, because He alone ministered to the Father’s work. It must also be He who says, “I am the First, and to all futurity I AM.”[Isaiah 41:4] The Word, no doubt, was before all things. “In the beginning was the Word;” and in that beginning He was sent forth by the Father. The Father, however, has no beginning, as proceeding from none; nor can He be seen, since He was not begotten. He who ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4, page 375, footnote 10 (Image)
Tertullian (IV), Minucius Felix, Commodian, Origen
Origen. (HTML)
Origen De Principiis. (HTML)
IV (HTML)
Sections 24-End translated from the Latin. (HTML)
... was; and a profound depth, who shall find?” Isaiah also, knowing that the beginnings of things could not be discovered by a mortal nature, and not even by those natures which, although more divine than human, were nevertheless themselves created or formed; knowing then, that by none of these could either the beginning or the end be discovered, says, “Tell the former things which have been, and we know that ye are gods; or announce what are the last things, and then we shall see that ye are gods.”[Isaiah 41:22-23] For my Hebrew teacher also used thus to teach, that as the beginning or end of all things could be comprehended by no one, save only our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, so under the form of a vision Isaiah spake of two seraphim alone, who ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 5, page 53, footnote 9 (Image)
Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, Appendix
Hippolytus. (HTML)
The Refutation of All Heresies. (HTML)
Book V. (HTML)
Further Exposition of the Heresy of the Naasseni; Profess to Follow Homer; Acknowledge a Triad of Principles; Their Technical Names of the Triad; Support These on the Authority of Greek Poets; Allegorize Our Saviour's Miracles; The Mystery of the Samothracians; Why the Lord Chose Twelve Disciples; The Name Corybas, Used by Thracians and Phrygians, Explained; Naasseni Profess to Find Their System in Scripture; Their Interpretation of Jacob's Vision; Their Idea of the “Perfect Man;” The “Perfect Man” Called “Papa” By the Phrygians; The Naasseni and Phrygians on the Resurrection; The Ecstasis of St. Paul; The Mysteries of Religion as Alluded to by Christ; Interpretation of the Parable of the Sower; Allegory of the Promised Land (HTML)
... flood,” according to the Psalter, “and who speaketh and crieth from many waters.” The “many waters,” he says, are the diversified generation of mortal men, from which (generation) he cries and vociferates to the unportrayed man, saying, “Preserve my only-begotten from the lions.” In reply to him, it has, says he, been declared, “Israel, thou art my child: fear not; even though thou passest through rivers, they shall not drown thee; even though thou passest through fire, it shall not scorch thee.”[Isaiah 41:8] By rivers he means, says he, the moist substance of generation, and by fire the impulsive principle and desire for generation. “Thou art mine; fear not.” And again, he says, “If a mother forget her children, so as not to have pity on them and give ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 5, page 517, footnote 6 (Image)
Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, Appendix
Cyprian. (HTML)
The Treatises of Cyprian. (HTML)
Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews. (HTML)
Book II. (HTML)
... will hear them, and will not forsake them; but I will open rivers in the mountains, and fountains in the midst of the fields. I will make the wildernesses watery groves, and a thirsty land into watercourses. I will establish in the land of drought the cedar-tree and the box-tree, and the myrtle and the cypress, and the elm and the poplar, that they may see and acknowledge, and know and believe together, that the Hand of the Lord hath done these things, and the Holy One of Israel hath shown them.”[Isaiah 41:15-20]
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 9, page 232, footnote 2 (Image)
Gospel of Peter, Diatessaron, Apocalypses, Visio Pauli, Testament of Abraham, Acts of X/P, Zosimus, Aristides, Clement, Origen
The Epistles of Clement. (HTML)
The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians. (HTML)
Continuation of the Above. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 4050 (In-Text, Margin)
Abraham, styled “the friend,”[Isaiah 41:8] was found faithful, inasmuch as he rendered obedience to the words of God. He, in the exercise of obedience, went out from his own country, and from his kindred, and from his father’s house, in order that, by forsaking a small territory, and a weak family, and an insignificant house, he might inherit the promises of God. For God said to him, “Get thee out from thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, into the land which I shall show thee. And I will make ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 3, page 164, footnote 3 (Image)
Theodoret, Jerome and Gennadius, Rufinus and Jerome
The Ecclesiastical History, Dialogues, and Letters of Theodoret. (HTML)
Dialogues. The “Eranistes” or “Polymorphus” of the Blessed Theodoretus, Bishop of Cyrus. (HTML)
The Immutable. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 988 (In-Text, Margin)
Orth. —So when we hear the prophet saying, “But thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend,”[Isaiah 41:8] are we to understand the Jews to be bodies only? Are we not to understand them to be men consisting of bodies and souls?
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 5, page 134, footnote 13 (Image)
Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises; Select Writings and Letters
Dogmatic Treatises. (HTML)
Against Eunomius. (HTML)
Book II (HTML)
Lastly he displays at length the folly of Eunomius, who at times speaks of the Holy Spirit as created, and as the fairest work of the Son, and at other times confesses, by the operations attributed to Him, that He is God, and thus ends the book. (HTML)
Again he says, “Emboldening the faint-hearted.” And here, while in accordance with his own method he follows his previous blasphemy against the Spirit, the truth for all that manifests itself, even through unfriendly lips. For to none other than to God does it belong to implant courage in the fearful, saying to the faint-hearted, “Fear not, for I am with thee, be not dismayed[Isaiah 41:10],” as says the Psalmist, “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” Nay, the Lord Himself says to the fearful,—“Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid,” and, “Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?” and, “Be of good cheer, it is ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 163, footnote 7 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)
To Salvina. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2391 (In-Text, Margin)
... of shewing pity we should judge unjust judgment. For each individual is to be judged not by his personal importance but by the merits of his case. His wealth need not stand in the way of the rich man, if he makes a good use of it; and poverty can be no recommendation to the poor if in the midst of squalor and want he fails to keep clear of wrong doing. Proofs of these things are not wanting either in scriptural times or our own; for Abraham, in spite of his immense wealth, was “the friend of God”[Isaiah 41:8] and poor men are daily arrested and punished for their crimes by law. She whom I now address is both rich and poor so that she cannot say what she actually has. For it is not of her purse that I am speaking but of the purity of her soul. I do not ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 7, page 30, footnote 8 (Image)
Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen
The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril. (HTML)
Of Faith. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 775 (In-Text, Margin)
5. There is much to tell of faith, and the whole day would not be time sufficient for us to describe it fully. At present let us be content with Abraham only, as one of the examples from the Old Testament, seeing that we have been made his sons through faith. He was justified not only by works, but also by faith: for though he did many things well, yet he was never called the friend of God[Isaiah 41:8], except when he believed. Moreover, his every work was performed in faith. Through faith he left his parents; left country, and place, and home through faith. In like manner, therefore, as he was justified be thou justified also. In his body he was already dead in regard to offspring, and Sarah his ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 7, page 307, footnote 3 (Image)
Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen
Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen. (HTML)
The Third Theological Oration. On the Son. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3525 (In-Text, Margin)
XVII. For we have learnt to believe in and to teach the Deity of the Son from their great and lofty utterances. And what utterances are these? These: God—The Word—He That Was In The Beginning and With The Beginning, and The Beginning. “In the Beginning was The Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and “With Thee is the Beginning,” and “He who calleth her The Beginning from generations.”[Isaiah 41:4] Then the Son is Only-begotten: The only “begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, it says, He hath declared Him.” The Way, the Truth, the Life, the Light. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life;” and “I am the Light of the World.” Wisdom and Power, “Christ, the Wisdom of God, and the ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 7, page 325, footnote 2 (Image)
Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen
Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen. (HTML)
The Fifth Theological Oration. On the Holy Spirit. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3726 (In-Text, Margin)
... your Unbegotten and Unoriginate, those two citadels of your position, or we our Immortal? Show me these in so many words, or we shall either set them aside, or erase them as not contained in Scripture; and you are slain by your own principle, the names you rely on being overthrown, and therewith the wall of refuge in which you trusted. Is it not evident that they are due to passages which imply them, though the words do not actually occur? What are these passages?—I am the first, and I am the last,[Isaiah 41:4] and before Me there was no God, neither shall there be after Me. For all that depends on that Am makes for my side, for it has neither beginning nor ending. When you accept this, that nothing is before Him, and that He has not an older Cause, you ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 7, page 353, footnote 10 (Image)
Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen
Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen. (HTML)
Oration on the Holy Lights. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3926 (In-Text, Margin)
V. And where will you place the butchery of Pelops, which feasted hungry gods, that bitter and inhuman hospitality? Where the horrible and dark spectres of Hecate, and the underground puerilities and sorceries of Trophonius, or the babblings of the Dodonæan Oak, or the trickeries of the Delphian tripod, or the prophetic draught of Castalia, which could prophesy anything, except their own being brought to silence?[Isaiah 41:22] Nor is it the sacrificial art of Magi, and their entrail forebodings, nor the Chaldæan astronomy and horoscopes, comparing our lives with the movements of the heavenly bodies, which cannot know even what they are themselves, or shall be. Nor are these Thracian orgies, from which the word ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 10, page 276, footnote 1 (Image)
Ambrose: Select Works and Letters
Dogmatic Treatises, Ethical Works, and Sermons. (HTML)
Exposition of the Christian Faith. (HTML)
Book IV. (HTML)
Chapter IX. Various quibbling arguments, advanced by the Arians to show that the Son had a beginning of existence, are considered and refuted, on the ground that whilst the Arians plainly prove nothing, or if they prove anything, prove it against themselves, (inasmuch as He Who is the beginning of all cannot Himself have a beginning), their reasonings do not even hold true with regard to facts of human existence. Time could not be before He was, Who is the Author of time--if indeed at some time He was not in existence, then the Father was without His Power and Wisdom. Again, our own human experience shows that a person is said to exist before he is born. (HTML)
108. But neither had the Son of God any beginning, seeing that He already was at the beginning, nor shall He come to an end, Who is the Beginning and the End of the Universe;[Isaiah 41:4] for being the Beginning, how could He take and receive that which He already had, or how shall He come to an end, being Himself the End of all things, so that in that End we have an abiding-place without end? The Divine Generation is not an event occurring in the course of time, and within its limits, and therefore before it time is not, and in it time has no place.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 13, page 359, footnote 15 (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 Wars. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 802 (In-Text, Margin)
... is the week and a half, which is ten years and a half. Again he said:— The judgment was set and they took away his authority from him, to injure and destroy him until the end of the kingdom. For the judgment came upon Antiochus, a judgment from heaven; and he became sick with a grievous and evil sickness, and on account of the smell of him as he rotted, no man could approach him, for worms were crawling and falling from him and eating his flesh because he oppressed the worm Jacob.[Isaiah 41:14] And his flesh rotted in his lifetime, because he caused the dead bodies of the sons of Jerusalem to rot and they were not buried. And he became defiled in his own eyes, because he had defiled the sanctuary of God. And he prayed and was not heard, ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 13, page 392, footnote 4 (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 Christ the Son of God. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1086 (In-Text, Margin)
... called; and Priest like Aaron, and King, like David; and great Prophet, like all the Prophets; and Shepherd, like the shepherds who tended and guided Israel. And so did He call children as He said:— Strange children shall hearken unto Me. And He has made us brothers unto Himself, He said:— I will declare Thy name unto My brethren. And we have become friends unto Him, as He said to His disciples:— I have called you friends, even as His Father called Abraham My friend.[Isaiah 41:8] And He said unto us:— I am the good Shepherd, the Door, the Way, the Vine, the Sower, the Bridegroom, the Pearl, the Lamp, the Light, the King, God, Saviour, and Redeemer. And by many names is He surnamed.