Early Church Fathers Scripture Index : Texts
Isaiah 44:6
There are 18 footnotes for this reference.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, page 110, footnote 10 (Image)
Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus
Ignatius (HTML)
Epistle to the Antiochians (HTML)
Chapter III.—The same continued. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1225 (In-Text, Margin)
The prophets also, when they speak as in the person of God, [saying,] “I am God, the first [of beings], and I am also the last, and besides Me there is no God,”[Isaiah 44:6] concerning the Father of the universe, do also speak of our Lord Jesus Christ. “A Son,” they say, has been given to us, on whose shoulder the government is from above; and His name is called the Angel of great counsel, Wonderful, Counsellor, the strong and mighty God.” And concerning His incarnation, “Behold, a virgin shall be with Child, and shall bring forth a Son; and they shall call his name Immanuel.” And ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, page 281, footnote 3 (Image)
Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus
Justin Martyr (HTML)
Hortatory Address to the Greeks (HTML)
Chapter XXI.—The namelessness of God. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2548 (In-Text, Margin)
For God cannot be called by any proper name, for names are given to mark out and distinguish their subject-matters, because these are many and diverse; but neither did any one exist before God who could give Him a name, nor did He Himself think it right to name Himself, seeing that He is one and unique, as He Himself also by His own prophets testifies, when He says, “I God am the first,” and after this, “And beside me there is no other God.”[Isaiah 44:6] On this account, then, as I before said, God did not, when He sent Moses to the Hebrews, mention any name, but by a participle He mystically teaches them that He is the one and only God. “For,” says He; “I am the Beingi;” manifestly contrasting Himself, “the Being,” ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 2, page 133, footnote 4 (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 724 (In-Text, Margin)
... 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.” And again: “I am God, the first and the last, and besides Me there is no God.”[Isaiah 44:6] 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 throne, and the earth is the footstool of My feet: what house will ye build for Me, ...
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 44:6] 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 614, footnote 1 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Anti-Marcion. (HTML)
Against Praxeas. (HTML)
The Designation of the One God in the Prophetic Scriptures. Intended as a Protest Against Heathen Idolatry, It Does Not Preclude the Correlative Idea of the Son of God. The Son is in the Father. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 7987 (In-Text, Margin)
... besides Himself in respect of the idolatry both of the Gentiles as well as of Israel; nay, even on account of our heretics also, who fabricate idols with their words, just as the heathen do with their hands; that is to say, they make another God and another Christ. When, therefore, He attested His own unity, the Father took care of the Son’s interests, that Christ should not be sup posed to have come from another God, but from Him who had already said, “I am God and there is none other beside me,”[Isaiah 44:6] who shows us that He is the only God, but in company with His Son, with whom “He stretcheth out the heavens alone.”
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 5, page 224, footnote 1 (Image)
Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, Appendix
Hippolytus. (HTML)
The Extant Works and Fragments of Hippolytus. (HTML)
Dogmatical and Historical. (HTML)
Against the Heresy of One Noetus. (HTML)
2. Now they seek to exhibit the foundation for their dogma by citing the word in the law, “I am the God of your fathers: ye shall have no other gods beside me;” and again in another passage, “I am the first,” He saith, “and the last; and beside me there is none other.”[Isaiah 44:6] Thus they say they prove that God is one. And then they answer in this manner: “If therefore I acknowledge Christ to be God, He is the Father Himself, if He is indeed God; and Christ suffered, being Himself God; and consequently the Father suffered, for He was the Father Himself.” But the case stands not thus; for the Scriptures do not set forth the matter in ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 5, page 642, footnote 5 (Image)
Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, Appendix
Novatian. (HTML)
A Treatise of Novatian Concerning the Trinity. (HTML)
In Fine, Notwithstanding the Said Heretics Have Gathered the Origin of Their Error from Consideration of What is Written: Although We Call Christ God, and the Father God, Still Scripture Does Not Set Forth Two Gods, Any More Than Two Lords or Two Teachers. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 5284 (In-Text, Margin)
... and blindness, if they either will not, or cannot, see what is evidently written in the midst of the divine documents. For we both know, and read, and believe, and maintain that God is one, who made the heaven as well as the earth, since we neither know any other, nor shall we at any time know such, seeing that there is none. “I,” says He, “am God, and there is none beside me, righteous and a Saviour.” And in another place: “I am the first and the last, and beside me there is no God who is as I.”[Isaiah 44:6-7] And, “Who hath meted out heaven with a span, and the earth with a handful? Who has suspended the mountains in a balance, and the woods on scales?” And Hezekiah: “That all may know that Thou art God alone.” Moreover, the Lord Himself: “Why askest ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 7, page 132, footnote 12 (Image)
Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, 2 Clement, Early Liturgies
Lactantius (HTML)
The Divine Institutes (HTML)
Book IV. Of True Wisdom and Religion (HTML)
Chap. XXIX.—Of the Christian religion, and of the union of Jesus with the Father (HTML)
... the Son, and the Father is in the Son; for He faithfully obeys the will of the Father, nor does He ever do nor has done anything except what the Father either willed or commanded. Lastly, that the Father and the Son are but one God, Isaiah showed in that passage which we have brought forward before, when he said: “They shall fall down unto Thee, and make supplication unto Thee, since God is in Thee, and there is no other God besides Thee.” And he also speaks to the same purport in another place:[Isaiah 44:6] “Thus saith God the King of Israel, and His Redeemer, the everlasting God; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.” When he had set forth two persons, one of God the King, that is, Christ, and the other of God the Father, ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 8, page 48, footnote 5 (Image)
Twelve Patriarchs, Excerpts and Epistles, The Clementina, Apocryphal Gospels and Acts, Syriac Documents
Excerpts of Theodotus. (HTML)
Excerpts of Theodotus. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 257 (In-Text, Margin)
XXXVIII. Against Tatian, who says that the words, “Let there be light,” are supplicatory. If, then, He is supplicating the supreme God, how does He say, “I am God, and beside me there is none else?”[Isaiah 44:6] We have said that there are punishments for blasphemies, for nonsense, for outrageous expressions; which are punished and chastised by reason.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 8, page 314, footnote 4 (Image)
Twelve Patriarchs, Excerpts and Epistles, The Clementina, Apocryphal Gospels and Acts, Syriac Documents
Pseudo-Clementine Literature. (HTML)
The Clementine Homilies. (HTML)
Homily XVI. (HTML)
Peter Appeals to the Old Testament to Prove the Unity of God. (HTML)
... Scripture says to the Jewish multitude, ‘The Lord your God is God of gods;’ so that, even if there are gods, they are under the God of the Jews. And somewhere else the Scripture says in regard to Him, God, the great and true, who regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward, He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow.’ The Scripture, in calling the God of the Jews great and true, and executing judgment, marked out the others as small, and not true. But also somewhere else the Scripture says,[Isaiah 44:6] ‘As I live, saith the Lord, there is no other God but me. I am the first, I am after this; except me there is no God.’ And again: ‘Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.’ And again: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 2, page 57, footnote 1 (Image)
Socrates: Church History from A.D. 305-438; Sozomenus: Church History from A.D. 323-425
The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus. (HTML)
Book II (HTML)
Creeds published at Sirmium in Presence of the Emperor Constantius. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 361 (In-Text, Margin)
... God makes the Son, or shall term the Son the dilatation of his essence, let him be anathema. If any one calls the Son of God the internal or uttered word, let him be anathema. If any one declares that the Son that was born of Mary was man only, let him be anathema. If any man affirming him that was born of Mary to be God and man, shall imply the unbegotten God himself, let him be anathema. If any one shall understand the text, “I am the first, and I am the last, and besides me there is no God,”[Isaiah 44:6] which was spoken for the destruction of idols and false gods, in the sense the Jews do, as if it were said for the subversion of the only-begotten of God before the ages, let him be anathema. If any one hearing “the Word was made flesh,” should ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 4, page 397, footnote 3 (Image)
Athanasius: Select Writings and Letters
Against the Arians. (Orationes contra Arianos IV.) (HTML)
Against the Arians. (Orationes contra Arianos IV.) (HTML)
Discourse III (HTML)
Texts Explained; Seventhly, John xiv. 10. Introduction. The doctrine of the coinherence. The Father and the Son Each whole and perfect God. They are in Each Other, because their Essence is One and the Same. They are Each Perfect and have One Essence, because the Second Person is the Son of the First. Asterius's evasive explanation of the text under review; refuted. Since the Son has all that the Father has, He is His Image; and the Father is the One God, because the Son is in the Father. (HTML)
... and thus the faith is one in one God. And he who worships and honours the Son, in the Son worships and honours the Father; for one is the Godhead; and therefore one the honour and one the worship which is paid to the Father in and through the Son. And he who thus worships, worships one God; for there is one God and none other than He. Accordingly when the Father is called the only God, and we read that there is one God, and ‘I am,’ and ‘beside Me there is no God,’ and ‘I the first and I the last[Isaiah 44:6],’ this has a fit meaning. For God is One and Only and First; but this is not said to the denial of the Son, perish the thought; for He is in that One, and First and Only, as being of that One and Only and First the Only Word and Wisdom and Radiance. ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 8, page 28, footnote 3 (Image)
Basil: Letters and Select Works
De Spiritu Sancto. (HTML)
In what manner in the confession of the three hypostases we preserve the pious dogma of the Monarchia. Wherein also is the refutation of them that allege that the Spirit is subnumerated. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1088 (In-Text, Margin)
45. For we do not count by way of addition, gradually making increase from unity to multitude, and saying one, two, and three,—nor yet first, second, and third. For “I,” God, “am the first, and I am the last.”[Isaiah 44:6] And hitherto we have never, even at the present time, heard of a second God. Worshipping as we do God of God, we both confess the distinction of the Persons, and at the same time abide by the Monarchy. We do not fritter away the theology in a divided plurality, because one Form, so to say, united in the invariableness of the Godhead, is beheld in God the Father, and in God the Only begotten. ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 9, page 16, footnote 1 (Image)
Hilary of Poitiers, John of Damascus
Title Page (HTML)
De Synodis or On the Councils. (HTML)
De Synodis or On the Councils. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 479 (In-Text, Margin)
XXIII. “If any man after the example of the Jews understands as said for the destruction of the Eternal Only-begotten God the words, I am the first God, and I am the last God, and beside Me there is no God[Isaiah 44:6], which were spoken for the destruction of idols and them that are no gods: let him be anathema.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 9, page 19, footnote 2 (Image)
Hilary of Poitiers, John of Damascus
Title Page (HTML)
De Synodis or On the Councils. (HTML)
De Synodis or On the Councils. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 488 (In-Text, Margin)
XXIII. “If any man, after the example of the Jews, understand as said for the destruction of the Eternal Only-begotten God, the words, I am the first God, and I am the last God, and beside Me there is no God[Isaiah 44:6], which were spoken for the destruction of idols and them that are no gods: let him be anathema.”
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 44:6] 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 10, page 299, footnote 1 (Image)
Ambrose: Select Works and Letters
Dogmatic Treatises, Ethical Works, and Sermons. (HTML)
Exposition of the Christian Faith. (HTML)
Book V. (HTML)
Chapter IX. The saint meets those who in Jewish wise object to the order of the words: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,” with the retort that the Son also is often placed before the Father; though he first points out that an answer to this objection has been already given by him. (HTML)
... that the Father is spoken of after Him. Is it therefore a fact that, because the name of the Son is placed first, by the mere accident of a word, as the Arians would have it, the Father comes second to the Son? God forbid, I say, God forbid. Faith knows nothing of such order as this; it knows nothing of a divided honour of the Father and the Son. I have not read of, nor heard of, nor found any varying degree in God. Never have I read of a second, never of a third God. I have read of a first God,[Isaiah 44:6] I have heard of a first and only God.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 13, page 389, footnote 1 (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 1060 (In-Text, Margin)
... conception of Adam, He brought him forth and gave him authority over all his creation. Concerning this the Prophet said:— Thou, Lord, hast been our habitation for generations, before the mountains were conceived, and before the earth travailed and before the world was framed. From age unto age Thou art the Lord. That no one should suppose that there is another God, either before or afterwards, he said:— From age and unto age, just as Isaiah said:— I am the first and I am the last.[Isaiah 44:6] And after that God brought forth Adam from within His thought, He fashioned him, and breathed into him of His Spirit, and gave him the knowledge of discernment, that he might discern good from evil, and might know that God made him. And inasmuch as ...