Early Church Fathers Scripture Index : Texts
John 2:21
There are 15 footnotes for this reference.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, page 532, footnote 3 (Image)
Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus
Irenæus (HTML)
Against Heresies: Book V (HTML)
Chapter VI.—God will bestow salvation upon the whole nature of man, consisting of body and soul in close union, since the Word took it upon Him, and adorned with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, of whom our bodies are, and are termed, the temples. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 4480 (In-Text, Margin)
... of God,” thus declaring: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man, therefore, will defile the temple of God, him will God destroy: for the temple of God is holy, which [temple] ye are.” Here he manifestly declares the body to be the temple in which the Spirit dwells. As also the Lord speaks in reference to Himself, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. He spake this, however,” it is said, “of the temple of His body.”[John 2:19-21] And not only does he (the apostle) acknowledge our bodies to be a temple, but even the temple of Christ, saying thus to the Corinthians, “Know ye not that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 2, page 585, footnote 2 (Image)
Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria
Clement of Alexandria (HTML)
The Stromata, or Miscellanies (HTML)
Fragments of Clemens Alexandrinus (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3831 (In-Text, Margin)
And with reference to the body, which by circumscription He consecrated as a hallowed place for Himself upon earth, He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again. The Jews therefore said, In forty-six years was this temple built, and wilt thou raise it up in three days? But He spake of the temple of His body.”[John 2:19-21]
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 558, footnote 5 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Anti-Marcion. (HTML)
On the Resurrection of the Flesh. (HTML)
Scripture Phrases and Passages Clearly Assert “The Resurrection of the Dead.” The Force of This Very Phrase Explained as Indicating the Prominent Place of the Flesh in the General Resurrection. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 7391 (In-Text, Margin)
... described, when, clothed as He was in its very substance, He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.” For He showed to what belongs (the incidents of) being destroyed, thrown down, and kept down—even to that to which it also appertains to be lifted and raised up again; although He was at the same time bearing about with Him “a soul that was trembling even unto death,” but which did not fall through death, because even the Scripture informs us that “He spoke of His body.”[John 2:21] So that it is the flesh which falls by death; and accordingly it derives its name, cadaver, from cadendo. The soul, however, has no trace of a fall in its designation, as indeed there is no mortality in its condition. Nay it is ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4, page 158, footnote 2 (Image)
Tertullian (IV), Minucius Felix, Commodian, Origen
Tertullian: Part Fourth. (HTML)
Appendix (HTML)
Five Books in Reply to Marcion. (HTML)
Of Marcion's Antitheses. (HTML)
Denote our bodies: God’s true temple[John 2:19-22] He,
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4, page 647, footnote 3 (Image)
Tertullian (IV), Minucius Felix, Commodian, Origen
Origen. (HTML)
Origen Against Celsus. (HTML)
Book VIII (HTML)
Chapter XIX (HTML)
... destroyed, as acting impiously towards the true temple. Of all the temples spoken of in this sense, the best and most excellent was the pure and holy body of our Saviour Jesus Christ. When He knew that wicked men might aim at the destruction of the temple of God in Him, but that their purposes of destruction would not prevail against the divine power which had built that temple, He says to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it again.…This He said of the temple of His body.”[John 2:21] And in other parts of holy Scripture where it speaks of the mystery of the resurrection to those whose ears are divinely opened, it says that the temple which has been destroyed shall be built up again of living and most precious stones, thereby ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 6, page 51, footnote 16 (Image)
Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius the Great, Julius Africanus, Anatolius and Minor Writers, Methodius, Arnobius
Gregory Thaumaturgus. (HTML)
Dubious or Spurious Writings. (HTML)
Twelve Topics on the Faith. (HTML)
Topic IX. (HTML)
If any one says that Christ suffers change or alteration, and refuses to acknowledge that He is unchangeable in the Spirit, though corruptible[John 2:20-21] in the flesh, let him be anathema.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 7, page 355, footnote 1 (Image)
Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, 2 Clement, Early Liturgies
Victorinus (HTML)
Commentary on the Apocalypse of the Blessed John (HTML)
From the eleventh chapter (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2297 (In-Text, Margin)
19. “And the temple of God was opened which is in heaven.”] The temple opened is a manifestation of our Lord. For the temple of God is the Son, as He Himself says: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” And when the Jews said, “Forty and six years was this temple in building,” the evangelist says, “He spake of the temple of His body.”[John 2:19-21]
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 9, page 92, footnote 27 (Image)
Gospel of Peter, Diatessaron, Apocalypses, Visio Pauli, Testament of Abraham, Acts of X/P, Zosimus, Aristides, Clement, Origen
The Diatessaron of Tatian. (HTML)
The Diatessaron. (HTML)
Section XXXII. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2194 (In-Text, Margin)
... not my Father’s house a house of merchandise. And he suffered not any [6] one to carry vessels inside the temple. And his disciples remembered the scripture, [7] The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up. The Jews answered and said unto him, [8] What sign hast thou shewn us, that thou doest this? Jesus answered and said unto [9] them, Destroy this temple, and I shall raise it in three days. The Jews said unto him, This temple was built in forty-six years, and wilt thou raise it in three days? [10][John 2:21] But he spake unto them of the temple of his body, that when they destroyed it, he [11] [Arabic, p. 122] would raise it in three days. When therefore he rose from among the dead, his disciples remembered that he said this; and they believed the ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 9, page 381, footnote 1 (Image)
Gospel of Peter, Diatessaron, Apocalypses, Visio Pauli, Testament of Abraham, Acts of X/P, Zosimus, Aristides, Clement, Origen
Epistle to Gregory and Origen's Commentary on the Gospel of John. (HTML)
Origen's Commentary on the Gospel of John. (HTML)
Book X. (HTML)
Jesus Comes to Capernaum. Statements of the Four Evangelists Regarding This. (HTML)
“After this[John 2:12-25] He went down to Capernaum, He and His mother and His brothers and His disciples; and there they abode not many days. And the passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and He found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting, and He made a sort of scourge of cords, and cast them all out of the temple, and the sheep and the oxen, and He poured out the small money of the changers and overthrew their tables, and to those ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 9, page 403, footnote 8 (Image)
Gospel of Peter, Diatessaron, Apocalypses, Visio Pauli, Testament of Abraham, Acts of X/P, Zosimus, Aristides, Clement, Origen
Epistle to Gregory and Origen's Commentary on the Gospel of John. (HTML)
Origen's Commentary on the Gospel of John. (HTML)
Book X. (HTML)
The Temple Spoken of by Christ is the Church. Application to the Church of the Statements Regarding the Building of Solomon's Temple, and the Numbers Stated in that Narrative. (HTML)
“But He spake of the temple of His body.[John 2:21] When, therefore, He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.” This refers to the statement that the body of the Son is His temple. It may be asked whether this is to be taken in its plain sense, or whether we should try to connect each statement that is recorded about the temple, with the view we take about the body of Jesus, whether the body which He received from the Virgin, or ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 3, page 74, footnote 3 (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 Number Six is Also Commended in the Building Up of the Body of Christ and of the Temple at Jerusalem. (HTML)
... which He was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before nor since. But He was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th. If, then you reckon from that day to this you find two hundred and seventy-six days which is forty-six times six. And in this number of years the temple was built, because in that number of sixes the body of the Lord was perfected; which being destroyed by the suffering of death, He raised again on the third day. For “He spake this of the temple of His body,”[John 2:19-21] as is declared by the most clear and solid testimony of the Gospel; where He said, “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 6, page 231, footnote 2 (Image)
Augustine: Sermon on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels
The Harmony of the Gospels. (HTML)
Book IV (HTML)
Of the Evangelist John, and the Distinction Between Him and the Other Three. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1632 (In-Text, Margin)
12. Then, after noticing the few days spent in Capharnaum, the evangelist comes again to the temple, where he states that Jesus spoke of the temple of His body in these terms: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up:”[John 2:12-22] in which declaration emphatic intimation is given not only that God was in that temple in the person of the Word that was made flesh, but also that He Himself raised the said flesh to life, in the veritable exercise of that prerogative which He has in His oneness with the Father, and according to which He does not act separately from Him; whereas it will perhaps be found that, ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 8, page 276, footnote 2 (Image)
Augustine: Expositions on the Psalms
Expositions on the Book of Psalms. (HTML)
Psalm LXVI (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2602 (In-Text, Margin)
... to us, that Thou doest these things?” besides that which He had spoken about Jonah through another similitude of this same thing also He spake, that ye might know this peculiar sign had been especially pointed out: “Destroy this Temple,” He saith, “and in three days I will raise it up.” And they said, “In forty and six years was builded this temple, and wilt Thou in three days raise it up?” And the evangelist explaining what it was, “But this,” he saith, “spake Jesus of the Temple of His Body.”[John 2:21] Behold this His power He said He would show to men in the same thing as that from whence He had given the similitude of a Temple, because of His flesh, which was the Temple of the Divinity hidden within. Whence the Jews outwardly saw the Temple, the ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 3, page 230, footnote 5 (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 Impassible. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1494 (In-Text, Margin)
Eran. —And where doth the Lord shew that the body was being offered? Or are you going to bring me once more that well worn passage “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up”? Or with your conceited self-sufficiency are you going to quote me the words of the Evangelist? “But He spake of the temple of his body. When therefore He was risen from the dead His disciples remembered that He had said this unto them and they believed the Scripture and the words which He had said.”[John 2:21-22]
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 3, page 241, footnote 5 (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 Impassible. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1562 (In-Text, Margin)
“Why does not the evangelist pass this by? Why did he add the correction, ‘But He spake of the temple of his body’?[John 2:21] for He did not say destroy this ‘body,’ but ‘temple’ that He might shew the indwelling God. Destroy this temple which is far more excellent than that of the Jews. The Jewish temple contained the Law; this temple contains the Lawgiver; the former the letter that killeth; the latter the spirit that giveth life.”