Early Church Fathers Scripture Index : Texts
1 Corinthians 4:9
There are 11 footnotes for this reference.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 2, page 418, footnote 10 (Image)
Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria
Clement of Alexandria (HTML)
The Stromata, or Miscellanies (HTML)
Book IV. (HTML)
Chapter VII.—The Blessedness of the Martyr. (HTML)
... add the following, to show the contempt for faith in the case of the multitude? “For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as appointed to death: we are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men. Up to this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are beaten, and are feeble, and labour, working with our hands. Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat; we are become as it were the offscourings of the world.”[1 Corinthians 4:9] Such also are the words of Plato in the Republic: “The just man, though stretched on the rack, though his eyes are dug out, will be happy.” The Gnostic will never then have the chief end placed in life, but in being always happy and blessed, ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 442, footnote 21 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Anti-Marcion. (HTML)
The Five Books Against Marcion. (HTML)
Book V. Wherein Tertullian proves, with respect to St. Paul's epistles, what he had proved in the preceding book with respect to St. Luke's gospel. Far from being at variance, they were in perfect unison with the writings of the Old Testament, and therefore testified that the Creator was the only God, and that the Lord Jesus was his Christ. As in the preceding books, Tertullian supports his argument with profound reasoning, and many happy illustrations of Holy Scripture. (HTML)
St. Paul's Phraseology Often Suggested by the Jewish Scriptures. Christ Our Passover--A Phrase Which Introduces Us to the Very Heart of the Ancient Dispensation. Christ's True Corporeity. Married and Unmarried States. Meaning of the Time is Short. In His Exhortations and Doctrine, the Apostle Wholly Teaches According to the Mind and Purposes of the God of the Old Testament. Prohibition of Meats and Drinks Withdrawn by the Creator. (HTML)
“And the hidden things of darkness He will Himself bring to light,” even by Christ; for He has promised Christ to be a Light, and Himself He has declared to be a lamp, “searching the hearts and reins.” From Him also shall “praise be had by every man,” from whom proceeds, as from a judge, the opposite also of praise. But here, at least, you say he interprets the world to be the God thereof, when he says: “We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.”[1 Corinthians 4:9] For if by world he had meant the people thereof, he would not have afterwards specially mentioned “ men.” To prevent, however, your using such an argument as this, the Holy Ghost has providentially explained the meaning of the passage thus: “We are made ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 9, page 311, footnote 6 (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 I. (HTML)
Christ as Light; How He, and How His Disciples are the Light of the World. (HTML)
... does not follow that the sensible is false, for the sensible may have an analogy with the intellectual, and not everything that is not true can correctly be called false. Now I ask whether the light of the world is the same thing with the light of men, and I conceive that a higher power of light is intended by the former phrase than by the latter, for the world in one sense is not only men. Paul shows that the world is something more than men when he writes to the Corinthians in his first Epistle:[1 Corinthians 4:9] “We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.” In one sense, too, it may be considered, the world is the creation which is being delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God, ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 2, page 269, footnote 10 (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 Perturbations of the Soul Which Appear as Right Affections in the Life of the Righteous. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 698 (In-Text, Margin)
... infirmities, the teacher (doctor) of the nations in faith and truth, who also labored more than all his fellow-apostles, and instructed the tribes of God’s people by his epistles, which edified not only those of his own time, but all those who were to be gathered in,—that hero, I say, and athlete of Christ, instructed by Him, anointed of His Spirit, crucified with Him, glorious in Him, lawfully maintaining a great conflict on the theatre of this world, and being made a spectacle to angels and men,[1 Corinthians 4:9] and pressing onwards for the prize of his high calling, —very joyfully do we with the eyes of faith behold him rejoicing with them that rejoice, and weeping with them that weep; though hampered by fightings without and fears within; desiring to ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 6, page 245, footnote 6 (Image)
Augustine: Sermon on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels
Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament. (HTML)
Of the agreement of the evangelists Matthew and Luke in the generations of the Lord. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1690 (In-Text, Margin)
... My hands and My feet, they told all My bones.” Lo! how He was made a spectacle, for His bones to be told! and this spectacle He expresseth more plainly, “they observed and looked upon Me.” He was made a spectacle and an object of derision, made a spectacle by them who were to show Him no favour indeed in that spectacle, but who were to be furious against Him, just as at first He made His martyrs spectacles; as saith the Apostle, “We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.”[1 Corinthians 4:9] Now two sorts of men are spectators of such spectacles; the one, carnal, the other, spiritual men. The carnal look on, as thinking those martyrs who are thrown to the beasts, or beheaded, or burnt in the flames, to be wretched men, and they detest ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 8, page 116, footnote 8 (Image)
Augustine: Expositions on the Psalms
Expositions on the Book of Psalms. (HTML)
Psalm XXXIX (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1066 (In-Text, Margin)
15. “Thou hast made me the reproach of the foolish.” Thou hast so willed it, that I should live among those, and preach the Truth among those, who love vanity; and I cannot but be a laughing-stock to them. “For we have been made a spectacle unto this world, and unto angels, and unto men:”[1 Corinthians 4:9] to angels who praise, to men who censure, us; or rather to angels, some of whom praise, some of whom are censuring us: and to men also, some of whom are praising, and some censuring us.…Both the one and the other are arms to us: the one “on the right hand,” the other “on the left:” arms however they are both of them; both of these kinds of arms, both ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 8, page 123, footnote 2 (Image)
Augustine: Expositions on the Psalms
Expositions on the Book of Psalms. (HTML)
Psalm XL (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1117 (In-Text, Margin)
... Peter walked, to symbolize a certain truth), for this world is a sea. It hath a deleterious bitterness; it hath the waves of tribulations, the tempests of temptations; it hath men in it who, like fish, delight in their own ruin, and prey upon each other; walk thou here, set thou thy foot on this. Thou wouldest see sights; be thyself a “spectacle.” That thy spirit may not sink, look on Him who goes before thee, and says, “We have been made a spectacle unto this world, and unto angels, and unto men.”[1 Corinthians 4:9] Tread thou on the waters; suffer not thyself to be drowned in the sea. Thou wilt not go there, thou wilt not “tread it under foot,” unless it be His bidding, who was Himself the first to walk upon the sea. For it was thus that Peter spoke. “If Thou ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 3, page 124, footnote 1 (Image)
Theodoret, Jerome and Gennadius, Rufinus and Jerome
The Ecclesiastical History, Dialogues, and Letters of Theodoret. (HTML)
The Ecclesiastical History of Theodoret. (HTML)
Book IV (HTML)
Narrative of events at Alexandria in the time of Lucius the Arian, taken from a letter of Petrus, Bishop of Alexandria. (HTML)
... hope that they might be induced to fall away from their right mind, but the rather, like the noblest of the athletes in a Stadium, they crushed all fear, and from time to time as it were anointing themselves with the thought of the bold deeds done by their fathers, through the help of holy thoughts maintained a nobler constancy in piety, and treated the rack as a training place for virtue. While they were thus struggling, and had become, as writes the blessed Paul, a spectacle to angels and to men,[1 Corinthians 4:9] the whole city ran up to gaze at Christ’s athletes, vanquishing by stout endurance the scourges of the judge who was torturing them, winning by patience trophies against impiety, and exhibiting triumphs against Arians. So their savage enemy thought ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 205, footnote 21 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)
To Eustochium. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2931 (In-Text, Margin)
... And she prayed to the Lord and said: Lord “preserve thou the children of those that are appointed to die,” that is, of those who for thy sake every day die bodily. I am aware that a talebearer—a class of persons who do a great deal of harm—once told her as a kindness that owing to her great fervour in virtue some people thought her mad and declared that something should be done for her head. She replied in the words of the apostle, “we are made a spectacle unto the world and to angels and to men,”[1 Corinthians 4:9] and “we are fools for Christ’s sake” but “the foolishness of God is wiser than men.” It is for this reason she said that even the Saviour says to the Father, “Thou knowest my foolishness,” and again “I am as a wonder unto many, but thou art my ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 7, page 16, footnote 17 (Image)
Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen
The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril. (HTML)
On Baptism. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 612 (In-Text, Margin)
... kingdom. For when the Saviour, in redeeming the world by His Cross, was pierced in the side, He shed forth blood and water; that men, living in times of peace, might be baptized in water, and, in times of persecution, in their own blood. For martyrdom also the Saviour is wont to call a baptism, saying, Can ye drink the cup which I drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? And the Martyrs confess, by being made a spectacle unto the world, and to Angels, and to men[1 Corinthians 4:9]; and thou wilt soon confess:—but it is not yet the time for thee to hear of this.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 7, page 222, footnote 2 (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 2799 (In-Text, Margin)
84. Sinners are planning upon our backs; and what we devise against each other, they turn against us all: and we have become a new spectacle, not to angels and men,[1 Corinthians 4:9] as says Paul, that bravest of athletes, in his contest with principalities and powers, but to almost all wicked men, and at every time and place, in the public squares, at carousals, at festivities, and times of sorrow. Nay, we have already—I can scarcely speak of it without tears—been represented on the stage, amid the laughter of the most licentious, and the most popular of all dialogues and scenes is the ...