Early Church Fathers Scripture Index : Texts
Colossians 2:11
There are 18 footnotes for this reference.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, page 481, footnote 2 (Image)
Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus
Irenæus (HTML)
Against Heresies: Book IV (HTML)
Chapter XVI.—Perfect righteousness was conferred neither by circumcision nor by any other legal ceremonies. The Decalogue, however, was not cancelled by Christ, but is always in force: men were never released from its commandments. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3986 (In-Text, Margin)
... the Lord, that sanctify them.” And in Exodus, God says to Moses: “And ye shall observe My Sabbaths; for it shall be a sign between Me and you for your generations.” These things, then, were given for a sign; but the signs were not unsymbolical, that is, neither unmeaning nor to no purpose, inasmuch as they were given by a wise Artist; but the circumcision after the flesh typified that after the Spirit. For “we,” says the apostle, “have been circumcised with the circumcision made without hands.”[Colossians 2:11] And the prophet declares, “Circumcise the hardness of your heart.” But the Sabbaths taught that we should continue day by day in God’s service. “For we have been counted,” says the Apostle Paul, “all the day long as sheep for the slaughter;” that ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 2, page 389, footnote 1 (Image)
Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria
Clement of Alexandria (HTML)
The Stromata, or Miscellanies (HTML)
Book III (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2486 (In-Text, Margin)
... Dei ignoratio; ut Deus autem ignoretur, efficit vitæ institutio. Omnino enim fieri non potest, ut quis simul sit et scientia præditus, et blandiri corpori non erubescat. Neque enim potest unquam convenire, quod voluptas sit bonum, cure eo, quod bonum sit solum pulchrum et honesturn: vel etiam cure eo, quod solus sit pulcher Dominus, et solus bonus Dens, et solus amabilis. “In Christo autem circumcisi estis, circumcisione non manu facta, in exspoliatione corporis carnis, in circumcisione Christi.[Colossians 2:11] Si ergo cum Christo consurrexistis, quæ sursum sunt quærite, quæ sursum sunt sapite, non quæ sunt super terram. Mortui enim estis, et vita vestra absconsa est cum Christo in Deo;” non autem ea, quam exercent, fornicatio. “Mortificate ergo membra, ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 550, footnote 7 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Anti-Marcion. (HTML)
On the Resurrection of the Flesh. (HTML)
The Earthy Material of Which Flesh is Created Wonderfully Improved by God's Manipulation. By the Addition of the Soul in Man's Constitution It Became the Chief Work in the Creation. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 7337 (In-Text, Margin)
... the vessel is the flesh, because this was made of clay by the breath of the divine afflatus; and it was afterwards clothed with “the coats of skins,” that is, with the cutaneous covering which was placed over it. So truly is this the fact, that if you withdraw the skin, you lay bare the flesh. Thus, that which becomes a spoil when stripped off, was a vestment as long as it remained laid over. Hence the apostle, when he call circumcision “a putting off (or spoliation) of the flesh,”[Colossians 2:11] affirmed the skin to be a coat or tunic. Now this being the case, you have both the clay made glorious by the hand of God, and the flesh more glorious still by His breathing upon it, by virtue of which the flesh not only laid aside its clayey ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4, page 40, footnote 4 (Image)
Tertullian (IV), Minucius Felix, Commodian, Origen
Tertullian: Part Fourth. (HTML)
To His Wife. (HTML)
I (HTML)
Marriage Lawful, But Not Polygamy. (HTML)
... although the Church did come in figuratively in the synagogue, yet (to interpret simply) it was necessary to institute (certain things) which should afterward deserve to be either lopped off or modified. For the Law was (in due time) to supervene. (Nor was that enough:) for it was meet that causes for making up the deficiencies of the Law should have forerun (Him who was to supply those deficiencies). And so to the Law presently had to succeed the Word of God introducing the spiritual circumcision.[Colossians 2:11] Therefore, by means of the wide licence of those days, materials for subsequent emendations were furnished beforehand, of which materials the Lord by His Gospel, and then the apostle in the last days of the (Jewish) age, either cut off the ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 5, page 120, footnote 1 (Image)
Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, Appendix
Hippolytus. (HTML)
The Refutation of All Heresies. (HTML)
Book VIII. (HTML)
Christ Undoes the Work of the Demiurge; Docetic Account of the Baptism and Death of Jesus; Why He Lived for Thirty Years on Earth. (HTML)
... in Jordan, and when He was baptized He received a figure and a seal in the water of (another spiritual body beside) the body born of the Virgin. (And the object of this was,) when the Archon condemned his own peculiar figment (of flesh) to death, (that is,) to the cross, that that soul which had been nourished in the body (born of the Virgin) might strip off that body and nail it to the (accursed) tree. (In this way the soul) would triumph by means of this (body) over principalities and powers,[Colossians 2:11] and would not be found naked, but would, instead of that flesh, assume the (other) body, which had been represented in the water when he was being baptized. This is, says (the Docetic), what the Saviour affirms: “Except a man be born of water and ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 5, page 510, footnote 13 (Image)
Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, Appendix
Cyprian. (HTML)
The Treatises of Cyprian. (HTML)
Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews. (HTML)
Book I. (HTML)
... and there be none to extinguish it.” Also Moses says: “In the last days God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God.” Also in Jesus the son of Nave: “And the Lord said unto Jesus, Make thee small knives of stone, very sharp, and set about to circumcise the children of Israel for the second time.” Paul also, to the Colossians: “Ye are circumcised with the circumcision not made with hands in the putting off of the flesh, but with the circumcision of Christ.”[Colossians 2:11] Also, because Adam was first made by God uncircumcised, and righteous Abel, and Enoch, who pleased God and was translated; and Noah, who, when the world and men were perishing on account of transgressions, was chosen alone, that in him the human ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 3, page 195, footnote 10 (Image)
Augustine: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises
Doctrinal Treatises of St. Augustin (HTML)
On the Holy Trinity. (HTML)
He speaks of the true wisdom of man, viz. that by which he remembers, understands, and loves God; and shows that it is in this very thing that the mind of man is the image of God, although his mind, which is here renewed in the knowledge of God, will only then be made the perfect likeness of God in that image when there shall be a perfect sight of God. (HTML)
How the Image of God is Formed Anew in Man. (HTML)
... too in Genesis, where it is said that by the deluge all flesh died which “had in it the spirit of life.” We speak also of the spirit, meaning the wind, a thing most manifestly corporeal; whence is that in the Psalms, “Fire and hail, snow and ice, the spirit of the storm.” Since spirit, then, is a word of so many meanings, the apostle intended to express by “the spirit of the mind” that spirit which is called the mind. As the same apostle also, when he says, “In putting off the body of the flesh,”[Colossians 2:11] certainly did not intend two things, as though flesh were one, and the body of the flesh another; but because body is the name of many things that have no flesh (for besides the flesh, there are many bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial), he ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 3, page 219, footnote 5 (Image)
Augustine: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises
Doctrinal Treatises of St. Augustin (HTML)
On the Holy Trinity. (HTML)
He embraces in a brief compendium the contents of the previous books; and finally shows that the Trinity, in the perfect sight of which consists the blessed life that is promised us, is here seen by us as in a glass and in an enigma, so long as it is seen through that image of God which we ourselves are. (HTML)
The Holy Spirit is Called the Gift of God in the Scriptures. By the Gift of the Holy Spirit is Meant the Gift Which is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is Specially Called Love, Although Not Only the Holy Spirit in the Trinity is Love. (HTML)
36. Certainly they must be warned, since they now see that the Holy Spirit is called the gift of God, that when they hear of “the gift of the Holy Spirit,” they should recognize therein that mode of speech which is found in the words, “In the spoiling of the body of the flesh.”[Colossians 2:11] For as the body of the flesh is nothing else but the flesh, so the gift of the Holy Spirit is nothing else but the Holy Spirit. He is then the gift of God, so far as He is given to those to whom He is given. But in Himself He is God, although He were given to no one, because He was God co-eternal with the Father and the Son before He was given to any one. ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 5, page 33, footnote 8 (Image)
Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings
A Treatise on the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants. (HTML)
Book I (HTML)
From the Epistle to the Colossians. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 369 (In-Text, Margin)
... with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead. And you, when ye were dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of the decree that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross; and putting the flesh off Him, He made a show of principalities and powers, confidently triumphing over them in Himself.”[Colossians 2:10-15]
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 5, page 249, footnote 8 (Image)
Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings
A Treatise on the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin. (HTML)
On Original Sin. (HTML)
In What Sense Christ is Called 'Sin.' (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2010 (In-Text, Margin)
There was a change of the sacramental ordinances made after the coming of Him whose advent they prefigured; but there was no change in the Mediator’s help, who, even previous to His coming in the flesh, all along delivered the ancient members of His body by their faith in His incarnation; and in respect of ourselves too, though we were dead in sins and in the uncircumcision of our flesh, we are quickened together in Christ, in whom we are circumcised with the circumcision not made with the hand,[Colossians 2:11] but such as was prefigured by the old manual circumcision, that the body of sin might be done away which was born with us from Adam. The propagation of a condemned origin condemns us, unless we are cleansed by the likeness of sinful flesh, in which ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 5, page 369, footnote 8 (Image)
Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings
A Treatise on the Soul and its Origin. (HTML)
Book IV. (HTML)
He Passes on to the Second Question About the Soul, Whether It is Called Spirit. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2513 (In-Text, Margin)
... meant, which consists of soul and spirit,”—a view which I know not where you obtained. By our “mind,” indeed, we usually understand nothing but our rational and intellectual faculty; and thus, when the apostle says, “Be ye renewed in the spirit of your mind,” what else does he mean than, Be ye renewed in your mind? “The spirit of the mind” is, accordingly, nothing else than the mind, just as “the body of the flesh” is nothing but the flesh; thus it is written, “In putting off the body of the flesh,”[Colossians 2:11] where the apostle calls the flesh “the body of the flesh.” He designates it, indeed, in another point of view as the spirit of man, which he quite distinguishes from the mind: “If,” says he, “I pray with the tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my mind is ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 376, footnote 12 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
Treatises. (HTML)
Against Jovinianus. (HTML)
Book I (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 4543 (In-Text, Margin)
... finely concludes the mystical Epistle to the Ephesians: “Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in uncorruptness.” “For our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory. Whatsoever things then are true, whatsoever are chaste, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things pertain to purity, let us join ourselves to these, let us follow these.[Colossians 2:11] Christ hath reconciled us in his body to God the Father through his death, and has presented us holy and without spot, and without blame before himself: in whom we have been also circumcised, not with the circumcision made with hands, to the ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 438, footnote 4 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
Treatises. (HTML)
To Pammachius against John of Jerusalem. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 5050 (In-Text, Margin)
... think that when body was spoken of flesh was meant; while yet the perfect would understand that, when body was spoken of, flesh was denied. Lastly, the Apostle, in his Epistle to the Colossians, wishing to show that the body of Christ was made of flesh, and was not spiritual, aërial, attenuated, said significantly, “And you, when you were some time alienated from Christ and enemies of His spirit in evil works, He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death.” And again in the same Epistle:[Colossians 2:11] “In whom ye were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands in the putting off of the body of the flesh.” If by body is meant flesh only, and the word is not ambiguous, nor capable of diverse significations, it was quite superfluous to use ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 7, page 30, footnote 18 (Image)
Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen
The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril. (HTML)
Of Faith. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 785 (In-Text, Margin)
... believe it. By the likeness therefore of our faith we are adopted into the sonship of Abraham. And then, following upon our faith, we receive like him the spiritual seal, being circumcised by the Holy Spirit through Baptism, not in the foreskin of the body, but in the heart, according to Jeremiah, saying, And ye shall be circumcised unto God in the foreskin of your heart: and according to the Apostle, in the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, and the rest[Colossians 2:11-12].
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 7, page 346, footnote 2 (Image)
Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen
Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen. (HTML)
On the Theophany, or Birthday of Christ. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3855 (In-Text, Margin)
IV. This is our present Festival; it is this which we are celebrating to-day, the Coming of God to Man, that we might go forth, or rather (for this is the more proper expression) that we might go back to God—that putting off the old man, we might put on the New; and that as we died in Adam, so we might live in Christ, being born with Christ and crucified with Him and buried with Him and rising with Him.[Colossians 2:11] For I must undergo the beautiful conversion, and as the painful succeeded the more blissful, so must the more blissful come out of the painful. For where sin abounded Grace did much more abound; and if a taste condemned us, how much more doth the Passion of Christ justify us? Therefore let us ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 8, page 21, footnote 15 (Image)
Basil: Letters and Select Works
De Spiritu Sancto. (HTML)
Reply to the suggested objection that we are baptized “into water.” Also concerning baptism. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1011 (In-Text, Margin)
... ending all that goes before, and beginning all that comes after. How then do we achieve the descent into hell? By imitating, through baptism, the burial of Christ. For the bodies of the baptized are, as it were, buried in the water. Baptism then symbolically signifies the putting off of the works of the flesh; as the apostle says, ye were “circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; buried with him in baptism.”[Colossians 2:11-12] And there is, as it were, a cleansing of the soul from the filth that has grown on it from the carnal mind, as it is written, “Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” On this account we do not, as is the fashion of the Jews, wash ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 9, page 44, footnote 1 (Image)
Hilary of Poitiers, John of Damascus
Title Page (HTML)
De Trinitate or On the Trinity. (HTML)
De Trinitate or On the Trinity. (HTML)
Book I (HTML)
... ye have risen again through faith in the working of God, Who raised Him from the dead. And you, when ye were dead in sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He hath quickened with Him, having forgiven you all your sins, blotting out the bond which was against us by its ordinances, which was contrary to us; and He hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to the Cross; and having put off the flesh He made a show of powers openly, triumphing over them through confidence in Himself[Colossians 2:8-15]. Steadfast faith rejects the vain subtleties of philosophic enquiry; truth refuses to be vanquished by these treacherous devices of human folly, and enslaved by falsehood. It will not confine God within the limits which barred our common reason, nor ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 9, page 158, footnote 2 (Image)
Hilary of Poitiers, John of Damascus
Title Page (HTML)
De Trinitate or On the Trinity. (HTML)
De Trinitate or On the Trinity. (HTML)
Book IX (HTML)
... and our assumption, that is, the fulness of Godhead abiding in Christ, and ourselves made full in Him by His birth as man, the Apostle continues the dispensation of human salvation in the words, In whom ye were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the stripping off of the body of the flesh, but with the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead[Colossians 2:11-12]. We are circumcised not with a fleshly circumcision but with the circumcision of Christ, that is, we are born again into a new man; for, being buried with Him in His baptism, we must die to the old man, because the regeneration of baptism has the ...