Early Church Fathers Scripture Index : Texts
1 John 4:2
There are 12 footnotes for this reference.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, page 443, footnote 8 (Image)
Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus
Irenæus (HTML)
Against Heresies: Book III (HTML)
Chapter XVI.—Proofs from the apostolic writings, that Jesus Christ was one and the same, the only begotten Son of God, perfect God and perfect man. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3605 (In-Text, Margin)
... when he says: “For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. Take heed to them, that ye lose not what ye have wrought.” And again does he say in the Epistle: “Many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit which separates Jesus Christ is not of God, but is of antichrist.”[1 John 4:1-2] These words agree with what was said in the Gospel, that “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” Wherefore he again exclaims in his Epistle, “Every one that believeth that Jesus is the Christ, has been born of God;” knowing Jesus Christ to be ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 464, footnote 3 (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)
The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. An Absurd Erasure of Marcion; Its Object Transparent. The Final Judgment on the Heathen as Well as the Jews Could Not Be Administered by Marcion's Christ. The Man of Sin--What? Inconsistency of Marcion's View. The Antichrist. The Great Events of the Last Apostasy Within the Providence and Intention of the Creator, Whose are All Things from the Beginning. Similarity of the Pauline Precepts with Those of the Creator. (HTML)
... first be revealed before the Lord comes; “who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; who is to sit in the temple of God, and boast himself as being God?” According indeed to our view, he is Antichrist; as it is taught us in both the ancient and the new prophecies, and especially by the Apostle John, who says that “already many false prophets are gone out into the world,” the fore-runners of Antichrist, who deny that Christ is come in the flesh,[1 John 4:1-3] and do not acknowledge Jesus (to be the Christ), meaning in God the Creator. According, however, to Marcion’s view, it is really hard to know whether He might not be (after all) the Creator’s Christ; because according to him He is not yet ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 625, footnote 3 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Anti-Marcion. (HTML)
Against Praxeas. (HTML)
Christ Not the Father, as Praxeas Said. The Inconsistency of This Opinion, No Less Than Its Absurdity, Exposed. The True Doctrine of Jesus Christ According to St. Paul, Who Agrees with Other Sacred Writers. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 8164 (In-Text, Margin)
... Christ therefore must be the same as Jesus who was anointed by the Father, and not the Father, who anointed the Son. To the same effect are the words of Peter: “Let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ,” that is, Anointed. John, moreover, brands that man as “a liar” who “denieth that Jesus is the Christ;” whilst on the other hand he declares that “every one is born of God who believeth that Jesus is the Christ.”[1 John 4:2-3] Wherefore he also exhorts us to believe in the name of His (the Father’s,) Son Jesus Christ, that “our fellowship may be with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” Paul, in like manner, everywhere speaks of “God the Father, and our Lord ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 5, page 519, footnote 9 (Image)
Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, Appendix
Cyprian. (HTML)
The Treatises of Cyprian. (HTML)
Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews. (HTML)
Book II. (HTML)
... out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Also Paul to the Galatians: “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent His Son, born of a woman.” Also in the Epistle of John: “Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. But whosoever denies that He is come in the flesh is not of God, but is of the spirit of Antichrist.”[1 John 4:2-3]
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 7, page 499, footnote 6 (Image)
Augustine: Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies
Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John. (HTML)
1 John III. 19–IV. 3. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2338 (In-Text, Margin)
... He goes on: “In this is known the Spirit of God.” Wake up the ears of your heart. We were at a loss; we were saying, Who knows? who discerns? Behold, he is about to tell the sign. “Hereby is known the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is the antichrist, of whom ye have heard that he should come; and even now already is he in this world.”[1 John 4:2-3] Our ears, so to say, are on the alert for discerning of the spirits; and we have been told something, such that thereby we discern not a whit the more. For what saith he? “Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, is of God.” ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 7, page 521, footnote 2 (Image)
Augustine: Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies
Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John. (HTML)
1 John V. 1–3. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2494 (In-Text, Margin)
3. “In this we know that we love the sons of God.”[1 John 4:2] What is this, brethren? Just now he was speaking of the Son of God, not of sons of God: lo, here one Christ was set before us to contemplate, and we were told, “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth Him that begat,” i.e. the Father, “loveth Him also that is begotten of Him,” i.e. the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. And he goes on: “In this we know that we love the sons of God;” as if he had been about to say, ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 1, page 258, footnote 5 (Image)
Eusebius: Church History from A.D. 1-324, Life of Constantine the Great, Oration in Praise of Constantine
The Church History of Eusebius. (HTML)
Book VI (HTML)
Serapion and his Extant Works. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1838 (In-Text, Margin)
6. For having obtained this Gospel from others who had studied it diligently, namely, from the successors of those who first used it, whom we call Docetæ[1 John 4:2] (for most of their opinions are connected with the teaching of that school) we have been able to read it through, and we find many things in accordance with the true doctrine of the Saviour, but some things added to that doctrine, which we have pointed out for you farther on.” So much in regard to Serapion.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 2, page 171, footnote 2 (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 VII (HTML)
Of the Presbyter Anastasius, by whom the Faith of Nestorius was perverted. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1007 (In-Text, Margin)
... ignorance: for being a man of natural fluency as a speaker, he was considered well educated, but in reality he was disgracefully illiterate. In fact he contemned the drudgery of an accurate examination of the ancient expositors: and, puffed up with his readiness of expression, he did not give his attention to the ancients, but thought himself the greatest of all. Now he was evidently unacquainted with the fact that in the First Catholic epistle of John it was written in the ancient copies,[1 John 4:2-3] ‘Every spirit that separates Jesus, is not of God.’ The mutilation of this passage is attributable to those who desired to separate the Divine nature from the human economy: or to use the very language of the early interpreters, some persons have ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 3, page 173, footnote 7 (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 1080 (In-Text, Margin)
... be man, on account of the nature which He took. The evangelist, however, speaks of His being made in the likeness of man as His being made flesh. But that you may know that they who deny the flesh of the Saviour are of the opposite spirit, hear the great John in his Catholic Epistle saying “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God, and this is that spirit of Anti-Christ.”[1 John 4:2-3]
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 10, page 289, footnote 3 (Image)
Ambrose: Select Works and Letters
Dogmatic Treatises, Ethical Works, and Sermons. (HTML)
Exposition of the Christian Faith. (HTML)
Book V. (HTML)
Chapter II. Since it has been proved that the Son is true God, and in that is not inferior to the Father, it is shown that by the word solus (alone) when used of the Father in the Scriptures, the Son is not excluded; nay, that this expression befits Him above all, and Him alone. The Trinity is alone, not amongst all, but above all. The Son alone does what the Father does, and alone has immortality. But we must not for this reason separate Him from the Father in our controversies. We may, however, understand that passage of the Incarnation. Lastly the Father is shut out from a share in the redemption of men by those who would have the Son to be separated from Him. (HTML)
... said, that Christ too is true and only God; or the passage may at least be understood partly in reference to the Godhead of the Father and the Son, and partly to the Incarnation of Christ: for knowledge is not perfect unless it confesses Jesus Christ from eternity to be only-begotten God, true Son of God, and, according to the flesh, begotten of a Virgin. Which also this very Evangelist has taught us elsewhere, saying: “Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God.”[1 John 4:2]
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 12, page 107, footnote 1 (Image)
Leo the Great, Gregory the Great
The Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great. (HTML)
Letters. (HTML)
To Leo Augustus. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 608 (In-Text, Margin)
... what licence can be granted them for discussing, when they have deserved to be condemned by a just and holy judgment, so that they might most truly fall under that sentence of the blessed Apostle, wherewith at the very outset of the infant Church he overthrew the enemies of Christ’s cross, saying: “every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ to have come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which dissolves Jesus is not of God, but this is antichrist[1 John 4:2-3].” And this pre-existent teaching of the Holy Ghost we must faithfully and stedfastly make use of, lest, by admitting the discussions of such men the authority of the divinely inspired decrees be diminished, when in all parts of your kingdom and in ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 12, page 149, footnote 4 (Image)
Leo the Great, Gregory the Great
The Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great. (HTML)
Sermons. (HTML)
On the Feast of the Epiphany, IV. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 890 (In-Text, Margin)
... you all, and let the catholic confession be fortified by the testimony of the manifestation of the Saviour’s infancy, while we anathematize the blasphemy of those who deny the flesh of our nature in Christ: about which the blessed Apostle John has forewarned us in no doubtful utterance, saying, “every spirit which confesses Christ Jesus to have come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit which destroys Jesus is not of God, and this is Antichrist[1 John 4:2-3].” Consequently let no Christian have aught in common with men of this kind, let him have no alliance or intercourse with such. Let it advantage the whole Church that many of them in the mercy of God have been discovered, and ...