Humanity in the early church · Sophia Scriptura

What human beings are: body and soul, the image of God, and humanity's place in creation.

To Autolycus 2.24Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Paradise was a real place on earth, in the east; the first human was made neither mortal nor immortal but capable of either, and was placed there to grow toward perfection and even divinity by keeping God's command.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 12Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · God made human beings neither in vain nor for his own need, but for their own sake, to live forever; so the whole human being, soul and body, must endure, and the resurrection is the last of the body's changes.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 13Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · God's purpose in creating human beings, to contemplate him forever, guarantees their continuance and therefore the resurrection.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 15Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · A human being is a unity of soul and body with one common end; since the rational human being must endure, the body must rise to rejoin the soul.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 24Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · The argument from the end: every being has its proper end, and the end of rational human beings cannot be mere freedom from pain or bodily pleasure.
Against Heresies 3.20.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God allowed man’s fall so that man, delivered by experience, might be grateful, know his weakness and God’s power, and grow into the likeness of Christ, who accustomed God and man to each other.
Against Heresies 4 pref. 4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Like the serpent with Eve, the heretics promise secret knowledge and lead people into death, blaspheming the Creator and denying the salvation of the flesh.
Against Heresies 5.6.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The perfect man is body and soul receiving the Spirit of God; Paul prays that spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless, because all three are to be saved together.
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 12Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Against Marcion 2.4Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Creator's goodness shows in the whole creation, made through his Word and pronounced good, and above all in man, formed in God's image, given dominion, a helper, and a law with a kind warning attached.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 5Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Even on heretical views the flesh owes its being to some divine will, but in truth God himself formed man by his own hand and gave the flesh the very name of man.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 7Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The clay became flesh when God breathed into it, and the soul is so joined to the flesh that it does everything through it; the flesh is therefore the soul's partner and co-heir.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 9Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · God will not abandon the flesh he made, adorned, and loves; its very weakness, sin, and condemnation are what his mercy came to heal.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 40Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Paul's “outer man” that is being corrupted means the flesh worn down by persecution in this life, not flesh destined to perish; flesh and soul that suffer together will be glorified together.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 45Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The “old man” and “new man” are not flesh and soul but the former and the renewed way of life; Paul condemns sinful works, not the body.
Fragments on Genesis, column 95Origen · ca. 220-254 · The image of God lies in the rational soul and is shown in actions; man was given rule over some animals, but not over sea monsters and wild beasts.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.28.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Seven angels made the world and, seeing a luminous image from above, tried to make a human being after it.
Homilies on Leviticus 5.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Some victims belong to God alone, some to priests, some also to the people; but the inward Jew must seek these victims within his own soul, a world in miniature containing all that the world contains.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 0.64Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Paul confirms the two men, inner and outer, and scripture uses the same names, such as boy, youth and father, for both.
Against Celsus 4.25Origen · ca. 248 · If wickedness makes one a worm, then wicked pagans, even famous orators, are as much worms as wicked Christians; but no rational being, bearing the seeds of virtue from God's Word, should be likened to such animals.
Against Celsus 4.78Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus says animals hunt us as much as we hunt them; Origen replies that human understanding, stronger than any weapon, has made all animals serve us, even the wild ones by exercising our courage.
Symposium 3.7Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Man stands between life and death and becomes what he inclines to; in Christ he became a harmonious instrument on which the Lord sings the resurrection.
Against the Manichaeans 23Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander argues that the divine power cannot be lessening if all stays the same, and that the Manichaean account of man as a work of matter modelled on an image in the sun is incoherent.
Res. 1.34Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The narrator argues that man, fashioned by God's own hands as a body-and-soul whole, was made immortal, since what immortality makes is immortal.
Res. 2.9Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The Greek excerpts of Book 2, chapters 9-10: trees do not consume the earth they grow from, God alone gives growth through his wisdom, and man was made from the four elements as a small world, as Ezekiel's four-faced cherubim signify.
Against the Nations 2.16Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius rejects the claim that divine souls are corrupted by descending into bodies, and argues that humans are closely akin to other animals.
Against the Nations 2.37Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If souls were God's own offspring they would never have left heaven for bodies, and humans add nothing to the world's completeness.
Against the Nations 2.52Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Human souls, like those of animals, may come from some unknown lower cause; even Plato assigned the making of man to lesser gods, not to the supreme God.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 22Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus compares body and soul to a temple and its statue and to a ship and its rudder, to show that both have one maker.
Homilies 3.36Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · All creation exists for man, who has been given wisdom to rule it, from farming and seafaring to knowing God and driving out demons.
Divine Institutes 2.11.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero says man, alone rational among creatures, was made by the supreme God.
Divine Institutes 2.11.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Scripture teaches that God formed the body and breathed in the soul.
Divine Institutes 6.10.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Humanity came from one man made by God, not from the earth.
Divine Institutes 7.5.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Why God made man.
Divine Institutes 7.5.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God made man for himself.
Divine Institutes 7.5.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God formed man from earth, clothing spirit in body.
On the Workmanship of God 1.10Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · The body was designed to serve and obey the soul as its master.
On the Workmanship of God 1.11Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · The body is an earthen vessel for the soul, made not by Prometheus but by God, and Lactantius will try to explain the design of both.
On the Workmanship of God 2.6Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · Man was made naked and unarmed because reason and intelligence supply what nature withheld.
On the Workmanship of God 8.2Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · God made man alone upright to look toward heaven, his origin, while the beasts, with no hope of immortality, face the ground.
On the Workmanship of God 8.3Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · Man's upright form and godlike face witness to his Maker; the mind rules the body from the head as from a citadel.
On the Anger of God 7.1Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Philosophers have erred much, but none ever said that man is no different from the beasts.
On the Anger of God 7.4Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Even man's upright body shows he is not a beast, whose nature is bent toward the ground.
On the Anger of God 7.12Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Animals share a likeness of every human trait except religion, which is found in man alone.
On the Anger of God 14.2Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Man alone was given reason, upright stature, and speech so that he might know, contemplate, and praise God, and all things were subject to him so that he would be subject to God.
On the Incarnation 3.3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · God, who is good, made humans in his image with a share in the Word's power so that they might live in blessedness.
Theophany 1.44Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.45Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.46Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.69Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.74Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Demonstration 17.7Aphrahat · 337-345
Catechetical Lecture 12.26Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The Creator, who fashions every child in the womb, was not ashamed to take flesh; nothing in the body as God made it is defiled.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 9Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Even Adam, though formed by God’s hand, does not differ in nature from other men; so on Arian premises the Son would not differ from creatures.
Against Arius 1.62Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus surveys views of human nature and, from Gen 2:7 and the sayings about one taken and one left, distinguishes a heavenly soul and intellect from a material soul, both to be purified by faith in Christ.
Homilies on the Psalms 44.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil explains the title of Psalm 44 (45): “those who will be changed” are human beings, changing in body and soul and finally at the resurrection; the song is for the beloved, Christ, known only by perfect love; and he reads verses 1–2 as the prophet's own word, inspired by the Spirit, the swift scribe.
Homilies on the Psalms 48.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · On Ps 49:12–13 Basil sets out man's dignity: made in God's image, ruling the creatures, above sun and stars, which are soulless and bound by necessity; yet man, enslaved to the flesh, has become like the beasts (lustful horse, wolf, fox), forgetting both his creation and the price of his redemption, the blood of Christ; God sets stumbling blocks in the way of sinners, as with Paul, so that they may turn and confess.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.10.1Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Man is the most useful and beautiful of God's earthly works, the only rational creature, able to use all things to know and worship his maker.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.10.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalmist's words "Your hands have made me and fashioned me" point to the special dignity of man's origin.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.10.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · All other creatures were made by a command, but man alone after God's deliberation, "Let us make man", which is his first dignity.
Tractates on the Psalms 134.14Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Of all God's works man is dearest to him: made deliberately in God's image, redeemed, destined to judge angels, and now transformed in Christ from vice to virtue.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 101Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Christ’s teaching that the maker of the outside made the inside, and his care for bodily purity, show that the body is God’s work; his own real body, crucified and buried, refutes the Manichees.
Oration 32.27Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory urges the would-be theologian to know himself first, listing the mysteries of human nature, body, soul, senses, memory, speech, and passions, before approaching higher things.
Oration 38.11Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · God made man as a blend of the spiritual and material, a little world, earthly and heavenly, destined by turning to God to be deified.
Oration 45.7Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · God made man as a blend of the spiritual and material, a little world, earthly and heavenly, destined by turning to God to be deified.
Tractates 1.12.4Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno explains that man is made of body and soul, with a bodily life and an eternal life gained by faith in baptism, and that the two are at war.
Tractates 2.19.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno teaches that the image of God in man is not the changeable body but the invisible spiritual image of the heavenly man, given in rebirth.
Tractates 2.20.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · In a second form of the same sermon Zeno teaches that the image of God is the heavenly man's spiritual image, citing 1 Corinthians 15:49 and 3:16.
Hexaemeron 6.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Basil asks his hearers to come prepared to contemplate creation as fellow contestants, and draws from the sun's beauty the greater beauty of the sun of righteousness.
Hexaemeron 9.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · God's command still works in the earth, preserving the kinds; man, made upright, should live for heaven, not like the beasts bent toward the belly.
Homilies 3.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · The poor and lowly should not despair, since as human beings made by God's hands and in his image they possess gifts of nature and of grace greater than wealth.
Question 106, section 16Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Man was made last, by God’s own hands and in the image of Father and Son, to enjoy the finished world.
Question 123, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Man, like every creature, was made perfect in his own kind, as a rational being, without needing to have received the Holy Spirit.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.19.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Demiurge made the earthly man from fluid matter and breathed into him the psychic man.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.19.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The 'garments of skin' are the fleshly body.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.19.13Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Humans have soul, body, flesh and spirit from different sources.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.4.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The seven angels formed man as a crawling worm.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 39.4.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · All humanity comes from one man, Adam.
On Noah 99Ambrose · ca. 378-384 · 'In the image of God' points to the Father and the Son, and because man is made in God's image, God avenges violence against him.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 59Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Macrina explains that creation advanced from plants to animals to man, who contains all forms of life; reason alone is proper to man and bears God’s image, while anger, fear, and the like came from his kinship with the animals.
On the Making of Man 0Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Gregory dedicates the treatise to his brother as an Easter gift, presents it as a supplement to Basil’s work on creation, and sets out its aim of examining everything that concerns man.
On the Making of Man 2Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Man came last because the king’s palace and banquet had to be prepared first; he was made of divine and earthly elements so that he could enjoy both God and the goods of the earth.
On the Making of Man 7Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Man is born without natural weapons or covering so that he must rule and use the animals, whose gifts, together with his own inventions such as iron, arrows, and sandals, supply what he lacks.
On the Making of Man 8Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Man’s upright form and his hands mark his rule; the order of creation (plants, animals, man) teaches the three levels of soul, and the hands free the mouth to serve speech.
On the Making of Man 9Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · The mind, which God shared with man, needs the body as an instrument; the vocal organs work together like a pipe and a lyre to make thought audible.
On the Making of Man 16Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Man’s greatness lies not in being a little world but in being made in God’s image, which belongs to the whole of humanity as one; the division into male and female was added afterward, in view of the foreseen fall, and does not belong to the divine archetype.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 22Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · The mysteries of human nature, soul and body, senses, memory and sleep, show how little we understand even ourselves.
Eleven Tractates 1.21Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Those who ascribe man's making to demons belong to the earthly, not the spiritual, man.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.6.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Though made from clay, man is God’s most precious work, upright and free, looking to heaven.
Hexameron (Exameron) 6.55Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The body is like the world: the head is its heaven and citadel, and the eyes its sun and moon.
Hexameron (Exameron) 6.67Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Speech and understanding set man apart: he alone interprets what he sees and hears, and can become the instrument of God's voice.
Hexameron (Exameron) 6.75Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The sixth day ends with man, the summit of creation, in whose mind God rests.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.14.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Genesis shows that "man" includes the woman.
On Free Choice of the Will 1.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Augustine argues that reason sets human beings above beasts and that a human being is rightly ordered when reason, mind, or spirit rules the lower motions of the soul, as the eternal law requires.
On Free Choice of the Will 3.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · The first man was made neither foolish nor wise but rational, able to receive and keep a command and so to attain wisdom; his fall through pride was a voluntary passage, neither foolish nor wise, from wisdom to folly.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Without deciding whether a human being is soul and body or soul alone, Augustine argues that a human being's highest good is not the body's highest good.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Against the Manichees' mockery that man was made from slime, Augustine answers that God could make even such a body free from corruption, and suggests that 'slime', a mixture of water and earth, may signify man as a union of soul and body.
Sermon 30.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Every honest person feels the war of flesh and spirit; Augustine wants not merely to resist but to be wholly healed, flesh included, since one Creator made both, and the conflict is the penalty of the soul’s desertion of God.
Sermon 43.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Man shares existence with stones, life with plants, and sensation with beasts, but has reason, in which he is made in God’s image; reason precedes and seeks understanding.
Sermon 150.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Providence brought only Epicureans and Stoics to debate with Paul because, man being body and soul, those who seek happiness in man must place it either in bodily pleasure, as the Epicureans did, or in virtue of mind, as the Stoics did.
Sermon 256.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against those who say the flesh is no part of a man, Paul shows that he is delivered not from his body but from its mortality: the same body will rise incorruptible, and death will be swallowed up in victory.
Sermon 277.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Martyrs did not despise their bodies, as the philosophers who call the body a prison do, but secured them eternal glory; even present health, the concord of the body’s elements, is a great good, though nothing to the angelic health promised in the resurrection.
Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis 16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393 · On “Let us make man to our image and likeness,” Augustine distinguishes image from likeness, presents the Son as Likeness itself in which creatures participate, places the image in the human mind, and concludes that man was made to the image of the whole Trinity.
On Continence 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · In Scripture 'flesh' often means the whole man, so living 'according to the flesh' means living according to oneself rather than according to God.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 24.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that God makes only the new, inner man born again in faith, not the old man born of bodily generation and lust.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine reads “Let us make man in our image” as showing the plurality of persons and “in the image of God” as showing the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Opening Book 6 on Genesis 2:7, Augustine asks whether man's formation from dust recapitulates the sixth day or whether man was first made hidden in causes and later formed visibly.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine rejects the idea that only the souls of the first humans were made on the sixth day, since sex and bodily food imply bodies.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · God did not form Adam with bodily hands; his “hands” are his power. Man excels not because God made him personally but because he was made to God's image in mind; his upright body befits this.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · If Adam had an animal body, how do we recover the immortality he lost? Some therefore held that Adam's body was changed into a spiritual one in paradise.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · On this view Adam had an animal body but a spiritual mind in God's image, which he lost by sin; spiritual men can still sin, as Paul shows. Augustine holds the view provisionally.
City of God 12.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God created the human race from one man, intermediate between angels and beasts, so that all humans would be bound by kinship as well as nature, and even Eve was made from Adam.
City of God 16.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Whatever strange races may exist, if they are rational mortal animals they descend from Adam; God knows how each part fits the beauty of the whole.
City of God 22.24Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Even in condemned humanity God preserves fruitfulness, forms each body, and endows the mind and body with gifts and the world with beauty; if these console the condemned, the rewards of the blessed will be far greater.
On the Soul and Its Origin 4.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Victor’s standard would make everyone beastlike, since no one knows all of human nature, not even the body, which anatomists dissect.
Theodotus, ACO I.1.2, homily 73.13Theodotus of Ancyra · 431 · The manger has become the eucharistic table, and Christ's lowliness, sufferings, and death have brought the world salvation; the virgin's body, made good by God, was no unworthy dwelling.
Poem on Genesis 121–150Hilary of Arles · ca. 440-449 · The poet praises man's upright form, reason, and speech, the breath of God breathed into him, and his appointment as lord of creation.