Idolatry in the early church · Sophia Scriptura

Worship of idols and images, sacrifices to the gods, and Christians' complicity in them. Part of Paganism.

Didache 6.3Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Keep food rules as you can, but never eat food offered to idols.
Epistle of Barnabas 14.3Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Israel's idolatry broke the tablets of the covenant.
Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.21.3 (98.3)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · In persecution the doubters give way to idolatry.
Apocalypse of Peter (Akhmim fragment) 33Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Makers of idols stand in fire beside others who beat one another unceasingly.
To Diognetus 2.2Anonymous · ca. 150–200 (disputed) · The gods are stone, bronze, wood, silver, iron, and clay.
To Diognetus 2.3Anonymous · ca. 150–200 (disputed) · Idols are made by craftsmen from ordinary material.
To Diognetus 2.4Anonymous · ca. 150–200 (disputed) · Idols are deaf, blind, and lifeless.
To Diognetus 2.5Anonymous · ca. 150–200 (disputed) · Worshipers become like their idols.
To Diognetus 2.8Anonymous · ca. 150–200 (disputed) · Sacrifices either torment the gods or prove them senseless.
To Diognetus 2.9Anonymous · ca. 150–200 (disputed) · No human would endure what idols endure; this shows they are senseless.
Apology 13Aristides of Athens · ca. 125–145 · The idols and the myths refute themselves: gods at war with one another, and guilty of what the laws punish, cannot be gods, however their stories are interpreted.
First Apology 9Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Christians do not worship idols, which are made by immoral craftsmen and bear the names of demons.
Martyrdom of Andrew (first Greek martyrdom), chapter 6Anonymous · ca. 150-200 (the Acts); the Martyrdom text is later · Andrew heals the sick of Patras, and the people destroy their idols and temples, proclaiming the God of Andrew.
Martyrdom of Andrew (first Greek martyrdom), chapter 12Anonymous · ca. 150-200 (the Acts); the Martyrdom text is later · Andrew tells Aegeates that the demons and idols have been overthrown by God the Word, who came in a body and sent the apostles, and calls him to believe and be saved.
Acts of John 27Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · John discovers that Lycomedes honours his portrait with garlands, lamps and altars.
Acts of John 41Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · John prays in the temple that the demon of the place be put to flight.
Acts of John 42Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · At John's prayer the altar and half the temple of Artemis collapse, and the Ephesians confess John's God.
Sibylline Oracles 8.371ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · God declares that he alone is God, knowing every secret deed, and condemns the making of voiceless idols.
Sibylline Oracles 8.381ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · God condemns those who forsake the Creator for sacrifices, lamps, and libations offered to idols and demons.
Sibylline Oracles 8.481ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · The Sibyl says that Christians, kin of Christ's heavenly race, love God and neighbour and do not approach temples or honour images with libations, flowers, lamps, or offerings.
On the Sole Government of God 1Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Envy turned humanity from the one Lord to idols; the author will refute idolatry from the Greek poets themselves.
On the Sole Government of God 2Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Aeschylus, Sophocles, Philemon, Orpheus, and Pythagoras are quoted as witnesses to the one invisible God.
Dialogue with Trypho 34.8Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Solomon fell into idolatry; Gentile Christians die rather than eat idol offerings.
Dialogue with Trypho 35.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Trypho says many who call themselves Christians eat idol meat.
Dialogue with Trypho 46.6Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Even so, Israel fell into idolatry.
Dialogue with Trypho 55.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Other “gods” are idols of demons.
5Anonymous · ca. 161–180 or 249–251 · Carpus confesses Christ and refuses to sacrifice.
6Anonymous · ca. 161–180 or 249–251 · Sacrifice to demons makes the worshipper like them.
7Anonymous · ca. 161–180 or 249–251 · True worshippers become like God; idol-worshippers become like the demons.
8Anonymous · ca. 161–180 or 249–251 · Idolaters justly share the devil's fate; Carpus will not sacrifice.
10Anonymous · ca. 161–180 or 249–251 · Carpus quotes Jeremiah against the gods.
12Anonymous · ca. 161–180 or 249–251 · The living do not sacrifice to the dead.
14Anonymous · ca. 161–180 or 249–251 · The idols never lived, so they cannot even die.
15Anonymous · ca. 161–180 or 249–251 · Without human honor the idols are mere decaying matter.
16Anonymous · ca. 161–180 or 249–251 · The eternal God contrasted with man-made, perishable gods.
To Autolycus 2.35Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · The law forbids the worship of anything created; the prophets, speaking by one Spirit, agree about the one Creator and condemn idolatry.
To Autolycus 2.36Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Long quotations from the Sibyl proclaim the one invisible Creator, mock the worship of animals and images, and foretell fire for idolaters and paradise for those who honor the true God.
A Plea for the Christians 15Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · God is to matter as a potter is to clay; honoring statues made of matter would put the perishable on a level with the eternal God.
A Plea for the Christians 17Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · The names of the gods come from the poets, and their images from recent sculptors whose names are known; such gods are younger than their makers.
A Plea for the Christians 23Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · The effects produced through idols are real but come from demons, not gods; Plato himself distinguished the uncreated God from the created gods of myth.
A Plea for the Christians 26Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · The demons, greedy for sacrificial blood, work through the statues of dead men such as Neryllinus and Proteus; the bronze itself and the men portrayed have no such power.
A Plea for the Christians 27Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · Idolatry begins in the soul's irrational fancies; the demons exploit these and take the credit for what the soul itself does.
The Instructor 2.8.72Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The early Greeks did not use garlands; Christians avoid them because they are dedicated to idols and used in the service of demons.
The Instructor 2.8.73Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Garlands are for the dead and for idols; the Christian awaits the unfading crown of heaven; the Lord's crown of thorns is a type of the church, of faith, and of the cost of discipleship.
The Instructor 2.12.126Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Hebrews melted their women's ornaments into the golden calf; the prophets condemn ornaments as the trappings of idolatry and unfaithfulness.
Exhortation to the Greeks 1.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The mythical singers led humanity into idolatry and slavery to demons; Clement's singer, the Word, frees people and calls them back to heaven.
Exhortation to the Greeks 1.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Word, God and man, who gave us being, has now appeared as teacher to give eternal life and to rescue us from the serpent, who binds people to lifeless idols.
Exhortation to the Greeks 2.23Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Those who worship such gods are doubly godless: they do not know the true God and they worship beings that do not exist.
Exhortation to the Greeks 2.39Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Greek cult titles are obscene or absurd, and the Greeks who mock Egyptian animal worship honor storks, weasels, ants, mice, and flies themselves.
Exhortation to the Greeks 4.46Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The first idols were plain wood and stone; only later were they shaped like human beings.
Exhortation to the Greeks 4.47Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The most famous statues of the gods have known makers and materials; even the “heaven-fallen” Palladium was made from bones.
Exhortation to the Greeks 4.50Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Temples are tombs; the Sibyl foretold the ruin of the temples of Artemis and Sarapis, and Heraclitus mocked prayer to statues.
Exhortation to the Greeks 4.51Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Statues have less sense than the lowest animals; they are dead matter shaped by craftsmen, while the true God is known by the mind.
Exhortation to the Greeks 4.52Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Tyrants who robbed their gods of gold, and birds that foul the statues, show that the images have no sense.
Exhortation to the Greeks 4.56Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Idols and daemons are earthbound spirits; statues are only earth given shape, and the soul's hopes must not rest on lifeless things.
Exhortation to the Greeks 4.57Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The statues display the gods' disgraceful characters, and art has even led men to fall in love with stone; admire the art, but do not mistake it for truth.
Exhortation to the Greeks 4.62Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Sibyl calls blessed those who reject temples and idols; the law forbids images, and the prophet calls the gods of the nations images of daemons.
Exhortation to the Greeks 7.74Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The tragedians and even Orpheus, in his late recantation, confess that there is one God who made all things.
Exhortation to the Greeks 8.78Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Jeremiah and Isaiah show the greatness of God, who fills heaven and earth, and foretell the shameful end of idols.
Exhortation to the Greeks 8.79Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The prophets proclaim that the world will pass away but the one God, the only savior, remains; idols and their worshipers will howl.
Exhortation to the Greeks 8.80Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The wisdom of Solomon and the words of Jeremiah and Moses call people back from idols to the one God, whose Wisdom is his Word.
Exhortation to the Greeks 10.91Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The wretched priests of the idols deserve pity; God, like a mother bird, rescues the human being who has fallen from the nest.
Against Heresies 3.6.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · When Scripture calls idols gods, it adds words showing that they are not gods, as David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Elijah do.
Against Heresies 3.6.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Paul too distinguishes the so-called gods from the one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ.
Against Heresies 3.12.9Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Paul's preaching at Damascus, Athens, and Lystra proclaimed the Creator of heaven and earth and Jesus the Son of God.
Against Heresies 4.15.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God first gave only the Decalogue; after the golden calf he added a law of servitude suited to Israel’s hardness, as Ezekiel and Stephen testify.
Against Heresies 4.24.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Paul laboured more than the other apostles because the Gentiles, unlike the Jews, had first to be taught to leave idols and to learn the moral law.
7Anonymous · ca. 180–185 · Perennis orders sacrifice to the gods and the emperor's image.
14Anonymous · ca. 180–185 · Apollonius refuses to adore idols made by human hands.
16Anonymous · ca. 180–185 · Worship of lifeless objects is shameful folly.
18Anonymous · ca. 180–185 · The Athenians worship a bronze ox-skull.
19Anonymous · ca. 180–185 · Idols cannot hear or act; Socrates mocked them.
Hortatory Address to the Greeks 16Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · The Sibyl too teaches one invisible God and blesses those who renounce temples and sacrifices.
Hortatory Address to the Greeks 18Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Sophocles is quoted as confessing one God and condemning images made by mortals.
Miscellanies 4.15.97Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Knowledge about idol meat must yield to the weak; Paul's permission to buy market meat excludes what the apostolic decree forbade (idol meat, blood, strangled things, fornication); Paul renounced his right to a wife and food to set an example.
Miscellanies 5.11.76Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Stoic Zeno rejected temples and statues as unworthy of the gods, and Plato forbade private images and costly offerings.
Miscellanies 5.14.113Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Lines ascribed to Sophocles proclaim one God, maker of heaven and earth, and condemn the worship of images.
Miscellanies 6.5.40Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Preaching of Peter explains that the Greeks, in ignorance, worship idols of wood and metal and animals given them for food, and so deny God.
Miscellanies 6.14.110Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Wisdom describes the astonishment of those who mocked the wise; God judges Gentiles justly, having given them philosophy and even the heavenly bodies to keep them from utter godlessness, but idolaters are condemned unless they repent.
Miscellanies 6.16.147Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Idolatry is spiritual adultery, as the prophet says; murder is violently removing the truth about God's providence and eternity; theft is claiming God's creative work for human art, or counterfeiting true philosophy.
Miscellanies 6.18.163Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Greeks must learn from the law, the prophets, and Paul to worship one God and to see that no idol can picture him, nor even the invisible souls of those they honor, whose bodies are only their instruments.
Miscellanies 7.5.28Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God cannot be confined in temples made with hands; a statue or temple made by human craft is only matter, and a God who had to be set up by human beings would once not have existed.
Miscellanies 7.6.30Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God is neither confined, pictured, nor hungry for sacrifices; Greek comic poets themselves mocked the way worshipers kept the good meat and gave the gods the scraps.
On Idolatry 1Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Idolatry is the chief sin, containing murder, adultery, fraud, and every other vice, because it robs God of his honor and serves the demons.
On Idolatry 2Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Idolatry is not only sacrifice and incense, just as Christ taught that adultery includes lust and murder includes hatred; Christians must recognize its hidden forms.
On Idolatry 3Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Idolatry existed before idols, but the arts that make images of any shape or material became its chief source, since any form made for worship is an idol.
On Idolatry 4Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · The law forbids making idols as well as worshipping them, and Enoch, Isaiah, and David all condemn those who make idols together with those who worship them.
On Idolatry 5Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Idol-makers' excuses, that they must earn a living, that Paul told each to remain as he was called, or that Moses made the bronze serpent, do not excuse them.
On Idolatry 8Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Craftsmen who build or furnish temples share the guilt of idolatry, but they can earn a living through the many other uses of their skills, and must refuse knowingly to make anything for idols.
On Idolatry 10Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Christians should not be schoolmasters, who must teach the myths of the gods and keep pagan festivals, but they may learn literature, rejecting the idolatry in it.
On Idolatry 11Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Trade breeds covetousness and lying, and trades that supply idol worship, such as selling sacrificial animals or incense, make a Christian the idols' agent.
On Idolatry 12Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · The excuse “I have nothing to live on” is answered by Christ's words and examples: the disciples left everything, and faith does not fear hunger.
On Idolatry 13Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Christians must not share in pagan festivals or their gift-giving customs, for the world's rejoicing is not theirs, and to join in is to be ashamed of Christ.
On Idolatry 15Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Hanging lamps and laurels on doors for public festivals honors the door-gods and demons; Christians owe obedience to rulers, but only within the bounds set by God.
On Idolatry 16Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Christians may attend family occasions such as weddings and coming-of-age ceremonies, which are clean in themselves, but not as participants in any sacrifice.
On Idolatry 18Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · The insignia of Roman office are bound up with idolatry, unlike the honors Joseph and Daniel wore, and Christ's own humility teaches Christians to shun worldly rank and power.
On Idolatry 20Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Idolatry can creep in through words: Christians may mention pagan gods' names in ordinary speech, but must never call them gods or swear by them, even in common exclamations.
On Idolatry 21Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Keeping silent when someone swears or curses by the gods, or cursing back in their name, honors the idols; a Christian should answer with a blessing in God's name.
On Idolatry 22Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · A Christian should not accept a blessing in the name of pagan gods but should make it known that his kindness was done for God; to let oneself pass as a pagan is to deny Christ.
On Idolatry 24Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Faith can steer safely through the dangers of idolatry by watchfulness; avoiding idolatry is the Christian's law, and just as no idolater was figured in Noah's ark, none should be in the church.
Octavius 2.4Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · On the beach Caecilius blew a kiss to a statue of Serapis, as pagans did.
Octavius 3.1Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Octavius rebukes Marcus for letting his friend Caecilius worship stone idols.
Octavius 23.9Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · People worship images because they are dazzled by precious materials.
Octavius 23.10Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Anyone who saw how idols are made would be ashamed to fear them.
Octavius 23.13Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · An idol becomes a 'god' only when people choose to dedicate it.
Octavius 28.7Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · The charge of worshipping an ass's head is absurd, but pagans do honour animals.
Apology 12Tertullian · ca. 197 · The gods are only dead men and their images mere material, which suffer in their making the very tortures inflicted on Christians.
Apology 27Tertullian · ca. 197 · Christians refuse to sacrifice even to save their lives, recognizing that the pressure to do so comes from the demons, over whom they triumph when condemned.
To the Nations 1.12Tertullian · 197 · Pagans who mock Christians as worshippers of the cross themselves venerate crosses in their wooden idols, in the frames of their statues, and in their military standards.
To the Nations 2.8Tertullian · 197 · Local gods are unknown even to their own towns, and the Egyptians worship animals and even a man: Serapis, Tertullian argues, was really the patriarch Joseph, deified for his grain policy.
On the Shows 5Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Pagan writers trace the games to Lydian religious rites in Etruria and to festivals of Liber, Neptune-Consus, Mars, and Jupiter, so the games were idolatrous from their origin.
On the Shows 8Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Every part of the circus is dedicated to some god, yet places defile no one of themselves; what defiles is taking part in what is done there, as a spectator or worshipper.
On the Shows 9Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Chariot racing, once simple horsemanship, became idolatrous when dedicated to the gods, and even the racing colors are consecrated to gods and the seasons.
On the Shows 12Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Gladiatorial shows began as human sacrifices to the dead, and so remain idolatry, even when given in honor of magistrates; the amphitheatre is a temple of demons.
To His Wife 2.6Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Married to a pagan, a Christian woman is drawn into idolatrous festivals and taverns and loses the fellowship, prayer, and Scripture of Christian life.
Didascalia 2.22 (Latin)Anonymous · first half of the third century · As an example for bishops judging sinners, the story of King Manasseh's idolatry is told from Kings and Chronicles.
Didascalia 2.23 (Latin)Anonymous · first half of the third century · Manasseh's prayer is heard and he is restored, showing that even idolatry may be forgiven to the penitent, whereas Amon, who sinned counting on later repentance, was swiftly destroyed.
Didascalia 5.11Anonymous · first half of the third century
Didascalia 5.12Anonymous · first half of the third century
On Isaiah, fragment 1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · On Isa 19:1: Egypt is the world, its idols are idolatry, and the light cloud on which the Lord rides is Christ's pure body, by which he came to shake error.
Arabic Pentateuch fragment XIII (on Gen 38:26)Hippolytus of Rome · unknown (transmitted in a medieval Arabic catena) · The catena retells Tamar's vindication before Judah and reads her as a type of the church freed from the reproach of idolatry.
Commentary on Daniel 2.14Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · The lemma of Daniel 3:1–6: Nebuchadnezzar's golden image and the command to worship it.
Commentary on Daniel 2.15Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · Puffed up by being called the golden head, Nebuchadnezzar set up a golden image of himself to be worshipped, and all the peoples obeyed.
Commentary on Daniel 2.16Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · The lemma of Daniel 3:8–15: the Chaldeans accuse the three youths, and the king threatens them with the furnace.
Commentary on Daniel 2.27Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · The king acted under the devil, who imitates God's works: the image's eighteen years, sixty cubits and six cubits are read as parodies of Christ, the patriarchs and the six days, and the many idols of the present age as the devil's devices.
Antidote for the Scorpion's Sting 2Tertullian · ca. 211–213 · Before arguing that martyrdom is good, Tertullian shows from the Law and the Prophets that God strictly forbade idolatry and commanded his people to reject other gods even at the cost of family and life.
Antidote for the Scorpion's Sting 3Tertullian · ca. 211–213 · God has always punished idolatry, as the golden calf, the sin at Baal of Peor, and Israel's repeated apostasy under the judges show; this establishes the ground for martyrdom.
Antidote for the Scorpion's Sting 4Tertullian · ca. 211–213 · By forbidding idolatry, God made room for martyrdom and willed it: whoever keeps his command under violence and dies for it is a soldier fulfilling the oath with which God sealed him.
Antidote for the Scorpion's Sting 8Tertullian · ca. 211–213 · God honours the deaths of his faithful: from Abel through the prophets to John the Baptist the righteous have suffered, and the three young men and Daniel were ready to die rather than worship idols.
Against Marcion 2.22Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The ban on images targets idolatry, so the bronze serpent and the cherubim on the ark do not break it; and when God rejects sacrifices he is rejecting worship offered without faith, not contradicting his own law.
On the Soul 39Tertullian · ca. 210 · Pagan birth rites hand children over to demons from birth; the children of believers are called holy, but only baptism by water and the Spirit makes one truly holy.
On Modesty 5Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · In the Decalogue adultery stands between idolatry and murder, bound to both; it cannot be pardoned while they are not.
Against Praxeas 18Tertullian · ca. 213 or later · When Scripture says there is only one God, it excludes idols and false gods, not the Son, who is included in the Father as the ray in the sun.
On the Crown 7Tertullian · 211 · Secular literature shows that crowns were invented by, and dedicated to, those the heathen worshipped as gods, so the crown belongs to idolatry and to the demons behind it.
On the Crown 10Tertullian · 211 · The crown belongs to idols and to the dead; created things are clean, but using them with the rites and dress of idolatry defiles them, and Christians must flee idolatry in every form.
On the Crown 12Tertullian · 211 · The military laurel, myrtle, and olive are sacred to pagan gods, and the crown is worn at vows to Jupiter, donatives, and triumphs; to wear it is to deny Christ, as Judas sold him for silver.
On the Crown 13Tertullian · 211 · Every occasion for crowns, civic offices, public festivals, pagan weddings, manumission, and the games, belongs to the world and to idolatry, which Christians renounced at baptism; their citizenship, freedom, and honours are in Christ.
Eclogae on Exodus-Judges, column 805Origen · ca. 220-254 · The manna and the good land read of Christ and his gifts: bread, vine, oil, pomegranates, fig, honey, stones, and bronze; then the literal sense of the land's goodness, and warnings against forgetting God and against child sacrifice.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.20.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon's disciples practice magic and worship images of Simon as Zeus and Helen as Athena.
Commentary on John 2.26Origen · ca. 230–248 · God allowed the nations the heavenly bodies so that they would at least not fall to idols and demons.
On Prayer 29.15Origen · ca. 233–234 · Idolaters given up to shameful passions receive the penalty of their error; but the purifying fire and prison of God's judgment are a benefit, cleansing sinners so that they may freely turn from evil.
Homily on Luke 22Origen · ca. 233–250 · The filling of valleys and levelling of mountains is fulfilled when Christ comes into the soul; John’s warning to the “brood of vipers” is addressed to catechumens; and the stones from which God raises children to Abraham are the Gentiles, once hardened by idolatry.
Exhortation to Martyrdom 6Origen · 235 · Origen distinguishes outwardly bowing to idols from inwardly serving them, and warns that denying Christ in court, even without belief, is still bowing to idols.
Exhortation to Martyrdom 7Origen · 235 · Denial and an oath by the emperor's Fortune are grave sins; not even the sun, a creature itself, would wish to be worshiped instead of God.
Exhortation to Martyrdom 40Origen · 235 · Denial sets a table for demons and cuts one off from the Lord's table and cup; whoever denies the Son loses the Father, but whoever confesses has him.
Homily on Isaiah 8Origen · ca. 235–250 · Origen reads the idols of Jerusalem and Samaria as the hidden idols of sin in church members and heretics, and the boastful king of Assyria as the devil, whom Christians resist by standing firm on Christ the rock.
Homilies on Exodus 8.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · An idol is the image of something that does not exist, a likeness the image of something real; the commandment forbids both, including the hidden images of demons.
Homilies on Exodus 8.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Serving and worshipping differ and both are forbidden; at baptism we renounce all other gods, and a soul that returns to Christ, its lawful husband, must keep wholly faithful lest the unclean spirit return.
Homilies on Joshua 20.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Anak means “empty humility,” the humiliation of sin and the lowly ideas of poets and philosophers about the divine; its three sons stand for the errors of idolatry, which the law cuts off, and Debir, “speech,” shows the letter of the Old Testament turned into spiritual speech in the church.
Homilies on Judges 2.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Bowing the knee to Baal is any sin; whatever a person loves above all is his god, so avarice, lust, and ambition are idolatry.
Homilies on Numbers 16.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Origen sets out the second oracle of Balaam and explains why Balak, said to be “standing” at his idolatrous sacrifice, is told to “rise.”
Homilies on Numbers 19.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Amalek, “the beginning of the nations,” is the invisible power that first turned men to idolatry; it is his seed, false teaching, that will perish, not the people, which answers those who call the God of the law cruel.
Homilies on Numbers 20.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Origen recounts how Balaam counselled Balak to defeat Israel by seducing it into sexual immorality and idolatry, urges Christians to arm themselves with the virtues against such darts, and explains “the teaching of Balaam” in Revelation as doing what Balaam did.
Homilies on Numbers 20.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Shittim (“refutation”) marks Israel’s fall into immorality and idolatry; Origen applies “things sacrificed to idols” to pagan doctrines, Solomon’s many wives to many philosophies, and Baal-peor to every sin as consecration to a demon, but insists that the guardian angels and the Father, Son, and Spirit care more for our salvation than the demons for our ruin.
Homilies on Jeremiah 5.2Origen · ca. 240 · The call “Return, you returning sons” is addressed to the Gentiles, who answer at once “We will be yours”; having said this, they must belong to God alone and to no passion or false god.
Homilies on Jeremiah 5.3Origen · ca. 240 · Converted Gentiles confess that the “mountains” (the gods of the nations) and the “hills” (deified heroes like Heracles and Asclepius) were a lie, and that their wonders were false signs, unlike those of Moses and Christ.
Homilies on Jeremiah 7.3Origen · ca. 240 · Israel, worshipping foreign gods in the holy land, was sent into exile; Christians who make gods of the belly or money will be cast out of the church, but those who worship God in this foreign world will go to the holy land.
Homilies on Jeremiah 16.9Origen · ca. 240 · Men make gods not only of statues but of their own invented doctrines, like the founders of philosophical schools and heresies, who worship the works of their own minds; God reveals his power against them in Christ's coming.
Lines 693–716Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · The waverer who mixes idolatry with Jewish observances must choose one of the two ways; the Jews, hardened like Pharaoh, were cast out of their land.
Lines 741–764Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Idolaters will be punished in unending fire, and those who live for pleasure, holding that there is nothing after death, reject God's mercy.
Instructions 1.2Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · God's law forbids the worship of idols, which began as prayers to dead kings, and promises resurrection to those who abandon them.
Instructions 1.8Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · The sun and moon were set in place by God on the fourth day and must not be worshiped.
Instructions 1.14Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Silvanus, a wooden image bought for money, is no god; the one God promises life after death.
Instructions 1.20Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · The household gods and images of the Titans are dead men and bronze.
On the Shows 4Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · All the shows descend from idolatry and are the devil's inventions, so a baptized Christian who attends them goes back on his renunciation of the devil.
Against Celsus 1.5Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus notes that philosophers also rejected idols; Origen agrees, because God wrote this truth too on human hearts.
Against Celsus 3.15Origen · ca. 248 · Origen says Christianity is not held together by fear of outsiders, since persecution has ceased for some time and may return, and that Christians openly teach converts to reject idols and worship the Creator.
Against Celsus 3.40Origen · ca. 248 · Origen argues that Christian teaching agrees with the common human notion that God is not a material image, so that the rational soul, hearing it, recognizes its Creator, abandons idols, and welcomes Christ.
Against Celsus 3.76Origen · ca. 248 · Christian teachers are not drunkards accusing the sober; rather, those who pray to lifeless images and worship statues or animals are drunk, and even mad.
Against Celsus 3.77Origen · ca. 248 · Those truly blind are not Christians but those who fail to rise from the beauty of creation to worship its Creator alone, and who turn to temples, statues, and festivals.
Against Celsus 4.26Origen · ca. 248 · If anyone deserves to be called worms, it is idolaters and the sexually licentious, not Christians who rise from creation to the Creator, pray to him, endure death, and keep their bodies chaste as temples of God.
Against Celsus 5.6Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus charges the Jews with worshipping heaven and angels but not the sun and stars; Origen replies that the Law forbids worshipping any created thing, heavenly bodies and angels alike.
Against Celsus 5.8Origen · ca. 248 · Worship of heaven and angels is not Judaism but a violation of it, as Jeremiah, Stephen in Acts, and Paul in Colossians show.
Against Celsus 5.11Origen · ca. 248 · Those who know God and his Son as the true light will not worship sun and stars, which themselves pray to God through the Son; as Jesus sent praise on to the Father, so the sun would say, 'Worship God alone.'
Against Celsus 5.12Origen · ca. 248 · God is present everywhere by providence, and Christ is always with his disciples, so it is absurd to pray to the stars; even if they announce the weather, their Lord, not his heralds, deserves worship.
Against Celsus 5.35Origen · ca. 248 · If philosophers may rightly abandon superstitious ancestral taboos, so may Christians; to keep them anyway would make a philosopher as ridiculous as an Egyptian who fears to eat an onion.
Against Celsus 5.37Origen · ca. 248 · When a city's law contradicts God's natural law, God's law must be obeyed even at the cost of death; so Christians reject the local gods, and Christ, unlike the newly invented Sarapis, is older than all creation.
Against Celsus 5.46Origen · ca. 248 · Moses forbids naming other gods; Christians would die rather than call Zeus or Amoun God, since these are names of demons, though one may call God by the common word for 'God' in any language.
Against Celsus 6.4Origen · ca. 248 · The philosophers who wrote nobly about the highest good still worshipped idols, so God chose the simple, while Moses and the prophets taught that God is seen by the pure in heart.
Against Celsus 6.14Origen · ca. 248 · Origen replies that the truly uneducated are those who pray to idols, and that the Church, like Moses and Daniel of old, includes learned people who have moved on from human to divine wisdom.
Against Celsus 6.66Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus imagines a seeker blinded by the light of true teaching, but Origen replies that it is idol-worshippers who sit in darkness, while Christians, following Christ the way, already know God.
Against Celsus 7.47Origen · ca. 248 · Paul's words in Romans 1 describe the philosophers who knew God through such doctrines yet worshipped images and fell into impurity.
Against Celsus 7.51Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus ignores the distinction between the spirit given to all and the fuller gift of the Holy Spirit; Christians, seeing with the soul's eyes, pray to guide the blind to the Word and be light to the world.
Against Celsus 7.62Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus says Christians' refusal of temples and images is shared by barbarian peoples and taught better by Heraclitus, and that Christians contradict themselves by saying man is God's image.
Against Celsus 7.64Origen · ca. 248 · Jews and Christians reject temples and images for different reasons from the barbarians: because of God's commandments against other gods and idols, for which they will even die.
Against Celsus 7.69Origen · ca. 248 · All demons have fallen from the good, as their use in love charms and spells shows, and the worship of the pagan gods at altars and temples is the service of demons, which Christians flee.
Against Celsus 8.24Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus says that eating sacrificial meat is harmless or that demons belong to God and should be honoured; Origen answers from 1 Corinthians that eating idol offerings harms weaker brothers and that one cannot share both the Lord's table and the table of demons.
Against Celsus 8.56Origen · ca. 248 · Christians will live in God's world by his laws, may marry and have children, and will bear hardships as trials; but they will not honour the demons, since they worship God alone, as Christ did, and cannot serve God and mammon.
Commentary on Romans 1.16Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · The philosophers knew the truth by God's revealing but suppressed it; God's wrath is the power that punishes, revealed 'from heaven' against those who sin knowingly; God's knowable works are manifest, his nature unknown save as the Son reveals.
Commentary on Romans 1.17Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · The philosophers, who study creation, could know God's eternal power and divinity from it; by seeking forms in God they lost God's image in themselves and fell into idolatry.
That Idols Are Not Gods 1Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246–250, if by Cyprian · The gods of the pagans were once kings, honored after death with images and rites that later generations turned into worship.
That Idols Are Not Gods 7Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246–250, if by Cyprian · Demons hide in idols, work oracles and diseases to win worship, but flee when Christians adjure them by the true God; they stir up hatred of Christians.
To Quirinus 1.1Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Scripture shows Israel repeatedly forsaking the Lord for idols, from the golden calf to the time of the Judges.
To Quirinus 3.59Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · The idols of the heathen are lifeless works of human hands, and the gods of the nations are demons.
Letter 55.27Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Novatian's followers cannot claim to shun idolaters, for Paul calls adulterers and defrauders idolaters; and in truth each bears only his own sin, so no one should be denied the hope of peace.
Letter 65.1Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Cyprian is grieved that Fortunatianus, bishop of Assuras, who sacrificed in the persecution, now claims his episcopate again instead of doing penance.
Martyrdom of Conon 5Anonymous · ca. 250 · Conon rebukes the governor and defies his threats.
Acts of Maximus 1Anonymous · ca. 250 · Maximus gives himself up under Decius and refuses to sacrifice.
Martyrdom of Pionius and Companions 8Anonymous · 250 (the text may be later) · Pionius refuses to sacrifice to the gods or to the emperor.
On Jewish Foods 7Novatian · ca. 250–258 · Food sacrificed to idols remains forbidden, since it makes the eater a guest of demons; Novatian closes with a doxology.
On the Lapsed 25Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Cyprian recounts how a little girl, fed idol-offered bread and wine by a nurse without her parents' knowledge, refused and vomited the eucharistic cup.
To Demetrian 12Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Pagans tolerate the worship of animals and idols, yet persecute Christians alone with ever more cruel tortures.
To Demetrian 16Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · God made humans upright to look to heaven; Demetrian should stop bowing to idols, turn to God, believe in Christ, and cease persecuting Christians.
To Fortunatus 0.5Cyprian of Carthage · 253 or 257 · Cyprian lists the thirteen headings of the work, from the folly of idols to the rewards awaiting martyrs.
To Fortunatus 1Cyprian of Carthage · 253 or 257 · Scripture shows that idols are lifeless works of human hands and that the elements are God's creatures, not gods.
To Fortunatus 3Cyprian of Carthage · 253 or 257 · Scripture threatens destruction and eternal punishment for those who sacrifice to idols.
To Fortunatus 5Cyprian of Carthage · 253 or 257 · The Law commanded death for those who lure others to idolatry; since Christ suffered for us, Christians must all the more be ready to confess him and die rather than deny him.
Canonical Epistle, canon 1Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 254–264 · Captives who ate the barbarians' food are not defiled, since it was not offered to idols; women raped in captivity are not to be blamed unless their earlier life was already immoral.
Passion of Montanus and Lucius 14Anonymous · 259 · Montanus's last exhortations against idolatry, heresy, and hasty reconciliation of the lapsed.
Commentary on the Apocalypse 2.3Victorinus of Pettau · late 3rd century · The letter to Pergamum warns those who, like Balaam, permit idol food and immorality, and promises the conquerors immortality and adoption.
On Free Will 15.5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Worship is good when directed to the true God and evil when given to idols.
Canon 1Anonymous · ca. 306 (disputed, ca. 295–314) · A baptized adult who sacrifices at a pagan temple is refused communion even at death.
Canon 2Anonymous · ca. 306 (disputed, ca. 295–314) · Baptized pagan priests (flamens) who have sacrificed, especially where killing or adultery was involved, are refused communion even at death.
Canon 17Anonymous · ca. 306 (disputed, ca. 295–314) · Parents who marry their daughters to pagan priests are refused communion even at death.
Canon 40Anonymous · ca. 306 (disputed, ca. 295–314) · Landowners may not accept as rent anything their tenants offered to idols.
Canon 59Anonymous · ca. 306 (disputed, ca. 295–314) · A Christian who goes up to the Capitol's idol to watch the sacrifice is guilty as a sacrificer and does ten years' penance.
Canon 60Anonymous · ca. 306 (disputed, ca. 295–314) · Someone killed for smashing idols is not to be counted a martyr.
Against the Nations 1.39Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius recalls his former worship of idols and anointed stones and confesses Christ, his teacher, as God.
Against the Nations 6.9Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Worshiping gods through images is like praying to one being while addressing another, a senseless substitution.
Against the Nations 6.10Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Images cannot be true likenesses of gods whom no one has seen, as the human-shaped sun, moon, and winds, and a lion-faced god, show.
Against the Nations 6.12Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The gods' statues are distinguished only by the attributes artists give them; exchange the attributes and no one could tell which god is which.
Against the Nations 6.13Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Statues of gods were modeled on real people, even prostitutes and a sculptor's boy-lover, which shows the images are human products.
Against the Nations 6.14Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Idols are made from base materials by human craftsmen, so it is madness to worship them as gods.
Against the Nations 6.15Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Raw materials are not worshiped, and shaping them into human forms adds no divinity to them.
Against the Nations 6.16Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Statues are hollow assemblies of metal and wood, decaying and fouled by vermin and birds, which shows they contain no divinity.
Against the Nations 6.22Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Even when statues of Venus were violated by lovers, the goddess did nothing, which shows she was not present in them.
Against the Nations 6.24Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The claim that images were made to frighten the crowd into virtue is refuted by the continuing prevalence of crime, even against temples themselves.
Against the Nations 6.26Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The attributes of the statues could frighten no one; it is laws and punishments, not images, that restrain crime and even protect the images themselves.
Canons of Hippolytus, canon 11Anonymous · 4th century · Craftsmen may not make idols; a baptized craftsman who does is excommunicated until he repents.
Church History 2.3.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Great churches arose everywhere as people, freed from idolatry, confessed the one Creator God.
Church History 2.13.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Simon was the first author of all heresy; his followers, feigning Christianity, worship images of Simon and Helena.
Church History 5.1.53Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · On the last day Blandina and the fifteen-year-old Ponticus, who had refused to swear by the idols, were brought in.
Church History 6.41.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Quinta refused to worship an idol and was dragged through the city and stoned.
Church History 8.10.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Offered freedom if they sacrificed or death if they refused, the martyrs gladly chose death, obeying the Scriptures that forbid worshiping other gods.
Church History 8.11.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · In Phrygia soldiers burned a whole Christian town with its people because all of them, officials included, refused to worship idols.
Homilies 6.23Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Clement mocks Egyptian animal worship and the public pictures of Zeus with Leda, and says that, though he does not know who God is, he knows what God is not.
Homilies 7.3Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter teaches that by eating sacrifices to demons the people fell under the evil ruler's power, and that by turning to God through the good ruler they can be healed.
Homilies 9.2Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · The idolaters' sin is worse than that of the generation of the flood, and the rule of many gods, unlike the rule of one, breeds conflict.
Homilies 9.15Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Demons draw those who eat at their tables and appear in dreams as idols, but the images themselves are lifeless, as a simple weighing would show.
Homilies 10.2Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter distinguishes idolaters, who are ignorant of eternal life, from believers who know it but stray from God's will.
Homilies 10.7Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Idols are useless even as servants, since they cannot see, hear, feel or move.
Homilies 10.9Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Idols are less than dead, often indistinguishable from tombs, and rational people worship not even the elements but only their Maker.
Homilies 10.16Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · The Egyptians dishonored the divine name by worshipping animals, onions, and worse.
Homilies 11.6Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · God does not destroy the objects of idol worship, since nearly everything has been worshipped and the worshipped thing itself is not guilty.
Homilies 11.9Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · God does not share his healing with idols, lest they take credit, and praise or blasphemy affects not God but the one who speaks.
Homilies 11.13Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter answers the appeal to ancestral custom and points out that people pray to heaven for rain but give the harvest's firstfruits to idols.
Homilies 11.15Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Pagan feasts, with their smoke, blood and wine, feed unclean spirits who enter the worshippers and drive them to vice and violent death.
Homilies 17.2Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Simon accuses Peter of magic and of teaching something worse than idolatry.
Recognitions 1.30Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter traces history after the flood: the ban on blood, the curse on Noah's middle son, the first altar to demons and the first idol, and Nimrod.
Recognitions 1.35Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter recounts the wilderness journey, the giving of the law at Sinai, and the golden calf made after the model of the Egyptian Apis.
Recognitions 4.20Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter argues that idols, mere metal, cannot be divine, and that neither divination nor healing proves divinity.
Recognitions 5.14Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Idols cannot even serve as slaves, yet their makers have made them masters, wasting useful material, while true worship means imitating God.
Recognitions 5.16Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Idols are lower than the dead, since they never lived; even sun and stars are not to be worshiped, for only the uncreated God is God.
Recognitions 5.30Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Ancestral custom is no excuse for idolatry, and those who pray to God in drought but then offer their first fruits to idols are ungrateful.
Prophetic Extracts 3.35Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius reads Jeremiah's nations abandoning idols as the Gentile conversion and the indelible “sin of Judah” as the Jewish people's sin against Christ, or Judas's.
Prophetic Extracts 4.19Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius reads Isaiah's “righteousness raised up from the east” as Christ, whose coming disarmed the hostile powers and led the nations to renounce their man-made idols.
Divine Institutes 1.15.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · People made images of dead kings and honoured them, which led to worship.
Divine Institutes 1.15.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The Sibyl rebukes Greece for worshipping dead men and idols.
Divine Institutes 1.19.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God cannot be worshipped alongside others, since his worship means believing he alone is God.
Divine Institutes 1.22.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Lucilius mocks those who, like children, think statues are alive.
Divine Institutes 1.22.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Idolaters are worse than children, whose mistake passes with age.
Divine Institutes 2.1.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · It is astonishing that people neglect the one living God for the dead.
Divine Institutes 2.1.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Humans are made upright to look to heaven, so idol worship goes against their nature.
Divine Institutes 2.1.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Humans stand upright to seek God in heaven, not to venerate earthly bronze or stone.
Divine Institutes 2.1.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · People look down and fear the works of their own hands.
Divine Institutes 2.2.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Idolaters say they fear not the images but the gods they represent, who must be in heaven.
Divine Institutes 2.2.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If the gods are in heaven, why worship walls, wood, and stone?
Divine Institutes 2.2.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Images were invented to remember the dead or absent.
Divine Institutes 2.2.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If the gods are everywhere, images are unnecessary.
Divine Institutes 2.2.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · No sane person prefers a portrait to the friend who has come home.
Divine Institutes 2.2.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Idolaters need something visible, but their images, like the dead, lack sense.
Divine Institutes 2.2.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Seneca notes that people adore statues but despise the sculptors.
Divine Institutes 2.2.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Statues cannot have powers their maker lacks, nor even the ones he has.
Divine Institutes 2.2.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Living, rational, heavenly beings adore lifeless earthly things.
Divine Institutes 2.2.24Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Rejecting idols, riches, and bodily pleasures means worshipping the living God and living.
Divine Institutes 2.3.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Even learned men like Cicero, knowing idolatry false, still practised it.
Divine Institutes 2.3.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If the learned err willingly, the childish crowd is even more captivated by images.
Divine Institutes 2.3.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Idolaters are bodies without true humanity, seeing nothing beyond the physical.
Divine Institutes 2.4.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Horace's Priapus admits he was a log that happened to be carved into a god.
Divine Institutes 2.4.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Even birds nest on and foul these supposed guardian gods.
Divine Institutes 2.4.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Idols can be broken, burned, or stolen.
Divine Institutes 2.4.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · It is absurd to seek protection from idols that cannot protect themselves.
Divine Institutes 2.4.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Adorning idols with riches is useless.
Divine Institutes 2.4.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Gifts to idols are like perfumes on corpses, useless to the senseless.
Divine Institutes 2.4.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The great statues of the gods are only large dolls consecrated by grown men.
Divine Institutes 2.4.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · People lavish offerings on idols that can use none of them.
Divine Institutes 2.4.32Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Such gods are nothing but their material.
Divine Institutes 2.5.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Admiring creation, people forgot the unseen Creator and worshipped his works.
Divine Institutes 2.5.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · People ungratefully prefer God's works, made to serve them, to God himself.
Divine Institutes 2.6.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The foolish prefer the elements to God and worship them in human form.
Divine Institutes 2.6.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · They make human images of the elements and love the costly images more than reality.
Divine Institutes 2.6.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · People visit temples to admire riches; their religion is admiration of wealth.
Divine Institutes 2.16.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Demons taught image-making and took on the names of dead kings.
Divine Institutes 2.16.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Demons hide in temples and work prodigies to make idols seem divine.
Divine Institutes 2.17.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · First, idols are images of dead men, and man, God's image, should not worship them.
Divine Institutes 2.17.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Deserting the living God for dead men is inexpiable; there is only one God.
Divine Institutes 2.17.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Second, idols are senseless earth.
Divine Institutes 2.17.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Worshippers of the dead, of earth, or of demons abandon reason and will be punished.
Divine Institutes 2.18.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · There is no true religion where there is an image.
Divine Institutes 2.18.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · An image (simulacrum) is a counterfeit, a mime of religion.
Divine Institutes 4.1.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · People abandoned God to worship man-made images, with evil results.
Divine Institutes 4.4.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Philosophers lose the inheritance of immortality; idolaters suffer everlasting death.
Divine Institutes 4.10.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · While Moses was on the mountain they made a golden calf.
Divine Institutes 4.10.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Under the judges, idolatry brought subjection until repentance brought release.
Divine Institutes 4.14.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · When idolatry prevailed, God sent his Son, prince of angels, to turn people to the true God.
Divine Institutes 5.8.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Evils multiply because God is abandoned and his worship forbidden.
Divine Institutes 5.8.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Idolatry, the denial of the common Father, caused all evils.
Divine Institutes 5.10.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Devotion to idols makes people impious toward the true God.
Divine Institutes 5.10.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Even upright idolaters are strangers to justice.
Divine Institutes 5.13.21Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The Sibyl calls idolaters deaf and senseless.
Divine Institutes 5.18.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Worshipping any but the Creator is a great crime.
Divine Institutes 5.19.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Idolaters follow demons they know nothing about.
Divine Institutes 6.7.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Idolatry joins all these paths in death.
Divine Institutes 6.20.36Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Attending the games is idolatry.
Divine Institutes 7.19.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Idols will be burned.
11Anonymous · 303–304 · Condemned, Dasius scatters the incense and overturns the idols.
Acts of Crispina 1Anonymous · 304 (5 December) · Crispina of Thagara, brought before the proconsul Anulinus at Theveste, refuses again and again to sacrifice to the gods, confessing the one God and Christ, and is threatened with shaving and death.
Passion of Irenaeus of Sirmium 4Anonymous · 304 (6 April) · At a night hearing Irenaeus disowns all ties for Christ and is condemned to the river.
On the Anger of God 2.4Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Some fall from the first step: rejecting idols, they worship the heavens and elements instead of God.
On the Anger of God 20.9Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Idolatry alone would justify destroying mankind, since men worship handmade figures instead of the living God.
On the Anger of God 20.11Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · The idolater turns from heaven to worship things made of the earth he should tread on.
On the Anger of God 22.8Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · The Sibyl warns against idolatry, adultery, sex between males, and killing children, for God is angry with those who sin.
Martyrs of Palestine (shorter recension) 4.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 311–314 · During Maximin's general order to sacrifice, Apphianus seized the governor's hand at a libation and urged him to abandon idols.
Martyrs of Palestine (shorter recension) 9.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 311–314 · Maximin's new edict ordered temples rebuilt, universal sacrifice and eating of sacrificial food, market goods defiled, and guards at the baths.
Martyrs of Palestine (shorter recension) 9.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 311–314 · Three Christians interrupted the governor's sacrifice, urging him to abandon idols.
Apology before the judgeLucian of Antioch · ca. 312 (reported by Rufinus ca. 400) · Lucian, on trial, defends the Christian faith in one God revealed through Christ, appeals to the witnesses of Christ's death and resurrection, and challenges his judges to believe.
Preparation for the Gospel 1.3.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The conversion of the nations from idols fulfills Jeremiah's prophecy that the nations would come to the Lord.
Preparation for the Gospel 1.5.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The greatest benefit of the gospel is deliverance from idolatry into the light of true worship.
Preparation for the Gospel 1.9.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Idolatry was a human invention arising from shameful ways, as Wisdom says.
Preparation for the Gospel 2.4.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Christians have been freed from idolatry by God's grace, the gospel's power, and sound reason.
Preparation for the Gospel 2.4.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Applying the name of God to obscene parts and beasts is the utmost impiety.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.13.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Those who call such myths theology are the profane, as Paul says of those who worship images of creatures.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.13.23Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · They should not shut God in temples, honor him with images, or please him with bloody sacrifices.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.12.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Hecate prescribes how to make her image from rue, lizards, and incense.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.12.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Hecate prescribes the number of lizards and promises to appear in dreams.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.15.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The gods are bound to the sacred images that bear their symbols.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.34.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The famine ended when the statue was restored.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.9.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Other peoples worship lifeless statues of human inventors.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.9.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Inventors only rearranged creation, so deifying them is foolish.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.9.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Greek mythmakers and Egyptian animal worshipers are alike foolish.
Preparation for the Gospel 9.39.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Polyhistor: Jeremiah finds the Jews worshiping Baal.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.13.36Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Xenophanes: God is one and unlike mortals; men make gods in their own image.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.13.40Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Lines ascribed to Sophocles proclaim one God and condemn idols.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.14.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Even Plato fell back into the idolatry of the Athenians.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.18.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses forbids worship of the heavenly bodies and directs worship to God alone.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.18.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo: the stars are God’s lieutenants; Moses corrects those who worship them.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.18.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo: worship belongs only to the invisible Creator; worship of a creature is the greatest impiety.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 20.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · It is vain to fear or trust idols that can neither see nor hear.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 20.6Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Idols made by human choice can have no divinity.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 20.7Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Offering gifts to idols that must be guarded against theft is madness.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 20.11Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Worshipping what one has made puts a human work above God's work.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 20.12Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Prometheus invented image-making for Jupiter's cult.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 20.13Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Hence the legend that Prometheus made living men; he invented clay images.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 20.15Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Dazzled by beauty, living people worshipped lifeless things.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 38.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Israel too fell into idolatry.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 52.9Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Idolaters face eternal punishment; those who suffer for God gain eternal life.
On the Deaths of the Persecutors 37.2Lactantius · ca. 314–315 · All food at his table was sacrificial, to defile his guests.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.5.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The patriarchs abandoned idolatry and worshiped the one Most High God.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.32Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Moses drew Israel out of Egyptian idolatry to the Creator as a first step of piety.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.49Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The prophecy is fulfilled today as Egyptians and all former idolaters worship the God of the prophets.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.62Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · There are three orders of religion: idolatry, Mosaic Judaism, and the gospel, which stands above both.
Demonstration of the Gospel 2.2.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Zephaniah foretells the end of idols and worship from every place; next heading: Zephaniah 3.
Demonstration of the Gospel 2.3.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Nations will come from the ends of the earth confessing the falsehood of their idols.
Demonstration of the Gospel 2.3.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · People will turn from idols to their Maker, while the cities are abandoned.
Demonstration of the Gospel 2.3.72Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · After Christ’s coming, people cast away their idols.
Demonstration of the Gospel 2.3.130Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Israel’s glory falls; a few believers are left; all mankind turns from idols.
Demonstration of the Gospel 2.3.165Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Jeremiah condemns Israel’s idolatry and adultery and foretells punishment, sparing the Lord’s “supports.”
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.2.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · As Moses first led Israel from idolatry to monotheism and gave its law, so Christ, far better, did this for all nations.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.6.31Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · No sorcerer ever founded a new nation under his name or established laws against idolatry that prevailed, as Jesus did.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.8.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Moses forbade Israel to worship the heavenly bodies, saying God had allotted them to the nations.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.9.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Pagan sources, cited in the Preparation for the Gospel, confirm that the earliest humans worshiped only the heavenly bodies, not idols or demons.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.9.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Idolatry and demon worship were later innovations, the work of the devil seeking to be like the Most High.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.17.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Aaron leading Israel out of Egypt prefigures Christ freeing the nations from idolatry.
Demonstration of the Gospel 5.4.17Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Egypt, thought the first source of idolatry, is named first among the nations to submit to Christ.
Demonstration of the Gospel 5.30.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Jeremiah foresees the nations abandoning their idols and coming to the Lord.
Demonstration of the Gospel 6.9.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Smoking mountains mean the destruction of idolatry, once practiced on high places; the next heading introduces Psalm 147.
Demonstration of the Gospel 6.13.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The mountains may also be idolatry and the demonic powers behind it, overthrown by Christ’s teaching.
Demonstration of the Gospel 6.16.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The nations who led Israel into idolatry will themselves be won from idolatry by Israel’s apostles.
Demonstration of the Gospel 6.20.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ came to Egypt first because idolatry began there and the Egyptians were the most superstitious of peoples.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.52Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The king of Damascus symbolizes idolatry; the king of Israel, apostasy from God's law.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.61Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The flies signify idolaters or unclean powers; the bee a warlike, organized force.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.106Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Some identify the power of Damascus with the magi; more broadly it means all converts from idolatry.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.3.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Solomon turned to idols and did evil before the Lord.
Demonstration of the Gospel, Book 8, preface 3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Further signs: the end of Mosaic worship and the temple, universal peace, and the turn from idols to the one God.
Demonstration of the Gospel, Book 8, preface 8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Humanity fell into idolatry, deifying dead rulers and their vices, as Romans 1 describes.
Demonstration of the Gospel 8.5.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · If Egypt had not turned from its idols to the God of the prophets, amid division and failing oracles, the prophecy would be unfulfilled.
Demonstration of the Gospel 9.16.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · They fail to see that Christ has done among all nations what Moses and the prophets could not do even in Israel: end idolatry.
Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 4.2Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Poets and sculptors worship as immortal the works they made, though they know themselves mortal.
Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 9.5Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Plato erred in introducing many gods with forms, which led to idolatry; so even his great wisdom is mixed with error.
Against the Heathen 8Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Forgetting that it is God’s image, the soul sank, like a diver into the depths, from inventing evil to inventing gods out of visible things.
Against the Heathen 9Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Idolatry descended step by step from the heavenly bodies to the elements, to men, beasts, and monsters, to deified lust, to rulers such as Hadrian’s Antinous, and to emperors voted gods by the Roman senate.
Against the Heathen 10Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Deifying the dead is an old custom: Theseus’ decrees, the cult of goddesses, and portraits of the mourned dead all became gods, and even Plato went to worship an image of Artemis.
Against the Heathen 11Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Scripture (Wisdom 14) explains how idols arose from grief and flattery, and the poets’ own tales of Zeus show him to be no god but the most shameful of men.
Against the Heathen 13Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Idolaters worship the craftsman’s art rather than the craftsman, and living, rational beings serve lifeless objects they themselves must guard.
Against the Heathen 14Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The Psalms and Isaiah 44 mock idols that cannot see, hear, or act, and the carpenter who burns half a log and worships the rest.
Against the Heathen 19Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Idolaters carve gods in the shapes of men and beasts, as Romans 1 says, and their philosophers defend images as channels for the divine or for angels.
Against the Heathen 20Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Neither the material, nor the form, nor the art of an image can be the means of God’s appearing; on any of these grounds idolatry refutes itself.
Against the Heathen 21Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · If images are only like letters through which angels are invoked, the idolaters wrongly give them God’s name and honor, and should rather honor their makers.
Against the Heathen 22Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The mixed and contradictory forms given to the gods, and the bodily shapes that need human repair, show that idols cannot represent the incorporeal and immortal God.
Against the Heathen 23Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Every nation, city, and village worships different and contradictory gods, as in Egypt, because people who have turned from the one God and his Word wander in many directions.
Against the Heathen 45Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · As a word reveals the mind, the Word reveals the Father; Scripture forbids idols and the worship of the heavenly bodies, which were given so that the nations might know their Maker.
Against the Heathen 47Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The Word, through whom the Father orders all things, is revealed daily in creation; those who honor creation instead of its Maker are senseless, while faith in Christ bears the fruit of immortality.
On the Incarnation 1.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The mockery of unbelievers only magnifies the Word's divinity, since by the cross he overthrows idols and wins over scoffers.
On the Incarnation 30.6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Idols and demons flee at Christ's name, the work of a living God.
On the Incarnation 36.4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · No prophet or king died on a cross for all, or ended Egypt's idolatry by going there.
On the Incarnation 37.5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The magi from Persia worshiped the newborn Christ, and the nations now forsake idols for him.
On the Incarnation 37.6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Egypt's idolatry ended only when Christ came there in the body.
On the Incarnation 46.4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Greek wisdom was made foolish when God's true Wisdom appeared, and the world is turning from idols to Christ.
On the Incarnation 50.1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · No king, sage, or magician ever won the world from idols as Christ has.
1Anonymous · 4th–5th century · Forty Cappadocian soldiers refuse to sacrifice under Licinius and are imprisoned.
Theophany 1.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.40Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.42Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 2.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 2.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 2.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 2.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 3.69Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 4.28Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 7.5Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Through such error the demons subdued humanity and filled the earth with temples.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 8.1Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Constantine resolved to remove the idols, which were like stumbling stones.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 8.3Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Constantine's envoys made the priests bring out their idols, exposed them, and melted down their precious metals.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 8.4Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Bronze statues of the gods were carried off bound, and Constantine searched for every remnant of idolatry.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 8.8Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · No god defended the idols; people, enlightened, pitied their ancestors' blindness and rejoiced in their freedom.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 9.6Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · No god foresaw or prevented the melting and chopping up of their images.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 10.2Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Converts despise the idols, learn Scripture, and worship not the heavenly bodies but their invisible Creator.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 11.8Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Worshipping the heavenly bodies and elements is like praising a palace's decorations instead of its architect.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 13.3Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · They deified dead men, animals and reptiles, and then images carved and cast from wood, stone and metal.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 13.5Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Every nation deified local men, monsters and passions, men who taught no virtue but were given to vice; and by imitating their gods' adulteries and crimes they destroyed their own souls.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 13.6Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Pagans sought the divine in mortal bodies like a man looking for the sun in the mud, and even sacrificed their own children.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 16.9Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Christ alone spread his teaching worldwide, abolished barbarous customs, endured constant persecution and flourished, founded a new nation, turned Egypt from animal worship, gave power over demons, and established bloodless sacrifices.
Demonstration 8.9Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 15.3Aphrahat · 337-345 · No food laws were given to Adam, Noah, or the patriarchs; God distinguished foods for Israel only to wean them from the Egyptian worship of cattle.
Demonstration 15.4Aphrahat · 337-345 · Israel worshipped Egyptian gods, as the golden calf shows; God's food laws and sacrifices of sheep and bulls were meant to break their reverence for the animals Egypt worshipped.
Demonstration 16.6Aphrahat · 337-345 · Gentiles such as Jethro, the Gibeonites, Rahab, Obed-edom, Ebed-melech, Ruth, and Uriah were accepted even under the old covenant; Christ is a covenant to Israel and a light to the nations, whose turning from idols provokes Israel.
Demonstration 21.7Aphrahat · 337-345
On Ecclesiastical Theology 2.21.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The first commandment is aimed against idols.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 2.22.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Isaiah's “no God besides me” is directed against idols.
Life of Constantine 2.44.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Constantine appointed mostly Christian governors and forbade pagan officials to sacrifice.
Life of Constantine 2.45.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Two laws banned idolatrous practices and ordered churches to be enlarged.
Life of Constantine 3.53.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Idols, an altar, and sacrifices had been set up at Abraham's oak of Mamre.
Life of Constantine 3.53.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Count Acacius is to destroy the idols and altar, and the bishops are to plan a basilica; pagans are barred from the site.
Life of Constantine 3.54.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The statues, once objects of sacrifice, became mere ornaments to be laughed at.
Life of Constantine 3.54.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The gold and silver idols were removed as stumbling blocks.
Life of Constantine 3.54.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Priests were made to bring out their idols, which were stripped of precious metal and exposed as hollow.
Life of Constantine 3.54.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Bronze idols were dragged away bound with ropes.
Life of Constantine 3.57.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The idols were found to contain bones, skulls, rags, and straw.
Life of Constantine 3.57.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The pagans saw that no god lived in their shrines.
Life of Constantine 4.23.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Idolatry and sacrifice were forbidden, and governors honored Sundays and martyrs' feasts.
Life of Constantine 4.25.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Constantine forbade sacrifice, divination, idols, secret rites, and gladiatorial games.
Life of Constantine 4.39.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · A Phoenician town named after Constantine burned its idols and became Christian.
Oration III Against the Arians 8Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · God's “I alone” is spoken through his Word against idols, as the sun might say “I alone am the light” against a painted board without meaning to deny its own radiance.
Catechetical Lecture 4.6Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Belief in the one God roots out idolatry and heresy; Cyril then sets out faith in the eternally begotten Son, who reigns with the Father from all eternity.
Catechetical Lecture 4.24Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Cyril turns to food, over which many stumble; some eat idol offerings indifferently.
Catechetical Lecture 6.8Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Though God is so great, people worship carved stones, animals, onions, and gods of wine, grain, and fire in his place.
Catechetical Lecture 7.12Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · People forsake the heavenly Father for idols and even the devil; sonship to God is by free choice and faith, and must be shown in works.
Catechetical Lecture 19.7Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Foods offered at idol festivals belong to the devil's pomp: as the invocation makes the eucharistic bread and wine Christ's body and blood, so the invocation of demons defiles these foods.
Catechetical Lecture 19.8Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The devil's "worship" is idolatry, divination, and magic; those who return to them after baptism are like Lot's wife, while the faithful flee to Christ.
Life of Antony 76Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Allegorizing the gods as natural forces still means worshiping creation instead of the Creator, as absurd as honoring a house instead of its architect.
On Saint Athanasius 1.6Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer argues that the emperor, by demanding Athanasius's condemnation and promoting heresy, breaks the first commandment and the law requiring two or three witnesses, and defies the judgment of the priests.
On Saint Athanasius 1.17Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer quotes in full the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and the coming of the rain.
On Apostate Kings 1Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Answering the emperor's claim that his long reign proves God's approval, Lucifer points to Gideon, who fell into idolatry yet ruled forty years.
On Apostate Kings 3Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer adds Solomon, Rehoboam and Jeroboam as kings who kept their thrones for years after turning to idols, so the emperor's survival proves nothing.
On Apostate Kings 4Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer charges that Jeroboam, raised by God's promise through Ahijah, repaid him with idolatry, and warns the emperor that the same ingratitude will be punished.
On Apostate Kings 5Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer recounts how Jeroboam, though warned by Ahijah's prophecy and by his withered hand at Bethel, persisted in idolatry until death, and warns the emperor not to do the same.
On Apostate Kings 6Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer lists further idolatrous kings of Judah and Israel (Abijam, Baasha, Omri, Jehoshaphat, Ahab) who reigned long, to show that the emperor's prosperity is no proof of right faith, and begs him to return to the church.
On Apostate Kings 9Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer calls Constantius a second Manasseh who has brought heresy into the church, and says that denying the Son of God is the sacrifice the devil now prefers to the burning of children.
Moral Rules (Moralia) 31Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's thirty-first rule, on what is set apart for those dedicated to God, with Rules 32 (render to each what is due) and 33 (on causing others to stumble), whose headings the scan lost.
Tractates on the Psalms 65.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Against the lie of false gods, all humanity is to worship the true Creator.
Tractates on the Psalms 67.20Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God is blessed daily as more people abandon idols and are led to salvation, and “day to day” means for ever.
Tractates on the Psalms 134.26Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Idols of gold and silver have only the form of a dead body; their worshippers will become like them, lifeless.
Paraenesis, or Exhortation to Penitence 4Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian cites the apostolic decree of Acts 15, which he reads as naming the three grave sins: idolatry, bloodshed, and sexual immorality (the rest of the chapter is missing from this text).
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 87Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · By rejecting the Law, which opposes evil and idolatry, the Manichees side with evil and fall into worse polytheism than the pagans; Titus sets out a test of the Law in three steps.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 90Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The Law guards against idolatry, the gravest injustice, which robs God of his honour, and against love of money, the root of injustice to others.
Oration 5.29Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory prays for the persecutors' conversion and celebrates the end of their outrages against churches, clergy, virgins, and martyrs' relics.
Oration 34.3Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory contrasts Egypt’s old animal and idol worship with the Christ and Christian teachers who have surpassed it.
Oration 37.19Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Idolatry is called adultery; Gregory rebukes the eunuchs for joining the impious doctrine and calls them to manliness.
Oration 39.6Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The worship of animals and idols brings its own punishment, making worshippers more senseless than the things they honour.
Oration 39.7Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The demons, envious of man, led him into idolatry; the remedy begins with the fear of God, which leads through obedience and cleansing to illumination, so that we may receive the Word worthily.
Oration 43.21Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · At Athens Gregory and Basil knew only two roads, to the church and to the schools, prided themselves on being Christians, and were confirmed in faith by the very idolatry of the city.
Oration 45.20Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Leaving Egypt, the Christian is to take the Egyptians' gold for good use and destroy the idols; God will then guide him as he guided Israel in the desert. The law sketched the mystery of the Pascha; Christ fulfilled it.
Tractates 1.4.3Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno describes unchastity's cosmetics and its link to idolatry, since the pagan gods Jupiter, Hercules and Venus were exalted through lust.
Tractates 1.15.6Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno warns Christians who tolerate pagan shrines on their estates, feast at tombs, observe omens or wrong their wives that their sacrifice is unacceptable, and that eating the Eucharist unworthily is deadly.
Hexaemeron 5.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The earth was commanded to sprout before the sun existed, so that no one would worship the sun as the source of life.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 3.12Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The rumor that the imperial commissioners would place an image on the altar proved false, so those who passed from the Donatists to Catholic unity cannot be blamed for changing.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 4.9Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Jeremiah's complaint of the forsaken fountain and broken cisterns concerns Israel's idolatry, not the Catholics' baptism; Parmenian has misapplied the prophets.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 8:1Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Knowledge that idols are nothing puffs up unless tempered by love; eating idol-meat that makes weak brothers stumble shows ignorance of true knowledge.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 8:7Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Some believers still ate sacrificial meat as if the idol had divine power, defiling their weak conscience.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 8:8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Eating sacrificial food gains nothing before God and should be refused because it offends the brothers.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 8:9Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Freedom to eat sacrificial meat must not offend those who still think idols are real.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 8:10Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · A knowledgeable Christian eating in an idol's temple can lead a weak brother, for whom Christ died, to eat in idolatrous belief and perish.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 10:6–7Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Israel's feast before the golden calf warns those who dine in idol temples.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 10:14Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Frequenting idol temples implies hope in them and doubt of God, as with Saul and the medium.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 10:18Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · As the Eucharist unites believers to Christ's body, eating sacrifices unites people to the altar of error.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 10:19–20Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Idols are nothing, but the devil is worshipped through them, so eating their sacrifices makes one a partner with demons.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 10:22Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · No one can rival the Lord, though Satan out of jealousy invented idolatry; all foods are lawful by nature, yet not always expedient.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 10:28–29Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · If told food is sacrificial, the believer should refuse it so that the pagan host does not think he honours idols.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 10:30Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Eating sacrificial food lets pagans think the Christian honours their idol, confirming them in error; the law commanded idols be destroyed, not shared.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 10:32Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Taking part in idol feasts offends Jews, confirms pagans, and scandalizes the church.
Commentary on Colossians 2:17Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Those who worship the stars, which Paul calls 'angels', keep souls bound below the heavens by the devil's work; turning back to Christ the head, creation grows for God.
Commentary on Colossians 3:5Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The sins to be put to death include greed, which is idolatry because, as idolatry steals God's name, greed seizes for one person the goods God made common to all.
Commentary on Ephesians 5:5Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Greed is idolatry because it hoards for oneself what God gave for all; believers must not be deceived by pagan appeals to ancient custom.
Commentary on Romans 1:23Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster lists examples of idolatry, Babylonian, Egyptian and Israelite, to show the folly of those who changed God’s glory into images of men and beasts.
Commentary on Romans 1:28Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster explains the vice list of Rom 1:28–30 as growing from malice, and notes that Paul names sexual immorality, which includes adultery, so that the lesser sin, tolerated by Roman law, would not seem unpunished.
Commentary on Romans 1:32Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster traces the vices to idolatry, recalls Sodom as a warning, and explains that those who consent to wrongdoing by silence or flattery share its guilt.
Commentary on Romans 5:14Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Reading Rom 5:14 without “not”, Ambrosiaster argues that death reigned only over those who, like Adam, sinned in contempt of God by idolatry, while those who honoured God awaited Christ in a place of rest; he defends this Latin reading against Greek manuscripts he regards as altered.
Commentary on Romans 8:23Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers, tossed in the world as on a stormy sea by persecution and strife, groan with creation for the coming of God’s kingdom; creation groans the more, seeing its fruits offered to idols.
Question 37, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · “Jacob” here is fleshly, idolatrous Samaria and “Israel” Jerusalem with its temple; when Jerusalem imitated Samaria, the same judgment reached it.
Question 102, section 18Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · In the letter to Pergamum the risen Christ commands penance for idolatry and sexual immorality, so those sins can be repented of within the church.
Question 113, section 7Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The devil, seeking to be worshiped as god, spread idolatry on earth after his fall, and Christ came to earth to crush him and reveal the truth.
Question 114, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Worship of the elements is not commanded by the supreme God whom the pagans themselves acknowledge, and it insults him as treason insults an emperor.
Letter 21.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome interprets the famine as the spiritual want of those who turn from God to idols.
Letter 34.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · From the Hebrew and Greek versions Jerome concludes that the "bread of sorrow" in Ps 127 means the bread of idols.
Letter 96.16Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus condemns Origen's statement that magic is not evil, arguing that magic and idolatry stand or fall together.
Letter 100.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus likens Origen's treatises to pagan idols and urges the church's teachers to build their doctrine, like careful masons, on the Scriptures and on Christ the cornerstone.
Letter 109.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome answers Riparius that Vigilantius wrongly calls the veneration of martyrs' relics idolatry: Christians honor the relics in order to adore Christ, and dead saints' bodies are not unclean.
Canon 3Anonymous · 374 · Baptized Christians who sacrifice to idols or accept rebaptism may do penance until death, with hope of God's forgiveness.
Ancoratus 2.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Christ's words lead to the one God, away from idolatry, which Scripture calls fornication.
Ancoratus 102.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Pastors expose idols as nothing.
Ancoratus 102.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Idols are human inventions giving cover to passions.
Ancoratus 102.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Idolatry began with demons and spread through each trade's craft.
Ancoratus 103.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Egyptians worshiped animals.
Ancoratus 104.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Cambyses wounded Apis to show he was no god.
Ancoratus 104.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · A chained god is no god.
Ancoratus 106.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Kings deified their favorites, like Antinous.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 3.1.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Idolatry and Hellenism begin with Serug, first through paintings.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 3.1.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Terah introduces statues made of clay.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 3.1.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Terah is punished for his idol-making through his son's death.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 3.1.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Idolatry begins with the deification of tyrants and sorcerers.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 8.2.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Writers and astronomers darkened humanity with idolatry.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 9.2.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Epiphanius claims the Samaritans unknowingly worship idols hidden on Gerizim.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 9.2.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Their prayer toward Gerizim is called idolatry, citing 2 Kings.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 19.1.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Elxai permitted outward idolatry in persecution.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 19.1.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Elxai cited a priest Phinehas who worshipped Artemis to escape death.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 21.3.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Simon's followers worship images of him as Zeus and Helen as Athena.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.21.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They eat idol sacrifices and attend pagan festivals and gladiator shows.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 32.3.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Epiphanes was worshipped as a god at Same in Cephallenia.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.8.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The poets' myths led to polytheism and idolatry.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 34.11.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Irenaeus denounces Marcus for turning Truth into an idol of letters.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.1.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The serpent brought in idolatry.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 55.1.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Scripture’s depths mislead some, as when people at Petra worshiped an image of Moses.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 62.7.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · It warned Israel against Canaanite idols.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 62.7.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Israel worshiped foreign gods, so God declared he alone is God.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.1.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Pagans forced Origen to hand out palms at the Serapeum.
On Paradise 61Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · The devil's promises were lies, except that their eyes were opened, a truth that harmed; his promise "you will be like gods" was the beginning of idolatry.
Apostolic Constitutions 2.22.0Anonymous · ca. 380 · The bishop should judge as God does with sinners and penitents, as David, Jonah and Hezekiah show; the story of Manasseh’s sins begins.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.12.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · The heavenly bodies were made for light, not worship, though Israel worshiped many created things.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.12.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · God threatened Judah for its idolatry through Ezekiel.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.12.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · The Lord condemns idolaters and worshipers of the sun and moon.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.16.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · The Gentiles turned from idols to the true light and became heirs of God's kingdom.
Apostolic Constitutions 7.21.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Food offered to idols must be avoided.
Apostolic Constitutions 8.32.8Anonymous · ca. 380 · Idol-makers must give up their trade.
Psalm 105Apollinaris of Laodicea · uncertain (fourth to sixth century) · A paraphrase of Psalm 105 of the Septuagint (Psalm 106): Israel’s confession of its rebellions in the desert and in the land, and of God’s repeated mercy.
Psalm 113Apollinaris of Laodicea · uncertain (fourth to sixth century) · A paraphrase of Psalm 113 of the Septuagint (Psalms 114–115): the sea fled at Israel’s exodus; not to us but to your name give glory; idols have mouths but cannot speak.
Psalm 134Apollinaris of Laodicea · uncertain (fourth to sixth century) · A paraphrase of Psalm 134 of the Septuagint (Psalm 135): praise the Lord who chose Israel, struck Egypt and the kings of Canaan, unlike the idols of the nations.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 14Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Gregory traces idolatry to worship of the heavens, the elements, images of the dead, and deified rulers.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 15Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Pagans deified their passions and even animals, a deception of the devil who misdirected their longing for God.
Book of Heresies 11.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some worship the frogs of the Egyptian plague.
Book of Heresies 12.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The mouse-worshippers derive their cult from the Philistines' golden mice.
Book of Heresies 13.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some worship the fly-god of Ekron, consulted by the sick king.
Book of Heresies 14.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The Troglodytes worshipped idols in caves, as Ezekiel saw.
Book of Heresies 15.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some Jews worshipped the Queen of Heaven, called Caelestis in Africa.
Book of Heresies 16.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Baal-worship under Ahab and Jezebel drew Elijah's rebuke.
Book of Heresies 17.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some worshipped Astarte and Chemosh, bringing captivity on Israel.
Book of Heresies 18.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Stephen rebuked the Jews for the worship of Moloch and Rephan.
Book of Heresies 19.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some sacrificed their children to demons at Topheth.
Book of Heresies 21.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The bronze serpent became an object of worship, along with engraved amulets.
Book of Heresies 22.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The elders offered incense to carved images.
Book of Heresies 23.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The women worshipped Tammuz, whom Philastrius identifies with Moses's Pharaoh.
Book of Heresies 24.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some Jews worshipped the Baals as many gods and goddesses.
Book of Heresies 25.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some say the idol Baal is named after Balaam.
Book of Heresies 27.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Worship of Ashtaroth after Joshua led to captivity; such gods were deified kings.
Book of Heresies 109.5Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Idolatry came from human will and was condemned by the prophets.
Book of Heresies 109.6Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · God never commanded the worship of angels, elements or idols.
Book of Heresies 109.8Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Solomon traces idolatry to a grieving father's image of his son.
Book of Heresies 147.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some think Scripture forbids cursing pagan gods.
Book of Heresies 147.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Moses, Abraham, Gideon and David opposed idols.
Eleven Tractates 1.7Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Those who make a sacrament of such figures are lost; Christians, who know idols are nothing, keep the figure of beasts out of themselves.
Eleven Tractates 1.16Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Freed by Christ, believers trample the powers that idols represent; Scripture names idols and demons so that we may reject them.
Eleven Tractates 6.102Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · God needs no offerings; the law's regulations answer the confusion idolatry had brought, when men gave God's name to days, animals, and stones.
Eleven Tractates 6.103Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Against idolatry God first gave the law through Moses; the sacrifices he asked for meant the killing of vices, not of animals.
On the Complaints of Job and David 3.30Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · The soul that turns to idols is like an unfaithful wife who separates herself from her husband, and it perishes far from God.
On the Complaints of Job and David 4.27Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · The foreign signs are the devil’s marks, which the faithful refuse as the Hebrew youths refused Nebuchadnezzar’s image; faith must not lie open on the road.
Petition to the Emperors (Libellus precum) 12Faustinus · ca. 383–384 · To sign a heresy out of fear is as much a sacrilege as sacrificing to idols; in matters of faith the few who suffer for the truth must be preferred to the many who gave way, and God has shown his judgment on the prevaricators by present punishments.
Petition to the Emperors (Libellus precum) 24Faustinus · ca. 383–384 · In Baetica the bishops Luciosus and Hyginus, with hired crowds and imperial officials, attacked the congregation of the presbyter Vincentius, a follower of Gregory of Elvira, killing clergy and a decurion and finally placing their altar beneath an idol.
Catechetical Oration 18Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · The end of idolatry, the spread of churches and of martyrs' contempt for death, and the ruin of the Jerusalem temple are offered as present proofs that God has come.
On the Life of Moses 321Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · While Moses is forty days with God, the people make the golden calf; Moses breaks the tablets and has the guilt cleansed through the Levites.
On the Life of Moses 377Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Seeing God consists in not seeing, for God is beyond all knowledge, as Moses learned in the darkness; any concept that claims to grasp God is an idol; Moses rises from peak to peak, from the darkness to the heavenly tabernacle.
On the Life of Moses 393Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · The broken tablets and the destruction of the golden calf, swallowed by the people, signify the end of idolatry; the Levites’ indiscriminate slaughter shows how partial punishment corrects the whole body, and in the higher sense it calls the friends of the law to slay what is falsely akin to them.
On the Life of Moses 395Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · The brothers, friends, and neighbours to be slain are the sinful thoughts that grow with us; Aaron who made the calf is the false “brother,” as distinct from the angelic brother; the earrings given up for the idol are the law removed from our hearing, as the serpent did in Eden.
On Jacob and the Happy Life 2.33Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The idols and earrings buried under the barren tree signify the end of pagan worship in the church; Ambrose links the tree to the one named in Susanna's trial.
On the Duties of the Clergy 1.26Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Against the philosophers’ idolatry and idle speculation, Moses shows true wisdom, which seeks God the judge and must issue in deeds.
Exposition of Psalm 118 8.59.4Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Earth, unlike heaven, is full of injustice and idolatry, so it most needs God’s mercy.
Letter 46.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Publicola, a landowner, asks Augustine eighteen questions on oaths sworn by pagan gods, food and objects connected with idols, and self-defence.
Letter 47.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that produce, water, and baths are not defiled by pagan offerings, and that spoils of destroyed temples may be put to common or sacred use but not taken for private gain.
Letter 47.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers the questions on food offered to idols, temple produce and wells, and on acting with an uncertain conscience.
Letter 47.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers that a starving traveller should refuse food known to be offered to an idol but may eat it if this is unknown.
Letter 102.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Demons demand temples and sacrifices because they know these belong to God; the fault of paganism is offering them to idols and demons.
Letter 102.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Scripture mocks senseless idols and identifies the gods of the nations as demons; true religion condemns sacrifice to demons, not sacrifice as such.
Letter 102.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Allegorical interpretations of pagan rites point to creatures, not the Creator; sacrifice is owed to God alone, and holy angels and men refuse it.
Letter 104.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine quotes his earlier letter: the offenders' lives and livelihood are to be spared, and only the wealth with which they live wickedly, which paid for idols and the burning of the church, may be taken.
Letter 120.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine rejects as a kind of idolatry the picture of the Trinity as three bodily masses in heaven sharing a fourth, omnipresent divinity.
Letter 185.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · In the apostles' time kings opposed Christ; now, as Psalm 2 foretold, kings serve the Lord as kings by just laws, like Hezekiah, Josiah, and Darius.
Letter 232.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine asks the pagan council of Madaura why they greeted him “in the Lord” while still worshiping idols, unless they mean to mock him.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.6.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Israel worshipped the calf; God answered by provoking them with a non-nation.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.8.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · To provoke God to jealousy, as by idol meat, is folly.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 45.16.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · At Christ’s coming the demons and idol-worship were troubled, and the heavy kingdom of sin bowed down.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine sets out the whole of Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8 and 10 to show that Paul's counsel to abstain from meat and wine was for self-restraint, to avoid idol food, and out of love for the weak, not because meat is unclean.
Tractates on Matthew 10.3Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius gives two meanings of the prohibition of swearing by heaven, earth, Jerusalem and one's head: to avoid venerating creatures, and because such oaths are oaths by God.
On True Religion 2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine interprets Socrates' oaths by dogs and stones as a rebuke of idolatry, but notes that neither he nor Plato turned the people from their idols.
On True Religion 10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine explains that religious error consists in worshiping soul, body, or mental images in place of God, and that the Christian religion is God's temporal help for restoring fallen man.
On True Religion 37Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine describes the descending stages of idolatry, from worshiping the soul and the highest creatures, through the sun, moon, stars and the world as a whole, down to idols made by human hands.
On True Religion 55Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine closes by urging his readers to worship no creature, neither phantoms, works, beasts, the dead, demons, elements, heavenly bodies, nor even angels, but the one God, the Trinity of one substance, to whom true religion binds us.
Sermon 4.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Esau sold his birthright for lentils, the food of Egypt and a figure of idolatry; the Israelites who made the calf lost their primacy, and carnal Christians still belong to Esau.
Sermon 8.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The rod that becomes a serpent and swallows the magicians' serpents signifies God's people made mortal and the nations absorbed into Christ's body; the first plague, water to blood, opposes the first commandment, as idolatry changes God's glory into a human image.
Sermon 24.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Idolaters are “dead stones” like their idols; the Church, made of living stones, labors to free them, hoping that God can raise children to Abraham from stones.
Sermon 24.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · No creature, not even man made in God’s image, can be compared with God; how much less a stone Hercules, whose dedication “To Hercules, the god” shames its worshipers.
Sermon 24.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Since the “Roman gods” have been removed at Rome, they should not remain at Carthage; Augustine mocks the gilded beard of a statue of Hercules, which has been shaved off.
Sermon 53.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God has no bodily face, hands, or feet; these words mean his knowledge, power, and presence; God is to be sought with the heart, which is his temple and seat.
Sermon 62.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians called to the heavenly banquet must not recline at feasts in idol temples, for this leads the weak to idolatry; Paul, the least apostle, is the fringe of Christ’s garment that heals those who touch it.
Sermon 62.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians who feast in idol temples become stumbling stones to pagans and wound the weak, sinning against Christ, who is God; at such tables they learn to doubt his divinity.
Sermon 62.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Excusing attendance at feasts before the Genius of Carthage as “not a god” fails, for its altar shows that pagans treat it as divine, and Paul forbids partnership with demons.
Sermon 62.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A good superior nourishes, a bad one tests; the world is a furnace where chaff burns and gold is refined; Christians must stand firm against threats and be filled from God’s banquet, not the idols’.
Sermon 62.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians obey authorities, but when the emperor commands what God forbids, such as attending in an idol temple, the greater Authority must be obeyed.
Sermon 62.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians must not destroy pagan idols without lawful authority, as the Circumcellions do, but may and should remove them where an owner, now Christian, gives the property or asks for it; pagans, heretics, and Jews unite in complaint against the Church.
Sermon 105.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine prays for the blasphemers rather than mocking them, grieves for the Christians of Rome, and answers that the idols could not protect Rome, since they could not protect themselves, while Christian Constantinople and Carthage stand.
Sermon 107.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · “All greed” includes lust beyond one’s wife, idolatry, and even honest attachment to one’s own property, which can lead a judge to give an unjust verdict for fear of losing what he has.
Sermon 141.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The philosophers’ folly was idolatry: knowing God from his works, they worshiped images made by craftsmen, which, if they had hearts, would worship their makers.
Sermon 180.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The habit of swearing requires extra vigilance because the tongue slips easily; even pagans fear to swear falsely by their stone idols, and a Christian who swears falsely by an idol is still a perjurer, since he deceives his neighbor before God.
Sermon 197.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Expounding Romans 1:18–25, Augustine argues that pagans knew God from creation but through pride turned to idols and to worship of creatures such as the sea and the sun.
Sermon 197.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Pagan interpreters who explain idols as the elements (Juno as the air) are the philosophers Paul warns against in Colossians 2:8.
Sermon 202.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Magi's gifts fulfil Isaiah's prophecy of the spoils of Damascus and Samaria; Christ's flight to Egypt and the innocents foreshadow his members' sufferings.
Sermon 241.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Having known God, the philosophers did not glorify him and fell into idolatry, even of animals, sinking as low as they had risen high.
Sermon 273.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians honor the martyrs, naming them at the altar, but offer sacrifice only to God; the saints themselves, like Paul and Barnabas at Lystra and the angel in the Apocalypse, refused worship, and the martyrs hate the drunken feasting at their shrines.
The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine asks how widely “sexual immorality” in the exception clause is to be taken, argues from 1 Cor 7 that it includes idolatry, unbelief, and every unlawful desire, holds that a woman who is put away should remain unmarried or be reconciled, and recounts without judgment a case from Antioch.
Against Jovinianus 1.10Jerome · 393 · Jerome summarizes 1 Cor 7:10–17 on divorce and mixed marriages and argues that Christian women may not marry pagans.
On Lying 12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Others argue that if a Christian may burn incense to idols to avoid being sexually violated, he may surely lie to avoid it.
On Christian Doctrine 3.7Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Pagan allegorical interpretations of idols, such as Neptune as the sea, merely redirect worship to creatures and are no better than idolatry.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 13.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers Faustus's imagined Gentile: the persecutions, the conversion of kings and the fall of idols, all foretold in the psalms and Jeremiah, make the prophets credible.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 14.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says the Manichaeans worship the sun and moon and imaginary beings, while Moses rightly praised the sun and moon as God's creatures without making them parts of God.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 14.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers Faustus's dilemma: a Christian forced to worship the sun should accept the curse of bodily death, from which the resurrection frees, rather than the soul's death by idolatry.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine replies that the Manichaeans are not called pagans but are worse than pagans, since pagans worship real created things while the Manichaeans worship mere inventions.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine replies that belief in one God did not come to Christians from the pagans; rather, pagan sages retained some knowledge of the one God but turned to worship of creatures, while the Manichaeans are worse still.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Christians honor the martyrs with love and imitation, but offer sacrifice only to God at their shrines, tolerating but not approving drunkenness there.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains animal sacrifices as figures of Christ's one sacrifice, whose pagan counterparts were demonic imitations, so that sacrifice is due to the true God alone.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.93Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine interprets Moses' burning, grinding, and making the people drink the golden calf as Christ dissolving pagan idolatry by the fire of his power, the word, and baptism, incorporating Gentiles into his body.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 32.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that Christians avoid food sacrificed to idols so as not to share with demons, and that the apostolic ban on blood was a temporary measure uniting Jews and gentiles which the Church no longer keeps.
Tractates 4Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · The Passover lamb 'from the lambs and the kids' signifies Christ's flesh taken from just and sinners alike; Gaudentius warns the newly baptized against idolatrous foods, magic, and drunken feasts for the dead.
On Catechizing the Uninstructed 19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–405 · The narration continues with the two cities of the wicked and the saints, the flood as a figure of the Church saved by the cross, the rise of idolatry, the call of Abraham, and Israel, whose saints already belonged to Christ's body.
On the Trinity 13.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · What the Word made flesh did in time belongs to knowledge, his eternal being to wisdom; Christ is both our knowledge and our wisdom, which the philosophers missed by refusing the Mediator.
The Harmony of the Gospels 1.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · The God of Israel, though refused by the Romans, is now worshiped everywhere and has through Christ turned the Roman empire to overthrow its idols.
The Harmony of the Gospels 1.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Those who blame the disciples rather than Christ for the overthrow of idols should read the prophets, who both commanded and foretold it.
The Harmony of the Gospels 1.38Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · No pagan god forbids the worship of another, however shameful, while the God of Israel forbids them all and has overthrown them.
The Harmony of the Gospels 1.40Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · The prophets, whose books the Jews themselves carry everywhere, foretold that the nations would abandon their idols, so the disciples did not invent this teaching.
The Harmony of the Gospels 1.41Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · The God of Israel, who forbade idols through Moses and promised blessing to all nations in Abraham's seed, has overthrown idolatry through Christ.
The Harmony of the Gospels 1.42Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Whether the pagans identify the God of Israel with Jupiter or Saturn, they do not obey him, though he has now subjected kings to Christ and made the idolaters hide.
The Harmony of the Gospels 1.43Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Augustine introduces Isaiah's prophecy that the Lord alone would be exalted and idols cast away in fear.
The Harmony of the Gospels 1.44Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Augustine quotes Isaiah 2:5–21 on the Lord alone being exalted and idols being hidden and cast away.
The Harmony of the Gospels 1.52Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Augustine sums up Book 1: the God of Israel, now worshiped everywhere, shows that Christ and his disciples taught the same against the gods.
Commentary on Daniel 1, scholion 10Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Daniel refused the king's food because it came from idol sacrifices.
Commentary on Daniel 3, scholion 3Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · The youths honored the king but refused to worship the image, as the law of Moses required.
Commentary on Daniel 5, scholion 7Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Belshazzar praised the idols as if they had defeated Israel's God.
Commentary on Daniel 8, scholion 23Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Antiochus defiled the temple, dedicating it to Olympian Zeus.
Verses to the Grace of the Lord 91–120Pomponius · 5th century(?) · Tityrus sings in Virgil's lines of the creation, the giving of the law, the exodus and manna, Israel's decline into idolatry, and the folly of idols.
Dialogues 3.9Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · A column from heaven shatters an idol; a woman with a flow of blood is healed by touching Martin’s garment; a snake turns back at his command.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 9.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The sixth jar is the age of John the Baptist, who warned the Jews not to boast of Abraham, since God could raise children to Abraham from 'stones', the Gentiles, who become his children by imitating his faith.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 42.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Rebuffed about Abraham, the Jews claimed God as their father, denying spiritual fornication, that is, idolatry.
On the Spirit and the Letter 19Augustine of Hippo · 412 · The pagans who knew God through creation but did not glorify him or give thanks fell through pride into idolatry, as Rom 1:18–23 shows.
City of God 7.27Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that the physical allegories point only to changeable creatures, and that worshipping a creature, or worshipping God with shameful rites, is sin — and doing both is a double sin.
City of God 8.23Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine quotes Hermes Trismegistus on men 'making gods' by joining spirits to statues and on the coming end of Egyptian religion, and contrasts his lament with the joy of the prophets who foretold the fall of idols.
City of God 8.24Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine seizes on Hermes' admission that idol-making arose from his ancestors' error and unbelief, and sets his lament beside the psalm's joyful 'new song' of the church built in all the earth.
City of God 17.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Jeroboam led Israel into idolatry, yet God sent prophets like Elijah and Elisha and kept seven thousand faithful.
On Faith and Works 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · No one would baptize an idolater who refused to give up idolatry; for the same reason the sexually immoral who refuse to amend must not be baptized, since both are excluded from God's kingdom.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.9Jerome · ca. 414-419 · The northern kings besiege Jerusalem as God's judgment for idolatry; the prophet must gird himself and speak without fear, trusting God's help.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.16Jerome · ca. 414-419 · God asks what wrong Israel's fathers found in him; sons who imitate their fathers' idolatry share their punishment and become like the idols they worship.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.21Jerome · ca. 414-419 · No pagan nation abandons its false gods, yet Israel abandoned the true God for idols; so too people pursue vice more zealously than virtue.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.22Jerome · ca. 414-419 · The heavens are appalled that Israel forsook God, the fountain of living water, for the broken cisterns of demons.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.28Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Israel, like an unfaithful wife, broke the covenant and gave herself to idols; so a Christian can be seduced from Scripture by the allure of worldly learning.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.32Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Jerusalem's eager pursuit of idols is pictured as a roe or wild ass in heat, or, in the Septuagint, as a harlot calling her lovers at evening.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.34Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Israel refuses to turn back and loves foreign gods, as those who follow heretics do; when caught, the people and its leaders are shamed like a thief.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.37Jerome · ca. 414-419 · God taunts Israel to call on the gods it made, so that need may expose their powerlessness.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.38Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Each city of Judah had its own gods, so that idolatry was divided even against itself.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.45Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Israel cannot justify itself, since it taught others its wickedness and shed innocent blood in idolatrous rites.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.51Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Israel's idolatry brought drought, and she has a harlot's brazen face; the rebuke fits heretics who glory in their errors.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.55Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Judah saw God divorce faithless Israel for her idolatry yet did not fear but sinned worse; Jerome applies the warning to heretics and to insincere returns to the church.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.101Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Judah served foreign gods at home and so will serve foreigners abroad; likewise God casts heretics out of the church.
Commentary on Jeremiah 2.38Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Whole families worship the queen of heaven; such idolatry harms not the changeless God but the idolaters themselves.
Commentary on Jeremiah 2.44Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Judah must mourn, for God has rejected it; Topheth in the valley of Hinnom, where children were burned to idols, will become the valley of slaughter, a place of countless unburied dead.
Commentary on Jeremiah 2.65Jerome · ca. 414-419 · God withdrew because idolatry provoked him.
Commentary on Jeremiah 2.86Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Idols are lifeless wood decked with metal that can do neither good nor harm; so too are false doctrines adorned with eloquence.
Commentary on Jeremiah 2.88Jerome · ca. 414-419 · The gods who did not make heaven and earth must perish.
Commentary on Jeremiah 2.103Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Israel and Judah conspired together against God's covenant; in their distress God will not hear them, yet one must never turn to demons as Saul did, but keep praying to the Lord.
Commentary on Jeremiah 2.106Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Judah had as many gods as cities and as many altars to Baal as Jerusalem had streets, worse than Israel.
Commentary on Jeremiah 2.109Jerome · ca. 414-419 · God, who planted Judah, pronounces judgment for its idolatry, and gives his reasons so that his justice may be seen.
Commentary on Jeremiah 3.67Jerome · ca. 414-419 · The nations come from the ends of the earth confessing that their fathers' idols were lies.
Commentary on Jeremiah 3.68Jerome · ca. 414-419 · The converted nations mock the folly of man-made gods; God reveals his hand and power, Christ, openly through the Son's passion.
Commentary on Jeremiah 4.5Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Those who forget God leave the ancient paths of the saints for an untrodden road of idolatry (Jer 18:15).
Commentary on Jeremiah 4.17Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Topheth will become a mass grave and Jerusalem a ruin because the people worshiped the host of heaven on their rooftops (Jer 19:13).
Commentary on Jeremiah 5.8Jerome · ca. 414-419 · God warned the people not to provoke him by idolatry, which would force him to afflict them against his will (Jer 25:6–7).
Commentary on Jeremiah 6.40Jerome · ca. 414-419 · God, the God of all flesh, whose providence extends even to brute creatures, will hand Jerusalem to the besieging Chaldeans, who will 'enter' and burn the houses where Baal was worshiped (Jer 32:26–29).
Commentary on Jeremiah 6.46Jerome · ca. 414-419 · As Judah set idols in the temple, so today new dogmas set up idols in the church and in believers' hearts (Jer 32:34).
Commentary on Jeremiah 6.47Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Jerome explains the Hebrew for 'make pass through,' the valley of Hinnom (Gehenna), bamoth ('high places'), and Moloch, the Ammonite idol (Jer 32:35).
Commentary on Jeremiah 6.48Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Judah worshiped Baal and Moloch, the northern tribes the golden calves; God's saying it never entered his heart is spoken in human fashion (Jer 32:35).
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.1.24Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Christianity grew under persecution; idol worship ceased at a word.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.32.2Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Valentinian gives up his command rather than sacrifice.
The Institutes 7.7John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Love of money begins with plausible fears about sickness and old age, leads to secret trade, and ends as idolatry, loving the emperor's image on coins instead of God's image.
The Institutes 12.21John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Joash, after allowing himself to be worshipped, was handed over by God to shameful treatment by the Syrians, showing that pride is punished by shameful passions.
The Conferences 10.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Isaac traces Sarapion’s error to the habits of paganism, which worshiped gods in human shape; the Anthropomorphites misread Genesis 1:26, whereas pure prayer admits no image, word, or form at all.
The Conferences 12.2John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Chaeremon explains the five members named in Colossians 3:5: sexual immorality, uncleanness (including involuntary pollution, as in the law), lust, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry because it prefers money to God.
The Conferences 14.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Scripture’s meaning deepens as one grows: the command against sexual immorality applies literally to the carnal, and spiritually to idolatry and pagan superstition, to Judaizing observance, to heresy, and finally to any wandering thought away from God.
Sermon on the Barbarian Time 4Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · The fathers of old put God before every human tie, from Phinehas and Moses to Daniel and the three youths, whereas the city now sacrifices souls by watching idolatrous night shows; let it fear eternal fire more than the barbarian sword and repent.
Canon 23Anonymous · date disputed (between ca. 442 and 506) · A bishop who tolerates pagan cults at trees, springs, or stones in his territory is guilty of sacrilege; the landowner who will not stop them is excommunicated.
Part 1, chapter 27Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Joseph, resisting Potiphar’s wife and leaving his garment in her hands, figures Christ whose garments are the martyrs, dragged by idolatry and persecution but freed in their souls.
Part 2, chapter 4Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The golden calf and Moses’ intercession figure apostasy and Christ’s self-offering for sinners; the Levites who struck even their kin figure the martyrs who preferred Christ to family.
Part 2, chapter 9Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Moses’ meekness, Miriam’s leprosy, the spies’ cluster of grapes, and the people’s fear and punishment in the desert figure Christ, the Church from the nations, the cross, apostasy after baptism, and the Jews’ loss of the inheritance to the Holy Innocents.
Part 2, chapter 12Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Balaam, hired to curse Israel, blessed it and foretold the star from Jacob, but then counseled seduction into idolatry; Phinehas’s zeal and the warning to Pergamum show that such seducers are still punished or brought to penance.
Part 2, chapter 14Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Joshua’s two spies, Rahab with her scarlet cord, the crossing of the Jordan with the twelve stones, and circumcision with stone knives figure John and Zechariah, the Gentile Church saved by Christ’s blood, the apostles, and baptism.
Part 2, chapter 15Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The fall of Jericho at the trumpets, and Rahab’s rescue, figure the Church’s spiritual warfare and the salvation of souls given to idolatrous fornication; as with Hosea’s wife and Jeremiah’s call to faithless Judah, Christ makes the harlot a chaste virgin and mother.
Part 2, chapter 17Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Deborah, mother in Israel, and Jael, who killed Sisera with a tent peg, figure the Church overcoming idolaters and heretics by the wood of the cross.
Part 2, chapter 18Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Gideon’s overthrow of Baal, the sign of the fleece first wet then dry, and his three hundred who lapped like dogs and broke their jars figure the passage of grace from the Synagogue to the Church and the victory of the martyrs, the Lord’s humble soldiers.
Part 2, chapter 28Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The division of the kingdom under Rehoboam figures heresy and schism, which Christ will gather into one flock; Elijah’s drought, the seven thousand, the sacrifice on Carmel, and the ravens that fed him figure Christ’s victory over idolatry and the Eucharist ministered through the Jews to the nations.
Part 2, chapter 33Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The captivity of Judah for its sins, Zedekiah’s blinding, and the plundered temple vessels warn the author’s own afflicted times to repent; Daniel’s first four visions (Susanna, the king’s food, the statue of four kingdoms, the furnace) figure Christ and his Church.
Part 3, chapter 38Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The prophecies of the destruction of idols are fulfilled in the author’s own times: the closing of temples under Theodosius, Symmachus’ failed plea for the altar of Victory, Eutropius’ flight to the church, the exposure of the frauds in the Serapeum and a Roman cave, and the consecration and later destruction of the temple of Caelestis at Carthage, which the author witnessed.
Part 4, chapter 7Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The harlot Babylon on the beast in the Apocalypse is the worldly city spread through the world, drunk with the martyrs’ blood and claiming eternity, from which God’s people must come out; Paul foretells the lawless one whom Christ will destroy.