The law of Moses in the early church

The Mosaic law, its purpose, its ceremonial and moral parts, and whether it binds Christians. Part of Scripture and canon.

Epistle of Barnabas 2.4Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · The prophets show God does not need sacrifices.
Epistle of Barnabas 2.5Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Isaiah: God rejects empty sacrifices and festivals.
Epistle of Barnabas 2.6Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · The sacrifices were abolished for Christ's new law.
Epistle of Barnabas 2.7Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Jeremiah: God did not command sacrifices at the exodus.
Epistle of Barnabas 3.6Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · God warned us beforehand so that we would not become proselytes to the Jewish law.
Epistle of Barnabas 10.1Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Moses' food laws contain three moral teachings.
Epistle of Barnabas 10.12Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · We understand the commandments because God circumcised our ears and hearts.
Dialogue with Trypho 8.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Trypho urges Justin to keep the law; the Messiah, if he has come, remains hidden until Elijah anoints him.
Dialogue with Trypho 10.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Trypho's real objection: Christians claim piety but ignore circumcision, Sabbaths, and feasts, and hope in a crucified man.
Dialogue with Trypho 10.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Trypho asks Justin to explain how Christians can hope in God without keeping the law.
Dialogue with Trypho 11.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Christians worship the same God as the Jews, the God of Abraham, but do not hope in him through the law of Moses.
Dialogue with Trypho 19.6Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Sacrifices and the Sabbath were concessions to keep Israel from idolatry.
Dialogue with Trypho 20.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Food laws were given to keep an easily straying people mindful of God; Noah could eat all meat.
Dialogue with Trypho 20.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The food laws were given because of Israel's idolatry.
Dialogue with Trypho 21.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Ezek 20:25–26: God gave statutes that were not good.
Dialogue with Trypho 22.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · God commanded sacrifices because of idolatry, not because he needed them.
Dialogue with Trypho 22.11Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Sacrifices and the temple were given because of Israel's sins, not because God needed them.
Dialogue with Trypho 23.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Otherwise God would have changed, or not willed the same righteousness for all.
Dialogue with Trypho 23.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · God is always the same; he commanded the law for sinners' sake.
Dialogue with Trypho 30.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The law seems unworthy of God only to those who do not see that it called a sick people to repentance.
Dialogue with Trypho 43.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The ceremonial law had to end with Christ, born of the Virgin of David's line.
Dialogue with Trypho 44.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Only those who share Abraham's faith will inherit; the law contains moral precepts, types of Christ, and concessions to hardness of heart.
Dialogue with Trypho 46.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Much of the law can no longer be kept; Trypho names the Sabbath, circumcision, new moons, and washings.
Dialogue with Trypho 46.5Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Tassels and phylacteries were given to keep a forgetful people mindful of God.
Dialogue with Trypho 67.6Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Christ kept the law to fulfill the Father's plan, not to be justified by it.
Dialogue with Trypho 67.10Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The new covenant distinguishes eternal commandments from concessions to hardness of heart.
Dialogue with Trypho 92.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Why did God add circumcision and the law if the patriarchs pleased him without them?
Diatessaron, section 8Tatian · ca. 160-180
To Autolycus 3.9Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Christians confess one God, who governs all things by providence and gave the holy law of the Ten Commandments through Moses to Israel and, through them, to the world.
Fragment 16Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 170–200
Fragment 16Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd–early 3rd century · Fragments ascribed to Clement from various sources: on the date of the Last Supper and the Passion (from On the Passover), on the dove at Jesus' baptism and the iota of the law, and on man as God's image.
Fragment 33 (On the Passover; Nikephoros (the likeness and the truth))Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd-early 3rd century · The Passover of the law is like an image honoured in the absence of its original but outshone when the truth is present.
The Instructor 1.6.33Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Paul distinguishes the good infancy of simplicity from the bad infancy of those under the law; in Christ believers are adopted heirs, not slaves.
The Instructor 1.7.60Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The law was given by the Word through Moses and was temporary; grace and truth came through Jesus, whom Moses foretold as the prophet like himself, prefigured by Joshua.
Against Heresies 1.26.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Ebionites hold a low view of Christ, use only Matthew, reject Paul, and keep circumcision and the law.
Against Heresies 3.12.12Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The heretics, offended by the law of Moses, invented another God; Marcion mutilated the Scriptures, and the Valentinians made the Creator a product of defect.
Against Heresies 3.12.15Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The apostles' careful observance of the law, and Peter's hesitation with Cornelius, show that they knew the law came from the same God.
Against Heresies 4.9.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The householder who brings out things new and old is Christ, author of both the old and the new covenants.
Against Heresies 4.9.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · “Greater than the temple” implies the same kind of thing, not a different God; the fuller gifts of the new covenant come from the same Father, Christ, and Spirit.
Against Heresies 4.12.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christ upheld the law of Moses while rebuking those who taught it without love; he is the end of the law because he is also its beginning.
Against Heresies 4.13.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christ’s sayings in the Sermon on the Mount extend and fulfil the natural precepts of the law rather than abolishing them, against Marcion.
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 4.15.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Moses permitted divorce because of Israel’s hardness, as Paul also made concessions for the weak; the same God gave both covenants and respects human freedom.
Against Heresies 4.16.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The righteous fathers had the Decalogue written in their hearts; when it was forgotten in Egypt, God gave it by voice and fed Israel with manna to train them again.
Against Heresies 4.16.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Decalogue made man glorious by giving him God’s friendship; spoken by the Lord himself, it remains, extended but not abolished by Christ’s coming.
Against Heresies 4.17.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The prophets show that God needs no sacrifices but wants obedience, a contrite heart, praise, and justice.
Against Heresies 4.17.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Jeremiah, Isaiah, Zechariah, and David show that God wanted obedience, mercy, and justice rather than sacrifices.
Against Heresies 5.8.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The law’s clean and unclean animals figure the faithful, the Gentiles, the Jews, and the heretics, according to whether they walk firmly in faith and meditate on God’s words.
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 26Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 89Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 96Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Hortatory Address to the Greeks 9Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Greek, Egyptian, and Jewish historians, including Diodorus, show that Moses was older than any Greek sage or lawgiver.
Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 8.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · If the law could give eternal life, Christ's coming and suffering would have been in vain, and the man who kept the law would not have needed to ask him.
Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 9.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The holy law was a preliminary training; Christ is the fulfillment of the law and makes believers sons, brothers, and heirs.
Miscellanies 1.26.167Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law given through Moses is a rule of justice leading to God; Paul says it was a schoolmaster guarding us until Christ; Moses was a living law.
Miscellanies 1.27.174Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul shows the law's benefit to the Jews; wisdom bears law and mercy; the law and the gospel are the work of one Lord, Christ, God's power and wisdom.
Miscellanies 1.27.175Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The prophets and Paul reproach those who do not understand the law; the law is good if used rightly, and its aim is love from a pure heart.
Miscellanies 1.29.182Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law of nature and the law of learning come from the one God and the one Word; Moses calls the Lord a covenant, and the Preaching of Peter calls him Law and Word. So ends Book 1.
Miscellanies 2.7.32Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · To attack fear is to attack the law and the God who gave it; without law, desire rules; the fear the commandments inspire is not irrational but rational, whatever the philosophers call it.
Miscellanies 2.7.34Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law threatens not outward misfortunes but real evils, such as adultery and the soul's death; it does not create sin but reveals it, as a good teacher shows what saves and what harms.
Miscellanies 2.7.35Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law revealed sin but did not create it; it is a good schoolmaster to Christ, leading through fear to repentance; the one near the Lord endures hardship for the truth; Barnabas too joins fear with keeping the commandments.
Miscellanies 3.2.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Epiphanes claims that God gave all things equally, while human laws, introducing “mine and yours,” created lawbreaking and theft; Clement notes that he misunderstands Paul on the law revealing sin.
Miscellanies 6.16.133Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Ten Commandments, written by God's finger (his power), picture creation: a heavenly decalogue of sun, moon, stars, and elements and an earthly one of living things; the ark is wisdom, and the two tablets foretell two covenants.
Miscellanies 6.16.137Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The first commandment teaches the one Almighty God who brought Israel out of Egypt; the second forbids applying God's name to idols, for only He Who Is is uncreated; the third teaches creation and the Sabbath rest, which we, not God, need.
Miscellanies 7.6.32Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God does not breathe or eat; the church's true sacrifice is prayer rising from holy souls, the righteous soul is the true altar, and the sacrifices of the law are allegories of the soul's cleansing.
Miscellanies 8.9.30Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Two things can be causes to each other of some effect without causing each other, as the stones of an arch hold each other up; so the law of “eye for eye” is not a cause of wrong but brings justice to one and correction to the other.
Against the Jews 2Tertullian · ca. 197–207 · God gave a law to all humanity from the beginning: the command in paradise contained the whole later law, and righteous men before Moses (Abel, Noah, Enoch, Melchizedek, Lot) pleased God without circumcision or the sabbath.
Against the Jews 3Tertullian · ca. 197–207 · Circumcision was given as a temporary sign, not for salvation; the prophets foretold a spiritual circumcision of the heart and a new law of peace going out from Zion to the nations, who have become God's people.
Against the Jews 6Tertullian · ca. 197–207 · Since the prophets foretold a new law, circumcision, sacrifice, and sabbath, the question is whether the one who was to bring them has already come.
Didascalia 1.6 (Latin)Anonymous · first half of the third century · The law binding Christians is the Decalogue and the judgments given before the golden calf; the laws added after it are a “second legislation” from which Christ released believers.
Didascalia 2.5Anonymous · first half of the third century
Didascalia 6.12Anonymous · first half of the third century
Didascalia 6.15Anonymous · first half of the third century · Converts from the Jewish people should leave the ritual observances of the “second legislation”; the abiding law is the Decalogue and the judgments, in which the name of Jesus is signified by the iota (ten).
Didascalia 6.16 (Latin)Anonymous · first half of the third century · The law of the Decalogue is simple and light, without food laws or sacrifices; the altar law of Exodus 20 is only a concession, since God never needed sacrifice.
Didascalia 6.16 (English)Anonymous · first half of the third century
Didascalia 6.17Anonymous · first half of the third century
Didascalia 6.18 (Latin)Anonymous · first half of the third century · The law gives life and binds Jews and Gentiles in the church as a yoke, but the “bonds” of the second legislation, from which Christ frees believers, are distinct from it.
Didascalia 6.18 (English)Anonymous · first half of the third century
Didascalia 6.19 (English)Anonymous · first half of the third century
Didascalia 6.19 (Latin)Anonymous · first half of the third century · Taking on the second legislation brings a curse; believers follow Christ and the Gospel, while the law of the Decalogue stands and binds even the lawless.
Didascalia 6.21Anonymous · first half of the third century · Christians must not keep the Levitical purity rules about menstruation, seminal flow, and intercourse, as though the Holy Spirit received in baptism left them, and so abstain from prayer, the eucharist, and the Scriptures.
Didascalia 6.22Anonymous · first half of the third century · Purity rites from the second legislation must be abandoned; Christians gather and offer the eucharist in cemeteries for the departed, touch the dead without fear, and treat menstruation and seminal flow as no bar to prayer, while adultery alone truly defiles.
On Proverbs, fragment 3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · On Prov 4:2: the law is called a good gift in contrast to bribes, and he who transgresses it forsakes it.
On the Holy Pascha, fragment 2 (Nicetas catena on Luke)Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · Fragments on the Pascha: Christ was presented in the temple under the law to redeem those under it; with his own soul he went down to Hades; he ate the supper before the Passover and suffered rather than ate it; and he showed his manhood in Gethsemane.
Arabic Pentateuch fragment XXHippolytus of Rome · unknown (transmitted in a medieval Arabic catena) · The catena explains Deuteronomy as the repetition of the law broken at the golden calf, and reads the eleven days' journey and five places of Deut 1:1–2 as the hours of the parable of the labourers in the vineyard.
Arabic Pentateuch fragment XXIIIHippolytus of Rome · unknown (transmitted in a medieval Arabic catena) · The catena summarizes laws of Deuteronomy on tithes, the seventh year, release of slaves and debts, firstborn, food, feasts, judges, sacrifices, and idolatry.
Arabic Pentateuch fragment XXIV (on Deut 19–23)Hippolytus of Rome · unknown (transmitted in a medieval Arabic catena) · The catena summarizes laws of Deuteronomy given because of Israel's corruption: retaliation, war, the unsolved murder, the captive wife, the rebellious son, the hanged man, the bird's nest, the parapet, the violated virgin, the runaway slave, interest, and vows.
Arabic Pentateuch fragment XXV (on Deut 24–26)Hippolytus of Rome · unknown (transmitted in a medieval Arabic catena) · The catena summarizes further laws of Deuteronomy: leprosy, pledges, wages, individual responsibility, gleaning, lawsuits, the ox, levirate marriage, just weights, and tithes.
Arabic Pentateuch fragment XXVI (on Deut 27)Hippolytus of Rome · unknown (transmitted in a medieval Arabic catena) · The catena retells the blessings and curses on Gerizim and Ebal, with notes on Shechem (Nablus), the Samaritans, and events of Genesis and John that took place there.
Arabic Pentateuch fragment XXVIIHippolytus of Rome · unknown (transmitted in a medieval Arabic catena) · The catena tells how Moses viewed the promised land from Nebo, charged Joshua, gave the law to the Levites to be read at the feast of tabernacles, and died and was buried by the angels.
Pistis Sophia 132Anonymous · 3rd century
On Mount Sinai and Mount Zion 1Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · The writer asks whether Sinai, where the law was given, and Zion, from which Isaiah says the law goes forth, are the same mountain, and proposes to answer from the meaning of their names.
On Mount Sinai and Mount Zion 6Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Sinai means “eternal temptation and hatred” because the people tested by the law there failed and fell into God's hatred, as the story of Esau and Jacob prefigures.
Fragment 28 on Genesis (Gen. 49, 14%)Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-235 · Resting “between the lots” means holding both the law and the Lord's teaching, as Christ fulfills the law and the prophets.
Against Marcion 1.19Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's god appeared only in the reign of Antoninus Pius, over a century after Christ, and was born of Marcion's own Antitheses, which set the gospel against the law; so Christ did not reveal him.
Against Marcion 1.20Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Paul's rebuke of Peter concerned conduct, not doctrine; the apostles agreed on one gospel, and Paul's attack on Jewish ceremonies in Galatians only carries out what the Creator himself had foretold through the prophets.
Against Marcion 2.17Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Creator's judgments serve his goodness: he sends rain on good and evil, spares the repentant (Nineveh, Hezekiah, David), and gave laws of justice and kindness long before any pagan lawgiver.
Against Marcion 2.18Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The law of “eye for eye” was meant to restrain violence by the fear of immediate requital; the food laws taught self-control and prepared for fasting; and the sacrifices kept an idolatry-prone people bound to the true God.
Against Marcion 2.19Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The law kept Israel mindful of God in every part of life, and the prophets taught justice, mercy, and care for the poor, while the Psalms promise blessing to the righteous: proof of a supremely good God.
Against Marcion 4.1Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Opening his examination of Marcion's gospel, Tertullian turns Marcion's Antitheses against him: the Creator himself foretold a new law and covenant, and contrasts in his works point to one God, not two.
Against Marcion 4.9Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The call of fishermen fulfills Jeremiah; Christ's cleansing of the leper and his command to show himself to the priest confirm the law, as Elisha's cure of Naaman prefigured.
Against Marcion 4.27Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's own apparent inconsistencies and his rebukes of the Pharisees and lawyers over washing, tithes, honors, burdens, the prophets' tombs, and the key of knowledge show that he upheld the Creator's law rather than attacking it.
Against Marcion 4.33Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's sayings on God and mammon, on the Pharisees' self-justification, and on the law and the prophets lasting until John show one God, the Creator, whose law is fulfilled rather than destroyed.
Against Marcion 5.2Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Galatians attacks the old law, not the Creator: the dispute there was only whether the Creator's law still bound believers, and Paul's “no other gospel” and his agreement with Acts show he preached no new god.
Against Marcion 5.3Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Paul's visit to Jerusalem, his yielding for a time to Jewish scruples, and his rebuke of Peter concerned only the law, and his teaching on faith, curse, and blessing belongs to the Creator, Abraham's God.
Against Marcion 5.4Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Working through Galatians 3–6, Tertullian argues that the promise to Abraham, the fullness of time, the end of the old observances, the allegory of the two sons, and the law of love all belong to the Creator, and that Paul's scars show Christ's flesh was real.
Against Marcion 5.11Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In 2 Corinthians 1–4 the Father of mercies, the new covenant of the Spirit, the veil of Moses, the “god of this age,” and the treasure in earthen vessels all point to the Creator and to the resurrection of the body.
Against Marcion 5.13Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In Romans 1–7 the God whose wrath and judgment are revealed, who judges by the gospel through Christ, whose law is holy and spiritual, and with whom sinners are reconciled, is the Creator, not Marcion's god.
Against Marcion 5.19Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In Colossians the gospel's spread through the world, Christ as image and firstborn of creation, the reconciliation of all things, the warning against philosophy, and the law as a shadow of Christ all point to the Creator, and Marcion's doctrines come from the philosophers.
On Fasting 2Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Tertullian lays out his opponents' case: that only the days when the bridegroom was taken away bind Christians, that other fasting is voluntary, and that Scripture condemns scruples about food.
On Fasting 5Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · The food laws of Israel trained the people in abstinence, and Israel's craving for Egypt's meat and onions repeated Adam's sin of the belly.
On Monogamy 7Tertullian · ca. 210–217 · The law of levirate marriage served reasons that have now ceased; the law's rules for priests, which forbade them to remarry, apply to Christians, whom Christ has made priests.
On Monogamy 13Tertullian · ca. 210–217 · Paul's advice that young widows remarry concerns those who could not keep a vow of widowhood; and Romans 7 frees a widow to remarry only under the law, from which Christians have died.
On Modesty 6Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Old Testament examples of pardon do not apply, since Christ has fulfilled and sharpened the law; flesh renewed in baptism is the body and temple of Christ, and only a precedent from the new era would count.
On Modesty 12Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · The apostolic decree of Acts 15 places sexual immorality between idolatry and bloodshed as sins the Spirit forbids, so, like them, it cannot be pardoned by the church.
On First Principles 2.4.2Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Acts, the great commandment and Paul's letters show that the God of the law is the God of the Gospel, preached by Christ and the apostles.
On First Principles 2.5.4Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Against the heretics' appeal to “a good tree cannot bear bad fruit” and “no one is good but God,” Origen shows that the law is called good and the Father of Christ is called just.
On First Principles 3.6.8Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · When God is all in all, bodily nature may take one splendid quality, and the heaven and earth of the beginning become the dwelling of the godly, where the true forms of the law's worship are found.
On First Principles 4.2.6Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Paul gives examples of the soul of Scripture (the muzzled ox) and of its spirit (the law as a shadow, the rock that was Christ, the allegory of Abraham's two sons), extending even to the histories of Kingdoms.
On First Principles 4.3.2Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Precepts of the law, such as cutting off the uncircumcised infant, eating the tragelaphus, forbidding the griffin, and sitting still on the Sabbath, are impossible to keep by the letter and lead to Jewish and Samaritan fables.
Eclogae on Exodus-Judges, column 293Origen · ca. 220-254 · To be left unpunished is God's abandonment; pray to be punished here; the kinds of law distinguished; the seventh-year release signifies freedom in Christ; the feasts cannot be kept literally by all.
Eclogae on Exodus-Judges, column 395Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Leviticus 1: the book's name; the sacrifices are worthy of God when the law is read spiritually; “gifts” and “sacrifices”; God allowed sacrifices to wean Israel from idolatry.
Eclogae on Exodus-Judges, column 397Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Leviticus 4–10: unwilling sin; the “carcass” as one dead to God; the double gain of sacrifice; priests and bishops must be sober; the sin offering must be eaten.
Eclogae on Exodus-Judges, column 419Origen · ca. 220-254 · Heretics who missed the hidden meaning of the law invented another God; but Scripture, like a human being, has body, soul, and spirit, and the same God gave law and Gospel.
Eclogae on Exodus-Judges, column 807Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Deuteronomy 12–19: sin by excess and by defect; clean animals read of conduct and meditation on Scripture; feasts and assemblies distinguished; boundaries; the law of retaliation and Christ's teaching.
Eclogae on Exodus-Judges, column 811Origen · ca. 220-254 · The millstones as old and new covenants; forty as a number of affliction; why no iron on altar stones; the tribes on Gerizim and Ebal; Moses' blessings.
Fragments on Genesis, column 105Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on the flood: sin corrupts the earth; the order of entering and leaving the ark shows abstinence in the ark and marriage after; Noah knew clean and unclean by natural law.
Fragments on Luke, column 327Origen · ca. 220-254 · John's call to prepare the way levels the proud and fills the humble, and his answer to the crowds leads them from the law's shadow to love, its fulfilment.
Fragments on Luke, column 365Origen · ca. 220-254 · The fatted calf is ethical and contemplative teaching, the iota of the law is Jesus, the leprosy laws picture the growth of reason in the soul, and Jesus' citing of the commandments refutes those who reject the law.
PG 12:1145 (Ps 4 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · More examples of “compunction” (LXX Ps 59, Isaac) and the other translators’ “be silent”; on Ps 4:5 the sacrifice of righteousness is not the animal sacrifices but justice, mercy and a broken heart, as Psalms 49 and 50 (LXX) and Jeremiah teach.
PG 12:1147 (Ps 4 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · The sacrifices of the law are a copy and shadow, to be read symbolically and mystically; hope in the Lord follows righteous action; Origen takes up the philosophers’ question whether the perfect man hopes, answering from Scripture that love “hopes all things.”
PG 12:1243 (Ps 18 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Ps 18 LXX (19):6–10: Christ the bridegroom, and the five names of the law.
PG 12:1601 (Ps 118 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Psalm 119:91–98 (LXX 118): the ant not under a master, meditation on the law as a preparation for martyrdom, day and night in the life of the beginner and of the perfect, and wisdom above one's enemies.
PG 12:1631 (Ps 123–124 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Psalm 124:7 (LXX 123) and Psalm 125:1–2 (LXX 124): the soul rescued like a sparrow, the snares of action and of thought broken by the Old and New Covenants, and those who trust in the Lord like Mount Zion.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.18.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They ignore Paul's warning that keeping one part of the law obliges one to keep it all; otherwise they agree with the church.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.33.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The giving of the law proves human free will; God gave it through righteous men and finally through Moses.
Fragment on 1 Corinthians (Jenkins § 35, part 1)Origen · ca. 226-254 · Origen rebukes those who exclude the twice-married from communion, allows second marriage as better than burning though not good in itself, and on 1 Cor 7:10–12 holds that a husband must not keep a wife who has committed sexual immorality, while the one who separates must remain unmarried or be reconciled.
Fragment 12 on John 1:17Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 1:17: the law was given by God through Moses, but grace and truth came through Christ, who, coming after the law and prophets, came before them as the cause of all inspired Scripture.
Fragment 54 on John 4:13Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 4:13–14: the law, Jacob's well, was given until the time of reformation, so its drinkers thirst again for the gospel, whose water becomes in them a spring leaping to eternal life.
Fragment 55 on John 4:15Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 4:15–18: allegorically, the woman's ‘husband’ is the law; her five husbands are the five books of Moses received only in their sensible sense, and the sixth, not her husband, is her half-assent that Jesus is a prophet.
Commentary on John 1.14Origen · ca. 230–248 · The law of Moses is the first-born produce of Scripture, and the Gospel its firstfruits.
Commentary on John 10.138Origen · ca. 230–248 · The cleansing was also a sign that the temple sacrifices and literal law-keeping were coming to an end.
Commentary on John 10.140Origen · ca. 230–248 · The spilled coins signify the end of the letter of the law, as the kingdom passes to the believing nations.
Commentary on John 13.43Origen · ca. 230–248 · The woman's husband is the law ruling her soul, as Paul says the law rules as long as it lives.
Commentary on John 13.44Origen · ca. 230–248 · Paul's “living husband” is the law.
Commentary on John 13.45Origen · ca. 230–248 · When the law dies, the soul is released from it.
Commentary on John 13.47Origen · ca. 230–248 · The letter of the law has died; the soul may now belong to the spiritual law, Christ risen from the dead.
Commentary on John 13.307Origen · ca. 230–248 · The fields are the Law and the Prophets, which become white only to Christ's disciples.
Homilies on Exodus 2.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Moses, hidden by his Levite parents and rescued by Pharaoh's daughter, figures the law received by the Church of the Gentiles, which understands it spiritually while the Synagogue keeps only the letter.
Homilies on Exodus 7.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The bitter water of Marah is the law taken literally (circumcision, sacrifices, the Sabbath), and the tree that sweetens it is Christ, the tree of life, who opens its spiritual sense.
Homilies on Exodus 7.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The commandments were given to test a murmuring people and bring death to those who do not keep them, but, sweetened by the cross and understood spiritually, they are commandments of life that free us from the “Egyptian sicknesses” of worldliness, astrology, and pleasure.
Homilies on Exodus 10.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Origen introduces the law of the struck pregnant woman (Exod 21:22–25) as one of the “ordinances” and asks whether Christ's “eye for eye” in Matthew cites this passage or the law of the false witness in Deuteronomy.
Homilies on Exodus 12.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · In the law only Moses' face is glorified, while his hand is leprous and his feet unshod, but at the transfiguration he appears wholly in glory beside Christ, of whom he had said, “You shall hear him.”
Homilies on Joshua 1.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Moses’ raised hands give Jesus (Joshua) victory over Amalek, and Joshua’s names and his place beside Moses on the mountain show his greatness.
Homilies on Joshua 1.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The book of Joshua depicts the mysteries of Christ: the death of Moses signifies the end of the law, as Paul’s image of a widow freed from her husband shows.
Homilies on Joshua 2.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Moses’ death signifies the end of the temple cult and the reign of Jesus in the church, as a non-canonical book’s image of two Moseses, one dead and one living, also shows.
Homilies on Joshua 5.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The fear owed to Moses under the law is changed when one passes to the Gospel and lives with Christ.
Homilies on Joshua 9.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The Deuteronomy, or “second law,” that Jesus writes on living stones is the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, written on the hearts of believing Gentiles.
Homilies on Joshua 9.8Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Jesus reads the whole law to his people when he reveals its spiritual sense, so that the catholic church receives the law of Moses as read by Christ.
Homilies on Joshua 15.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Each believer had a particular king of sin, such as avarice, pride, or lust, whom Jesus slays and commands us to leave no trace of; Christ also fulfilled the whole law, being born under it.
Homilies on Joshua 18.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Caleb, “as a heart,” son of Jephunneh, “turning,” figures the believer who acts with understanding and is strong in the mysteries of both the law and the Gospel.
Homilies on Leviticus 2.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Origen recalls the laws of gifts and of sin offerings read previously (for the high priest, the synagogue, a ruler, and a single soul) whose explanation had been left over.
Homilies on Leviticus 2.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The soul 'from the people of the land' that does a commandment 'which shall not be done' is the one that keeps the sacrificial law literally, since God gave such commands to signify Christ, not to be done.
Homilies on Leviticus 4.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The law on denying deposits, fraud in partnership, and robbery edifies the weak literally, but Origen refuses to think the faithful guilty of such crimes and turns to the spiritual sense.
Homilies on Leviticus 4.7Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The law that whoever touches the holy sacrifice is sanctified cannot be true literally (a murderer touching it would be sanctified), so it must be understood through the Gospel, which removes the veil from Moses.
Homilies on Leviticus 4.10Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The high priest's daily offering, half morning and half evening, is the law in its letter and its spirit, the latter given at the Saviour's coming; the law is 'eternal' only spiritually, and Christ's own word, like a whole burnt offering, is not to be revised.
Homilies on Leviticus 5.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Read literally, the laws of sacrifice would hinder Christianity; read spiritually, they make the hearer a Jew inwardly, and the heretics who reject them fail to see that Scripture, like the world, has body, soul, and spirit.
Homilies on Leviticus 6.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The people's presence at the high priest's consecration shows that the most worthy must be chosen openly; his two tunics signify knowing the law in letter and spirit, while the apostles keep only the inner, spiritual one; the ephod signifies works.
Homilies on Leviticus 7.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Paul's calling the law's food and drink 'spiritual' and 'a shadow', and Peter's vision at Joppa, interpreted by him as meaning that no human being is common or unclean, show that the clean and unclean animals signify people.
Homilies on Leviticus 7.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Christ's parable of the net shows that the clean and unclean fish are people; each person gives others clean or unclean 'food' in conversation, and even the Gospel's letter, such as eating Christ's flesh, kills unless taken spiritually.
Homilies on Leviticus 10.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The law's rites were like a sculptor's clay model, needed only until Christ, the true temple, high priest, and Lamb, brought the finished work; therefore God let the temple be destroyed.
Homilies on Leviticus 10.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Christians should not keep the Jewish fast of the Day of Atonement; Barabbas and Jesus are the two goats, and Christian fasting means abstaining from sin, with set fasts and fasting to feed the poor.
Homilies on Leviticus 11.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Origen distinguishes commandments from judgments with penalties and argues that the law's death penalty for adultery purged the sinner, whereas Christians, spared bodily punishment, must be purged by repentance or face future judgment.
Homilies on Leviticus 13.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The lamp fed by the people's oil is the law and the prophets, which went out among the Jews when their good works failed; Christians must keep their own lamps burning with the oil of good works, love, and peace.
Homilies on Leviticus 15.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Origen sets out the three laws on redeeming houses: in walled cities within a year, in unwalled villages at any time, and Levitical houses always.
Homilies on Leviticus 16.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The blessings at the end of Leviticus, like prizes in the games, reward keeping God's law; since the law is spiritual, its blessings are spiritual and open to all who share the virtues of those first blessed.
Homilies on Leviticus 16.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The promised rain is not the common rain given to just and unjust but the word of God, which must be given 'in its season', suited to each hearer's capacity.
Homilies on Leviticus 16.7Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The 'five' who rout a hundred are the wise teachers who overcome unbelief with the sword of God's word; God's look restores, as with Peter, and the old law gives way to the new, so that God dwells in the renewed heart.
Homilies on Numbers 6.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Origen reads Moses' Ethiopian wife as the church of the Gentiles and Miriam's leprosy as the present state of the synagogue, which will be healed when all Israel is saved.
Homilies on Numbers 7.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Miriam's leprosy warns against slander, and those who disparage Moses, whether Jews, heretics who reject the law, or carnal readers of Scripture, are lepers in the soul.
Homilies on Numbers 7.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · God's praise of Moses as one to whom he speaks face to face points to the law understood spiritually in the church, and preachers who fail to expound the law spiritually give occasion for despising it.
Homilies on Numbers 9.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Against heretics who say the God of the law is just but not good, Origen points to Moses and Aaron praying for their enemies, and teaches that the law understood spiritually is always a new testament.
Homilies on Numbers 11.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Distinguishing “law” from commandments, ordinances, testimonies, and judgments, Origen argues that some precepts are only shadows, some (like the Ten Commandments) are kept literally, and some (like the joining of husband and wife) are kept literally and also bear an allegorical sense.
Homilies on Numbers 11.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The firstfruits law still binds Christians literally: they should give firstfruits to the clergy, since Christ requires righteousness exceeding that of the Pharisees, who tithed even herbs.
Homilies on Numbers 17.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Balak takes Balaam to Phogor (“delight”); Origen explains why the law allowed sacrifices to God (a concession like divorce, and perhaps a remedy against sacrifices to demons) until Christ, the one perfect victim.
Homilies on Numbers 23.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Origen introduces the laws of sacrifices and feasts by explaining that Christ has transferred worship from the visible rites of the law to the invisible and spiritual, which require spiritual ears and eyes.
Homilies on Numbers 28.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Since the Jews no longer possess the land, the boundaries of Numbers 34 cannot be meant merely literally; following wisdom, Origen reads them as a shadow and image of the heavenly inheritance.
Homilies on Psalms 36-38 8.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · As the people advanced, God added to the law further ordinances for the priests and Levites, recorded in 1 Chronicles; these earthly orders are a copy and shadow of the heavenly priesthood to come.
Homilies on Psalms 36-38 9.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · This life is lived in an “image” of virtue, knowledge, and righteousness, not yet in the truth seen face to face; the law was a shadow, Christ in the flesh an image, and heaven the truth; every act paints a heavenly or an earthly image in the soul, and the devil’s images, the vices, must be scraped away.
Homilies on Jeremiah 12.12Origen · ca. 240 · The bright mountains are the angels and saints, the dark ones the devil and his powers; to “listen secretly” is to grasp the hidden spiritual sense of Scripture, which is why Christians who keep Jewish feasts and fasts literally are rebuked, and the church must fear being crushed as Israel was.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 0.73Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · The two great commandments contain the whole law, as a woman in love does nothing to displease her beloved; perfect love makes tribulation light, as Jacob's love for Rachel did.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 2.160Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · The 'likenesses of gold' are the law and its tabernacle, figures and shadows of heavenly realities, which the angels and prophets made for the church to stir her desire for the true gold.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.182Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · The shade of the apple tree is the life-giving shadow of Christ, better than the shadow of the law and a step toward seeing face to face.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.220Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · In the body the soul sees wisdom only through images; applied to Christ and the Church, Christ stood behind the wall of the Old Testament and calls the Church from the letter to the spirit.
Against Celsus 1.18Origen · ca. 248 · Compared book with book, Moses' laws help ordinary readers and reward deeper study, and they have spread through the world, while the Greek poets are forgotten.
Against Celsus 2.1Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus's Jew accuses Jewish Christians of abandoning the law, but Jewish believers such as the Ebionites keep it, as Peter did for a long time and as Paul did among Jews.
Against Celsus 2.2Origen · ca. 248 · The "many things" Jesus could not yet tell his Jewish disciples were the spiritual meaning of the law, which the Spirit later taught, as in Peter's vision.
Against Celsus 2.3Origen · ca. 248 · Jewish Christians like Paul constantly appeal to the law, reading it spiritually; Celsus, writing as an enemy, did not trouble to distinguish the different groups.
Against Celsus 2.4Origen · ca. 248 · Christians begin from the Jewish Scriptures and honor them more by uncovering their deeper meaning; the gospel's roots in the law, as Jesus and Mark say, do not bind believers to its letter.
Against Celsus 2.6Origen · ca. 248 · Even if Jesus kept the Jewish customs, he is still the Son of the God who gave the law, which the prophets themselves teach has a hidden meaning.
Against Celsus 2.7Origen · ca. 248 · Jesus, who washed his disciples' feet, was not boastful or a liar, and turning the law's bodily observances into spiritual ones is not unholy.
Against Celsus 2.52Origen · ca. 248 · Origen asks Celsus's Jew why he accepts Moses' miracles as divine but rejects Jesus', when Jesus did a greater work in founding a new way of life among the nations.
Against Celsus 2.76Origen · ca. 248 · Origen answers that Jesus' “woes” are no different from God's in the prophets and the curses of the Law, spoken to bring people to repentance, and that even Greek sages could not persuade everyone.
Against Celsus 5.43Origen · ca. 248 · The Jewish law, such as its release of slaves after six years, is far better than other nations' laws; even the least Jew worships the one God while philosophers bow to idols, and had Israel not killed the prophets and plotted against Jesus it would model the heavenly city Plato sought.
Against Celsus 7.18Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus sets Moses' promises of wealth and conquest against Jesus' teaching on poverty and non-retaliation, but Origen replies that the law's promises were never meant literally, since the righteous prophets lived in poverty.
Against Celsus 7.20Origen · ca. 248 · The law is twofold, the letter and the spiritual meaning; as Ezekiel and Paul show, the letter kills but the spiritual sense gives life, and so the law is both “not good” and “holy.”
Against Celsus 7.26Origen · ca. 248 · The law of Moses suited a nation with its own state and wars, while the Gospel suits people from all nations under Roman rule; providence ended the temple worship and has made Christianity grow despite persecution.
Against Celsus 8.29Origen · ca. 248 · Jesus set aside the Jewish food laws so as not to hinder anyone from coming to God, teaching that defilement comes from within, while the apostles forbade Gentile believers only idol offerings, strangled meat, and blood.
Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 1Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Origen explains how Christ silenced the Sadducees, why only a true disciple can rightly call him “Teacher,” and how the commandments are ranked under the two great commandments of love.
Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 9Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Origen distinguishes Christ's disciples from the crowds, explains the “seat of Moses” and its counterpart in the Church, warns church leaders who demand titles or impose unbearable burdens, and reads the law's commands about Passover, phylacteries, and fringes spiritually.
Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 78Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · The two apostles named Judas figure faithful and faithless confessors; Judas sold Christ for thirty staters, as those who sin for gain betray the Word, and sought a moment without the crowd, as betrayers do in persecution; the Passover is to be kept not bodily, as the Ebionites would, but spiritually, in the large upper room of a purified understanding.
Commentary on Matthew 10.9Origen · ca. 246–248 · The many fine pearls of the law and prophets prepare for the one pearl, Christ, as the partial glory of Moses prepares for the surpassing glory of the gospel.
Commentary on Matthew 11.1Origen · ca. 246–248 · The disciples’ “evening” and “the hour is past” signify the end of the age of the law and prophets; Jesus answers that the crowds need not go away, since he can feed them through his disciples.
Commentary on Matthew 11.8Origen · ca. 246–248 · The Pharisees, unmoved by the healings, can accuse the disciples only of breaking a tradition of the elders, not a commandment of God; Origen urges washing the hands of the soul before receiving Christ’s bread.
Commentary on Matthew 11.12Origen · ca. 246–248 · Foods are indifferent in themselves; what defiles is evil speech and thought, greed, gluttony, or eating with a doubting conscience what is offered to demons, while the food laws are a shadow of spiritual nourishment.
Commentary on Matthew 11.14Origen · ca. 246–248 · Against those who separate the God of the law from the Father of Jesus, Origen says the Pharisees were rejected for their misreading of the law, not for the law; and he argues that the bread of the Lord benefits only one who receives it with a pure conscience, the word spoken over it, not its matter, being what helps.
Commentary on Matthew 12.4Origen · ca. 246–248 · The Pharisees and Sadducees are “adulterous” because the soul, wedded to the law of the mind, has turned to the law of sin; with Rom 7 Origen describes the law as the soul’s husband, who dies for the perfect, who are then joined to the living Word, while the Word leaves the synagogue for the Gentiles.
Commentary on Matthew 12.5Origen · ca. 246–248 · The leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees is the old teaching of the bare letter and the denial of the resurrection; disciples who have crossed to the spiritual must see and beware, for Christ himself is their living bread.
Commentary on Matthew 17.32Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen gives three readings of the brother who refuses the levirate duty: a doctrine that despises the law’s letter, the heresies that separate the law from the Gospel, and a disciple who will not carry on a wise man’s teaching.
Commentary on Romans 1.10Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · God and his saints bear witness to each other; Paul serves God in his spirit, the best part of man, and the spirit of the law over its letter, as did the patriarchs and prophets.
Commentary on Romans 2.8Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen asks which law Paul means (Moses, Christ, human laws, or natural law), argues that Christians are judged by the spiritual sense of the law, and notes that Scripture never says God destroys anyone: people perish by their own doing, and Christ came to seek the lost.
Commentary on Romans 2.9Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · The law written on Gentile hearts is the moral law of natural equity (like the Golden Rule), not the ceremonial law; the heart means the soul's rational power, and conscience is the spirit joined to the soul as its tutor, which may be separated from a disobedient soul after death.
Commentary on Romans 2.13Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen applies Rom 2:26-29 to Jewish and Gentile believers and to catechumens, argues at length from the law that circumcision bound only Abraham's descendants and slaves, gives its spiritual meaning, answers pagan and Marcionite objections, and begins Rom 3:1-4 on the Jews' advantage, the oracles of God, and 'every man a liar.'
Commentary on Romans 3.6Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · The law that 'speaks to those in the law' and brings the knowledge of sin is the natural law given to every rational being, including angels, from the age of discernment; Christ is not under law but is the law, the perfect are a law to themselves, and the law is good because it reveals sin as medicine reveals sickness.
Commentary on Romans 3.11Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Paul does not destroy the law through faith but confirms it, because believing in Christ fulfills what Moses wrote, while Marcion, the Ebionites, and unrepentant sinners destroy it; the law's glory is not abolished by anyone but eclipsed by the greater glory of Christ, as a pedagogue's office ends when the child comes of age.
Commentary on Romans 4.3Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · The promise that Abraham would inherit the world came before the law of Moses and rests on the righteousness of faith, for the law only spares from punishment while faith, asked of friends, receives the promise.
Commentary on Romans 4.4Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · The inheritance promised to Abraham comes through faith, not through the law of Moses or natural law; against heretics who say the law causes transgression, Origen argues that law reveals but does not cause sin, that the law which 'works wrath' may be the law of sin in our members, and that one who keeps from sin by conscience is better than one restrained only by the law's threat.
Commentary on Romans 6.7Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen explains Paul’s marriage analogy in Romans 7: the law according to the letter is the dead first husband, and the soul is now free to be joined to Christ, the risen second husband, serving in the newness of the Spirit.
Commentary on Romans 6.12Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen reads Romans 8:3–9 of the law understood according to the letter (weak and now “dead”) versus according to the spirit, explains the Son’s “likeness of sinful flesh” and his sacrifice for sin, and gives a second reading based on the law of the mind.
Commentary on Romans 7.20Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen explains that the Gentiles, who had righteousness implanted by natural law rather than pursued from books, reached the righteousness of faith, while Israel pursued the letter and missed the spiritual law, stumbling at Christ, who blocks the road of sin as he did for Paul.
Commentary on Romans 8.2Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Christ, the end of the law and the righteousness of faith, is present everywhere as the Word, near every person in possibility and in believers in actuality; true confession of Jesus as Lord means subjection to all that Christ is and newness of life.
Commentary on Romans 9.1Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Christians offer God the reasonable sacrifice of their own bodies, mastering pride, anger and lust; virginity holds a high rank but married believers too can offer a holy sacrifice, while virgins stained by pride or avarice do not; renewal of mind through Scripture lets one discern God's good, pleasing and perfect will.
Commentary on Romans 9.31Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Love fulfills every commandment, since no one kills, commits adultery against, robs or slanders the one he loves; above all, loving Christ, our true neighbor, fulfills the whole law, and love of Christ brings love of neighbor.
Commentary on Romans 9.42Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Nothing is 'common' (unclean) by nature; a man is made common by the many evil spirits that possess an alienated mind, and food is unclean only to one who thinks it so; yet freedom must yield to love so as not to destroy a weaker brother, and true observance lies in moderation and a pure mind, as the holiness of Paul's handkerchiefs and Peter's shadow shows.
Commentary on Romans 10.3Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · All things are clean by nature and become unclean only through a brother's offense or one's own judgment; the food laws once set Israel apart, but with the opening of faith to the Gentiles all foods are purified; yet abstaining from meat and wine is truly good when a brother would otherwise stumble, and abstainers must not be forced to eat.
To Quirinus 1.9Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Isaiah and Jesus indicate that the law given through Moses was to end.
On Jewish Foods 2Novatian · ca. 250–258 · Novatian argues that the food laws must be read spiritually, since God declared all creatures very good and preserved even the unclean ones in the ark, and he outlines the history of human food from fruit to grain to flesh.
On Jewish Foods 3Novatian · ca. 250–258 · Novatian interprets the clean and unclean animals as pictures of human virtues and vices: chewing the cud means meditating on God's commands, a divided hoof a firm walk in virtue, and each forbidden animal a particular vice.
On Jewish Foods 5Novatian · ca. 250–258 · With Christ, the end of the Law, food distinctions have ceased; Novatian cites Paul and the Gospels to show that God is worshiped by faith and virtue, not by foods.
Symposium 10.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Domnina, the last speaker, argues that chastity, taught by Christ, did what the law could not: it overthrew the devil's reign over humanity.
Symposium 10.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Jotham's fable of the trees choosing a king foretells four stages of God's law: the fig for paradise, the vine for Noah, the olive for Moses, and the bramble for the apostles' teaching of chastity.
Commentary on the Apocalypse 5.2Victorinus of Pettau · late 3rd century · Christ, the lion and the slain Lamb, unseals the testament veiled in Moses' law, which becomes plain after his death and victory.
Cib. 6Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Turning to the question of the dead body in a house (Num 19), Methodius argues that Christ, Peter's vision, and the apostolic council set aside the Law's purity and food rules.
Cib. 7Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God gave the food laws not because foods defile but to train Israel by small commands, as teachers start children with strokes; the Law is a shadow, the gospel an image, of the good things to come.
Cib. 8Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The food laws are shadows: the divided hoof means an active life and chewing the cud means understanding Scripture, and the psalm's ivory palace means resurrection bodies, not elephant bone.
Cib. 9Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · With Christ's coming the Law's purifications ended; the ashes of the red heifer ran out, yet the Law forbade any substitute or any omission of the rite.
Cib. 10Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Since the heifer's ashes have run out, Jews cannot keep the Law literally without transgressing it; the true circumcision is of the heart by the Spirit.
Church History 1.2.22Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Through Moses the Word gave the Hebrew nation symbols such as the sabbath and circumcision, not yet the full mysteries.
Church History 1.4.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · The patriarchs, like Christians, did not keep circumcision, sabbath, or food laws, but knew Christ, who appeared to them.
Church History 3.27.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Some Ebionites held Jesus a mere man born of Joseph and Mary, and required the law for salvation.
Church History 3.27.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Other Ebionites accepted the virgin birth but denied Christ's pre-existence as the Word, and kept the law.
Church History 5.13.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Apelles wrote much against the law of Moses.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 15Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes opens the debate: he claims to be the Paraclete promised by Jesus and argues that the law and the prophets come from Satan, not from the Father of Christ.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 32Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes retorts that the same complaint would hold for all who lived before Christ; Archelaus answers that the righteous before Moses kept the law written in their hearts, and that the written law was given in mercy.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 34Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus explains why the law is called a ministry of death: it limited death's reign to transgressors, and Christ came to avenge Moses and the righteous when death broke that covenant.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 35Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus explains "the curse of the law" by the sabbath and the law's strict penalties, which Christ relieved by forgiveness, and "the power of sin" by the golden calf.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 44Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Diodorus writes to Archelaus that Manes is teaching that the law of Moses comes from the evil prince, and lists the contrasts Manes draws between the law and the Gospel.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 45Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Diodorus reports Manes's use of 2 Corinthians 3, Galatians, and Romans against the law, and asks Archelaus to answer.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 46Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus replies to Diodorus that the Old and New Testaments are one fabric, and that Moses was a tutor and foster-father who handed God's people over to Christ, as the parable of the rich man shows.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 47Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus answers Manes's contrasts: Jesus' teaching on retaliation advances from justice to goodness, the spoiling of Egypt was just wages, and Jesus too accepts gifts from the rich.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 49Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus explains the "ministry of death" and the veil of Moses: the lesser glory of Moses is not rejected, as a lamp is not despised at sunrise, and the veil lies over the hearts of those who read Moses without turning to Christ.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 52Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Using Archelaus's letter, Diodorus argues against Manes that two unbegotten principles would need two old or two new testaments, and that Jannes and Mambres, not Moses, resisted the truth.
Homilies 3.47Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter argues that Moses handed the Law down orally to seventy elders, and that it was written later by others, as the account of his death shows.
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 1.36Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter teaches that Moses allowed sacrifice to God only as a concession, leaving its abolition to the prophet like Moses.
Recognitions 1.37Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter teaches that the single place of sacrifice pointed forward to the Prophet who would reject both sacrifices and the temple, as its repeated destructions showed.
Recognitions 6.10Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · The baptized must show God's likeness by avoiding sin, and keep the purity rules of the law, beginning with abstaining from intercourse during menstruation.
Prophetic Extracts 1.9Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius argues that at the burning bush and at Sinai the Lord, the Word, spoke to Moses through an angel and angels, whereas he had appeared in person to the patriarchs.
Prophetic Extracts 2.5Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius reads the ninth psalm, with its title about the death of the son, as foretelling Christ's passion and resurrection and his appointment as lawgiver of the nations.
Divine Institutes 4.17.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · They accused him of breaking the law on sabbath, circumcision and pork.
Divine Institutes 4.17.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · He changed the law by God's will and as foretold.
Divine Institutes 4.17.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Micah foretold a new law from Zion.
Divine Institutes 4.17.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The old law came from Horeb; the Sibyl foretold its dissolution by the Son.
Divine Institutes 4.17.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The Son is the living law replacing the old.
Divine Institutes 4.17.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Joshua succeeding Moses figures the new law succeeding the old.
Divine Institutes 4.20.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The old covenant was imperfect; the new is complete.
Preparation for the Gospel 1.2.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The final Jewish objection: Christians break the law yet claim the rewards promised to those who keep it.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.6.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses gave the Jews their ritual law, but the earlier Hebrews lived a free piety according to nature.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.8.22Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Abraham was righteous before and apart from the law of Moses.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.8.39Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Mosaic law, suited to a weakened people, gave symbols and shadows rather than the naked truth.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.8.40Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Mosaic polity lasted until Christ, as the prophets foretold, giving way to the new covenant.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses joined teaching and practice, regulating even food, company, work, and rest.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Unchanging fidelity proves the law's excellence and divine origin.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.9.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The law fenced Israel off from other nations to keep it pure.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.9.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · All creatures are alike in nature, but each food law has a deep reason.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.9.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The food laws are not trivial but aim at justice and character.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.9.29Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The laws are signs of right reason, not arbitrary.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.9.35Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The food laws all point to justice.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.62.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The question the Demonstration will answer: why Gentiles use the Jewish Scriptures but not the law.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 38.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · True religion survived among the Hebrews, who received the law through Moses.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.2.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Since the law of Moses fitted only Jews living in Judea, another way was needed for all nations to share Abraham’s blessing.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.3.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The law required all males to appear three times a year at the place God would choose.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.3.25Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The law’s demands could not suit distant nations, especially since it curses all who fail to keep it.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.3.46Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Moses knew his law could not serve all nations and that another prophet was needed.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.4.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The old covenant was given to raise up Israelites who had fallen into Egyptian idolatry; the law is not for the righteous.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.4.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Isaiah calls the new covenant a law going out from Zion to all nations.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.5.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Unlike the old covenant, the new had to be livable by all nations everywhere.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The commandments the patriarchs kept differed from Moses’ law, which was not given to the fathers.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.31Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Meanwhile the law of Moses served as guardian and physician for Israel, giving a lower, imperfect way of life.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.36Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Since the fall of Jerusalem, Jews cannot perform the law’s sacrifices and rites.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.39Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · With Christ’s coming and the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, the Mosaic order ended and the new teaching replaced it.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.47Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Isaiah’s altar in Egypt contradicts Moses’ restriction to one place and points to a new man sent by God.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.48Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · A new altar implies a new priesthood and thus a change of law.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.72Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Moses accommodated hardness of heart; Christ restores the ancient piety.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.76Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ himself kept the law of Moses, so as not to seem hostile to it or give heretics a pretext.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.7.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ kept and fulfilled the Mosaic law before instituting the gospel law.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.7.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ gave a law fitted to all, since the Mosaic law was impossible for the nations.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.7.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Having fulfilled the law, Christ gave through his disciples precepts suited to all nations.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.2.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Moses foretells another prophet, since his own law served only Israel and God intended to provide for all nations.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.2.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · No later prophet was a lawgiver like Moses; all pointed back to him.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.2.26Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ intensifies each commandment of the law.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.10.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Since the angels could not help, the Word first sent faint rays of his light through Moses and the prophets and their laws.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.10.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Through Moses the Word forbade Israel to follow the practices of Egypt and Canaan.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.10.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The Mosaic law was an elementary introduction to piety, taught through symbols and bodily rites such as circumcision.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.16.54Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Paul and Hebrews call the Mosaic law a shadow of heavenly realities.
Demonstration of the Gospel 6.3.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The God who comes openly is the Word; his coming brings the calling of the nations and the end of Mosaic sacrifices.
Demonstration of the Gospel 6.3.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Since Christ, all nations are called and Jewish worship has ceased; the psalm may also refer to the second coming. The next heading introduces Psalm 84.
Demonstration of the Gospel 6.13.24Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Micah 6 questions the value of burnt offerings, pointing to the end of the old worship.
Demonstration of the Gospel, Book 8, preface 10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · God spoke to the few God-beloved among the Hebrews and gave them the introductory law of Moses.
Demonstration of the Gospel 8.2.29Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Unlike the Mosaic law, given to one nation for a time, the righteousness proclaimed by Christ is for all and everlasting.
Demonstration of the Gospel 10.4.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The first rod, Beauty, is Jerusalem, the Mosaic worship, and the old covenant.
On the Incarnation 12.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · God also sent the law and the prophets so that humans could learn of him from other humans.
On the Incarnation 12.5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The law and prophets, though sent to the Jews, were a school of divine knowledge for the whole world.
Letter 1.1Antony the Great · before 356 · Antony describes three ways by which souls come to God: by the law implanted at creation, as Abraham did, by the written law, and by afflictions that bring hard hearts to repentance.
Letter 4.1Antony the Great · before 356 · Antony's fourth letter recounts God's visits to his creatures through the natural law, Moses, the prophets, and John, and finally through the Son, whose coming is judgment to those who do not amend.
On the Witch of Endor 25Eustathius of Antioch · ca. 324–337 · Eustathius argues that the law would not command the stoning of mediums if they truly brought up souls and foretold the future, and that the Scriptures consistently condemn them, as in the accounts of Manasseh and Josiah and in Isaiah's rebuke of those who consult the dead.
Demonstration 2.2Aphrahat · 337-345 · Had love been kept, no law would have been needed; the righteous before Moses kept the law's righteousness without it.
Demonstration 2.3Aphrahat · 337-345 · The law was added because of transgression, as a tutor until the promised seed, Christ, came, 430 years after the promise to Abraham.
Demonstration 2.4Aphrahat · 337-345 · The 430 years of Exod 12:40 are counted from God's word to Abraham, whose faith already carried the coming servitude; the law could not annul the earlier promise.
Demonstration 2.5Aphrahat · 337-345 · The promise waited 1,794 years for Christ's coming, which ended the law's observances while fulfilling the law and the prophets.
Demonstration 2.6Aphrahat · 337-345 · The promised covenant, sealed by Christ's death, ended the sacrifices and observances of the law, which God had already rejected through the psalms and prophets.
Demonstration 2.7Aphrahat · 337-345 · Christ took up the whole law into the two commandments, so that not a letter of it is lost and love is its true keeping.
Demonstration 3.4Aphrahat · 337-345 · Jezebel's fast, proclaimed to murder Naboth under cover of the law, was impious; she and Ahab paid with their blood where Naboth's was shed.
Demonstration 11.11Aphrahat · 337-345 · God gave a succession of covenants; the new covenant replaces fleshly circumcision with circumcision of the heart in baptism, and Joshua's deeds prefigure those of Jesus.
Demonstration 13.2Aphrahat · 337-345 · The sabbath was given for rest, not for justification: beasts keep it too, yet they gain no righteousness and are not bound by the law's moral commands.
Demonstration 15.1Aphrahat · 337-345 · Food cannot defile, as Christ taught against the Pharisees: it passes through the body, while evil thoughts from the heart are what defile.
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 15.5Aphrahat · 337-345 · Samson ate honey from a lion's carcass and drank water from a donkey's jawbone, and ravens fed Elijah, all unclean by the law, without defilement.
Demonstration 15.6Aphrahat · 337-345 · God never needed sacrifices; he gave them, and the purity laws, as 'statutes that were not good' after the golden calf, to restrain Israel; the prophets show that he requires justice and mercy, and Christ has lifted that heavy yoke.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 2.20.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The law's provisions, including Moses' permission of divorce, were concessions to hardness of heart.
Oration I Against the Arians 59Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius explains that Hebrews calls the Son “better” because the grace and covenant brought by him differ in kind from the ministry of angels and the law, as he differs in nature from creatures.
Oration I Against the Arians 60Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius explains that Christ “became guarantor” of a better covenant as man, bearing the judgment in his body and freeing the flesh from sin.
Catechetical Lecture 17.29Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The Spirit freed the church from the law's ceremonial burdens through the apostolic decree of Acts 15, which the apostles ascribed to the Holy Spirit.
Commentary on Matthew 9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Matthew’s call and banquet, the question about fasting, the patches and wineskins, the ruler’s daughter and the woman with the flow of blood, the two blind men, and the mute demoniac are read as figures of grace to sinners, the law, and the nations.
Commentary on Matthew 11Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · John’s question from prison is for his disciples; Jesus praises John, rebukes the unbelieving generation, affirms that he is Wisdom by nature, reproaches the unrepentant cities, and reveals the Father in mutual knowledge, offering his easy yoke.
Commentary on Matthew 13Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Hilary expounds the parables of Matthew 13: Christ in the boat as the church, the mustard seed, the leaven in three measures (law, prophets, Gospels), the hidden treasure, the pearl, and the net.
Commentary on Matthew 14Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Hilary treats the scribe of the kingdom, Jesus rejected at Nazareth, John’s death as the law silenced by Israel’s pleasure and unbelief, the feeding of the five thousand as the law and prophets turned into gospel food, and the walking on the water as Christ’s return to the storm-tossed church, with Peter’s faith and fall.
Commentary on Matthew 17Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Hilary expounds the transfiguration (six days as six thousand years, Moses and Elijah as law and prophets), Elijah and John, the epileptic boy and the mustard-seed faith, the second passion prediction, and the temple tax as a figure of Stephen, the first martyr.
Commentary on Matthew 20Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Hilary expounds the disciples’ fear and the apostles’ thrones in the regeneration, the laborers in the vineyard (hours as covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and the incarnation), the request of the sons of Zebedee (with Moses and Elijah as the two witnesses), humility in leadership, and the two blind men of Jericho as the nations.
Commentary on Matthew 24Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Hilary expounds the woes against the scribes and Pharisees: obey the law they teach but not their deeds, the shut kingdom, the proselyte made a son of Gehenna, oaths by the temple, tithing herbs, the whitewashed tombs, the killing of the prophets, and the lament over Jerusalem, with Christ as a hen gathering her chicks.
On the Trinity 5.23Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The God who gave the Law through a Mediator at Sinai, whose voice Israel could not bear, is true God, as Moses' whole witness shows.
On the Trinity 11.28Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · "End" in Scripture means completion, not ceasing to exist: Christ is the end of the law as its fulfilment (Rom 10:4; Matt 5:17).
Letter 160Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil answers a letter circulating under Diodorus's name that allowed a man to marry his deceased wife's sister: church custom forbids it, Lev 18:18 does not permit it, and Lev 18:6 forbids it.
Moral Rules (Moralia) 42Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's forty-second rule, that the Lord came to fulfil the law and the prophets, with Rule 43 on how the gospel goes beyond the law, whose heading the scan lost.
Treatise on the Mysteries 1.8.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–366 · Israel sins if it does not share the law, a shadow of things to come, with the Gentiles.
Treatise on the Mysteries 1.8.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–366 · Like Cain, those under the law are guilty unless they share in the Gentiles' accepted offering.
Tractates on the Psalms 2.9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · After the diapsalma the apostles speak: they break the bonds of sin for the nations and throw off the yoke of the law from themselves.
Tractates on the Psalms 67.17Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Against those who say the gospel changed the law, Hilary answers that Christ the mediator gave the law through angels and now preaches the gospel.
Tractates on the Psalms 68.24Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Hilary distinguishes the book of the living, of those who kept the law, from the book of the righteous, of those justified by faith in Christ.
Tractates on the Psalms 68.26Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · In Christ, the end of the law, animal sacrifices give way to the sacrifice of praise, which pleases God more than a young calf.
Tractates on the Psalms 91.1Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The law’s observances, including the Sabbath, were shadows that profited by faith in Christ to come; Hilary will explain the meaning of the Sabbath.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.3.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalmist asks to see the spiritual realities behind the law's Sabbath, Passover, jubilee, and priesthood, which are prefigured in its bodily observances.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.5.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · What the psalmist wants to understand are the spiritual meanings of the creation week, the Sabbath, the feasts, the sabbatical and jubilee years, circumcision, Passover, and the promised land.
Tractates on the Psalms 119.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Christ, the eternal high priest, has entered the true holy of holies through his blood, and Isaiah's call to repentance and justice names the steps by which we ascend to him.
Tractates on the Psalms 131.24Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Hilary follows the Septuagint 'widow' (not 'catch'), praising widows' continence and, with Romans 7, reading the widow as the church freed from the law to be joined to Christ.
Three Letters to Sympronianus 3.20Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian answers the example of Achar by asking whether the Novatians would revive the whole Mosaic penal law, and cites Christ’s mercy to sinners and Paul’s teaching on bearing one another’s burdens.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 78Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Titus turns to the Manichaean treatment of the Law and the Gospels, which they cut and supplement; then, after a break in the text, he argues that no middle wall or void could separate the two principles.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 80Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The Manichees corrupt the Gospels worse than unbelievers who reject them; Christ cannot be known without the Law and the Prophets, as the parable of Lazarus and the Transfiguration show.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 81Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Christ came to fulfil the Law and cleansed his Father’s house; the Gospels begin from the Law and the Prophets, so the Manichees who reject the Law also reject the Gospel’s witness.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 82Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · John, Luke and Paul all link the Gospel to the Law and the Prophets: Christ is David’s heir, and the God who spoke in the prophets is the Father of the Son.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 83Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Titus contrasts the Valentinian, Marcionite and Manichaean rejections of the Law and argues that the just and the good are one, since the Son who judges justly is the image of the Father.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 84Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Christ calls the Father righteous; Valentinus, Marcion and Mani attack the Law in three ways, but a Law that foretold Christ must come from one who knew God’s counsel.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 86Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The Law foretold Christ’s enthronement, sonship and prophetic office; its commandments against immorality, idolatry and covetousness cannot come from an evil principle.
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. 88Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Paul calls the Law holy and spiritual; it opposes every one of the four kinds of vice, and where it is obeyed evil loses its power.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 89Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The Law and the Prophets remove every vice, folly, cowardice, licentiousness and injustice, and guard eyes, tongue and body against pleasure.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 91Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The Law checks love of glory as well as love of money and honours the upright; heretics hate it because it opposes their passions. Titus begins to show that it also teaches every virtue.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 92Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The Law teaches all four virtues: prudence from God, self-control in Joseph’s refusal of Potiphar’s wife, and courage in Judith’s venture.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 93Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Judith’s prudent courage and Abraham’s refusal of reward illustrate virtue in the Law; the Law, the Gospel and Paul agree on one God and on the Son begotten from the Father.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 94Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The Father’s voice at Christ’s baptism echoes Ps 2:7, and Paul everywhere interprets the Old Testament; the apostles join Law and Gospel, while the heretics, false apostles, try to divide them.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 95Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Law and Gospel agree on Father, Son and Holy Spirit; the Manichees call the Old Testament harsh, citing Elisha’s bears and Elijah’s fire.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 98Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · God spared Nineveh and even Ahab at the slightest repentance; the Law is a shadow and tutor leading to Christ. Titus turns to the Manichaean claim that the human body was made by the evil one.
Commentary on Ephesians 2.15Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Christ, the mediator, broke down the wall of fleshly desire between souls and God, made void the law’s observances understood in a fleshly way, and joined souls with the spiritual realm into one new, spiritual man.
Commentary on Galatians 0Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Victorinus states the purpose of Galatians: to call the Galatians back from adding Judaism, understood bodily, to faith in Christ, by first establishing Paul’s authority as an apostle taught by revelation.
Commentary on Galatians 1.3Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · The greeting already makes Paul’s point: grace and peace come from God through Christ, who gave himself to free us, so nothing need be added to him, neither the law’s works, nor sabbath, nor circumcision.
Commentary on Galatians 2.18Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Returning to the law’s works after faith in Christ rebuilds what was torn down and makes one a transgressor of Christ’s commandments.
Commentary on Galatians 2.19Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Paul died to the law through the law, either through Christ’s law to Moses’ law or, as Victorinus prefers to explain, through the law understood spiritually to the same law understood in a fleshly way, and so his old man is crucified with Christ.
Commentary on Galatians 3.3Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · The works of the law serve the flesh, so those who began in the Spirit through the gospel would be ending in the flesh by adding them.
Commentary on Galatians 3.10Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Those who rely on the works of the law, such as sacrifices, circumcision, and food rules, as distinct from the Christian works Paul commands, are under a curse; the commentary then breaks off and resumes on Christ as mediator.
Commentary on Galatians 3.20Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · The law, which only judges deeds, is not a mediator, whereas Christ, the promised seed, is the one mediator who joins what was separated and frees the church held by the world, so justification is through him and not through the law.
Commentary on Galatians 3.21Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · The law is not against the promises, for it was not given to give life but to show and warn against sin, shutting all under sin so that the promise might come by faith in Christ, which alone suffices for justification.
Commentary on Galatians 3.23Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Before faith came, the law kept people from sin like a guard and served as a pedagogue until Christ, preparing them to receive justification by faith in him.
Commentary on Galatians 3.25Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · With the coming of Christ, who is faith itself, believers no longer live under the law as pedagogue but by faith.
Commentary on Galatians 4.1Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Like an heir who is still a child and so no different from a slave, those under the law before Christ were kept in custody until the time came to receive the inheritance.
Commentary on Galatians 4.2Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · The law of Moses acted as guardian and steward over the heirs until the time set by the Father, when they could take up the inheritance in freedom.
Commentary on Galatians 4.3Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · By saying “under the elements of the world” instead of “under the law,” Paul shows that both Jews and Gentiles lived under worldly laws and the necessities of the stars, from which faith in Christ frees believers, so the Jewish law must all the more be left behind.
Commentary on Galatians 4.21Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Paul turns the law itself against the Judaizers, since rightly read it points to faith in Christ as the whole of salvation.
Oration 2.40Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The war of the passions and the sanctity required of priests under the old law show that no one should accept the priesthood before being purified himself.
Oration 45.13Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The whole law was a shadow of what was to come; God revealed himself on Sinai in measure to each, and gave the law as a gentle remedy, allowing sacrifices for a time to lead people gradually from idols to the Gospel.
Oration 45.14Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The sacrifices of the law pointed to Christ, the true victim for the whole world; each feature of the Passover lamb (innocent, perfect, male, a year old, without blemish) is read of him.
Oration 45.15Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory reads the Passover night, the flight from Egypt, the blood on the doorposts, the removal of leaven, the roasting and eating of the lamb, and the girded loins as figures of the Christian's deliverance from sin and the stricter demands of the Gospel.
Tractates 1.1.2Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno explains what the law is good for, warning and exposing sin, and how it differs from faith, which disputation cannot produce.
Tractates 1.2.5Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno shows love at work among animals and the elements, and from the great commandment argues that the law hangs on love yet is to be revered.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 9:21Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul met the Samaritans, who keep only the Pentateuch, on the ground of the law, and the gentiles on the ground of natural reason and their own poets, to lead both to Christ.
Commentary on 1 Timothy 1:8–11Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The law is good when used rightly: its temporary works ceased with Christ, the justified live by the law of nature, and the written law was given because that natural law had been despised.
Commentary on 2 Corinthians 3:3Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christians are a letter of Christ written by the Spirit on hearts, unlike the old law written on stone tablets that Moses broke.
Commentary on 2 Corinthians 3:5–6Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The apostles' sufficiency is God's gift; the letter of the Law kills transgressors, but the spirit, the law of faith, gives life through forgiveness.
Commentary on 2 Corinthians 3:7–8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The law of faith surpasses the law of Moses: the forgiven may now behold God's glory, as the apostles saw Christ's on the mountain.
Commentary on 2 Corinthians 3:10Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The glory of Moses' face bore no fruit for sinners, whereas the glory of grace lets the purified see Christ's glory.
Commentary on 2 Corinthians 3:11Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Moses' glory was a passing figure; Christ's is the abiding reality, as the sun eclipses the stars.
Commentary on 2 Corinthians 3:15Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · When Moses is read, the sentence on those under the Law is recited and the veil remains on their hearts.
Commentary on Colossians 2:16–17Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Food laws, feasts, new moons, and the sabbath were shadows whose authority ceased with Christ, as an emperor's image loses authority when he is present.
Commentary on Ephesians 2:14Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christ's passion removed the enmity between Jew and gentile; the ceremonial law, given for a time, ceased with Christ.
Commentary on Ephesians 2:15Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christ abolished the ceremonial law, a burden, to make Jew and gentile one new man.
Commentary on Ephesians 3:5–6Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The newly revealed mystery is that gentiles share the promise in Christ without circumcision or the Law's observances.
Commentary on Ephesians 3:7Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul's ministry made known God's decree to save the gentiles without the works of the Law.
Prologue to the Commentary on GalatiansAmbrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster's prologue: Christians who keep the works of the law, like the Symmachians, deny Christ's divinity; the law ceased with John, faith alone saves, and circumcision gave way to the circumcision of the heart.
Commentary on Galatians 1:3Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Father and Son are equally Lord and God; to serve the law alongside Christ insults him, who gave himself to free us from the devil, the law's condemnation and the present age.
Commentary on Galatians 1:6Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul marvels that the Galatians so quickly left grace for the slavery of the law, misled by false apostles who claimed his gospel differed from the other apostles'.
Commentary on Galatians 1:10Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul pleases God, not men, unlike the Judaizers who sought Jewish approval; the law was God's will until Christ came, but keeping it now opposes him.
Commentary on Galatians 1:13Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul, once a zealous persecutor trained by Gamaliel, left the law for grace; gentiles have even less reason to take it up.
Commentary on Galatians 2:4–5Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster reads Paul as yielding 'for an hour' by circumcising Timothy to avert Jewish sedition, and argues at length against the Greek reading 'we did not yield even for an hour'.
Commentary on Galatians 2:15–16Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Even born Jews seek justification by faith in Christ, not by works of the law; the patriarchs too were justified by faith.
Commentary on Galatians 2:17Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · To return to the law after seeking justification in Christ is to declare oneself under sin and the law's curse, not to make Christ a servant of sin.
Commentary on Galatians 2:18Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Returning to the law condemns oneself; through the law of faith Paul died to Moses' law to live to God, crucified with Christ to the world.
Commentary on Galatians 2:21Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · If the law could justify, Christ's death would be pointless; he died to give the forgiveness the law could not.
Commentary on Galatians 3:9–10Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers share Abraham's blessing, while those under the law are cursed because no one can keep all its commands.
Commentary on Galatians 3:12Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The law justifies only before the world for this life; justification before God comes by faith; the law on the tablets is useful, the rest a burden.
Commentary on Galatians 3:17Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The law, given 430 years later, cannot void God's promise to Abraham; justification by the law would cancel both promise and faith, which even Jews would not admit.
Commentary on Galatians 3:19Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The law of deeds stood between the promise and Christ to train Israel; the 'angels' are God's messengers from Moses to John, and the mediator is Christ.
Commentary on Galatians 3:20Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christ is the arbiter who made peace between Jews and gentiles by removing what divided them; as God he is one with the Father; the law, unable to give life, shut all under sin so that faith might receive the promise.
Commentary on Galatians 3:23Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The law guarded the Jews until faith came, to present them to Christ.
Commentary on Galatians 3:24Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The law was a tutor until Christ came to justify believers.
Commentary on Galatians 3:25–26Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · With faith in Christ, believers are freed from the law as tutor and made sons of God through cleansing from sin.
Commentary on Galatians 4:1–2Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Like a minor heir under guardians, those under the law lacked freedom.
Commentary on Galatians 4:3Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The 'elements' are new moons and sabbaths; Christ, born under the law and circumcised as Abraham's promised son, ended the need for circumcision and made believers adopted sons.
Commentary on Galatians 5:3Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Gentiles could keep parts of the law uncircumcised, but circumcision binds one to the whole law; those who seek justification by it after faith have fallen from grace.
Commentary on Galatians 5:18Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Those led by the Spirit do not err and so are not under the law.
Commentary on Philippians 3:8–11Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · All is loss compared to knowing Christ; righteousness from faith, not from the Law, suffices for salvation, and knowing Christ's incarnation, passion, and resurrection is the treasure of wisdom.
Prologue to the Commentary on RomansAmbrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster’s prologue explains that the Roman Christians had received Christ from Jewish believers who kept the law, and outlines the four ways in which Paul argues that salvation comes through faith in Christ, not the law.
Commentary on Romans 1:1Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster explains Paul’s name, his title “servant of Christ Jesus” as a sign of both natures, and his being set apart from Judaism for the gospel, which surpasses the law as better surpasses good.
Commentary on Romans 1:9Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster explains that Paul serves God in spirit through the gospel rather than through the ceremonies of the law, and that his prayers for the Romans are meant to awaken their love.
Commentary on Romans 1:11Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster says Paul wished to come in person to give the Romans spiritual understanding in place of the law-keeping they had received, since God decreed to save the human race by faith alone added to the natural law.
Commentary on Romans 2:12Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Gentiles who refuse both Moses and Christ will perish; a gentile who keeps the natural law still needs faith to be perfect; Jews who reject what their law promised will be judged by it.
Commentary on Romans 2:25Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster takes “circumcision” for descent from Abraham, which profits only if one keeps the law by believing in the Christ it promised.
Commentary on Romans 3:17Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster explains the lack of the fear of God and argues that Paul’s “all” means the wicked part of the people, since there are always two peoples in one nation.
Commentary on Romans 3:19Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster says that all, Jews and gentiles, are guilty and need God’s mercy; no one is justified before God by the law, which gives a temporal righteousness, but by faith; and he distinguishes three parts of the law.
Commentary on Romans 3:21Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · God’s righteousness, which forgives those the law condemned, came without the ceremonial law but was foretold by it; it is called righteousness because God keeps his promise.
Commentary on Romans 3:31Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Faith establishes the law by showing that what it foretold has come; the law itself foretold its own end, as Daniel, Jeremiah and the Lord show.
Commentary on Romans 4:14Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · If the inheritance came by the law the promise would be void; the law brings wrath on sinners, but faith brings pardon, so that the promise is sure for all, Jews and gentiles who share Abraham’s faith.
Commentary on Romans 5:13Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Before Moses sin was known by natural law but not reckoned as liable to God’s judgment, until the law showed that God judges; Ambrosiaster sets out three parts of the natural law.
Commentary on Romans 5:20Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The law, given to help nature’s seeds of righteousness, in fact exposed and multiplied sin through human habit and the devil’s work; God answered with the superabundant grace of forgiveness through his Son.
Commentary on Romans 7:2Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster says that the law binding a wife to her living husband comes from the Gospel, not from Moses, and applies Paul's example to believers, who are not adulterers when joined to Christ once the law is dead to them.
Commentary on Romans 7:5Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster lists ways of being “in the flesh”, explains that the law reveals rather than causes sin, and contrasts the old law, just but unable to forgive, with the law of faith and of the spirit written on the heart.
Commentary on Romans 7:7Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The law is not sin but reveals it; through the command “You shall not covet” people learned that desire, thought harmless, is sin.
Commentary on Romans 7:8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster takes “sin” here as the devil, who, seeing the law given to help man, used it to provoke every desire; before the law sin seemed dead because people thought God would not judge it.
Commentary on Romans 7:13Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The good law did not cause death; the devil used it to provoke sin, so that sin under the law grew beyond its former measure, and God answered by sending Christ.
Commentary on Romans 8:1–2Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · There is no condemnation for those in Christ; the law of faith frees from sin and death, which the law of Moses, though spiritual, could not do; Christ, born of a virgin in sinless flesh like ours, condemned sin (the devil) by the devil’s own sin in crucifying him.
Commentary on Romans 8:4Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The law’s justification is fulfilled in the forgiven who live by the spirit; Christ condemned sin in three ways: by not sinning, on the cross, and by forgiving sins.
Commentary on Romans 9:29–30Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The “seed” left by God is Christ, without whom Israel would have perished like Sodom; the gentiles, who did not seek the law’s righteousness, attained the greater righteousness of faith in Christ.
Commentary on Romans 9:32Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Israel failed by seeking justification through ceremonial works given for their hardness of heart; the new covenant of forgiveness through Christ replaces that burden.
Commentary on Romans 10:1–2Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul shows his love for the Jews and their zeal, while teaching that the time for keeping the law has passed.
Commentary on Titus 1:14Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The judaizers’ ritual rules, including those on foods and marriage, were not good commands but a yoke given as punishment for Israel’s stubbornness, now relaxed by God’s mercy in Christ.
On the Destruction of Jerusalem 4.5Anonymous · ca. 370 · The author turns to events at Jerusalem, explaining that the old law and worship were a shadow of the truth that God replaced with the new.
Question 3, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The line from Seth to Abraham, David, and Christ shows that all who believed in the one God were Christians from the beginning; Christ’s coming revealed the persons within the one God and completed the law.
Question 4, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The written law was not needed at first, since the natural law was known; it was given through Moses when habitual sin had obscured that law, to restore its authority.
Question 7, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The “ten words” are ten commands; the first tablet holds the four that concern God: no other gods, no images, not taking his name in vain, and keeping the sabbath.
Question 44, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · God promised a new covenant removing the heavy and figurative precepts, such as sabbath and circumcision; the nations and the faithful remnant receive it, while the faithless Jews forfeit both covenants.
Question 44, section 5Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Under the new covenant, sealed by blood like the old but with few precepts, believers keep no sabbath, new moons, circumcision, or food laws, being justified by faith like Abraham.
Question 44, section 9Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Israel’s ceremonial precepts were “not good” commands imposed as punishment for rebellion (Ezek 20); the new covenant abolishes them, though not the natural law, and justifies by faith as in Abraham’s time.
Question 60, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Jesus sent the healed leper to offer the Mosaic sacrifice, though that time was past, as a testimony against those who called him an enemy of the law; Paul circumcised Timothy for the same reason.
Question 61, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Ritual laws such as the sabbath and fasts yield to necessity, while what is criminal is never lawful; Jesus refuted his accusers from the law’s own past rather than from its fulfillment.
Question 69, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The law’s ritual burdens ended for ever, while its condemning sentence ends only for those who keep the forgiveness received in baptism; those who relapse fall under it again.
Question 69, section 3Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Circumcision and sabbath were temporary, ceasing with the law of faith as Daniel foretold; God, who is spirit, is now served in spirit, and the law is not abolished but succeeded.
Question 69, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The moral commandments remain, while ritual laws have ceased; Christ fulfilled the law by adding a higher righteousness, such as turning the other cheek instead of just retaliation.
Question 70, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The “adversary” with whom one must agree on the way is the law, hostile to sinners; one must be reconciled to it by good conduct before it accuses one at the judgment.
Question 95, section 5Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · A short version of the calculation: fifty days separate the Passover from the giving of the law, both on the fourth day of the week, so Pentecost is the feast of the law’s dedication.
Question 127, section 13Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Moses’ miracles, Paul’s typology, and Christ’s own words show that the law of Moses comes from the same God as the gospel, so it cannot be dismissed as error.
Letter 21.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome explains that the parable answers the Pharisees' complaint that Jesus ate with sinners, and sets it against the severity of the law and the mercy of the gospel.
Letter 64.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Beginning his treatise on the priestly law for Fabiola, Jerome interprets spiritually the portions of the sacrifices given to the priests.
Letter 67.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine explains that Paul kept Jewish rites out of compassion and as a born Jew, not as a pretence, while refusing to impose them on Gentiles.
Letter 67.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine argues that Paul rejected only the Jews' errors, not the rites themselves, and became 'all things to all' by compassion, not pretence.
Letter 73.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome summarizes Hebrews 7: Melchizedek's being 'without genealogy' means his origins are not recorded, and he prefigures Christ's eternal priesthood.
Letter 74.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome continues the allegory: Solomon as Christ tests the two women with the sword, and the true mother, the church, will not see her child divided between law and grace.
Letter 78.14Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome interprets the twelfth station, Sinai, where the law was given on the fiftieth day, as a type of Pentecost and the gift of the Spirit.
Letter 79.11Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome compares the concession of second marriage to the 'statutes that were not good' given to rebellious Israel and holds up Judith and Anna as models for Salvina's widowhood.
Letter 112.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome mocks Augustine's view that Jewish believers remained bound to the law and says that as a monk he merely reports his predecessors' interpretations.
Letter 112.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome argues from Galatians that Peter had first taught freedom from the law and at Antioch withdrew from the Gentiles only out of fear of losing the Jewish believers.
Letter 112.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome points out that Paul himself circumcised Timothy and took a Nazirite vow at Cenchreae out of regard for the Jews.
Letter 112.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome cites Paul's purification in the temple at James's request (Acts 21) as a further case in which Paul observed the law to avoid offending Jewish believers.
Letter 112.12Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome quotes Augustine's explanation that Paul kept Jewish rites out of compassion, not pretense, and summarizes Augustine's view of the dispute at Antioch.
Letter 112.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome objects that Augustine's view would revive the heresy of Cerinthus, Ebion, and the Nazarenes, who mixed the law's ceremonies with the gospel.
Letter 112.14Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome insists that Jewish ceremonies are deadly to Christians of any origin, citing Scripture that Christ is the end of the law and that the new covenant replaces the old.
Letter 112.15Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome challenges Augustine as a bishop to accept a Jewish Christian who keeps circumcision, sabbath, and Passover, and quotes Augustine's account of what Paul had given up.
Letter 112.16Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome argues that the law's ceremonies cannot be morally indifferent, as Augustine's view implies, and that Augustine escapes Porphyry only to fall into the error of Ebion.
Letter 112.17Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome answers Augustine's argument from 1 Cor 9 that Paul acted from compassion, holding that Paul's conduct among Jews and Gentiles alike was a pretense for their sake.
Letter 116.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine holds that Peter really erred at Antioch, while Paul kept certain Jewish rites not as necessary for salvation but to show that what God had commanded through Moses was not idolatry.
Letter 116.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine interprets James's advice in Acts 21 as meant to show that Paul did not condemn the law as sacrilegious, while he taught that salvation comes by grace, not by the law's rites.
Letter 116.11Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine holds that Peter already shared Paul's view and was rebuked only for a pretense that lent support to those who made the law necessary for salvation.
Letter 116.14Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine argues that the old rites were neither good nor evil, citing Ezek 20:25 and the varied custom of fasting on Saturday as an example of an observance that is neither commanded nor sinful.
Letter 116.15Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine explains that the old rites, given to foreshadow Christ, were to be laid aside gradually and honorably, so that Paul could observe them sincerely then, though no Christian may observe them now.
Letter 116.16Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine turns Jerome's charge back on him, and argues that the Jewish rites, now dead, had to be escorted with reverence to their burial, so that to revive them now would be to violate the grave.
Letter 116.17Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine concedes that he should have said the old rites were harmless only when grace was first revealed, and assures Jerome that he has never held that Jewish Christians may keep them now.
Letter 116.18Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine agrees that Jewish ceremonies are now deadly for Christians, whether kept truly or in pretense, but argues from Christ's own circumcision, his command to the leper, and his going up to the feast that such observance was once sincere.
Letter 116.19Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine answers Jerome's use of Gal 5:2 and 5:4 by arguing that Paul condemned circumcision only when sought as necessary for salvation.
Letter 116.20Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine explains that to be 'under the law' in Paul's blameworthy sense is to try to keep God's commands by one's own strength without grace; the old rites could justify no one but were to be laid aside with honor.
Letter 121.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome expounds Rom 7:7-25: the law reveals sin, several kinds of 'law' appear in Scripture including the natural law, and Paul speaks in the person of the repentant sinner.
Letter 149.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer, asked to explain the Jewish feasts spiritually, first addresses those who insist on keeping them according to the letter.
Letter 149.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer argues from the prophets, Paul and the Gospels that the Jewish feasts and sacrifices are not to be kept according to the letter.
Book of Rules 3Tyconius · ca. 380 · Tyconius’s third rule: the promise (given by faith) and the law (given to multiply sin and drive men to grace) never contradict each other; the righteous of old were justified by faith through the Spirit, and the promises to Abraham’s seed are firm because God foreknew those who would believe, while the church contains both sons of promise and sons of the slave woman.
On the Holy Spirit 14.33Basil of Caesarea · ca. 374–375 · Moses was a type of Christ, not of the Spirit; God trained his people through shadows and types before showing them the full light.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 8.5.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Dietary and other laws had not yet been given.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 8.5.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The law was given through Moses after the exodus.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 8.5.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The law, a tutor, taught circumcision, sabbath, tithes, and worship of one God.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 8.6.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Had the Jews received Christ, they would have seen the law fulfilled, not abolished.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 8.7.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Keeping the law without Christ cannot save.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 8.8.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The elders explain that the land requires keeping the law of Moses.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 8.8.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Ezra is sent with the law to teach the settlers of Samaria.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 9.4.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The law's rule about corpses was a figure, not a literal abhorrence.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 28.2.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Cerinthus calls the lawgiver not good yet keeps his law.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 29.7.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They differ from Jews by faith in Christ and from Christians by keeping the law.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 29.8.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Keeping the law is now impossible, so its observers are under a curse.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 29.8.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Christ came to fulfil the law and remove its curse.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 29.8.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Moses closed the law with a curse.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 29.8.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Christ replaced the unfulfillable law with greater gifts.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 29.8.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul warns that law-keepers fall from grace.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.2.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Ebion held that Christ was Joseph's son and kept the Jewish law.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.22.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Peter meant only what the law called unclean.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.22.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God declared all foods clean to the church.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.3.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Ptolemy writes to Flora about how the Mosaic Law is misunderstood.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.3.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Some ascribe the Law to God the Father, others to the devil.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.3.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Law cannot be from the perfect God, being imperfect.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.3.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Nor can the Law be from the devil, since it forbids injustice.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.3.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Ptolemy will explain the Law and its giver from the Saviour's words.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.4.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Pentateuch's law has three sources, as the Saviour shows.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.4.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The three parts are from God, from Moses, and from the elders.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.4.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Jesus said Moses permitted divorce because of hardness of heart, but God joined marriage.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.4.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God's law forbids divorce; Moses' law allows it.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.4.14Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Law is thus shown to have three parts.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.5.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God's part of the Law is itself threefold: pure law, law mixed with injustice, and symbolic law.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.5.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The pure law is the Ten Commandments, which the Saviour fulfilled.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.5.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The symbolic law covers offerings, circumcision, sabbath, fasting and Passover.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.6.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul confirms each of the three parts.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.9.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Moses' laws were given by God through Moses, as Christ's words show.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.9.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Moses' divorce law was given by the Holy Spirit, not against God's will.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.9.13Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God's laws served for their time, as types, or as revelations fulfilled in Christ.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.10.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Ptolemy slanders the law of retaliation.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.10.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The law of retaliation aims at the same end as Christ's command.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.10.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Retaliation deterred violence, as turning the cheek does.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.11.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · So God gave each generation laws suited to it.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 41.3.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Cerdo assigns the law and prophets to the evil god.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 42.11.17Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Epiphanius repeats each of his 78 excerpts from Marcion's gospel and refutes Marcion from it, chiefly on Christ's real flesh, the unity of God, and the Old Testament.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 42.12.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Epiphanius repeats each of his 40 excerpts from Marcion's Pauline letters and refutes Marcion from them, arguing that Paul upholds the Law, the prophets, the one Creator and the resurrection of the body.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 50.2.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Deuteronomy's curses cover many commands, not only the Passover.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 50.2.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · By keeping one law they incur the curses of all the others.
Apostolic Constitutions 1.1.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christ’s word on looking with desire shows that he confirms and fulfils the Decalogue, which he himself spoke through Moses.
Apostolic Constitutions 1.6.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · In reading the Law one should set aside the added ‘second legislation’, reading it only as history.
Apostolic Constitutions 1.6.8Anonymous · ca. 380 · One must distinguish the natural law from the additions given after the golden calf.
Apostolic Constitutions 1.6.9Anonymous · ca. 380 · The Decalogue is the true law, the later bonds having been ended or changed by Christ; Kings should be read for examples, and men must use men’s baths.
Apostolic Constitutions 2.5.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · A bishop must distinguish the law from the ‘second legislation’.
Apostolic Constitutions 6.12.9Anonymous · ca. 380 · Peter and James spoke at the Jerusalem council, which freed Gentile believers from circumcision and sent its decree.
Apostolic Constitutions 6.19.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · God gave a simple law, the Ten Commandments, to help the natural law.
Apostolic Constitutions 6.20.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · When Israel forgot its Deliverer and made the golden calf, God bound it with the burden of the ritual law.
Apostolic Constitutions 6.20.9Anonymous · ca. 380 · The ritual laws and their penalties were meant to bring Israel back from polytheism to the one God of the natural law.
Apostolic Constitutions 6.21.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Believers, who obey freely, are released from the bonds of the ritual law.
Apostolic Constitutions 6.22.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christ confirmed the law, removed the heavier added ordinances, and set free the will.
On Noah 45Ambrose · ca. 378-384 · God blots out the flesh like letters erased from a tablet, so that better may be written; Ambrose contrasts the broken tablets of the law with the Spirit's writing in the church.
Psalm 118Apollinaris of Laodicea · uncertain (fourth to sixth century) · A paraphrase of Psalm 118 of the Septuagint (Psalm 119), the great psalm of the law: blessed are those who walk in God’s ordinances, which are a lamp to the feet and sweeter than gold.
Theological Oration 5 (Or. 31), On the Holy Spirit 25Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · God led humanity gradually, from idols to the Law and from the Law to the gospel, persuading rather than forcing.
Book of Heresies 156.7Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The law stands between commandment and grace; the ancients knew the Trinity.
Book of Heresies 156.9Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Christ gave his friends a commandment as Adam had one before sin.
Canons on the Letters of Paul 65Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · Paul speaks of two laws, Moses' which does not justify and Christ's which saves.
Against Helvidius 12Jerome · ca. 383 · From the law of the firstborn Jerome shows that "firstborn" means the first to open the womb, whether or not brothers follow.
Second Apology of David 48Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · Uriah’s death figures the end of the law, freeing human nature, as a widow is free to remarry, to be joined to Christ without adultery.
Second Apology of David 49Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · Uriah (“my light”) is the law, Christ’s light; it was diminished not by Christ but by enemies, until the fullness of the Gentiles and Israel’s salvation.
Second Apology of David 52Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · The flesh died in Christ to be freed from the law, so that we might belong to the risen Christ in newness of the Spirit.
On the Life of Moses 315Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Gregory narrates the purifications before Sinai and the terrifying theophany of darkness, fire, and trumpet-voice, which leads the people to ask that Moses mediate the law.
On the Life of Moses 317Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Left alone, Moses enters the darkness where God is, receives the teaching about God’s incomprehensibility and the moral law, and is shown the pattern of the tabernacle with its gold, silver, and bronze.
On the Life of Moses 371Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · The victory over Amalek is won by God himself through Joshua, a type of Jesus, the true successor of Moses; Moses’ raised hands are the spiritual understanding of the law, held up by the priesthood, and form the sign of the cross; so strengthened, the soul is led to the mountain of the knowledge of God.
On Jacob and the Happy Life 1.13Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The law made sin known and so increased guilt, raising the question how a good commandment can bring death.
On Jacob and the Happy Life 1.14Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Like the knowledge of poisons or an antidote, the commandment is good in itself though it brings death to those who misuse it.
On Jacob and the Happy Life 1.15Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Following Paul in Romans 7, Ambrose shows that the law and the mind are good, but the flesh drags the mind into sin against its will.
On Jacob and the Happy Life 1.16Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · God's grace in Christ frees the one whom the law could not, so the law's commandment, though it works death, is not death to the believer.
On Jacob and the Happy Life 1.17Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The mind, though good, cannot master the flesh by the law alone; it needs Christ, who nailed our passions to the cross and justified us by his death.
On Jacob and the Happy Life 1.19Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · What the law could not do is achieved by walking in the Spirit and not returning to the old life; the law, a passing shadow, could not put the flesh to death.
On Jacob and the Happy Life 1.20Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The written law, added to the law of nature, brought recognition of sin rather than release, so that no one can plead ignorance.
Exposition of Psalm 118 3.26.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Only one whose eyes are opened can see in the law’s offerings the true forgiveness given in the gospel.
Exposition of Psalm 118 5.10.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The law with its festivals, new moons, and sabbaths is the shadow of Christ in which the church rested.
Exposition of Psalm 118 5.10.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The sabbatical year and its releases also belong to the law’s shadow.
Exposition of Psalm 118 5.11.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The jubilee, the Passover feasts, Pentecost, and the sabbath are all shadows.
Exposition of Psalm 118 5.11.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The feasts of the seventh month, trumpets, atonement, and booths, are shadows too.
Exposition of Psalm 118 5.23.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Scripture speaks of the ways of the law, of righteous ordinances, of testimonies, and of commandments.
Exposition of Psalm 118 12.34.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The law is a tutor giving life to those who keep it until faith matures.
Exposition of Psalm 118 12.34.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The law justifies only in appearance, yet the prophet keeps gratitude to it as to a useful tutor.
Exposition of Psalm 118 13.4.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Neither the Marcionite nor the Jew can truly love the law; only the Christian, who reads it spiritually, can.
Exposition of Psalm 118 16.18.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The “precepts not good” were imperfect precepts suited to the weak; the perfect ones came in the Gospel.
Exposition of Psalm 118 18.37.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The Mosaic law is a copy; the true law and its fulfillment are in Christ, the true sacrifice.
Exposition of Psalm 118 18.37.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ entered heaven itself and gave a new law written on hearts, with full forgiveness.
Exposition of Psalm 118 18.38.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The law’s sacrifices could not remove sin; grace and truth came through Christ.
Exposition of Psalm 118 21.12.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The law is spiritual; without Christ the books lack their sense.
Exposition of Psalm 118 21.13.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The law calls the dead unclean, but in truth only the unjust are dead.
Exposition of Psalm 118 21.20.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The law could not give peace; Joshua, figure of Jesus, brought it, as Christ gives his peace.
Letter 36.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that the Sabbath signified rest and joy, that the law said nothing about eating or fasting on it, and that Christ's words on fasting do not concern the Sabbath.
Letter 40.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that Paul's becoming 'as a Jew' was an act of compassion, not pretence, and that he kept the Jewish rites without hope of salvation in them.
Letter 40.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that what Paul counted as loss was Jewish error, not the law's rites, and that his becoming all things to all was compassion, not pretence.
Letter 75.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Jerome mocks Augustine’s view that Jewish Christians remained bound to the law and says he himself merely reports the various interpretations of earlier writers.
Letter 75.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Jerome argues that Peter had been the first to teach that the law need not be kept, and withdrew from the Gentiles at Antioch only out of fear of losing the Jewish believers.
Letter 75.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Jerome points out that Paul himself circumcised Timothy and shaved his head under a vow, and so should pardon Peter.
Letter 75.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Jerome cites Paul’s purification and offering in the temple at James’s advice as a further pretence for the sake of the Jewish believers.
Letter 75.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Jerome quotes Augustine’s view that Paul kept the Jewish rites as harmless for Jewish believers and summarizes his argument about Peter’s fault.
Letter 75.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Jerome argues that Augustine’s view revives the heresy of the Ebionites and Nazarenes, who mixed the law with the gospel.
Letter 75.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Jerome insists that the Jewish ceremonies are deadly to all Christians, Jewish or Gentile, citing the Gospels, Jeremiah, Paul, and Ezekiel.
Letter 75.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Jerome challenges Augustine to let a converted Jew keep circumcision, sabbath, food laws, and Passover, and quotes Augustine’s account of the Jews’ ‘evil’ that Paul abandoned.
Letter 75.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Jerome denies that the law’s ceremonies can be kept ‘without necessity for salvation’, since they are either good or evil, and accuses Augustine of falling into the Ebionite error.
Letter 75.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Jerome mocks Augustine’s claim that Paul kept the law out of compassion rather than pretence, arguing that both views amount to Paul pretending to be what he was not.
Letter 82.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues from James’s advice in Acts 21 that Paul kept the rites to refute the slander that he condemned the law as sacrilegious, not to teach that they were needed for salvation.
Letter 82.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that the old rites were neither good (since they do not justify) nor evil (since God commanded them), comparing the varying custom of fasting on Saturday.
Letter 82.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that the old rites were to be read, not practised, by Christians, but were allowed to fade out honourably among Jewish believers; Peter erred by pretence, while Paul acted truthfully.
Letter 82.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine turns Jerome’s charge back on him and compares the old rites to a dead body that the apostles honourably escorted to burial but that no Christian may now disturb.
Letter 82.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine admits he should have added that the old rites were harmless only at the beginning, refers Jerome to his work against Faustus, and affirms that Jewish Christians may not now keep them.
Letter 82.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine agrees with Jerome that the Jewish rites are now deadly, adding that pretended observance is equally so, and points out that Christ himself truly kept the law.
Letter 82.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that to be ‘under the law’ in Paul’s sense is to try to keep God’s commandments by one’s own strength without grace, and that the old rites could justify no one but were to be honourably laid aside.
Letter 138.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The change from Old to New Testament sacraments shows no change in God; it was foretold by the Psalms and by Jeremiah's promise of a new covenant.
Letter 145.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The law reveals human weakness and drives us to grace; the Spirit pours love into our hearts, and love fulfills the law, whereas those who trust their own strength find the law a chain.
Letter 149.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains Colossians 2:16–18: no one should judge Christians over food or festivals, mere shadows, nor impose a false humility and worship of angels; 'wishing in humility' means affecting humility.
Letter 157.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · God both commands and gives continence, as the Book of Wisdom says; the law commands so that we may seek grace.
Letter 157.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The law, whether natural, given in paradise, or Mosaic, could not give life but increased transgression; Christ's grace saves infants and adults alike, even the gravely fallen.
Letter 177.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The law was given to reveal and increase sin so that people would seek the grace of God's promises.
Letter 177.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Grace was hidden under the law like the dew in Gideon's fleece and is now manifest; those who rely on their own righteousness repeat Israel's error.
Letter 186.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The righteousness of the law is called a man's own because the law commands without helping, while the righteousness of God is given through faith in Christ.
Letter 190.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The law was given not to justify but to convict proud humanity of sin, so that it might seek the medicine of grace.
Letter 196.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Not only the ceremonial works of the law but even its moral command 'You shall not covet' does not justify without faith in Christ, as Rom 7 shows.
Letter 196.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The law is holy, but sin uses it to make those who rely on their own powers transgressors, so that grace may superabound.
Letter 196.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Those who glory in the law without grace, whether Jews or Pelagians, refuse God's righteousness; the Pelagians thus Judaize in error, and their leaders have been excommunicated.
Letter 196.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · To avoid Judaizing one must drop the ceremonial observances, which were shadows, and keep the moral law of love, attributing all progress in it to grace.
Letter 196.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Aptus, who calls himself a Jew and urges Christians to keep the food laws, does so carnally; Christians keep the moral law by grace and hold the names Jew and Israel only in the spiritual sense.
Homilies on Matthew 1.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom opens his series: the Scriptures are a second-best remedy for hearts no longer written on by the Spirit; he contrasts Sinai with Pentecost, explains why Matthew's book is called a gospel, why there are four evangelists, and why their minor differences confirm their truth.
Homilies on Matthew 12.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Homily 12 opens with Matt 3:13–16: the Master comes to be baptized by the servant; John, who called him the sinless Lamb, protests; Christ's 'it is fitting now to fulfill all righteousness' means completing the whole law so as to lift its curse.
Homilies on Matthew 16.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ declares that he has not come to destroy the law or the prophets in order to forestall the suspicion that his higher commands abolished the old law, just as he mixed humble words and prayers with acts of authority.
Homilies on Matthew 16.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ left the boldest statements about his divinity and creative work to his disciples out of condescension to his hearers, and he fulfilled the prophets by his deeds and the law by keeping it and by enabling believers to fulfil it through faith.
Homilies on Matthew 16.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The new commandments intensify and fulfil the old law rather than abolish it; the Old Testament is good and akin to the New, though less perfect, and Christ, legislating with his own authority, begins with anger as the root of murder.
Homilies on Matthew 17.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ forbids oaths by heaven, earth, Jerusalem, or one’s head because all belong to God, rejects excuses of compulsion, and teaches that the oath was a concession to past weakness, as weaning shows that the breast, once good, is outgrown.
Homilies on Matthew 17.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The concessions of the old law were not from the devil but a form of nurture now outgrown, as the same act can be good or bad according to time and purpose; Christians must exceed the old righteousness, though many fall short of it.
Homilies on Matthew 18.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The law of retaliation was a wise concession that restrained violence, but Christ, transferring blame to the evil one, teaches us to overcome evil by suffering it and to offer the other cheek.
Homilies on Matthew 25.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The crowds marvel at Christ’s authority, which he confirms by cleansing the leper with “I will” and a touch; sending him to the priest honors the law, and the homily closes on thanksgiving, the Eucharist, and humility.
Homilies on Matthew 39.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ’s second answer, that the priests in the temple profane the sabbath and are guiltless, shows that the law itself sets the sabbath aside, so that what the disciples did is no sin at all.
Homilies on Matthew 39.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The priests are guiltless by law, and Christ, Lord of the temple and of the sabbath, is greater; the sabbath trained Israel for a time, but Christians keep a spiritual feast continually and should strive beyond what is commanded.
Homilies on Matthew 48.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom explains the law of levirate marriage, which permitted marrying a brother’s widow only when he had died childless, so that Herod’s marriage to his brother’s wife who had a child was unlawful; he condemns the satanic banquet, the dancing at weddings and Herodias as the architect of the murder.
Homilies on Matthew 51.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ sets aside the food laws gently, from the nature of things, defends God’s law against the Pharisees’ traditions (against the Manichaean reading of the uprooted plant), rebukes the offended disciples, and teaches that defilement comes from the heart; Chrysostom applies this to worshipers who wash hands but not souls.
Homilies on Matthew 56.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · To strengthen the disciples facing death, Christ shows the three leading apostles the glory of his kingdom at the Transfiguration; Moses and Elijah appear to show the difference between servants and Master, and that he neither broke the law nor wrongly claimed equality with the Father.
Homilies on Matthew 72.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ bids the people obey the scribes and Pharisees who sit on Moses’ seat but not imitate their works; Chrysostom explains that “all” means the moral law, that the teachers’ office is to be respected though they are corrupt, and that their hypocrisy and harshness make their guilt greater.
Homilies on Matthew 73.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom expounds Christ’s woes on the scribes and Pharisees: devouring widows’ houses under cover of prayer, shutting others out of the kingdom, making proselytes worse than themselves, tithing herbs while neglecting justice, mercy and faith, and cleaning only the outside of the cup.
Homilies on Matthew 73.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The gnat and the camel show that bodily purifications are trifles beside mercy, judgment and faith, which cleanse the soul; Christ does not reimpose the legal observances but shows them superfluous, and the image of whitewashed tombs fits many Christians too.
On 1 Cor 7:39, section 2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom explains that Moses permitted the certificate of divorce only to prevent the murder of unwanted wives, that Deut 24:1–4 calls the second union a defilement, and that Christ and Malachi restore the law of creation.
On Fleeing the World 14Ambrose · ca. 387-391 · Paul’s Letter to the Romans sets out the same six refuges: image, creation, royal judgment, goodness, and law.
On Fleeing the World 15Ambrose · ca. 387-391 · Natural and written law show what is good and evil but cannot convert the mind; the final refuge is the death of the High Priest.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.19.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The law's prohibitions suit beginners, as Jesus' answer to the rich young man shows.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 39.10.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The true Jesus came when Christ, given a body, came to do the Father’s will, and the sacrifices of the law ceased.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.57.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Paul solved the parable of Abraham’s two sons: Hagar and Sarah are two covenants, Sinai meaning the measure of the law.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.57.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Sinai, the “wage”, stands for justification by works; the free Jerusalem above, like Sarah, has freedom.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.65.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Aquila’s “change of place” refers to the passing of the law from Judea to the nations; the scribes sit on Moses’ seat but do not move the burdens.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.68.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The gentiles “shook their heads” to read the law spiritually; the letter brings a curse, the Spirit a blessing.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.68.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · No one is justified by works of the law; all must flee to the blessing in Christ, who did not desert the synagogue and redeemed us.
Tractates on Matthew 3.1Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius introduces the Sermon on the Mount: the Lord who gave the law on Sinai gives blessings on the mountain, the new covenant of grace.
Tractates on Matthew 6.1Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains how Christ, the author of the Law, fulfilled it by completing its prophecies and figures and confirming its precepts, and sees the cross in the iota and stroke.
Tractates on Matthew 12.1Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains Christ's command to love enemies, foreshadowed in Isaiah, the Psalms, Job and the law about an enemy's fallen ox.
On True Religion 17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine explains that God's teaching is given both plainly and in figures and sacraments, and defends the unity of the Old and New Testaments, comparing God to a physician who prescribes differently for different conditions.
Homily 5Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390–394 · Expounding Song 2:8–17, Gregory reads the bridegroom's leaping over the mountains as the Incarnation overthrowing the demons, the wall and windows as the law and prophets giving way to the Gospel, spring as the end of idolatry's winter, and the repeated 'Arise, come' as the soul's endless ascent into the infinite good.
Homily 9Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390–394 · On Song 4:10–15 Gregory reads the bridegroom's praises of the bride's breasts, garments, lips, locked garden, sealed fountain, and spices as stages of the soul's ascent, ending with the bride as a well of living water, that is, a soul made like the divine fountain.
Sermon 6.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The fire that did not burn the thorn bush signifies the Law, which did not destroy the sins of the Jews.
Sermon 9.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Decalogue is divided between the two great commandments: three strings for God, who is a Trinity, and seven for the neighbor, beginning with honor of parents, which Paul calls the first commandment.
Sermon 9.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who keep the commandments only out of fear carry the psaltery without singing; only the new man, who keeps them with delight in love, sings the new song.
Sermon 25.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The old Law “gives birth to slavery” for those who serve God for earthly rewards; those of the New Testament hope for a new inheritance and lift up their hearts to the Lord in humility.
Sermon 26.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The grace that matters is not creation but the grace that makes Christians; the Law could not give life, but was given to expose pride and make sin known.
Sermon 26.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against those who ascribe the Law to an evil power, Paul calls the Law holy, just, and good; it exposed the sin that held us, and Christ, who alone is not bound, sets us free.
Sermon 32.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Here the river signifies the old people that let the Law be passed over like stones in a stream; taking the stones into the milk vessel signifies the Law brought into grace by Christ.
Sermon 32.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The same ten commandments that oppressed the old people through fear are fulfilled by grace through love; to sing on the ten-stringed psaltery is to keep the commandments gladly.
Sermon 33.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The ten-stringed psaltery is the Decalogue; those under the Law in fear carry it as a burden, while those under grace play it in love and sing the new song.
Sermon 33.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Love fulfills the Law; as there are two commandments of love, so the Decalogue was given on two tablets, three commandments for love of God and seven for love of neighbor.
Sermon 33.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The three commandments of the first tablet correspond to the Trinity: one God (the Father), not taking the Lord’s name “to vanity” (the Son is no creature), and the Sabbath (the Holy Spirit’s gift of rest), kept spiritually by avoiding sin.
Sermon 109.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The adversary is the word of God, which opposes our sinful will by saying “do not,” but only for our good; agreeing with it by keeping the commandments loses nothing and finds oneself.
Sermon 125.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The five porches are the five books of Moses, the law, which exposed but could not heal the sick, so that the proud might recognize their sin and seek the grace of Christ, which alone frees from the law of sin.
Sermon 125.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Forty signifies the fulfillment of the law, the ten commandments spread to the four corners of the world, which is restraint from love of the world, taught alike by Moses, Elijah, and Christ in their forty-day fasts; Lent figures this life of labor, and the fifty days after Easter, forty plus the denarius of reward, figure the eternal praise of the resurrection.
Sermon 136.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Law without grace only makes sinners into transgressors, like Elisha’s staff laid on the dead boy; it shut all under sin so that the promise might be given through faith in Christ, whose Spirit gives life.
Sermon 136.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As Gehazi’s staff could not raise the dead boy but Elisha, stretching himself on him, did, so the Law could not give life, but Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh and gave it.
Sermon 145.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Law, especially “You shall not desire,” terrifies the self-reliant and shows the law of sin in their members; one who refrains from adultery only for fear of hell has not yet the love of righteousness that grace gives, by which God’s sweetness is tasted.
Sermon 145.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Law shows the captive his enemy but cannot free him; once he stops presuming on himself and cries, “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me?”, grace delivers him and he tastes the Lord’s sweetness.
Sermon 149.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Jewish food laws were shadows of things to come; for Christians cleanness lies in the conscience, as Paul’s rules about meat sacrificed to idols show.
Sermon 149.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The clean animals with divided hoof and cud-chewing signify sound conduct and meditation on God’s word; those lacking either do not belong to the fellowship of the saints.
Sermon 149.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Since Christ came, the food laws are to be understood, not kept; “Kill and eat” freed Peter from Jewish observances without commanding gluttony.
Sermon 151.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The saint does good in not consenting, but does not accomplish good, which would be not to desire; the enemy does evil in stirring desire, but does not accomplish it; this war lasts until the resurrection removes sin, death’s sting, which the Law only made more guilty.
Sermon 152.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Romans 8:2–3 names three laws: the law of the Spirit of life (grace and faith), the law of sin and death in our members, and the Law of Moses, a law of works that commands but cannot help and so makes sinners into transgressors.
Sermon 152.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Manichees, Paul calls the Law holy, just, and good; it worked death only by making sin appear and exceed measure through transgression, so that the sinner might turn to grace.
Sermon 152.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The law of the Spirit is the law of grace that takes sin away; the Law of Moses shows sin but cannot remove it; the two correspond to the two Testaments, Hagar and the free Jerusalem above.
Sermon 153.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Manichees use Rom 7:5 to claim that the Law of Moses is evil and not from God; anyone who reads the context will find the apostle praising the Law.
Sermon 153.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Manichee charges that Rom 7:5–6 condemns the Law; Augustine asks him to read on, since Paul foresaw the objection and answered it himself.
Sermon 153.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul himself raised the Manichee’s objection, “Is the Law sin?”, and answered “Far from it,” so whoever appeals to his authority must accept that answer.
Sermon 153.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Society praises the drunkard and lets a married man use harlots or his slave-girl without legal penalty, but God’s Law says “You shall not desire”; hearing it, the sinner recognizes his sin, tries to resist, fails, and becomes a transgressor.
Sermon 153.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · After defending the Law in a word, Paul goes on to praise it openly as holy, just, and good, against the Manichees.
Sermon 154.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Continuing yesterday's sermon on Romans 7, Augustine recalls that the Law is not sin but was given so that man might find himself and his weakness.
Sermon 154.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul agrees with the Law because his will rejects the desire the Law forbids, even though he still feels it; the “doing” is desiring, not consenting.
Sermon 155.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · No condemnation remains because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ sets free; Augustine then asks why the Sinai law, also written by God's finger (the Spirit), did not.
Sermon 155.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Sinai law is holy; it was given so that weakness might be revealed and increased and the Physician sought, but written on stone it did not give the help of grace.
Sermon 155.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine contrasts Sinai, where God wrote on stone and terrified a people standing far off, with Pentecost, where the Spirit came gently and wrote the law on hearts, as Jeremiah foretold.
Sermon 156.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Law was given to reveal the disease so that the Physician would be sought; fallen nature cannot heal itself, and Christ heals freely and gives himself as reward; the Law is a tutor leading to Christ.
Sermon 156.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against Jews who thought the Law sufficient for free choice, Paul teaches that the Law was added for the sake of transgression, to humble the proud until Christ came; free choice in paradise showed only its power to fall.
Sermon 156.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The same Spirit who gave the Law in fear on Sinai now writes it in love on hearts; fear of punishment is a servant that keeps the place for love, which casts out fear.
Sermon 163.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Law alone, commanding without the Spirit's help, increases desire and becomes sin's power; Christ forgave all sin, teaches prayer, and helps and crowns the one who fights.
Sermon 163.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Law shuts all under sin like railings so that we flee to grace; the promise is God's own act, given to believers, and victory over death is his gift through Christ.
Sermon 169.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul counted his blameless righteousness under the Law as loss and even dung for Christ, though the Law is holy, which raises the question how a good thing could be loss.
Sermon 169.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine states the difficulty: the Law is holy and from God, yet Paul counted his righteousness under it as dung and called it “my own righteousness from the Law” in contrast to righteousness from God through faith.
Sermon 169.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · “My own righteousness from the Law” is keeping the commandments from fear of punishment, which restrains desire like a frightened lion or wolf without changing it; God's righteousness is the delight in good that he alone gives.
Sermon 169.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Saul persecuted the Church because he sought his own righteousness from the Law by his own strength, stumbling over Christ the humble stone, until Christ called to him in mercy from heaven.
Sermon 170.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine asks how Paul could count as dung his blameless life under the Law, given by God, while elsewhere confessing he was a blasphemer and persecutor saved by mercy.
Sermon 170.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul's words must not be taken in the Manichaean sense that the Law came from an evil god; the Law is good, given to reveal the sickness of those who thought themselves healthy, while all inherit Adam's sin, even day-old infants.
Sermon 170.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul's being “without complaint” refers to human judgment: one can refrain from seizing others' goods while still desiring them, and so be guilty before God; the Jews credited even their outward righteousness to themselves.
Sermon 248.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · 153 is the sum of the numbers 1 to 17, and 17 is the ten commandments plus the sevenfold Spirit, since no one fulfills the law without grace.
Sermon 249.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Decalogue is fulfilled only when the sevenfold Spirit is added, for the letter kills and the Spirit gives life; ten plus seven gives seventeen, whose sum from one is 153.
Sermon 250.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The second catch, on the right, figures the saints after the resurrection, unbroken in unity; 153 is the sum to 17, the ten commandments with the sevenfold Spirit, without whom the letter kills.
Sermon 270.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Spirit came ten days after the fortieth day because forty (ten times four) signifies the law preached through this age, while the single ten signifies the law fulfilled by grace; the letter alone kills, the Spirit gives life.
On the Profit of Believing 9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Augustine grants that the law was a temporary slavery for those not ruled by reason, but argues that grace removes not the Old Testament but the veil over its meaning.
On the Profit of Believing 12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Augustine asks in which kind of error the Manichaeans place the Catholic church and affirms his belief that the Old Testament writers were great and divine and that the law was given by God.
Homily 12 on Romans, section 12.2John Chrysostom · ca. 391-400 · Chrysostom explains Paul's example in Rom 7:1–3: a wife is called an adulteress if she becomes another man's while her husband lives, but is free once he dies, and so believers are freed from the law, which Paul puts in the husband's place.
Homily 12 on Romans, section 12.3John Chrysostom · ca. 391-400 · Chrysostom notes that the law, which permitted a divorced woman to marry another even while her husband lived, cannot forbid marriage after his death, and that Paul leaves divorce aside because it was blameworthy even when allowed.
The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine argues that the Sermon on the Mount contains the perfect pattern of the Christian life, explains the mountain as the greater precepts of righteousness, and reads the poor in spirit as the humble who fear God.
The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains that good works are to be shown not for human praise but so that God may be glorified, and introduces Christ’s saying that he came to fulfil the Law.
The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains “fulfilling” the Law first as adding what it lacks, and reads the iota and the stroke as the least commandments.
Letter 3.76 (to Archontius)Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Moses permitted the bill of divorce not as right but to prevent a worse evil, the murder of hated wives and secret adultery; Christ defended Moses ("because of your hardness of heart"), allowing a wife to be put away only for adultery and requiring every other fault to be borne.
Against Jovinianus 1.22Jerome · 393 · Jerome contrasts Moses, the married figure of the law, with Joshua, of whom no wife or children are recorded, comparing their deaths and burials.
Against Jovinianus 1.24Jerome · 393 · Jerome answers the examples of David and Solomon: their many wives belong to the time of the law, and the Gospel requires more.
Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Augustine shows that Adimantus's use of Matt 15:11 against the food laws of Leviticus refutes the Manichaeans' own abstinence from meat, since Christ told the disciples privately that no food defiles, while the food laws were figures of the Church.
On Continence 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · The law alone reveals and even strengthens concupiscence; grace gives the delight by which continence overcomes it.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 6.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that catholics, like Manichaeans, do not keep the Old Testament’s ceremonial laws, and accuses them of praising what they do not observe.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 6.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine distinguishes moral precepts from precepts that signified future things, and argues from Paul that the latter were figures, to be read but no longer observed.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 6.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that Old Testament sacrifices signified the one sacrifice of Christ, and contrasts them with the Manichaean belief that the elect’s food consists of living souls.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 6.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that the Old Testament called some animals unclean by signification, not by nature, illustrating with the pig that does not chew the cud as a figure of those who do not ponder wisdom.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 6.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains each ceremonial law Faustus mocked as a figure once binding and now fulfilled in a spiritual meaning, and charges Faustus with a docetic Christ who deceived.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 8.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues from the new patch on an old garment and from Galatians that Christians should not take up the Old Testament.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 10.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus says the Old Testament’s earthly promises belong to the Jews who keep its law, and that the commandment against coveting forbids him to claim them.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 10.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Christians keep the Old Testament’s moral precepts and hold its figurative precepts and earthly promises as testimony.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 12.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues from Rom 9:1–5 and 3:1–2 that the covenants, law, and oracles entrusted to Israel are praised by Paul and bear witness to Christ.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 12.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine reads the curse on Cain as the church’s judgment on the unbelieving Jewish people, who keep the law’s outward observances without the grace of Christ hidden in them.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 14.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus rejects Moses for cursing everyone who hangs on a tree, which he says curses Christ and the martyrs, and for cursing those who raise no offspring.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 15.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine defends the stone tablets of the law as prophetic of the church's heart of flesh, of Christ the stone, and of Pentecost, and as containing the two commandments of love in ten precepts.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 15.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains, from Romans 7 and 2 Corinthians 3, that the law is holy and good and that it kills only as letter without grace, while with the Spirit it is fulfilled in love.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus says he would gladly accept any prophecy of Christ in Moses or elsewhere, as one takes fish from the sea, without accepting Moses' law.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that Deuteronomy 28:66 refers to Israel's captivity, and that the curses and death penalty of the law cannot be about Christ without making Moses an enemy of Christ.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus notes that Catholics themselves keep none of the law of Moses, which shows that Christ and Moses taught contrary things.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Christ's appeal to the law's two witnesses itself points to Moses' prophecy of the Father and the Son, and that the Jews' silence proves nothing.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Christ did not turn Israel from its God, since he proclaimed the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, nor did he break Moses' commandments, but rebuked those who made them void.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that the Sabbath, circumcision and food laws were figures for their time, and that Christ called his hungry disciples innocent, while Manichaean teaching counts plucking grain as murder and gives their god no rest.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers Faustus's mockery of the food laws: they figure those who are to be received into Christ's body or rejected, and the Manichaeans, who neither ruminate on wisdom nor rightly divide the two Testaments, are among the unclean.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine concludes that Catholics observe all that Moses wrote in the realities the figures foretold, as a reader voices what was written, while the Jews neglected even the plain commands.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 17.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that Jesus' warning “do not think I came to destroy” implies he did destroy the law by his conduct, and that adding to the law would equally break Deuteronomy's command.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 17.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that the Jews' misunderstanding explains Christ's warning, and that the following verses show he meant the very law the Pharisees taught but did not keep.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 17.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that Christ fulfils the law not by adding words but by giving the love that keeps its commands and by accomplishing what it prophesied.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 18.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that Catholics, who neither keep the law nor deny that Christ founded a New Testament, are as bound as Manichaeans to reject “I came not to destroy the law.”
Against Faustus the Manichaean 18.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus asks whether Catholics would take up circumcision, the Sabbath, sacrifices and food laws, and concludes that Matthew 5:17 either means something else or was never said.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 18.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine repeats that the rites of the law were figures to be removed when their realities came, and that their removal, foretold by the prophets, is itself a fulfilment of the law.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 18.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains the animal sacrifices as concessions to the people that also prefigured Christ, the bull, ram and goat, whose blood cleanses.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 18.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that the tares are evil men, not interpolations, that Catholics use reason against Manichaean error, and that by love and fulfilled prophecy they keep the law Christ came to fulfil.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus accepts that Jesus said he came not to abolish the law but to fulfil it, and argues that he said it to calm the Jews’ anger.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus distinguishes three laws (Hebrew, natural, and the law of truth) and three kinds of prophets, asking which law Jesus meant.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that Jesus fulfilled the ancient moral precepts given before Moses but destroyed the specifically Mosaic ones, such as retaliation and divorce.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus says only Jewish Christians who keep circumcision, sabbath, and food laws could press this text on him, and the catholic Christian keeps none of them.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus says that taking the text literally nearly made him a Jew, but the Manichaean faith rescued him.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus turns the objection back on catholics, who also neglect sabbath, circumcision, sacrifices, and food laws, and so must either deny the text or reinterpret it.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Christ fulfilled the Mosaic law itself: the law made the proud aware of sin, and grace through the Spirit and Christ’s priestly sacrifice fulfils its righteousness.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that the prophecies were fulfilled in Christ, so the figurative rites that foretold him are rightly no longer performed.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine shows how Christ fulfilled the food laws, sacrifices, unleavened bread, Passover, new moons, ritual washings, and the feast of tabernacles.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says the old sacraments were removed because Christ fulfilled them, and fewer, greater, and easier sacraments were instituted.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that the apostles let Jewish believers keep their ancestral rites for a time but forbade imposing them on Gentiles, and identifies the Nazarenes as those who refused this settlement.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine distinguishes the moral precepts of the law, which Christians keep through grace, from its promissory sacraments, which passed away because Christ fulfilled them.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine rejects Faustus’s division between pre-Mosaic precepts fulfilled by Christ and Mosaic ones abolished, holding that all were rightly given and fulfilled.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that the law of retaliation set a limit to revenge and that Christ’s command not to retaliate keeps its purpose more safely, just as not swearing guards against perjury.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that the Mosaic certificate of divorce was meant to delay and discourage divorce by sending the husband to the scribes for counsel, and asks why Manichaeans, who reject procreation, object to divorce.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine concludes that Christ fulfilled the law not by adding words but by giving through the Spirit the love that fulfils it.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine sums up that Christ fulfilled the law by grace and truth, and notes that the Old Testament teaches eternal life and resurrection but never names the “kingdom of heaven,” which belongs to the New Testament.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus distinguishes the true moral law from the Jewish precepts of circumcision, sabbath, and sacrifice, which he calls blemishes added by the Hebrew writers.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine replies that the precepts of the law are fulfilled through grace by love, and its sacramental figures are fulfilled by being removed when the truth they promised came.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.69Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine praises Moses as God's faithful servant, minister of the holy law and prophet of Christ, to be judged by God's testimony, not Faustus's slander.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 30.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus replies to the charge from 1 Timothy 4 that Manichaean abstinence is a doctrine of demons by pointing to the food laws of Moses.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 31.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that if “to the clean all things are clean” is Paul’s, then Moses, the prophets, Daniel, and the three young men were defiled in mind for observing food laws.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 31.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that “to the clean all things are clean” concerns the goodness of created natures, while the food laws concerned signification, and that nothing at all is clean to the Manichaeans.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 32.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus lists Old Testament laws—circumcision, sabbath, sacrifices, Passover rites, Pentecost offerings, food laws—that Catholics keep only in part or not at all.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 32.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that Catholics do not really believe Old Testament curses on the hanged, the childless, the uncircumcised, and sabbath-breakers, which would condemn Christ and Christians.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 32.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine states his principle that all the Old Testament is true and useful, its unobserved commands being fitting signs for their time, as a physician changes his prescriptions.
Tractates 5Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · The shoes and staffs of the Passover meal: shoes are the commandments of Scripture that protect the soul's steps in this world's Egypt, to be loosed only in the holy land; the staff is the rod of correction that the apostolic pastor needs only for the unruly.
Tractates 15Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · For the feast of the Maccabean martyrs: why Christians honour Jews who died rather than eat pork; the food laws taught continence and obedience, as the tree of paradise did, and the apostolic decree kept only abstinence from idol meats, blood, and sexual immorality.
On Catechizing the Uninstructed 20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–405 · The narration continues with the exodus as a figure of baptism, the Passover lamb as a figure of Christ's passion, the law written by the finger of God, and the earthly Jerusalem and King David as figures of the heavenly city and Christ.
On the Trinity 2.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine argues that the fire, cloud and voices at Sinai were creatures serving the Creator, not God's substance, and tentatively suggests that the Holy Spirit is signified there, since the Law was written by the 'finger of God' and given fifty days after the Passover, as the Spirit came fifty days after Easter.
On the Trinity 3.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine concludes from Hebrews, Acts and Galatians that the Old Testament theophanies and even the giving of the Law were done through angels speaking or acting in the person of God, never through God's own substance, and leaves for the next book the difference between these and the sendings of the Son and the Spirit.
On the Work of Monks 12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Paul's becoming all things to all, including his observances at Jerusalem and his refusal of support, was compassion for the weak, not pretense.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 27Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Moses carried Joseph's bones despite the law against touching the dead because his oath to Joseph was the greater obligation; Scripture often excuses such necessary breaches, and need not explain everything.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 33–36Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Four questions: a person's lifespan is not fixed by fate (Deut 22:25–27 compares rape to murder, and Hezekiah's years were added to an unfixed life); the flood covered the whole earth; animals are clean by nature but some were called unclean by the law, partly against Egyptian animal worship; and God's “repenting” shows his unchanging justice and mercy.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 91–92Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Adam, being rational, already had the notion of death and of shame without having seen them; and the answer distinguishes Scripture's terms judgments, ordinances, law, testimony, commandments, and precepts.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 97Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The law's repeated washings and sacrifices only cleansed ritual faults and punished real crimes without mercy, while grace offers sinners repentance as a physician for every sin, so grace is the more loving.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 100–101Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Miracles continued in churches seized by heretics because they are worked by the orthodox saints and martyrs to whom those churches belong; and Christians learn in the right order, for the apostles preached Christ from the law, which is the Gospel foretold, as the Gospel is the law fulfilled.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 103Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Keeping the law was possible, as the blameless Zechariah and Elizabeth show, since its sum is to love God and neighbor; men sin from unwillingness, not inability, which is why not all fall into the same sins.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 140–141Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The Jews knew Jesus as the heir in the sense of the parable (a man above all men by his works) but did not know God would raise him and make him heir of all, so their ignorance was willing; and those called blameless under the law were cleansed by sacrifice and confession, whereas Christ alone was sinless.
On the Good of Marriage 7Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Augustine finds it a hard question whether a man who dismisses an adulterous wife may remarry, inclines to think not, and explains the firmness of the bond as a sacrament.
On the Good of Marriage 23Augustine of Hippo · 401 · The law's purifications after intercourse, emissions, menstruation, and contact with the dead are signs, not proofs that these acts are sins.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The Sabbath, kept carnally by the Jews, is removed in the time of grace; the believer keeps a perpetual Sabbath, resting from former works through baptism.
Against Felix the Manichaean 2.11Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Augustine explains that humanity was held by the devil through its own consent under God's just judgment, that Christ took up the curse and death to undo them, and that the law is good, revealing sin so that the proud might repent.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 3.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christians bear the cross, the sign of Christ's humility; the law given through Moses showed sin and made the proud sick, so that they might confess their sickness and seek the physician, Christ.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 3.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The law given through Moses made the proud guilty and showed them that, though commanded, they could not fulfill righteousness without God's help.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 3.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The law of the Old Testament exposed sickness without healing it, binding the patient for the physician; Christ heals with bitter medicines, having first drunk them himself.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 3.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The law came through Moses, a faithful servant who could not release from guilt; grace and truth came through Christ, the Emperor who grants pardon.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 3.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The same commandments are given to Christians as to Israel, the Sabbath to be kept spiritually by abstaining from sin, but the old promises were earthly because a carnal people, quick to turn to idols, could grasp only visible things.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 3.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The law commands the same as the Gospel but promised earthly rewards; to Christians is promised eternal life, the vision of God that the psalmist longed for.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 7.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The tenth hour signifies the law of ten commandments, which Christ, its giver and teacher, fulfills through love; those who cannot fulfill it should flee to his mercy and use the prayer he composed.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 17.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The pool signifies the Jewish people and its five porticoes the five books of Moses, which, like the law, exposed the sick but could not heal them.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 17.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Forty signifies the fulfillment of the law, which love fulfills in its two commandments; so the man sick for thirty-eight years, two short of forty, lacked the twofold love.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 30.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ asks them to judge between him and Moses by the truth, not by persons: healing on the sabbath is no servile work.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 33.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The scribes brought the adulteress to trap Christ between his gentleness and justice, since the Law commanded adulterers to be stoned; but the trap caught those who set it.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The four days of Lazarus' death signify original sin, transgression of the natural law, of the law of Moses, and of the gospel; Christ comes to raise even such.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The stone on Lazarus’s tomb signifies the law that weighs on the guilty; to remove it is to preach grace.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 122.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The number 153 is the sum of the numbers from one to seventeen, and seventeen is ten (the law) plus seven (the Spirit), so the fish signify all who belong to the grace of the Spirit.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 1.12Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · “Until the law sin was in the world” means that neither natural nor written law could remove sin; sin was not recognized as sin, though God still held it as sin.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 1.13Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Death reigned even over those who had not sinned personally as Adam did, because they drew original sin from him; Augustine notes a Latin variant of Romans 5:14 and prefers the Greek reading.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 2.20Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Zechariah and Elizabeth were blameless in the law as Paul had been, yet Paul counted that righteousness loss and confessed that even as an apostle he was not yet perfect but still pressing on.
On the Spirit and the Letter 6Augustine of Hippo · 412 · “The letter kills” refers not only to figurative texts taken literally but chiefly to the law's command “You shall not covet,” which without the Spirit only increases desire.
On the Spirit and the Letter 8Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Romans shows that the letter of the law kills when the Spirit is absent, because it makes sin known and adds transgression.
On the Spirit and the Letter 14Augustine of Hippo · 412 · The law that cannot justify is not only the ceremonial law but the moral law that gives knowledge of sin, including “You shall not covet.”
On the Spirit and the Letter 16Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Augustine reconciles “the law is good if used lawfully” with “the law is not laid down for the righteous”: the law leads the unrighteous to grace, and the righteous use it to frighten others toward grace.
On the Spirit and the Letter 21Augustine of Hippo · 412 · The difference between the law of works and the law of faith is not that between Judaism and Christianity, since the gospel too says “You shall not covet.”
On the Spirit and the Letter 22Augustine of Hippo · 412 · The law of works commands, “Do what I command”; the law of faith prays, “Give what you command”; justification is by faith and free grace, not by the merits of deeds.
On the Spirit and the Letter 23Augustine of Hippo · 412 · The law that cannot justify includes the Decalogue, which Christians keep except for the literal Sabbath, since it contains “You shall not covet.”
On the Spirit and the Letter 24Augustine of Hippo · 412 · In 2 Cor 3 the letter that kills is the whole Decalogue engraved on stone, not merely the Sabbath command.
On the Spirit and the Letter 25Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Augustine quotes Rom 7:6–25 in full to show that Paul's argument concerns the law that forbids sin, not ceremonial observances.
On the Spirit and the Letter 34Augustine of Hippo · 412 · The old covenant failed through Israel's fault, not the law's; the law was given so that grace might be sought, and grace so that the law might be fulfilled.
On the Spirit and the Letter 42Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Jeremiah's new covenant differs from the old not in rites but in that God writes his law on hearts and gives himself as reward; God helps us not by outward commands but by pouring out love within.
On the Spirit and the Letter 43Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Augustine raises the question how the new covenant's law written on hearts differs from the gentiles' having the law written on their hearts by nature (Rom 2:14–15).
On the Spirit and the Letter 44Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Following Paul's argument in Rom 1–2, Augustine argues that the gentiles with the law written on their hearts are gentile believers who belong to the gospel.
City of God 7.32Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that the mystery of redemption in Christ was always proclaimed by signs, and that the whole worship of Israel foretold what is fulfilled in Christ.
City of God 10.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine teaches that God needs no sacrifices, and that the visible sacrifices of the old law were signs of the invisible sacrifice of a contrite heart, praise, and mercy.
City of God 10.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that the invisible God appeared in visible forms that were not himself, and that the giving of the law at Sinai was confirmed by public wonders.
City of God 10.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that the law commanding worship of the one God was delivered by angels, through whom the invisible God spoke in visible signs and human words.
City of God 10.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine recounts the miracles connected with the ark of the testimony, which commended the law of worship of the one God.
City of God 13.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · As sinners abuse the good law, so the righteous use evil death well; death remains an evil, the wages of sin, even when it crowns martyrs.
City of God 18.11Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine dates the exodus, the giving of the law, and the deaths of Moses and Joshua, explaining why the Old Testament of earthly promises came before the New.
City of God 20.26Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The sacrifices “as in the days of old” that the purified saints will offer are themselves, sinless as in paradise before the Fall, not a return to the animal sacrifices of the Law; the Lord will be a swift witness against the wicked.
City of God 20.28Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Those who read the law of Moses carnally murmured that serving God was useless; the last judgment will openly show the misery of the wicked and the happiness of the righteous.
On Faith and Works 44Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · Rom 2:12 concerns Gentiles and Jews, both needing Christ's grace, not good and bad Christians.
Commentary on Jeremiah 5.37Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Free choice is ours, but every good work is to be credited to God's grace; the repeated sending of prophets refutes the idea that the law once given suffices; as Shiloh gave way to the temple, so the law's ceremonies gave way to the church (Jer 26:4–6).
On Nature and Grace 67Augustine of Hippo · 415 · Augustine explains that the baptized still feel the flesh opposing the spirit, but those led by the Spirit are not under the law of fear but under the law of liberty and love.
On Nature and Grace 83Augustine of Hippo · 415 · Augustine teaches that God's commandments are not impossible but move us to do what is easy and pray for what is hard, and that they become light to love, which is the fulfilling of the law.
On Man's Perfection in Righteousness 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · All commandments sum up in love of God and neighbor, forbidding covetousness and commanding love; continence and love are God's gifts, and the law drives us to grace.
On Man's Perfection in Righteousness 42Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · The conditional promises of the law were given to humble the proud and lead them to grace; the righteous of old too were saved by Christ, the one mediator.
On the Proceedings of Pelagius 14Augustine of Hippo · 417 · Augustine explains two senses of “Old Testament”: strictly, the Sinai covenant of earthly promises; loosely, all the Scriptures before Christ, in which the kingdom of heaven is indeed promised.
On the Proceedings of Pelagius 20Augustine of Hippo · 417 · The grace Pelagius names is ambiguous; the grace Scripture teaches is not nature or knowledge of the law, but the Spirit's help that frees from the body of death (Rom 7).
On the Grace of Christ and On Original Sin 1.9Augustine of Hippo · 418 · The law shows what to do but cannot enable it; it drives the proud to grace, and the righteousness of God is given, not commanded.
On the Grace of Christ and On Original Sin 1.10Augustine of Hippo · 418 · No one fulfills the law through the law, only through the love poured in by the Spirit; Pelagius disguises his view of grace as law and teaching by changing his terms.
Questions on Exodus 71 (on Exod 21:10-11)Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Augustine discusses how to divide the Ten Commandments, the difference between adultery and coveting a neighbour's wife, and whether the commandment against adultery also forbids all sexual immorality, citing Matt 5:32.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine answers Julian's charge that Catholics call the apostles slaves of lust, and begins examining Romans 7, first showing from Paul that the law reveals sin but only grace removes it.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine notes that the Pelagians do not object to Romans 7:7–13 being read of Paul's past, and explains how it can describe his life before grace.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine explains that Paul could be outwardly blameless under the law while inwardly sinful, as his own words to the Ephesians and Titus show.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine answers the charge about the Old Testament law: the law makes people hearers of righteousness, but only grace makes them doers.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine shows from Paul that the law revealed and increased transgression, and that only those who receive the Spirit of grace are children of the free woman.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine argues that the covenant with Abraham, which the later law could not annul, is the New Covenant hidden in prophecy.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine describes those who belong to the Old Covenant of slavery: those who trust in the letter of the law and keep it from fear or desire, not love.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine explains that the ritual laws of the Old Testament were signs now fulfilled, but its moral precepts, above all the Ten Commandments apart from the literal Sabbath, bind Christians.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine explains that the righteous of old, including Moses, were saved by the same faith in Christ as Christians, while those who obeyed the law from fear belong to the Old Covenant.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine explains why the covenant of Moses is called 'old' and the covenant with Abraham 'new', and affirms that the Holy Spirit gave virtue to the Old Testament saints.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine distinguishes the righteousness 'from the law', a man's own, from the righteousness of God given by the Spirit of grace, which alone fulfills the law.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine reads Philippians 3 as directed against those who trust in the righteousness of the law, and shows that Paul, still on the way, pressed on toward a perfection he had not yet reached.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 4.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine argues that the Old Testament saints received eternal life not through the law but through faith in Christ, a faith that is itself God's gift.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 4.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine argues that the Pelagians reduce grace to knowledge of the law, whereas true grace is the inspiration of love, as the story of Elisha's staff illustrates.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 118Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · The four stages of human life (before the Law, under the Law, under grace, in perfect peace) correspond to the history of God's people; even the righteous of old were saved only through faith in Christ.
On Grace and Free Will 10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 426 · The law gives knowledge of sin, not deliverance; without grace it works wrath, and no one is justified by works of the law.
On Grace and Free Will 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 426 · Against the Pelagian claim that the law is the grace that helps us, Augustine shows that the letter kills and the Spirit gives life; those who put to death the deeds of the flesh are led by God's Spirit.
Retractations 1.23Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Reviewing his Exposition of Galatians, Augustine explains “wholly God” of the risen Christ, refines his punctuation of Gal 3:19, and applies Gal 5:17 also to those under grace.
The Conferences 8.23John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · God implanted the knowledge of the law in human nature from creation; the written law was given later as a help when it had been corrupted, and the patriarchs kept its commands before it was written.
The Conferences 8.24John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · God's original creation was perfect and the natural law sufficed; the written law came when it was corrupted, and the Gospel's higher demands could only follow the law, which answers heretics who accuse the God of the Old Testament of changing his mind.
The Conferences 17.20John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph argues that Paul too practised useful pretence, becoming all things to all, and that truth told by Doeg brought ruin while Rahab's lie brought blessing.
The Conferences 21.4John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Abraham, David, Elijah, Jeremiah, Elisha, and the Rechabites went beyond the law, offering not tithes but themselves to God.
The Conferences 21.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Christians are called beyond tithes to the Gospel’s counsel of perfection, which Christ offers to free will rather than imposing as a law with curses, so that the great may be crowned and the lesser still spared.
The Conferences 21.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The Gospel both raises the strong to perfection and pardons the weak, whereas the law leaves its keepers only halfway between condemnation and glory.
The Conferences 21.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Each person chooses to live under grace or under law; merely keeping the law’s requirements, like tithing, leaves one short of the Gospel, which demands everything.
The Conferences 21.29John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The Lenten fast was set by church leaders for those absorbed in worldly life; the perfect, who give God all their time, are not bound by it and may relax it for a holy reason.
The Conferences 21.32John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Theonas contrasts law and grace: the law commends marriage, tithes, retaliation, and hatred of enemies; grace calls to virginity, total renunciation, nonresistance, and love of enemies.
The Conferences 21.33John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Under grace, love of God excludes sin; under the law, marriage, tithing, and retaliation leave room for lust, avarice, and anger, whereas grace uproots these by virginity, total renunciation, and love of enemies.
The Conferences 21.34John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · To be under grace is to fulfil Christ’s counsels; those who neither keep the law nor follow the Gospel but use grace as license are under a double dominion of sin.
The Conferences 23.4John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Scripture calls many things good, yet compared with God none is good; so all virtues, like the law beside the Gospel, are dimmed beside contemplation, and busy good works hold the saints back from it.
Verses on the Birthday of the Maccabees 241–270Hilary of Arles · ca. 430-449 · The fifth son is brought forward; his mother, unable to embrace him, urges him to keep God's law given through Moses and promises him the resurrection.
On Rom 7.1Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Theodoret explains that the law binds people only while they live, introducing Paul's example of marriage.
Part 1, chapter 36Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The ten plagues of Egypt are matched one by one with the ten commandments, each plague showing the spiritual harm of breaking the corresponding commandment.
Part 2, chapter 1Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The law given on Sinai and the covenant in sacrificial blood figure Christ’s new law written on hearts and sealed in his blood; the gospel commandments fulfil and temper the old without contradicting it.
Part 2, chapter 7Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The laws of clean and unclean foods, already expounded allegorically by earlier writers, are summed up in Christ’s command to give alms, which cleanses all things and is praised at length.