Faith in the early church · Sophia Scriptura

Faith: its nature, object, and relation to reason, knowledge, and works. Part of Salvation.

1 Clement 10.6Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.
1 Clement 12.1Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Rahab was saved by faith and hospitality.
1 Clement 12.8Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Rahab had faith and prophecy.
1 Clement 31.2Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Abraham was blessed for righteousness through faith.
1 Clement 32.4Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · We are justified not by our own wisdom, piety, or works, but through faith.
Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 1.2 (26.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Faith, fear of God, and self-control lead to life.
Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 9.9 (39.9)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Doubt is the devil's daughter and uproots many.
Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 9.10 (39.10)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Faith accomplishes all; doubt fails at everything.
Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 9.11 (39.11)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Faith is from above; doubt is earthly and powerless.
Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 9.12 (39.12)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Serve faith and live.
To Diognetus 8.6Anonymous · ca. 150–200 (disputed) · God is seen by faith alone.
On the Resurrection 1Justin Martyr · 2nd century (disputed) · The word of truth needs no proof beyond itself, since truth is God; the author takes up arms for the weak against those who deny the resurrection of the flesh.
On the Resurrection 5Justin Martyr · 2nd century (disputed) · Against those who say the resurrection is impossible: even the pagans think their gods can do all things; believers have proof in the making of the first man and in human generation, and will argue also from worldly reasons.
Sentence 6 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · One of little faith is faithless in faith.
Sentence 7 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · The faithful person, tested in faith, is a god in a living human body. The one faithless in faith is a dead person in a living body.
Sentence 166 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Faith is the leader of all good actions.
Sentence 170 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · A cowardly and servile nature would have no share in faith.
Sentence 171 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · If you are faithful, do not prefer speaking what you should to listening. When you are among the faithful, listen rather than speak.
Sentence 196 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · You cannot live well unless you have believed sincerely.
Sentence 402 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Faith lifts the soul from earth to God.
Diatessaron, section 11Tatian · ca. 160-180
Against Heresies 4.5.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Abraham believed the one Creator God and his promise, left his kindred, and followed the Word.
Against Heresies 4.21.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Abraham is the prophet and father of our faith, which is one and the same as his, as Paul teaches in Galatians.
Against Heresies 5.10.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The grafted wild olive shows that men who receive the Spirit by faith bear fruit and enter God’s paradise, while those who reject him remain mere flesh and blood.
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 24Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 27Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 61Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Miscellanies 1.7.38Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Good deeds without faith do not profit after death; the Scriptures were translated into Greek so the Greeks would have no excuse; many ways lead to the one gate of righteousness, which is Christ, as 1 Clement shows.
Miscellanies 2.2.8Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Heraclitus blames those who do not believe; the prophets say the righteous live by faith and that without faith there is no understanding; faith is a voluntary preconception and assent, as Hebrews defines it.
Miscellanies 2.2.9Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Faith is an intellectual assent and the beginning of action and knowledge; for the believer, God's voice in Scripture is itself an irrefutable demonstration; blessed are those who believe without seeing.
Miscellanies 2.3.10Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Basilidians make faith a natural gift of the elect; the Valentinians leave faith to simple Christians and claim knowledge for themselves, the spiritual saved by nature.
Miscellanies 2.3.11Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If faith were a natural gift, there would be no praise or blame, no repentance, no baptism, no need of the Son or the Father: salvation rests on voluntary faith.
Miscellanies 2.4.12Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christians, free to choose, rest on faith in God's word as an unshakable criterion; Hebrews 11 shows that faith justified the righteous even before the law.
Miscellanies 2.4.13Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Hebrews lists many heroes of faith; truth is known through sense, mind, knowledge, and opinion; faith passes beyond opinion to truth; first principles cannot be demonstrated.
Miscellanies 2.4.14Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Only faith reaches the first principle of all things, which the Greek philosophers never knew; knowledge is demonstrative, but faith is a grace that rises to the simple, immaterial God.
Miscellanies 2.4.15Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Materialists drag everything down to what can be touched, while Platonists defend invisible forms; Christ gives new eyes to see what faith grasps; faith, like a money-changer's skill, is the criterion of knowledge.
Miscellanies 2.4.16Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Conjecture counterfeits faith; virtue is learned by obeying the Word, and to obey him is to believe him; faith and knowledge support each other; even Epicurus called faith a preconception without which no inquiry is possible.
Miscellanies 2.4.17Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · No one can learn without a preconception, which is faith; so Isaiah's “if you do not believe, you will not understand” is true, and Heraclitus paraphrased it.
Miscellanies 2.5.23Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Plato holds that faithfulness is the greatest virtue, containing the others, and that peace is best; so faith is the mother of the virtues.
Miscellanies 2.6.25Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Faith comes from hearing the preached word of God; the word of the Lord is itself a demonstration; as in a ball game, teaching needs hearers who receive it with faith.
Miscellanies 2.6.27Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Repentance and hope arise from faith; the faithful servant keeps what God has entrusted; God is faithful and worthy of belief; faith is not mere supposition but assent to what is strong.
Miscellanies 2.6.28Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Faith is a willing preconception, confidence a firm judgment; we trust God alone, who keeps his promises; Abraham's faith was reckoned as righteousness, and we, his seed by hearing, must believe; the one God gave both covenants.
Miscellanies 2.6.30Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Faith is not cheap: if it were merely human it would have died out, but it grows everywhere; whether born of love or fear, it is divine; fear, the law's schoolmaster, itself depends on faith.
Miscellanies 2.11.48Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Worldly knowledge puffs up, but faithful knowledge is a sure demonstration from the Scriptures; faith and demonstration are each twofold, scientific or opinion-based, and faith is a power of God.
Miscellanies 2.11.49Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Faith moves mountains and heals; human demonstration uses rhetoric and logic, but the highest demonstration, from the divine Scriptures, produces faith and true knowledge.
Miscellanies 2.12.53Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Faith looks to past and future, with memory and hope; fear grows into faith and then love, not the fear of a beast but a son's reverent fear of his father; blessed is the one in whom love and fear are blended.
Miscellanies 5.1.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Book 5 opens on faith: faith and knowledge cannot be separated, as the Father cannot be without the Son; we believe the Son to know the Father; Christians believe and know what most disbelieve and do not know.
Miscellanies 5.1.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Faith is the ear of the soul; Paul speaks of faith growing “from faith to faith”: the common faith is the foundation, and the excellent faith built on it, like the apostles', is perfected through learning and obedience.
Miscellanies 5.1.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Abraham believed and was counted righteous before Christ's coming, disproving salvation by nature; and if, as Marcion says, the Creator saved Abraham, the “good God” came late, imitating him and saving by force or stealth, which is not goodness.
Miscellanies 5.1.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Unbelievers are foolish, and useless disputes should be avoided; inquiry with faith is best; there are things not to be inquired into, but where God has spoken in Scripture, faith is established beyond dispute.
Miscellanies 5.1.8Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God makes foolish the wisdom of the world; Jeremiah bids us ask for the good way; Numa founded a temple of Faith; Abraham believed, and his name change from Abram, “elevated father,” signifies his turn from natural philosophy to knowledge of the one God.
Miscellanies 5.1.9Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Empedocles praises faith; Paul wants faith to rest on God's power, not human wisdom; Heraclitus, taught by barbarian (biblical) philosophy, knew of judgment by fire, which the Stoics made the conflagration; Plato speaks of cleansings by fire and flood.
Miscellanies 5.13.84Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Plato said we must believe the children of the gods even without proof; Clement applies this to the prophets and to Christ, the true Son, through whom God proclaimed the Scriptures.
Miscellanies 5.13.85Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Son must be believed even without demonstration; trust, which is more than faith, grows as learning grows, and those who scorn philosophy scorn faith as well.
Miscellanies 7.10.55Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Knowledge perfects faith; faith is the foundation and Christ is both foundation and building; knowledge is handed down by tradition like a deposit, and it leads on to love and the inheritance.
Miscellanies 7.16.95Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Whoever rejects the church's tradition for heresy becomes like Circe's beasts, while whoever returns to the Scriptures is made godlike; the Lord speaking in Scripture is the first principle, grasped by faith, and his voice is the surest proof.
Miscellanies 8.3.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Since proof cannot go back forever, all demonstration rests on first principles that are believed without proof, that is, on faith, and on what is plainly evident to sense and thought.
Book of the Laws of Countries 8Anonymous · ca. 196–235
On Baptism 2Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Unbelievers stumble at the simplicity of baptism, but God chose foolish and humble things to shame human wisdom, and his power works through what seems impossible.
On Baptism 12Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Tertullian answers those who question the apostles' salvation because they were not baptized with Christian baptism: they probably received John's baptism, and in any case their faith and close following of Christ could stand in its place.
On the Raising of Lazarus (homily), part 1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · The first part of a homily on the raising of Lazarus: the preacher apologizes for yesterday's lapse of memory, praises the illness and death of Lazarus as occasions of faith, and shows Christ both man and God.
Prescription against Heretics 10Tertullian · ca. 203 · Seeking has a matter, a time, and a limit: one seeks what Christ taught until one finds and believes it; otherwise every heretic's appeal would keep one seeking forever.
Prescription against Heretics 14Tertullian · ca. 203 · Within the rule of faith one may inquire freely, but faith, not skill in Scripture, saves; heretics who claim still to be seeking are not yet believers, and conferring with them only leads the blind into the pit.
2.37Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · Better to die a martyr than to be rescued and sin; the youths' faith wins glory from God and king and spreads the knowledge of God; Book 2 closes, and Book 3 opens with Nebuchadnezzar's proclamation (Dan 4:1–3).
Against Marcion 4.18Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The centurion's faith, the raising of the widow's son, John the Baptist's question, and the sinful woman who anointed Jesus all show that Christ belonged to the Creator and had a real body.
On First Principles 4.1.7Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · That the divine sense of Scripture is not obvious to all no more disproves its inspiration than providence is disproved by being hidden; the treasure lies in earthen vessels, so that faith rests on God's power.
Eclogae on Exodus-Judges, column 815Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Joshua 1–2: the promise depended on keeping the law; Rahab saved by faith, a symbol of the Gentile church; the spies let down from the wall like Paul.
Fragments on Genesis, column 113Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Gen 14–15: Abraham “the crosser” (Hebrew); the stars as the offspring of his soul; why he asked for a sign; the Amorites' sins not yet full; the 400 and 430 years.
Fragments on Luke, column 313Origen · ca. 220-254 · Every friend of God is a Theophilus, and Luke's eyewitnesses saw the Word himself, not merely a body, as contemplatives and servants.
Fragments on Luke, column 339Origen · ca. 220-254 · The healing of the bleeding woman before Jairus's daughter foreshadows the nations believing before Israel, and those "standing" by Jesus are those who see the Word in his kingly glory.
Fragments on Luke, column 347Origen · ca. 220-254 · The moonstruck boy pictures souls whose virtue waxes and wanes like the moon, healed only by the faith that moves mountains; the Son of Man is handed over by the Father, by Judas and by the devil.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.33.13Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Christian faith rests not on eloquence but on words spoken by divine power, through which the Word calls humans freely back from disobedience.
Fragment 7 on John 1:12Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 1:12: believing ‘in his name’ gives the aptitude to become God's children, but those who progress to believe ‘in him’ become children in act.
Fragment 69 on John 9:35Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 9:35–37: Jesus ‘found’ the man cast out by the unbelievers and asked whether he believed in the Son of Man, leading him from the border of unbelief to faith in the Son of God.
Fragment 92 on John 12:44Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 12:44–45: believing in Christ is the first stage, open to many; beholding the Word and the Father in him is the second, granted only to the pure in heart after long exercise, as Jesus taught Philip and the Jews who believed.
Commentary on John 6.151Origen · ca. 230–248 · The Pharisees came to baptism out of fear of the crowd, not faith.
Commentary on John 10.298Origen · ca. 230–248 · Literally, after the resurrection the disciples understood Jesus' saying about the temple and truly believed.
Commentary on John 10.299Origen · ca. 230–248 · Spiritually, at the resurrection of Christ's whole body the disciples will see what Scripture foreshadowed and believe fully.
Commentary on John 10.301Origen · ca. 230–248 · Some wrongly take “Blessed are those who have not seen” to mean they are more blessed than those who saw.
Commentary on John 10.302Origen · ca. 230–248 · That would make later believers more blessed than the apostles; true blessedness is to see spiritually, as Jesus told the disciples.
Commentary on John 10.304Origen · ca. 230–248 · Those who see are more blessed, like Simeon holding the infant Christ; perfect faith will come at the resurrection of the whole church.
Commentary on John 10.305Origen · ca. 230–248 · As knowledge is now partial, so is every good, including faith.
Commentary on John 10.306Origen · ca. 230–248 · Faith now is partial, but will be perfected by sight. Next lemma: John 2:23–25.
Commentary on John 10.307Origen · ca. 230–248 · Jesus did not entrust himself to those who believed in his name, which differs from believing in him.
Commentary on John 10.308Origen · ca. 230–248 · Jesus promises that whoever believes in him, not merely in his name, is not judged.
Commentary on John 10.309Origen · ca. 230–248 · Believing in his name is real but lesser faith, so Jesus does not entrust himself to such people.
Commentary on John 10.311Origen · ca. 230–248 · Many believe in his name, but those who believe in him walk the narrow way found by few.
Commentary on John 10.313Origen · ca. 230–248 · Those believing in his name rely on others' testimony, unlike the first disciples.
Commentary on John 10.314Origen · ca. 230–248 · These believed because of signs, in his name only, so Jesus, knowing their hearts, did not trust himself to them.
Commentary on John 13.348Origen · ca. 230–248 · Faith began through the woman's word but grew through the Word himself, who is known better directly than through another.
Commentary on John 13.353Origen · ca. 230–248 · One taught at second hand cannot experience what the eyewitness does; walking by sight is better than by faith.
Commentary on John 13.354Origen · ca. 230–248 · Those who walk by sight have the higher gifts of wisdom and knowledge; faith, though a gift, ranks after them.
Commentary on John 13.355Origen · ca. 230–248 · Origen asks how Paul, who saw the Lord, can say “we walk by faith, not by sight.”
Commentary on John 19.17Origen · ca. 230–248 · Knowing God requires a purified mind; believing and knowing are not the same.
Commentary on John 19.18Origen · ca. 230–248 · Knowing and believing differ, as Jesus told believing Jews they would come to know the truth.
Commentary on John 19.20Origen · ca. 230–248 · Knowledge and faith are distinct gifts of the Spirit.
Commentary on John 20.269Origen · ca. 230–248 · One can believe in Christ in one aspect but not another, such as accepting his crucifixion but not his virgin birth.
Commentary on John 20.273Origen · ca. 230–248 · So Jesus addressed believers who believed him in one respect but not another.
Commentary on John 20.284Origen · ca. 230–248 · An honest answer: we do not believe because our soul's eyes, clouded by wickedness, are not yet cleansed.
Commentary on John 20.285Origen · ca. 230–248 · Knowing how weak our faith is, we should ask Christ the physician to unveil our eyes and grant the gift of faith.
Commentary on John 28.12Origen · ca. 230–248 · Let us believe with faith reckoned as righteousness.
Commentary on John 28.13Origen · ca. 230–248 · Whoever has not yet seen God's glory has not truly believed, for Christ promised that believers would see it.
Commentary on John 32.172Origen · ca. 230–248 · As the wise can grow wiser, so believers can grow in faith.
Commentary on John 32.173Origen · ca. 230–248 · A believer can become more believing, as a wise man becomes wiser.
Commentary on John 32.174Origen · ca. 230–248 · The apostles' prayer “Increase our faith” shows they had faith that could grow.
Commentary on John 32.177Origen · ca. 230–248 · Paul's phrase “all faith” shows faith has degrees.
Commentary on John 32.182Origen · ca. 230–248 · Believers can add to their faith by learning.
Commentary on John 32.183Origen · ca. 230–248 · Having “all faith” means believing all saving truths firmly; people fall short of it in different degrees.
Commentary on John 32.184Origen · ca. 230–248 · God's recompense and salvation will be proportioned to each person's faith.
Commentary on John 32.186Origen · ca. 230–248 · Origen will illustrate the articles of saving faith.
Commentary on John 32.194Origen · ca. 230–248 · Complete faith is what can move mountains; lacking any part weakens that power.
Commentary on John 32.195Origen · ca. 230–248 · As a crew short even one man cannot launch a ship, faith lacking any part cannot move mountains.
Homily on Luke 1Origen · ca. 233–250 · Luke’s “many have tried” shows that many gospels were written but the church receives only four; true sight of the Word belongs to faith, and every lover of God is a “Theophilus.”
Exhortation to Martyrdom 5Origen · 235 · Piety toward the one God is a contest only God's people undertake; faith in the heart is not enough without confessing him with the mouth.
Homilies on Exodus 13.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The materials are to be offered “from yourselves”: the gold of a believing heart, the silver of confession, and the bronze of voice, the gift of tongues and interpretation.
Homilies on Joshua 10.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Against heretics who call Joshua inhumane for enslaving the Gibeonites, Origen answers that he judged by the measure of their faith: Rahab believed wholly and was received, while the Gibeonites came by fraud with a faith without works.
Homilies on Leviticus 3.8Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The ram bought with the holy shekel is Christ, acquired by one's own riches of wisdom and above all by a sincere and approved faith, free of heresy, which alone obtains remission of sins.
Homilies on Leviticus 4.8Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Christ is the one sacrifice whose flesh sanctifies all who touch it in faith, as the woman with the flow of blood did; only 'males', mature souls, may eat it, and only within the church, not among schismatics.
Homilies on Leviticus 9.7Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · As Isaiah's lips were purged by a coal, so sinners need fire for every member that has sinned; lack of faith and neglect of Scripture leave the flesh stronger than the spirit.
Homilies on Numbers 11.7Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · God accepts firstfruits only from those sanctified by faith, not the self-credited virtues of pagans, and the “eternal ordinance” points to invisible, spiritual realities given to Christ and his apostles.
Homilies on Jeremiah 6.1Origen · ca. 240 · God's eyes rest on faith and on every virtue, as they turn from unbelief and vice; whoever acquires the virtues receives the light of God's face.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.195Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Against God's saving darts stand the demons' fiery darts, quenched by faith; the Bridegroom's left and right hands are not to be taken bodily, for the Word is beyond gender.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.216Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · The roe stands for faith and the stag for good works; the mountains of Bethel are the books of Scripture; like a hunter losing the scent, Origen goes back over the passage.
To Vigilius, on Jewish Unbelief 6Anonymous · 3rd century (disputed) · Christ is the sun of righteousness; to believe in him is to know God, and faith leads to understanding.
To Vigilius, on Jewish Unbelief 7Anonymous · 3rd century (disputed) · Abraham's faith is the pattern for believers, his true sons; Israel lost that name by unbelief, yet Christ turned some of them to the truth.
Against Celsus 1.9Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus mocks Christians for believing without reasons; Origen replies that Christianity also examines its beliefs deeply, but simple faith is the best way to help the many who cannot study philosophy.
Against Celsus 1.11Origen · ca. 248 · All human life—sailing, marrying, farming—rests on faith, so it is far more reasonable to trust God and Christ, who died for humanity and sent his disciples through the world.
Against Celsus 1.13Origen · ca. 248 · Paul did not call all wisdom evil but only "the wisdom of this world"; reasoned faith is better than simple faith, but God saves through the "foolishness" of preaching Christ crucified.
Against Celsus 6.10Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus says Plato gives reasons and makes no boastful claims, but Origen answers that Plato's Zeus boasts in the Timaeus, that Scripture condemns thoughtless belief, and that Christians suit their teaching to each hearer, often with reasoned argument.
Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 67Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · The two faithful servants hear the same praise because each used all he had; faith in small things is reckoned as righteousness, as with Abraham, and God asks only that each use all he has received for his glory.
Commentary on Matthew 10.19Origen · ca. 246–248 · Jesus did few mighty works at Nazareth because of unbelief; divine power and human faith work together, as weather and farming do in producing a harvest.
Commentary on Matthew 11.17Origen · ca. 246–248 · The different petitioners and titles for Jesus signify different kinds of souls; the Canaanite woman, at first answered as a little dog, wins the children’s bread by great faith, and Origen rejects the transmigration of souls into animals while allowing that a soul may sink or rise in rationality.
Commentary on Matthew 12.6Origen · ca. 246–248 · Leaven in Scripture signifies teaching; Jesus’ knowledge of the disciples’ thoughts shows his divinity, and all faith in this life is “little faith” compared with what is perfect.
Commentary on Matthew 12.15Origen · ca. 246–248 · Why does Jesus forbid the disciples to say he is the Christ, when he had sent them to preach? Origen answers that belief is less than knowledge, and knowledge itself has degrees, the highest coming by the Father’s revelation, as Peter received it.
Commentary on Matthew 13.7Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen explains “faithless and perverse generation,” takes the mountains moved by faith as hostile powers lodged in souls, and advises prayer and fasting rather than addressing the spirit.
Commentary on Matthew 16.9Origen · ca. 246–248 · Accepting the healing of the two blind men as history, Origen seeks its meaning through faith: Jericho is the world, and the crowd that follows Jesus and his disciples out of it is led toward Jerusalem.
Commentary on Romans 1.9Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Paul's thanksgiving 'for all' signals praise rather than reproach; it is a sacrifice offered through Christ the High Priest; the Romans' faith is proclaimed on earth and in heaven.
Commentary on Romans 1.15Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · God's righteousness is revealed in that no one is excluded from salvation; 'from faith to faith' is from the Law to the Gospel; God's wrath is revealed against those, like the philosophers, who know the truth but hold it in unrighteousness.
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 4.5Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · The promise rests on faith so that it may be grace, since even faith is a gift of the Spirit, and grace written in the heart is firmer than the law written on parchment; Abraham is father of all who believe, Jew and Gentile; God 'gives life to the dead' by raising souls dead in sin, and 'calls what is not' by bringing Gentiles into being through participation in him who is.
Commentary on Romans 4.6Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Abraham believed 'against hope in hope' when he had despaired of a son; faith, hope, and love are the foundation, growth, and summit of salvation; faith can be weak or healthy and grows by degrees; and since Abraham later fathered six sons, his 'body as good as dead' is read as the mortification of desire, so that he could beget Isaac and Christ, as believers too may 'beget Christ' through chastity.
Commentary on Romans 8.1Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · The Jews have zeal for God but not according to knowledge, and the same can be true of Christians' fear, love, faith, chastity, almsgiving and fasting; yet zeal without knowledge is better than none, and Paul prays for Israel's salvation.
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 9.35Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · The 'weak in faith' who eat only vegetables, perhaps Jewish believers keeping food laws, are to be received and not despised by Gentile believers; weakness in faith is doubt in some part, not unbelief.
Commentary on Romans 10.5Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Blessed is the one who holds firm in what he has approved, whether chastity or freedom in foods, without self-condemnation; whatever is done without faith is sin, and the heretics' 'faith' is mere credulity, a false light like pirates' lamps luring sailors to shipwreck.
To Quirinus 1.5Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Understanding of Scripture comes only through faith in Christ, since righteousness has always been by faith, as with Abraham.
Letter 6.3Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · The women and boys among the confessors recall the three youths in the furnace, who confessed God whether or not he would deliver them.
Letter 58.5Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Believers should imitate Abel, Abraham, the three youths who refused Nebuchadnezzar's statue, and Daniel before Bel, trusting the Spirit to speak through them.
Against the Nations 2.9Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Philosophers too accept their doctrines on the authority of earlier teachers, not on sight.
Church History 1.13.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Jesus' reply (quoted): Abgar is blessed for believing without seeing; after his ascension a disciple will come to heal him.
Recognitions 1.16Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter teaches that divine truth can be known only from the true Prophet, whose credentials must first be tested and who must then be believed in everything.
Preparation for the Gospel 1.1.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Answering the charge that Christians believe without reason, Eusebius proposes first to address the questions of Greeks and Jews as a preparation.
Preparation for the Gospel 1.3.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Eusebius, invoking God through Christ the high priest, begins by refuting the charge of unreasoning faith.
Preparation for the Gospel 1.5.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · For simple beginners, sound faith serves as a medicine that gives them right beliefs about providence, immortality, and virtue.
Preparation for the Gospel 1.5.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · As patients trust physicians without understanding medicine, so beginners may rightly receive the faith.
Preparation for the Gospel 1.5.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Sailors, farmers, and travelers all act in faith and hope.
Preparation for the Gospel 1.5.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Since all life depends on faith and hope, it is no wonder that some receive the truth by faith and others by demonstration.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.1.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Scripture puts faith before understanding.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.2.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Christ commends faith joined with wisdom and goodness.
Demonstration of the Gospel 6.14.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The prophecy urges patience for the late coming and promises life to those who believe, while God is displeased with those who shrink back.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.28Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Understanding the prophecy requires faith; Jews who did not believe still do not understand it.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.29Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Unbelief is the cause of failure to understand the prophecies.
Against the Heathen 1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Athanasius explains that he writes for a Christian friend to show that faith in the crucified Christ is not irrational, first by refuting the errors of unbelievers.
Theophany 4.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Book 3, lines 174–198Juvencus · ca. 330 · The Canaanite woman's faith and her daughter's healing; Jesus returns to Galilee.
Demonstration 1.2Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 1.4Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 1.17Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 2.11Aphrahat · 337-345 · Aphrahat links this demonstration to the first, on faith: faith makes firm the love that flows from the two commandments.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 1.12.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Faith in the only-begotten Son, not knowledge of his generation, gives eternal life.
Life of Constantine 2.60.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Faith must not be forced; Constantine would urge the end of temple worship, but will not compel it.
Historical Fragments 2.1.2.1Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 343–367 · Faith justifies Abraham, saves the Canaanite woman's daughter, and gives birth from God.
Catechetical Lecture 5.3Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Even ordinary life (marriage, farming, seafaring) rests on faith; Scripture teaches that without faith no one can please God, and faith is the shield against the devil.
Catechetical Lecture 5.5Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Abraham, justified by faith, believed God’s promise of a son and offered Isaac, trusting that God could raise the dead.
Catechetical Lecture 5.10Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The first kind of faith is doctrinal assent, which saves; what the righteous gained over years Christ gives at once, as to the penitent robber.
Catechetical Lecture 5.11Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The second kind of faith is the Spirit’s gift that works wonders; small as a mustard seed, it accomplishes great things.
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.
Life of Antony 77Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony made the philosophers admit that faith working in the soul comes before and surpasses proof by argument.
Life of Antony 78Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Christian faith, held even by the unlettered, spreads and overcomes demons and magic by the name of Christ crucified, while pagan argument converts no one.
On the Trinity 1.12Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Hilary received the mystery of the incarnation by faith, not by the measure of human reason, believing in order to understand.
On the Trinity 3.20Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The risen Lord's bodily entry through shut doors is a fact beyond explanation; so too the Son's birth from the Father must be believed though not understood.
On the Trinity 3.24Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · A created mind cannot fully understand its Creator; unbelief is the folly of measuring God by one's own weakness, as Paul teaches.
On the Trinity 3.25Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The cross seems foolish to Greeks and a stumbling block to Jews, yet God saves believers through it; what seems weak in God surpasses human wisdom.
On the Trinity 10.68Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Romans 10:6–9 forbids anxious questions and makes salvation the confession of Jesus as Lord, as Abraham's faith was reckoned as righteousness.
On the Trinity 10.70Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Salvation is the simple confession that Jesus is Lord and belief that God raised him (Rom 10:8–9), not curious questioning.
On the Trinity 11.1Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Eph 4:4–6 joins one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father: each is one by his own property, not by a single undistinguished person.
On the Trinity 11.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Faith is not one if Christ is preached as weak, created, or God and Son only in name; such preaching proclaims another Christ.
On the Trinity 12.53Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · As Hilary confesses God in heaven, sea, earth, and his own mind without understanding them, he will not presume to grasp the Son's origin.
On Saint Athanasius 1.41Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Comparing Athanasius to Job and his accusers to Job's friends, Lucifer urges the emperor to seek prayer and baptism through Athanasius, and argues that Job, Abraham, Daniel and the three young men were justified by the same faith in Father, Son and Spirit that the church holds.
Letter 234Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil answers the Eunomian dilemma 'Do you worship what you know or what you do not know?': God is known from his activities, not in his essence, which remains inaccessible, and faith rests on knowing that God is, not what he is.
Letter 235Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil explains that knowledge of God's existence from creation precedes faith, that 'knowledge' has many senses, and that the Eunomian demand to know God's essence confuses them, as Scripture's own uses of 'know' show.
Against Arius 4.17Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus explains that life and understanding go forth from God's inner motion as Christ and the Spirit, and that Christ gives life through faith while the Spirit adds the knowledge that completes salvation.
Moral Rules (Moralia) 6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's sixth rule, on fearless confession of Christ, with Rules 7 (hearing without obeying condemns) and 8 (one must not doubt the Lord's words), whose headings the scan lost.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.43Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · God shows some reasons for what he permits but hides most, so that people may trust him as friends trust one another, rather than demand proofs.
Commentary on Ephesians 2.20Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Believers are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, which is faith in Christ, and on Christ the cornerstone, who joins into one what the world had separated.
Commentary on Ephesians 3.16Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Paul prays that the Ephesians be strengthened by the Spirit in the inner man, where Christ dwells through faith alone, and be rooted and grounded in love.
Commentary on Ephesians 3.18Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Paul prays for faith, knowledge, and above all the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge; the four dimensions are the three of a body with height divided, applied to knowing God; and all these together are the fullness of God.
Commentary on Ephesians 4.14Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Faith and knowledge of Christ make believers mature, no longer tossed by doctrines and human cunning, and Victorinus maps the three warnings of Psalm 1 onto heresy, wickedness, and cunning.
Commentary on Ephesians 6.14Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Having done all that was commanded, believers stand girded with truth and clothed with the breastplate of righteousness, which protects, while faith, which also resists, remains the head of all.
Commentary on Ephesians 6.16Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · The shield of faith quenches the devil’s fiery arrows, the persuasive words that inflame the blood, because faith takes everything spiritually and the light of Christ overcomes worldly fire.
Commentary on Galatians 1.6Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · The one gospel is faith in Christ, the Son of God, whose death and resurrection forgive sins and conquer death, freely and without works, so the Galatians’ quick turn to Judaizing is cause for wonder.
Commentary on Galatians 2.20Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Christ now lives in Paul, who lives in the flesh by faith in the Son of God who gave himself for him; to seek righteousness from the law would make Christ’s death pointless.
Commentary on Galatians 3.2Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · The Galatians received the Spirit from hearing with faith, not from the law’s works, so adding the law now contradicts the faith by which the Spirit was given.
Commentary on Galatians 3.8Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Scripture foretold to Abraham that the Gentiles would be justified and blessed by faith as he was, so faith is everything, and those who rely on works are not blessed but cursed.
Commentary on Galatians 5.2Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Those who seek salvation in circumcision show that they think Christ insufficient, which is to lack faith in him, so Christ will profit them nothing.
Commentary on Galatians 5.6Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · In Christ neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts, but faith working through love toward God and every person, which fulfills the whole law: faith frees and love builds up.
Commentary on Philippians 3.8Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Paul counts all his former advantages as loss and dung to gain Christ and be found in him, having not his own legal righteousness from works but the righteousness from God through faith in Christ.
Oration 3.7Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory urges his flock to respect themselves and their faith, to prefer silence and good deeds to talk about God, and to walk the royal road.
Oration 26.3Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory contrasts himself with self-serving shepherds and asks his people to account for the fruit of his teaching in sound faith and good works.
Oration 32.25Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory says the simple, untrained in philosophy, can be saved through faith and confession, as Paul teaches in Romans 10.
Oration 32.26Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory argues that salvation by faith and confession must be open to all, not only the learned, and prefers the simple believer to the clever arguer who empties the cross.
Tractates 1.1.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno opens his discourse on faith: faith is born of one's own will, not lent by a teacher, and the simple believer is better than the clever disputer.
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 1.1.3Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno argues that faith cannot belong to the theological treatise, since treatises multiply rival faiths, whereas the one ancient faith is older and greater than the law.
Tractates 1.1.4Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno asks whether faith consists in teaching or believing, laments a faith built of arguments and factions, and warns against curious disputation.
Tractates 1.1.5Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno challenges the disputer to show real powers of faith instead of probing the divine nature by argument, citing Sirach, Romans and 1 Timothy against curiosity.
Tractates 1.2.2Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno praises faith as the foundation of hope and, from the example of Abraham, shows that faith and hope live or die together.
Tractates 1.2.3Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno lists the heroes of faith, from Enoch to the apostles, to show what faith accomplishes.
Tractates 2.10.2Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno retells the sacrifice of Isaac, stressing the joy and willingness of both father and son.
Tractates 2.12.2Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno describes Abraham's unwavering obedience in offering Isaac and concludes that faith alone keeps one safe, making believers sons of Abraham.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 5.8Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The gospel healings show that faith, not the holiness of the one who acts, brings the gift: the mother whose daughter was raised, the centurion, and the woman with the flow of blood.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 2:13–14Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Spiritual truths are known by faith, not by learning or astrology; the natural man mocks the divine generation, virgin birth and resurrection because he judges all by sense.
Commentary on Ephesians 2:3Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The 'desires of the flesh' mean unbelief and idolatry; nature becomes 'of wrath' by an evil will, not by its substance, and is restored by returning to God.
Commentary on Galatians 3:2Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The Galatians received the Spirit, then visibly manifest in believers, by faith and not by the law, so submitting to circumcision was folly.
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 1:17Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster explains God’s righteousness as his justifying the ungodly freely by faith, and “from faith to faith” as from God’s faithfulness in promising to the faith of the one who believes.
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 4:17Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Abraham, father of all believers, trusted the God who gives life to the dead and believed against hope that he and Sarah would have countless descendants.
Commentary on Romans 4:19–22Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Abraham believed God against his own knowledge of nature, and so is the model for the nations of a faith that trusts God beyond the world’s reckoning.
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 9:7Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Abraham’s true sons, Jew or gentile, are those who share his faith in the promise fulfilled in Christ, of whom Isaac was a type.
Question 102, section 30Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · A believer who comes in faith to God’s minister receives what God gives, whatever the minister’s life, as the believer could rightly plead before God.
Question 113, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Faith comes first, but it is strengthened when the believer, helped by the Spirit, comes to understand the reasons for what God has done.
Question 117, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Abraham, father of all believers because of his faith in things beyond belief, was granted to see Christ’s day in advance.
Question 117, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Abraham was justified for believing God’s promise of countless descendants, something the world thought impossible and foolish.
Question 117, section 3Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Abraham’s faith was great because he believed the impossible, trusting not the appearance of things but the God who promised, whom it is folly not to believe.
Question 117, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Faith is reasonable because it trusts God, not nature, to do what nature cannot, and so gives the Creator due honor.
Question 117, section 5Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Abraham, a Chaldean skilled in astrology, put faith in God above human knowledge before any miracles had been seen, and so became father of the faithful and judge of unbelievers.
Question 117, section 6Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Abraham obeyed without hesitation when told to sacrifice Isaac, the son of the promise, concealing it from Sarah, and so taught all to keep God’s commands.
Letter 122.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · At the request of Hedibia and of Artemia, Rusticus’s wife, Jerome urges Rusticus to repent, gathering prophetic calls to return and warning that despair is itself unbelief.
On the Holy Spirit 10.26Basil of Caesarea · ca. 374–375 · We were saved and baptised into Father, Son, and Spirit, and must never abandon that baptismal confession.
On the Holy Spirit 12.28Basil of Caesarea · ca. 374–375 · Baptism must always be given in the names of Father, Son, and Spirit, since faith and baptism are joined and both rest on the same three names.
Ancoratus 67.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Salvation comes from faith through hearing.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.20.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Church members are merely psychic, relying on works and bare faith.
On Cain and Abel 2.8Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Faith first, then perfect works, are the whole offering God asks; exchanging the ass's firstborn for a sheep means turning labour into fruit.
On the Christian Faith 1.0Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose dedicates the work to the Emperor Gratian, who asked for a statement of the faith before going to war, and announces that he will follow the faith of the 318 fathers of Nicaea.
Life of Macrina, part 12Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380 · The officer's wife discovers on the road home that their daughter's eye has been healed by Macrina's prayer; Gregory ends by declining to record her further miracles for fear of unbelief.
Book of Heresies 155.6Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · God's dimensions cannot be known except by faith.
Book of Heresies 155.8Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · God is invisible but may be believed.
Book of Heresies 155.10Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Faith and confession lead to salvation.
Altercatio, chapter 2, speech 6Evagrius of Gaul · ca. 400 · Theophilus says the words are Christ’s and refer to his two comings; faith must precede understanding.
Catechetical Oration 38Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Gregory turns briefly to faith, referring to his fuller works: the one reborn in baptism must know from whom he is born and what he becomes.
On the Life of Moses 389Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · The bells and pomegranates are faith and good conscience: faith must ring out in proclaiming the Trinity, while the austere life, like a pomegranate, is bitter outside and sweet within; the tassels are voluntary virtues beyond the commandment, as Paul preached without pay.
Exposition of Psalm 118 3.29.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ wills the cleansing of all, but only the faithful are cleansed; he touches those whose faith touches him.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.31.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Faith and knowledge are distinct gifts; knowledge includes faith but not the reverse.
Exposition of Psalm 118 17.2.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Faith is the true homeland, which makes strangers citizens of heaven.
Exposition of Psalm 118 20.56.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Truth, the beginning of God’s words, is the foundation of faith.
Exposition of Psalm 118 20.57.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Faith is the Christian’s beginning, righteousness and martyrdom its fullness.
Letter 98.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Boniface asks how sponsors can answer that an infant believes and turns to God when they cannot say whether he will be chaste or honest.
Letter 118.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that the incarnation of Truth was the best provision for leading humanity to truth by faith, and that the church combines authority with reason.
Letter 120.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine points out that Consentius's request for an explanation of the Trinity contradicts his own claim that reason should not be sought, and asks him to correct it.
Letter 120.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that faith precedes the reason that cannot yet be grasped, yet a small reason, which persuades us to believe, precedes faith.
Letter 120.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that reason must be given to believers according to their capacity, while they keep to the way of faith, which alone leads to the vision of God.
Letter 120.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine notes that some truths become credible once reasoned out, while God sometimes hides the reason of his miracles so that they may still rouse wonder and faith.
Letter 147.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine distinguishes seeing with the body (the sun) from seeing with the mind (one's own life and will), and notes that we believe God will be seen only because Scripture says so.
Letter 147.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · What is not seen by body or mind can only be believed; the canonical Scriptures must be believed without doubt, while other testimony is weighed on its merits.
Letter 147.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Much ordinary knowledge (history, one's parentage) rests on others' testimony; errors there are harmless unless they touch the faith, but nothing should be rashly believed.
Letter 147.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Things present to the senses of mind or body are seen; things absent are believed on testimony, while things once seen and remembered count as seen.
Letter 147.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Knowledge comprises things seen and things believed on adequate testimony; faith itself is seen by the mind, though its object is not.
Letter 147.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Even the disciples did not see the resurrection happen but believed it on seeing the risen Christ; we believe the whole, which is present neither to our senses nor to our minds.
Letter 147.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Faith is visible to the believer's own mind but not its object, and one person's faith is hidden from another until the Lord reveals the thoughts of hearts.
Letter 157.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The righteous of the Old Testament were saved by the same faith in Christ's incarnation as Christians; the sacraments changed but the faith did not.
Letter 184.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Unbelievers must be answered by argument, but faith is God's gift and must be prayed for, as Paul, Christ, and Stephen prayed for their persecutors.
Letter 186.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Faith may be said to obtain grace, but only because it obtains love, which is itself God's gift; God works all good in the elect, including their love for him.
Letter 194.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Even forgiveness is obtained by faith, so faith itself, the beginning of all merit, must be God's free gift.
Letter 194.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Faith, which prays, is itself given before prayer; why one believes and another does not lies in God's unsearchable but just judgment.
Letter 194.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · To those who blame God's will for their hardness, Augustine repeats Paul's answer; it suffices to believe that God frees by mercy and condemns by justice, his reasons being unsearchable.
Letter 226.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Hilary reports that the opponents appeal to Augustine's own earlier writings (Letter 102 against Porphyry and the Exposition of Propositions from Romans) for election based on foreseen faith.
On Order 2.26Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine explains that authority comes first in time and reason first in reality: authority opens the door to learning, and reason then leads the few to know the intellect and the first principle of all things, while those who live well by authority alone will be freed after death.
Soliloquies 1.6Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Reason compares knowing God to the sun lighting what the eye sees, and explains that the soul needs healthy eyes, looking and seeing, and that faith, hope and love are required for its healing.
Soliloquies 1.7Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Reason explains that once the soul sees God, faith and hope are no longer needed and only love remains, though in this life all three are still required.
Soliloquies 1.15Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Reason begins to show that truth outlasts all true things that perish, so that truth must dwell in what is immortal, and urges Augustine to entrust himself wholly to God.
Homilies on Matthew 8.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Homily 8 opens with Matt 2:11–14: the magi, moved by the star and inner illumination, worshiped a poor child as God with symbolic gifts; they and Joseph obeyed without questioning; Christ fled rather than show his power, lest his incarnation seem unreal.
Homilies on Matthew 24.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ requires doing the Father’s will, not only professing faith, and quietly reveals himself as the judge who will reject even those who worked miracles without a good life.
Homilies on Matthew 26.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ offers of his own accord to go to the centurion’s house so that the man’s faith and humility may be revealed; as with the leper, he confirms the centurion’s belief in his authority by marveling at it.
Homilies on Matthew 26.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Unlike Martha, the centurion believed Christ acts by his own authority, and is rewarded with the kingdom; Chrysostom harmonizes Matthew and Luke, explaining the elders’ embassy as Jewish flattery.
Homilies on Matthew 26.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The two Gospel accounts complement each other; the centurion, though a man of rank, humbly asks only for a word, and is honored with the kingdom, while the leper too was praised in his own way.
Homilies on Matthew 26.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The centurion grasped that Christ commands death and life as a master commands soldiers; his faith becomes a prophecy of the Gentiles entering the kingdom while the sons of the kingdom are cast out.
Homilies on Matthew 29.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · In healing the paralytic Christ first forgives his sins and then reveals the scribes’ secret thoughts, proving by deeds what they themselves said belongs to God alone, and so showing his equality with the Father.
Homilies on Matthew 31.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The ruler of the synagogue asks Christ to come and lay his hand on his dead daughter; on the way the woman with the flow of blood, ashamed of her uncleanness, is healed by touching his garment, and Christ brings her into the open for her sake and for the ruler’s.
Homilies on Matthew 31.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ delays so that the girl’s death may be certain and her raising undeniable; he praises the woman’s faith, and at the ruler’s house he calls death sleep, teaching the disciples not to fear it.
Homilies on Matthew 32.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ heals the two blind men privately after drawing from them a confession of his power and lordship, and charges them to silence; he then frees a mute demoniac, and the crowds declare that nothing like it was ever seen in Israel.
Homilies on Matthew 38.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom lists the ways Christ has drawn the people to faith, and explains his thanksgiving that the Father hid these things from the wise and revealed them to babes as joy for those who believed, not at the loss of others.
Homilies on Matthew 50.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Peter sinks through little faith though he is near Christ, the disciples confess Jesus as Son of God, the sick of Gennesaret are healed by touching his fringe, and Chrysostom urges approaching Christ’s body in the Eucharist with faith and a pure heart.
Homilies on Matthew 52.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The Canaanite woman, rebuffed by silence and called a little dog, turns Christ’s words into her plea with humility and faith, and Christ, who delayed in order to reveal her virtue, praises her great faith and heals her daughter.
Homilies on Matthew 57.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ pairs each foretelling of his passion with miracles and with John’s fate to console the disciples; he heals the moonstruck boy whom the disciples could not heal, exposing the father’s weak faith and teaching that faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.27Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God first made, then adorned the world, to prevent belief in uncreated forms and to lead faith step by step, as at the raising of Lazarus.
Hexameron (Exameron) 6.38Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Poisonous creatures are like tutors' rods, correcting the weak; believers like Paul are unharmed, so unbelief is the real danger.
On Joseph 42Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · All nations came to Joseph to buy grain; we buy Christ not with silver but with faith and with the life we owe him, as he redeemed us with his blood.
On Joseph 80Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Jacob's disbelief turning to joy figures the people coming to believe in Christ's resurrection, the foundation of faith.
On Joseph 81Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Jacob's setting out before sacrificing shows that faith precedes worship.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.41.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The fruit is faith and the mysteries; the leaf is moral conduct that guards it.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.41.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Virtues without faith, among pagans or Jews, are leaves without fruit.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.42.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Faith and works belong together, like fruit and leaf.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.19.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The faith is a vineyard planted by God in the heart.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.24.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Faith is worth more than everything, as Abraham showed.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 39.24.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The preacher in the great church does not hide God’s righteousness, which is faith, but proclaims Christ crucified.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 39.25.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The whole psalm is spoken by Christ, who came to establish faith and forgive sins.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.50.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The Canaanite woman, first of the gentiles to come out to Christ, won his praise of her great faith by her persevering prayer.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 45.9.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The mountain moved by faith is the demon; perfect faith, like mustard seed, must be joined to love.
On Free Choice of the Will 2.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Evodius asks why a will given for doing right can be turned to sin; Augustine agrees to inquire as if all were uncertain, beginning from faith and seeking understanding, as Scripture commands.
On Free Choice of the Will 3.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Augustine declines to decide among the four accounts of the soul's origin: error about creatures is harmless if not held as certain, but error about the Creator, whose substance is the Trinity, is pernicious; what matters is where the soul is going, not where it began.
On the Greatness of the Soul 7Augustine of Hippo · 387–388 · Defining a figure as space enclosed by lines, Augustine explains that believing authority is a short and safe way for most, but one who insists on reason must accept the long detours of true and certain reasoning.
Tractates on Matthew 17.1Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius interprets the eye as the lamp of the body, meaning faith, which lights the Christian's way; the heretic, having lost it, lives in great darkness.
The Teacher 11Augustine of Hippo · 389 · Words only prompt us to seek things; what we know we know from the things themselves or from the inner Teacher, Christ, the truth within the mind, while what we receive only through words, like the story of the three young men, we believe rather than know.
On True Religion 24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine explains that God's healing of the soul proceeds by authority, which asks for faith, and then by reason, which leads to understanding, beginning from the bodily things by which we are held.
Sermon 2.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Abraham's faith did not waver when God, who had promised Isaac, commanded him to sacrifice him; and God who commanded is better than Abraham who obeyed.
Sermon 2.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Before the figurative sense is explained, the story must be believed as history; but Abraham's life is both event and prophecy of Christ.
Sermon 2.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Abraham's faith and work both pleased God; Paul's "justified by faith without works" is shown by the dying believer and the thief, while true faith works through love in the heart.
Sermon 4.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Justice, truth and wisdom are a light present everywhere and diminished by no one; to see it the mind must be purified by faith.
Sermon 19.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Recovering, the psalmist asks what he has in heaven and what he wanted on earth: earthly riches are worthless beside heaven, whose reward is God himself, more beautiful than all creation.
Sermon 27.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · We walk by faith in the crucified, “unsightly” Christ, whose sign we bear on our foreheads; only at the vision of his beauty will we see God’s equity in why one is baptized and another is not.
Sermon 27.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul, after saying that God shut up all in unbelief to have mercy on all, ends not with an explanation but with wonder; we should do the same until the house of God is dedicated.
Sermon 38.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Faith is the first commandment: with continence and endurance we look for the life that will “increase at the last,” since life here only decreases as we live it.
Sermon 38.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · We are troubled because faith, like Christ in the boat, is asleep; God has already fulfilled so much of what he promised and foretold that we should believe the rest will come.
Sermon 43.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Right faith, believing what is not yet seen, is the beginning of a good life; as we needed a Creator to exist, we need a Savior to live again.
Sermon 43.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Faith itself is a great gift received from God, for which we must give thanks rather than boast.
Sermon 43.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The prophet Isaiah settles the dispute: “Unless you believe, you will not understand.”
Sermon 43.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Understanding also helps faith: preachers water the faith that has sprouted in their hearers, though only God gives the growth, as the father of the sick boy knew.
Sermon 43.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The father who said “I believe; help my unbelief” had some faith and asked for more; both sayings are true: understand the preacher’s word in order to believe, and believe God’s word in order to understand.
Sermon 49.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The work of the vineyard is justice, and justice is believing in Christ, for “the just lives by faith”; Augustine, a fellow laborer, cannot see hearts, but God who hired us can.
Sermon 53.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Faith cleans the heart to see God; but bare belief is not enough, for, as James says, the demons believe and tremble.
Sermon 53.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Our faith differs from the demons’ faith because it works through love and hopes for God’s promises; faith, hope, and love together cleanse the heart.
Sermon 80.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ rebuked even the apostles for unbelief, yet they knew to ask him, “Lord, increase our faith.”
Sermon 81.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ foretold the troubles of the world, which is growing old; faith must be woken like Christ asleep in the boat, for he came to make us new in the world’s old age.
Sermon 88.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Faith without miracles is more praiseworthy: Christ kept his scars to heal doubting hearts and called blessed those who believe without seeing.
Sermon 88.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Philip could not yet see the Father in the Son because the eye of his heart was not healed; faith must come first, for we walk by faith until we come to sight.
Sermon 90.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The faith that marks the wedding garment is not the bare belief demons share but faith working through love, since love cannot exist without faith though faith can exist without love.
Sermon 105.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · In the second triad, bread, fish, and egg, the bread is love, opposed by the stone of hardness, and the fish is faith, which lives unbroken among the world’s storms and is opposed by the serpent, the devil.
Sermon 106.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ, who heard the Pharisee’s thoughts, rebuked outward washing; even baptism cleanses through faith, which is within, as Acts and 1 Peter show.
Sermon 112.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The five yoke of oxen are the five senses, paired like yokes, by which earthly people refuse to believe what they cannot perceive, like Thomas; Christians believe without seeing, and eat by faith the same supper Christ consecrated.
Sermon 112.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The supper arose from a guest’s saying about eating bread in God’s kingdom, while the bread himself reclined before him; the oxen to be “tested” signify a curiosity of the senses that, like Thomas, refuses to believe without touching.
Sermon 112.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The lust of the eyes stands for all five senses, since we speak of “seeing” by every sense; Christ invited his doubting disciples to touch and see, but we believe by hearing the preachers, without touching.
Sermon 115.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The parable of the unjust judge teaches persistent prayer, which springs from faith and in turn strengthens faith; the faith Christ asked whether he would find on earth is perfect faith, which even the apostles lacked.
Sermon 126.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Faith comes before understanding, as Isaiah says; the Scriptures read in church are lamps in a dark place until the day dawns.
Sermon 126.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who refuse to believe until they see are like those who want to climb without steps.
Sermon 127.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians are not made for present goods but for what eye has not seen; like an infant who cannot believe he will grow up, we must believe what we do not yet see.
Sermon 131.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Faith is God’s gift: the Father draws people to Christ, not by compulsion but by the sweetness of desire, and faith in the Crucified carries them over the waves of this world like a ship’s timber.
Sermon 136.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The healed man erred in thinking Christ only a prophet and in saying that God does not hear sinners, as the tax collector shows; his heart was washed when he believed in the Son of God.
Sermon 139.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ alone is Son by nature, others by grace and adoption; therefore he alone can say, “I and the Father are one,” that is, of one nature and substance.
Sermon 143.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Faith in Christ is the only cleansing from original and personal sin, since it joins us to the sinless one; therefore unbelief is the sin of which the Spirit convicts the world.
Sermon 143.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Unbelief is singled out because it holds all other sins fast, while faith looses them; so Paul speaks of the Jews’ unbelief rather than their sin, since all have sinned.
Sermon 143.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Spirit brought the blessedness of believing without seeing: with Christ’s bodily presence removed, believers direct their minds to his divinity and know even his flesh spiritually, by faith.
Sermon 143.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ had to depart bodily so that we might believe spiritually; this faith in the unseen, risen mediator is the righteousness by which the world, which believes only what it sees, is convicted.
Sermon 156.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ is the one Mediator, God's arm stretched to fallen man; grace is medicine, not license to sin, and the faith that saves works through love, which itself is God's gift.
Sermon 158.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Justifying faith differs from the demons' faith, which also confesses Christ, by hope and above all love: it is “faith working through love.”
Sermon 158.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Good works should seek only God himself as reward, who alone satisfies; faith working through love belongs to this life and will give way to sight.
Sermon 159.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Love requires delight; just as a master prefers an ugly faithful slave to a handsome unfaithful one, we already love invisible goods like faith more than visible ones.
Sermon 168.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God promised the Gentiles to Abraham and himself fulfils the promise, so believers are children of Abraham's faith by God's doing; even their faith is God's gift.
Sermon 168.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul's “peace, love with faith” runs from end to beginning: faith that works through love, unlike the demons' faith born of fear, leads to the true and secure peace that is the goal of all good desire.
Sermon 168.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Peace, love, and faith are from God, as Paul's greeting says; his own conversion shows it, for Saul, raging and merciless, obtained mercy so that he might become faithful.
Sermon 168.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Pelagian objection that our faith and prayer come first and earn the rest, Augustine answers that no one gives God anything first: faith itself is received, and we give God only from his own gifts.
Sermon 168.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Faith is given even to unbelievers through the prayers of the faithful, as Stephen prayed for those stoning him; the churches glorified God, not Paul, for Saul's conversion.
Sermon 168.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Believers pray for unbelieving friends and spouses to be given faith, which shows that faith is God's gift and no one may boast except in the Lord.
Sermon 183.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · All heretics, and bad Catholics too by their deeds, deny Christ come in the flesh; faith without works is like the demons' faith, which confessed Christ from fear, unlike Peter's confession from love.
Sermon 232.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The two on the road to Emmaus called Christ a prophet, falling back on outsiders' opinions, whereas Peter had confessed him the Son of the living God, a confession that merited the promise of the keys.
Sermon 232.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The repentant thief, told of only in Luke, believed in Christ's kingdom while he hung on the cross, when the disciples had lost hope; Christ rewarded his faith with paradise that very day.
Sermon 234.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · We, who believe, are better off than the Emmaus disciples who had lost hope, whom the thief on the cross outdid; Christ is known in the breaking of bread, which by his blessing becomes his body.
Sermon 234.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Faith in the resurrection distinguishes Christians from pagans and Jews; faith working through love, not fear, distinguishes them from demons, who also confessed Christ.
Sermon 235.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ willed to be recognized in the breaking of bread for the sake of those who would eat his flesh without seeing him; hospitality restored what unbelief had taken.
Sermon 235.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ withdrew his bodily presence so that faith might grow; what we do not see will come, to the joy of believers and the confusion of unbelievers.
Sermon 244.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · “Do not touch me” means: do not believe me only a man; Christ ascends to the Father for whoever understands him as God equal to the Father, as well as the man who was crucified.
Sermon 246.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Mary thought Christ the gardener, and so he is, the planter of the mustard seed of faith; she recognized him when he called her by the name written in his book.
Sermon 246.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · To touch Christ is to believe him God equal to the Father; those who, like Photinus, hold him only a man have touched him on earth and gone astray.
Sermon 247.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · That the risen Christ entered through shut doors should be believed, not reasoned out, like the virgin birth, his walking on the sea, and the daily miracles of nature.
Sermon 258.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Thomas, in darkness while he would not believe, was made light when he touched the risen Christ and confessed him Lord and God, man and God, the fullness of faith.
Sermon 261.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ is always God, equal to the Father; to ask what kind of God he is, piety seeks by believing and learning together under the one heavenly teacher, while vanity seeks by quarreling.
Sermon 264.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ stayed forty days to strengthen the disciples’ faith, but ascended so that they would stop loving him carnally and learn to see with the heart the Word equal to the Father.
Sermon 279.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Faith in the heart must be confessed with the mouth; many pagans privately see the prophecies fulfilled but are ashamed to confess the humble, crucified Son of God, and those ashamed of him now will be ashamed at his coming.
Sermon 290.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Zechariah and Mary asked almost the same question of the angel, yet he was struck dumb for unbelief while she was given an explanation; God judged their hearts, not their words.
Sermon 292.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who claim ‘I justify you’ in baptism in effect say ‘I am the Christ’; but only the one in whom we believe, who justifies the ungodly, justifies, and no minister dares say ‘believe in me’.
Sermon 293.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Only the births of John and Christ are celebrated; their births are contrasted (barrenness and virginity, unbelief and faith, waning and waxing light), and the similar questions of Zechariah and Mary were judged by their hearts.
On the Profit of Believing 2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Augustine states his aim: to show that the Manichaeans wrongly attack Catholics for believing before understanding, and recalls how their promise of pure reason drew him and Honoratus.
On the Profit of Believing 21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Heretics promise reason on obscure matters and fault the church for requiring belief, but true religion cannot be entered without belief and authority.
On the Profit of Believing 22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · By comparing the studious with the eager and the curious with the interested, Augustine shows that believing differs from credulity.
On the Profit of Believing 23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Friendship requires belief, and since a teacher of religion must believe the learner’s sincerity, the learner should in turn believe the teacher.
On the Profit of Believing 24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Since few can reach God by reason, the church leads all by the safe way of faith first, and even the capable should walk it for the sake of others.
On the Profit of Believing 25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Augustine distinguishes understanding, believing, and opining, owed respectively to reason, authority, and error, and shows that belief on authority is praiseworthy while opinion is faulty.
On the Profit of Believing 26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Children must believe, without being able to know, who their parents are, which shows that human society depends on belief.
On the Profit of Believing 29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Only God can resolve this difficulty, and the search for religion requires belief in him from the start; hence the Catholic church asks for faith first.
On the Profit of Believing 30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · The heretic who forbids belief cannot be approached except by the very faith he condemns.
On the Profit of Believing 31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Heretics who urge belief in Christ contradict their own rejection of belief, since faith in Christ rests on the report of the Catholic peoples, who should therefore be asked what Christ taught.
On the Profit of Believing 32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Those who refuse to believe Christ without reason are not Christians, for Christ himself sought faith through miracles, and so built the authority of the church.
On Continence 30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Paul's warning of God's wrath shows that faith without works does not save; the 'members' to be put to death are the vices dwelling in the members.
On Lying 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Lying even to lead someone to the truth destroys the credibility of Christian teaching, which rests on faith; so the good must never lie.
On the Christian Struggle 14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Faith subjects the soul to God and must come before understanding, since no one living wickedly can know the truth.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Mani promises knowledge but demands belief; if belief is required, Augustine would rather believe what the Church, confirmed among all peoples, teaches, and then come to understanding through faith.
Confessions 6.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine came to prefer catholic doctrine, recognizing that much of life rests on belief and that the Scriptures, received with such authority, are to be believed.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 5.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that keeping Christ’s commands is the harder and truer part of accepting the gospel, compared with confessing his birth.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 5.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues from Christ’s sayings that the kingdom is promised to those who keep his commands, never to those who confess his birth.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 5.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, promises eternal life to those who believe in him as he truly is, including as the Son of Man born of David’s line.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 12.45Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that faith in Christ always comes through human witnesses, and that prophecy protected the apostles’ preaching from being dismissed as magic.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 12.46Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that the simple faith catholics require includes believing the prophets, as milk before solid food, until the mind can understand.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 12.47Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers Faustus’s charge against the prophets’ lives by pointing to Abraham, justified by faith and set by Paul as an example for believers.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus rejects the reply that a Christian must believe the saying because it is in the Gospel, pointing to Christ's patience with Thomas.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine raises, but sets aside, the question whether faith in the coming Christ benefited the righteous of old as faith in Christ come benefits believers now.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine replies that Christians live differently from pagans because they believe, hope, and love differently, even when using the same things, and that the many bad catholics do not discredit catholic teaching.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine shows from Genesis that when Abraham took Hagar, God had promised him an heir from his own body but had not yet said it would be through Sarah.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.53Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine teaches that understanding must follow faith and righteous living, as Rachel was married after Leah, and that in this life contemplation always coexists with labour.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 33.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that the centurion “came” to Christ by faith more truly than his messengers, as the woman touched him while the crowd pressed, and that any honest narrator telling a story twice varies without contradiction.
On the Trinity 1.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine explains that the Son's being 'subjected' to the Father and 'handing over the kingdom' (1 Cor 15) mean that Christ will bring believers to the contemplation of God, in which Father, Son and Spirit are seen together, since none of them can be shown or enjoyed apart from the others.
On the Trinity 4.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine explains that we, being temporal and changeable, had to be cleansed through faith in temporal events, so the eternal Truth came into being as man, was born, died, rose and ascended, that our faith might become truth and our mortality be changed into eternity.
On the Trinity 8.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · We must love God before we see him, and so love him by faith; but faith must not invent false images, and in believing bodily things what matters is the general knowledge of their kind, not imagined details.
On the Trinity 8.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · We love Paul because we see in the unchangeable truth the form of justice by which he lived; faith and hope in such lives make us love that form, God, more ardently and know him more clearly.
On the Trinity 9.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine insists that we are still seeking: holding firmly by faith that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God, we seek to understand without rash affirmation.
On the Trinity 13.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Using the prologue of John, Augustine shows that some truths belong to wisdom and others, done in time, to knowledge, and that faith is seen by each believer within himself.
On the Trinity 13.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Faith is a thing of the heart, seen by each only in himself; the faith of all believers is called one in kind, as their will is one when they will the same thing.
On the Trinity 13.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine sums up: happiness requires faith in Christ, and the faith held in memory, recalled, and loved forms a trinity in the inner man, though not yet the image of God.
On the Trinity 14.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The trinity formed by remembering, contemplating, and loving our faith is not yet the image of God, because faith will pass away when we see face to face.
On the Trinity 15.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · God, though incomprehensible, is to be sought always, faith seeking and understanding finding; and it was right to seek traces of the Trinity in creatures first, as Wisdom 13 shows.
On the Trinity 15.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Those who see the trinity in their mind but not that it is God's image miss the One it reflects; without the faith that cleanses the heart, their understanding condemns them, darkened as it is by the penalty of sin.
On the Trinity 15.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Quoting his own sermon, Augustine explains why the Spirit proceeds from both and is not a son; those who cannot see this should believe Scripture and seek understanding, and his soul, still wounded, cannot yet fix its gaze on the light.
The Harmony of the Gospels 1.53Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Christ, the wisdom of God, became man so that by faith in temporal things we might be cleansed and reach eternal truth; he is the mediator between God and humanity.
The Harmony of the Gospels 2.66Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Matthew gives the father's real wish, that his dead daughter be raised, while Mark and Luke give his words when she was still dying; both are true.
The Harmony of the Gospels 4.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Christ's word that John should 'remain until I come' signifies that the contemplation John's Gospel offers is perfected only at Christ's coming; meanwhile we walk by faith, active and humble, with the three evangelists.
Exposition of the Right Faith 14Anonymous · early 5th century (probably Theodoret) · Asking “how” about God betrays unbelief: how, then, did he create heaven, earth and the questioner himself, and how is his power present to all things?
Exposition of the Right Faith 16Anonymous · early 5th century (probably Theodoret) · Faith resolves what reason cannot grasp; the author distinguishes what must be inquired into from what must be believed and worshipped.
Apology against Rufinus 2.2Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome mocks Rufinus's excuses to Anastasius for not coming to Rome and his claim to be approved in faith and love.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 3Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · Rufinus notes the Roman and Aquileian forms of the Creed and explains why it begins with 'I believe'.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 3.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Faith is a free gift to the ungodly, and eternal life, though it seems a wage owed to faith, is itself 'grace for grace' because faith is grace.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 12.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ came to save, not to judge, but whoever refuses to believe in him has already been judged.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 15.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · With understanding present, the woman is told to believe: God is spirit and is worshiped not on a mountain or in a temple but in spirit and truth.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 15.33Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Samaritans believed first through the woman's report and then through Christ's presence, as people today come to faith through the Church's witness and the two commandments of love.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 16.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Samaritans believed Christ's word without signs while the Galileans, even after miracles, believed little; so the Jews, Christ's own people, rejected him, while the Gentiles believe the Gospel without seeing signs.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 16.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Thomas, an Israelite, believed only after seeing, as the official did; those who believe without seeing, the Gentiles, are the blessed whom Christ foretold.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 19.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The same believers rise twice, now in the mind by obedient faith and at the end in the flesh; “hearing” Christ's voice means obeying it.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 22.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Faith leads to understanding and understanding to eternal life, where Christ himself will be seen without the reading of the gospel.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 22.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The passage from death to life happens now, in the heart, when one hears and believes; the present life is not yet true life, which is eternal.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 22.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The “hour” in which the dead hear Christ's voice is the whole present age; the sinner rises by believing, comes forth by confessing, and is loosed by the apostles' ministry, as Lazarus was.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 25.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The work of God is to believe in Christ, faith working through love; the crowd, preferring Moses' manna, asked for a greater sign.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 26.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · No one comes to Christ unless the Father draws him, yet faith cannot be unwilling, since one believes with the heart; how, then, is one “drawn”?
Tractates on the Gospel of John 26.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · We come to Christ by believing, not walking; to “touch” him, like the woman with the flow of blood, is to believe, and Mary was told not to touch him as though he were only what she saw.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 27.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Some did not understand because they did not believe; faith, which joins us to Christ, is itself a gift of the Father, so the believer must not be proud.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 27.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Peter, speaking for all as the sign of unity, confessed that Christ has the words of eternal life; we believe in order to know, and Christ gives in his flesh and blood what he himself is.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 29.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Believe in order to understand: to do God's will is to believe in Christ, which means to love him and be incorporated into his members by faith working through love.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 34.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Following is present, having the light is future: now we follow by faith, then we shall see; meanwhile we desire God, who alone sees that desire and gives himself.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 36.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ's judgment is true because the Father, who sent him, is with him; his being sent is his incarnation, which is believed before it is understood.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 38.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Only God truly is, without change, past, or future; Christ's “I am” means “I am God,” which we cannot grasp but must believe.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 38.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Asked “Who are you?”, Christ answered “The Beginning,” meaning “Believe me to be the Beginning,” who became lowly and speaks to men so that they may believe.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 40.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Faith is a lowly foundation, like a tree's root, but if they remain in Christ's word it leads to discipleship and knowledge of the truth.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 40.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · We believe in order to know: faith in what is not seen will be rewarded with the sight of the truth, when God's image, worn away in us like a coin's, is stamped anew.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 45.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Believers who do not yet understand Christ's words differ from unbelievers because they believe and keep knocking; let them hold to faith and wait for understanding.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 45.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The righteous before Christ believed in him as to come and so belonged to the same faith and fold as believers now; the signs differed, as in the Red Sea and the rock, but the faith was one.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 45.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · To go in through Christ is to enter the Church and the life of faith; to go out is to pass by faith at death to the more abundant life where the shepherd has gone before.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Jesus told the disciples plainly that Lazarus was dead, knowing it without being told, so that their existing faith might be strengthened.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Faith is the life of the soul: the believer who dies in the flesh lives, and the unbeliever who lives in the flesh is already dead.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ’s groaning signifies the groaning of faith in a sinner who accuses himself; waking faith is like waking Christ asleep in the storm-tossed boat.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 54.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · To believe in Christ is to believe in the Father who has a Son equal and co-eternal with him, not merely in the man who was seen.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 54.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · No apostle could say "he who believes in me"; Christ could, because he is equal to the Father, so that whoever sees him sees the Father.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 68.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ goes away to prepare the place by making us live by faith, which cleanses the heart for the sight of God; the dwelling places differ as merits differ.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 72.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Since every believer is said to do Christ's works, those works must be the justification of the ungodly, which Christ works in us but not without us.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 79.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · "That you may believe" means that seeing the risen and ascending Christ would restore and increase the disciples' faith in what they could not see, his divinity.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 91.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The sin meant is unbelief in Christ despite his words and works, the sin that retains all others.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 95.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The world is convicted of its own sin of unbelief and of the righteousness of believers, which is faith in the Christ they no longer see.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 95.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · "You will no longer see me" means they would no longer see Christ in his mortal lowliness; believing in him unseen is the righteousness of faith.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 98.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ crucified is the same teaching for all, milk to the carnal who believe it and solid food to the spiritual who understand it.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 106.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The disciples truly knew and believed only after receiving the Spirit; Christ speaks of their faith in the past tense as a prediction.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 109.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ prayed for all who would ever believe through the apostles' word, including believers of later ages.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 109.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Those who seemed already to believe did not yet hold faith in the resurrection; they too came to true faith through the apostles' word and were included in Christ's prayer.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 109.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Paul, taught by revelation, and the penitent thief, who believed when the apostles' faith failed, seem not to have believed through the apostles' word.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 109.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · "Their word" is the word of faith in Christ's resurrection, first entrusted to the apostles to preach; all believers, Paul and the thief included, believe through it.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 110.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The unity and the faith Christ prays for are the same thing: the faithful world, reconciled to God, becomes one by believing, by God's grace.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 110.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · "I in them and you in me" is said as mediator; "perfected into one" points to the final blessedness, when the world will know by sight what it now believes.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 111.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Seeing Christ's glory is the reward of faith reserved for the pure in heart; we shall be with Christ in the Father, a 'place' to be thought of without bodily images.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 121.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Thomas sees the risen man and confesses him as God; Christ blesses those who believe without seeing, which points to the faith of the Gentiles.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 4.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · We believe in Christ through the apostles' witness and must abide in him so as not to be shamed at his coming; his promise is sure if we keep faith.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 4.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Sin is iniquity; Christ, who had no sin, came to take it away; whoever abides in him by faith does not sin, in so far as he believes.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 10.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · To believe that Jesus is the Christ is to believe with love, as Peter did, whose confession is the rock on which the Church is built; the demons confessed the same words without love.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 2.50Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · God lets believers die so that faith may be real faith in unseen things, not a desire to escape death; only those alive at Christ's return will be changed without dying.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 2.52Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Christ ascended and withheld immortality from believers' bodies so that they might live by faith in what is unseen; this is the righteousness of which the Spirit convicts the world.
On the Christian Life 13Fastidius · ca. 411-430 · Against those who hold that faith alone saves without works of righteousness, the author argues from both Testaments that God condemns sin, and that Paul's "works of the law" are ceremonial works, not righteousness.
On the Spirit and the Letter 18Augustine of Hippo · 412 · True wisdom is godliness, which gives thanks to God rather than claiming righteousness for oneself; the righteousness of God in Rom 1:17 is the righteousness God gives.
On the Spirit and the Letter 51Augustine of Hippo · 412 · The law's promise of life is fulfilled only by the justified, and justification comes from faith, which obtains the Spirit's sweetness so that one acts from love rather than fear.
On the Spirit and the Letter 54Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Faith is in our power, since believing is consenting, which is an act of will; yet all power is from God, though evil will is not, and God may give power to the wicked as judgment.
On the Spirit and the Letter 55Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Not all believing is good; the faith Paul commends is belief in God.
On the Spirit and the Letter 56Augustine of Hippo · 412 · The faith Paul commends is not servile belief that fears punishment but the faith of sons that asks God for righteousness and continence, obtains the Spirit, and works through love.
On the Spirit and the Letter 57Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Augustine asks whether the will to believe is God's gift or comes from natural free choice, noting the difficulty on either side.
On the Spirit and the Letter 58Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Augustine first proposes that the will to believe arises from God-given free choice when God calls; unbelievers resist God's will but cannot escape his judgment.
On the Spirit and the Letter 60Augustine of Hippo · 412 · God works the will to believe by outward and inward persuasion, though consent remains the act of one's own will; why one is persuaded and another not lies in the depth of God's judgments.
City of God 4.20Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that Virtue and Faith are gifts of God, not goddesses, and asks why, if they are deities, the Romans did not also deify temperance, fortitude, and prudence.
City of God 11.2Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Knowledge of the unchangeable God is reached only through faith in Christ the mediator, who as man is the way and as God the goal.
City of God 13.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The baptized still die so that faith may remain faith and martyrs may conquer the fear of death; by grace the penalty of sin becomes the martyr's weapon of righteousness.
City of God 16.32Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac, trusting in resurrection, prefigures God's giving of his Son; the ram caught in thorns figures Christ, and God confirms the promise by oath.
City of God 22.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Contrasting Rome's belief in Romulus with the church's faith in Christ, Augustine argues that Rome made its founder a god by love, while the church, persuaded by miracles and prophecy, loved Christ by believing him God, and its martyrs died rather than deny him.
On Faith and Works 20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · Christ told the rich man to keep the commandments to enter life; faith and conduct are inseparable, so Scripture sometimes names one for both.
On Faith and Works 21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · Paul's teaching that we are justified by faith without works of the law was misread as licence; true saving faith works through love, and the other apostles wrote against faith without works.
On Faith and Works 23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · James compares faith without works to the demons' belief and calls it dead.
On Faith and Works 27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · Augustine's own interpretation: the foundation is faith working through love; gold and silver are wholehearted devotion to God, while wood and hay are carnal attachments to lawful goods, lost with painful “fire”; grave sin destroys the foundation itself.
On Faith and Works 30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · The Canaanite woman was praised because Christ saw her changed; believing in Christ means faith working through love, not the dead faith of demons.
On Faith and Works 41Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · Faith profits by bringing help to live well and pardon for those who turn from sin; Wisdom 15:2 and 1 John 2:1–2 give no security to those who persist.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.93Jerome · ca. 414-419 · God looks for faith, not works of the law; punishments are meant to correct, yet Jerusalem hardened itself against them.
On Nature and Grace 2Augustine of Hippo · 415 · Augustine argues that if nature alone could fulfill righteousness without faith in Christ, Christ would have died in vain.
On Nature and Grace 17Augustine of Hippo · 415 · Augustine argues from James 3 that the wisdom which tames the tongue comes down from above and must be asked of God in faith, so that the law commands and faith obtains.
On Patience 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · The righteous of the Old Testament were also justified by faith in the Christ to come and by prevenient mercy; God's choice and love always come first.
On Man's Perfection in Righteousness 41Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · None of Caelestius's texts on choice excludes grace: even marriage, voluntary goodness, choosing life, and willing the commandments depend on God, who gives faith.
Apologetic Book 17.6Orosius · ca. 415–416 · Each receives a measure of faith.
Apologetic Book 23.3Orosius · ca. 415–416 · Abraham's spotlessness is faith.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.1.4Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Where reason fails, faith helps.
On the Proceedings of Pelagius 34Augustine of Hippo · 417 · Faith itself, the beginning of every good work, is not merited but given by God's prevenient mercy.
On the Grace of Christ and On Original Sin 1.11Augustine of Hippo · 418 · Pelagius explains 'God works in you to will' as God's promises and exhortations; Augustine insists on a grace that makes people actually believe, love, and be persuaded.
On the Grace of Christ and On Original Sin 2.27Augustine of Hippo · 418 · Augustine distinguishes truly open questions (the location of paradise, where Enoch and Elijah are, the number of heavens, the elements, eclipses, Methuselah's age) from questions of faith.
On the Grace of Christ and On Original Sin 2.28Augustine of Hippo · 418 · The Christian faith rests on the two men, Adam and Christ; even the righteous of old, including Job, were justified only by faith in the one mediator's incarnation, death, and resurrection.
On the Grace of Christ and On Original Sin 2.29Augustine of Hippo · 418 · Even under the law the righteous were saved by grace through the same faith in Christ that they expressed in the Psalms and prophets; that grace was hidden then and is revealed now.
On Marriage and Concupiscence 1.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Union for begetting is the natural good of marriage, but true married chastity exists only where it serves the true faith.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine argues from Scripture that believing in Christ, and so receiving him, is itself a gift of God's grace.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1.39Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine answers that the Old Testament saints were saved only by faith in Christ the Mediator, not by nature or the law, as Pelagius taught.
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 3.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine answers the charge that he calls the saints only relatively good, explaining that right faith, not moral achievement alone, distinguishes the righteous, and illustrating this with two contrasting men.
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.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · God is worshipped by faith, hope, and love, and explaining what each concerns will answer all Laurentius's questions.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Faith differs from hope, since faith concerns good and evil, past, present, and future, while hope concerns only one's own future good; yet love, hope, and faith cannot exist without one another.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Augustine leaves open whether harmless mistakes are sins and rejects the Academics' suspension of all assent, since faith requires assent and much, like the fact that we live, is certain.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Faith too is God's gift, and good works follow from his grace, which makes us not men, as at creation, but good men.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 67Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Against those who hold that baptized catholics who die unrepentant in grave sin will be saved through a temporary fire, Augustine argues from Paul and James that faith without works does not save.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 75Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · “Give alms and all things are clean” does not cover the unrepentant or unbelievers, for only faith in Christ cleanses.
On Grace and Free Will 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 426 · Paul's good fight, finished course, and kept faith were all God's gifts; faith that works through love, itself God's gift, produces the works for which eternal life is rendered.
On Grace and Free Will 14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 426 · Against the claim that grace is given for the merit of a good will, Augustine shows that faith itself is God's gift and that God, as Ezekiel says, takes away the heart of stone for his name's sake, not for prior merits.
Retractations 1.13Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Reviewing On the Usefulness of Believing, Augustine refines his remarks on the letter that kills, on who is already blessed, on knowing and believing, on wise and foolish, and on miracles today.
The Conferences 3.16John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The apostles asked God even for faith, and Christ prayed that Peter's faith would not fail; without Christ we can do nothing, and every good gift comes from above.
The Conferences 7.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The perfect mind is like the centurion who commands soldiers to come and go; armed with faith, love, hope, and the word of God, and strong in weakness and patience, the monk can rule his thoughts.
On the Predestination of the Saints 2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 428/429 · Against those who hold that the beginning of faith is ours and only its increase God's, Augustine argues that faith from its beginning is God's gift, since we cannot even think anything of ourselves.
On the Predestination of the Saints 3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 428/429 · Augustine admits that before his episcopate he held that the beginning of faith was ours, and quotes his Retractations correcting his earlier Exposition of Propositions from Romans.
On the Predestination of the Saints 4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 428/429 · Augustine shows that he corrected his view in the first book To Simplician, written early in his episcopate, quoting his Retractations; 1 Cor 4:7 excludes claiming even the beginning of faith as one's own.
On the Predestination of the Saints 5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 428/429 · 1 Cor 4:7 cannot refer to natural gifts common to all, since Paul speaks of what distinguishes one person from another; the capacity for faith is natural, but having faith is grace, for in the elect the will is prepared by the Lord.
On the Predestination of the Saints 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 428/429 · Faith itself is the work of God (John 6:29) and his gift (Eph 2:8); even Cornelius's good works before he believed in Christ are to be credited to God.
On the Predestination of the Saints 8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 428/429 · Coming to Christ is believing, and is given by the Father's inward teaching; God teaches all who come, out of mercy, and those he does not teach are not taught by judgment; faith, begun and completed, is God's gift, given to some and not others by his just and hidden judgment.
On the Predestination of the Saints 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 428/429 · Faith, like putting to death the deeds of the flesh, is both required of us and God's gift; it is safer to entrust oneself to God's firm promise than to one's own uncertain will.
On the Predestination of the Saints 17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 428/429 · The elect are not chosen because they believed but chosen so that they may believe; they were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world by predestination, and called out of the world by the calling that fulfils it.
On the Predestination of the Saints 19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 428/429 · Against the brothers' view that God foreknew only the beginning of faith, Augustine argues from Eph 1 and Paul's thanksgivings for the faith of the Ephesians and Thessalonians that the beginning of faith is God's work.
On the Predestination of the Saints 20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 428/429 · Paul's prayers for an “open door” and the opening of Lydia's heart show that the beginning of faith is God's gift; God inclines human wills not only for earthly kingdoms but for the kingdom of heaven.
On the Predestination of the Saints 21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 428/429 · Augustine closes the first book, explaining that its length was required by the new claim that the beginning of faith is man's own, and restating that even the beginning of faith is God's gift.
Part 16Eutherius of Tyana · ca. 431-440 · The author argues against blind acceptance of words, showing that apparently contrary texts about Christ (only-begotten and firstborn, eternal and recent, without genealogy and with one) agree only when referred to his two natures.
Chapter 8Prosper of Aquitaine · ca. 432-433 · Prosper answers Cassian's appeal to 'the rule of the church's faith' with a chain of biblical texts showing that faith and every good will are gifts of grace, which does not abolish the will but makes it good.
Chapter 16Prosper of Aquitaine · ca. 432-433 · Prosper rejects Cassian's claim that the centurion's faith would have earned no praise had it been God's gift, showing from Paul's thanksgivings that faith is both praised and given by God.
Chapter 17Prosper of Aquitaine · ca. 432-433 · Prosper shows that Cassian, though disowning the thesis that grace is given according to merit, implies it by making the centurion's faith his own meritorious possession.
Tome to the Armenians 6Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 435-437 · Paul names faith, hope, and love as the chief virtues; faith gives men knowledge beyond even the angels and lifts the mind to God.
Part 1, chapter 10Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Abraham, called out of astrological Chaldea, believed the promise of land and heir and so became the father of faith, pointing to the Christian inheritance in the land of the living.
Part 1, chapter 11Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · God promised Abraham a seed as countless as the stars, and Abraham’s faith, counted as righteousness, is the foundation fulfilled in Christ.
Part 1, chapter 13Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · God’s renaming of Abram as Abraham, father of many nations, shows that the promise extends to all who share his faith, not only to his descendants by the flesh.