Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

 

Spoils of the Temple, Jean-Guillaume Moitte

So the Lord said, “These people draw near to Me and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me, and they worship Me in vain, teaching the commandments and doctrines of men. Therefore behold, I will proceed to remove this people, and I shall remove them. I shall destroy the wisdom of the wise and hide the understanding of the intelligent.” (Isaiah 29:13–14)

But if we are impure and unfaithful, all things are profane to us, either due to heresy inhabiting our hearts or to a sinful conscience. Moreover, if our conscience does not accuse us and if we have pious trust in the Lord, “we will pray with the spirit and we will pray with the mind; we will sing with the spirit and sing with the mind,” and we will be far removed from those about whom it is here written: “their minds and consciences are polluted.”

“They claim to know God, but they deny him with their deeds. They are accursed, disobedient and repelled by every good deed.” It is about these persons whose minds and consciences are polluted, who claim to know God but deny him with their deeds, that it is said in Isaiah: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” See how they honor God with their lips while fleeing from him in their heart; professing belief in God with words, their works deny him.

Jerome, Commentary on Titus 1.15-16

First, then, I assert that none other than the Creator and Sustainer of both man and the universe can be acknowledged as Father and Lord; next, that to the Father also the title of Lord accrues by reason of His power, and that the Son too receives the same through the Father; then that “grace and peace” are not only His who had them published, but His likewise to whom offense had been given. For neither does grace exist, except after offense; nor peace, except after war. Now, both the people by their transgression of His laws, and the whole race of mankind by their neglect of natural duty, had both sinned and rebelled against the Creator. Marcion’s god, however, could not have been offended, both because he was unknown to everybody, and because he is incapable of being irritated. What grace, therefore, can be had of a god who has not been offended? What peace from one who has never experienced rebellion? “The cross of Christ,” he says, “is to them that perish foolishness; but unto such as shall obtain salvation, it is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” And then, that we may know from where this comes, he adds: “For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.’”

Tertullian, Against Marcion 5.5