English · ASV

Hilary of Poitiers

Nicene & Post-Nicene · AD 325–500

625 passages across 25 books of the Bible · Who was this?

Commentary

181–200 of 625
  1. John 17:3
    But in what does eternal life consist? His own words tell us: “That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Is there any doubt or difficulty here, or any inconsistency? It is life to know the true God. But the bare knowledge of him does not give life. What, then, does he add? “And Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” In you, the only true God, the Son pays the honor due to his Father. By the addition “and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,” he associates himself with the true Godhead. The believer in his confession draws no line between the two, for his hope of life rests in both. And indeed, the true God is inseparable from him whose name follows in the creed. Therefore when we read, “That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,” these terms of sender and of sent are not intended, under any semblance of distinction either in name or interval [of time], to convey a difference between the true Godhead of Father and of Son. Rather, they are meant to be a guide to the devout confession of them as begetter and begotten.

    ON THE TRINITY 3.14

  2. John 17:3
    But it must be clear to everyone that the truth or genuineness of something is evidenced in its nature and powers. For instance, true wheat is what grows to maturity with the beard bristling around it which is then purged from the chaff and ground into flour, baked into a loaf and taken for food. [Wheat] demonstrates the nature and uses that bread is known for.… What element of the Godhead, then, is lacking in the Son who possesses both the nature and power of God? For he had at his disposal the powers of the divine nature to bring into being the nonexistent and to create whenever he wanted.

    ON THE TRINITY 5.3-4

  3. John 17:4-5
    (iii. de Trin) This new glory with which our Lord had glorified the Father, does not imply any advancement in Godhead, but refers to the honour received from those who are converted from ignorance to knowledge.

    (ix. de Trin) After which, that we may understand the reward of His obedience, and the mystery of the whole dispensation, He adds, And now glorify Me with the glory with Thine own Self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.

    (iii. de Trin) Or He prayed that that which was mortal, might receive the glory immortal, that the corruption of the flesh might be transformed and absorbed into the incorruption of the Spirit.

    (as quoted by Aquinas, AD 1274) Catena Aurea by Aquinas

  4. John 17:5
    And so, he had not abdicated his own position. And yet, he had taken ours. He prays, then, that the nature that he had assumed may be promoted to the glory that he had never renounced. … This Son, now incarnate, prayed that flesh might be to the Father what the Son had been. He prayed that flesh, born in time, might receive the splendor of the everlasting glory, that the corruption of the flesh might be swallowed up, transformed into the power of God and the incorruption of the Spirit.

    ON THE TRINITY 3.16

  5. John 17:11
    John, who especially brings out the working of spiritual causes in the Gospel, preserves this prayer of the Lord for the apostles that all the others passed over. Notice how he prayed, namely, “Holy Father, keep them in your name.… While I was with them, I kept them in your name: those whom you gave me I have kept.” That prayer was not for himself but for his apostles. He was not in sorrow for himself since he asks them to pray that they won’t be tempted.… And when he prays, he prays for those whom he preserved, so long as he was with them, whom he now hands over to the Father to preserve. Now that he is about to accomplish the mystery of death, he begs the Father to guard them. The presence of the angel who was sent to him (if this explanation is true) is no doubt significant. Jesus showed his certainty that the prayer was answered when, at its close, he commands the disciples to sleep. The effect of this prayer and the security that prompted the command, “sleep,” is noticed by the Evangelist in the course of the passion, when he says of the apostles just before they escaped from th…
    John, who especially brings out the working of spiritual causes in the Gospel, preserves this prayer of the Lord for the apostles that all the others passed over. Notice how he prayed, namely, “Holy Father, keep them in your name.… While I was with them, I kept them in your name: those whom you gave me I have kept.” That prayer was not for himself but for his apostles. He was not in sorrow for himself since he asks them to pray that they won’t be tempted.… And when he prays, he prays for those whom he preserved, so long as he was with them, whom he now hands over to the Father to preserve. Now that he is about to accomplish the mystery of death, he begs the Father to guard them. The presence of the angel who was sent to him (if this explanation is true) is no doubt significant. Jesus showed his certainty that the prayer was answered when, at its close, he commands the disciples to sleep. The effect of this prayer and the security that prompted the command, “sleep,” is noticed by the Evangelist in the course of the passion, when he says of the apostles just before they escaped from the hands of the pursuers, “That the word might be fulfilled which he had spoken, ‘Of those whom you have given me, I lost not one of them.’ ” He himself fulfills the petition of his prayer, and they are all safe. But he asks that those whom he has preserved the Father will now preserve in his own name. And they are preserved; the faith of Peter does not fail: it cowered, but repentance followed immediately.

    ON THE TRINITY 10.42

  6. John 17:20
    Our Lord prays to His Father that those who shall believe in Him may be one, and as He is in the Father and the Father in Him, so all may be one in Them. Why dost thou bring in here an identity of mind, why a unity of soul and heart through agreement of will? For there would have been no lack of suitable words for our Lord, if it were will that made them one, to have prayed in this fashion: Father, as We are one in will, so may they also be one in will, that we may all be one through agreement.... For those first of all is the prayer of whom it is said, That they all may be one. Then the promotion of unity is set forth by a pattern of unity, when He says, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us, so that as the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, so through the pattern of this unity all might be one in the Father and the Son.

    On the Trinity, Book 8, Section 11

  7. John 17:20
    Now our Lord has not left the minds of His faithful followers in doubt, but has explained the manner in which His nature operates, saying, "That they may be one, as We are one: I in them and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in one."... If He wished to indicate a mere unity of will, why did He set forth a kind of gradation and sequence in the completion of the unity, unless it were that, since He was in the Father through the nature of Deity, and we on the contrary in Him through His birth in the body, He would have us believe that He is in us through the mystery of the sacraments? And thus there might be taught a perfect unity through a Mediator, whilst, we abiding in Him, He abode in the Father, and as abiding in the Father abode also in us; and so we might arrive at unity with the Father, since in Him Who dwells naturally in the Father by birth, we also dwell naturally, while He Himself abides naturally in us also.

    On the Trinity, Book 8, Sections 13 and 15

  8. John 17:20
    The words of Christ, "I and the Father are one," [heretics] endeavour to refer to a mere concord of unanimity, so that there may be in them a unity of will not of nature, that is, that they may be one not by essence of being, but by identity of will. And they apply to the support of their case the passage in the Acts of the Apostles, "Now of the multitude of them that believed the heart and soul were one," in order to prove that a diversity of souls and hearts may be united into one heart and soul through a mere conformity of will.... Or again, they quote the prayer of our Lord for the salvation of the nations who should believe in Him: "Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that shall believe on Me through their Word; that they all may be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us," to shew that since men cannot, so to speak, be fused back into God or themselves coalesce into one undistinguished mass, this oneness must arise from unity of will, while all perform actions pleasing to God, and unite one with another in the harmonious…
    The words of Christ, "I and the Father are one," [heretics] endeavour to refer to a mere concord of unanimity, so that there may be in them a unity of will not of nature, that is, that they may be one not by essence of being, but by identity of will. And they apply to the support of their case the passage in the Acts of the Apostles, "Now of the multitude of them that believed the heart and soul were one," in order to prove that a diversity of souls and hearts may be united into one heart and soul through a mere conformity of will.... Or again, they quote the prayer of our Lord for the salvation of the nations who should believe in Him: "Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that shall believe on Me through their Word; that they all may be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us," to shew that since men cannot, so to speak, be fused back into God or themselves coalesce into one undistinguished mass, this oneness must arise from unity of will, while all perform actions pleasing to God, and unite one with another in the harmonious accord of their thoughts, and that thus it is not nature which makes them one, but will.

    On the Trinity, Book 8, Section 5

  9. John 17:20
    The world is to believe that the Son has been sent by the Father because all who shall believe in Him will be one in the Father and the Son. And how they will be so we are soon told: "And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given unto them." Now I ask whether glory is identical with will, since will is an emotion of the mind while glory is an ornament or embellishment of nature. So then it is the glory received from the Father that the Son hath given to all who shall believe in Him, and certainly not will.... It is then with this object that the received glory was bestowed, that all might be one. So now all are one in glory, because the glory given is none other than that which was received.

    On the Trinity, Book 8, Section 12

  10. John 17:21
    (vii de Trin) And this unity is recommended by the great example of unity: As Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us, i. e. that as the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, so, after the likeness of this unity, all may be one in the Father and in the Son. (viii. de Trin) Heretics endeavouring to get over the words, I and My Father are one, as a proving unity of nature, and to reduce them to mean a unity simply of natural love, and agreement of will, bring forwards these words of our Lord's as an example of this kind of unity: That they may be all one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee. But though impiety can cheat its own understanding, it cannot alter the meaning of the words themselves. For they who are born again of a nature that gives unity in life eternal, they cease to be one in will merely, acquiring the same nature by their regeneration: but the Father and Son alone are properly one, because God, only-begotten of God, can only exist in that nature from which He is derived. (viii. de Trin) Or, the world will believe that t…
    (vii de Trin) And this unity is recommended by the great example of unity: As Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us, i. e. that as the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, so, after the likeness of this unity, all may be one in the Father and in the Son.

    (viii. de Trin) Heretics endeavouring to get over the words, I and My Father are one, as a proving unity of nature, and to reduce them to mean a unity simply of natural love, and agreement of will, bring forwards these words of our Lord's as an example of this kind of unity: That they may be all one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee. But though impiety can cheat its own understanding, it cannot alter the meaning of the words themselves. For they who are born again of a nature that gives unity in life eternal, they cease to be one in will merely, acquiring the same nature by their regeneration: but the Father and Son alone are properly one, because God, only-begotten of God, can only exist in that nature from which He is derived.

    (viii. de Trin) Or, the world will believe that the Son is sent from the Father, for that reason, viz. because all who believe in Him are one in the Father and the Son.

    (as quoted by Aquinas, AD 1274) Catena Aurea by Aquinas

  11. John 17:21
    [This passage] shows that since human beings cannot, so to speak, be fused back into God or themselves coalesce into one undistinguished mass, this oneness must arise from unity of will, as all perform actions pleasing to God and unite with one another in the harmonious agreement of their thoughts. Therefore, it is not nature that makes them one but will.

    ON THE TRINITY 8.5

  12. John 17:22
    Now I ask whether glory is identical with will, since will is an emotion of the mind while glory is an ornament or embellishment of nature. So then, it is the glory received from the Father that the Son has given to all who shall believe in him, and certainly not will. Had will been given, faith would carry with it no reward, for a necessity of will attached to us would also impose faith on us. However, he has shown what is effected by the bestowal of the glory received: “that they may be one, even as we are one.” It is then with this object that the received glory was bestowed, that all might be one. So now all are one in glory, because the glory given is none other than that which was received; nor has it been given for any other reason than that all should be one. And since all are one through the glory given to the Son and by the Son bestowed on believers, I ask how the Son can be of a different glory from the Father’s, since the glory of the Son brings all that believe into the unity of the Father’s glory. Now it may be that the utterance of human hope in this case may be somewh…
    Now I ask whether glory is identical with will, since will is an emotion of the mind while glory is an ornament or embellishment of nature. So then, it is the glory received from the Father that the Son has given to all who shall believe in him, and certainly not will. Had will been given, faith would carry with it no reward, for a necessity of will attached to us would also impose faith on us. However, he has shown what is effected by the bestowal of the glory received: “that they may be one, even as we are one.” It is then with this object that the received glory was bestowed, that all might be one. So now all are one in glory, because the glory given is none other than that which was received; nor has it been given for any other reason than that all should be one. And since all are one through the glory given to the Son and by the Son bestowed on believers, I ask how the Son can be of a different glory from the Father’s, since the glory of the Son brings all that believe into the unity of the Father’s glory. Now it may be that the utterance of human hope in this case may be somewhat immoderate, yet it will not be contrary to faith. For though to hope for this were presumptuous, yet not to have believed it is sinful, for we have one and the same author both of our hope and of our faith.

    ON THE TRINITY 8.12

  13. John 17:22-23
    (viii. de Trin) By this giving and receiving of honour, then, all are one. But I do not yet apprehend in what way this makes all one. Our Lord, however, explains the gradation and order in the consummating of this unity, when He adds, I in them, and Thou in Me; so that inasmuch as He was in the Father by His divine nature, we in Him by His incarnation, and He again in us by the mystery of the sacrament, a perfect union by means of a Mediator was established.

    (as quoted by Aquinas, AD 1274) Catena Aurea by Aquinas

  14. John 19:7
    If you [Arians] will not learn who Christ is from those who know him, learn it at least from those who do not.… Can’t you see your fellowship with the … Jews [of Jesus’ day] in which your denial of the divine Sonship has involved you! For they have put on record the reason of their condemnation: “And by our law he ought to die because he made himself the Son of God.” Isn’t this the same charge that you are blasphemously bringing against him, that, while you pronounce him a creature, he calls himself the Son? He confesses himself the Son, and they declare him guilty of death. You too deny that he is the Son of God. What sentence do you pass on him? You have the same repugnance to his claim as had the Jews. You agree with their verdict. I want to know whether you will quarrel about the sentence. Your offense, in denying that he is the Son of God, is exactly the same as theirs, though their guilt is less, for they sinned in ignorance.

    ON THE TRINITY 6.50

  15. John 19:26-27
    And yet some very depraved men take from this the basis of their view that there were many brothers of our Lord as a point of tradition. If there had been sons of Mary who were not rather produced from a previous marriage of Joseph's, Mary never would have been transferred to the apostle John as his mother at the time of the Passion, nor would the Lord have said to them both, "Woman, behold your son," and to John, "Behold your mother," [John 19:26-27] unless perhaps he was leaving his disciple's filial love in order to comfort her who was left behind.

    Commentary on Matthew verse 1:4, page 45-46

  16. John 19:30
    The only-begotten God had the power of laying down his life and of taking it up again. After the drought of vinegar, when he had shown that his work of human suffering was finished and in order to accomplish in himself the mystery of death, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. If it has been granted to our mortal nature of its own will to breathe its last breath and seek rest in death—if the buffeted soul may depart without the breaking up of the body and the spirit burst forth and flee away without being as it were violated in its own home by the breaking and piercing and crushing of limbs—then fear of death might have seized the Lord of life. This is true if, that is, when he gave up the ghost and died, his death was not an exercise of his own free will. But if he died of his own will and through his own will gave back his spirit, death had no terror, because it was in his own power.

    ON THE TRINITY 10.11

  17. John 20:17
    (de Trin.) Heretics, among their other impieties, misinterpret these words of our Lord's, and say, that if His Father is their Father, His God their God, He cannot be God Himself. But though He remained in the form of God, He took upon Him the form of a servant; and Christ says this in the form of a servant to men. And we cannot doubt that in so far as He is man, the Father is His Father in the same sense in which He is of other men, and God His God in like manner. Indeed He begins with saying, Go to My brethren. But God can only have brethren according to the flesh; the Only-Begotten God, being Only-Begotten, is without brethren.

    (as quoted by Aquinas, AD 1274) Catena Aurea by Aquinas

  18. John 20:26
    The Lord stoops to the level even of our feeble understanding. He works a miracle of his invisible power in order to satisfy the doubts of unbelieving minds. Explain, my critic, the ways of heaven—explain his action if you can. The disciples were in a closed room. They had met and held their assembly in secret since the passion of the Lord. The Lord presents himself to strengthen the faith of Thomas by meeting his challenge. He gives him his body to feel, his wounds to handle. He, indeed, who would be recognized as having suffered wounds must necessarily produce the body in which those wounds were received. I ask at what point in the walls of that closed house the Lord bodily entered. The apostle has recorded the circumstances with careful precision: “Jesus came when the doors were shut and stood in the midst.” Did he penetrate through bricks and mortar or through stout woodwork—substances whose very nature it is to bar progress? For there he stood in bodily presence; there was no suspicion of deceit. Let the eye of your mind follow his path as he enters. Let your intellectual vision…
    The Lord stoops to the level even of our feeble understanding. He works a miracle of his invisible power in order to satisfy the doubts of unbelieving minds. Explain, my critic, the ways of heaven—explain his action if you can. The disciples were in a closed room. They had met and held their assembly in secret since the passion of the Lord. The Lord presents himself to strengthen the faith of Thomas by meeting his challenge. He gives him his body to feel, his wounds to handle. He, indeed, who would be recognized as having suffered wounds must necessarily produce the body in which those wounds were received. I ask at what point in the walls of that closed house the Lord bodily entered. The apostle has recorded the circumstances with careful precision: “Jesus came when the doors were shut and stood in the midst.” Did he penetrate through bricks and mortar or through stout woodwork—substances whose very nature it is to bar progress? For there he stood in bodily presence; there was no suspicion of deceit. Let the eye of your mind follow his path as he enters. Let your intellectual vision accompany him as he passes into that closed dwelling. There is no breach in the walls; no door has been unbarred. Yet, see how he stands in the midst whose might no barrier can resist. You are a critic of things invisible; I ask you to explain a visible event. Everything remains firm as it was. No body is capable of insinuating itself through the interstices of wood and stone. The body of the Lord does not disperse itself, to come together again after a disappearance. Yet where does the one who is standing in their midst come from? Your senses and your words are powerless to account for it. The fact is certain, but it lies beyond the region of human explanation. If, as you say, our account of the divine birth is a lie, then prove that this account of the Lord’s entrance is a fiction. If we assume that an event did not happen, because we cannot discover how it was done, we make the limits of our understanding into the limits of reality. But the certainty of the evidence proves the falsehood of our contradiction. The Lord did stand in a closed house in the midst of the disciples; the Son was born of the Father. Deny not that he stood, because your puny wits cannot ascertain how he came there; renounce instead a disbelief in God the only-begotten and perfect Son of God the unbegotten and perfect Father that is based only on the incapacity of sense and speech to comprehend.

    ON THE TRINITY 3.20

  19. Luke 8:28-31
    Did not the devils know the real nature of this name? It is fitting that the heretics should be found guilty, not by the teachings of the apostles but by the mouth of demons. The latter often exclaim, “What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” The truth drew out this reluctant confession, and being forced to obey, their grief testifies to the strength of this nature. This power overcomes them, since they abandon bodies that they have possessed for a long time. They pay their tribute of honor when they acknowledge the nature of Christ. In the meantime, Christ testifies that he is the Son by his miracles as well as by his name. O heretic, where do you find the name of a creature or the favor of an adoption among those words by which the demons admit who he is?

    ON THE TRINITY 6.49

  20. Malachi 3:6
    He does not need those things that are from him, through him and to him; neither he who is the origin, nor he who is the designer, nor he who embraces all things. He is outside of the things that are within; he is the Creator of those that have been made; and he himself is never in want of his own possessions. Nothing is before him, nothing is from anywhere else, nothing is outside of him. What growth in fullness is therefore wanting to him that God may yet be all in all in the course of time? Or whence shall he procure it outside of whom there is nothing, but nothing in the sense that he always is? And by what kind of an increase is he himself to be made complete who always exists and outside of whom there is nothing? Or by what kind of growth is he to be changed who says, “I am, and I change not,” since there is no opportunity for a change or any cause that will enable him to make progress. Nor is there anything prior to eternity or anything else besides God in his relationship with God. Hence God will not be all in all through subjection of the Son, nor will any cause make him per…
    He does not need those things that are from him, through him and to him; neither he who is the origin, nor he who is the designer, nor he who embraces all things. He is outside of the things that are within; he is the Creator of those that have been made; and he himself is never in want of his own possessions. Nothing is before him, nothing is from anywhere else, nothing is outside of him. What growth in fullness is therefore wanting to him that God may yet be all in all in the course of time? Or whence shall he procure it outside of whom there is nothing, but nothing in the sense that he always is? And by what kind of an increase is he himself to be made complete who always exists and outside of whom there is nothing? Or by what kind of growth is he to be changed who says, “I am, and I change not,” since there is no opportunity for a change or any cause that will enable him to make progress. Nor is there anything prior to eternity or anything else besides God in his relationship with God. Hence God will not be all in all through subjection of the Son, nor will any cause make him perfect from whom, through whom and in whom every cause exists. He remains, therefore, as he is, always God, and he does not stand in need of improvement who is always that which he is from himself and to himself.

    ON THE TRINITY 11:47

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