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← Augustine of Hippo

Atos 4

Augustine of Hippo · Comentário Patrístico (catena)

Atos 4:12

For "there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus," since "there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved," and "in him God has defined to all men their faith, in that he has raised him from the dead." Now without this faith, that is to say, without a belief in the one Mediator between God and humankind, the man Christ Jesus; without faith, I say, in his resurrection by which God has given assurance to all people and which no one could of course truly believe were it not for his incarnation and death; without faith, therefore, in the incarnation and death and resurrection of Christ, the Christian truth unhesitatingly declares that the ancient saints could not possibly have been cleansed from sin so as to have become holy and justified by the grace of God. And this is true both of the saints who are mentioned in holy Scripture and of those also who are not indeed mentioned therein but must yet be supposed to have existed—either before the deluge or in the interval between that event and the giving of the law or in the period of the law itself—not merely among the children of Israel, as the prophets, but even outside that nation, as for instance Job. For cleansing from sin was by the self-same faith. The one Mediator cleansed the hearts of these too, and there also was "shed abroad in them the love of God by the Holy Spirit," "who blows where he wills," not following people's merits but even producing these very merits himself. For the grace of God will in no wise exist unless it be wholly free. — ON ORIGINAL SIN 2.24.28

Atos 4:27

For Christ took his name from chrism, that is, from annointing.

Atos 4:32

If love made one soul of so many souls and one heart of so many hearts, how great must be the love between the Father and the Son! Surely it must be greater than that between those people who had one heart. If, then, the heart of many brothers was one by charity, if the soul of many sisters was one by charity, would you say that God the Father and God the Son are two? If they are two Gods, there is not the highest charity between them. For if love is here so great as to make your soul and your friend's soul one soul, how can it be, then, that the Father and the Son are not one God? Let true faith banish the thought. In short, understand from this how excellent that love is: the souls of many people are many, and if they love one another, it is one soul; still, in the case of people, they may be called many souls, because the union is not so strong. But there it is right for you to say one God; two or three Gods it is not right for you to say. From this, the supreme and surpassing excellence of love is shown to you to be such that a greater cannot be. — TRACTATES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 14.9

Atos 4:32

For … the love that God puts in people makes one heart of many hearts and makes the many souls of people into one soul, as it is written of them that believed and mutually loved one another, in the Acts of the Apostles, "They had one soul and one heart toward God." If, therefore, my soul and your soul become one soul, when we think the same thing and love one another, how much more must God the Father and God the Son be one God in the fountain of love! — TRACTATES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 18.4