What makes a particular Church Council Ecumenical? How many have fit this definition down through history, and what is their importance and authority? The Catholic and Orthodox Churches have related but somewhat different answers to these questions....
St. Augustine explains how King Solomon was a prototype or symbol of Jesus Christ and how the Jerusalem Temple was likewise an image or figure of the Church. Only those who build with the Lord build up the church effectively. This passage is...
Augustine shows how, inasmuch as Jesus Christ, the son of God, became man, he himself was the subject of predestination. By divine grace, not by human merits, Jesus was predestined to be of the line of David according to his sacred humanity....
Was the divinity of Jesus Christ and the dogma of the Trinity invented by the Roman Emperor Constantine? Here is extensive evidence from the Early Church Fathers before AD 312 for the belief that Jesus was divine,...
St. Peter Chrysologus contrasts the first, earthly Adam with our Lord Jesus Christ, viewed as the second, last Adam, the man from heaven....
Here Irenaeus comments on Jesus statement in Matthew 11:27 that "no one knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son has revealed him." The full revelation of God comes in and...
Pope Paul VI was the first Pope we know of since Peter to return to the Holy Land on pilgrimage. While in Nazareth in 1964, he spoke these words about the lessons we can learn from the everyday life of the Holy Family during the...
Here, the fathers of the Second Vatican Council II praise Christ as the Perfect Man, like us in all things but sin. A moving tribute to the true humanity of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh....
Maximus the Confessor on the Mystery of the Divine Incarnation. [dropcaps type='normal' font_size='100' color='' background_color='' border_color='']T[/dropcaps]he Word of God, born once in the flesh (such is his kindness and his goodness), is always willing to be born spiritually in those who desire him. In them he...
A lyrical tribute to the wonder and mystery of the Incarnation by Gregory of Nazianzen. He shows that the first step in the work of atonement between God and man is taken when the Divine Word, the eternal Son of God, unites his divinity...