Saturday, February 1, 2025

St. Athanasius on Gen 2:17

"This 'you shall die by death,' what else might it be except not merely to die, but to remain in the corruption of death?"

     St. Athanasius, De incarnatione 3, trans. Behr (St. Athanasius the Great On the incarnation:  Greek original and English translation, Popular patristics series 44a (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2011), 57).

BHS:  כִּ֗י בְּי֛וֹם אֲכָלְךָ֥ מִמֶּ֖נּוּ מ֥וֹת תָּמֽוּת׃

LXX:  ᾗ δ᾽ ἂν ἡμέρᾳ φάγητε ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ, θανάτῳ ἀποθανεῖσθε.

Vulgate:  in quocumque enim die comederis ex eo, morte morieris.

     "Indeed, with the common Savior of all dying for us, we, the faithful in Christ, no longer die by death as before [(οὐκέτι νῦν ὥσπερ πάλαι . . . θανάτῳ ἀποθνῄσκομεν)] according to the threat of the law, for such condemnation has ceased.  But with corruption ceasing and being destroyed by the grace of the resurrection, henceforth according to the mortality of the body we are dissolved only for the time which God has set for each, that we may be able 'to attain to a better resurrection' (Heb 11:35).  For as seeds sown in the ground, we do not perish when we are dissolved [(οὐκ ἀπολλύμεθα διαλυόμενοι)], but as sown we shall arise again, death having been destroyed by the grace of the Savior" (Ibid. 21 (p. 95)).


"we were the purpose of his embodiment"

Τῆς γὰρ ἐκείνου ἐνσωματώσεως ἡμεῖς γεγόναμεν ὑπόθεσις

     St. Athanasius, De incarnatione 4, trans. Behr (St. Athanasius the Great On the incarnation:  Greek original and English translation, Popular patristics series 44a (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2011), 59).

Sunday, January 26, 2025

"God, . . . rich in means, employs all things for his hidden ends"

"Dieu, . . . fécond en moyens, emploie toutes choses à ses fins cachées".

     Fr. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, "Oraison funébre de Henriette-Marie de France, reine de la Grande-Bretagne" (Chaillot, 16 November 1669), in Bossuet: oraisons funèbres, panégyriques, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade 33, ed. the Abbé Bernard Velat (Paris: Librairie Galllimard, 1951): 73.