ACC ~ Titus 1 v15

DISPOSITION IS THE KEY. CHRYSOSTOM: Things then are not clean or unclean from their own nature but from the disposition of him who partakes of them. HOMILIES ON TITUS 3.

SEVERIAN OF GABALA: God has made all things pure. If anything is unclean, the use to which it is put makes it so. PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH.

AMBROSIASTER: Everything created by God is good; for those who do not know this, they become impure. COMMENTARY ON THE LETTER TO TITUS.

AUGUSTINE: Therefore, if a man offers sacrifice to God, and a good man receive it at his hands, the sacrifice is to each man of such character as he himself has shown himself to be, since we find it also written that “unto the pure all things are pure.” THE LETTERS OF PETILIAN THE DONATIST 2.52.120.

AUGUSTINE: With all this, no one is pressed to endure hardships for which he is unfit. Nothing is imposed on anyone against his will, nor is he condemned by the rest because he confesses himself too feeble to imitate them. They bear in mind how strongly Scripture enjoins charity on all. … Accordingly, all their endeavors are concerned not about the rejection of kinds of food as polluted but about the subjugation of inordinate desire and the maintenance of brotherly love. THE MORALS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 1.33.71.

JEROME: This is entirely directed against the Jewish distinction of clean and unclean, which was maintained on a mistaken view of abolished laws. COMMENTARY ON TITUS.

GREGORY THE GREAT: For, as in the Old Testament outward acts were attended to, so in the New Testament it is not so much what is done outwardly as what is thought inwardly that is regarded with close attention, that it may be punished with searching judgment. LETTERS 64.

FOOD LAWS AND THE FUTURE. AUGUSTINE: The Jews, you see, had accepted that there were certain animals which they could not eat, and others from which they must abstain. The apostle Paul makes it clear that they received this law as a symbolic sign of future realities. SERMONS 149.3.

A PROPER ASCETICISM. AUGUSTINE: But now, when you abstain for the sake of chastising the body from various kinds of food that are in themselves quite permissible, remember that “to the pure all things are pure”; don’t regard anything as impure except what unbelief has defiled; “for to the impure and unbelievers,” the apostle says, nothing is pure.But naturally, when the faithful are reducing their bodies to slavery, whatever is deducted from bodily pleasure is credited to spiritual health. SERMONS 208.1.

HUMILITY. POEMEN: “If a man has attained to that which the apostle speaks of ‘to the pure, everything is pure,’ he sees himself less than all creatures.” The brother said, “How can I deem myself less than a murderer?” The old man said, “When a man has really comprehended this saying, if he sees a man committing a murder he says, ‘He has only committed this one sin, but I commit sin every day.’” SAYINGS OF THE FATHERS 97.

NOTHING NATURAL UNCLEAN. ATHANASIUS: All things made by God are beautiful and pure, for the Word of God has made nothing useless or impure. … But since the devil’s darts are varied and subtle, he contrives to trouble those who are of simpler mind, and tries to hinder the ordinary exercises of the brethren, scattering secretly among them thoughts of uncleanness and defilement. Come, let us briefly dispel the error of the evil one by the grace of the Savior and confirm the mind of the simple. … For tell me, beloved and most pious friend, what sin or uncleanness there is in any natural secretion—as though a man were minded to make a culpable matter of the cleanings of the nose or the sputa from the mouth? And we may add also the secretions of the belly, such as are of a physical necessity of animal life. Moreover if we believe man to be, as the divine Scriptures say, a work of God’s hands, how could any defiled work proceed from a pure Power? … But when any bodily excretion takes place independently of will, then we experience this, like other things, by a necessity of nature. LETTERS TO AMUN 48.

THE TRUE HUMANITY OF JESUS. AUGUSTINE: Those likewise are to be detested who deny that our Lord Jesus Christ had Mary as his mother on earth. That dispensation did honor to both sexes male and female and showed that both had a part in God’s care; not only that which he as-sumed but that also through which he assumed it, being a man born of a woman. … Nor should our faith be lessened by any reference to “a woman’s internal organs,” as if it might appear that we must reject any such generation of our Lord because sordid people think that sordid. “The foolishness of God is wiser than men”;and “to the pure all things are pure.” FAITH AND THE CREED 4.9-10.

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