The Hymn Inspired by John I AM the Bread of Life
Bible Stories and Parables

The Hymn inspired by John, I Am the Bread of Life, with Commentary by Church Fathers and Reformed Preachers

John Chrysostom teaches us: “Jesus calls this the true bread, not because the miracle of the manna was false, but because it was a type and not the very truth itself.” “After Jesus says, ‘Moses did not give,’ he does not say, ‘I give,’ but says that the Father, and not Moses, gives.”
“When they heard this, the people replied: ‘Give us this bread to eat.’ They still thought it was something material, and they yet expected to satisfy their appetites, and so they quickly ran to him. What does Christ do? Leading them on little by little, he says, ‘The bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’” […]

Polycarp, Christian Martyrs, and Stoic Philosophers: Dying the Good Death
Epictetus and Rufus

Polycarp, Christian Martyrs, and Stoic Philosophers: Dying the Good Death

Did the Christian martyrdoms and the Stoic view towards suicide both reflect the ancient Greek and Roman concern that the virtuous person should die the good death, facing death with courage, not fearing death?
What we are not concerned with is whether the Christian views towards martyrdom affected the Stoic views of suicide, or the reverse, or vice versa. How one influenced the other is both impractical to conjecture and impossible to prove.
We cannot assume that all Stoic philosophers enthusiastically condoned suicide. In the City of God, St Augustine opposed suicide in all cases. The Stoic Seneca obsessed about suicide because he spent his last few retirement years wondering when the evil Emperor Nero would send his sword-wielding soldiers to his estate to insist that he commit suicide. Like St Augustine, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus opposed suicide in most circumstances. […]

Command 9&10 Do Not Envy

St Augustine’s Treatise on the Faith and the Creed

This discourse on the Apostle’s Creed was delivered by St Augustine to a local church council in North Africa.  In this treatise he repeats his classical explanation of the Trinity:
The Father is truly God, the Son is truly God, and the Holy Spirit is truly God.
The Father is not sometimes the Son, and the Father is not sometimes the Holy Spirit, and God is One.  We have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, but “there are not three Gods in that Trinity, but One God and one substance.” […]