1 Peter 2:7
To you therefore that believe, he is honour: but to them that believe not, the stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head of the corner:
Open 1 Peter 2:7 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →In the palace
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Vobis igitur honor credentibus : non credentibus autem lapis, quem reprobaverunt ædificantes : hic factus est in caput anguli,
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- ὑμῖν οὖν ἡ τιμὴ τοῖς πιστεύουσιν· ἀπιστοῦσιν δὲ λίθος ὃν ἀπεδοκίμασαν οἱ οἰκοδομοῦντες οὗτος ἐγενήθη εἰς κεφαλὴν γωνίας
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine Reply to Faustus the Manichæan, Faustus rejects the Old Testament because it leaves no room for Christ. Christ the one Bridegroom suffices for His Bride the Church. Augustin answers as well as he can, and reproves the Manichæans with presumption in claiming to be the Bride of Christ
4. It is a silly falsehood that thou hast been seduced to another God, who promises abundance of food and the land of Canaan. For thou canst perceive how the saints of old, who were also thy children, were enlightened by these figures which were prophecies of thee. Thou needest not regard the poor jest against the stone tablets, for the stony heart of which they were in old times a figure is not in thee. For thou art an epistle of the apostles, "written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not on tables of stone, but on the fleshy tables of the heart." Our opponents ignorantly think that these words are in their favor, and that the apostle finds fault with the dispensation of the Old Testament, where as they are the words of the prophet. …
St Augustine Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John, Chapter XII. 27-36
13. “Then said Jesus unto them, Yet a little light is in you.” And by this it is you understand that Christ abideth for ever. “Walk, then, while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.” Walk, draw near, come to the full understanding that Christ shall both die and shall live for ever; that He shall shed His blood to redeem us, and ascend on high to carry His redeemed along with Him. But darkness will come upon you, if your belief in Christ’s eternity is of such a kind as to refuse to admit in His case the humiliation of death. “And he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.” So may he stumble on that stone of stumbling and rock of offence which the Lord Himself became to the blinded Jews: just as to those who believed, the stone which the builders despised was made the head of the corner. …
St Ambrose Exposition of the Christian Faith, Chapter V. Continuing the exposition of the disputed passage, which he had begun, Ambrose brings forward four reasons why we affirm that something cannot be, and shows that the first three fail to apply to Christ, and infers that the only reason why the Son can do nothing of Himself is His Unity in Power with the Father
53. Which of these three different causes of impossibility, think you, which we have enumerated (setting aside the fourth) can we meetly assign to the case of the Son of God? Is He naturally insensible and immovable, like a stone? He is indeed a stone of stumbling to the wicked, a cornerstone for the faithful; but He is not insensible, upon Whom the faithful affection of sentient peoples are stayed. He is not an immovable rock, “for they drank of a Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.” The work of the Father, then, is not rendered impossible to Christ by diversity of nature.
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).