From the early Church Fathers to now.
7 Patristic · 2 Medieval
“See ye that I alone am, and there is no other God besides me: I will kill and I will make to live: I will strike, and I will heal, and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.”
“We are sure that he causes to die. We see it. Just so also is it sure and worthy of belief that he makes alive. And from all that I have explained to you, receive and believe that in the day of the resurrection your body shall arise in its entirety, and you shall receive from our Lord the reward of your faith. And in all that you have believed, you shall rejoice and be made glad.”
“In order that the godlessness of the heretics may not perhaps apply the meaning of these words to the unbegotten God the Father, the sense itself of the words and the authority of the apostle come to our aid. He, as we have already explained, interprets this whole passage as pertaining to the person of the only-begotten God.”
“He himself permits the suffering which he again restores. The One who strikes is the One who heals. The afflictions precede in order that the graces may be lasting. Only then do we exert ourselves exceedingly for the preservation of what has been given.”
“It is not possible for the good to exist in me unless it is made to live through the death of my enemy. As long as we keep grasping opposites with each of our hands, it is impossible for there to be participation in both elements in the same being. For if we are holding evil, we lose the power to take hold of virtue.”
“He is God, so he also takes pity. He gets angry, and he takes pity. He gets angry and strikes; he takes pity and heals. He gets angry and does to death; he takes pity and brings to life. In one person he does this. It's not that he does some people to death and brings others to life, but in the same people he is both angry and gentle. He is angry with errors; he is gentle with bad habits put right. "I will strike and I will heal: I will kill and I will make alive." One and the same Saul, afterward Paul, he both laid low and raised up. He laid low an unbeliever; he raised up a believer. He laid low a persecutor; he raised up a preacher.”
“[Paul's conversion] fulfilled in him what was written in the prophet, "I will strike, and I will heal." What God strikes, you see, is that in people which lifts up itself against God. The surgeon isn't being heartless when he lances the tumor, when he cuts or burns out the suppurating sore. He's causing pain; he certainly is, but in order to restore health. It's a horrid business; but if it wasn't, it wouldn't be any use.”
“So the apostle was petrified, knocked down and laid low, raised up and patched up. The words, you see, were realized in him: "It is I that will strike and I that will heal." You see, it doesn't say, "I will heal, and I will strike," but "I will strike, and I will heal." I will strike you and give myself to you. Thus being laid low, he was horrified at his own justice, in which he was certainly without reproach, praiseworthy, great, even glorious among the Jews. He reckoned it was waste, he thought it was loss, he counted it dung, "that he might be found in him, not having his own justice, which is from the law; but that which is through the faith of Christ, which is," he says, "from God."”
“Concerning the first, we proceed as follows and it is shown that the divine being is supremely one. And that this is so, faith and divine Scripture sufficiently proclaim, Exodus twenty: Your God is one God; and Deuteronomy thirty-two: See therefore that I alone am, and there is no other God besides me; and David in the Psalm: There shall not be in you a new god, nor shall you adore a foreign god: and divine Scripture sufficiently preaches this.”
“It must be said that this truth, that God is one, is a truth not only believable, but also intelligible: since it is necessary and certain not only from the testimony of Scripture and the illumination of grace, which is found in faith; but it is also certain from itself and from the testimony of creatures. From itself, therefore: because the divine being, on account of its singular sublimity and sublime singularity, possesses unity in every way. For since God has every perfection in himself, and this in the highest degree and most excellently, he is shown to be one not only from the sublimity of nature and wisdom, power and goodness and influence and causality, but indeed from all his conditions and noble properties that are attributed to him in the highest degree. Hence all conditions attest to the unity of the supreme essence. From the testimony of creatures also: because every creature, just as it has natural goodness, so also is shown to have unity. "For nothing can exist unless it is one," as Boethius and Augustine say, and as sense and intellect teach. Therefore, just as every creature by its goodness proclaims that in God there is true and supreme goodness, so by its unity it proclaims that the cause of all things is one in itself. Nor does the diversity of things stand against this testimony. For every diversity of things is comprehended within one universe, which in itself is indeed finite and limited and perfect. But this would not be so unless that plurality were reduced to something in which there would be a stopping point: and therefore it is necessary that all things be reduced to one ultimate end and one first principle, otherwise there would be a regress to infinity. Therefore the very universe of things testifies that God is one: whence, just as it is impossible for one circumference to have, nor can one rationally conceive, any but one center, from which lines flow and to which they are reduced as to a terminus: so in one universe one cannot posit or understand anything but one God alone.”
The in-app commentary runs from the Fathers to the early-modern record, then stops — that's where the public-domain sources end, not where the reading does. For the modern reading, follow the sources directly.