“And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.”
And do not presume to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father, for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. The appeal to Abrahamic descent as a substitute for genuine repentance is the specific self-deception John names. The claim we have Abraham as our father was not merely ethnic pride but a theological conviction: the covenant with Abraham was permanent and the descendants of Abraham were its beneficiaries. John does not deny the covenant; he challenges the assumption that biological descent from Abraham automatically places one within the covenant's benefits. Romans 9:6–8 makes the same point: not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. God can make children of Abraham from stones — covenant membership is God's creative act, not humanity's genealogical inheritance.
Church Fathers on Matthew 3:9
The words of the teachers should be fitted to the quality of the hearers, that in each particular it should agree with itself and yet never depart from the fortress of general edification.
It was necessary that after the teaching which he used to the common people, the Evangelist should give an example of the doctrine he delivered to the more advanced; therefore he says, 'Seeing many of the Pharisees, &c.'
The manner of Scripture is to give names from the imitation of deeds, according to that of Ezekiel, 'Thy father was an Amorite;' [Ezek 16:3] so these from following vipers are called 'generation of vipers.'
Read all 28 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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