Commentary on John 1 part 12/94

For He was called by many voices of the saints.

But wine had failed those who feasted.

For the law made nothing perfect, nor did the Mosaic letter suffice to gladden perfectly.

But neither did the measure of the inborn sobriety extend so far as to be able to preserve us.

Therefore it would be true, even in our case, to say: They have no wine.

But our God, rich in giving, does not overlook our nature when it is worn down by the lack of good things.

He provided us with wine; he displayed it as better than the first.

For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life; and the Law does not possess what is perfect among good things.

But the divine instructions of the Gospel teaching bring in the fullest blessing.

And the master of the feast marvels at the new wine.

For each one, I think, of those appointed to the divine priesthood and entrusted with the household of our Saviour Christ, is struck with wonder at his word that surpasses the Law.

And Christ commands that it be given to him first, because, according to the voice of Paul, 'The labouring farmer must be the first to partake of the fruits.' And let the hearer once more understand what I say.

'And he found in the temple those selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money-changers sitting.'

Once again through these things the Jews are convicted, in that they held in contempt the laws given to them, and made no account of the writings of Moses, but looked only to their love of gain.

For the Law commanded that those who were to go up to the divine temple be purified beforehand in various ways; but the bankers, that is, the money-changers, and others besides them, whose business was greed and usury and increase amid their lusts—

for the whole aim of the merchants is bent upon these things—

these men did not restrain those defiling the holy court, but they themselves, indeed—those very ones who had the power to prevent it—altogether commanded them to enter it as it were with unwashed feet.

so that God may appear to speak the truth concerning them, saying: 'Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard, they have defiled my portion, they have made my desirable portion a trackless wilderness; it has become an utter desolation.' For the Lord's vineyard was indeed ruined, being taught to trample underfoot the very reverence due to the divine, and through the shameful greed of those set over it being reduced to a barren waste, unto all manner of ignorance.

'And having made as it were a whip of cords, he cast them all out of the temple.'

The Saviour is fittingly indignant at the senselessness of the Jews.

For the divine temple ought not to have been turned into a house of merchandise, but a house of prayer.

And he shows his movement not in bare words, but with blows and a scourge he drives them out of the sacred precincts, justly devising for them a punishment befitting slaves.

For they were not going to receive the Son who sets men free through faith.

And observe well for me how, as in an image of things, that which was spoken through Paul is inscribed: 'If anyone destroys the temple of God, him will God destroy.' 'Take these things away from here.'

'Do not make my Father's house a house of merchandise.'

He commands as a master, but he leads by the hand toward what is fitting as a teacher, and he sets alongside the chastisement an explanation of their faults, not permitting the one being rebuked, out of shame, to be provoked to anger over them.

And it must be noted that once again he calls God his own Father in a singular sense, as being himself the only one existing by nature from him and truly begotten.

Our Word is a son, as one of us, that is to say, by adoption and by the will of the Father alone; for which reason indeed the common boast set before all, he snatches to himself alone, saying, 'Do not make my Father's house'—and not rather 'our Father's house'? For this would perhaps have been more consistent to say, if he knew himself also to be one of the sons who are not sons by nature.

But since the Word knows himself to be, not among the sons by grace, but from the very substance of God the Father, he sets himself apart from the others, calling God his own Father.

For it befits those who have been called to sonship and possess a dignity that is acquired, when they pray, to cry aloud, 'Our Father who art in the heavens'; but he who is one and only, existing as one from one, the Only-begotten, will fittingly call God his own Father.

But if, taking up what lies before us, one must also more rationally fit these things to what has been said above, the reading is to be contemplated in another way.

'And he found in the temple those selling the sheep and the oxen,' and what follows.

Behold again the whole scheme of the economy concerning us, woven together through two matters.

For with the men of Cana in Galilee, I mean, Christ both feasts and dwells together, and he made those who had invited and thereby honoured him his table-companions.

And through signs he benefits them, and he fills up what was lacking to them for their good cheer.

And what good thing indeed does he not lavish upon them? Thereby teaching, as through a type, that he will also receive the inhabitants of Galilee, that is, the Gentiles, being called as it were toward them through the faith that is in them, and he will bring them into the heavenly bridal chamber—clearly, into the Church of the firstborn—and will make them recline together with the saints.

For the holy disciples reclined together with those who feasted.

And they will share together in the divine and spiritual feast, even as he himself somewhere says: 'That many shall come from the east and the west and shall recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob,' nothing being lacking to them for their delight.

For everlasting gladness shall be upon their head. But the disobedient Jews he will cast out of the holy places, and will set them outside the sacred enclosure of the saints.

But even when they bring offerings for sacrifice, he will not receive them.

Rather, he will subject them to chastisement and to the scourge, bound tightly with the cords of their own transgressions.

For hear him saying, 'Take these things away from here,' that you may once more understand those things which of old he also spoke through the voice of the prophet Isaiah: 'The whole burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of lambs, and the blood of bulls and goats I do not desire, nor if you come to appear before me.'

'For who has required these things at your hands? You shall no more tread my court.'

'If you bring fine flour, it is vain.'

'Incense is an abomination to me.'

'Your new moons and your sabbaths and the great day I cannot endure.'

'Your fasting and idleness and your feasts my soul hates.'

'You have become to me a surfeit; I will no more forgive your sins.' All of which he most excellently signifies through a type by devising for them the whip of cords.

For scourges are a sign of chastisement.

'His disciples remembered that it is written: The zeal of thy house shall consume me.'

The disciples gather together little by little that which is perfect in knowledge, and, comparing the things written with the outcomes of events, they already display a great advance toward what is greater.

'What sign do you show us, that you do these things?' The multitude of the Jews is astonished at the strangeness of his authority, but those who frequent the temple are greatly distressed, being deprived of gains not easily numbered.

And they cannot refute him, as though he spoke not most rightly in commanding that the divine temple ought not to be made a house of merchandise.

But again they contrive delays regarding the expulsion of the merchants, making the excuse that they ought not readily to yield to him, nor indeed rashly to receive as Son of God one attested by no sign.

To those who ask for good things out of a good purpose, God stretches out his hand very readily.

He fastens upon them the charge of wickedness.

Thus the Saviour reproved the Pharisees when they asked for a sign in other places of the Gospels, saying: 'An evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of Jonah the prophet.'

'For as Jonah was in the belly of the sea-monster three days and three nights, so also shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.' What therefore he said to those, this also to these with a slight variation.

For they too ask, as those did, tempting him.

But this sign would not have been given at all to those of such a disposition of mind, had it not been altogether necessary that it should come to pass for the salvation of us all.

And it must be known that they made this the pretext of their accusation, saying falsely before Pontius Pilate what they had not heard.

But since he knew that they would do it without delay, he intimates in a moral sense the very thing that was about to come to pass.

For see how senselessly they commit outrage, sparing not their own souls.

For our Lord Jesus the Christ called God his own Father, saying, 'Do not make my Father's house a house of merchandise.' Then, when they ought already to have understood him to be Son and God, as having appeared from God the Father, they still believe him to be a bare man and one of us.

For this very reason they also put forward the time spent on the building of the temple, saying, 'Forty-six years was this temple in building, and will you raise it up in three days?' But O you who are drunk with every senselessness, I think one might justly say to them: if a wise mind dwelt in you, if you believe the temple among you to be a house of God, how was it not necessary to conceive him to be God by nature, who dared without peril to say, 'Do not make my Father's house a house of merchandise'? Tell me then, how, I ask you, would he thereafter have needed long times for the construction of a single house? Or how would he have been powerless for whatever might come to pass in general, he who in only seven days in number fashioned this whole universe with unspeakable power, and who has the ability in the mere willing? For these things the people learned in the sacred writings ought to have reasoned.

'But he was speaking about the temple of his body.'

'When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.'

The word of wisdom is readily received by the wise man.

And the knowledge of the teachings settles more easily upon the understanding, and just as in wax not too greatly hardened the impress of the seals is well engraved, so in the more tender hearts of men the divine word is readily fixed.

For this reason also the hard-hearted man is called wicked.

The disciples therefore, being good in disposition, are made wise, and they ruminate upon the words from the divine Scripture, nourishing themselves unto more exact knowledge, and coming thence firmly to believe.

If the body of Christ was called a temple, how would not the Only-begotten Word who dwells in it be God by nature, if indeed it is not admissible to say that one who is not God dwells in a temple? Or let someone come forward into our midst and say, of which of the saints the body was ever called a temple.

But I do not think anyone could point out what has been said.

I say therefore henceforth—what indeed, existing, we shall also find to be true, if we carefully search out the divine Scripture—that to none of the saints has such an honour been attached.

And indeed the blessed Baptist, although he had advanced to the very height of every virtue, and yielded to no one the pre-eminence in godliness, had his head cut off through the madness of Herod; yet nothing of this sort is recorded concerning him.

On the contrary, the Evangelist devised a somewhat coarser expression for the remains, saying this too by way of dispensation, as it seems to me, in order that the dignity might be preserved for Christ alone.

'And having sent,' he says, 'the bloodthirsty man'—

'he beheaded John in the prison.'

'And his disciples came and took up his corpse.' But if John's body is called a corpse, whose then shall be a temple? For it is in another sense that we are said to be temples of God, on account of the Holy Spirit that dwells in us;

for again, we are designated temples of God and not of ourselves.

But perhaps someone will say: How then, tell me, does the Saviour Himself call His own body a corpse? For He says, 'Wherever the corpse may be, there the eagles will be gathered together.' To this also we reply that Christ did not say these things concerning His own body, but that in the manner and figure of a parable He signifies the future gathering of the saints unto Him at that season, when again He shall appear to us from the heavens with the holy angels in the glory of His Father. For, He says, just as the flocks of flesh-eating birds swoop down with swift rush upon the bodies that fall, so also shall you be gathered together unto Me.

This too Paul laid bare for us, saying, 'For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible.' And indeed elsewhere also: 'And we shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.' Therefore that which is taken from a likeness unto an image will in no way wrong the force of the truth.

'Now while He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, at the feast, many believed on His name, beholding the signs which He did.'

Christ does not cease from saving and benefiting.

For some He draws by wise words, and others by power. Astounding them in a manner befitting God, He nets them unto faith, since from the works they beheld Him performing they were persuaded to assent that He who is the Maker of things so worthy of wonder is indeed truly God.

'But Jesus Himself did not entrust Himself to them.'

Not secure is the resolve of those who have but recently believed, nor is the mind firmly settled upon miracles that are still fresh;

and those who still hold the word of catechesis, as it were, green and unripe—how could they already be fixed in reverent devotion? Not yet, therefore, does Christ entrust Himself to the newcomers, thereby displaying a thing great and most worthy of love, namely, genuineness toward God, which does not lie ready at hand for those who wish to seize it, but is achieved by longing after the good, by practice, and by time.

For in order that in this too He might become a pattern for us, and might teach for whom initiation is more fitting, He receives indeed those who believe, but is not yet seen to be confident toward them, by His not believing them;

so that hence it is clear that newcomers ought to be exercised in catechesis for no small time;

for thus would they scarcely become faithful.

'for He Himself knew what was in man.'

This too, along with the rest, is a dignity befitting God in Christ, and belonging to none of created beings.

The Psalmist attaches it, as being truth, to God who truly is, saying, 'He who alone fashioned their hearts, who understands all their works.' But if it belongs to God alone to understand the things within us, and Christ understands them,

how shall He not be by nature God, the Knower of secret things, knowing what is deep and hidden, as it is written? 'For what man knows the things of a man, save the spirit of the man which is in him?' And though no man knows, God will not be ignorant;

since He is never counted among all those against whom the word 'No one' might reasonably be brought;

but as being outside all things and having all things under His feet, He will know.

Paul too will bear witness, saying, 'For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints also and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart;

and there is no creature that is not manifest before Him, but all things are naked and laid open unto His eyes.' For as He who planted the ear hears all things, and as He who fashioned the eye perceives. And indeed He is brought in speaking in Job: 'Who is this that hides counsel from Me, and keeps back words in his heart, and thinks to conceal them from Me?' Therefore, in order that we might recognize the Son as being by nature God, the Evangelist necessarily says: 'That He had no need that anyone should bear witness concerning man;'

'for He Himself knew what was in man.'

'Now there was a man of the Pharisees, Nicodemus his name, a ruler of the Jews.'

'This man came to Him by night and said to Him:'

Nicodemus is somewhat more ready toward believing, but being overcome by a shame that is not good, and at the same time not disregarding the glory that is among men, he shrinks from boldness of speech; he divides his purpose between the two, and limps in his resolve, and, as it is written, is weak upon both his hams: on the one hand thrust toward the necessity of believing by the reproofs of his conscience because of the excess of the miracles, but on the other reckoning the loss of his leadership among the nation to be unbearable;

for he was a ruler of the Jews.

But supposing that he could both preserve his glory among them and be a believer in secret, he comes to Jesus, having made the darkness of night an accomplice to his scheme, and being accused, by his coming in hidden fashion, of a double-minded resolve.

'Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher;

for no one can do these signs which You do, unless God be with him.'

'Jesus answered and said to him:'

In these words he supposed that he could possess piety entire, and he assumes that, for salvation, it will suffice him merely to marvel at the things at which it is fitting to marvel;

and beyond these he seeks nothing further.

But by naming Him a teacher from God and one aided by Him, he does not yet know Him as being by nature God, nor does he understand, evidently, the account of the dispensation with the flesh, but approaches Him still as a mere man, and holds but a slight estimate concerning Him.

'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one be born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.'

'Nicodemus says to Him:'

'It is not,' He says, 'O Nicodemus, in the things you supposed that believing consists.'

A word does not suffice you unto righteousness, nor will you set piety aright by bare utterances.

'For not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but he who does the will of My Father who is in the heavens.' And the will of the Father is that man be shown forth as a partaker of the Holy Spirit, and that he who is from the earth, having been regenerated unto an unwonted and strange life, be designated a citizen of heaven.

And by saying 'from above' the regeneration through the Spirit, He clearly shows that the Spirit is from the substance of God the Father, just as indeed He Himself somewhere says concerning Himself, 'I am from the things above;' and the most wise Evangelist again says concerning Him, 'He who comes from above is above all.' But that the Spirit is altogether from the substance of God the Father, we shall say more fully in its proper season.

Through these things Nicodemus is convicted of being still a natural man, and on this account in no way receiving the things of the Spirit of God; for he reckons folly the mystery that is thus august and illustrious.

And hearing of the birth from above and spiritual, he still imagines a bodily womb running back again to the birth-pangs of those already born, and, not ascending to the law of our nature, he measures the more divine things by a rule of his own;

and finding the height of these teachings impassable to his own conceptions, he falls down and is carried away.

For just as things hurled with more forceful casts against hardened stones leap back again,

so, I think, an untaught mind also, when it assails contemplations quicker than itself, grows faint and slips back, and, ever content to dwell within the measures fitting to itself, dishonours the better and loftier understanding.

This too the ruler of the Jews suffered, and does not accept the spiritual birth.

'Unless one be born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.'

Since the man did not understand in the manner he ought what the need to be born from above might signify, He instructs him with plainer teachings, and sets before him a barer knowledge of the mystery.

For our Lord Jesus Christ called the regeneration through the Spirit 'from above,' showing the Spirit to be of the highest substance of all, through whom we become partakers of the divine nature, as reaping the fruit of that which proceeds essentially from it, and through Him and in Him being refashioned unto the archetypal beauty, and thus being reborn unto newness of life and remoulded unto the divine adoption.

But Nicodemus, not taking the word 'from above' in this way, supposed that a future birth was signified, as in the case of bodies;

on this account also, falling into reasonings that shut him up into what is impossible, he was caught out as being at once senseless and slow to learn.

Necessarily therefore the Saviour, dealing yet more tenderly with him as with one weaker in condition, and removing the veil that seemed to have been cast over the word, now says openly: 'Unless one be born again through water and Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.'

For since man is by nature something composite and not simple, being mixed of two things—namely, a perceptible body and an intellectual soul—a twofold healing was needed for his regeneration, akin in some way to each of the things mentioned.

For by the Spirit the spirit of man is sanctified, and by water that has in turn been sanctified, the body.

For just as the water poured into cauldrons, having consorted with the fierce heat of the fire, takes on the power derived from it, so, through the operation of the Spirit, the perceptible water is transformed unto a certain divine and ineffable power, and thereafter sanctifies those in whom it may come to be.

'That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.'

And by yet another reasoning He again persuades him to ascend unto a loftier understanding, and, when he hears of spiritual birth, not to take into his mind the things proper to bodies.

For just as it is altogether necessary, He says, that the offspring of flesh be flesh, so evidently the offspring of Spirit be spirits.

But for those in whom the account of their mode of being is different, for these the manner of birth also will assuredly not be the same.

And it must be known that we call the spirit of man an offspring of the Spirit, not as though it were by nature out of Him;

but in a first and more original sense, according to that which, through Him, calls that which was not into being; and in a second and dispensational sense, according to the refashioning toward God through Him, He imprinting upon us the characters proper to Himself, and remoulding our understanding, as it were, into His own quality.

'but you do not know whence it comes and whither it goes;

so is everyone who has been born of the Spirit.'

It is the excellence of a teacher to be able to guide the mind of his hearers by varied methods, and to proceed through many contemplations, heaping up proofs for those matters in which the discourse may appear difficult.

He accepts therefore from examples the type of the mystery, and says: This wind, which is both within the world and in the air, breathes over the whole inhabited earth, and, running wherever it will, is signified as present only by its sound, and escapes the eye of all, yet, consorting with bodies by its most subtle breezes, instils a certain perception of the natural energy that is in it;

so understand for Me, He says, also the regeneration through the Spirit, being led by the hand from small examples unto the greater, and, as in an image, conceiving through the argument set before you the things that surpass perception.

'Nicodemus answered and said to Him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said to him:'

The long discourse profited nothing the one who understood nothing.

Wisely, therefore, was it said in the book of Proverbs: 'Speak into the ears of those who hear.'

And the Saviour showed this to be true by experience, giving us in this also a pattern of Himself.

The teacher will assuredly lie beyond all blame for any inability to persuade, so long as he himself sets forth whatever he thinks to be rightly held, even though he profits nothing because of the slowness of his hearers to learn.

Moreover, from this too we learn that a hardening has come upon Israel in part; for hearing they hear, yet do not understand.

'You are the teacher of Israel, and do you not know these things?' By means of one man Christ convicts them all — men decked out with the name of teacher, and clothed in the bare pretension of skill in the Law, yet carrying a mind full of ignorance, and able to understand nothing of those things which they ought not merely to have known thoroughly, but already to have been able to teach to others as well.

But if the one who instructs is in such a state, in what state is the one being instructed — since the disciple does not surpass the measure of his teacher, according to the word of the Saviour? For 'A disciple is not,' He says, 'above his teacher.' And since they were thus unlearned, Christ will speak no falsehood in likening them to whitewashed tombs.

Most fittingly too will Paul say to the ruler of the Jews: 'God is about to strike you, you whitewashed wall.' 'Verily, verily I say to you, that we speak what we know, and we testify to what we have seen.'

He finds the man unloving of learning and exceedingly untaught, and, through the great grossness of his mind, no longer able from any quarter to be led by the hand toward the apprehension of the divine doctrines, even though a long discourse had been spent upon him with varied illustrations.

Whence, reasonably, forgoing an exact exposition, He counsels him henceforth to receive by an uncurious faith that which he cannot understand.

And He testifies that He Himself clearly knows what He is saying, showing by the manifest dignity of His person that to contradict any further is most perilous.

For it was not likely that Nicodemus had forgotten, who had firmly declared that he knew concerning our Saviour Jesus Christ that He had come from God as a teacher.

But to resist One who comes from God and is God — how would that not be full of danger? For the matter now plainly appears to be a fighting against God.

Nevertheless, we who may possess the authority to teach ought to know from this that, for those newly coming to belief, faith in simple reasonings is better than some profound argument and an over-curious exposition.

With milk, too, did Paul give drink to some who were not yet able to partake of the more solid foods.

And again, 'You shall know knowingly the souls of your flock,' the all-wise Solomon says somewhere to us.

He means that the teacher's word ought not to be set before those who come without discernment, but adapted proportionately to the measure of each.

'And you do not receive our testimony.'

As having the Father and the Spirit within Himself by nature, the Saviour extended into a plural number the person of those who bear witness.

So that in a certain way, according to the law of Moses — 'By the mouth of two and three witnesses' — that which was said might be confirmed.

He shows the Jews to be carried simply, by unbridled and heedless impulses, toward the deep pit of destruction.

For if, out of much ignorance, they are neither able to understand what is preached, nor make it acceptable by faith, what other way of salvation could be devised for them? Rightly, then, and most justly, did the Saviour declare that Jerusalem would be without excuse, as one snatching destruction upon herself of her own accord. For 'Jerusalem, Jerusalem,' He says, 'you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to her, how often would I have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not!'

'Behold, your house is left to you desolate. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? And no one has ascended into heaven except He who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven.'