Commentary on John 1 part 36/94

And what indeed was signified by it, as in a type, to the men of old, we shall gather spiritually and set forth again according to the measure of the supply of God, who reveals all dark things and opens to us hidden and unseen treasures.

For to those who have already advanced to the settled habit that stands in no need, and possess the more perfect understanding, it will be possible both to conceive and to utter things far better than these;

'Give knowledge to a righteous man, and he will receive yet more.' First, then, the law was defined concerning circumcision, God saying to Abraham: 'Thou shalt keep my covenant, thou and thy seed after thee throughout their generations;

and this is my covenant which I will establish between you and me, and between thy seed after thee throughout their generations;

every male shall be circumcised;

and ye shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be for a covenant between me and you;

and a child of eight days shall be circumcised among you, every male.' Having defined the law concerning this, and having ordained that they must by all means be circumcised in the flesh of the foreskin, He declares the transgression of the law not to be without penalty, showing the matter to be a type of a most necessary mystery;

'for an everlasting covenant of yours;

and the uncircumcised male, who shall not be circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin on the eighth day, that soul shall be utterly destroyed from among its seed;

for he hath broken my covenant.' Now the inspired Paul strongly affirmed that circumcision was given to the patriarch as a kind of sign and seal of the faith he had while in uncircumcision.

For his aim, it seems, and his zealous endeavour, was to show that the calling and righteousness which is through faith both precedes and is more ancient than every ordinance of the law.

For thus he barely shamed those of Israel and somehow persuaded them not to regard the righteousness which is through faith as a transgression of the law, but rather as a return to that which was from the beginning and before every law;

but having in due season carried the force of his argument round to what was for the moment beneficial and useful for the present, knowing yet another manner of circumcision, he is found once more.

For, since the Jews loved to glory in the flesh,

counselling them to unlearn this, he writes again: 'For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in spirit and not in letter, whose praise is not of men but of God.' For is he not, through these words, henceforth persuading them to pass over to other conceptions concerning it, and does he not wish that they should not merely reflect that circumcision was given to the forefather as a seal of the faith in uncircumcision, but should conceive of something yet greater and spiritual therein? We must therefore inquire and consider not carelessly what the circumcision in the spirit is, of what the one accomplished in the flesh might be conceived a symbol, and for what cause a man is circumcised not indifferently, on whatever day it may fall, but only on the eighth.

And we shall take, as an excellent image of such a matter, that which was said by God to holy Moses: 'Go down and testify to the people, and sanctify them to-day and to-morrow, and let them wash their garments, and let them be ready against the third day;

for on the third day the Lord will come down upon Mount Sinai.' For in the being purified beforehand He wishes them to practise the seemliness that comes through manner of life;

and in their having to wash their garments round about, He intimates the cleansing of the body itself.

For the body is, as it were, a garment and covering of the soul.

For I will go up to the first and most necessary beginning of the discourse;

it was by all means necessary that those who hasten into intimacy with the holy God should be purified beforehand, according to that which is said by Him, 'Ye shall be holy, for I am holy'; a symbol of purification was appointed to the men of old through the circumcision in the flesh;

when we examine closely the nature of our affairs, we shall find pleasure marching in front of all sin;

and a burning desire, ever rising up before the deed and forestalling the discernment of the mind, calls us to transgression, and so persuades us henceforth to proceed by a most smooth road to the carrying out of the things chosen.

And that our discourse on these things is somehow true, the disciple of Christ declares, crying thus: 'Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God;

for God is not tempted with evils, and He Himself tempteth no man; but every man is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own lust;

as a riddle, namely that it is impossible for us ever to be seen pure, unless, receiving in the heart the most keenly-cutting energy of the divine word, and taking to mind the sword of the Spirit, we send away the desires after all things most shameful, doing in no wise the things that are in our own wills, even though they feign to hold most delightful enjoyment, but being persuaded to cherish and to do only that which seems good to God.

Since the truer circumcision brings in for us such a power, to those accustomed to be high-minded on the flesh alone it might fitly be said: 'Be circumcised to God, and circumcise the hardness of your heart, ye men of Judah and ye that dwell in Jerusalem.' For he who is circumcised in the flesh is circumcised in the flesh alone, but he who has received the circumcision in the spirit through faith in Christ is alone and truly circumcised to God.

'For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God;

when Christ, who is your life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with Him be manifested in glory.' For will not one say truly that a man is dead to the world, when he declines the pleasures in the world for God's sake? Such a one also did the inspired Paul appear to us, saying: 'But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.' For having become partakers of Him through the Spirit, who without hands circumcises all the uncleanness within us, we were made dead to the world, and live the best life unto God.

Therefore the circumcision is on the eighth day because of the resurrection of Christ, and not before the eighth;

for the giving of the Spirit is not before the resurrection, but is after it, or rather at the very season of the resurrection, when also He breathed upon His own disciples, saying, 'Receive ye the Holy Spirit.' To the Jews, then, the circumcision by iron was the more fitting, for they were still slaves and under the law that chastens;

and iron is a sign of chastisement;

but to us, as being free and spiritual, belongs the cleansing through the Spirit, sending forth every defilement of our souls, and bringing in perfection in the splendour that is according to godliness through faith.

For that it is through the truer and spiritual circumcision that the boast of the perfection according to godliness is fulfilled, we shall behold if we again consider closely the things written concerning the patriarch Abraham.

It is written, then, concerning the forefather Abraham, that he was ninety and nine years old in number, and God then, for his profit, laid down for him the law of circumcision, setting this too as a kind of clear sign, that circumcision is as it were a doorway and a certain introduction to the perfection unto virtue; or rather, clearly intimating that no one will ever arrive at this at all who has not the cleansing prefigured through circumcision;

for the number one hundred is a symbol of perfection;

before perfection, therefore, comes circumcision;

for this, marching in front toward that, easily brings us up to it.

But the useful things from circumcision are not for us bounded merely by these—and I mean circumcision that is in the spirit—

rather, we shall find it now owed to those alone who are free according to Christ.

And free indeed in Christ is altogether the man who has shaken off the slavery under the devil and the yoke of sin, and has burst asunder their bonds, as it is written, and has bound about himself the splendid and untyrannized boast of righteousness—and I mean the righteousness that is in faith in Christ.

And that we shall find the circumcision on the eighth day befitting the free, but no longer the slaves, we shall in no wise again be in doubt when we go about the sacred and divine Scripture.

Ishmael, the son begotten to the patriarch of the handmaid Hagar, was indeed circumcised, but not on the eighth day, rather in his thirteenth year;

for it is written thus, that Abraham circumcised Ishmael his son at thirteen years old, in order that the divine word might show us that the son of the Jerusalem which is in bondage—that is, Israel—falls away both from the eighth and from the twelfth.

For he falls away from the eighth, as having refused to receive the saving proclamation of the resurrection which came to pass on the eighth—that is, the gospel of Christ—through which it was beyond doubt that those benefited unto faith are also circumcised in the spirit;

and he falls away again also from the twelfth, as being thrust out by his disobediences, in a riddle, from the sacred choir of the apostles, being eager to remain untasting and wholly untried of the teaching that comes from them.

The household servant, then, is in these things;

but Isaac, the free son of the free woman, is circumcised on the eighth day.

For the free children of the free woman—of the Jerusalem above, I mean—having received the eighth, that is, the resurrection of Christ, have also been enriched with the circumcision in the spirit, which set them free from all sin, delivering them from death, since also from sin, out of which and through which is death, and transferring them into the life of Christ.

And that again, in addition to the things we have already discussed by anticipation, both the loosing of death and the overthrow of corruption are found through the circumcision in the spirit, we shall behold easily when we busy ourselves with the book called Exodus.

For the blessed Moses was sent by divine command to Pharaoh the tyrant of the Egyptians, announcing that it behoved him to release Israel from that long bondage.

And indeed he was proceeding, as one about now to obtain the things for the sake of which we have spoken;

But it came to pass, it says, on the way, at the lodging-place, that an angel met him and sought to kill him.

And Zipporah, taking a stone, circumcised the foreskin of her son and said, 'The blood of my child's circumcision has stayed';

and he departed from him, because she had said, 'The blood of my child's circumcision has stayed.' Here I bid you set your ear attentively;

for the one called an angel seeks to lay hands upon Moses and to kill him, yet he withdraws from him only with difficulty and desists, being turned aside by the child's circumcision, which Zipporah, having performed it by means of a stone, declares to have paid off the debt due;

for 'the blood of my child's circumcision has stayed,' she cries, driving away the destroyer of Moses.

But unless some mystical meaning lay hidden within these things as well, tell me, what plausible sense could it show — that the hierophant Moses should be saved by the circumcision of the child, and that the destroyer, leaping upon him like a wild beast, should at the sight of the blood then break off his assault and be reined back as though even to retreat? Therefore —

for I shall proceed first of all to that point.

The good, or rather the boast, arising from his own circumcision did not suffice for the salvation of blessed Moses —

for I think it better to put it thus —

for the power of the circumcision according to the Law will not overturn death, which comes indiscriminately upon all, both the wicked and the good.

But it terrifies death even against its will, and overturns it in its raging fury — the circumcision in the Spirit of the new people, that is, of those who have believed in Christ, being most excellently accomplished through Zipporah, that is, through the Church.

How then, one might very reasonably ask, is Israel also — who has no share in it — preserved in the spiritual circumcision of the new people? To this we say that, so far as it depended on Israel's unwillingness to accept the resurrection of our Saviour Christ, death would have reigned even forever;

but since those who believed did accept it, through them the grace of the resurrection passed over to the whole of nature, being held out, in a certain way, to all through the circumcision in the Spirit;

even if a great difference in the resurrection is seen between these and those.

they will gain the power of resurrection;

for they shall come back to life unto condemnation, not having loved Christ who justifies;

but those who are admirers of the Saviour's resurrection and genuine keepers of the commandments shall, as it is written, come forth from the earth in which they are, unto the resurrection of life.

The people circumcised in the Spirit will therefore transmit its own good even to those who are still unbelieving.

For to it, properly, the grace of the resurrection is owed; yet it will transmit that grace to others as well, since God has willed by His art to save the whole of nature.

For as Paul says: just as we were once disobedient to the mercy of Israel, that through their obedience we might gain the grace that is through Christ,

so also they have now been disobedient to our mercy, that they in turn might again obtain mercy, our Saviour Christ transmitting even to them, through our faith, the good that comes from the resurrection.

For the things owed to those who believe He bestows, more fittingly, upon the whole of nature.

For it is on this account that our inspired apostle Paul, revealing to us the mystery concerning the resurrection

that is to be, says that Christ will rise as the firstfruits;

for indeed He has risen first from the dead; 'but afterward,' he says, 'those who are Christ's, at His coming.' For before all the others, those made His own through faith, he says, must rise, showing that the resurrection is owed to them most especially, properly and peculiarly, even if it reaches through to the whole of nature — plainly out of the goodness and love for mankind of God, who has willed utterly to abolish death.

Observe how Zipporah does not circumcise the child with iron;

for iron is a punisher, and befits the chastiser of those under the Law;

but with a stone, as it is written, understood as a type of Christ.

For the unbreakable and firm quality, in all respects, of the nature of the Only-begotten is signified through this.

Therefore also God the Father called Christ 'adamant' among the holy prophets, saying: 'Behold, I set adamant in the midst of my people Israel.' For that the divine and ineffable nature of the Word can in no way yield to those who oppose it, the adamant again signifies to us as it were in a figure;

and so too for us the inspired Jesus [Joshua], after Moses' generalship and after his death being called to leadership, by the divine stone rendered the sons of Israel clean; and since it was necessary to rise up against the hand of the enemies, he charged them most earnestly to arm themselves beforehand, as it were, through circumcision, knowing that in no other way would those who were so soon to fight be better than falling and stronger than death.

And it is written thus concerning him: 'And the Lord said to Joshua, Make for yourself knives of stone from a sharp-cut rock, and sit down and circumcise the sons of Israel.'

And Joshua made knives of stone, and circumcised the sons of Israel. For in these things, for us, the name of the 'rock' signifies the as it were fixed and unbreakable nature of the Word of God;

and that which is called 'sharp-cut' denotes His power, which reaches subtly into all things, and His most keen activity, since Paul too — he who was reared in the sacred and divine writings — calls the divine word living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and says that it penetrates even to the dividing of soul and spirit. And He who is thus subtle and keen, reaching into our hearts through His own Spirit, delivers us from all uncleanness;

and having circumcised — as cannot be told — the things wherein we are full of the utmost abomination, He renders us holy and blameless.

For behold with me in these things the most transparent image of the truth.

For the one who circumcises is Jesus [Joshua], and those who undergo this from him are 'every young child,' as it is written, 'who does not today know good or evil.' For those who had come out of the land of the Egyptians had the divine wrath as the wage of their disobedience, and manifold punishment awaited them in the wilderness, it having seemed good, fittingly, to the all-pure God not to bring them into the land which He had sworn to their fathers.

But those free from the charges of that disobedience were fulfilling a type of the new people, so as to receive also the circumcision in the Spirit through Christ, the ancient and first people — that is, Israel — having gone off to destruction, as we were just now saying.

Moreover the noble and new people is circumcised, at Joshua's command, beyond the Jordan, as it is written.

For so also stand the things contemplated from the truth.

For we shall in no way receive the circumcision of the heart through the Spirit, before we have been brought across the mystical Jordan, but only when we have come to the far side of the holy waters.

And when all the people had been circumcised by Joshua's command, the lawgiver at once discloses the profit arising from the deed, and says to holy Joshua: 'On this day I have taken away from you the reproach of Egypt.' On what grounds, then, shall we grant that Israel is benefited concerning the circumcision? Or what reproach do we say was taken from him? Plainly, slavery, and the readiness to greed that comes from weakness, and moreover the toils over the clay and the brickmaking.

Do you see from how many evils the power of the circumcision understood in the Spirit sets free? For it draws out the soul of man from the hand of the devil, renders it free and released from the sin that tyrannizes within us, and shows it superior to all the greed that comes from wicked demons.

But it also releases from the clay and the brickmaking, for it no longer allows the man, defiled by the pleasures of the flesh, to be mired in the toils about the earth; and it frees him also from death and corruption; and the things of the circumcision are not wholly in these, but it renders men also partakers of the divine nature through participation in our Saviour Christ.

For the writer of the book adds to what has been said, that 'And the sons of Israel kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month, and they ate of the grain of the land, unleavened and new.' For it is not otherwise possible to partake of the true Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, nor indeed to find the unleavened and new food of the evangelical proclamations, unless we have first passed through the mystical Jordan, and received the circumcision from the living Word, and first wiped off, as it were like a stain of the soul, the reproach of Egypt, according to the manner just now expounded to us.

For that God turns away in loathing from the one not yet circumcised, as one full of every reproach and uncleanness — not abhorring the flesh, which He did not disdain to fashion,

but rather the one who, so to speak, still holds himself sound and whole in the pleasures directed toward vice, in that he has cast nothing away — this we shall again recognize, when we find Him saying to holy Moses and Aaron: 'This is the law of the Passover;

no foreigner shall eat of it; but every servant of anyone, and one bought with money, you shall circumcise him, and then he shall eat of it.' For He utterly excludes the alien, thereby signifying the one not yet made kin to Christ through faith;

but the one who is a slave to sin, and in a certain way sold to the devil, He then very opportunely permits — once he has been circumcised beforehand and cleansed beforehand — to touch the most sacred flesh.

For being pure, we shall the more purely partake of Christ, according to what is rhythmically proclaimed in the churches: 'The holy things for the holy.'

For it was indeed just and fitting that, since our Saviour Christ died for us, and cleansed us not by the sprinklings according to the Law but by His own blood, we too should dedicate to Him our own life, and, as in the order of just debts, henceforth lay down this — that we no longer live as citizens for ourselves, but give back, as it were, the total consecration of our souls unto sanctification.

For that the precious blood and the death of Christ, who died on behalf of all, both saved us from every evil and became the procurer of the circumcision in the Spirit — through which we gain union with the God who is over all — this too we shall again see in what follows.

Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, being a hundred and ten years old;

and they buried him at the borders of his inheritance;

there they laid with him in the tomb, in which they buried him there, the knives of stone with which he circumcised the sons of Israel. For blessed Joshua, having died, was being buried;

but the knives were fixed usefully beside the tomb, having served the type of circumcision;

so that again we may understand through this, that to the death of our Saviour Christ has been fixed the grace of the circumcision in the Spirit, which is for us the harbinger of all the heavenly goods.

We shall therefore take the circumcision on the eighth day, understanding nothing Jewish, as the cleansing through the Spirit, in faith and the resurrection of Christ, the casting off of all sin, the removal of death and corruption, the procurer of sanctification and of intimacy with Christ, an image of freedom, both the way and the door of intimacy with God.

Enough, then, has now been said of the spiritual contemplations gathered by us from every side upon these matters; and, the two chief points having been distinguished as was fitting, and having drawn out for each the argument befitting it,

it would remain, and is owed, to say for what reason the spiritual matter of circumcision in a sense triumphs over even the honour of the Sabbath.

For circumcision is acceptable even on the Sabbath, not shuddering at the law of rest that attaches to it.

Since, then, the sabbath-rest on the seventh day signifies the ease and idleness from all vice, and the respite from sin, while the circumcision in the Spirit again signifies nothing other than these things, though in a changed manner —

for to be delivered, I think, from superfluous desires and from excessive pleasure manifestly gives birth to the idleness from vice;

we shall find circumcision not in any way loosing the law concerning the Sabbath, but rather already shielding it and running together, so to speak, into one and the same argument, and openly proclaiming that it behoves to rest and to be released from vice — so that both are the same, I mean both to be circumcised and to rest on the Sabbath, insofar as one would best suppose, according to their convergence from both toward one aim.

For we shall surely not sit down beside the gross type of the history, but shall rather approach spiritually the oracles of the Spirit.

Therefore, without any accusation, even on the Sabbath the profit from circumcision will enter in, since, according to the voice of the Saviour, 'the priests profane the Sabbath in the temple by performing sacred service on it,' not ceasing from their customary duties, 'and they are guiltless,' as the Judge Himself has borne witness to them, very rightly and most fittingly.

For of sacred works, and of all things that gladden the Deity, what season could there be in which one might say that it behoves us to abstain from them? And to cease from earnest zeal in godliness — at what time is this not harmful? It is, then, of vice alone, and of loathsome sin only, that the Sabbath rest has its most praiseworthy dissolution and truce; but it in no way hinders one from delighting in sacred works, and whatever one may think will be for the benefit of one's own soul, this too it rightly and blamelessly permits one even to press on earnestly to accomplish.

And this same thing you would see brought in as the profit in the power of circumcision as well.

For in the cutting away of the pleasures directed toward vice, there is seen the birth of idleness from sin, and the beginning of worship in the Spirit and of the most sacred manner of life;

but the difference, indeed, is small.

in these matters — necessary, nonetheless, all the same.

For the fact that it was commanded that neither of the two be performed on the seventh day, nor indeed perhaps on the eighth, gives us to understand that the reasoning proper to each has been in some way distinguished.

But this too carries a certain meaning, and one not without elegance, as it seems to me.

For to rest from wickedness is not yet, by any means, also the casting away of wickedness.

For the passions often lie quiet within us, though they are not in every respect outside the mind;

but, being forcibly reined in by sober reasoning as by a kind of bridle into a stillness discordant with their nature, and yielding even unwillingly to the labours of ascetic discipline —

passion, so far as befits a man, is assuredly quite another thing beside that, and something far greater than merely resting from passion.

Now, the arguments concerning these things being thus arranged, it remains fitting to understand that we shall not arrive at the casting away of the passions — that is, of the faults born of pleasure, which is also signified through circumcision — before we have first dissolved the vice that is active in its working, and have brought to a standstill, as it were into idleness, the movements of the mind that run toward transgression.

For using such a thing then as a kind of step, we shall easily ascend to something yet greater and higher — I mean the utter cutting-off of the passions.

But to rest from passion has some portion of what seems to lie within our own power;

for we shall cease from evil by lending the weight of our own will toward the better;

but to be released from passion is not altogether within our power, but would be a work truly befitting Christ, who suffered on our behalf, that He might refashion all men unto newness of life.

For this very reason, then, circumcision fittingly received the eighth day as its allotted portion, introducing the season of resurrection, the renewer, so to speak.

But its neighbour a little behind, the seventh, is the resting.

For the resting which is temporary and according to the will falls somewhat short of, and lies a little behind, the complete cutting-off of the passions.

That, contrary to the ignorant suppositions of the Greeks, our affairs are not subject as of necessity to the hours, but of our own free choice we come both to the good and to its opposite; and that we are governed by the biddings of God;

on the text set before us: 'They sought to seize Him, and no one laid hands on Him, because His hour had not yet come.'

That after the cross of the Saviour, at His returning to life from the dead, the Holy Spirit was firmly established as a dwelling within us;

on the text set before us: 'For the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified.'

That the suffering on the cross was not the work of the strength of the Jews, nor did Christ die through the covetous greed of any, but He Himself of His own will suffered this on our behalf, that He might save all;

on the text set before us: 'These words He spoke in the treasury, teaching in the temple; and no one seized Him, because His hour had not yet come.'