Commentary on John 1 part 4/94

For what will there be intervening between a father and a son, or again between a son and a father? But if, according to their ignorance, an interposed will and inward word—which they say is the interpreter of that will—walls off the Son from the Father, then the Father will no longer be conceived as Father at all, nor the Son as Son, if we are to conceive that both the will of God and the word interpreting it lie in their own proper hypostases.

But if we grant that these are without subsistence, then immediately and directly the Son is in God the Father;

where then, henceforth, will the inward word find room, or what place will the will occupy, conceived as other than the Son? Another point through reduction to absurdity.

We believe the holy and adored Trinity to be of one substance, even though the madness of the heretics be unwilling;

but I think it is fitting, in the case of things consubstantial, to admit also that they resemble one another in all respects, at least as regards the account of their natural properties.

If then, according to the folly of some, there exists in God the Father a certain other inward word besides the Son, the Son too will surely have an inward word within Himself, being His image and the unaltered impress of His hypostasis, as it is written;

and likewise the Holy Spirit too will have one, according to the same proportion of the concepts.

The Trinity, then, has become for us doubled, and the divine nature henceforth appears in composition.

But in simple substances, there is nothing else besides them themselves;

nothing therefore will prevent the holy and consubstantial Trinity from being immediately conjoined, with nothing intervening.

When the divine Scripture sets down the names with the articles prefixed, then it signifies also some one thing, which alone is properly and truly what it is said to be;

but when it does not prefix the article, it makes a more general indication concerning everything that is signified, as for example:

for the argument will come also through a clear demonstration;

but whenever it is said with the article, 'the God,' it signifies the one who alone exists and is God properly;

and more simply, and without the article, it may signify any one of those who have been called to this by grace.

And again, 'many men';

but when the Saviour says with the article, 'the Son of Man,' He designates Himself as set apart from myriads.

Since the names have this pattern in the divine Scripture, how then is it fitting to understand the phrase 'In the beginning was the Word'? For if every word of God is signified by this, as existing in the beginning, let them show it, and we are talking nonsense;

but if the evangelist, by prefixing the article, signifies one who properly and truly is, crying 'In the beginning was the Word';

why do they vainly contend, introducing another, only that they may cast the Son out of the substance of the Father? Considering the absurdity that follows upon these things, it is fitting to renounce the folly of those who hold heterodox opinions.

Another point, showing that the Son is not formed according to the inward word, as those men say, but is the image of the Father Himself.

If for this reason, according to them, the Only-begotten Son of God is and is named 'Word'—namely that, receiving the inward word of the Father, He is as it were formed toward that word—why is He not seen saying to His own disciples, 'I and the word of the Father are one; he who has seen me has seen the word of the Father'? But since, transcending all things, He likens Himself, alone to the Father alone, then, with nothing intermediate coming in for the likeness, the Son will be conceived as resembling the Begetter Himself and no other besides Him.

An objection, as from the opposing party.

We find, they say, that the Son is other than the inward word of God, not attending to this by our own conceptions, but by the considerations drawn from the divine Scripture;

when the Father, in turn, answers and says, 'I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again';

shall we not surely grant that the Father makes His defence to the Son in a word? How then is not the one through whom the Father answers back to Him other than the Son? To this, various solutions in order.

One should lament the unholy heretics, and indeed say concerning them that which is spoken in the prophets: 'Weep not for the dead, neither bemoan him;

weep bitterly for the one who thinks and says such things concerning the Only-begotten.'

For what could be more wretched than such men, if indeed they have supposed this to be properly and truly the voice of the Father, to which not only the Saviour listened, but also the very throng of the Jews standing round, or rather the choir of the holy disciples? For they ought rather to have imagined the God-befitting excellences, and not to have tried to bring under our own laws the things above us.

For a bodily voice, and the sound thrust into the air through lips, or devised by some other mechanism, strikes upon the hearing of the body;

but the will of the Father, revolving quietly and as it were within the mind in unutterable utterances, is known by the Son alone, who exists in Him by nature as His wisdom.

But to suppose that God uses a voice made through sound is altogether incredible, if indeed we think we must preserve for the nature above all things the things that are above creation.

And besides, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself did not say that it was a voice of God the Father; nor does He show Himself to need the interpretation of another in order to be able to learn the will of the Father, saying, 'This voice came not because of me, but because of you.' But it were fitting, O best of men, that He should rather have said, if indeed you hold such right opinions concerning Him, 'You have heard with me the voice of the Father';

but now, turning the meaning to the very opposite, He neither confesses that He Himself had need of a voice, but rather insists that it came into being on account of those men—not that it was uttered by the Father, but that it came to be, and for their sake.

And if God the Father works all things through Him, then surely through Him also this was done; or rather, He Himself was the voice, not interpreting to Himself the disposition of the Begetter;

but to the ears of those standing round, that they might believe.

{Another.} If they say that the Son had need of some implanted word, that He might be taught by it the will of God the Father;

where then will Paul find room when he says, 'Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God'? For how is the Son the wisdom of the Father, if, being deficient in wisdom, He receives its perfection from another, by learning, that is, what He does not know? Or how is it not necessary to say that His wisdom is not perfect in the Father? And if the Son is the wisdom of the Father, how could the will be conceived as other than He? For then it were time to say that the will of God the Father is not perfected in wisdom.

But great is the impiety in these things, and on every side the argument holds blasphemy.

It is not, then, as a partaker of instruction from another that the Son knows the things in His own Father, but being Himself the Word and the wisdom and the will, He searches all things, even the depths of God, as it is somewhere written also concerning the Spirit.

{Another.} The divine Scriptures present the Son to us as the image and unaltered impress of the Father;

and the Saviour Himself somewhere says, 'He who has seen me has seen the Father.' But if, having such likeness to Him, He does not from Himself know the things in Him, but needs, as it were, the narrations of another in order to learn;

then it were time to think that the Father too is in this same condition, if indeed He is in likeness to the Son; and He too will need one to interpret the things lying hidden in the Offspring in what is unseen.

And besides the absurdities arising from this, the divine nature has become for us receptive even of ignorance.

But since to think in this way is impious, we must move on to what is more befitting;

for this is seen to be profitable and useful.

{Another.} 'The Spirit,' says the blessed Paul, 'searches all things, even the depths of God'; and in addition to this, 'For what man knows the things of a man, save the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the things of God none has known, save the Spirit of God which is in Him.' Since, then, the Holy Spirit that examines all things exactly is not only of the Father, but also of the Son;

knowing? Then it will now appear superfluous to suppose that the Son learns the will of the Father through another, and the need of a word vainly mediating will assuredly be idle, according to their want of instruction.

For the Son knows all things of Himself.

{Another, through reduction to absurdity.} Those who accuse the substance of the Only-begotten by saying that He does not know the will of the Father, but has as it were made use of a teacher in order to learn—namely the other word conceived by them, which they name 'inward'—let them tell us, if indeed they think they must establish their own opinion on this point, whether they will say that the inward word is by nature equal to the Son;

for let it be supposed as already even subsisting by itself;

or not equal, but somehow inferior, or even superior? If then they reckon it less, they will also be impious against the Father Himself;

for there will assuredly be in Him something inferior to Himself, and other than Him, that is, the inward word.

But if they will not say it is inferior, but will grant it to lie among things superior to the Son, the accusation against the Father concerning the Son will assuredly be twofold.

For first, having begotten, He will be convicted of that which is inferior to the things that are in Himself.

Then, besides this, He too will possess a superior indwelling word, if indeed the Father is consubstantial with the Son who, according to those men, is reckoned as the lesser.

But it is surely fitting, I suppose, that our opponents should recoil from the blasphemy that touches both sides alike;

and they will say that the Father's indwelling word is equal in essence to the Son.

The matter in question is therefore resolved.

For how shall the one teach the other, as one who knows teaching one who does not, if indeed both are equal by nature? Since, then, the word held by those men is feeble on every side, it would henceforth be superfluous to suppose that the Son is mediated by anyone, rather than to believe that He is Himself the God Word who is in God the Father, who was in the beginning.

{Another argument.} The blessed Paul says that in the Son are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and of all knowledge;

but if he who says such things is truthful, how could we further suppose that the Son stands in need of teaching from another, or in whom henceforth shall we seek perfection in knowledge, if He who possesses the whole of it is made wise by another? And how can that which is made wise be wisdom at all? And since it is necessary for us to attend not to the words of those men but to the things given through the Spirit, and since, as Paul says, the Son has in Himself the treasures of wisdom and of all knowledge, He will not learn from any other the things by which He is wisdom, but, existing in the Father, He knows all the things of the Father, as being His wisdom.

That the Son together with the Father is Creator by nature, as being from His essence, and not taken up as an assistant.

All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made.

Since men thought they ought to render worship to something other than the Creator, and bestowed upon the elements that came into being from her the glory that befits the divine nature alone, the theologian necessarily brings in the Only-Begotten as being Maker and Creator by nature, saying that all things came into being through Him, and that without Him nothing came into existence, so that by the deceits of those men he might bar the way of advance, and might show to those who do not know Him the Author of all things, and, through those very things by which he says the creation was made, might clearly teach that He who calls things into being is other than the creation, and that by an ineffable power He brought into being the things that are, out of things that were not, to their coming to be.

For it was thus henceforth possible to behold the Craftsman analogically from the beauty of created things, and to recognize the One who is God in truth, through whom all things have already come to be and, having come to be, are preserved.

Against the false worship of the Greeks, then, thus, I think, the evangelical word may rightly be set in array; and for this reason we believe that the Only-Begotten is introduced through the voice of the holy man as Maker and Creator.

But since it is fitting to consider also the perverse sophistries of the heretics, I think it proper, looking again at their habits, to say a few more things against them.

All things, he says, were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made.

This too invests the Son with a dignity befitting God, showing Him on every side to be consubstantial with the Father who begot Him, and declaring that all that belongs to Him is present by nature in the Offspring;

so that He may be understood as truly God from God, not having the appellation as an acquired thing, as we do, and coming to us through grace alone, according to the saying, 'I said, You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High.' For if all things were made through Him, He would be other than all things;

for in the word 'all,' there is nothing which is not seen among the totality.

So, indeed, even the blessed Paul is found to have understood the word 'all' in this way;

for since in one of his epistles he was making his discourse concerning our Saviour, and was declaring that all things had been put in subjection under His feet, he very rightly adds: 'For in saying all things, He left nothing that is not put in subjection to Him.' Therefore, since we believe that all things came into being through the Son, we would not understand Him to be one of all things, but shall reckon Him to lie outside of all; and, separating Him from the nature and kinship of created things, we shall confess Him to be henceforth nothing else than God from God by nature.

For what could anyone posit as intermediate between God and creation — and I do not mean according to the account of essence,

but only according to the positing, as in thought, of some other of existing things? Or what other place shall the Son occupy, transcending the nature of things made, or rather being Himself the Maker? For all things came into being through Him, as through a Power, as through the Wisdom of God the Father — a wisdom not hidden within the nature of the Begetter, just as indeed there is even in a man, perhaps, the wisdom and power inherent in him, but rather one that subsists properly and by itself, yet nonetheless comes forth from the Father according to the ineffable manner of the begetting, so that He may be understood as truly existing as Son, the Wisdom and the Power of the Father.

But even if the blessed Evangelist says that all things came into being through Him, I think the expression will bring no harm to the doctrines concerning Him.

For it is not the case that, because existing things are said to have come to be through Him, the Son will therefore certainly enter in as our assistant, or as a servant and minister of another's wishes, so that He should no longer be understood as being Creator by nature, or as being supplied by some other with the power to create; but rather He Himself and alone, being the Strength of God the Father, as Son, as Only-Begotten, works all things, the Father, of course, working together and being present with Him, together with the Holy Spirit;

for all things are from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.

It is just as if one were to say that the flower itself, from its own good scent, is present in energy in the fragrance that arises from that sweetness, since the fragrance proceeds from it by nature.

But the force of the illustration in these things is slight, and the Nature that is above all will transcend even this, receiving from it but small tokens of the truths contemplated.

For otherwise how shall we understand the saying, 'My Father works until now, and I work'? For the Son does not say that God the Father does anything privately and by Himself with regard to existing things, while He Himself again similarly works apart from the Father, and, as it were, with the essence from which He is remaining unstirred;

but rather we shall receive the Son as shining forth in the manner of begetting from the Father's essence, and as existing and subsisting in it and from it in a self-subsistent manner, God the Word;

and again the Father as being in the Son, as in a consubstantial Offspring, connaturally, yet distinctly according to the sole difference of being and of being conceived as that which each is.

For the Father remains that which He is, even though He exists connaturally in the Son, just as we say that the sun is in its radiance;

and again the Son will not be conceived as anything other than what He is, even though He exists connaturally in the Father, just as the radiance of the sun is in the sun.

For thus, the Father being truly conceived and being the Father, and the Son again being and being conceived as the Son, with the Holy Spirit, of course, entering in together, the number of the Holy Trinity mounts up into one and the same Godhead.

For how could God be conceived as being altogether one, if each of the things signified were to withdraw into a wholly separate individuality, and, being borne entirely away from the connaturality and essential relation to the other, were named God? Therefore, according to the account of self-subsistent being, we would conceive the Father and the Son and the Spirit, not confounding into one the position by which each is what it is — that is, the distinction of the persons, or of the names;

but preserving distinctively to each the being and being called that which He is, and believing thus, we nonetheless refer them naturally to one Godhead, and decline to conceive them as being altogether separate, because the Son is called the Word and Wisdom and Radiance and Impress and Power of the Father.

For 'Word' and 'Wisdom,' because of their being from the mind and in the mind immediately and without interval, and because of the mutual interchange, so to speak, of the things signified;

for mind will be seen to be in word and wisdom, and word reciprocally in mind, and there is nothing intervening or separating the one from the other;

and again 'Power,' as being present without interval in those who are of such a nature as to possess it, and as unable to be separated from them in any way, as though in the order of an accident, apart from the destruction of the subject;

and again 'Impress,' as being ever connatural and unable to be separated from the essence of which He is the Impress.

Therefore, since each is in the other naturally and necessarily, when the Father works, of course, the Son will work, as being His natural and essential and self-subsistent Power;

and when the Son likewise works, the Father also works, as the Fountain of the creating Word, being present by nature in His own Offspring, just as fire is present in the heat that proceeds from it.

Without Him was not anything made.

It comes over me to marvel exceedingly at the unholy heretics.

For all those things which seem somehow to detract from the dignity of the Only-Begotten and to declare Him second to the Begetter — at least according to the aim that is in those men — these they hunt after with great zeal, and gather from every side the drugs of their own perversity;

but all those things which, on the other hand, are soundly and rightly spoken, and refer the Son to the glory of the Father, these indeed they bury in very deep silences, as though having one and only one aim: to revile in vain Him who is glorified by all creation.

For when they hear that all things were made through Him, they warmly apply the name of servitude, dreaming up the Son as a slave instead of free, and as an attendant rather than a Master;

but when again they learn that without Him was not anything made, they do not rise up to think anything great and admirable concerning Him.

For inasmuch as God the Father is not of such a nature as to create in any other way except through His own Offspring, who is Himself Wisdom and Power, the Evangelist says that nothing whatever came into being apart from Him;

for this reason also the Only-Begotten is the glory of God the Father;

for He is glorified as Creator through the Son;

for He works all things, and brings into being the things that are not.

One might rightly understand the saying, 'Without Him was not anything made,' as spoken with reference to the fashioning of man, if he considers it by himself;

for 'Let us make man,' He says, 'according to Our image and after Our likeness.' For in this above all it is possible to behold clearly that there is nothing lowly in the Son, as though He were an assistant according to the account of those men.

For God the Father does not command the Word, 'Make man,' but, as being with Him by nature and existing without interval, He made Him, as it were, a fellow worker and a partaker in the will concerning man — not anticipating the knowledge that is in the Son in the act of thinking anything, but being manifested, as mind is, without interval and timelessly, in the Word that is engraved and inherent.

But let the truths befitting God again be above the force of the illustration;

and we say that He works together with the Son, not conceiving them as two in a divided way, lest two gods be conceived, nor as the two together being one, lest the Son be contracted into the Father, or indeed the Father into the Son, but rather in that way in which one might grant that the light from which the radiance flashed forth is present with the radiance that comes from the light;

for in such cases the begetter seems in a way, in thought, to be separated from the begotten which comes forth without division;

yet the two together are one and the same in nature, and the one is by no means apart from the other;

and He will again be, even beyond this, God, seeing that He is also above essence, and has nothing that is supremely like Him among created things, so that something of the Holy Trinity may indeed be taken as an image, an image having nothing that differs, so as to attain accuracy of doctrine.

For the divine Scripture is sometimes indifferent regarding its words, doing no injustice to the subject matter, but applying to the things signified, in a somewhat catachrestic way, the terms and the means by which it may think that things are well made clear.

Wherefore we must not be scandalized at the lowliness of the words spoken, but must rather concede the victory, and grant that the power in the tongue and the acuteness of every mind are surpassed by the divine and ineffable Nature;

for in this way too we shall show no small piety.

That the Son is Life by nature, and for this reason is not made, but is from the essence of God the Father.

That which was made, in Him was life.

The blessed Evangelist still makes his discourses to us concerning God the Word;

and it seems to me that he goes usefully through all the things that belong to Him by nature, in order both to shame the drunken insolences of those who hold false doctrines, and to fortify with the truths pertaining to it those who wish to be distinguished by right faith — men who gather their persuasion not from words of worldly wisdom, but who marvel at the beauty of the truth in the demonstration of the Spirit.

What, then, he wishes to teach also through the passage before us is this.

He has just now shown the Son to be Maker and Creator by nature, saying that all things came into being through Him, and that without Him not one thing was called into being.

But since He not only bestows on the creation its being called into existence, but also holds together that which has come to be through Himself, mingling Himself, so to speak, into those who do not have eternal existence according to their own nature, and becoming Life to the things that are, so that the things that have come to be may remain and be preserved, each according to the proper limit of its nature, He says of necessity: 'That which was made, in Him was life';

not only, he says, were all things made through Him, but also whatever has come to be, the life was in Him — that is, the Only-Begotten Word of God, the beginning and constitution of all things, both visible and invisible, of things heavenly and earthly and under the earth.

For He Himself, being the Life by nature, bestows on the things that are their being and living and moving in manifold ways, not by any partition and alteration into each of the regions that are separated by nature;

But the life of all things is one, extending to each according as befits it and as it is able to partake.

But since that which has been brought from non-being into being must also of necessity suffer corruption, and that which has any beginning at all hastens toward its end;

for it belongs to the divine nature alone, which transcends all things, neither to have taken its beginning from anything nor to have an end;

for the perpetual successions among each of like kinds, and the natural transitions of things of the same genus or species into one another, ever looking to the course that follows, render the creation perpetually manifest, and preserve it in continual subsistence for God who made it.

And this then is what it means for each of the things that are to sow in itself seed according to its kind and after its likeness, according to the ineffable declaration of the Creator.

Life, therefore, was in all things; for this is what was set forth.

Again one might reasonably say to the heretic who wars against the truth:

What then will you say to this, when you hear the Spirit-bearer declaring that in all created things was the Life, that is, the Word who was in the beginning? Will you even now dare to say that the Son is not of the substance of God and the Father, so that he might be thought created and made? And how would one not, and most justly, cry out against your ignorance, sir? For if the Word was in the things that have come to be, as Life by nature, mingling himself by participation with the things that are,

then he is other than the things in which he is believed to be.

But being other in nature than what the creation is, how would he not then be the God who is above it? But if you persist in your shamelessness and do not cease from supposing the Son to be created—the Son who is in the things that have come to be, as Life—

first, he will be conceived as being something in himself;

then, in addition to this, he will also be supposed to be a partaker of himself, and life, if indeed being in the things that have come to be, he too will be reckoned to be one out of them.

But the fighter against God himself surely sees, in every way, how great is the want of instruction in thinking thus.

Therefore, if the Word who gives them life is participated in among created things, he himself will not be among the things that participate, but is evidently other than them.

And if this is so, then he is not created, but is in them as Life by nature.

And through the following connected reflections we shall again come to know this.

Reflections, or syllogisms.

If the Son is not of the substance of God and the Father, but they hold that he brought him into being from outside, then he is created and made.

How then is he who is in the things that have come to be the one who gives life to all things? And what excellence shall we then find in the divine nature? Or how does the most wise Paul speak of it as something wondrous in the case of the God who is God by nature, who gives life to all things? For if the Son, being created, gives life to all things, then the creation gives life to itself, being in need of it—by no means bringing to this the God who made it.

There is then nothing greater in God beyond the creation.

For it works no less than God is able to do.

The Son, therefore, is not created, but rather God, and on account of this is by nature also Life.

{Another.} The psalmist marvels exceedingly at the divine nature, and most fittingly, and indeed assigns to it a most excellent dignity, saying, 'For with you is the fountain of life.' But if the Father brought the Son into being, and he does not have his being of his substance, yet even so, being such, gives life to created things and is Life by nature as life-giver, why does the psalmist vainly contend, saying that with God alone is the fountain of life? For the nature of created things also admits of it, if it gives life, even though the Son is not of the divine substance, according to the folly of certain men.

Therefore the Son is Life by nature, as God from God and Life from Life.