Commentary on John 1 part 46/94

the things which ye have heard from your father do ye. He hath spoken to you through Moses; pass over the commandment; ye heard Him saying, Thou shalt not slay the innocent and righteous. How then do ye seek to kill me, thereby loosing the commandment of the Father? But we may also take it in yet another way: Ye also therefore do the things which ye have heard from your father;

He hath spoken, He says, unto you through the prophets; ye heard Him saying, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; proclaim, O daughter of Jerusalem;

behold, thy King cometh unto thee, righteous and bringing salvation, and riding upon the foal of an ass, the son of a beast of burden; and again, through the voice of Isaiah: Get thee up upon a high mountain, thou that bringest good tidings to Zion; lift up thy voice with strength, thou that bringest good tidings to Jerusalem;

behold your God; behold, the Lord cometh with strength, and His arm with dominion;

behold, His reward is with Him, and His work is before Him;

as a shepherd He shall feed His flock, and with His arm shall gather the lambs, and shall comfort those that are with young. Being obedient therefore to the commandments of the Father, receive Him who was foretold;

honour by faith Him who was proclaimed beforehand;

give at least to the words of the Father the mastery within you.

But it must be known that He says the Law is of God the Father, although it was spoken by Him through angels, not placing Himself outside the giving of the law, but conceding to the suppositions of the Jews, who had believed it to be so, and not disputing against the supposition, by way of dispensation;

for He often sought to put them to shame, since they would not receive Him;

for bringing forward into the midst the name of the Father —

They answered him and said, Our father is Abraham.

O the great ignorance, and mind hardened unto disobedience, and looking only unto contentiousness!

For though our Saviour Christ assented and said plainly, I know that ye are Abraham's seed, they persist in the same things, and, as though someone were straining and contending and saying that they were not of the seed of Abraham after the flesh, they say again that our father is Abraham; and going over the same words many times they do not blush — they who fancy that they need yield not even to Battus, but are the finest emulators of that man's chattering.

But perhaps there came to them some utterly irrational occasion for the matter — and of what kind, we shall again tell.

For when the Lord said, The things which I have seen with the Father, these I speak, they did not suppose that by these words He signified God and the Father, but thought He was speaking either of the righteous Joseph, or of some other of those upon the earth, having very petty thoughts about Him and mocking Him and reasoning quite meanly.

For the holy Virgin bore in her womb the divine Babe, not having consorted in marriage, but of the Holy Spirit, as it is written;

and the blessed Joseph, being at the outset ignorant of the manner of the dispensation, was minded to put her away secretly, according to the saying of Matthew.

Nevertheless it was not altogether unknown among the Jews that before marriage and union the holy Virgin conceived in the womb; yet they did not understand that it was also of the Holy Spirit, but rather supposed that she had been corrupted by some one of the nation, whence they held opinions concerning Christ that were not right.

For they thought Him to be the son begotten of another father, of him who had corrupted the holy Virgin, according to their folly, and to have been merely inscribed to Joseph, being illegitimate and not truly his son.

When therefore He said, I speak the things which I have seen with the Father, they by no means admitted any thought concerning God, but rather suspected that He was signifying one of the fathers upon earth, and was attempting to alter their ambitious pride in their forefather, and to assign to His own blood the honour owed to another, and, deeming that He was disparaging the most ancient glory of the patriarchate, they meet Him more contentiously and more vehemently, saying, Our father is Abraham.

For it is as if they said: Though thou pour over us wise words, O man, and though thou thunder round us with extraordinary wonders and applaud thyself with mighty works beyond reason, thou shalt not remove us from the ancient boast; we shall not inscribe thy father as the founder of the race; we shall not assign such glory to another; nay, neither shall we exchange the more ancient for new progenitors.

They called Him the son of the carpenter, disparaging Him in manifold ways, and ranking as nothing the King and Lord of all.

But that they were also ill-disposed concerning the holy Virgin, as one corrupted by some one, we shall know quite plainly from what follows.

Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham;

but now ye seek to kill me, a man who hath spoken to you the truth which I heard from God;

and since He sees them exceedingly senseless, and understanding nothing of the things that were said, He now makes His word free of the veil and bare of all covering.

For it behoved you, He says, it behoved you, if ye have believed that to be ranked among the children of Abraham is the highest honour, to be earnest to imitate that man's ways;

it behoved you to track out the forefather's lovable virtue; it behoved you moreover to emulate and to love his ready obedience.

He heard God saying, Get thee out from thy land and from thy kindred, and come hither into the land which I shall show thee. And delaying nothing about the fulfilment of what was declared, forthwith he ran out from the land that bore him, and, not knowing the foreign land, he laid hold of it, having taken courage upon the sparing care of Him who commanded.

And when he had, as it were, reached the very goal of his life, having worn out about his hundredth year, he heard, Thou shalt have seed;

and doubting in nothing, he gave warm faith to Him who spoke, not attending to the weakness of the flesh, but considering the strength of Him who had declared it.

He heard that he should offer up in sacrifice to God his beloved son, and forthwith he struggled against the longings of nature, making the tender love toward the young man secondary to the divine commandment.

But in you I find everything contrary to these things;

for ye seek to kill me, He says, because I have spoken to you the things that are from God;

this Abraham did not do;

for he did not insult with disobediences Him who spoke to him, nor did he seek to do any of the things that grieved Him.

How then are ye still children of Abraham, having departed so far from his love of God as the difference of your ways declares? But observe how He orders His discourse;

for here He has not said that He heard the truth from the Father, but from God, since, as we said just now, out of the immeasurable folly that was in them they were somehow dragged down concerning Him unto thoughts that were not true, supposing that He was speaking of some father of those upon the earth.

And very well, while making the discourse about being put to death, He names Himself a man, everywhere preserving to Himself incorruptibility as God by nature, yet not separating from Himself His own temple, but as being one Son even when He became man;

and He says moreover that He spoke truth.

For the word of the Saviour teaches us to practise godliness no longer in types and figures, but persuades us to love the worship that is in spirit and true.

But when He says, 'The things which I have heard from the Father,' we must in no way take offence.

For since He declares Himself to be man, He speaks this also in a manner befitting a man.

For just as He is said to die as a man, let Him also be said to hear as a man.

It is likely that He sets down, under the term 'to hear,' the innate knowledge which He possesses concerning the will of His own Begetter.

For thus it is customary even for the God-inspired Scripture itself often to speak concerning God.

For when it says, 'And the Lord heard,' we shall by no means attribute to Him a distinct and separate faculty of hearing, such as indeed exists in us.

For the divine nature is simple, and free from all composition.

Rather we shall understand knowledge as hearing, and hearing as knowledge.

And nothing composite exists in that which is simple, as we have said.

And we shall add to these a third argument, not departing from the fitting aim.

God the Father said somewhere concerning Christ to the most holy Moses, 'A Prophet will I raise up for them'—clearly for those of Israel.

'from among their brethren, like unto thee, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all things whatsoever I command him.' For this reason, therefore, I suppose, our Lord Jesus Christ says that He heard the truth from the Father and spoke it to the Jews, at once convicting them, who fought against Himself, as fighting against God the Father, and showing Himself.

clearly showing Himself to be that One whom the Lawgiver had promised beforehand that He would raise up for them.

'Ye do the works of your father.'

Having proved the Jews to be of a different character from their ancestor, and greatly estranged from his love toward God, He rightly strips them of their vain fleshly boasting.

And having plainly declared that they ought no longer to be reckoned among that man's children, He assigns them to another father, one after their own likeness, and He defined the likeness that comes from works as a kind of bond of kinship—teaching that the good in disposition, because it befits them to be joined with the good; and determining that it is consistent for those who live after an evil manner and are condemned for the same things to be ranked in the order of fathers.

For just as those who have chosen to live most nobly, and who on this account have already been styled saints, may without danger call God their Father—since they earnestly strive to imitate Him as far as is possible for men—so also to the wicked the evil one would justly be inscribed as begetter, since they form in their own habits the image of his wickedness and perversity.

For a father is not always understood, especially in the divine Scripture, as one who has begotten from himself, but also as one who has certain persons conformed to his own habits, of whom for this reason he is said to be father.

So also the divinely-inspired Paul writes to some: 'For in Christ Jesus through the gospel I have begotten you.' Just as, then, as we were saying, some are made conformed both to God and to the holy fathers through likeness in manner of life and through sanctification.

so also some are made of the same character and same mind with the devil and those like him, suffering this from their own depravity.

Therefore the saints are most fittingly the fathers of the saints, and again the wicked, being of like turn, of the wicked.

And those who, so far as it can be expressed, impress the divine form upon their own souls in sanctification, and who possess the boldness befitting God's own sons, will rightly say, 'Our Father which art in heaven.' But the base, on the other hand, will be attached to the father who is after their own kind, having been begotten, as it were, through their likeness to him into the same depravity as his own.

Christ therefore both defines and names for the Jews another father besides the holy Abraham.

But who this is, He does not yet say plainly.

'They said therefore unto Him, We were not born of fornication;'

'we have one Father, even God.'

I have already said before that the Jews, who readily dared all things, were sick with bitter and unholy conceptions concerning Christ the Saviour.

For they supposed that the holy Virgin, I mean the Mother of the Lord, had been corrupted, and had conceived in the womb not of the Holy Spirit, nor by the power from on high, but perchance by some one of those upon the earth.

For being disobedient and altogether senseless, they either took no account at all of the prophetic writings, though plainly hearing, 'Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son,' or looking only to the flesh and following the sequences that hold among us, and not conceiving of the nature that works even beyond reason—to which nothing is hard to accomplish, but everything that seems to it is easily traversed—they thought that a woman could not otherwise conceive except from union and intercourse with a man.

The wretched men, being sick with such a suspicion, dared to slander the birth, through the Spirit, of the divine and not-unwondrous Offspring.

And since, setting them outside their kinship with Abraham, He assigns them to another father, they are exceedingly enraged, and foaming forth unbridled the wrath that is in them, they say revilingly, 'We were not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.'

But let one again observe and consider plainly how great a folly they are sick with in this matter also.

For those who, on account of the baseness and depravity in them, were not even reckoned among Abraham's children by the righteous Judge, go off to such a measure of insanity as even to name God as father to themselves—perhaps because of what is said in the books of Moses, 'Israel is My firstborn son'—yet not receiving into mind what is said through the voice of Isaiah, 'Woe, apostate children, thus saith the Lord.' And one might reasonably inquire what it was that persuaded the Jews at the present time no longer to say, 'Our father is Abraham,' or 'We have one father, Abraham,' but at once to run up to the one God.

And they seem to me to have reasoned something of this sort within themselves.

For since, striking at the Lord with their reviling as though His mother had been unchaste before marriage, they were ascribing to Him two fathers, they of necessity sought to take, as a kind of accomplice of their malice in this matter, the naming of the one.

For by the very means through which they strongly maintain that they have one Father, even God, by these same means they obliquely cast reproach of two fathers upon the Lord, setting, as it were, the one over against the two.

For they considered that in saying 'We have one father, Abraham,' they would altogether have denied the others, I mean Isaac and Jacob, and the twelve from him; and if they were to do this, they seemed already to arm themselves against themselves, and to fight against their own will and boast, alienating Israel from the nobility of the fathers, and thereby thenceforth running together with the Lord's words.

Fleeing therefore the harm that seemed to spring up for them from this quarter, they no longer say, 'We have one father, Abraham,' but rather inscribe to themselves one Father, even God, being charmed only by the most treacherous pleasures of reviling, so that they may stumble into yet greater charges—being workers of all impiety, yet daring to take in the place of a father the enemy of all impiety.

'Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love Me;'

'for I came forth from God and am come.'

The Lord does not by these words take away the possibility that some may also be ranked among the sons of God, but rather shows to whom the boast would befit, and that it will be found to belong rather to the saints.

And He rather convicts the insolent Jew of playing the fool.

'For I,' He says, 'am one and true Son by nature, and that clearly of God the Father;'

'but all have been appointed as being formed with reference to Me, and as ascending into My glory;'

'for the images are always with reference to their archetypes.'

'How then,' He says, 'can ye at all be numbered among the children of God—ye who have neither come to love Him who has shone forth from God and transforms into His own form those who believe in Him, but already even dishonour Him, and that not in one way but in many? And they who have not received the character of God the Father, how could they at all be formed with reference to Him? Moreover, it will not be possible for those who chance along to be called, without blame, children of God,' He says, 'but for those in whom the beauty of piety toward Him shines forth—for those, I think, and not for others, will it be fitting.'

'I have come from heaven to counsel the best things, and My word is found calling you to conformity with God.'

'But if indeed it were truly a matter of eagerness and longing to you to have God as Father, assuredly ye would also have loved Me, the guide and teacher of such a way, who give the means of likeness to the one and true Son, who make conformed to Himself, through the Holy Spirit, those who receive Him.'

'Have ye loved?' Therefore the matter set before us at once contains also a bitter conviction against the Jews;

for when they attempt to call God Father, they stand far off from the virtue of those who have been called to this, through their not loving Him who is from God by nature.

And at the same time He usefully introduces the mention of His ineffable begetting, that in this too they may again be caught in impiety, calling Him base-born and illegitimate.

If therefore the saying, 'I came forth from God,' signifies His ineffable and beginningless begetting from the Father;

then in adding 'I am come,' He signifies His entrance into this world in the flesh.

And He surely does not say, as those opposed and first suppose, that the God-Word then first shone forth from God the Father when He became man;

for this seemed good to certain of the unholy heretics;

but he will rather understand what is said in a consequent manner, and will again think of it piously.

For not because He joined the expressions, I mean the 'I came forth' and the 'I am come,' will the Word from the Father be altogether contemporaneous with the birth of the flesh; but we shall preserve to each of the things signified what is fitting.

For, believing that the first, the begetting of the Word conceived as from God, is beginningless and beyond mind;

wherefore it is also set first in the words, 'I came forth from God;'

but the second, that is, the begetting according to the flesh: 'For neither have I come of Myself, but He sent Me.'

'I was made flesh like unto you, that is, I became man, and by the good pleasure of God the Father I came into this world to speak to you the things from God, and to make known to those who knew them not all things that are according to His mind.'

'But ye have not loved,' He says, 'the Saviour and Guide who has been shown forth to you out of the divine will.'

'How then will ye any longer be styled children of God, or in what manner will ye gain the grace of intimacy with Him, ye who have not honoured the One who is from Him?' And it is likely that the Lord again hints at something, and by such words hastens to silence the people of the Jews as they bark vainly against Him.

But what then is the thing hinted at, we shall tell in few words.

Many among the Jews, counting the divine fear as nothing, but admiring and welcoming only the honours that come from men, and being overcome by shameful gains, dared to prophesy, speaking the things from their own heart and not from the mouth of the Lord, as it is written.

The account of the matter before us, then, is in these things.

And it is likely again that the heretic makes, as it were, food of the impiety within him out of what has been said.

For he will perhaps bring accusation against the substance of the Only-begotten, and will suppose it to be among things lesser than those in which the Father is, because He says that He was sent by Him.

Let him remember Paul crying out concerning the Son: 'Who, being in the form of God, counted it not a thing to be grasped to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death.' But if He humbled Himself willingly, clearly the Father as it were consenting and willing along with Him, what accusation will one have who follows the manner of the economy to its end, according to the reasoning by which it had to be? And if, because He says He was sent, thou thinkest the Son to lie among things lesser than those in which the Father is—tell me, I pray, again: how does He who, according to thy ignorance, is among lesser things, work the works of God without any difference at all? For where does the 'lesser' shine through in Him who possesses perfectly all things of His own Begetter, and the fullest, God-befitting authority? He will therefore not be conceived as lesser on account of the mission, but being God from God by nature and truly—since He Himself is the wisdom and the power of the Father—He is sent to us just as from the sun the light diffused from it, that He may make wise that which lacks wisdom, and that so thenceforth it may be raised up through Him, and that which had grown weak may be empowered unto the knowledge of God the Father, and be led up to all virtue.

For all the best things have appeared to the nature of man through Christ alone.

There is therefore in Christ nothing whatsoever of the servile, save only the form according to the flesh; rather, His authority and power over all things are befitting of God, even though the discourse shapes for us that which is human, fittingly conforming itself to the measure of the abasement.

What has often been said by us we shall say again, for the benefit of those who will read it.

For the discourse may pass very frequently through that which is by nature helpful, doing no injury at all.

It was therefore the custom of Christ the Saviour by no means always to receive the word that bubbles up from the tongue of those who disobeyed Him, but rather to look into hearts and reins, and to make His replies to the reasonings still turning about in the depth of their heart.

For a man, not knowing the thoughts that are in another, must of necessity receive the spoken word; but God is not so.

For knowing all things, He has the inward thought in place of the utterance.

Since therefore the Lord had said to the Jews that He had come not of Himself, as was the custom of those who go about of their own opinion and not from the divine Spirit to prophesy, but had rather been sent from God, they again pondered within themselves, or reasoned among themselves, or even secretly whispering to one another, they said: Many prophets have spoken the things from God, and have brought in to us the words from the Spirit, but we find nothing among them of such a kind as is in this man's sayings.

For He wholly draws men away from the worship according to the Law, and transfers them to some other polity, and introduces to us a strange manner of life.

His word, then, has plainly become discordant, and irreconcilable with the men of old.

I have not been ignorant, He says, that you are unable to understand My speech, that is, My teaching; but I will tell you the cause of the matter, and I will make plain what the hindrance is.

You cannot hear My word.

In saying 'You cannot,' He convicts them as being powerless in respect of that which is perfectly good, because they are held fast in the grip of their own passions.

For love of pleasure unnerves the mind, and the inclination that runs unbridled toward what is base, slackening the tension of the heart, renders it feeble and utterly without courage for the very ability to accomplish virtue.

Having therefore been first weakened by their inclinations toward baseness, and being tyrannized by their own passions, He says, you cannot hear My word.

...in them; but the ungodly shall be weak in them. You will find something akin to these things also in what was said to the Pharisees elsewhere: How can you believe, who receive glory from one another, and do not seek the glory that is from the only God? For in this too the fact that they cannot believe signifies the voluntary weakness of their understanding, that is, that their mind has been captured beforehand by the love of glory.

And again we find true concerning the Jews that which was spoken through the voice of Paul: But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. Therefore, since they were natural men, they accounted as foolishness Him who was henceforth calling them to be saved, and teaching the way of the excellent polity, and rightly directing them so that they might be able to please the virtue-loving God, to whom be all honour, glory, and might unto the ages of ages. Amen.

You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you wish to do.

He is a manslayer from the beginning, and stands not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.

Having fittingly driven them away, as from a pasture, from kinship with Abraham, since they had ways unlike his, and having convicted them as having departed far from the piety toward God Himself, and having in addition to these things set forth the cause of their inability to be obedient to His speech, He now shows again who might more suitably and more properly be named their father.

You therefore, He says, are of your father the devil, whom He says to be a manslayer in the beginning, and not to stand in the truth, and to be a liar.

And that this one has for a father a liar, whom also in what follows He clearly defined who he might be.

For this very rashness of the things set forth, being, as in few words, of great obscurity, requires most of all the tests of exactness.

For the discourse concerning this is deep, and not, I think, easily surveyed by many.

For as far as concerns the meaning that can be readily taken up, He defines for the Jews no other father than Satan, who slid down from heaven.

But what lies in what follows, as concerning the father defined for them, that he is a liar just as his father also is, somewhat troubles us, or rather compels us to be no little perplexed.

For what likely things, in our thinking, should we suppose came to be a father to the devil, or who slid down before him, another one to whom the one after him might be likened as in form and manner? For in the sacred and divine writings no one could point out to us any such reading.

And what is in no way admissible for belief is that which has not been said in the God-inspired Scriptures.

...into which this one was formed, I mean, according to the form that is in baseness? For some of the older expositors, treating of the things in the passage before us, say that that ancient Satan, who is understood also as the ringleader of all the other demons, was bound by the power of God, and was cast into Tartarus itself, there to render account for the things wherein he acted insolently against God; but that another after him was made to appear, one equal in manner to the abominations of the father.

They have well and firmly asserted concerning the present ruler of this age, that the Saviour said of him both that he was a manslayer from the beginning, and that he is a liar just as his father.

But if we did not think much within ourselves concerning this, we should reasonably have accepted the word as readily to hand.

But as it is, it does not allow us to assent unreflectingly, and before all the rest, that consideration.

For at the time of the sojourn of our Saviour, the tyranny of the devil was receiving the beginning of its downfall, and the wicked and unclean spirits were being sent into the abyss.

And indeed the demons, coming to Him, expressly besought Him not to command them to go away into the abyss, as it is written.

And we remember that they also made a great outcry concerning this, saying: Ah, what have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? We know You, who You are.

Have You come here before the time to torment us? For that our Lord Jesus the Christ, having sojourned among us, was about to consume them and to distress them in various ways, they too doubtless knew altogether, finding much talk about Him among those of Israel; yet they charged Him with having arrived not in due time, and doing this tyrannically, and perversely accusing the season of His sojourn.

Yet they say 'before the time,' as men who were in no way being tormented at any other time, but who expected one time, that of the sojourn, at which they were unhesitatingly going to endure the things expected.