Greek original · 148 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 1:6687–1:6834 (13790 verses in all)
But to this we also say this: If, while that one was bound according to the supposition of some, another deceived Adam, and yet has not ceased from the madness of which he is accused, then the first will be wholly guiltless in the things concerning us, and the argument will likewise, as is reasonable, acquit him of every charge, since he has neither murdered anyone, nor deceived, nor lied.
Nor would it justly be said to him by God: As a garment defiled with blood shall not be clean, so neither shall you be clean, because you have destroyed My land and slain My people. If then we allow that one, whom they also say to be the first, to have no share in the evils just now enumerated by us, whom shall we henceforth determine the second after him to imitate, or toward whom did the latter form himself, surpassing in wickedness the one who leads, and bearing the marks of that one's baseness in coarser characters? Yet it were perhaps not unfitting to go through more things in searching out the argument concerning this; but to strive too vehemently over matters where it is least necessary we reckon superfluous.
We must therefore go on to another meaning, and seek out exactly whom Christ defines as father to the Jews, one equal in manner and of like mind, such as would reasonably be inscribed a father of the demon, that ringleader of evil, that is, Satan.
He therefore refers them back to Cain, who first of all men, when reproved, did not love his admonisher, but was shown to be, after Satan, the beginning of envy and murder and guile and falsehood and deceit, of whom he might justly be named even a son, inasmuch as he impressed within himself the whole formation of that one's wickedness.
For in the same manner as God is understood as father to everyone holy and righteous, being Himself the beginning of all sanctification and righteousness, in the same manner, I think, Satan would with good reason be named father to every wicked man, being himself the beginning of all wickedness.
And having shown Cain to be equal in manner and of like mind to this one, we bring the argument down, in the third place, upon the Jews, who bear the whole image of the baseness in him.
Therefore Satan, having dishonoured as it were his own principality, and greatly grasping after things above his own nature, and not keeping the limit of his own rank, was cast down, and fell, being convicted as it were through this by God, and being taught the measure of his own nature.
But having no benefit from this because of his own ill counsel, he sickened toward the worse, in no way looking to the need to set right his own resolve promptly, but rather earnestly striving to remain, as it were, in the unshakable fixity of his perversity.
And when the first man had been formed by God according to the writing of Moses, and was in paradise still keeping the commandment that had been given, I mean the one concerning the tree, Satan was first kindled into envy; and when as it were his own transgression and disobedience was being convicted by the first-formed pair, while they were still keeping the commandment that had been given, he hastened to drag them by manifold deceits into disobedience.
And knowing that they would bring forth children, having counted the commands of the great King as nothing, he persuades even those who had done no wrong to do this, enveloping in the uttermost evils those who had committed no injustice.
For that the transgression in Adam, and the death that leaped upon us through it, became the work of diabolical deceit and envy, both the very nature of the matter will teach, and no less will the oracle of the all-wise Solomon make clear, which runs thus: God did not make death.
And the Lord God said to Cain: Why have you become deeply grieved, and why has your countenance fallen? If you offer rightly, but do not divide rightly, have you not sinned? Be still. Then to Abel: To you shall be his turning, and you shall rule over him. Therefore Cain was convicted for not having divided rightly what was offered, while Abel was justly counted worthy of praises and honour; and this became to Cain the very nourishment of envy.
For he grew savage toward the reproofs that would have brought him to soberness, just like Satan; then, having conceived an unjust envy, as we have said, he goes against his brother by guile, having now devised an unholy envy.
Therefore Cain is firstborn, as we have said; and again, as among these children of God by adoption, Israel is firstborn, according to what was said to Moses: Israel is My firstborn son. That one brought the things from the earth as a sacrifice to God, but He had no regard for his sacrifices, as it is written.
And the worship of the Law, that of Israel, according to what was said, is somewhat more earthly, being through calves and sheep and the fruits from the earth.
For to what purpose, He says, do you bring Me frankincense from Sheba and cinnamon from a land far off? But also through the voice of Isaiah He plainly cries aloud: For who has required these things at your hands? Then after Cain enters Abel the righteous to sacrifice from the sheep.
Then what follows upon these things? Cain was rebuked as not having divided rightly, and being convicted he sickened with envy, and rushes to murder without judgement.
God also admonished, in the Son, the people of the Jews; He demanded from them the better things for the presentation of gifts, commanding the worship according to the Law to be transferred into spiritual fruit-bearing, and exhorting them to transform the letter into truth.
In like manner the Jews deceived, so far as it lay with them, when they sent forth the traitor to Christ in the guise of a friend; and he, coming to hand Him over, greeted Him deceitfully, saying, 'Hail, Rabbi.' But taking Him also into the plain, that is, outside the gate, they made away with Him.
You see, then, how they are convicted of in no way closely resembling Abraham or those born of him, but rather they bear the image of their own and truly fitting father, being sick to an extraordinary degree with a wickedness conformed and akin to his; and so with justice they hear: 'You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you wish to do.'
The aim of the discourse looks toward the father of the Jews who was set forth and pointed out in the midst, I mean Cain; but it is broadened toward what is more general.
For He does not limit the force of what is said to that man's ways alone, but rather attributes to everyone like him what applies specifically to one, laying it upon all who are alike.
For the things which he has learned from his leaders and from the one who gave the beginning of wickedness—having made lying a kind of natural aptitude—he imitates his own father.
'For this reason,' He says, 'since his father too became a lover of lying, and he is led as it were by certain natural ordinances into the base lineage of his forefathers and father, and displays in himself their vileness, having made the depravity in his ancestors a most conspicuous image, as it were, of his own manners and ways, he assuredly glories somehow in his own evils.'
'I came forth and am here'; for if anyone lies because he has a liar for a father, and speaks thence as from his own kinship, how is it not necessary that I too, who speak the truth, should assuredly be understood to have been begotten of a true Father—and not, as you in your impiety have supposed, of some earthly man through fornication and an unlawful union? With such words, then, might the Lord address the Jews.
But one must know that in the case of men—or rather of rational spirits—kinship is seen in character and ways, whatever kinship they might have both toward one another and toward the devil, the father of all wickedness.
For truly being from Him, together with the property according to nature, having all that is His and the utmost of resemblance in all respects, He is seen to be the form and image and impress of the One who begot Him.
'Which of you convicts Me of sin?' The question is not that of one expecting to be convicted, but rather of one who removes and utterly denies that He who has shone forth from God as true God could fall into sin.
For all sin takes its origin from a turning aside from the better toward that which is not so, and is engendered in those whose nature it is to turn, and who are receptive of alteration toward things not fitting.
How, then, could He be thought even to sin, who knows no turning, nor is receptive of any alteration toward what is unfitting, but is rather unshaken in the goods innate in Him—and this not from another, but from Himself? The Lord therefore inquires of the Jews whether at all they are able to convict Him of sin.
Yet fitting it to the matter at hand, we say that He is not asking about every sin for the present—being afraid of thus being convicted of doing so—but rather we conceived something of this sort: that, always being most earnestly zealous to put the sin of the Jews to shame, He would by no means through this suffer Himself to goad them to accuse again those things which indeed we mentioned before: 'For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a man, make Yourself God'; and in addition to these, still also to bring forward the abolition of the Sabbath, on account of which He was being judged as though a lawbreaker.
'For if I am never at any time,' He says, 'convicted as a liar, for what reason have you resolved to disobey Him who at all times speaks the truth, and who plainly says that I was begotten of a true Father and that I know not falsehood? Grant then, grant henceforth without hesitation to hold in faith that I am assuredly also true, when I say concerning Myself, I came forth from the Father and am here; and concerning you, that your father is the devil.'
For this too is a thing most especially befitting to teachers: I mean, not to shrink from unfolding in many ways a word which has not been received at the first time, so that it may settle in the souls of the hearers.
And they vainly falsely claim God as their father for themselves, whenever they say, 'We have one Father, God.' For God, He says, being wholly truth, rejoices in truth, and wills that those who worship Him should worship in truth and in spirit.
For let one, say, of those accustomed to be temperate say to a licentious son, or to a servant, or a neighbor: 'If I seem to you to be temperate in declining fornication, and in setting the suspicion of it as far as possible from my own head, why do you disobey and not believe me when I say that the thing is base and abominable?' And surely it is not at all as seeking to bring a defense against the question that he would say such things, but rather by convicting him, showing plainly from what he disobeys, that, rejoicing in dissoluteness, he does not admit the word that would make him temperate.
So then also in the case of the Jews we shall understand it, when Christ says, 'If I speak the truth, why do you not believe Me?' For the form of such questions has a confession that falls out, as it were, and is always somehow lying ready to hand from those being questioned; but rather the interrogation, for the most part, one might say, convicts them.
For I say that one must not think all the Jews without exception to have been baptized in unmixed follies, but that there were some who had indeed a zeal for God, as Paul says, yet not according to knowledge, and for this reason delayed a little concerning the faith.
nor yet according to that which is said through Paul, 'All things are of God'; for since He who gives being to all is the Creator and Author of the generation of all things, the inspired Paul says that all things are from Him.
Therefore He says that the one who has been made akin to God through virtue and a lawful manner of life, and has been deemed worthy as it were of kinship with Him, is 'of God'—inasmuch as He deigns to rank such people also among His children.
for good does not easily dwell in the wicked, and the longing for virtue is in no way strong enough to prevail, since their mind is filled to the uttermost with baseness, and looks only to its own will.
When Christ says, 'He who is of God hears the words of God,' let no one suppose that He is enjoining that we should receive the divine utterances by the ears of the body alone.
For which of beings, even if he be utterly base, would not listen to the voice of one speaking anything whatsoever, unless indeed by some disease he were deprived of sense? But the word 'hears' He here sets down in place of 'assents,' 'is persuaded,' and 'stores away into his own mind,' according to what is said in the book of Proverbs: 'The wise in heart will receive commandments.' For the word, when carried about in the ears of the foolish, or rather of the scornful, like some meaningless sound, and like some noise that has vainly disturbed them, at once departs from those who received it; but it sinks in, as it were into good soil, the heart of the understanding.
Very wisely, then, the Lord, convicting the follies of the Jews and showing them to be blaspheming unrestrainedly, says that His own words are the words of God.
'For He is, as it were, re-educating them,' He says, 'to think concerning Himself the more fitting things, and not to suppose that He has in truth sprung from Joseph, or from any other of those upon the earth, but to believe that He has shone forth as God from God, from the essence of God and the Father'—which very thing, when they understood it, they are vexed, and inflame themselves with hotter passions, adding lawlessness upon their own lawlessness, as it is written, whereby they insult Him still more greatly.
The Jews answered and said to Him, 'Do we not rightly say that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?' It is fitting again to lament the stupefaction of the Jews and the excess of their folly.
For they are caught by their own utterances, like wild beasts, when they leap upon the hands of those who slaughter them, themselves lending against themselves the impulses upon the blade.
For being convicted—since it was their habit and their nurtured practice to speak lies—they at once show as true what is true, and are cut to the quick, on hearing from the Savior that they are not of God.
For they dare to call Him who has shone forth from God as God a Samaritan and a demoniac, they themselves rather having within themselves the bitter and God-fighting demon;
As liars, then, and insolent men and revilers, and being caught through these very things, and accustomed to fight against God, they will pay the fitting penalty to the Judge who is mighty in all things.
For their setting it forth to say, 'Do we not rightly say,' somewhat intimates that on certain grounds they also disparage Him as a Samaritan, and indeed also the other charge, which it belongs to their utterance to dare.
They say, then, that He is a Samaritan as one indifferent concerning the commandments of the Law, and one who reckons the abolition of the Sabbath as nothing.
Or, by another line of reasoning, they call him a Samaritan, since it was the custom of the Samaritans both to testify to their own purity and to lay false claim to it, while condemning others as being defiled.
For this reason, I think, it is written that 'the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans'; and they also refuse to mingle with certain others, loathing in a manner the defilement thence arising, since to them such foolish talk seems to be rightly held.
But the Lord, condemning the malice of the Jews, called them sons of the devil, while for himself he bears witness to a complete freedom from all fault with respect to sin, and to purity in its very highest degree, saying: 'Which of you convicts me of sin?' And this plainly ascribed to himself the loftiest purity, in that he could not fall into sin.
But in calling the Jews children of Satan, he condemned them as being defiled and as having their mind full of all uncleanness—which indeed is also true.
And this very thing they suppose Christ to be doing, whenever, being a man, he sets himself as it were in the place of God, saying, 'He who is of God hears the words of God.' For he intimates, they say, that such words are spoken concerning his own utterances.
This, then, was the pretext and occasion for the reviling of the Jews against him—or rather the blasphemy—which pledged for them the everlasting flame, that they should say those things.
For being angry because they had often been called sons of the devil and liars, they prove by their very deed that the charge belongs to them—the very thing which they ought rather to have shaken off by an inclination toward virtue.
For to love reviling altogether, and to attribute to some as present what is not present in them, befits not those ranked among the children of God, but is most fitting for sons of the devil.
And these wretched men not only revile—they who bear false witness against their own head, not to say against Christ—but they even strongly maintain that they do this rightly, not in the least condemning their own baseness, which is the plainest proof of the most complete blindness.
For most emphatically he says, 'I have not a demon,' and, as it were setting himself in contrast to them, he declares himself free from the reviling on this score, and rather shows that what was said is true concerning them.
For if they did not themselves truly possess the demon, they would with good reason have shuddered to call demon-possessed the one who was attested to them as God by his works.
Most skilfully, then, he says, 'I have not,' transferring as it were upon them what was said, and rather assigning it to them, because it is thus in truth.
'I therefore have it not,' he says, 'but you evidently have the demon; and I honour my own Father,' declaring himself to be God and to have shone forth from God, and firmly affirming that he knew no sin.
For it was needful—yes, needful—that he who is of God should be God, and that he who is of the one who knows no sin should be seen to be such, according to the one from whom he is.
For I say justly concerning you, that you are not of God, since it is not lawful to say that those who have come to such a pitch of wickedness and are steeped in every baseness are of God.
For he honours, and deems worthy of kinship with himself, not the liar and reviler and blasphemer and boaster and insolent man, nor him who is wont unjustly to thirst for murder, but the reasonable and gentle and godly and God-loving and good man.
So then in this respect also I honour the Father, in that I set outside kinship with him those who are condemned for unmixed wickedness; but you dishonour me even when I do this, laying blame upon the praises concerning the Father, so that you are caught being impious not only against the Son but now against him also.
For if in bearing the noblest witness concerning myself I honour the one who begot me, then surely, he says, the one who casts upon him who is of him the utmost reproaches will altogether dishonour him.
On every side, therefore, Christ is confirmed by his own words, and clearly declares that he is God by nature; and by the things through which he says the Father is honoured, thrusting the multitude of the unholy out of kinship with him, he declares the Jews to be wholly aliens from God.
For, although he hears the worst and most jarring of all things from those who impiously behave insolently toward him—and this many times and not merely once—he abides in his own kindness, and departs in no way from what befits him, doing this also for our example, that we, striving to follow in his footsteps, may not be caught rendering reviling for reviling, nor any other evil for evil to those who wish to grieve us, but rather may overcome evil with good. 'I therefore do not seek my own glory,' he says—not as though he made insolence toward him a thing without peril for those who will it, nor yet as urging any lightly to go into this impiety, is he seen saying this; rather he hints at this: 'For I have come,' he says, 'not to traffic in the glory that is from you, nor at all craving honour or renown.'
But he who did not deem it unworthy to take the form of a servant, though it was possible for him to remain in equality with God and the Father, and to revel in things beyond mind and speech—how could he still be thought to seek glory from anyone, and not rather willingly to endure ingloriousness for the benefit of others? For either the Lord means this in these words, or else we shall suppose in yet another way that he does not seek his own glory.
For though it was in his power at once to punish the insolent, and to exact penalties for the blasphemy, as against those who were impious toward him, the Lord of all,
but that impiety toward God might not appear a thing that anyone could ride roughshod over, of necessity, as though setting up a kind of bulwark against them to hinder them from at once advancing to this, he set over against them the wrath of the Father.
for he will be an avenger, and will rise up against the insolent—not as though championing another, perhaps, nor as wishing to be grieved and deeming it fitting because one of the saints has been insulted, but as though the sin ascends to himself;
for there is nothing at all coming between the Father and the Son, so far as concerns the identity of essence we affirm, even though each be conceived as existing distinctly in his own person.
For on this very account also our Lord Jesus Christ says elsewhere: 'He who honours not the Son, honours not the Father either.' For the Son has in himself by nature the Father, glorified together with him, and each, evidently, co-subsisting with the other;
The wretched Jews, therefore, shall be punished for their blasphemy against the Lord and Son, having been impious against the whole consubstantial and holy Trinity, and against the nature that is queen over all, inasmuch as they grieved it in the Son.