Commentary on John 1 part 64/94

and he weaves together a certain reasoning, all but forcing Him to say, even against His will, both where He is going and to what end the way of His departure is directed.

'For we do not know,' he said, 'where You go; how then could we know the way?' Now Christ passes over the disciple's excessive curiosity;

for He does not answer to that which the man himself wished, but, keeping that within His own knowledge and reserving it rather for a more fitting occasion, He usefully unveils that which was necessary for their instruction.

'I therefore,' He says, 'am the way; I am the truth; I am the life.'

And that the Lord speaks truly in saying these things concerning Himself, no one of sound mind, I think, would ever doubt;

yet I judge that this must be inquired into with a love of learning.

For why, though He is named Light and Wisdom and Power, and by however many other names in the God-inspired Scriptures—names chosen, as it were, and having very great significance—does He for the present make use of these, calling Himself Way and Truth and Life? For the force of the saying is, as I think, profound and not very easy to survey.

Nevertheless, one must not shrink from the attempt.

For I will say what comes up into my mind, plainly leaving it to those accustomed to contemplate more keen-sightedly to conceive the better things.

I mean, then, through action according to manifold virtue, and through faith in uprightness, and through hope in life.

Is there, then, for us any other supplier or procurer or cause or occasion of being able to do such things, besides our Lord Jesus Christ? By no means.

For He Himself has enacted for us the things that surpass the Law; He Himself has shown us the way, which, I think, one might rightly understand of the virtue that is in action, and of that which in the deeds done according to Christ is passable and ready.

He Himself, therefore, is the truth; He Himself is the way—that is, the true definition of faith, and the rule and measuring-line of the unerring apprehension concerning God.

For believing in the Son truly—that is, in Him who was begotten of the very substance of God the Father, not spuriously, not falsely named, nor yet a creature or a thing made—we shall wear about us the boast of the true faith.

One both knows God as Father and will receive Him as such.

He Himself, accordingly, is the truth; He Himself is the life;

for no other will restore to us the life that is in hope—that is, the life in incorruption and blessedness and sanctification;

for He Himself raises us up, and, when we had become dead through the ancient curse, will bring us back again to that which we were in the beginning.

All the fairest and most excellent things, therefore, have already appeared and will come to be for us in Him and through Him.

And observe with me again how very fitting to the contemplation of the things before us is the discourse concerning these matters.

For while the disciple was still doubting and saying, 'How do we know the way?' He showed in few words that, once they knew Him to be the cause and supplier and dispenser of the good things that convey men to the world above, they would no longer have any need of anything in order to know the way.

But since He joined to this the words 'No one comes to the Father except through Me,' come now, let us also say something concerning this, of the things that are to be said, first investigating that point: how one might go to the Father.

We come, then, in two ways;

for either, having become holy according to the measure befitting humanity, we are joined to the holy God—

for 'You shall be holy,' He says, 'because I am holy'—or else we walk toward the knowledge of the Father which is in faith and contemplation, as in a mirror and in a riddle, according as it is written.

But no one could ever be holy, or attain to it through a life according to virtue, unless Christ guides him in all things; nor could he be joined to God the Father, unless Christ in every way mediates.

For He is the Mediator between God and men, joining humanity to God through Himself and in Himself.

For inasmuch as He has sprung from the substance of God the Father, being Word and Radiance and Impress, He is one with the Father, being wholly in Him and having Him in Himself;

but inasmuch as He has become man according to our likeness, apart from our sin, He is joined to those on earth, and has become as it were a boundary between, holding together in Himself the things that have run together into unity and friendship.

No one, therefore, will come to the Father—that is, will be shown forth a partaker of the divine nature—except through Christ alone.

For if He had not mediated by becoming man, our estate would not have advanced to such blessedness; but even if anyone should go to the Father through contemplation—I mean that which is in faith and in the knowledge according to godliness—he will again come by means of our Savior Christ Himself.

For, as I said just now, I will say it again, since the argument admits of no other path:

for whoever has received the Son as Son in truth will arrive at the knowledge of God the Father;

for neither could He be conceived as Son, unless there be also fully received along with Him the One who begot Him.

For the knowledge concerning the Father runs together with the Son, and again the knowledge concerning the Son runs together with the Father.

Therefore the Lord is true in saying 'No one comes to the Father except through Me,' because the Son is the natural and substantial image of God the Father, and not, as it has seemed to some, fashioned toward Him by extrinsic dignities, being and conceived as something else in substance.

'If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also.'

Someone might perhaps say, and possibly suppose, that the Son is here discoursing about Himself with reference to Himself.

For He would not have uttered anything vain and superfluous, even though at times, on account of some being unable to follow closely what is said, He does make a most useful repetition.

But in the present passage He greatly benefits us, adding these things to what preceded.

For since Thomas was inquiring, saying 'Where will You go, or how could we know the way?'—not knowing whither He was to go—He necessarily said, 'I am the way and the life and the truth,' and that 'No one comes to the Father except through Me,' showing thereby that if anyone should wish to know the way by which he might go to life eternal, he must by all means be zealous to know Christ.

Christ necessarily shuts out, in a manner, from the knowledge concerning God those also who thus form their opinion, unless they are willing to receive Him too.

For one must approach God the Father through the Son.

For in proportion to the contemplation of the Offspring we shall come also to the very Begetter.

For it is not possible—no, it is not—to doubt that whoever believes the Son to subsist thus as Son, I mean Him who is from the substance of the One who begot Him, will assuredly know the Father also.

According, then, to the simpler and less intricate understanding, one might perhaps suppose Him to have spoken thus;

but if it should seem good to anyone to proceed through subtler thoughts, so as to press on to the very testing of the matters themselves, he will again find the Son speaking truth.

For the divine nature is altogether uncontainable by every mind, and to dare at all to busy oneself with prying into what the Maker of all things is according to substance carries a proof of utter madness.

Yet it is somehow possible for us to gather a certain knowledge, as in shadows and riddles, setting before the mind as it were a mirror—namely, the catalogue of the excellences inherent in the nature of the Son.

For from the things which He is, and from the things He has wrought as having become man, and before the incarnation, one might thereafter, by analogy, ascend to the contemplation of Him who begot Him.

For behold, I pray you, the glory and power inherent in Him; see the authority in all things that is unhindered.

For tell me, of the things that are beyond speech, what is there that He is not seen to have accomplished by His free nods, both before the flesh and after the flesh? But He who was seen by us to be so great through these very deeds says, 'I and the Father are one;

he who has seen Me has seen the Father.' One must therefore, according to the force of the passage before us, proceed from the image to the archetype, and from the impress to Him whose impress He indeed altogether is; and not, as some of those accustomed to hold heterodox views suppose, do we say that the Son is figured toward the Father by certain extrinsic and outward dignities; nor, as it seems to those who go astray, is He said to be the image of God the Father in the sense of having His glory, His power, His wisdom, while yet being of another nature.

For these are their idle tales and their over-dressed nonsense—or rather impiety—devised for the overthrow and destruction of the Son's consubstantiality, according, that is, to the unholy and God-fighting aim that is in them;

but as Son truly, begotten ineffably and inconceivably from the substance of God the Father, He is His impress and image and radiance, bearing in His own nature that which is proper to the substance of the One who begot Him, and the beauty of the natural excellences.

For we shall not be witless like them, nor thrust our own mind down to such folly of counsel as to say that One who is not by nature like God, nor indeed begotten from the substance of God the Father, has been granted the glory of God; or to affirm that what has wholly been made, and what has been brought over from non-being into being, can ever bear the divine power and wisdom without difference, and possess them in such wise as the divine and ineffable nature of God the Father might be conceived to possess them.

For what still would be the difference between maker and thing made, or what is it that intervenes and is able to sever from the sameness—I mean the sameness in substance—that which has come to be, from Him who created it? For if it wholly possesses His glory and power and wisdom in an equal manner with God the Father, what is the greater thing in Him, and what more will He have beyond us, or beyond the creation? For my part I could not say at all, and I suppose that they too will be at a loss.

The Son, therefore, is not figured for us into equality with the Father by outward dignities, and He is not, as one in the painting of a picture, decorated for us with mere semblances of colors alone, being molded and falsely feigned into the form of the king; but He is truly the impress and image of Him who begot Him, making manifest the nature of the Father in His own and natural good things.

For this reason He says it is impossible for any to recognize the Father, unless they have first recognized Him—that is, the Son.

'And from now on you know Him and have seen Him.'

For having said 'If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also,' and being supposed to be reproaching the disciples for their ignorance of things so necessary, He straightway healed this, saying, 'From now on you know Him and have seen Him.'

For since they were about to be leaders of the churches situated everywhere, having heard from the Savior Himself the words 'Go and make disciples of all the nations,' for this cause chiefly, as I think, having usefully demonstrated beforehand and made as it were a common word to them all—that whoever knows the Son will assuredly know also the Father and God from whom He is—He usefully bears witness to His own disciples of their knowledge, not as a favor;

for He could never utter anything that is not true;

but they truly both knew and had recognized Him.

For that they knew and had believed the Lord to be truly the Son of God is on no account doubtful to those who are of sound mind.

For in what manner did Nathanael the Israelite, having heard 'Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree I saw you,' at once bring in the confession of faith, saying, 'Rabbi, You are the Son of God, You are the King of Israel'? And indeed, when the sea had been marvelously and unusually calmed, how did those in the boat worship Him, saying, 'Truly You are the Son of God'? Will anyone then say that they spoke the word without knowing that He is God and has been begotten from God the Father? And then how would such a one not be convicted of ignorance? In the region of Caesarea Philippi, when they were questioned by Christ Himself, 'Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?'—did they not first tell the surmises of others? For 'some,' he says, 'think Him to be Elijah, and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.'

But whom do they themselves say that He is? Not declining to speak plainly, they all with one voice, through the chief among them—and this was Peter himself—said without hesitation, 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.' Therefore, when Christ says, 'If ye had known me, ye would have known my Father also,' do not by any means suppose that this word was spoken to the disciples themselves; rather, He lays it down as a kind of general rule for men everywhere, setting forward the person of the holy apostles as an example.

For observe how we shall find that they were not ignorant that He both is God and is the Son of God.

But when God said that He Himself was the way, they did not fully grasp what seemed to be spoken enigmatically; and it is on this point alone that the charge of ignorance will stand against them.

For this very reason, having briefly convicted them of not being able to understand what had been spoken to them indirectly, and then setting forth a word common to all, and clearly teaching that whoever should be ignorant of the Son will forfeit even the very knowledge of the Father—since the disciples had already confessed the faith—He fittingly bears witness to their knowledge, saying, 'From henceforth ye know Him and have seen Him.'

But when He says 'from henceforth,' He does not by any means mean from that very hour or that day on which He was making these remarks to them concerning such matters.

Rather, He says 'from henceforth' by way of contrast with the ancient and former time, setting against it the newly-appeared and recent season of His own coming, in which the knowledge of the Father through the Son has become more radiant for those throughout the whole inhabited world.

For this reason too, in the book of Psalms, He says as to God and Father, 'Thy knowledge is made too wonderful for me.' For having seen the Son excelling in wonders beyond words, and with divine authority easily accomplishing whatever He wills, we have thereby marvelled at the knowledge of the Father, conceiving it to be no otherwise than as is that of the Son who came forth from Him.

'From henceforth, therefore, ye know Him and have seen Him.'

For we have known in the Son, as I said just now, who the Father is; and not only have we come to know Him, but we have also beheld Him, that is, seen Him.

For knowledge indicates the contemplation that comes through concepts, such as one might perhaps attain concerning the divine and ineffable nature—that nature, I mean, which is over all and through all and in all.

But 'to see' signifies the full assurance that comes through the working of wonders.

For we have not only come to know that the Father is life by nature.

We have held the knowledge of the matter within ourselves by bare and mere concepts.

But in the Son who gives life to the dead and restores again to being those who had been corrupted.

Not only have we come to know that God and the Father is life by nature, and that He holds all creation beneath His feet, and exercises kingly authority over the things that have come to be from Him, so that all the works tremble and quake because of Him, according to what is written.

But we have seen Him to be such in the Son also, when, rebuking the sea and the winds, He said with much authority, 'Peace, be still.' Since, therefore, He was about to say that they had not only come to know the Father but had also seen Him, He thought it necessary to preface it with 'from henceforth'—and for what reason? For the law given through Moses proclaimed to the sons of Israel, 'The Lord thy God is one Lord,' and it did not set before those of old the doctrine concerning the Son, but, delivering them from polytheism alone, it called them to the worship of the One.

But our Lord Jesus the Christ, when He became man, through many signs and works made known to us the Father through Himself, and displayed the one nature of Godhead that is conceived of and truly subsists in the Holy Trinity.

Well, then, does He say 'from henceforth,' because of the incompleteness in knowledge of those who lived according to the law and after their manner.

It is to be noted that in saying that He Himself is seen instead of the Father, He does not overthrow the truth that the Father and God, from whom He is, exists truly and in His own subsistence.

Nor does He say that He Himself is the Father, so far as concerns the declaration of person.

But since He is of one substance with the Father, He says that the Begetter is seen in Him—just as if some man's son, wishing to point out the nature of his own father, showing himself might perhaps say to one wishing to learn this, 'Thou hast beheld my father in me.'

But God, on the other hand, transcends the force of the illustration.

Philip saith unto Him, 'Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.'

Philip is indeed fond of learning, yet not very keen towards the understanding more befitting divine visions.

For he would never have supposed that with the eyes of the body one could avail to behold the divine nature, though God says plainly, 'No man shall see my face and live.' For even if He was at times seen by the saints, as the divinely-inspired Scripture said, yet I think no one would ever suppose that the divine nature became visible in such a way as it is in itself, but rather that it was fashioned into a form more befitting the occasion.

And indeed the prophets beheld Him in diverse ways, and manifold among them is the account concerning God.

For Isaiah beheld in one way, but Ezekiel again not in like manner with the vision seen by the former.

Philip ought therefore to have understood that it was altogether among the things impossible for one to be able to behold the divine essence, and this through flesh, and not apart from flesh; and it was, moreover, hardly sensible, when the image and exact impress of God the Father was present with him, to seek to go on to the archetype itself, as though it were not yet present and had not been displayed in the manner it ought.

For the contemplation of Christ is fully sufficient for setting forth the essence of God the Father, since He beautifully and exactly weaves out the lovely beauty of the royal essence whence He sprang.

For the tree is known from its fruit, according to the very word of the Saviour.

Since, therefore, the contemplation of the Son suffices, for one who is once intelligent, both for the setting forth and for the exact full assurance of who by nature is also the One who begot Him.

The disciple's word appears perhaps superfluous, yet it will not lie outside the bounds of praises that reach the highest degree.

For it is as if he had said, perhaps: 'We would confess that we have come within all gladness, and we would seek nothing lacking towards being blessed, if we ourselves also were deemed worthy of the much-longed-for vision of God and the Father.'

A simpler contemplation for the many.

But if we must also see something more searchingly, and perhaps say something of the hidden things, we shall suppose that Philip both spoke and understood something of this sort.

For the leaders of the Jews were gnawed with vexation at the Saviour's wonders, and along with them the scribes and Pharisees as well; and being struck to the heart, as with stones, by the countless divine signs, they burst with envy, and they knew that they had no means at all of doing anything against these things or of hindering Him as He worked wonders.

But disparaging in this way the things that had marvellously come to pass, and belittling His glory with deceitful words, and running up and down throughout the land of the Jews, and even through Jerusalem itself, they at one time asserted that He wrought the signs by Beelzebul.

And at another time again, driven to uncontrollable madness, they asserted that He was possessed by a demon and did not know what He was saying.

Being intolerably provoked at His glories—and who this was, I will of necessity relate.

For they were persuading the peoples, as we have just shown, not to accept the word from our Saviour, but to depart from Him as one teaching contrary to the law, and to hasten to flee as far away as possible, and rather to cleave to the things ordained through Moses.

And for what reason? For they used to say that Moses the great brought forth the peoples of old to meet God, according to what is written, and set them at the mountain of Sinai, and showed them God on the mountain, and made them able to hear His words, and gave full assurance, and that very plainly, that God was speaking the laws.

But this One, they said, showed none of these things at all.

But that this was a much-repeated argument among them, you will learn from what follows.

For you will observe them saying to the man blind from birth, whom the Saviour healed by ineffable power, 'Thou art that man's disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.'

'For we know that God spake unto Moses; but as for this man, we know not whence He is.' Those, then, who championed the Jewish doctrines supposed that they were framing an argument on these matters hard to contend against and not easily overturned in the eyes of the many; and they stirred up a tumult, as was likely, and by this means tripped up many.

Philip, having considered this in himself—that all the contradiction of the Jews would be dissolved if Christ Himself should also show the Father to those who believe in Him—comes forward saying, 'Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.'

'And nothing at all will be lacking to us, if Thou also wilt show us the Father and God.'

'For this will suffice Thy disciples, so as to be able henceforth, and very well too, to arm themselves against the arguments of those who put forward those things.'

Having applied some such contemplation to what lies before us, I think we should not stray from the fitting sense.

For Philip himself also calls us to understand thus, saying, 'It sufficeth us to see the Father and God,' as though this alone were still lacking to those who had believed; and the Saviour Himself too somehow suggests it, saying in what follows, 'The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works.' But how it is fitting to understand this also, will be told not so much in the present place, but in the more befitting and neighbouring passage.

Jesus saith unto him, 'Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.'

He shows the disciple that his ignorance is without excuse.

For the more inaccessible of speculations, and those which in themselves demand a finer scrutiny by way of comprehension in the understanding, will indeed—even if perhaps not in a short time, yet at any rate over long stretches of time—assuredly be attainable to the lovers of learning and become manifest to them.

But those things which contain nothing tortuous, but have a straightforward apprehension—these one might attack, and that with very great ease.

'Philip, tell me what it was that hindered thee towards an exact understanding concerning me.'

'For although so long a time has elapsed, during which I am with you, and sufficient for the full assurance of the things thou oughtest to have learned, dost thou still doubt—or rather, art thou caught in ignorance of who I am by nature and whence, and that too when thou findest Me to be the Maker of the very things most marvelled at by thee?'

'How is it that thou hast not known,' He says, 'that he who has beheld me has seen the Father? Yet thou thinkest that the Jews of old beheld the divine nature on Mount Sinai, and heard it speaking, when it was laying down the laws concerning what must be done.'

'But thou hast not yet been disposed to grasp that thou hast beheld the Father through me and in me.'

'For he that hath seen me hath seen the Father.'

And that Christ signifies to us no bodily contemplation, I think those who hear need no lengthy words.

For no one of those who possess understanding would say that the nature of God is subject to bodily visions; nor with the eyes of the flesh could one behold that which, even with the eyes of the mind, is scarcely comprehensible as in a mirror.

For we see as in a riddle.

And I think that even he who prides himself on very great knowledge has but small thoughts concerning God.

But that other thing again we will say to the enemies of the truth, who have a broad tongue against us, or rather against the very essence of the Only-begotten.

For if the Son is not of the very essence of God and the Father, existing by generation that which He is—God, that is, both by nature and in truth—but is adorned only with externally-added forms and made resplendent with imported glories, not excelling in natural dignities, while He forms the Father in Himself and is the unchanging image of God: then, first, He would not be Son by nature, nor indeed offspring in truth, but a thing made, according to our manner, or some other such thing.

And this being admitted, and believed to be so, we shall assuredly say that other thing also in all truth: that the Father would not be Father in actuality and by nature, but rather by will and perhaps by seeming—just as He is also called our Father.

Then what follows from this? It will be agreed, and as of necessity there will arise, a Triad.

For no longer is the holy [Trinity] believed by us in a certain [proper] manner, but rather three [gods], as though the one did not essentially exist within the others, and each of the names, as it were, withdrew into the account of its own peculiar nature, the one being wholly cut off from the other.

For the force of the speculation somehow compels us to speak of these matters even in a coarser way.

And if we shall grant this to be true, and shall say that it is so, and shall accept the Son as wholly alien to the essence of God and the Father, how will He not be lying when He says, 'He that hath seen me hath seen the Father'? For if the Father exists as God by nature, how could the Son, though not existing as God by nature according to their account, show the Father in Himself to us? For how shall we behold in that which has been made the uncreated?

But when a thing at some time did not exist — at least as far as the principle of its having been made is concerned — how could anyone behold in it the One who exists throughout all things? For let no one tell me — let one of those who have blasphemed against these matters, sophistically distorting the power of the truth, say — that because it possesses the glory of God the Father, together with His power and His wisdom and His goodness and His capacity to accomplish all things and to bring into being the things that at one time did not exist, for this reason it is also His image.

But let him first demonstrate whether it appears as God according to nature, and thus without any variation, so that there is nothing to impair the utterly complete and total likeness of the image to the archetype.

And when he is at a loss over this too and unwilling to demonstrate it, we shall next ask him to say what argument could permit that what is by nature not God — according to the loathsomeness that resides in them — should be able to accomplish the works of the Godhead.

For this is what it means to bear the image of the Father.

For if the Son, not having of Himself the power sufficient for this, borrows it from the Father, and is supplied by Him with both wisdom and strength in order that He may be able to accomplish rightly the very things we say befit the nature of the Father alone, then in this way He will falsify both the image and the likeness.

But if we assent to Him as speaking truly, we shall be caught wronging the very glory of God the Father — and how, I will tell.

For it is necessary to say either that He falsifies the image of God the Father, since He does not have of Himself the strength sufficient for the works, but is supplied with it from another — for the archetype is not thus;

for the archetype is not so.

or, if He speaks truly in saying that the Father is seen in Him, and that there is absolutely nothing that differs or intervenes or falsifies the total resemblance, then it necessarily follows — and unwillingly one must say it — that the Father Himself also has His power imported and derived from another.

For it was in this way that He willed to show Himself to us in the image of His own nature, that is, of His glory.