Commentary on the Gospel of John 10 part 4/5

It is also fitting to rejoice that, by the one mounted on the beast of burden and the young colt, every battle bow is utterly destroyed, the fiery darts of the enemy no longer prevailing against the one who has received Jesus into his own temple.

And there will also be, at the sojourn of the Savior in Jerusalem, a multitude with peace from the nations, as he rules the waters, in order to crush the heads of the dragons upon the water, and we may tread upon the waves of the sea, reaching as far as the outlets of all the rivers upon the earth.

Mark, however, writing about the donkey that it was said by the Lord, 'On which no one of men has yet sat,' seems to me to hint that those who believed later had never yet, before Jesus's sojourn among them, subjected themselves in respect of the word.

For perhaps no man had yet sat upon the colt, but some of the beasts, or of the powers alien to the Word, had sat upon it, since the wealth of the opposing powers is also said by the prophet Isaiah to be carried upon donkeys and camels, through these words: 'In affliction and distress, the lion and the lion's whelp, thence also flying asps, who carried their wealth upon donkeys and camels.'

But it must again be asked of those who attend to the bare letter, whether according to them it would not seem to have been written in vain, 'on which no one of men has yet sat.' For who besides a man sits upon a colt? And so much, then, for what is ours.

But let us also look at the views of Heracleon, who says that the ascent to Jerusalem signifies the ascent of the Lord from material things into the psychic place, which happens to be an image of Jerusalem.

And he thinks that 'he found them in the temple' and not 'in the sanctuary' is said in order that the calling alone, the one apart from the Spirit, might not be understood to be helped by the Lord; for he holds that 'the temple' is the holy of holies, into which only the high priest entered — where I think he means the spiritual to have access — while the parts of the forecourt, where the Levites also were, are a symbol of the psychics who are found in salvation outside the fullness.

In addition to these things, he understood those found in the temple selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money-changers sitting there, to be spoken of instead of those who give nothing by grace, but reckon the entrance of strangers into the temple as a matter of trade and profit, furnishing the sacrifices for the worship of God for the sake of their own profit and love of money.

He reports in his own peculiar way that the whip too was made by Jesus out of cords, not taken from anyone else, saying that the whip is in fact an image of the power and activity of the Holy Spirit, who blows away those who are worse; and he says that the whip and the flax and the linen cloth, and everything of this kind, are an image of the power and activity of the Holy Spirit.

Then he has added on his own something not written in Scripture, namely that the whip was bound to a piece of wood; and taking this wood to be a type of the cross, he says that by this wood the dice-playing merchants and all wickedness were consumed and made to vanish.

And I do not know how, babbling nonsense, he says that the whip is fashioned out of these two materials, seeking to explain what was done by Jesus: "For he did not make it," he says, "out of the skin of a dead animal, so that he might fashion the church no longer as a den of robbers and merchants, but as the house of his Father."

But it is necessary to state, against him, the most essential point concerning the deity, drawn also from these very words. For if Jesus says that the temple in Jerusalem is the house of his own Father, and this temple came into being for the glory of the one who created heaven and earth, how are we not thereby taught directly not to suppose that the Son of God is the son of anyone other than the maker of heaven and earth?

Into this house of the Father of Jesus, then, as being a house of prayer, the apostles of Christ too (as we find in their Acts) are commanded by the angel, having gone, to stand and speak to the people all the words of this life.

But they also go there through the Beautiful Gate to pray, approaching it as a house of prayer — which they would not have done, had they not known that he is the same God as the one worshiped by those who deify that temple.

Therefore also Peter and the apostles, obeying God rather than men, say: "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree" — for they know that it was by none other than the God of the fathers that Jesus was raised from the dead; and it is he whom Christ, glorifying him, also says is the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, who are not dead but living.

And how would the disciples too, if the house had not been the house of that same God — the God of Christ — have remembered what is said in the sixty-eighth psalm: "The zeal of your house has consumed me"? For it stands thus in the prophet, and not "will consume me."

And Christ is especially zealous for the house of God that is in each of us, not wishing it to be some other house, nor the house of prayer to be a den of robbers, inasmuch as he is the son of a jealous God — if we hear such expressions from the Scriptures more fittingly, understanding them as spoken metaphorically, drawn from human affairs, in order to represent that God wishes nothing alien to be mixed with his will in the soul of all people, but especially of those who wish to receive the things of the most divine faith.

However, one must know that the sixty-eighth psalm, which contains "The zeal of your house has consumed me," and, a little after, "They gave me gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink" — both recorded in the Gospels — is to be understood as spoken from the person of Christ, showing no change in the speaking person.

But Heracleon very inflexibly supposes that "The zeal of your house will consume me" is spoken from the person of the powers cast out and destroyed by the Savior — being unable to preserve the coherence of the prophecy in the psalm, if it is understood as spoken from the person of the powers cast out and destroyed.

And it follows, according to him, that "They gave me gall for my food," recorded in the same psalm, is likewise spoken by those powers; but, as is likely, he was troubled by "will consume me," as something that could not be uttered by Christ, not perceiving the customary usage of anthropopathic expressions concerning God and Christ. The Jews then answered and said to him, "What sign do you show us, that you do these things?" Jesus answered and said to them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."

The corporeal ones, lovers of sensible things, seem to me now to be signified through the Jews — those who make the house of the Father into a house of merchandise on account of the things driven out by Jesus; being indignant at the matters they cherish being taken away from them, they demand a sign, by which sign the Word — whom they do not accept, even though he is doing these very things — will fittingly appear.

And the Savior, joining as one the discourse concerning that temple with the discourse concerning his own body, answers the question "What sign do you show, that you do these things?" with "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."

For even though he was able to show countless other signs, yet in no other way did he answer "Why do you do these things?"; rather, he fittingly answered with the matters concerning the temple, in place of other signs unrelated to the temple.

Both, however — the temple and the body of Jesus — according to one of the interpretations, appear to me to be a type of the church, in that it is built out of living stones, becoming a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, being built up upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, and being properly called a temple.

And through "You are the body of Christ, and members individually," even if the harmony of the stones of the temple should seem to be broken apart — that is, all the bones of Christ scattered, as it is written in Psalm twenty-one, through the plots made in persecutions and tribulations by those warring against the unity of the temple in persecutions — the temple will be raised up, and the body will rise on the third day, after the day of evil now present in it, and after that, the day of the consummation. For a third day will begin in the new heaven and new earth, when these bones — the whole house of Israel — will be raised on the great Lord's day, death having been conquered; so that the resurrection of Christ that has already occurred, from the passion at the cross, also contains the mystery of the resurrection of the whole body of Christ.

And just as that sensible body of Jesus was crucified and buried, and after this raised, so too the whole body of Christ made up of the saints has been co-crucified with Christ, and now no longer lives; for each of those who, like Paul, boasts in nothing else than the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which he himself has been crucified to the world, and the world to him.

Not only, then, has he been co-crucified with Christ and crucified to the world, but he is also buried together with Christ; for Paul says, "We were buried together with Christ."

And as if having come to be in a certain pledge of resurrection, he says, "We have risen with him" — since he walks in a certain newness of life, as one not yet risen according to the blessed and perfect resurrection that is hoped for. So then, either he is now crucified, and after this buried; or he is now buried and, having been taken down from the cross, will at some point — insofar as he is now sent forth in this life — be raised.

Great, then, is the mystery of the resurrection, and hard for many of us to contemplate — a mystery spoken of in many other places of Scripture too, and declared not least through these words in Ezekiel: "And the hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me in the midst of the plain, and this was full of human bones. And he led me around them, round about, and behold, there were very many upon the face of the plain, and behold, very dry. And he said to me, Son of man, will these bones live? And I said, Lord, Lord, you know these things. And he said to me, Prophesy over these bones, and you shall say to them: You dry bones, hear the word of the Lord." And a little after:

"And the Lord spoke to me, saying, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. And they say, Our bones have become dry, our hope has perished, we are utterly cut off."

For to what sort of bones is it said, "Hear the word of the Lord," as to ones perceiving the word of the Lord, being, as it were, the house of Israel or the body of Christ — concerning which the Lord said, "All my bones were scattered," while none of his bodily bones was actually scattered, nor was even one of them broken?

But when this resurrection of the true and more perfect body of Christ occurs, then the members of Christ, which now, in relation to what is to come, are dry bones, will be gathered together, bone to bone and joint to joint, none of them lacking a joint, arriving at the perfect man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of the body of Christ.

And then the many members will become the one body, all the members of the body, though many, becoming one body; but the discernment of foot and hand and eye and hearing and smell — of those members which severally complete the head, and those which complete the feet, and the rest of the members, both the weaker and lowlier and unseemly, and the seemly — belongs to God alone to make, who will blend the body together.

And then, more than now, giving greater honor to that which is lacking, so that there may be no division at all in the body, but the members may have the same care for one another, and if one member has some good experience, all the members may share that good experience with it, or if it is glorified, all may rejoice together.

These things have been said by me not unrelated to the temple and to those driven out from it, concerning which the Savior says, "The zeal of your house will consume me"; nor unrelated to the Jews who demand that a sign be shown to them, nor to the Lord's answer to them, in which he joins the discourse concerning the temple with that concerning his own body, saying:

"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." For from this temple, which is the body of Christ, these irrational and mercantile things must be driven out, so that it may no longer be a house of merchandise.

And this temple, too, must be destroyed by those who plot against the Word of God, and after being destroyed, must be raised on the third day previously mentioned by us; at which time the disciples too will remember what he had said before the temple of God — his Word — was destroyed, [remember] that which he said, and will believe, their knowledge and faith then being brought to completion, not in the Scripture alone but also in the word that Jesus spoke.

And each one of such temples, when Jesus purifies him by putting away the irrational things and the sellers, on account of zeal for the Word that is in them, will be destroyed, so as to be raised by Jesus — not on the third day, so far as this passage before us states; for it is not written, "Destroy this temple, and on the third day I will raise it," but "In three days"; for the raising of the temple is accomplished … on the

…the first day after it was destroyed, and the second; but its raising is brought to completion within the whole three days. For this reason there has already occurred a resurrection, and there will also be a resurrection, if indeed we have been buried together with Christ and have risen together with him.

And since "We have risen with him" is not sufficient for the whole resurrection: "In Christ all will be made alive, but each in his own order — Christ the firstfruits, then those who are Christ's at his coming, then the end."

For it belonged to the resurrection also that on the first day he should come to be in the paradise of God; and it belonged to the resurrection when, appearing, he says, "Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father"; but the perfection of the resurrection was when he comes to be with the Father.

But since those who are confused on the topic concerning Father and Son, gathering together "And we are found even false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that he raised up Christ, whom he did not raise" and similar statements, which show that the one who raised is other than the one who was raised, and also "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," have supposed that from these it is established that the Son does not differ in number from the Father, but that both are one not only in essence but also in substrate, being spoken of as Father and Son according to certain different notions, not according to hypostasis — it must be said to them, first, the primary constructive statements showing that the Son is other than the Father, and that necessarily the Son is the son of a father, and the father is the father of a son.

After this, it is not absurd to say that he who confesses that he can do nothing unless he sees the Father doing it, and who says that whatever things the Father does, the Son likewise does these same things, has raised the dead man — who was the body — the Father granting him this; and it must first be said of this Father that he raised Christ from the dead.

Heracleon, however, says that "in three" is used in place of "on the third," without having investigated — though he did indeed attend to the phrase "in three" — how the resurrection is effected in three days.

Moreover, he says that the third day is the spiritual day, in which they suppose the resurrection of the church is signified.

And it follows from this to say that the first day is the earthly day, and the second the psychic day, since the resurrection of the church did not occur in these.

It seems, then, that the things recorded by the false witnesses in the Gospel according to Matthew and Mark, near the end of the Gospel, when they accuse our Lord Jesus Christ, have reference to "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days."

For he was speaking about the temple of his own body, but they, supposing that the things said here referred to the temple built of stones, kept saying in their accusation: "This man said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and in three days to build it"; or as Mark has it: "We heard him saying, I will destroy this temple made with hands, and in three days I will build another not made with hands" — at which time the high priest also stood up and said to him, "Do you answer nothing? What is it that these men testify against you?" But Jesus was silent; or as Luke says: "And the high priest stood up in the midst and questioned Jesus, saying, Do you not answer anything? What is it these men testify against you? But he was silent and answered nothing."

And I think it necessary that these things too have been set down, having reference to the passage now before us: "The Jews then said, This temple was built in forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?"

We are not able to say how the Jews claim that this temple was built in forty-six years, if we are to follow the historical record.

For it is written in the Third Book of Kingdoms: "They prepared the stones and the timbers for three years; and in the fourth year, in the second month, when King Solomon reigned over Israel, the king commanded, and they brought large, precious stones for the foundation of the house, and unhewn stones. And the sons of Solomon and the sons of Hiram hewed them and laid them in the fourth year, and they laid the foundation of the house of the Lord in the month Nisan, and in the second month; and in the eleventh year, in the month Baal, which was the eighth month, the house was finished according to its whole design and its whole arrangement."

So then, even if we reckon the time of preparation together with the time of construction, altogether eleven years are not completed for the building of the temple.

How then do the Jews say that this temple was built in forty-six years? Unless perhaps someone, forcing the matter, will make it his ambition to establish that the period of forty-six years is completed from when David, having taken counsel concerning the building of the temple, says to Nathan the prophet: "Behold, I dwell in a house of cedar, and the ark of God sits in the midst of the tent." For even though he was prevented, as a man of bloodshed, from building it, he does seem to have been occupied with gathering the material for the temple.

At any rate, in First Chronicles, King David says to the whole assembly: "Solomon my son, whom the Lord has chosen, is young and tender, and the work is great, for the building is not for man but for the Lord God. According to all my power I have prepared for the house of my God gold, silver, bronze and iron, timber, shoham stones and stones for setting, and costly and varied stones, and every precious stone, and much Parian marble. Moreover, in my delight in the house of my God, I have of my own possession gold and silver, and behold, I have given to the house of my Lord, over and above what I have prepared for the house of the holy things, three thousand talents of gold from Sufir and seven thousand talents of refined silver, with which the houses of God are to be overlaid, by the hand of craftsmen."

For David reigned seven years in Hebron, and thirty-three in Jerusalem. If, then, someone is able to demonstrate that the beginning of the preparation for the temple occurred with his gathering of suitable material from the fifth year of his reign, he will be able, by forcing the matter, to speak of the forty [-six] years. But someone else will say that the temple being pointed to is not the one built by Solomon — for that one had been destroyed at the time of the captivity — but the one built under Ezra, concerning which we do not have any means of clearly demonstrating the truth of the account of forty-six years.

It seems too that, according to the books of Maccabees, there was considerable turmoil concerning the people and the temple. And I do not know whether the temple was rebuilt at that time over so many years.

Heracleon, however, without even paying attention to the historical record, says that Solomon built the temple — which is in fact an image of the Savior — in forty-six years; and he refers the number six to matter, that is, to the formed thing, while the number forty, which he says is the unconjoined tetrad, he refers to the inbreathing and to the seed that is in the inbreathing.

See, however, whether it is possible to take the forty as referring to the four elements of the world, which are ranked in order, striving into the temple, and the six on account of man having come to be on the sixth day. — "But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When, then, he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken."

If the body of Jesus has been called his temple, it is worth inquiring whether this should be taken more simply, or whether one should make it one's ambition to bring up each of the things written concerning the temple to the discourse about the body of Jesus — either the body which he took from the virgin, or the body of the church, which is said to be his body, just as we too are called members of his body by the apostle.

One person, then, freeing himself from difficulty by despairing of being able to refer each of the details concerning the temple to the body, whichever way it may be, will take refuge in the simpler interpretation, saying that for this reason the temple, understood either way as body, has been so named — since, just as the temple had the glory of God dwelling in it, so too, since he who is the image and glory of God, the firstborn of all creation, bears the body or the church as a statue within it, it has fittingly been called the temple of God.

We, however, seeing that to speak about each of the things concerning the temple in Third Kingdoms is difficult to expound and far exceeds our present discourse — and moreover does not pertain to the present text — set this aside for now.

Yet especially in such matters, being persuaded that, because it is beyond human nature, the distinctive character of the God-inspired Scripture is displayed according to the wisdom of God, showing the wisdom hidden in a mystery, which none of the rulers of this age has known, and perceiving that we ourselves are in need of an exceptional spirit of wisdom in order to understand such great things in a manner befitting sacred things, we shall attempt, as far as possible, to sketch briefly the general sense of the passage — learning from Peter that the church, as body and house of God built from living stones, is a spiritual house for a holy priesthood; so that the son of David who built the temple is, in this respect, a type of Christ, who, after the wars, when the deepest peace had come to be, built the temple for the glory of God in the earthly Jerusalem, so that worship might no longer be performed by means of the tent, a thing that could be moved. Each

…of the details concerning the temple we shall attempt to bring up to the church. For perhaps, when all the enemies become a footstool for the feet of Christ, and the last enemy, death, is abolished, the most perfect peace will come to be — when Christ shall be Solomon, which is interpreted "Peaceable," the prophecy concerning him being fulfilled, which says: "With those who hated peace I was peaceable."

And then each of the living stones, according to the worth of his life here, will be a stone of the temple: one, in the foundation, an apostle or prophet, bearing those set upon him; another, after those in the foundation, being borne by the apostles, and himself, together with the apostles, bearing together the lesser ones; and one will be a stone of the innermost parts, where the ark and the cherubim and the mercy seat are; another, of the surrounding court; and yet another, still outside the court, a stone of the altar of whole burnt offerings belonging to the Levites and priests.

And the administration and service concerning these things will be entrusted to holy powers, angels of God — some being dominions, or thrones, or principalities, or authorities, and others subordinate to these — of whom the three thousand six hundred overseer-rulers are types, the rulers appointed over the works of Solomon, and the seventy thousand who carried burdens, and the eighty thousand quarriers in the mountain, who did the works and prepared the stones and the timbers.

One should observe that those recorded as carrying loads, being seventy thousand, are akin to the number seven; while the quarriers and those who shaped the stones, so that they might become harmonious for the temple, are related to the number eight; while the overseers, being three thousand six hundred, are joined to the perfect number six, as it were multiplied by itself. The preparation, moreover, of the stones being carried and made ready for the building, being completed in three years, seems to me to signify the whole span of time that is akin to the interval eternally related to the triad.

These things will be when peace is brought to perfection, after the four hundred and thirty years of the administration of the affairs concerning the exodus from Egypt, and after the things administered in Egypt, four hundred and thirty years after the covenant made by God with Abraham — so that from Abraham to the beginning of the building of the temple there are two sabbatical numbers, namely seven hundred and seventy — at which time also our king Christ will command the seventy thousand burden-bearers not to take up random stones for the foundation of the house, but large, precious, unhewn stones, so that they may be hewn not by chance workmen but by the sons of Solomon; for this we found written in Third Kingdoms.

Then, on account of the great peace, Hiram, king of Tyre, also cooperates in the building of the temple, giving his own sons to the sons of Solomon, to hew together the large and precious stones for the holy house, which had been set in the fourth year for the foundation of the house of the Lord. The house, however, is completed within an octave of years, in the eighth month of the eighth year from the laying of the foundation.

It will not be out of place, in the meantime, for those who suppose that nothing beyond the historical sense is signified through these things, to have some arguments meant to give them pause, brought forward — arguments directing them, as befits spirit rather than letter, toward seeking the mind of the Spirit worthy of these things.

For did the sons of kings really occupy themselves with the hewing of the large and precious stones, taking up a craft alien to royal nobility? And was the number of the burden-bearers and quarriers and overseers, and the time of the preparation of the stones, and the recording of such similar details, written down merely as it happened, without significance?

And it was fitting that the holy house being constructed in peace should be built for God without hammer and axe and any iron implement, so that nothing tumultuous might be heard in the temple of God.

Again I am at a loss, addressing those who are enslaved to the letter: how is it possible that, there being eighty thousand quarriers, the house of God is built with rough, unworked stones, and yet hammer and axe and every iron implement were not heard in his house while it was being built?

But perhaps the living stones being quarried are quarried noiselessly and without disturbance, outside the site of the temple, so that they may come ready to the place fitting for them in the building.