約翰福音註釋 第 1 章 第 15/94 段

And that punishment is often called wrath in the divine Scriptures, I shall bring forward two witnesses, Paul and John;

For the one said to those turning from among the Gentiles, 'And we were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest'; while the other said to the scribes and Pharisees, 'Offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?' 'When therefore the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John' —

although indeed Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples —

he left Judea and went away again into Galilee.

From what point does the discourse advance to this for us, or from what beginning does the sequence of the narrative that draws us on introduce the Lord as knowing what the Pharisees had inquired to learn? It is, as it seems, not without elegance to speak of this.

For the holy Evangelist's saying 'When therefore he knew' plainly gives birth to a certain intimation of something presupposed as underlying;

for all things he knows of himself as God, with none informing him, and not when they first come to pass, but even before their coming to be, as the prophet testified.

But he awaits the times appropriate to each thing, and yields rather to the natural sequence of events, or to his foreknowledge;

for this too was worthy of a dispensation befitting God.

When therefore a dispute arose on the part of John's disciples with a Jew concerning purification, there was much discussion on both sides.

For the former, pleading for their own teacher, contended that the baptism which came through him was now in better measure than the legal sprinklings and the typical purifications among them;

and, as was likely, they made a proof of the matter from the fact that many were coming to him, and were most gladly forsaking the more ancient and time-honored customs.

But the others in turn, since the argument was borne against them down a steep slope, and the power of the truth, streaming down like waters, was baptizing the feeble mind of those who resisted, came round against their own judgment, and unwillingly, declaring that far better was the baptism supplied through Christ;

and they now prevailed, using the same reasonings for their proof, and by the very same considerations rising up against those who had conquered them;

for they strongly asserted that far more were seen coming to Christ, and that all were running to him rather than to John;

whence, I suppose, John's disciples too, kindled to grief, came to their own teacher, saying, 'Rabbi, he who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have borne witness, behold, this man baptizes, and all are coming to him.' For they put forward, as though in a question, the contentious assertions of the Jews, or rather their demonstrative arguments.

Hence, then, the Evangelist says that the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making more disciples than John; then, declining their monstrous envy, and reserving his suffering for his own appointed time, he withdraws from the region of the Jews, and departs again into Galilee.

He must needs pass through Samaria.

So he comes to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground which Jacob gave to his son Joseph.

O the great sagacity and unmixed vigilance!

By his defenses he forestalls the things expected to be inquired.

For someone might straightway say, whether speaking to another or pondering secretly to himself: For what reason did our Lord Jesus Christ bring enlightenment to the Samaritans not at the fitting time? For the Syrophoenician woman once came, entreating with tears for mercy upon her wretched daughter, and what did the Compassionate One say to her? 'It is not good,' he says, 'to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs'; for he did not, I think, judge it right to lavish prematurely upon those from among the Gentiles the grace apportioned to those of Israel;

which indeed he also made yet plainer, saying, 'I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' How then, one might say, did he who was sent only to Israel instruct the race of the Samaritans, and that while Israel had not yet wholly spurned the grace? To such objections he brings a persuasive and authoritative defense: 'But he must needs pass through Samaria.'

For it was not for this cause and this alone that he undertook the journey to the Samaritans, namely to proclaim the word among them and to remove the blessing wholly and entirely from Israel;

but since he had to pass by, for this reason he teaches, accomplishing the work of wisdom.

For just as fire could never cease from the burning activity that belongs to it by nature, so I think it is altogether impossible that the Wisdom of all things should not do what befits wisdom;

and just as, while saying that it was not permitted to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs, he yet flung the grace to the little woman who was shedding tears and imploring with many words for mercy — not receiving from another the law as to the season of giving, but himself being, together with the Father, the one who determines it, as Son and God and Lord —

so also he had mercy on the Samaritans, and, unveiling the ineffable power of his God-befitting authority, he makes the enlightenment of a whole region a by-work of the journey.

And it would in another way have been unfitting that Israel, already raging with madness and thirsting for blood against the Lord, should be perfectly loved.

But since it did not yet do so utterly, and yet persecutes still with measure, for this reason our Lord Jesus Christ does not yet wholly strip it of the grace, but nonetheless draws off the blessing little by little to others.

But wholly to depart from the land of the Jews and to hasten to go into that of the foreigners, on account of the inhumanity of the persecutors, was a kind of threat, as it were painted in outline by the very nature of the matter — that they would now undergo an entire loss of the grace, and would pass on to others their own good, that is, Christ, unless they refrained from their drunken outrage against him.

Now Jacob's spring was there;

Jesus therefore, being wearied from the journey, was sitting thus by the spring.

Having gone beyond the borders of Judea, and being now among the foreigners, the Savior rests by the spring of Jacob;

showing us again as in a figure and by an enigma, that even though the evangelical proclamation should go forth from Jerusalem, and the divine word should henceforth run out into the nations, the love toward the fathers will not be cast away together with Israel, but Christ will again lay hold of them, and will again rest and lodge as among holy ones, preserving for them unwithered the grace given at the beginning.

And he lingers with delight at the memorials of the saints, that in this too he may afford us a pattern in himself, and become the beginning and door of honor toward the fathers.

And he rests, being wearied from the journey, as it is written, that in this too he may accuse the impiety of those who drove him out.

But what then will the Arians, neighbors of those men's folly, say to us again in reply to this — or rather, those to whom it might justly be said, 'Sodom has been justified more than you'? For the former crucify Christ according to the flesh, but the latter commit drunken outrage against the very ineffable nature of the Word.

Behold, he has been wearied from the journey;

who is it that suffered this? Will you then bring in for us the Lord of the powers as deficient in strength, and lay upon the very Only-begotten of the Father the toil arising from the journey, so that he who knows not how to suffer should henceforth be conceived as passible? Or will you decline so to think, doing rightly, and lay the charges concerning these things upon the nature of the body alone — or rather will you say that the toil befits the humanity rather than the Word, existing and conceived bare and by himself? Just as, then, though possessing in his own nature the power to do all things, and himself being the strength of all, he is said to have been wearied;

for do not, I beg, do not divide the one Christ into a pair of sons, even though he appropriates to himself the sufferings of the humanity;

and yet he remains impassible, since he who by nature is not apt to toil became man;

so likewise, if he should say anything of all that we shall think ought rather to befit a man, and not indeed to befit God, let us not straightway go word-hunting, nor, just when we most have need of the art that leads to godliness, then above all be caught being ignorant — making the account of the dispensation with flesh as far off as possible, but hotly ascending to the very Godhead of the Word, and, out of much ignorance, laying hold of matters beyond us.

For if he has not become man at all, unless he came to be in the form of the servant, it were just to be troubled whenever he says anything servile, and rather to demand all things according to the account befitting God;

but if, being saved in firm faith and without wavering, we have taken courage that, according to John's utterance, 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,' then whenever you see him speaking as flesh, that is, as man, receive, for the security of the proclamation, the account befitting a man.

For it was not otherwise possible clearly to recognize that, being God and Word, he became man, unless he who is impassible were recorded also to have suffered something, and he who is exalted to have spoken something lowly.

With good occasion it shows Jesus resting by the spring.

For when the sun, at its very height from the mid-arches of heaven, was pouring down its ray upon those on the earth, and scorching bodies with its unmixed shafts, to go still further forward was not without harm, while to take a little breath was rather more consequent — being also just the time when he could readily have repelled the charge of luxury, the fitting occasion pleading for the deed.

And he says it was not precisely the sixth, but about the sixth hour, that we too may learn not to be indifferent even in the smallest matters, but rather to strive and to practice truthfulness even in things that happen to be trivial.

There comes a woman from Samaria to draw water.

For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy provisions.

The Samaritan woman says to him.

The Savior was not ignorant of the little woman's coming.

For being true God, he knew full well and exceedingly that she would presently be there to draw the cold stream from the well;

and when she was now present, he made his catch within the nets, and, straightway stretching out the word of teaching, he made his discourse from the matters at hand.

Now that one ought by no means to be defiled from any source, the Law contrived for the Jews;

and for this reason it enjoined withdrawal from every unclean thing, and that they should mingle neither with foreigners nor with the uncircumcised.

But they, referring the force of the commandment to something much more, and following rather the most groundless observances than the exactness of the things spoken, not daring even so much as to touch the flesh of those of another tribe, thought that they fell into every uncleanness if they should be seen at all to have any dealings whatever with Samaritans.

And to such a degree did their separation henceforth proceed, that they shrank even from tasting water and food that was brought by the hand of foreigners.

so that she might be summoned to inquiry — who he might be, and whence, or how he had despised the Jewish customs;

'How is it that you, being a Jew, ask to drink from me, who am a Samaritan woman? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.'

Jesus answered and said to her.

The beginning of learning is inquiry, and the root of understanding in things unknown is perplexity concerning them.

This beginning the discourse desires to seize;

and it is precisely for this reason that the Savior wisely feigned to regard the customs of the Jews as nothing.

Not knowing the supramundane and supracelestial essence of the Only-begotten, or rather being wholly ignorant of the Word who had become man, the woman therefore named him a Jew.

And to this he keeps silence usefully, that the subject of his discourse toward her may again be preserved;

yet nonetheless he raises the conception concerning himself to a higher one, saying that she does not know who it is that has asked for drink, or how great is the grace of the things supplied from God — implying that, if she had the knowledge, she would not have endured to be behindhand, for she would have anticipated and asked the Lord.

By these words, then, he provokes her also to desire most earnestly to learn.

But observe how, even now practicing a discourse that is skillful and bare of boasting, he says that he is God, even though the woman is slow to be able to understand.

For persuading her to marvel at the gift of God, he introduces himself as the supplier of it.

'For if you had known,' He says, 'the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, you would have asked Him.'

But to whom would it befit to bestow freely the things of God, save to Him who is by nature God? And He calls the life-giving gift of the Spirit 'living water,' through which alone humanity — though withering like the stumps upon the mountains, and shown forth by the malignities of the devil already parched and barren of every virtue — runs back to the ancient beauty of its nature; and, drinking in the life-giving grace, is decked round about with manifold forms of good things, and, sprouting up into the disposition that loves virtue, sends forth the most flourishing branches of love toward God.

Something of this sort God also declares to us through the prophet Isaiah: 'The beasts of the field shall bless me, the sirens and the daughters of ostriches, because I have given water in the wilderness and rivers in the dry land, to give drink to my chosen race, my people whom I have preserved to declare my virtues.' And that the soul of the righteous man shall be as a fruitful tree, another of the saints says, and that it shall spring up as grass in the midst of water, and shall be seen as a willow beside flowing water.

But it is not the time for us to linger upon these things.

Wherefore we shall again swim on to other matters, pressing forward toward the great and broad sea of the divine contemplations.

'Lord, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep;'

'whence then have you the living water?' The woman imagines nothing beyond what is customary, and in no way grasps the power of the things that were spoken; but she supposes that, after the manner of those accustomed to work wonders by incantation and demonic deceit, He will, apart from a rope and any other contrivance, bring up the water of its own accord for her from the bottom of the well-shafts.

But He names 'living water,' with reference to His own purpose, that which has newly rained up from the springing fountains.

'Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well, and drank of it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?' Jesus answered and said to her.

The woman lays hold of herself, and that with all speed; yet she does not perceive rightly, nor has she taken up altogether true surmises concerning Him.

For it was not possible that she who wholly enjoyed the divine words should not by all means be profited toward soberness.

In distinguished holiness, and on this account promising to grant her the living water, and to discover it apart from the customary drawing-vessels, or from another spring much better for use — He forthwith transfers the discourse to what is more chastened; and, as a holy woman comparing holy things, she says: 'Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well?' Receive the depth of the thought, from the fact that she no longer marvels if, without a rope, He promises the water, but only converses concerning the quality of its taste.

Now the Samaritans are indeed of foreign descent;

yet they too inscribe Jacob as their father in two ways.

For, dwelling in a land bordering upon and neighboring that of the Jews, they took to themselves a little of the worship of those people, and made it their study to boast in the fathers of the Jews.

And besides, it was in fact truly the case that the greater number of those inhabiting Samaria had sprung from the root of Jacob.

For Jeroboam the son of Nabat, having gathered together the ten tribes of Israel and the half-tribe of Ephraim, departed from Jerusalem in the time of the kingdom of Rehoboam the son of Solomon, and, having seized Samaria, built houses and cities in it.

'Everyone who drinks of this water shall thirst again;'

'but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst forever; but the water that I will give him shall become in him a spring of water leaping up unto eternal life.'

'Are you greater than our father Jacob?' — as though the Samaritan woman were putting forward some great and hard-to-contend problem, the Saviour again most skillfully declines the boast in mere words, not saying plainly that He is greater, but persuades her to test the more excellent one from the quality of the deeds.

Therefore, showing that the difference between the spiritual waters and those in sense-perception and more earthy is beyond all comparison, He says: 'Everyone who drinks of this water shall thirst again; but he who is filled with my waters,' He says, 'not only shall be shown to be superior to thirsting any longer, but shall have a spring within himself able to nourish him unto eternal life.'

Therefore he who bestows the greater things shall be among the greater, He says, than he who possesses the lesser; and the victor shall not bear away the same glory as the vanquished.

Again she speaks only of the customary things and imagines them, and grasps nothing at all of what is said;

and in being freed from small toils she thinks she will have the whole of our Saviour's munificence, and in no longer thirsting she sets the measure of God's grace, not even in bare thoughts receiving the things that transcend.

'Go, call your husband, and come here.'

It was then well and not falsely said that the minds of women are somehow female of the female, and that a soft mind is lodged in women, in no way possessing the power to understand anything keenly;

but the nature of men is somehow more apt to learn, and much readier for reasoning, having a mind roused up unto soberness and, so to speak, ardent and made manly.

For this cause, I think, He bade the little woman call her husband, secretly reproving her, that she had a most unlearned heart, unmanageable by the words unto wisdom; and at the same time managing yet another most excellent thing besides this.

The woman says to Him: 'I have no husband.'

Jesus says to her: 'You have well said, I have no husband;'

And to whom, henceforth, would it not be manifest that the Saviour was not ignorant that she was destitute of one lawfully joined to her according to the law, but made the inquiry after the non-existent husband as a pretext for uncovering the hidden things? For it was — indeed it was — thus scarcely possible to profit her, marveling now no longer at Him as one of us, but as already above man, through His paradoxically knowing the things within her.

And He usefully accepts her saying that she has no husband, although she had been corrupted with so many;

for it is not union out of love of pleasure, but consent according to the law and a bond out of pure love, that accomplish the blameless marriage.

'Lord, I perceive that you are a prophet.'

Scarcely does she blaze up toward soberness, and again not yet perfectly.

Yet she was shown to be better than before, little by little, in no way chafing at the reproofs, but snatching the power from the sign unto her profit; and thus emerging from a soft mind, and moderately ascending nevertheless toward a vigorous understanding, and stretching out the eye of her heart to an unaccustomed contemplation of things.

Wherefore it is especially fitting to marvel at our Saviour's forbearance together with His power, who easily reshapes untaught minds into an admirable disposition.

'Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where one must worship.'

Supposing the Lord to be truly a prophet and a Jew, she plumes herself greatly upon the local customs, and stoutly maintains that the Samaritans have deliberated better than the opinion of the Jews.

For the Jews, receiving still grosser conceptions concerning the divine and incorporeal nature, insisted that the God over all must be worshiped only in Jerusalem, or in neighboring Zion, as though the whole of the ineffable and incomprehensible nature were once for all brought down there and shut up in temples made with hands.

Wherefore, being exceedingly senseless in this, they were reproved through the voice of the prophets, God saying: 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth is the footstool of my feet;'

'What kind of house will you build me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest?' But the Samaritans again, lying not far from the Jews' ignorance, having both a land and an ignorance that bordered upon them, thinking that they must pray and worship in the mountain called Gerizim, do not escape being justly laughed at.

This inquiry the woman puts forward to the Saviour, as some great and hard-to-grasp problem, saying: 'Our fathers worshiped in this mountain,' and what follows.

'Believe me, woman, that an hour is coming when neither in Jerusalem nor in this mountain shall you worship the Father.'

He condemns at once the ignorance of them all, saying that the form of the worship on both sides shall be transferred to what is more true.

For no longer, He says, shall a place be sought in which they will suppose God properly to dwell, but they shall worship the Lord as one who fills all things and is able to hold them together, each from his own place, even as one of the holy prophets says.

And by the 'hour' and 'season' of the removal of such customs, He signifies His own sojourn in the world with a body.

And observe how, using a most elegant mode of speech, He guides the mind of the little woman toward conceptions concerning the Son, calling God 'Father;'

for how could 'Father' be conceived at all, if there were no Son? CHAPTER V.

That the Son is not among those who worship, in that He is Word and God, but is rather worshiped together with the Father.

'You worship what you do not know;'

'we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.'

He speaks again as a Jew and as a man, the dispensation of the matter demanding this manner even now;

for Christ would not have failed of the fitting occasion;

and He assigns something more, unto understanding, to the worship of the Jews.

For the Samaritans indeed worship God as in a simple and uninvestigated manner;

but the Jews, through the law and the prophets, receive the knowledge of Him who is, so far as was possible.

For this reason He says that the Samaritans do not know, but that the Jews somehow have full knowledge, from whom also salvation shall be manifested — meaning clearly Himself — as He stoutly affirms.

But among the worshipers He again ranks Himself as man — He who, together with God and the Father, is worshiped both by us and by the holy angels.

For since He put around Himself the form of a servant, He fulfills the ministry befitting a servant, not having lost His being God and Lord and worthy of worship;

for He remains the same even though He has become man, preserving in every way the principle of the dispensation with flesh.

And even if you see the humiliation to be great and beyond nature, enter in as an admirer, not as an accuser, not as one fond of complaint, but rather as an imitator.

Such does Paul wish us to be seen, saying: 'Let each of you have this mind among yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery 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.' Do you see how the Son has become for us a pattern of humble-mindedness, being in equality with the Father and in His form, as it is written;

but having come down for our sakes into voluntary obedience and humiliation? How then ought the fashion of obedience, and how that of humiliation, to be made manifest, save clearly through deeds and words that fall short of the God-befitting dignity, and hold much the lesser part than those in which the Word was still bare with the Father, and unentwined with the form of the servant? For where at all shall we say that He came down, unless we grant Him also to have endured some of the things beneath His worth? And how has He become in the likeness of men, according to the voice of Paul, unless He imitated what befits men? And a thing most befitting men is worship, as being paid in the rank of a debt and offered by us to God.

Therefore He worships as man, when He has become man, but is ever worshiped together with the Father, since He was and is and shall be God by nature and true.

But the one on the opposite side will not endure this again, but will rise up in resistance, saying this: 'Do not be startled when we say that the Son worships;'

'for we do not think that He must worship the Father in the same way as we too, of course, or as angels perchance, but the worship of the Son is something exceptional, and much among the better things than that which is from us.'

What then, again, shall we say to these things? That, O man, in setting round the Only-begotten a most notable servitude, and having gilded over with certain deceitful words the dignity befitting a servant, you think, in deceiving yourself.

Cease glorifying the Son in dishonor, that you may remain honoring the Father;

'For he who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father either,' as it is written.

For tell me, what does it profit the Only-begotten toward freedom, that He renders to the Father a worship set apart from ours? For so long as He is found among those who worship, He will be a slave in every way; and even if He be conceived of as a worshipper set apart, He will in no way differ from created things as regards being created, but only by other pre-eminences — just as, among men, Michael differs, or some other holy and rational power, in which excelling those upon the earth is seen to be attached essentially, whether by reason of holiness, or by some abundance of glory; for thus it seemed good to God, the most excellent Artificer of all things.

But being ranked together with created things, according to the principle of having been made, is common to Him with the rest.

Therefore the Word, who is in the Father and from the Father by nature, will in no way escape being created — even if He be said to worship in a special manner.

Then how is that which is made still a Son? Or how is the slave and servant Lord according to nature? For I, at least, think that the kingly and lordly dignity shines forth in being worshipped;

whereas the servile measure, befitting a slave, is determined in the act of worshipping.

It falls to us, then, to think that we ought to confess the nature that is supreme and above all things.

Wherefore also to all creation it was proclaimed through the all-wise Moses: 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve'; so that to whatever the servitude belongs by nature, and which falls under the yoke of the Godhead, this thing must indeed by all means worship, and be subject to the posture of service.

For in saying 'Lord', He defines that which is a slave; and in saying 'God', that which is made.

For somehow the slave is conceived of together with, and set over against, that which is Lord by nature; and that which was brought into being is set over against the uncreated Godhead.

But since the Son is eternally in the Father, and exists as Lord in that He is God, whence He could be shown to owe worship as a debt, I am at a loss to demonstrate.

But when those men babble again, saying, 'The Only-begotten will worship the Father, neither as a slave, nor as a creature, but as a Son the One who begot Him' —