約翰福音註釋 第 1 章 第 18/94 段

He commanded the multitude of the armies, and thus the wall was shaken down; and running within, they took the city, not honouring the untimely idleness of the Sabbath, nor declining to conquer on it because of the excluding law, but neither then acting against the stratagems of Joshua, and keeping the man's leadership altogether free from reproach.

And in these things is the type.

But when the truth was present, that is, Christ, having pulled down and mastered the corruption that had been raised as a rampart against the nature of man by the devil, and is then seen doing this on the Sabbath—as in the preludes and beginning of the matter, in the paralytic—they take it ill without instruction and condemn the docile obedience of the fathers, not permitting nature to conquer on the Sabbath the injury arising from sicknesses, so far as to be eager to insist that Jesus must be persecuted for doing good on the Sabbath.

'My Father works until now, and I work.'

For this necessarily is what 'until now' declares, so that the force of the reflection may receive the meaning befitting it.

But since the Jews were untaught, and knew not who by nature the Only-Begotten is, but ascribed to God and Father alone the ordinance of the law given through Moses, firmly maintaining that one must be persuaded by and obey Him alone, He plainly endeavours to persuade them that He works all things together with the Father, and, having in Himself the nature of the One who begot Him, because He is nothing other than He as regards the identity of essence, He will never think anything different from what seems good to the One who begot Him.

And as being of the same essence, He both wills these things—or rather, being Himself the living will and power of the Father—He works all things in all with the Father.

In order, then, to repel the idle murmuring of the Jews, and to shame those who were persecuting on grounds over which they seemed to be angry—as though the honour due to the Sabbath had been despised—He says: 'My Father works until now, and I work.'

For He all but wishes to indicate something of this kind: 'If you believe, O man, that by the nod and will of God, who compacted and fashioned all things, the creation is governed even on the Sabbath—so that the sun rises, and the rain-bearing springs are likewise released, and the fruits shoot up from the earth, not declining their growth on account of the Sabbath, and the fire performs its own works, ministering without hindrance to the needs of men—

then know full well that you confess the Father to work the things befitting God even on the Sabbath.

Why then, He says, do you ignorantly accuse the One through whom He works all things? For God the Father will work in no other way than as through the power and wisdom of the Son.

For this cause He says, 'I also work.'

He therefore puts to shame, by the notions leading to absurdity, the unbridled rage of the persecutors, showing them to be setting themselves in opposition not so much against Himself as, so to speak, against the Father—to whom alone they were zealous to ascribe the honour of the law, not yet knowing the Son who by nature is from Him and through Him.

For this reason too He says that God is in a singular sense His own Father, most skilfully leading them by the hand to this fairest and most precious lesson.

The mind of the Jews is intensified toward inhumanity, and by the very things through which they ought to have been healed, they sicken the more, so that they might justly hear: 'How do you say, We are wise?' For while they ought to have their disposition made gentle, being transformed by the fitting reasoning into reverence, they are already thirsting for the blood of the One who gives full assurance through His deeds that in no way at all has the divine law been transgressed by a man's being made whole on the Sabbath.

They interweave with their wrath on account of the Sabbath, as though it were a charge of blasphemy, the truth itself, binding themselves fast with the cords of their own transgressions into wraths that cannot be loosed.

For they thought they were being pious, taking it ill that, being a man, He called God His own Father in a special sense.

—the God Word who for our sakes became in the form of a servant, the life welling up from God the Father, that is, the Only-Begotten, to whom alone properly and truly God is inscribed and is Father, but to us no longer;

for we are adopted, ascending to the dignity that is above nature through the will of Him who honoured us, and gaining the title of 'gods' and 'sons' on account of Christ who dwells in us through the Holy Spirit.

Looking, therefore, to the flesh alone, and not recognizing the God who dwelt in the flesh, they do not bear with Him as He leaps up to the measure beyond the nature of man, by calling God His own Father.

For by saying 'My Father,' He would reasonably introduce this thought.

And they suppose that He whose Father God is in a peculiar sense must be equal to Him by nature—understanding this one thing alone rightly.

For so it is, and not otherwise.

Since, then, the saying introduces this thought as well, they are the more indignant, turning aside from the right word of the truth.

That the Son is not less than the Father in respect of power or of the activity exercised in certain things, but is equal in might and consubstantial, as being from Him and by nature.

Jesus therefore answered and said to them: 'Verily, verily, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, except what He sees the Father doing;

for whatever things He does, these the Son also does in like manner.'

What we said in the preceding passages, this He now interprets in another manner, from every side drawing His hearers, as with a net, toward the finding of the truth.

But the teaching which was not at first received, on account of the weakness of those who were unable to understand, he reshapes in another fashion; and going over the same reflections, he introduces it in varied ways.

And this too would be a work of the virtue befitting a teacher: namely, not to convey the knowledge of what is taught in a hurried and cursory manner, but in a stately fashion, elaborating it variously, and by the changed turn of phrase often smoothing away the difficulty inherent in the reflections.

Having therefore mingled the human with that which befits God, and having blended out of both a single discourse holding the middle ground,

so that gently the dignity befitting the Only-Begotten sinks down, while the nature of man ascends;

for what the Father does, these things the Son likewise does.

For in being able to do the things of God the Father in a manner indistinguishable from him, and to work in like manner with the one who begot him, he bears witness to the identity of essence with him.

For things which have obtained the same nature as one another will work in like manner; but those in which the mode of being is different will also have a mode of operation in all things that is not the same.

Therefore, as true God from God the true Father, he says that he is able to do these things in like manner with him; yet, so that he may appear not only equal in power to the Father, but of one mind in all things and having with him one will over all, he says that he can do nothing of himself, unless he sees the Father doing something.

It is as though he were saying more plainly to those who had set about persecuting him, when a man had been healed on the Sabbath: You suppose that the honour of the Sabbath has been dissolved; but I would never have done this, were I not seeing the Father as a like worker;

for he works the things pertaining to the maintenance of the world even on the Sabbath, albeit through me.

It is impossible, therefore, he says, that I, the Son who is of him by nature, should not in every way and in all things both work and will the things of the Father—not as having received from without, by instruction, the pattern of acting, nor as being summoned by a deliberate impulse to will the same as the Father, but as one who, by the laws of an unaltered nature, ascends to the same counsel and act as God the Father.

For the saying, that he can do nothing of himself, is very well circumscribed within these bounds;

the obedience of Christ, as it is written.

But perhaps he who fights against the truth will be unpersuaded, and will make the saying a kind of nourishment for his own ill counsel, saying: If the Son were in equality with the Father, assigning to him no superiority as a matter of necessity on account of any deficiency of his own nature, what was it that persuaded him thus openly and without concealment to say that he can do nothing of himself unless he sees the Father doing something? For clearly, he says, in these words he confesses that he can do nothing at all of himself, as knowing plainly the one who is better and superior;

But you, on the other hand, again quibble away the meaning for us.

What, then, have we to say in reply to these things? The enemy of Christ again puts on a bold face for his blasphemies, and being drunk with ignorance does not perceive it.

For you ought, most excellent sir, to examine accurately the force of what was said, and not rashly to leap upon the reasonings that arise from ignorance.

For in what manner do you think it right to bring down the Son from equality with the Father, because he says that he can do nothing of himself unless he sees the Father doing something? Is it as not having equality in power that he says such things? And yet, from the very words before us it is possible to see the Son as equal in strength with the one who begot him, rather than deficient in the might that befits God; for he is not seen saying, The Son can do nothing of himself unless he receive the power to do it from the Father;

for that indeed would have been the saying of one who was weak;

but rather, Unless he sees the Father doing something.

And that through the sense of sight we are naturally summoned not so much to the acquisition of power as to the contemplation of certain things, I suppose no one will contend.

Therefore the Son, in saying that he fixes his gaze upon the works of the one who begot him, shows himself not as weak, but rather as an emulator, or a spectator; and how this is to be understood more accurately will be said by us in what follows.

And that through his operation—unaltered and most closely alike, I mean that which extends to all things—he is seen to have equality in power, he will teach clearly in what follows, himself adding concerning his own Father: For whatever things he does, these, he says, the Son likewise does.

How then is he less, who is distinguished by operations of equal weight with God the Father? For will fire work anything other than what belongs to fire, when no variation is observed in its operation? And how could this ever come to pass? How then will the Son work the things of the Father in like manner, if for this reason he is left behind, having less than the equal strength as compared with him? And these things we have taken, as from the passage before us, with reference to the present text;

but let us again, proceeding through other reflections, see whether the nature of the Son admits at any point of being in second place to the Father;

and let the discourse concerning power be set before us in like manner.

Do they confess the Son to be God from God by nature and true, and truly of the essence of the Father, or do they say that he is God, but impiously attach to it that he lies outside the essence of the Father?

If, then, they say that he is not of the essence of the Father, he will be neither God by nature nor a true Son;

for that which does not exist from God by nature could not at all be conceived as God by nature; but neither would he be Son, unless he were begotten of the essence of the Father—and they are introducing to us some spurious and newly-invented god.

But if they will not say this, blushing at the absurdity in their own dogmas, and will grant that the Only-Begotten truly exists from the Father and is God by nature and truly;

how will he be in things less than the Father, or how will he be powerless in anything, and not rather have the matter charge back upon the essence of the one who begot? For if it be at all admissible that he who is God by nature should be weak, what is there to hinder the Father from suffering this—since the divine and ineffable nature would then once for all possess the capacity of suffering, and would thus already be seen to be so in the Son according to their argument? Therefore the divine is on this account not even impassible; nor will it lie altogether in sameness and unchangeable blessedness.

which belongs properly and alone to him, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit? But the adversary will again say to us: In this respect we affirm that the Father surpasses the Son.

For the one is the originator of the works, as having perfection both in power and in the knowing of all things;

but the other first becomes a spectator, and then thus a worker, imprinting upon himself the imitation of the Father's operation, so that through the likeness of the works he too may be conceived as God;

for this he teaches us, they say, when he says that he can do nothing of himself unless he sees the Father doing something.

What do you say, O most audacious one? Does the Son imprint upon himself the impressions of the Father's operation, so that through this he may be conceived as God? Then he will be God by instruction, and no longer by nature;

and just as in us there is, say, knowledge and art, so likewise in him the dignity is such—and he is rather a craftsman of the works of the Godhead than true God;

and he is doubtless in every way something other than the art within him, even though he be one befitting God.

How then do angels in heaven worship, and we too worship without reproach, one who has stepped outside the bounds of the Godhead and bears his glory in art alone—when the holy Scripture lays down the law for us that we ought not to serve any other beside him who truly is God? For it says: You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. But surely the holy multitude of angels above would not have fallen away from what is fitting; yet it worships the Son and serves him together with us, recognizing him as God by nature, and not by instruction, as those triflers assert;

for they do not perceive, as is likely, into how many absurdities they will fall from this.

For, first of all, the Son will admit alteration and change—the change toward the greater as from the lesser—and yet he himself says through the prophet: See, see that I am, and I have not been changed; and the Psalmist too, in the Spirit, will be utterly falsified, who cries out to the Son: But you are the same.

For he waits, as they say, for the Father to be at work upon some one of existing things, as for a kind of guide and teacher, so that having contemplated he may become an imitator;

then how would such a one not seem to some, henceforth, to ascend from an ignorance of certain things into knowledge, and to be turned from the worse toward the better—if indeed we shall reckon that to know some good thing is better than not to know it? Then what besides these absurdities is seen? Let those who bring in God as an instructor, or rather as a Father, tell us: Does the Son, standing in ignorance of the works of the Father, wait to see, or does he have most accurate knowledge concerning these things? If, then, they shall say that he waits though knowing, they will plainly show him doing something most superfluous, and the Father a practitioner of a most idle undertaking;

for the one inspects, as though not knowing, that which he knows accurately, while the other undertakes to teach one who already knows;

and to which of existing beings will it not be manifest that such things lie within the extremity of the ridiculous? But perhaps they will not say this;

they will shift over to the contrary.

For they will maintain that he waits of necessity for the Father to be at work, in order that, having contemplated, he may learn.

How then does he know all things before their coming to be? Or how will he speak the truth in saying of himself: I am a God at hand, says the Lord, and not a God from afar;

shall anything be hidden from me? And how is it not absurd and ignorant to believe that the Spirit searches and knows the depths of God, yet to suppose that the very Giver of the Spirit stands in ignorance of the works of the Father and of his own Spirit, so far as to be left behind in knowledge? For will not the Son moreover cast away even his being Wisdom, if indeed he is wholly ignorant and receives through learning? For he would rather be receptive of wisdom than himself be Wisdom by nature.

For wisdom is that which makes wise, not that which is by nature made wise; just as, of course, light too is that which illumines, not that which is by nature illumined.

Therefore he is once more something other than the wisdom within him, and first of all not simple, but composed henceforth of two;

then, in addition to this, he will lose also his being God—I mean God by nature and essentially;

for the divine nature does not endure this, having simplicity as its proper good, and being all-perfect.

And if the Son is not God by nature, how does he both work and accomplish the things that befit God alone? For will they say that even for a power befitting God it suffices him merely to see the Father working, and that through bare beholding he gains the being God by nature, and the being able to do as many things as does the one who shows them to him? There is then nothing to hinder that many other gods too be displayed to us, if the Father should be willing to show to them also the way of his own works; and in the learning of something superfluous will lie the distinctive excellence of the Father's essence;

for the one taught, as they assert, is found, having run up into the dignity of Godhead by nature, saying: I and the Father are one;

He that has seen me has seen the Father. Let them therefore measure how great a throng of blasphemy is heaped up for them from their willing to think in such a way, and let them hold true thoughts concerning the Son, as it is written.

For neither from contemplation of the effects wrought by the Father, nor yet as having him in a preliminary way in the works, is the Son a maker or a wonder-worker, and God on this account; but because a certain natural law, as it were, bears him toward the unaltered likeness of the one who begot him, even though he shines forth and is manifested through the unfailing resemblance of the works.

But setting forth once more, if it seem good, the sum of the discourse, and testing it by keener inquiries, let us consider accurately what henceforth may be the force of what is said, and now let us examine carefully how it befits us to think piously.

Therefore: Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, he says, unless he sees the Father doing something;

for whatever things he does, these the Son likewise does.

Do you see how, through the unaltered identity in the works, he shows himself in all things like the Father, so that through this he may appear to be also the heir of his essence? For as of one who must necessarily and incontestably be conceived as God by nature—namely, the one who has operation equal with God the Father—the Saviour says such things.

But let no one be offended when he appears to say, in a manner belonging to the dispensation, that he can do nothing of himself unless he sees the Father doing something.

For inasmuch as he was now clothed with the form of the servant and had become man through being united to flesh, he did not carry on his discourse in a manner altogether free and unrestrained toward a boldness befitting God;

but rather he sometimes made use, for the sake of the dispensation, of such a manner as might befit God and man together;

for indeed he was truly both at once.

This, then, is one true explanation;

but I think it necessary to expound the matter before us in yet another way as well, and somewhat more keenly to attack the accuracy of the reflection.

The Son, he says, can do nothing of himself unless he sees the Father doing something.

The word 'cannot,' or the impossibility, is either predicated of certain things, or is applied to some of the things that exist.

For this being predicated, we say, is by no means necessarily indicative of constraint or of weakness;

Often too it teaches the fixity of natures and the unshakeable stability of essences, with regard to those states in which each of the things signified either exists or has come to be, and to those operations which it knows how to perform naturally and immutably.

But let the argument come forward, if it seems good, by way of examples as well.

When a man perhaps says that he is not able to carry a piece of timber somewhere because it is likely both unwieldy and heavy, he is charging the weakness that resides in himself.

But when some other man says, 'Being by nature a rational man, and begotten of a father who is by nature rational, I am not able to do, as something proper and of myself, that which I do not see to be inherent in the nature of him who begot me,' then the 'I am not able' indicates the fixity of the essence and its incapacity to fall away into anything other than what it is.

'For I am not able,' he says, 'of myself to be other than a rational living being, having been endowed with a fullness of the advantages that belong to my nature;

for I do not see that this can be undergone in the nature of him who begot me.'

'Do not, then, find fault,' he says, 'with the works of the Son;

for, contemplating the essence of him who begot him as it were in his own thoughts, that is, in his natural motions, whatever works he sees it fittingly to accomplish, these he does, and nothing else, being unable to undergo any of those things that are contrary to nature, because he exists from that very essence.'

For example, the nature of the Father possesses the will to show mercy;

and the Son, beholding this as inherent in it, being merciful as it were from himself and by nature, is unable to become anything other than what that nature is.

For he has from the Father, just as he has the essence, so also the good things of the essence;

and this, it is clear, simply and without composition, inasmuch as he is God.

Therefore he wisely adds to the foregoing words: 'For whatever things that One does, these the Son also does likewise.'

In these words he sums up, so to speak, the whole thought of his not being able to do anything of himself unless he see the Father doing something.

But if you reckon up the cause for which the Son says such things, you will more accurately fix your mind upon what has been said by us.

Since, then, it was on a sabbath day that he had mercy on the paralytic, the Jews were attempting to persecute him;

but Christ puts them to shame, showing that God the Father too shows mercy on the sabbath.

For he did not think it right ever to hinder those things that tend toward our salvation;

and indeed at the outset he had said, 'My Father works until now, and I work.' But since they appeared to be indignant at this out of great ill-will, he adds again: 'The Son can do nothing of himself, unless he see the Father doing something;'

'for whatever things that One does, these the Son also does likewise.'

'For since the Father,' he says, 'does not refuse to show mercy on the sabbath, seeing that he is at all times compassionate, on this very account I too at all times show mercy, being unable in any way to introduce innovation into the Father's essence within myself, through my appearing and being such as he himself is by nature;

for I altogether operate the things that are his, as from him.'

But to say that the Father exists as the initiator of the works who begins beforehand will not be free from the utmost ignorance.

For how could he ever, privately and alone, begin beforehand, when he has the Son as the power that operates upon all things, coexisting with him eternally, and manifesting his willing toward anything and his movement in operation upon particular things?

And if they ignorantly insist that he waits for the Father's particular operation upon each of the works, so as to imitate it in like manner, let them show us that the Father ever wrought anything privately and by himself, or what sort of paralytic he himself first healed, giving the deed to the Offspring as a pattern.

For the Father loves the Son.

Christ refutes those who without understanding were fiercely roused to vain anger, those who were recklessly acting impiously against him on account of the sabbath, making the most vivid demonstration of the matter through his saying that he is loved by his own begetter.

For if the Father wholly loves the Son, plainly he does not love one who grieves him, but rather one who gladdens him in whatever things he does and works.

In vain, then, do they persecute one who does not refuse to show mercy on the sabbath, and by this again they are convicted of setting themselves in opposition to the decrees of God and the Father.

For they think it right to hate one whom he himself loves; yet it is surely altogether clear that he would never have loved one who ran counter to the will of him who begot him, and who was accustomed to do privately and alone only whatever he himself might wish.

But since he justly loves him, plainly he also consents to and concurs in the loosing of the sabbath, and shows that it involves nothing at which God the Lord of the Law might reasonably be indignant.

And he shows him all things that he himself does.

Necessarily he adds these words too to those preceding, and for what cause, I will again declare.

For fathers among us, sometimes overcome by natural affections, both put up with sons who grieve them, and often bear patiently when they see them attempting things contrary to their better judgment.

For a certain keen longing for their children has taken up residence in them, persuading all their faint-heartedness toward those children to gain the upper hand.

'But not thus,' he says, 'does God the Father love the Son;

rather, as having one essence with him, he is called, by certain natural laws, so to speak, to a will and a power that are without variation.'

'Therefore,' he says, 'the Son works nothing contrary to what seems good or fitting to him who begot him, nor does he wanton over the Father's love, being one who is fond of novelty in his works and unbridled, but whatever things he beholds him to be the maker of, as it were again in his thoughts, precisely these he altogether accomplishes, being held fast by the identity of essence so as nowhere to deviate from what befits God.'

For he has no share in any turning or alteration into anything;

but he remains the same unceasingly, as the psalmist somewhere says.

And again the Father shows the Son what he himself does, not setting them beside him as though drawn out on a tablet, nor teaching him as one who is ignorant;

but rather portraying his whole self in the nature of the Offspring, and showing in himself the things that are peculiarly inherent in him, so that from those things which he himself is and appears to be, the Offspring may know his begetter, of what sort and who he is by nature.

For on this account Christ says: 'No one knows who the Son is except the Father, nor does any one recognize who the Father is except the Son.' For the exact knowledge of each lies in both, not by teaching but by nature;

and God the Father sees the Son in himself, and again in turn the Son sees the Father in himself;

on this account he says, 'I am in the Father and the Father is in me.' But let the seeing and the being seen, once more in these matters, be understood in a manner befitting God.

And greater works than these will he show him, that you may marvel.

In the foregoing the blessed Evangelist says that 'the Jews sought to kill Jesus, because he not only loosed the sabbath, but also called God his own Father, making himself equal with God.' The accusation concerning the sabbath, then, he had cleared away, showing the Father too to be active on the sabbath, and expending a lengthy discourse upon this;

but that he is in equality with the Father, even though he has become man for our sake, this he attempts to teach.

For this was still what was lacking to the discourse;

and on this account he says that 'And greater works than these will he show him, that you may marvel.'

And what again does he mean to make plain to us through this? 'The paralytic has been healed,' he says, 'who had been thirty-eight years in his infirmity.' And truly wonderful indeed was the power of him who healed, and exceedingly befitting God his authority;

and one so wonder-working, no one, I think, being of sound mind, would blame for saying that he is God himself, and, inasmuch as he is Son, in all things equal to him who begot him;

'but since you are minded most basely and most irrationally,' he says, 'and are scandalized on account of this perishable body, it is necessary for you to learn thoroughly that the matters of my authority and strength will not stand fixed at these things only;'

'For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he wills.'