約翰福音註釋 第 1 章 第 22/94 段

'For tell Me, what is the use,' He says, 'that you search the divine Scriptures, supposing that through them you will ascend to eternal life,

sharpening yourselves in words, while the very things by which you might gain eternal life you do not so much as admit into your own mind.'

And that in both the Law and the holy prophets there is much discourse concerning the Life which is according to nature — that is, the Only-Begotten — is, I think, manifest to all who love learning.

He again perceives — or rather sees, in a manner befitting God — the disobedient and unruly throng of the Pharisees being stung, and not at all on account of the things for which He blamed them, as searching the divine Scriptures otherwise than they ought, but rather at His having said, 'You will not come to Me.' For the things from which they themselves readily suffer, these they believe are able to prevail even in the case of the Saviour.

For they supposed, as was likely, having suffered this too out of great folly, that the Lord was already seeking to lord it over them and desiring to procure for Himself the honours from all, through calling them into discipleship.

Having taken some such suspicion into their mind, they themselves expected to fall — as it were at any moment — from their authority over the nation,

and they were cut to the quick not a little, seeing the Heir wishing to demand the fruit of the vineyard.

'For I do not call to discipleship with Me those who hear,' He says, 'hunting after honours from you or from others, as you do; nor would I receive this as the reward of My teaching, since I have most fully My glory of Myself, and it is not inferior to that which comes from you. But I have said that you do not wish to come to Me because I clearly know that you have not the love of God in yourselves.'

'For being destitute of the love toward God,' He says, 'how could you attain to Me, the Only-Begotten God who has shone forth from God? I am come in My Father's name, and you receive Me not;

if another shall come in his own name, him you will receive.'

Lest the Pharisees should think that the Lord was reviling them in vain by saying, 'You have not the love of God in yourselves,' showing that what was said is a true matter, He at once adds this also to what was said above:

'For that I do not lie,' He says, 'in saying that you are destitute of the love toward the divine, I will establish to you by one single matter.

For I indeed came in My Father's name,

for I persuade you to press on to do all things unto the glory of God the Father;

but by your acts of disobedience you have shaken off the One who has come from above and set out from God;

for I know, as God, the things that are to be;

the false-named one, who does not attribute the glory to God and the Father, nor demands the faith that is due from you, but transacts everything in his own name.'

From this, I think, the blessed Paul too, having understood, says something true concerning both the Jews and the son of lawlessness: 'Because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God sends them a working of error, that they should believe the lie; that they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.' The proof, therefore, that the Pharisees were not assailed by our Saviour Christ with idle words is the very thing that was said, which brings forward, as a prophecy, a matter to be fulfilled in its own proper time.

'How can you believe, receiving glory from men, and the glory that comes from the only God you do not seek?' He reproves the Pharisees as already loving dominion and making much of the honours from men, secretly hinting that they do exceedingly wrong in senselessly attaching the diseases of their own soul to God, who knows in no way how to be diseased.

Then, He says that those clinging tenaciously to vainglory suffer through it the loss of the noblest things — meaning of course the faith in Himself;

as it seems to us when He plainly said, 'For if I still pleased men, I should not be Christ's servant.' It is therefore natural that, as by a kind of necessity, it should befall those who hunt after the honours from men to fall away from the glory that is from above and from God alone, even as the Saviour says.

And again He says 'the only God,' distinguishing Him over against the gods of the nations, and not placing Himself outside the honour that belongs to the Only One.

For, as we have already often said, the fullness of the holy and consubstantial Trinity ascends into one nature and glory of Godhead.

'Think not that I will accuse you to the Father;

there is one who accuses you, even Moses, in whom you have hoped.'

Having said that the Pharisees press on to live in a manner more devoted to vainglory than to piety, and on this account having taught that they had swerved aside into immeasurable disobedience, He says that they shall be accused by that very Moses in whom it was their custom to glory even most vehemently.

And so, when the man born blind once said to them concerning Christ, 'Do you also wish to become His disciples?' they at once cried out expressly, saying, 'You are that man's disciple, but we are Moses' disciples.' 'Moses himself, therefore, will accuse you,' He says, 'in whom you have placed all your hope, and he will cry out before God against the folly that is in you, being himself, along with the rest, held in contempt.'

And surely we shall not suppose that those who disobey Christ are without accusation before Him, because He said to the Jews, 'Think not that I will accuse you to the Father.'

For what indeed shall we say, when we hear Him saying, 'Everyone therefore who shall confess Me before men, him will I also confess before My Father who is in heaven;

but whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father who is in heaven'? Shall we not reasonably suppose that those to whom this happens through Christ will at some time be accused before God the Father through His denial? But I think this is plain to everyone.

The Jews, therefore, are by no means free from being accused, having through their long disobedience denied Christ; but again the word to them is most aptly framed.

For since, shaking off the admonitions from Him, and reckoning as nothing His divine and heavenly teaching, they persist in ever having to keep the things of Moses — so that they are seen already crying out quite nakedly, 'We know that God has spoken to Moses; but as for this man, we know not whence he is' — He very necessarily convicts them of transgressing even against that Moses in whom they take such great pride, and says that they will in no way need another accuser, but that the Law given through him will suffice for them alone, since by the very things wherein they disobey Him they will henceforth be justly accused, having fallen, even if the voice of the Judge — that is, of Christ — should remain silent.

'For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me;

for he wrote of Me.'

Having said that the Jews would be accused by the all-wise Moses, and would undergo indictment for their acts of disobedience toward Himself, He usefully adds these words also, teaching that He did not censure them in vain, or, in another way, declining the imputation of loving to revile;

for He is seen speaking a matter that is not false.

'Let it be so, then,' He says, 'that you thrust aside My words; I will bear with it even while being disobeyed;

receive Moses, your own;

give faith to him who is admired among you, and you will assuredly know Him whom in ignorance you dishonour;

burst open the types that are in travail with the truth;

for I am sketched out in his books.'

'Therefore Moses himself also will accuse you,' He says, 'when he sees you disobeying the writings concerning Me.'

It would perhaps have behoved us, having interpreted the sense contained in the passages before us, to proceed again to what follows, entrusting to those who are truly lovers of learning the searching out of the images of Christ set forth through Moses.

For his writings are full of the things spoken of, and abundant is the discourse found in him,

and brimming with hidden contemplations.

But that we may not seem to have entrusted the mastery of it to sloth, and thus without good reason to shrink from the admirable sweat of the task, simply attaching the difficulty to the writings of Moses, we shall set ourselves to this also, knowing what is written: 'The Lord will give a word to those who preach the gospel with great power.' But since, as we have said, the discourse concerning these things is long, and since the all-wise Moses prefigures the mystery concerning Christ through many figures, we shall think it right not to heap up an immeasurable crowd upon those who will read; rather, choosing one out of all, we shall be earnest to make the demonstration clear, that the word of our Saviour was true which He spoke to the Jews, saying, 'If you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote of Me.'

That Moses signified the coming of the Saviour.

'The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet from among your brethren, like unto me; him you shall hear.'

'according to all that you asked of the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, We will not again hear the voice of the Lord our God, nor see this great fire any more, lest we die.'

'And the Lord said to me, They have rightly spoken all that they have said;'

'I will raise up for them a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto you, and I will put my word in his mouth, and he shall speak to them whatsoever I command him.'

For this reason, indeed, it is not possible, by taking the type of him and the image drawn from the legal priesthood, to make our declaration.

Nevertheless, since we are not accustomed to be without understanding, thinking all things rightly through Christ, we shall speak to those who take this up, prying into the sense that lies within what is set before us. Behold now, once again, unveiled to us is spoken the mystery concerning Christ, artfully refashioned by the subtlest contemplation out of the likeness set forth in the account of Moses.

'For the Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet from among your brethren, like unto me,' he says. And interpreting this himself, and that very swiftly, showing what sort of contemplation drawn from the figure of himself the announcement conveys to us, he plainly adds: 'according to all that you asked of the Lord your God at Mount Sinai on the day of the assembly, saying, We will not again hear the voice of the Lord our God, nor see this great fire any more, lest we die.' For at that time he insists that he himself was called a mediator, since the Synagogue of the Jews was as yet too weak to approach what surpasses nature, and therefore prudently begged off from things beyond its power.

And this, clearly, was the vision of God, startling the sight with apparitions not of the customary kind, and the supernatural and unbearable resoundings of trumpets to those who heard.

Therefore the mediation of Moses was shown at that time to be a remedy for their weakness, as he ministered to the synagogue the things divinely ordained from above.

But you will again transfer the type to the truth, and by these things you will understand the Mediator of God and men to be Christ, ministering to the more docile through a human voice—when for our sakes he was born of a woman—the ineffable will of God the Father, known to him alone, inasmuch as he is understood to be the Son from him and Wisdom, knowing all things, even the depths of God. For since it was not possible with the eyes of the body to gaze upon the divine and ineffable glory of the Being that transcends all things, unmixed and bare;

he took counsel, saying: 'All things that I have heard from the Father, these I will declare to you'; and again: 'For I have not spoken of myself, but the Father who sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak.' Therefore, according to the image of mediation, Moses of old also would be understood as a type of Christ, ministering full well and rightly to the sons of Israel the things divinely determined.

But the mediation of Moses was that of a servant, whereas the mediation through Christ is free and more mystical, since he by nature touches the parties mediated and reaches unto both—I mean both the humanity that is mediated and God the Father.

For he was by nature God, as Only-begotten from God, in a manner not separated from the substance of him who begot, but rather adhering to it, inasmuch as he is understood to be also from it;

and he was also man, inasmuch as he became flesh, likening himself to us, that through him what by nature is greatly divided might be joined to God.

When therefore Moses says, 'The Lord will raise up for you a Prophet like unto me,' you will understand it in no other way than the manner we have just now stated;

since he himself also sets the seal upon the word concerning this, God saying: 'They have rightly spoken all that they have said; I will raise up for them a Prophet like unto you, and I will put my words upon him, and he shall speak to them according to all that I command him.' For the Son bears all things by the word of his power, as Paul says, and announces to us the utterances of the Father, inasmuch as he was appointed mediator by him, according to that which is sung in the Psalms, as from Christ himself: 'But I was set up king by him upon Zion his holy mountain, declaring the ordinance of the Lord.' And if it seems to anyone that from other considerations too one may ascend to the manner of the likeness, he will take 'like unto me' to mean a lawgiver, and will adduce as proof: 'It was said to them of old, You shall not commit adultery;'

'but I say to you, You shall not lust.'

And again he will likewise take 'like unto me' to mean one leading by the hand, as it were, and one who goes before, saying that it is unto the ability to understand the things that are in the Father's will, and the means by which the road to the kingdom of heaven might become smooth and passable;

just as, of course, to the men of old the blessed Moses appeared as teacher of the tutelage given through the Law, everywhere appending to his own words: 'That you may live a long time, and that the Lord your God may bring you into the land which he swore to your fathers.' And since to the things spoken he added: 'And the man who will not hear whatsoever that prophet shall speak in my name, I will require it of him,' let the Jews, being ignorant and roughening their own mind unto the utmost deafness, now behold themselves self-summoned, pouring destruction upon their own heads;

for they shall be under divine wrath, receiving as the wages of their drunken outrage against Christ that they should be brought into the entire loss of good things;

'For if they had believed Moses, they would have believed Christ;'

'for he wrote concerning him.'

'But if you believe not his writings, how shall you believe my words?' The saying might seem to someone, and quite reasonably, to have great obscurity;

for it will go astray, and not without cause, into untrue surmises, if one supposes that the writings of Moses are set above the words of the Saviour;

for the saying has a certain such construction, and inasmuch as it is not possible to speak having grasped it from exact contemplation, it furnishes to the writings of Moses a supposition more worthy of account than the words of the Saviour.

For by saying, 'But if you believe not his writings, how shall you believe my words?' it somehow gives one to understand that his writings lie among the better things, rather than those in which the words that come from him might be;

but the very nature of the matter will exhibit so implausible a notion as full of the utmost silliness.

For how could the writings of Moses be understood as surpassing the words of the Saviour, where the things through him were types and shadows, but the things through Christ are truth? And it would perhaps be long, though not difficult, to spend discourse upon this;

but things exceedingly clear, and taking their proofs not from without but from themselves, it is superfluous, I think, to discuss, as though it might turn out ill or well

to linger over such matters in petty verbosity, and to chop up things nowhere difficult into ill-timed loquacities? Therefore the saying spoken through the Saviour has some such sense.

'If,' he says, 'having the Law written through Moses, and studying his writings up and down, you make of no account the transgression of them, drowning in strange forgetfulness what has often been read, how could you become better disposed toward my words, or how could you appear readier and more obedient toward my utterances—you who do not often, nor always, attend to them, but hear them as if in passing, and only once, on occasion, lodge them in the ears of the body? For either you will approach the things spoken in this fashion, or you will regard them otherwise;'

for the careful inquiry and search in these matters is very profitable for good learning.

Therefore the writings of Moses bring in a certain tutelage and the figuration through type of the mysteries concerning Christ, and, as it were, certain rudiments of the knowledge concerning him—the things adumbrated in that Law—which also, through what has already been examined, we have shown more fully.

That the frequent departures of Christ from Jerusalem signify that grace was to be transferred to the Gentiles;

and at the same time a discourse also concerning the five barley loaves and the two fishes.

'And after these things Jesus went away over the sea of Tiberias.'

I suppose it necessary first to say this to the hearers, that the Lord is seen making his departures from Jerusalem not without some most compelling cause;

but he arranges something at almost every one, and in the very nature of the events, as though on a tablet, he inscribes mysteries.

What then is the aim of the removal, and what is here intimated, we shall make manifest in due season, when the chapters set before us have come to their end;

for having divided each part little by little, and interpreted what is profitable from the writings, and thus set it before those who take it up for understanding, we shall bring on at the last the contemplation upon the whole, cutting short more summarily the things that have been said in their many parts.

But what is now in hand, this too I think must be spoken first.

'After these things,' he says, 'Jesus went away over the sea of Tiberias.'

After what things? This must be inquired into not carelessly.

A marvellous physician, therefore, was Christ shown to be in Jerusalem;

he healed a man who had been thirty-eight years in his infirmity, not by applying a drug, nor by devising some remedy to repel diseases, but rather by a word, as God, with all-effecting authority and a nod befitting God;

for 'Rise,' he says, 'take up your bed, and go to your house.' And since it was the Sabbath, the Jews, sick with the grossness of the letter, are ignorantly angered—they who more than that man were bound by the irrationalities native to them, sick with a feeble idleness toward all good things together, paralyzed in mind and slackened in disposition, to whom it might reasonably be said, 'Strengthen the slackened hands and the paralyzed knees.' And they are angered, saying that the honour owed to the Sabbath ought to be kept even by the Lawgiver himself;

they condemn Christ as a transgressor, not receiving into mind what is written: 'Impious is he who says to a king, You break the law.' Upon these things there were sharp reproofs from the Saviour;

'the Son of man is lord of the Sabbath.' But they, being fit for nothing that is good, yet most ready for every perversity, rise in faction against him who teaches the very things they ought to have learned, and now thirst for the blood of him who wills to make them wise, rendering to him, as it is written, evil for good.

After these things, then, both done and said, the Lord departs from Jerusalem as of necessity; and since the Passover of the Jews was near, as we shall find in what follows a little later, he crossed over the very sea of Tiberias, or the lake so called in the country of the Jews.

And since we have just now said that what most of all drove him off and persuaded him to withdraw and go away to other places, and those so far removed from Jerusalem, was chiefly this—that the Passover of the Jews was near—

I think it fitting to show that Jesus did quite rightly in declining to be found in Jerusalem at that season.

Now the Law given through Moses commanded the Jews to go up from all the surrounding region to Jerusalem, there to celebrate in type the feast of Tabernacles.

And from this the spiritual man will understand the gathering together of all the saints unto Christ, when indeed from all the inhabited world, after the resurrection of the dead, they shall be brought together into the city above, the heavenly Jerusalem, offering there the thank-offerings of the true feast of Tabernacles—that is, of the fastening together and abiding of the bodies—corruption being clearly loosed, and death having fallen unto death.

But as for what one may say concerning what naturally arises from the history: the multitude of those going up to Jerusalem knew no number, and it was especially likely at that season that the Pharisees could do much, pretending to plead the cause of the Law, and, as in so great a crowd, crying out against the transgressor, or against him whom they supposed to be transgressing in their eyes.

For there is nothing at all difficult in fanning into flame the measureless swarm of the common herd, whenever anyone says that he has been wronged and undertakes to incite them, and that against those who have grieved him in no way at all;

for like water, or even fire, it is flung everywhere with undiscerning and unpremeditated impulses, and moves against everything that submits to suffer.

These things, therefore, not being ignorant of them, the Lord secretly withdraws himself, together with the disciples, from Jerusalem, and arrives over the sea of Tiberias;

and that he declines the murderous Jews, doing quite rightly, we shall learn again through these words as well.

For the blessed Evangelist himself says: 'And after these things Jesus walked in Galilee;'

'for he would not walk in Judaea, because the Jews sought to kill him.' That he declines to walk in Judaea, then, in order that he might not undergo death prematurely, I will grant, someone will perhaps say; but even if he flees the feast, I do not yet learn why.

Therefore those who were reckoned his brethren approach in Galilee, saying to Christ: 'Depart hence and go into Judaea, that your disciples also may behold the signs which you do.' But the Lord to them: 'Go up to the feast; I go not up to this feast, because my time is not yet fulfilled.' It is therefore evident and clear that the Saviour withdrew from Jerusalem, not undertaking his departure thence as a self-chosen thing, but both abhorring the abominations of the disobedient, and baffling the aptness of his persecutors' savagery, and repelling by artifice the dart of envy.

And he withdraws again, although being able to suffer nothing even if he were present, in order that he might inscribe for us a noble type—not of cowardice, but rather of caution and of love toward one's neighbour.

...to their wraths, and we cut short the audacity of the grasping greed directed against ourselves, benefiting rather those who might be evil toward us, and unjustly so, than being benefited—which is manifestly, not seeking our own things, but also the things of others.

It is therefore the work of love, not to rise up at all in opposition against those who wilfully do evil, nor, misusing the ability to suffer nothing—even if being present we be caught—to render the wrath in them the more bitter, as it were, since it does not have power over the one hated;

love therefore, as Paul says, seeks not its own things—which was purely in Christ.

And again, having fixed sharply upon the things written the eye of your understanding, you will marvel, finding a most excellent dispensation in the withdrawals of our Saviour—I mean those from Jerusalem.

For he is often driven out by the madness of the Jews, but lodging among those of another race, he seems somehow to be preserved among them and to enjoy the honour that is due;

through this giving the better verdict to the Church from among the Gentiles, and causing the God-hating disposition of those of Israel to be convicted through the reverence of others, and displaying the cruelty in the former through the gentleness in the latter, so that through all things they might henceforth appear, by their own debt and rightly, thrust out from the promise made to the fathers.

And having leapt away from Jerusalem, the Lord does not lodge in any one of the surrounding cities, nor does he encamp in the neighbouring villages, but goes away over the sea of Tiberias, all but threatening by a most manifest deed those who have impiously chosen that it is fitting to persecute him—that he will stand off so far from them, and will sever himself from the whole nation, so as to render the road of return to him in some way impassable for them.

For the sea is in no way passable to the feet of men.

It seems, moreover, that the figure holds hidden within it for us, as within birth-pangs, yet another mystery.

For when Israel was being sent forth out of the land of the Egyptians, Pharaoh followed after them, exceedingly enraged; and, stung to frenzy at the unexpected good fortune of the nation, he was driven by the law of battle to dare those things that spring from envy and grief.

He followed after, supposing that he would be able to compel back into slavery those who had only lately and with difficulty slipped out from the servitude under him.

But God was bringing the people across through the midst of the sea; while the pursuer, pressing on vehemently and by no means willing to slacken his wrath, but irrationally persuaded to fight against God out of unmixed fury, was drowned in the very midst of it with all his host; but Israel alone was preserved.

But let Moses too now come forward into our midst, who beforehand lamented the folly of the Jews, and let him say to them, in indignation at their impieties against Christ: 'A wicked and adulterous generation, do you thus requite the Lord?' Him who carried you across through the midst of the sea and its violent waves, you drive beyond the sea, and pursuing Him you do not blush? Yours therefore is the suffering, O Jew; henceforth the sea shall drown you.

Death was then, and is now under Christ and the unholy Jews, the lot of the pursuers, not of the pursued; it was so in those of old, and it is so now.

But for the Egyptians and for him who ruled among them, the danger then concerned the body drawn from earth; whereas the Jews, in their suffering, are chastised in a greater degree, in the things that are more precious.

For they endure the loss of the soul, receiving requital in proportion to their own evil deeds.

For Pharaoh was justly chastised, seeking to lay covetous hold, unto slavery, upon what was free.

It should be noted that he calls the lake of Tiberias a sea, following the language of the divine Scripture.

And often the usage even of those outside makes no distinction, so that some do not refuse at times to name the sea a lake as well.

And a great multitude followed Him, because they beheld the signs which He did upon those who were sick.

And Jesus went up into the mountain, and there He sat with His disciples.

Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was near.

For when Christ had gone forth out of Jerusalem, according to that which was spoken among the prophets, 'I have forsaken My house, I have abandoned My inheritance,' when, spurning away the disobedient and stubborn people of the Jews, He gave Himself to those of another race, then a great multitude followed Him.