約翰福音註釋 第 1 章 第 28/94 段

Then how, tell me, will you not appear henceforth to be talking exceedingly great nonsense? For how could subjection in itself, by itself, be conceived as subsisting, if it does not inhere in some one of the things that are? For such things, of necessity, are accustomed to come to be and to occur when the things in which they naturally arise are presupposed, and not otherwise.

And they are contemplated rather as belonging to substances, or as occurring to substances, or else as subsisting by themselves.

And just as desire, for instance, which calls and carries one toward some one of the things that are, could not exist by itself, but is rather engendered in that which is by nature apt to receive it;

so subjection, which intimates a certain inclination of wills toward the duty of being subject to certain ones, will not be conceived as existing in a proper nature of its own, but rather, like passion or willing or desire, for instance, will henceforth inhere in some one of the things that are.

Besides, the name and reality of subjection could not properly be conceived of anything at all, if uttered indiscriminately; but one will not even discern whether it is base or good, unless it should have added to it the specification of whose the subjection is;

for one is subject to God, but also to the devil;

and just as the name 'wise' is something intermediate;

for some are wise to do evil, but others again, being wise, shall inherit glory, having, that is to say, their wisdom directed unto good things;

so subjection has rather a certain intermediate quality, and not a determinate truth.

For it is unclear of what at all the subjection will be.

Therefore the nature of the Son too rests on things unclear to us, if it be conceived by you as subjection.

one might, without any falsehood, be able to say

But that this subjection will never exist by itself in its own right, we shall now perceive, once we have brought the argument to bear somewhat more concretely and clearly upon the created things themselves.

And receive, in addition to these, a certain syllogism.

For if we grant that man's being consists, say, in his being subjected, then we shall by all means reckon that his not-being lies in his not being subjected.

How then was it said to a certain man by the psalmist—as to one who already is and exists, but who is not yet also subjected—'Be subject to the Lord and make supplication to him'? Do you see, then, how utterly senseless it is to suppose that subjection subsists by itself? It is therefore necessary also to confess that the Son first is and exists in his own nature, and only then to speak of his being subjected to the Father.

What then, tell me, is it that compels the One who is from the substance of the Begetter, the unaltered character of his nature, to fall away from equality with him on account of his obedience? For we, thinking and speaking rightly, know him to be consubstantial with the One who begot him, and we attribute to him equality of honour in all things, and in no way reckon him to be inferior to the dignity befitting God.

But you—consider for me in what manner you will cast out from the honour equal in measure to the Father, on account of the so-called subjection, the One who is resplendent with the same good things by reason of the identity of substance.

'But this very thing,' he says, 'will contend on behalf of our arguments—namely, that the Son obeys the Father, and is not greatly concerned about his own will, but rather yields to the Father's, as to one who is manifestly superior and greater.'

But this very thing, according to your own words, O sir—the very thing you think will profit your arguments—you will again find to be nothing else than the fruit of the ignorance dwelling in you.

For if we were distinguishing which is superior in rank and possesses the greater in glory, then perhaps—and even then only barely—your much-babbled point might have seemed to have some timely force.

But since it is the mode of consubstantiality that is under examination, how will you not be convicted of no small folly, in assigning to God and Father the 'greater' therein, against his own Offspring? For the greater, or the lesser, or whatever such thing may be predicated of things of the same kind, we shall not grant that these are properly substances.

just as we were also saying in the case of subjection, but they are somehow external, and outside the things pertaining to substances.

For that which already pre-exists and subsists may perhaps admit, as in comparison with something else, the 'greater' or 'lesser'.

But if there is nothing underlying and pre-existing about which such things are wont to arise, how could they exist by themselves, seeing that they are conceived and defined according to the rank of an accident? Therefore, whenever the 'lesser' or even the 'greater' is named by us, you will not touch the substance of the Only-Begotten, nor yet that of the Father, but by mere external superiorities or inferiorities you will, as you suppose, exalt the Father, while you will revile the Son—and this though you hear him crying aloud in plain terms, 'He who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father either,' and that it is fitting for all to honour the Son even as they honour the Father.

For that things which can in no way be divided into an alien otherness, but have received one and the same substance, must be clothed in glory of equal weight—this Christ taught, doing so most excellently indeed, not looking to receive the testimony concerning himself from men, as he himself said, but having entered in as a witness to himself, worthy of credit and worthier than all existing things.

And being by nature Truth, he will surely speak things that are true, just as it is possible for us to prove this from the very quality of things.

For the 'greater,' or the 'lesser,' will reasonably find room, not against the substance itself of any things, but against certain of the things that pertain to the substances of existing things.

But of what sort of thing do I speak? A man, in relation to some other man, insofar as he is conceived and called a man, will in no respect possess the 'greater' or the 'lesser'.

For one man is neither less than another man insofar as he is man, nor greater insofar as he is again a man.

For the principle of the nature is beheld as equal in all.

in the case of everything that has been made and numbered among the creation.

Therefore such things are found to be wholly inadmissible in regard to the substances themselves, but they befall the substances—or rather certain of the things pertaining to them—as we granted in the passages above.

How then will the Father be greater than the Son, being by nature God of the One who is by nature God? For the Son's having been begotten from him will by all means compel you—even unwillingly—to render back to him consubstantiality with the Father.

Since, then, it is presupposed and enters in beyond dispute that the Son is by nature God, let us inquire, if it seems good, which of two courses we shall take: whether, rendering to him honour equal—as toward the One from whom he is—we shall also confer glory upon the Begetter; or whether we shall accomplish the contrary, insulting the Begotten with lower and lesser things—which is indeed what really and more truly is the case.

For it is the Father's glory to have begotten such a one, of whatever sort he himself may be by nature.

But the contrary will by all means come about.

unless the Son preserves the excellence of nature befitting him, having something less either in glory or in some of those things which it was by all means necessary should be present, so that he might be seen through all to be perfect and true God.

But being of such a nature, if he honours the Father—do not laugh, O man, lest you incur judgement by wickedly and ignorantly disparaging what least of all ought to be disparaged.

For it is surely fitting to marvel at him for this also—that he both honours and loves the One who begot him.

For every form of virtue has, as a kind of fountain and root, the Substance that is highest of all.

And the good things, having first shone forth in that Substance, flow down also to us, who have been made according to its image.

For this reason too the lawgiver proclaimed to us that one must honour father and mother, and moreover attached to them the fairest rewards.

knowing, I think, that this matter is the greatest of all, and so far removed from all reproach that it is shown to be even the procurer of a long-lived life.

Just as we, then, on account of being subjected and obedient to those who begot us, are not rendered into others of a different nature in relation to them, but being what men from men are, and possessing and preserving intact the definition of humanity, we practise obedience as a mark of splendid virtue—

so you will understand it also in the case of the Father and the Son.

For being what he is—God from God, evidently, perfect from perfect, the unaltered character of the Begetter's substance—he will reckon nothing other than what that One himself would reckon, whose Counsel and Word he is.

And he will by all means will the same things as the Father, by the same laws, so to speak, of consubstantiality, being held together with the Father unto willing all good things together with him.

Be not offended, therefore, O man, in any way, whenever you hear him saying, 'I have come down from heaven, not that I may do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.'

For what we said from the beginning, this we shall say again.

It was concerning a definite and evident matter that Christ made his statement on this point.

For teaching that dying on behalf of all was willed—because the divine nature had thus resolved—yet unwilled on account of the sufferings on the cross, and insofar as the flesh, so far as in it lay, shrank from death, he says such things.

And a long discourse has already been expended by us on this.

But that the suffering on the cross is also seen to be in some sense unwilled by the Saviour Christ, insofar as he was man, we may perceive as a consequence from the very nature of the matters themselves.

We say, then, that it was the work of Jewish madness that Christ should by every means and altogether be crucified; and this was to come to pass from them without delay, since they had a boldness for such deeds that was by no means untrained, judging from the things they had already perpetrated against the holy prophets and against those saints who had lived at that time.

But since that which had fallen into death could not otherwise be raised again to life, unless the Only-Begotten Word of God had become man—and having become man he must by all means suffer—

he made the unwilled into the willed, and this because the divine nature had accepted it, on account of the love toward us.

The artificer Wisdom, that is, the Son, made that which had been contrived out of diabolical perversity—I mean his own death in the flesh—into a way of salvation for us and a door of life; and the things in his hopes were turned back upon the devil, who scarcely learned by suffering that it is hard for him to fight against God.

And it seems to me that the divinely-inspired psalmist too agrees with the arguments concerning these things, and hints at something of this sort when he says—as concerning Christ and the devil—'In his own snare he will humble him.' For the devil fashioned death as a snare against Christ, but in that very snare, his own, he has been brought low.

For death has been undone in the death of Christ, and the tyrant, who did not expect to fall, has been abolished.

And it would have been no hard thing to add a long discourse upon these matters; but that which was in hand, this again we shall state.

If the death of Christ was not properly and truly the work of Jewish wills and the fruit of the unholy audacities among them, but was rather a divine decree—as some suppose—that by all means led to this;

how then would it not have been necessary that what was resolved should now be fulfilled of necessity through men by all means, and not otherwise? Then how, tell me, would certain men still justly be punished for serving the inexorable decrees of God? And how is that man wretched, and not rather among the more fortunate, had he not been born, through whom Christ was betrayed? For if the suffering was willed by the Saviour, and could in no other way be conceived as unwilled, what penalty would he justly incur who was shown to be a minister, inexorably, of the Master's wills and of the things that were to be? Or will it not be evident to all that what seemed good to the divine and ineffable nature had by all means to come to pass, and to come to pass by all means through certain agents? But it is possible, both from these considerations and from many others, to perceive that, since the Son came down from heaven to endure death on behalf of all—both willingly and unwillingly at once—in order that he might raise all up on the last day, being thus also a glory to the Father himself because of the benefit to all;

he by no means wills himself to be conceived through these things as of a different nature, or as in any respect inferior to the Begetter.

The adversary, then, I suppose, will now blush deeply, and will not array himself against our arguments concerning these matters.

But to one who again persists and has resolved that it is fitting to contend, I say that further point.

If the Son has come down from heaven not to fulfil his own will, as he himself says, but that of the Father—and to you the words of the interpretation just now stated by us on this point will perhaps not seem pleasant—

is it not necessary to say that their wills are in some way arrayed against each other, and that their volition is distinguished in an opposite direction? But surely it is agreed by all.

For if there is nothing dividing them, then surely there is by all means one will in both.

But if, as though there existed some will other than the Father's, he sets aside his own and fulfils that of the Father, how shall we not speak senselessly in saying that it is one, and not one over against another? Let us therefore see wherein the will of the Father consists;

for thus we shall also discern the other, wherever it may look.

The will of the Father, then, as the Saviour himself has said, is 'that of all which he has given him he should lose nothing, but should raise it up on the last day.'

And that it is good and loving toward mankind, no one will gainsay.

But if we transfer our conceptions to a will of the Son that is opposed, we shall find him neither loving toward mankind, nor good at all, since he would by all means be minded contrary to the Father, willing neither to save us nor to raise us up from death.

Let the enemy of Christ, then, be silenced, since on every side his argument is convicted of blasphemy, and let him not bark at us with bitter words concerning these things.

'For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.'

Having already defined the good will of the Father, he again clarifies it, and sets it forth more amply for the consideration of his hearers, by taking it up once more.

For what the manner of the leading-to would be, and what some will gain from having been led-to, he expounds brilliantly.

The Father, then, gives to the Son—who is mighty to give life—the things that lack life;

and he gives thus—by implanting in each, evidently through knowledge, a true apprehension concerning the Son, and the ability to understand clearly that he is God from God the true Father—in order that, being thus disposed and made resplendent with contemplations concerning him, one might be brought up to the reward that comes from faith, that is, to the long-lived life and the unstinted existence in blessedness.

The Father, then, leads to the Son, through knowledge and contemplation befitting God, those to whom he would vote the divine grace.

But the Son, receiving them, gives them life, implanting His own proper Good into those which by their own nature are prone to corruption; and, burying within them the life-giving power of the Spirit as it were a spark of fire, He wholly transforms them throughout into immortality.

But again, when you hear that the Father brings them near, while the Son bestows on those who run to Him the power to be brought back to life, do not wander off into strange notions, as though each does something separately and in a divided way, according to what he might be naturally fitted for; rather receive this into your mind, that the Father is a fellow-worker with the Son, and the Son in turn with the Father, and that (so to speak) the salvation which concerns us, and our return from death back to life, is the work of the whole Holy Trinity. Know sufficiently, too, that the Father possesses every power and capacity, and likewise the Son, and moreover the Holy Spirit.

The good things that come to us come through the whole Holy Trinity, and God the Father is found to be all in all, wholly and completely, through the Son in the Spirit.

Nevertheless we must also observe this, that something of great worth is found in believing in the Son.

And if in the Son the Father and God is known according to nature, who then could any longer endure those who carry Him outside the essence of the Father, and who keep their mouth ungated for blasphemy on this matter? For by the very same means whereby He promises to be able to raise up to life that which has fallen into death, by these very things, with no intervening difference at all, He ascends into a natural identity with Him who begot Him.

For it is the proper work of life to give life; and since the Father is life according to nature, He too who is by nature from Him — that is, the Only-begotten — will assuredly be understood as life.

The Jews therefore murmured concerning Him, because He said, 'I am the bread that came down from heaven.'

Again those who understand nothing of the things said by Christ are indignant;

and the untrained mind is somehow, for the most part, wont to be seen in such conditions;

for, not being able to grasp those thoughts through which it was likely they would somehow be changed for the better, it ends up in untimely faint-heartedness.

For shall we not find that saying to be true of these very Jews as well? For on what account are they angry? What word has summoned them to this? And why do they murmur? Yet it would rather have befitted them, in a more studious manner, to fix their mind upon the things spoken, and from these very matters to examine the truth; and, through the greatness of the works accomplished, to advance to the most reliable understanding — whether perhaps Christ was lying when He called Himself bread, and this too as having come down from heaven, or whether He speaks truly and is found to be such in this very way.

For thus, judging rightly, they might have been well educated toward the discovery of what is profitable.

Christ having shown Himself to be the true bread of life, and contrasting Himself with the manna that was supplied in type and shadow to their fathers in the wilderness —

For 'he who comes to Me,' He says, 'shall never hunger at all' — inasmuch as those who ate that manna had a brief and easily-cast-off enjoyment concerning the flesh;

but those who come to Him through faith will not rise to a benefit like that of the men of that time, but will rather reap the perpetual grace of the blessing.

The mind of the Jews therefore stumbles, looking only at the things upon the earth;

and this indeed was that which was sung concerning them: 'Let their eyes be darkened that they may not see, and bow down their back continually' — that, in no way lifting themselves up toward the knowledge of the divine mysteries, they might, being evil, perish evilly through their own senselessness and their exceedingly ungovernable disposition to disobedience.

And when we somehow recall the things in the writings of Moses, we shall find murmuring against the best and good things to have been, as it were, an ancestral inheritance belonging to the Jews;

but the matter ended in a bitter conclusion; and both of old among those men experience showed it, and now among these no less has shown it.

Those men murmured in the wilderness and made their ungrateful outcry against God, but they were destroyed by the serpents, as also wise Paul somewhere testified;

these too murmur against Christ, and with such long-continued disobedience they insult the Lawgiver and Redeemer;

but He will command the serpent, and it shall bite them, according to that which is written;

and they shall lie exposed as a feast for the all-devouring beast; for disobedience, of necessity, always ends in a most grievous end.

And they said, 'Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How then does He say, I have come down from heaven?' O great ignorance, and mind darkened with unmixed drunkenness!

'The heart of this people has grown gross,' according to that which is written. For truly it perceives nothing of the things which it ought to understand clearly, and it both thinks and utters things worthy of laughter;

for it surely would have rather befitted them, studying the writing of the all-wise Moses and delighting in the proclamations of the holy prophets, to understand this: that Christ was not expected to come to us apart from flesh, nor apart from the coverings that are through the body, but was proclaimed beforehand to appear in human form, and to be found in this common shape of all men;

for on this account the prophetic word cries out to us that the holy Virgin shall conceive in the womb and shall bear a son;

and it was foretold that a rod should come forth out of the root of Jesse.

But those who run out into such great irrationality do not perceive that, even if they knew the mother according to the flesh of Him who had been proclaimed beforehand as coming with flesh, they suppose for this very reason that they must by all means disbelieve — namely, that He came down from the heavens;

for even if we find that this did not take place according to the body, yet the divine Word was, as in His own temple, in the body from the Virgin, having come to us from above from the Father, and for the salvation of all having laid hold of the seed of Abraham, that He might in all things be made like His brethren, and might call human nature to the adoption which is toward God, being shown forth at once as God and man.

But the Jews, not understanding the dispensation of our Saviour with flesh, from knowing His mother and father — though he was not His father — are not ashamed to be vexed that Christ said He had come down from heaven.

But again in this matter there rises for us a type of much benefit;

for through these things we are instructed in our own affairs, that it would bring us much harm not rather to behold, with the intelligible eyes of the heart, the virtue that resides in the saints, and to look toward the glory hidden in them, but often, on account of the meanness concerning the body, to reckon as of no account that which is great and precious in God's sight.

Thus somewhere God says concerning the saints among the prophets, as though in one utterance extending the word over all: 'Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and the Lord shall be his hope; and he shall be as a tree flourishing beside the water, and shall put forth his root toward the moisture; in the year of drought he shall not fear, and shall not cease to bear fruit.'

'The heart is deep beyond all things, and it is man; and who shall know him? I the Lord search hearts and try reins.' Whenever, then, we belittle with our arrogance the one who is known by God and admired for the virtues just mentioned, looking only at his outward and perishable flesh, and making the dishonour that comes from the body a pretext for our small-mindedness toward him, how shall we not, thinking things contrary to the King of all, be convicted and thus incur no small penalty — sometimes calling the exalted lowly, and setting light as darkness, and defining the sweet as bitter? We must therefore guard for the saints the honours that befit them, and behold them rather through their inward and hidden renown, than in whatever state they may be on account of the flesh.

But indeed most of us in no way consent to deem worthy of honour, or even of any glory at all, that which is lowly in the world, even though it be distinguished in virtues; but looking only to the abundance that comes from wealth, and gazing with eyes not very just upon the corruptible renown that is all but already dead, we account as nothing the judging of things rightly.

For such men the Saviour's disciple very fittingly ridicules, saying: 'You hypocrites; for if there come into your synagogue a man with gold rings, in splendid apparel, and there come in also a poor man in filthy clothing, and then you say,' he says, 'to the rich man, Sit here in a good place, but to the poor man, Stand there, or sit under my footstool — did you not make distinctions among yourselves?' And it follows from this to consider how great and reasonable a blame they would have incurred, who admired the man for his outward coverings and not for his inward good things.

For wealth and the splendour that comes from wealth would reasonably confer upon its possessors a glory that is alien and spurious;

but the brightness in the heart, and the transparency in good works, would be a genuine and inborn wealth for those who have it — not perishing together with the flesh, and not rotting away with it, but, while the soul still dwells in this life, cohabiting with it, and, when it departs again, flying away together with it, wherever the Ruler of all should incline.

For there are many mansions with the Father, as we have heard.

We must therefore honour, not at all necessarily, the one conspicuous in wealth and painted over as on a tablet with the petty glories upon the earth, but rather those in whom the brightness of their works brings forth through God an unfading renown, and in whom the inward beauty shines out, made resplendent through every form of good things.

Jesus answered and said to them, 'Murmur not with one another.'

'No one can come to Me except the Father who sent Me draw him; and I will raise him up at the last day.'

The Jews belittle Jesus, being ignorant of the Father in the heavens, and in no way recognising that He is by nature the Son of Him who is Lord of all, but looking only to His mother upon the earth and to Joseph.

On this account He meets them somewhat more warmly, and at once again usefully springs up to that very dignity which befits God;

for by those things whereby He knows, as God, even what was secretly whispered and had risen up into their mind, by these very things He permits them to understand that they are falling away from the truth, and that they made an exceedingly small estimate concerning Him.

making manifest the buried reasoning and the murmuring secretly whispered among them, for the reason already stated, He says, 'Murmur not with one another';

then, showing that the mystery concerning Himself is a good taught by God among men, and that the knowledge concerning Him is a work of grace from above, He says that no one can even come to Him unless he has been drawn by the admonitions of the Father;

and this again was to do nothing other than to persuade them to consider that they must weep and be embittered, and seek to be set free from the things by which they had already grieved Him, and somehow be drawn up also into salvation through the faith that is toward Him — by the counsel of the Father, and with the help from above making easy for them the way in these things, and rendering it, as it were, smooth, which, since they were sinning unsparingly, had become rough.

Moreover, He usefully affirmed that He would raise up from the dead the one who believes, and through this again presented Himself to the senseless as being God by nature and true;

for to be able at all to give life, and to compel to return to renewed life one who is held fast by death, would justly befit the nature of God alone, and could be ascribed to none of created things.

For it belongs to the Living One to give life, and not to one who borrows the grace from another.

'It is written in the prophets, And they shall all be taught of God.'

Perceiving as God the senselessness present in His hearers, He does not leave the word concerning this matter without testimony, but shows it to have been proclaimed and foretold from above through the holy prophets, both removing beforehand the occasions of those who were pondering to object that it would befit Him again, and no less stripping bare the ignorance present in them — through the fact that they are seen to be ignorant of this too, although they were being trained by the Law toward the apprehension of the things to come.

He therefore persuades them, even against their will, now to yield assent;