約翰福音註釋 第 1 章 第 3/94 段

{Another.} If the Word who is from Him, being by nature Son of God the Father, is lesser than Him—whether in respect of the account of God-befitting dignity, or as not possessing invariability by nature, or in any of the modes of deficiencies—then the accusation will belong not so much to Him as to the substance from which He is believed to be, if indeed it appears to beget the 'lesser,' or rather the 'worse,' in relation to itself; and this although the generated and made creation does not suffer this to happen to it.

For everything that is fruitful assuredly begets what is like unto itself.

But if they say that the divine nature of the Father is set above all passion, then plainly it will lie beyond even this reproach; and as being the archetype of the good things within us, it will beget the Son not lesser, but equal and consubstantial, lest He who is so far above us should fail to be God even for us.

Another argument, by reduction to absurdity.

Showing Himself equal to God the Father, Christ says somewhere to His own disciples: 'He that has seen Me has seen the Father.' How then shall He who is such by nature, and who is so as He Himself in truth firmly declares, have the lesser part according to certain men's folly? For if, being lesser, He shows the Father in Himself with no difference intervening, the lesser would ascend to the Father, since it appears in the Son as in an unaltered image.

Therefore the Son is not lesser, since it is in Him that the Father, being perfect, is imaged forth.

{Another.} And how could the Son, being in the very things in which the Father is, admit of the lesser part, when He says blamelessly: 'All things whatsoever the Father has are Mine'; and again, addressing God the Father, that 'all Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine'? For if the Son is truly lesser according to certain men's folly, then since He speaks truly in saying to the Father, 'Mine are Thine and Thine are Mine,' the lesser would pass over also to the Father, and likewise the greater to the Son, the order of things making no difference, since in each are seen the properties belonging to the other, and whatever may be the Father's, this is also the Son's, and again, whatever appears to be proper to the Son, this is also the Father's.

Nothing then will hinder us from calling the Father lesser than the Son, and the Son greater than the Father.

But this is among the most absurd of things, even so much as to conceive anything of the sort.

Equal therefore, and not lesser, is He who has in common with the Father the excellences of the essence.

If all things whatsoever the Father has are wholly the Son's, and there is in the Father perfection, then the Son also will be perfect, having the very things that are proper and peculiar to the Father.

Therefore He is not lesser, according to the impiety of the heretics.

Another argument, by reduction to absurdity, with an interweaving of syllogism.

Let those tell us who pour upon their own head the unquenchable flame, who refuse rectitude in the divine doctrines and devise the twists of manifold syllogisms for the deceit and overthrow of the simpler sort: is the Father then better than the Son, having the greater in relation to Him, if indeed He is lesser, as those men in their raving assert—or not? But I fully suppose they will say, 'He is better.'

Or let them tell us what surplus the Father will be seen to have in possessing the greater, if He is not better. For if it is nothing at all, then every charge against the Son is already dissolved.

But if the difference is something great, then He is better, as having the greater.

He begot, but a lesser being.

For if it appears better to have begotten the Son equal to Himself in all things, who was it that hindered Him from doing this? For if there was something that hindered as by necessity, they will confess, even against their will, that there is something greater than the Father.

But if there was nothing at all that hindered, and He had the power, and knew that it was nobler to beget the Son equal, yet willed Him lesser, then envy and malice are shown to have arisen in Him.

For He would not have willed to render the equal to the Son.

Either then the Father will be unable as regards the begetting, or He will be envious, according to the conclusion gathered from the syllogisms, if the Son has the lesser part according to their reasoning.

For the divine and unsullied nature is above all passion.

Therefore the Son is not lesser, lest He lose the equal, since the Father in no way lacked strength to beget from Himself one equal to Himself, nor yet was hindered by any malice from willing the better.

{Another.} The Saviour Himself says somewhere that He is in the Father, and the Father likewise in Him.

But it is surely plain to everyone that we ought not to conceive of the Father as being contained in the Son as body in body, or vessel in vessel, or again of the Son as being in some way transposed into the Father.

Rather, the One appears in the Other, and the Other in this One, as in the unvarying identity of essence, and in the unity and likeness according to nature.

Just as if someone, beholding his own form in an image, should say truly to certain persons, and in wonder at the likeness of his own shape wrought out to the highest degree, exclaim: 'I am in this picture, and the picture is in me.'

Or in another manner also: as if the sweet quality of honey, being set upon the tongue, should say concerning itself: 'I am in the honey, and the honey is in me.'

Or again as if the heat that naturally proceeds from fire, uttering a voice, should say: 'I am in the fire, and the fire is in me.'

For each of the things mentioned is in a manner divisible in thought, yet one in nature, and one from one, proceeding forth by an undivided and unspaced procession, even while it seems to be separated from that in which it is.

Nevertheless, even if the power possesses this figure of the concepts applied to these things, yet the one appears in the other, and both are the same as regards essence.

If then, because of the unvarying nature of the essence and the utterly unaltered character in the impress, the Father is in the Son, how shall the greater be contained and be seen in the lesser—as the Son is according to those men? But since He is wholly in Him, the Son therefore is assuredly perfect, being the receptacle of the perfect and the impress of the great Father.

Against those who dare to say that the Word who is immanent and natural in God the Father is one, and the Son spoken of in the divine Scriptures is another.

Such is the false doctrine of the followers of Eunomius.

'The same was in the beginning with God.'

In these words the Evangelist made, as it were, a certain recapitulation of what had already been said before.

And by adding the word 'the same,' he is seen almost to cry aloud: He who is in the beginning, the Word who is with the Father, He who exists as God from God—this is He, and no other, concerning whom our sacred treatise is set forth.

And again it seems that not without reason did he add to what he had said: 'The same was in the beginning with God.'

For as one enlightened by the divine Spirit unto the knowledge of things to come, he was not ignorant, as it seems to me and as one may say who speaks truly, that there would appear certain workers of perdition, snares of the devil, traps of death, dragging down into the storehouses and onto the gallows of Hades those who out of ignorance give heed to whatever things they belch forth from a wicked heart.

They will set themselves up, and will steel themselves against their own head, saying that the Word immanent in God the Father is one, and that the Son and Word, through whom God works all things, is another—one exceedingly resembling and most like the immanent Word.

As one therefore who had already heard them blaspheming, and who was reasonably stirred against the outlandish madness of the writings composed among them, the blessed Evangelist, having already defined and, as was fitting, marked out through many words the one and only and true Word who is from God, and in God, and toward God, swiftly adds: 'The same was in the beginning with God'—that is, as Son toward Father, as innate, as from His essence, as Only-begotten.

The same—there being no second.

But since I think it fitting for those who earnestly undertake to expound the matters concerning such impiety to lay their blasphemy more bare, for the safety of the simpler sort:

For he who has learned will be on his guard, and will leap over it as over a serpent lurking in the midst of the road.

Of necessity I will set forth that opinion of theirs, as in the form of an objection.

For it would indeed receive its solutions in due order, in whatever ways God who makes all men wise may grant.

The opinion of Eunomius concerning the Son of God.

The Only-begotten Son of God, he says, is not His Word in the proper and strict sense.

But the immanent word of God the Father is moved in Him and exists forever.

But the Son who is said to have been begotten from Him, receiving His immanent word, both knows all things by learning them, and after the likeness of that word is called and is 'word.'

Then, for the confirmation, as he supposes, of his own impiety and of his perverted notions, he weaves together certain such syllogisms, that, as it is written, the wretched man may be bound fast with the cords of his own sins.

If the Word, he says, who is natural and immanent in God the Father, is Himself the Son, and is consubstantial with Him who begot Him, what still hinders the Father also from being and being called 'Word,' as consubstantial with the Word? {And again:} If the Son is the Word of God the Father, and there is no other beside Him:

by what reason, he says, is the Father found saying to Him: 'Thou art My Son;'

'this day have I begotten Thee'?

For it is manifest that the Father did not carry on His discourses toward Him apart from word, since everything spoken is altogether spoken in word, and not otherwise.

And the Saviour Himself says somewhere that 'I know the Father, and keep His word.'

And again: 'The word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me.'

When therefore the Father discourses toward Him in word, and He Himself also confesses—now that He keeps the word of the Father, now again that the Jews heard not His own word, but the Father's:

how, he says, would it not be undoubtedly acknowledged that the Son is other than the immanent word, that is, than the word in intellectual motion, by partaking of which and being filled with which the uttered word, that which manifests the essence of the Father—that is, the Son—is called 'word'?

Such then are the evils that the madman strings together for himself, and he is not ashamed to speak in contradiction of all the divine Scriptures together, showing true concerning himself what is written: 'When the ungodly comes into the depth of evils, he despises.' For truly this fighter against God has, out of folly, plunged deep into wickedness, refusing to be set upright by the truth, and sinking down through the rottenness of his own reasonings.

For that the Only-begotten Son of God the Father is properly and strictly His Word, we shall learn through what follows below.

The refutation, in order, of the false doctrine of Eunomius.

For how could wisdom at all enter into a craftily malicious soul? Or what, tell me, could be more craftily malicious than such men, who, according to what is written, turn away their hearing from the truth, and run more readily after the fables of their own notions—so that they might justly hear, speaking not the things from the divine Scripture: 'Woe to those who prophesy from their own heart, and not from the mouth of the Lord'? For who, speaking from the mouth of the Lord, says, 'Jesus is anathema'? Which indeed some do, unrestrainedly making themselves haughty over the doctrines of piety.

And they bring forward, for the demonstration of their own opinion (as they suppose), or rather of their unbridled impiety, that our Lord Jesus Christ says, in His discourses to the Jews, that 'I know the Father, and keep His word'; and in addition to this, also that which was said to Him by the Father: 'From the womb before the morning star have I begotten Thee.' Then, belching forth the venom from their own father, they say: 'If He who speaks is other than He to whom He speaks—'

And the Father discourses through word toward the Son;

then the innate word, in which the Father was carrying on His discourses, would be other than He.

And again: If the Son Himself somewhere, he says, firmly asserted that He keeps the word of the Father:

how would He who keeps not henceforth be other than that which is kept?

But against these things it is perhaps not difficult to make reply.

For it was not as having another word within Himself, that of the Father, that the Son said He keeps the word of the Father;

nor did He ever assert that He had come to us bringing along as it were some tutor; but as being alone by nature within the Father, and having again likewise the Father within Himself, with no other intervening.

'I,' He says, 'am in the Father, and the Father in Me' — not the innate word, nor yet any other word whatsoever.

How then would it be fitting to understand what was said by Him to the Jews, someone might ask us, and quite reasonably so.

To this we shall reply, speaking truly the things that rise up into our mind. The Saviour was teaching the most stubborn people of the Jews, and, drawing His hearers little by little away from the legal worship, He often cried aloud, 'I am the truth,' all but saying: 'Shake off, O you men, the yoke of the Law;'

accept the worship in spirit;

let the shadow now depart, let the type withdraw far off, for the truth has shone forth.

But it did not seem to all that He acted rightly in overturning the things of Moses — or rather in leading men on to what is truer — so that some already cried out, 'If this man were from God, He would not have loosed the Sabbath;'

which would be outright to condemn as sin one who knew it not.

Making His defence, therefore, against such senselessness of the Jews, He removes all boastfulness from His words, and wishes to teach in a veiled and not an open manner that the Son who knows no sin could do nothing contrary to what seems good to God the Father.

But lest, by saying more nakedly 'I know no sin,' He should again provoke them to stone Him;

for immediately, boiling over into wrath, they would have leapt upon Him, saying: 'To be without sin belongs to God alone;'

but You, being a man, do not utter the things that befit God alone.'

Which very thing they also did elsewhere, saying that they stoned Him with good reason, because, being a man, He made Himself God.

In a guarded way the Saviour, inasmuch as He had also become man, and, being under the Law together with those under the Law, said that He kept the word of the Father, all but saying: 'Nowhere shall I transgress the will of the Father;'

for it is in transgressing the divine Law that sin comes to be; but I know no sin, being God according to nature;

therefore in teaching I do not grieve the Father.

Henceforth let no one find fault with Him who by nature is Lawgiver, yet, on account of His likeness to us, is a keeper of the Law.

And He says that He knows the Father, not simply as we do, and more incuriously merely this alone — that He is God — but that from the things which He Himself is, He affirms that He apprehends the nature of the Father.

And since He knows that the One who begot Him abides knowing no change, He knows manifestly also that He Himself is unchangeable, from an unchangeable Father.

'Thought,' or rather the accusation, of those who suppose that the Son thinks something otherwise, contrary to the will of the Father.

For He keeps, as He says, His word, and is by nature ignorant of sinning;

for He knows the Father to be one who cannot suffer this, to whom He is consubstantial as a true Son.

And since to this they add also the clause joined to their objection, 'From the womb before the morning star I begot You,' come then, let us again unfold upon this matter also the discourse concerning piety.

For it is not because the Father says such things to the Son that we must therefore altogether suppose that an innate word inheres in Him, and conceive as the Son some other one besides that word;

but let us first consider this by ourselves, that the prophet, having made it his care to speak mysteries in the Spirit, personates for us the person of the Son, and indeed brings Him in as hearing from the Father, 'You are My Son,' and the things that follow upon these.

And surely the arrangement made according to the human form will by no means compel us to conceive two words; but, ascribing to our own customs the inevitable economy that comes through such things, we shall — if indeed we are to act rightly — lay the blame upon the weakness of our own nature, which has neither words nor yet manners of contemplation that minister accurately to the mysteries above us, or that are able blamelessly to interpret the things more befitting God.

But again we shall grant to the divine nature to overcome the mind and reason that is in us, not by any means understanding the things concerning it as they are spoken, but as befits it and as it wills.

Or if some of the unholy heretics think that we do not rightly make use of such expressions, and do not permit our customary usage to ascend to it because of the form of the expression, they shall justly hear: Let the Father be conceived, according to our manner, even as begetting; let Him not deny a womb and the birth-pangs of bringing forth.

For 'from the womb I begot You,' He says to the Son.

But perhaps — or rather assuredly — they will say that by the likeness to us the genuine travail of the Father over the Son is signified.

Therefore let that too be conceived piously, even though it be spoken in a human figure, and their bitter and unholy problem is undone.

These things, then, would have sufficed, as I think;

but since we have understood that we ought and must beat down, by the rectitude of pious doctrines, the problems devised out of their perversity — as it were a swarm of enemies — come then, let us set them forth in order, each in its due place, and raise up in opposition that which withstands them, and arm the ever-victorious truth against them with warmer considerations.

And again the problem, as coming from them, will be set before the syllogisms that solve it, provoking the sobriety of reason to advance to a more exact testing, and, like the flow of some river-current ever bearing downward along the slope, drawing on the good eagerness of the readers always to learn that which is set against it.

Problems, that is, objections, as from the heretics.

If, he says, there does not inhere in God the Father another word, substantial and internal, besides the Only-begotten Son who is from Him — who indeed, in imitation of that word, is also called Word — some absurd consequence will result from this, and it will be necessary for us who suppose ourselves to think rightly to confess that, if the Word is consubstantial with the Father, and the Father with the Word, nothing further is seen to prevent the Father from being and being called word, as consubstantial with the Word.

No manner, O most excellent men, will compel us to think that the Father must be conceived and called Word, or to be able to believe that He can be, because He is consubstantial with the Word;

for things that are of the same nature will not by any means admit a mutual passing-over into one another and a commingling, as though the one might change into the other, so that the things signified could be contracted from a plurality into a unity, or perhaps from a dyad into a monad.

For it is not because the forefather Adam was somehow consubstantial with the child born of him that the father will therefore pass over into the son, and the son again mount up in turn into the father;

each has its own property, and one will be conceived as son, as being from some father;

and the other again as father, being shown to be the begetter of someone.

But if you think to construct a clever argument upon this — that consubstantiality will altogether compel the consubstantial to be one with the consubstantial, and will permit no distinction to prevail, so that each is by itself and in that which it is —

what is it that has persuaded the Judge of all not to punish the father for the son, nor to exact penalties from the son on the father's behalf? For 'the soul that sins,' He says, 'it shall die; and the son shall not bear the iniquity of his father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of his son.' And since, though the father is consubstantial with the son, the word of Him who judges just things does not bring down the father into the place of sonship, nor does it assign the son to the position of fatherhood, but knows each individually — neither this passing over into that, nor that proceeding toward this, although the essence is one in both —

it is surely quite evident that no manner will henceforth compel the God and Father to pass over into being Word, because He is consubstantial with the Word;

for He remains altogether upon Himself, that is, Father, even though the one begotten of Him be conceived and exist as Word, and on that account Son — so that the more divine things may not appear even in worse case than our own.

Another figure equal to the objection, by reduction to absurdity.

Inasmuch as the Son has no variation with respect to His own Father, but is the most exact image and character of His hypostasis, He is found saying to His own disciples: 'He who has seen Me has seen the Father.' But if, being thus, He is consubstantial with the Father, and consubstantial things will altogether admit a mutual pouring-together into one another, nothing will hinder — according to what is likely — the Son from being conceived as Father, as consubstantial with the Father, and being able to pass over into that, nothing impeding it toward this, if indeed the account of consubstantiality suffices for the manner of change, that is, of transference.

Therefore let the Son be conceived as Father, and let Him say, as already being this, to Him who is truly Father: 'From the womb before the morning star I begot You;' and let Him take up into Himself simply every utterance befitting the Father.

But this having come to pass, the whole is now confounded, and that which is ever the same, that is, the holy and consubstantial Trinity, will henceforth be contracted into a unity, if indeed that which properly and individually belongs to each is to be abolished by the account of consubstantiality, and the identity of nature is to overturn the distinction of the persons.

Therefore the Father will not be Word, as consubstantial with the Word, but will remain unchangeable, being this very thing which He is, even though He have with respect to His own Word the sameness of nature, that is, consubstantiality.

And thus their problem has been shown to be vain.

{Another.} If every word is the word of someone — of him who pours it forth from the tongue, that is, or who belches it out and brings it up from the heart —

and the Father will be Word, since He is consubstantial with the Word;

He will then be His own word — or rather no one's, or He does not exist at all;

for how will there be a word, when there is no one whose word it is? But this is absurd;

for the divine and undefiled nature will never be receptive of non-being, nor will the Father ever pass over into Word, even though He be consubstantial with the Word;

but He will remain Father, of whom the Son is also Word.

{Another.} If the divine nature is believed to be incapable of all change and alteration with respect to the account of its essence;

how, as though quitting His own place, will the Father be transferred into being Word? For He will be receptive of change, as suffering this of necessity, and He will not be the same, not having kept what He was from the beginning.

For to be altered is utterly foreign to the divine nature;

the Father therefore will not have the change into Word, but will be Father always, having the unchangeable and unalterable as God.

Another, as from the same, by way of narration.

But indeed He will never have the being Father;

for this too is one of the things belonging to the begetter;

but the Son will remain deprived of none of the things that are in the Father, even though He be not conceived as Father, having all things perfectly in Himself that are proper and distinctive of the Father's essence.

This same account, therefore, having fitted also to the person of the Father, we say that He has all the things of the Son by nature, yet can never pass over into sonship and into being Word, but, being by nature unchangeable, remains this which He is — so that, in addition to being God and Father, He may also be unalterable, having within Himself unalterably the Word who has shone forth from Him, that is, the Son.

{Another.} The Lawgiver and God found fault with certain ones through the holy prophets, saying: 'Between holy and profane I made no distinction;' for truly there is seen in these things much difference, or rather contrariety, of ways, in the estimation of those willing to judge discerningly.

But if it be admissible that the nature of consubstantial things be commingled into itself, and that the things existing in individual and indivisible hypostases run off to whatever they will of things of the same kind or of the same species;

what account then distinguishes for us the profane from the holy, if there is nowhere seen any difference of that which properly is, or of what each is, but on account of the identity of essence the one lies in the other? Let it be, then, that — the knowledge of each being thus made indifferent — the things of all are confounded into all;

and the traitor Judas is as Peter or Paul, as consubstantial with Peter and Paul;

and Peter again in turn, or Paul, is Judas, inasmuch as they too are consubstantial with him.

But to think in this way is utterly irrational; nor will the fact that they are of the same substance in any way do away with the difference which, in a certain respect, obtains between things of the same genus or the same species over against one another.

It is not, then, the case that the weakness in us will so wax bold against the divine substance as to compel God the Father to be, and to be called, 'Word,' merely because He is of one substance with the Word.

For He remains always Father, in no way able to be robbed of that difference as to what each is in this respect; nor does the identity of substance require Him to possess nothing that is proper to Himself.

And He will in no way in this respect have advantage over the Son, but will rather show Him to be genuine, possessing from Himself by nature the immutability and unchangeableness of the One who begot Him, and by possessing—He too properly and alone—sonship, and not being changed into a Father, just as neither is that One changed into a Son.

A problem, or another objection as from the heretics.

It is not with good reason, they say, that you charge with not thinking rightly those who say that the Word implanted in God the Father is other than the Son;

and this though you hear Him plainly saying in the evangelical expositions: 'I know the Father, and I keep His word.'

But if, as He Himself affirmed, He keeps the word of the Father, then that word must surely and necessarily be other than He, in relation to Him; for the difference of otherness must be preserved between the keeper and the thing kept.

Solutions, various and in order, showing plainly that the Word of God the Father is the Son.

If the Word of God the Father be not Himself the Only-begotten Son, but there be some other in God besides Him—the one they name 'inward' (endiathetos)—let those who put forward the contrary opinion tell us whether the word conceived by their ignorance is subsistent (has its own hypostasis) or not.

For if they say it subsists by itself, conceived as existing in a proper existence, they will assuredly confess that there are two sons;

but if they say it is without subsistence (has no hypostasis), then, with nothing intervening any longer and walling off the Son, how shall He be a third from the Father, and not rather immediately, as a Son to a Father? Another point through the same considerations.

The adversaries define the inward word as existing in God the Father, through which, according to their most unseemly supposition, the Son is taught the will of the Father;

but how much folly their dogma on this point contains, it is necessary to observe.

And it is fitting to consider the reasoning upon the matter in this way.