約翰福音註釋 第 1 章 第 30/94 段

for we rested from sins.

And it came to pass that the holy apostles were then shown forth for us, being nourished by whose divine writings we ascend unto the life that is in sanctification.

For this reason He commands especially that the loaves be set forth on the day of the sabbaths upon the holy table, that is, in the Church;

for often the whole is signified from a part.

And what could be holier than the holy table of Christ? Therefore the Saviour was prefigured as bread according to the Law;

and the disciples in turn as loaves, after His likeness;

for all things were truly in Christ, but in us also after the likeness which is with respect to Him, and through His grace.

The Jews therefore strove with one another, saying: How can this man give us His flesh to eat? Jesus therefore said to them:

All things are plain to those who understand, and right to those who find knowledge, according to that which is written;

but they are dark to the foolish. And that which is too easy to learn also breeds contempt.

For the truly intelligent hearer stores up what is more readily grasped of the lessons in the treasury of his mind, allowing himself no negligence concerning it;

but the matters in which the discourse appears difficult he goes round about with inquiries, and does not cease from his eager questioning.

And it seems to me that he usefully hastens to do something like what they say the swiftest hunting hounds do, which, having from nature great keenness of perception through their nostrils, forever course around the lairs of the quarry they seek.

For does not the wise and prophetic oracle call us to just such a disposition, saying: 'Seeking, seek, and dwell with me'? For one must, in seeking, truly seek—that is, bringing to this the most intense eagerness, one must not wander off anywhere toward vanishing notions, but the more anything grows harsh with difficulty, so much the more should one apply a keener mind to it, and with swifter assaults of thought lay siege to what is hidden.

But indeed the untrained and unguided mind, whatever runs counter to it, this it altogether insults with its unbelief, and turns away from what overcomes it as though it were counterfeit, rising up from untutored rashness even to the utmost arrogance.

For to be unwilling to yield to anyone, nor to suppose that anything is greater than oneself—how would this be anything else, in the end, than what we have just said? We shall find the Jews too fallen into this passion, as they look to the nature of the matter.

For whereas they ought to have received without delay the words of the Saviour—having already marvelled through many things at his God-befitting power and his authority irresistible over all—and to inquire concerning what was hard to attain, and rather to beg to be taught concerning the things at which they appeared to take offence;

again there is the 'How.' Foolishly do they speak concerning God, as though not knowing that the saying is seen to be full of all blasphemy.

For the power to accomplish all things without toil belongs to God;

but being natural men, as the blessed Paul says, they did not receive the things of the Spirit of God, and the mystery so venerable appears to them as folly.

Others stumble while correcting their own manner of life: in the receiving of the divine mysteries they ought to have a faith that asks no questions, and to bring the 'How' to bear on none of the things spoken;

for the word is Jewish, and on account of this it is a cause of the uttermost punishment;

since even the ruler of the synagogue of the Jews,

saying 'How can these things be?' when he was listening to the divine words, was justly derided, hearing: 'Art thou the teacher of Israel, and knowest not these things?' Let us therefore, becoming more skilled at the hunt for what is profitable—learning even through the absurdity of others—decline to say 'How' concerning the things that God may work, and let us rather practise entrusting to him the knowledge of the way of his own works;

for just as no one shall know what God is according to nature, yet he who believes that he is, and becomes a rewarder of those who seek him out, is justified—so again a man will be ignorant of the manner in which each of the things accomplished by him comes to pass, but by attributing the outcome to faith, and by consenting that he who is above all, God, is able to do all things, he will receive for such a good disposition a reward not to be despised.

But: 'As the heaven is distant from the earth, so are my ways distant from your ways, and your thoughts from my mind.' And he who so far surpasses us in wisdom and power—how shall he not also work in a manner beyond expectation, and leap over our comprehension? I should like, moreover, to bring in upon these matters a reasoning not without elegance, as it seems to me.

For those in this present life who have taken up the science of what is called mechanics often profess to accomplish some great thing, and the method escapes the mind of the hearers before the actual viewing of the things done;

but looking to the skill that is in them, even before the trial of it we make it acceptable to our faith, being ashamed still to gainsay it.

How then, someone will say, would they not with good reason be liable to grievous charges, who dare by their unbelief to dishonour God, the best Craftsman of all, not declining to say 'How' concerning the things he may work, and this though they have known him to be the supplier of all wisdom, and are taught through the whole of divine Scripture that he can do all things? But if you persist, O Jew, in saying 'How,' I too will say to you, imitating your ignorance on your account: How did you come out of Egypt? And tell me, how was the rod of Moses turned into a serpent? How was the hand made leprous, and again restored, as it is written? How did the water pass over into the nature of blood? How did you pass through the midst of the sea as through dry land? How was the bitter water of Marah changed into sweet by means of wood? How was water given you from the rocky breasts? How did the manna come down upon you? How did the Jordan again stand still in its place? Or how, by a mere shout, was the impregnable wall of Jericho shaken down—and you will not fail to keep saying 'How'? For you will be caught having already marvelled at many mighty works, upon which, if you bring the 'How,' you will utterly disbelieve the whole of divine Scripture, and will overthrow all the words of the holy prophets, and, before all, the sacred writings of your own Moses.

Therefore it were better rather to believe in Christ, and, assenting without delay to the things spoken by him, to hasten to learn the manner of the blessing, not thoughtlessly to rail in drunken folly, saying: 'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?'—for even the 'this man' they say in contempt;

for such indeed is again what their arrogant word darkly hints at.

'Verily, verily, I say unto you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves.'

Long-suffering indeed and full of mercy is Christ, as one may see even now from the very things set before us.

And having overcome as God the arrogance of those who grieved him, he tells them the means by which they shall ascend to an age-long life;

and in what manner he will give them his flesh to eat, he does not yet teach;

for he knew that they were in darkness and were in no way able to understand the ineffable thing;

but how great a good will come to them from eating, he usefully shows, that perhaps, by more readily persuading them with the boundless pleasures that belong to the will to live, he might teach them to believe.

For to those who have already believed, the being able to learn also fittingly follows.

Since even thus says the prophet Isaiah: 'Unless you believe, neither shall you understand.' Therefore it was fitting, when faith had first been rooted in them, that there should second be admitted the understanding concerning the things of which they are ignorant, and that inquiry should not be seen to be older than faith.

—that inquiry, that is, should be seen to belong to faith.

For to those who had already believed, he broke the bread and gave it, saying: 'Take, eat, this is my body'; and likewise also, passing the cup around to all, he says: 'Take, drink of it, all of you;'

'for this is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.' Do you see how, to those who are still foolish and who thrust away from themselves faith that asks no questions, he does not explain the manner of the mystery, but to those who have already believed he is found declaring it most clearly? Let them therefore hear, who out of folly have not yet received faith in Christ: 'Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no eternal life in yourselves;'

for wholly without share and without taste of the life that is in sanctification and blessedness do they remain, who have not received Jesus through the mystical blessing.

For he is life according to nature, inasmuch as he was begotten of a living Father;

and no less life-giving is his holy body also, being in a certain manner brought together and ineffably united to the Word that gives life to all things;

wherefore it is reckoned as his own, and is understood as one together with him.

For it is inseparable after the incarnation, except insofar as concerns the knowing that the Word who came from God the Father and the temple that came from the Virgin are not indeed the same in nature;

for the body is not of one substance with the Word who is from God;

but they are one by their coming together and by their incomprehensible concurrence;

and since the flesh of the Saviour has become life-giving, inasmuch as it is united to the life that is by nature—namely, the Word that is from God—when we taste of it, then we have life in ourselves, we too being made one with it, just as it is with the Word that dwells within it.

For on this very account, in raising the dead, the Saviour is found working not by word alone, nor by his God-befitting commands only, but he took special care to employ, as a certain fellow-worker for this very purpose, his holy flesh, that he might show it able to give life, and to have become already one with him.

For the body was indeed his own, and not another's.

And so, when he raised the little daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, saying: 'Maiden, arise,' he took hold of her hand, as it is written;

giving life indeed as God, by his all-working command;

but giving life again also through the touch of his holy flesh, thus displaying through both one single and kindred operation.

But also, when he was entering into a city called Nain, and there was being carried out an only-begotten son who had died, to his mother, again he touched the bier, saying: 'Young man, I say to you, arise.' And he not only grants to his word to effect the return to life of the dead, but that he might show his own body to be life-giving, as we have already said, he touches the dead, and through it puts life into those who were already corrupted.

And if, by the mere touch of his holy flesh, that which was corrupted is given life, how shall we not gain a richer profit from the life-giving blessing, when we also taste of it? For it will surely transform those who partake of it into its own good, that is, into immortality.

And do not marvel at this, nor say within yourself, in Jewish fashion, 'How';

but consider rather that water is by nature cold;

yet when, poured into a cauldron, it comes into contact with fire, then it well-nigh forgets its own nature, and passes over into the operation of that which has overcome it.

In the same manner, therefore, we too, even though we are corruptible on account of the nature of the flesh, yet by the mingling of life we lay aside our own weakness, and are transformed into its property, that is, into life.

For it was necessary, yes necessary, not only that the soul should be recreated into newness of life through the Holy Spirit, but also that this coarse and earthy body should be sanctified through a coarser and kindred partaking, and be called to incorruption.

And let the Jew, sluggish unto understanding, by no means suppose that a manner of newer mysteries has been devised by us.

For he will behold in more ancient writings—I mean those of Moses—it already foredescribed and bearing the power of the truth, that it was accomplished even in bare figures.

For what, tell me, turned back the destroyer? And what caused the forefathers of those men not to perish together with the Egyptians, when death, which conquers all, was arming itself against the firstborn? Would it not be manifest to all, that inasmuch as, in obedience to the divine law, they had sacrificed the lamb, and, having tasted of its flesh, had smeared the doorposts with the blood, death was compelled to pass them by as sanctified? For the destroyer—that is, the death of the flesh—had been arrayed against the whole of human nature, because of the transgression in the first-formed man.

For then first we heard: 'Earth thou art, and to earth shalt thou return.' But since Christ was about to overthrow so terrible a tyrant, coming to be in us as life through his holy flesh, the mystery was prefigured to men of old, and they tasted of the flesh of the sheep, and, being sanctified by the blood, were preserved, while, according to the will of God, he who was appointed to destroy passed by those who were partakers of the lamb.

Why then, O Jew, are you vexed, when you are now called by the types to the truth, when Christ says: 'Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves'? And yet it were rather fitting to go with more boldness to the comprehension of the mysteries, having been first schooled through the books of Moses, and led by the hand through most ancient figures to the necessity of believing without hesitation.

'He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.'

And herein especially it is fitting to marvel at the holy Evangelist, who cried aloud expressly: 'And the Word became flesh';

for he did not shrink from saying not that he came to be in flesh, but that he became flesh, that he might show the union.

And we do not by any means say either that the Word who is God from the Father was changed over into the nature of the flesh, or that the flesh was transferred into the Word;

for each remains that which it is by nature, and Christ is one out of both;

and the Word, having ineffably and beyond the human mind been united to his own flesh, and having, as it were, wholly transferred it into himself according to the operation of being able to give life to the things that need life,

he both drove out the corruption of our nature, and dislodged the death that of old had prevailed on account of sin.

Therefore he who eats the holy flesh of Christ has eternal life;

for the flesh has in itself the Word who is by nature life.

For on this account he says: 'I will raise him up on the last day.'

And instead of saying that it—namely, his body—will raise up him, that is, the one who eats, he has set down 'I,' as being no other than his own flesh.

and not at all by nature; for it will by no means endure to be cut apart into a pair of sons after the union.

'I therefore,' He says, 'who have come to be in him — that is, plainly through my own flesh — will raise up on the last day the one who eats.'

For indeed it was impossible that he who by nature is Life should not utterly conquer corruption and prevail over death.

For this reason, even though the death that leapt upon us through the transgression should compel the human body to undergo corruption, yet since Christ comes to be in us through his own flesh, we shall assuredly rise again;

or rather, it is even impossible that the Life should not make alive those in whom it comes to be.

For just as if someone were to take a spark and bury it in a great heap of chaff, so that he might keep the seed of fire preserved,

so also our Lord Jesus Christ hides Life within us through his own flesh, and implants immortality like a kind of seed, doing away with all the corruption that is in us.

'For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.'

Again he contrasts the mystical blessing with the supply of the manna, and the taste of the cup with the streams from the rocky flanks.

And what he has already said elsewhere before, this he says again here, weaving the same argument in many ways.

For he charges them not to marvel excessively at the manna, but rather to receive him as bread from heaven and as the giver of eternal life.

'For your fathers,' he says, 'ate the manna in the wilderness and died;

but this is the bread which comes down from heaven, that anyone may eat of it and not die.' For the nourishment of the manna, he says, having quite briefly for its season made sport of the body's need and put to shame the harm arising from want, again grew weak, since it did not implant eternal life in those who had eaten it.

It was not, then, true food nor bread from heaven, that is;

but the holy body of Christ, which nourishes unto immortality and eternal life, is food that is truly true.

'But they also drank water from the rock.'

And what then, he says? What benefit was there for those who drank? For they have died.

That too, therefore, was not true drink; but the drink that is found true in truth is the precious blood of Christ, uprooting the whole of corruption from its foundations, and prising out the death that has taken up dwelling in human flesh.

For it is the blood not of some ordinary chance one, but of Life itself according to nature.

For this reason we are also called the body and members of Christ, as receiving the Son himself within ourselves through the blessing.

'He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.'

In many ways through these words he initiates us into the mystery; and since the saying is somewhat hard to attain for the more unlearned, requiring rather the understanding that comes from believing in him than inquiry, he makes it easy by turning the same things up and down. In manifold fashion, and from every side, he makes clear to us the profit that comes from the matter, fixing firmly, as a kind of foundation and base for our faith, the noblest longing set upon him.

For 'he who eats my flesh,' he says, 'and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.'

For just as if someone were to join one piece of wax to another piece of wax, he would surely see the one to have come to be within the other;

in the same way, I think, he too who receives the flesh of our Saviour Christ and drinks his precious blood, as he himself says, is found to be one as regards him, being as it were blended together and mingled with him through the partaking, so that he is found in Christ, and Christ again in turn in him.

In somewhat this way Christ instructed us also in the Gospel according to Matthew, saying: 'The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, until the whole was leavened.' Now who the woman is, and what is the triad of the so-called measures, or indeed what the measure is altogether, will be told in its proper place;

but for the present we shall speak only concerning the leaven.

As therefore Paul says, that 'a little leaven leavens the whole lump,' so in turn a very small blessing mingles our whole body into itself, and fills it with its own working, and thus Christ comes to be in us, and we again in turn in him.

For indeed one who speaks truly will say that the leaven is in the whole of the lump, and the lump too, by the same reasoning, comes to be in the whole of the leaven;

you have, as in brief compass, the sense of what has been said.

But if indeed we are lovers of eternal life, if we pray to have within ourselves the giver of immortality, let us not, like certain of the more careless, decline to be blessed, nor let the devil, deep in cunning, contrive for us as a snare and a noose that harmful over-scrupulousness.

'... of the bread and drinking from the cup unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself.' But when I examine my own case, I see that I am not worthy.

When, then, will you be worthy? — so he who says this will hear from us — when will you present yourself to Christ? For if you are always going to be terrified by your slips, and yet will not cease from slipping,

'For who shall understand his transgressions?' according to the holy psalmist — you will be found utterly without share in the sanctification that saves.

You will therefore resolve to pursue a life more godly and orderly, and thus you will partake of the blessing, having believed it to be able to drive away not only death but also the diseases that are within us;

for Christ, when he comes to be in us, lulls to sleep the law that rages in the members of the flesh, and kindles anew reverence toward God, but mortifies the passions, not reckoning to us the transgressions in which we are, but rather healing us as those who have fallen sick.

For he binds up what is broken, raises up what has fallen, as a good shepherd who has laid down his own life for the sheep.

That the Son is not a partaker of a life derived from another, but rather is Life according to nature, as having been begotten from the Life that is according to nature, from God the Father.

'As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father;

so he who eats me, that one also shall live because of me.'

The sense of the words set forth is rather less clear, and clothed with no ordinary difficulty;

nevertheless it will not entirely leap away into the unfindable, for it will be grasped and will be catchable by those who are willing to understand rightly.

When, therefore, the Son says that he has been sent, he then indicates his having been made flesh, and nothing else;

and when we say 'having been made flesh,' we mean that he became fully man.

'Just as, therefore,' he says, 'the Father made me man, and since, being God the Word, I was begotten from the Life that is according to nature — being Life — and having become man I filled my own temple, that is, the body, with my own nature;

in the very same way, he too who eats my flesh shall live because of me.

For I took flesh that dies, but since I have dwelt in it, being Life according to nature — because I am from a living Father — I refashioned the whole of my own into life.

I have not been conquered by the corruption of the flesh, but rather have conquered it as God.'

For I will say it again, shrinking from nothing because of its usefulness:

'Even if I have become,' he says, 'flesh —

for this is what 'having been sent' signifies —

I live again because of the living Father, that is, preserving in myself the excellence of the one who begot me; so too he who receives me within himself through the partaking of my flesh shall live, being wholly transformed into me, who am able to give life because I am, as it were, from a root that is life-giving, that is, from God the Father.'

He says that he has been made flesh by the Father, and yet Solomon says, 'Wisdom has built for herself a house'; while the blessed Gabriel attributes the fashioning of the divine body to the working of the Spirit, when he spoke to the holy Virgin — for he says, 'The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you' — so that once again you may consider that, since the Godhead according to nature is one, and is contemplated in Father and Son and in the Holy Spirit, each does not work separately upon some one of the things that are, but whatever may be said to come to pass even through one, this is altogether the work of the whole divine nature.

For since the Holy Trinity is one, at least according to the principle of consubstantiality, there will surely be altogether one power over all things.

For all things are from the Father through the Son in the Spirit;

and what we have often said, this we shall say again;

for to say the same things, even if it be wearisome, yet has the security.

For it is customary for the Saviour Christ to attribute usefully to the working of the Father all those things that spring up beyond the power befitting a man.

For he humbled himself, having become man;

and since he accepted the form of the servant, he does not dishonour the measure befitting a servant; yet he does not lie outside of doing all things together with the Father.

For, he says, in the Saviour's own words, 'The Father, abiding in me, himself does the works.' Rendering therefore to the economy with the flesh what is fitting, he attributes to God the Father the things beyond the power of a man.

For to create a temple in a virgin far transcends the power of a man.

But to this the opponent will again say: 'And how else could the Son have disclosed what he is by nature, or how could he have shown clearly that the Father is greater, unless by saying, "I live because of the Father"? For if the Father is the supplier of life to the Son, who will proceed to such stupidity as not altogether to consider that what is a partaker of life will not be the same by nature as Life itself, that is, as the one able to give life?' To such things, then, we too, bringing forward the argument of the truth against them, will opportunely say: 'The fool will speak folly, and his heart will devise vain things, to accomplish lawless deeds and to speak error against the Lord.' For what could be more lawless than such a notion of the heretics? And how is it not the utmost error that is spoken by them against Christ who gives life to all, when the most senseless ones do not blush to say that he lives as a partaker of a life from another, just like the things that have come to be through him? Will the Son, then, henceforth be for us also merely a living creature, inasmuch as he is a partaker of life, and not himself Life according to nature? For the living creature must altogether be something other than the life that is in it.

But if they think that they can be the same, let every living creature be called life;

yet I think no one who is of sound mind would do so;

therefore the Only-begotten will be understood by us not as a living creature, but as Life according to nature.

For how could he even speak truly in saying, 'I am the resurrection and the life'? For life is that which gives life, not that which is in need of a life derived from another, just as, of course, that too is understood to be wisdom which is able to make wise, not that which is by nature made wise.

Therefore according to you the truth will prove false, and Christ will not speak truly when he says, 'I am the life.'

And again the splendid choir of the saints will speak falsely in uttering the words that pour forth through the Spirit, and in calling the Only-begotten Life.

For our divine psalmist is found saying, as to the Father, 'For with you is the fountain of life'; and the wondrous Evangelist John in his own epistles speaks thus: 'That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have beheld and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life';

'And the life was made manifest, and we have seen, and we bear witness, and we declare unto you the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was made manifest unto us.' Do you see how the psalmist spoke truly, and this too through the voice of John, when he says to God the Father of all things, 'For with thee is the fountain of life'? For the Son both was and is with him the fountain of life.

For that this Spirit-bearing man says such things concerning him, he will again give full assurance through his own words.

For he writes thus: 'And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ.'