約翰福音註釋 第 1 章 第 37/94 段

That the Son is God by nature, wholly removed from any likeness to the creation, as regards the account of His essence;

on the text set before us: 'You are of this world;

I am not of this world.'

That the Son is not less in power and wisdom than God the Father, but rather is Wisdom itself and His power;

on the text set before us: 'Of Myself I do nothing, but as the Father taught Me, these things I speak.'

'Some therefore of those of Jerusalem said, Is not this He whom they seek to kill?' Since it was the feast called, according to the Law, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Jews had, so to speak, come running together from all the surrounding country to Jerusalem —

for this was what seemed good to the Lawgiver —

Christ was making His teaching addressed to all.

For surely He did not speak only to the townsfolk.

It is necessary, then, for anyone at all who is a good learner and eager to hear, to inquire what it was that persuaded our divine Evangelist to bring in all the rest of the flock of the Jews as silent, but to attach the saying on this matter to the men of Jerusalem alone;

and what, considering and pondering by themselves, do they say such things?

What then shall we say to this? Since Christ, the Saviour of us all, had wrought not a few signs in the city, and dwelt rather frequently in Jerusalem, some of those in the city were somehow persuaded, advancing gently at last, to wish to believe in Him, yet neither openly nor freely did they dare to love Him, being cowed by the audacity of the rulers, and being driven into a harmful fear — not, however, out of any plotting.

For this the blessed Evangelist clearly indicated, having said in what has already gone before that no one spoke openly concerning Him for fear of the Jews. For here by 'Jews' he henceforth designates the rulers, shrinking, as it seems to me, from bestowing upon men so utterly abandoned the appellation of 'rulers.'

So then, when our Saviour Jesus Christ was speaking boldly, and vigorously assailing the madness of the rulers, convicting them very plainly that they had no regard for the word of the Lawgiver, but each inclined, and all too easily, toward what seemed good to himself, and slipped rashly into a murderous frenzy as though it were nothing base, and endured on top of this none of the unpleasant things which it was likely He would suffer at the hands of those from whom such was to be expected —

this very thing the men of Jerusalem take as a proof and full assurance of the God-befitting authority that is in Him, and receiving this too, as it were, as an addition to the things already marvelled at, and heaping it upon what had gone before, they are henceforth driven, with more ardent impulses, toward the conviction that they ought to believe in Him.

Therefore, gathering up knowledge from probable reasoning, they say, 'Is not this He whom they seek to kill?' For consider that, all but stretching out high their right hand, carrying it hither and thither, they point out the one who convicts, and now laugh at the untamed savagery of those men, which they see lulled to rest — not by sober reasoning;

whence should it be? but rather by a God-befitting power and authority.

It is to be noted that, contrary to all the other crowds of the Jews, the men of Jerusalem alone say the opposite things; and how, I will tell.

When once our Saviour Christ was setting forth the most excellent things, the Pharisees stood by, cut to the heart at these matters, and now openly unveiled toward untamed audacity, and pressing on to do the deeds of murder;

and to this He Himself was speaking, convicting them as transgressors of the Law — those very men who had resolved that it was fitting to commit murder: 'Did not Moses give you the Law? and none of you keeps the Law;

why do you seek to kill Me?' And the whole aim of the saying strikes down as with arrows the hearts of the rulers;

'Who seeks to kill You?' But I suppose it is plain to everyone that, since He beheld the Pharisees already murderous, Christ says those things.

How then, when certain ones here deny it and cry out, 'Who seeks to kill You?', do the men of Jerusalem alone, passing the opposite verdict against all the others, say, 'Is not this He whom they seek to kill?' And this too is well put, 'they seek,' that the daring deeds might be ascribed to the rulers alone.

A persuasive argument, then, prevails upon us to understand that the rest of the Jewish populace was ignorant of the intent among the rulers, but the men of Jerusalem, being for the most part together with them and dwelling in one city, and ever meeting with them, somehow knew the unholy intent buried within them against the Saviour Christ.

And it has come about that the defiled throng of the Jews is accused not only through the voice of our Saviour, but already also out of that very flock that acted under them, which by their madness has been utterly ruined and hurled down the precipices.

For it is possible, in some way, from what has been said, to see this flock as already thirsting and, as it were, kindled toward faith in Christ, and needing but a very little leading by the hand, which had they obtained, they would readily have received Him who has come to us from heaven.

Guilty, therefore, of the destruction of the sheep are those who obtained the office of leading.

The prophet Jeremiah cries out thus: 'Because the shepherds have become foolish, and have not sought out the Lord;

therefore the whole pasture has had no understanding, and they were scattered.' 'See, He speaks openly to them, and they say nothing to Him.'

They intensify within themselves the words of their full conviction, and they mount up, as it were, to a more manifest proof, seeing the danger-free boldness of Christ.

And they are exceedingly and reasonably astonished, finding those men, who of old were unholy and insolent, now carried into an unpractised and unwonted forbearance, and beholding them cultivating a strange gentleness.

Hence they pass over into reasonable suspicions;

but by the very things through which they again marvel at them as forbearing, and for which they ought in no way to have been angered, by these very things they are caught in the act of accusing them — how it was their custom, those interpreters of the most excellent things, to fasten indiscriminately upon everything, and to go hotly and simply against all, if only anyone should speak things discordant with them, even should it plead in favour of the divine Law.

For terrible ever was the arrogant swelling of the Pharisees, and their audacity knew no measure of their madness.

'Who then,' they say, 'is he that tames them for the present, and who is he that has laid the sober reasoning as a bridle upon their old, ungovernable wrath? And who, having so charmed them and, as it were, ever lulls to gentleness certain serpents that leap upon us? See, He speaks openly, and they say nothing to Him.'

'He does not speak simply,' he says, 'but with boldness.'

And no one, I think, would justly find fault with their wrath as being at rest, if the one who is sought had made His words against them secretly.

For in their not perceiving it, perhaps, their passions would not even have been stirred; but the word having been made with boldness, and coming through bitter rebukes —

for this above all is what the name 'boldness' indicates —

not only have they refrained from wrath, though very readily afflicted with this disease, but they shrink even at mere words.

'Do the rulers perhaps truly know that this is the Christ?' You see how, gathering together from reasonable considerations and probable reasonings the ground that they ought to believe, they all but grow vexed, as though the rulers already knew Him, but expressly declined it because of their fighting against God, and would not endure to feel shame before Him who has come from above, and were somehow burying with envious silences the proclamation of Him.

'For if they have not truly known,' he says, 'that this is the Christ, what is it that has persuaded them to endure Him as He convicts them boldly, and somehow innovates even upon the things proclaimed of old — things through which He was caught healing even on the Sabbath — and grieves them not moderately through the words in which He says undisguisedly, Did not Moses give you the Law, and none of you keeps the Law? But they bear patiently with these things, though very intolerably disposed toward them, and accustomed to leap more hotly even upon those who do no wrong.'

Therefore, coming to it through every reasoning, they gather little by little their faith in Christ, and yet they assign to the rulers the knowing of the truth, inasmuch as these were before them, and nurtured in the sacred writings, and able, more than they themselves, to understand the mysteries in the divine Scriptures.

And observe throughout that the populace of the Jews was made ready to follow the rulers without hesitation — a populace that would surely have been saved unto the right way, had it been guided by the leaders.

For on this very account they shall also pay bitter penalties, when the Saviour Himself brought the charge, saying, 'Woe to you, lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge;

you yourselves did not enter in, and those who were entering you hindered.' For the word of those who teach rightly is, as it were, a door and a gate to the knowledge of God, and a road easily conveying to all virtue; and the shepherd's skill knows how to preserve the flock of the fostered ones.

Just as, therefore, the contrary easily destroys, and will bear off the flocks down the precipices even against their will.

'But this man we know whence He is;

yet when the Christ comes, no one knows whence He is.'

Very profitably, having laboured through the reasonings that arose from probability and having been drawn toward true surmises concerning Christ by reason of the God-befitting authority that resides in Him, the crowd, being now not inelegantly led toward the apprehension of true religion, does not perceive that it is once again slipping back into the ignorance that is native to the Jews.

For those who had rightly examined those matters seem in some way to wish to hunt out the truth from every quarter, and they proceed to the necessity of believing not merely from the silence of the rulers and their unaccustomed mildness, but they also search the Holy Scripture itself, being called to this from a right disposition, yet nevertheless making their trial concerning the mystery in an untutored and altogether uncomprehending manner.

For because they only know whence He is who speaks with boldness—that is, from what village He sets out, and from what parents He was born—they say that He is not the very One proclaimed beforehand through the Law.

Then to these things they add: «But when the Christ comes, no one knows whence He is.»

And it is surely plain to everyone that their going astray in this matter also befell them out of ignorance.

But I judge it necessary to examine whence these opinions come to advance among them.

What then is it that has persuaded them—those who had considered the matters concerning Him rightly—to suppose, for this reason, that He is not the Christ, since they were not ignorant of whence He is?

And why do they add to these words, «When the Christ comes, no one knows whence He is»? For it is from this very thing that they thereafter suffer loss of the apprehension of the truth.

Now there is a saying borne along in Isaiah concerning Christ: «Who shall declare His generation? For His life is taken away from the earth.» And the blessed prophet, setting this word upon God the Word, means by «generation» His existence.

For who could at all even utter the manner of the Only-begotten's existence? What tongue shall declare the ineffable begetting of the Son from the Father? Or what mind will not grow faint before this? For that He was begotten of God and the Father we both know and have believed.

But the «how» we declare to be inaccessible to every mind, and to hold a most perilous scrutiny.

For one must not seek the deeper things, nor examine the more difficult, but rather ponder the things we have been commanded, and believe unshakenly concerning God that He truly is and that He becomes a rewarder to those who seek Him; and no longer, according to what is written, seek the things beyond mind and understanding—not only that which is in us, but also that which is in the whole creation, or in every rational being that has been made.

Who then shall recount the generation of the Only-begotten? For «His life is taken away from the earth»—that is, the word concerning His existence is shown to be higher than all things that are upon the earth.

For here again He calls «life» His existence.

This tripped up the uncomprehending mind of the Jews, and in some way lured them away from the true recognition of Christ.

For they did not consider, as was fitting, that the word concerning Him is found to be twofold among the holy prophets.

For when they signify that He will be present in flesh in this life, they set forth His birth from the Virgin according to the flesh as manifest.

For «Behold, the Virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bear a son.» But they also proclaim clearly where He shall be born: «And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephratha, are small to be among the thousands of Judah;

out of you shall come forth for Me One to be a ruler in Israel, and His goings forth are from the beginning, from the days of eternity.» But interpreting, so far as is possible, the ineffable begetting from the Father and God, they say either that which we spoke of before, «Who shall declare His generation? for His life is taken away from the earth»; or the saying joined to the one just cited, «And His goings forth are from the beginning, from the days of eternity.» For here by «goings forth» of the Only-begotten it signifies as it were a shining out as from light, and, before all age and day and moment, a going forth into His own existence, as it were from the substance of the One who begot Him.

Finding the Jews playing the ignorant, He will say with a broad laugh: «Not merely from the fact that the generation of the Christ is unknown are the things concerning Him to be sought out, but also from the fact that it is known who He is and whence He sets out according to the flesh.» Jesus therefore cried out, teaching in the temple and saying: «You both know Me, and you know whence I am.»

While the men of Jerusalem were quietly whispering those things to one another—

for they did not dare to speak with boldness because of the fear of the Jews, as it is written—

Christ, in a manner befitting God, receives once more the knowledge of the things that had been said.

And since He was considering that it would be fitting to benefit the men, He at once shows once again in Himself an energy befitting God, and clearly reveals that He possesses the knowledge of all things.

For He lifts up His voice on high—though formerly He was not accustomed to do this Himself—and He convicts them again as not having a firm mind concerning the God-inspired Scripture; and He makes as the root of His own words that which had been whispered in a corner and barely spat out.

Then, in addition to these things, from the very grounds by which they senselessly thought that one ought not to believe, through these same grounds He keenly persuades them that it is fitting for them to believe.

And the sense of what is said is of this kind:

«You have marvelled,» He says, «and doing so quite rightly, that there truly exists in Me a God-befitting power, easily taming, and that too, the murderous mind of the Jews;

for they seek to kill Me, according to the report that has been made among you truthfully and with exactness, and they set very great zeal upon this.

But,» He says, «while I ought to withdraw and depart as far as possible from those who have plotted that they ought to slay Me, taking no thought at all of their madness, on the contrary I speak with boldness and convict them as those who wrong the Law by not being willing to judge just judgment.

For those who of old were terrible endure evil unwillingly, and the fact is not the fruit of their own choice, but the might of My authority.

For I do not permit them—raging as they are and whetted to inhuman wrath—to dare a premature bloodshed against Me.

Upon these things, therefore,» He says, «and quite reasonably, you are astounded; and you say that you have truly known—those who lead you—that I am the Christ.

But following the fitting reasoning in these matters, inclining toward the oracles from the divine Scripture, when you ought rather to have been benefited unto being confirmed in the apprehension concerning Me, you have suffered the opposite and have been scandalized.

For from merely knowing whence I am and through whom I have been born,» He says, «you have reckoned that I am not the Christ.

Know therefore that you both know Me and know whence I am—that is, the divine Scripture has given you both to know Me and whence I am.

And it is not because you have perchance come to know that I am a Nazarene or a Bethlehemite, and that I was born through a woman, that on this account you must by all means also admit the disease of unbelief;

but rather, from the things said concerning Me, and by reason of the birth according to the flesh, from these you ought the more to advance to the apprehension of the mysteries concerning Me, and not to incline to one single prophet's utterance alone, which discloses the ineffable begetting from God and the Father.

«And I have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true.»

Having woven His discourse together with no ordinary art, He manages everywhere not to seem to rouse His hearers readily toward plausible impulses; and having in some way overshadowed what was said with obscurity, He steals away the greater part of their fury, and takes away the sharpness of their agitation.

«Why then, on this account also,» He says, «when I have expounded it many times and cried aloud outright that I have been sent from God and the Father, do they still disbelieve, and, because they know His race according to the flesh, do they say that He is not the very One proclaimed beforehand through the Law and announced in advance through the holy prophets?»

Mingling the refutation with the defences, He most aptly exposes their calumny and says: «I have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true.»

«For it is your custom,» He says, «O you who dare anything readily and who proceed without consideration to whatever thing, even to the most terrible, sometimes to prophesy falsely, and, when God has not sent you, to say that you have been sent from God.

But I am not of your sort, nor will I imitate the well-worn audacities that are among you.

I have not arrived of Myself, nor as a self-appointed messenger, as you do, but I have come from heaven;

true is He who sent Me—not, I suppose, after the manner of that lie-loving one of yours, that is, the devil, whose spirit you receive when you dare to prophesy falsehood.

Therefore He who sent Me is true, but the one who rouses you to fabricate the words that come from God is not true.

For he is a liar and the father of those who lie.

And that we shall find false prophesying to have been habitual to the Jews, we shall see without toil upon lighting on the words of the prophets.

«I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied.» And again in Jeremiah: «The prophets prophesy falsely in My name; I did not send them, nor did I speak to them, nor did I command them;

for they prophesy to you visions and auguries and prophecies of their own heart.» The boastful Jew is convicted therefore in this: that he attaches even to Christ Himself the rashness against God that belongs to himself—that is, false prophecy.

But to disbelieve altogether the One who cries out that He has been sent from God and from the Father—what else would this be, in the end, than to cry out outright, «You prophesy falsely, imitating our doings against us»? «Whom you do not know, but I know Him, because I am from Him, and He sent Me.»

«You were saying just now,» He says, «‹The Christ, when He comes, no one knows whence He is.›

But since you hold this opinion as being rightly held, and you maintain it firmly as true, I concur with your words concerning this.

For the Father from whom I am is true, but is not known to you.

When therefore,» He says, «you consider the mystery concerning Me most ill-advisedly, yet in a manner pleasing to yourselves, and then, knowing who I am and whence I am according to the flesh, you dismiss the obligation of believing—for this reason alone receive the faith: whenever you find yourselves not understanding whence I am;

and I am from the Father, whom you do not know, since you do not know the One who is from Him, in whom alone the Father is beheld.

For he who has seen the Son has seen the Father, and he who knows the Son has not been ignorant of the One who begot Him.

Therefore, since every pretext of specious argument is on this account also taken away from them, they will again be caught in their malice, no longer finding any excuse for disobedience, but thrust out from knowledge by their own perversities alone—so that what is written may also be shown to be true: «You have seen many times, and you have not kept it;

your ears have been opened, and you have not heard.» And since He was applying Himself to the words of the Jews, that «no one knows whence He is when the Christ comes,» necessarily drawing Himself forth, as God, from the multitude of created things and of all the rest to whom the «No one» might reasonably apply, showing Himself to be other in nature—that He does not, together with those, fail to know His own Begetter—He says, but has strongly affirmed that He knows both Himself and Him with all exactness.

For He is God from God the Father, possessing concerning these things a knowledge that is paradoxical and strange, or rather one that befits Him alone.

For the Son does not, I think, know the Father in the same manner as we know.

For the nature of created things comes only as far as conception unto the vision of God, and, not overrunning the bounds fitting to itself, yields—not willingly—to the divine nature the being hidden in ineffable words.

But the Only-begotten, who has shone forth from God the Father, beholds the whole Begetter within Himself, and, portraying the substance of the One who begot Him in His own nature, knows Him thus, in a way that cannot be told;

for the things concerning God are inexpressible.

That, contrary to the ignorant surmises of the Greeks, our affairs are not subject to the hours as by necessity, but rather it is of our own choice that we come both to the good and to its contrary;

and that we are governed by the beckonings of God.

«The Jews therefore were seeking to seize Him;

and no one laid his hand upon Him, because His hour had not yet come.»

For they were in some way being persuaded thereafter to the necessity of confessing that He was the Christ.

They are dragged back to their accustomed insolence, and they thirst once more to shed blood.

Having thrust aside as utterly useless to them all reverence for the Law, and setting at nothing what is written in the sacred Scriptures, and deeming worthy of no remembrance the command 'You shall not slay the innocent and the righteous,' they are sick with a most unjust madness against Christ.

But by the divine power the outcome of their attempts is once again turned entirely against them, into the opposite of what they intended.

For 'the deceitful man shall not catch his prey,' as it is written.

For they seek to seize Him, as the Evangelist says, since He had of His own will and self-prompting kept silence at their reproaches, and by His refusal to answer seemed to be checking Himself from any later outbursts of anger.

For this they took as proof that Jesus is God by nature, when some of the men of Jerusalem said: 'Behold, He speaks openly, and they say nothing to Him.'

'Can it be that the rulers have truly known that this is the Christ?' But He who takes the wise in their own craftiness renders utterly futile the daring of those who had devised such things, and confirms among the crowds that which was quietly being noised abroad as by way of consideration and conjecture.

For they are restrained by an operation befitting God, which puts a bridle upon them in their unholy deeds, and permits their designs to extend only as far as attempts.

And the reason why they were not able to carry through to completion the purpose they had set before them, the most wise Evangelist has usefully added on this point.

'For His hour,' he says, 'had not yet come.'

By 'hour' here he plainly means the time, namely the time of the Passion and of the precious Cross.

Then, to whom would it not become plain from this also, that Christ would in no way have suffered had He been forced against His will to be willing to suffer? For it was not through Jewish greed, but of His own free will that He went up, for our sake and on our behalf, upon the Cross.

Therefore also He says, wiping away the reproach that might arise from His seeming to be powerless: 'No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself.'

'I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority again to take it up.' For as we have already said before, He endured the Cross for us not against His will.

For He offered Himself as a holy sacrifice to God the Father, purchasing the salvation of all by His own blood.

Wherefore also He said in the Gospel proclamations: 'For their sake I sanctify myself.' And by 'I sanctify' here He means 'I present and dedicate.'

For that which is offered in sacrifice to God is holy.

And that He received the slaughter on behalf of all as free from any greed on anyone's part, we shall learn again when in the Psalms we hear Him saying to God the Father: 'Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for me.'

'Whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You took no pleasure in; then I said, Behold, I come; in the roll of the book it is written of me, to do Your will, O God.' You see how of His own accord He goes up to the suffering on behalf of all? 'For behold, I come,' He says: I have not been hunted down by any necessity from another.

He therefore escapes for the moment the insolence of the rulers, reserving His suffering for the fitting time, and practising in all things the boldness most befitting God.

I think, then, that these things will suffice for the clarification of the matters before us.

But since some, through evil-mindedness, so as to suppose against all reason that human affairs are subject to hours and days and seasons, I think it necessary again to say a few words about these things, if indeed our aim presses on through every consideration to furnish what is profitable to those who will read.

To the children of the Church, then, I suppose that what has also been nurtured in them by the sacred Scriptures will suffice for the refutation of the Greeks' deceit, and to be able rightly to cast off the ill-counsel that comes from this quarter — namely that which was spoken by Paul, by way of accusation or rather of wise rebuke, to some of those there disposed: 'You observe days and months and seasons and years.'

'I am afraid of you, lest perhaps I have labored over you in vain.' For indeed, when every sophistry has been done away, the man caught in such folly will destroy his own soul, and will be convicted of dishonoring the very Author of us all, to whom alone the wise and well-instructed reason among us assigns the helm of our affairs.

And their charges will not stop even at these things, but will go on even to something more grievous than these.

For he will openly revile the good-loving God, and will call the enemy of all sin a worker of base things.

For if by Him were made time and hour and day and year, and these lead certain men, as by necessity and constraint, sometimes into unwilled baseness, so that they even fall into the misfortunes that come from this, how will not the argument on this point shine forth as true for you? But where then will the passage through the all-wise Moses lead us? 'For God saw,' it says, 'all things that He had made, and behold, all were very good.' But one among all things is time.

And in time are both hour and day and year.

But if that which the eye of the divine nature saw to be good, we shall call a bringer-on of base things, how shall we not outright confess the Lord of all to be a maker convicted of most shameful deeds? I suppose, then, that those who are held in the faults just now mentioned by us will blush deeply.

But since it is likely that some have determined not only to resist the Greek follies, but even to plead in their favor, come then, let us again examine in another way the absurdity inherent in that doctrine, and, heaping up the useful aids that come from reasonings, let us bring truth forth against their abominations.