約翰福音註釋 第 1 章 第 62/94 段

After the departure of the betrayer, then, and his running away from the hearth, He now, as in the fitting moment, communicates the mysteries to the genuine among the disciples, and says: 'Now is the Son of Man glorified.'

And by this He signifies the saving Passion, as being at the doors and about to be present after a little while.

He says that the Son of Man has been glorified, not meaning some other beside Himself, nor in a divided way, as it seemed good to some;

for Christ is one Son, both before the flesh and after the flesh, both before He became man like us and when He became man.

But how He maintains that He has been glorified, this must be sought out.

'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.' But also, having once broken five loaves and two fishes, He caused the multitude of those who had run together to Him to be satisfied, amounting, apart from children and women, to five thousand men.

And the wonder wrought seemed so glorious to some that, struck by the surpassing greatness of the matter, they sought to proclaim Him even king;

for this the Evangelist himself testified to us.

And it is nothing difficult to extend the discourse through however many other instances also, and very broadly, since the glory of the matters we have just enumerated is in no way inferior.

How then, henceforth, does He who was of old glorified say that He is now glorified? For He has been glorified also through other things, and appeared as holding the repute of a God-befitting authority;

yet the perfection of glory and the fullness of renown lay altogether in that, in His suffering for the life of the world, and in Himself innovating the manner of the resurrection of all.

For examining as well as we can the account of the mystery concerning Him, we shall behold Him as having died not for Himself perhaps, nor properly on His own account, but as having suffered and acted on behalf of all humanity—both the Passion itself, and after it the resurrection.

For He died according to the flesh, showing His own life as a counterweight to the life of all, and fulfilling in Himself the power of that ancient curse, He who is of worth equal to all.

But He has been raised again from the dead into a certain incorruptible and unending life, raising up in Himself the whole of nature.

For having died once, according to what is written, He dies no more;

death no longer has dominion over Him.

For in that He died, He died unto sin once for all; but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. And this shall be true of us also for Christ's sake.

For we shall be raised no longer unto death, but unto life unending—though after this there is a great difference among those who rise, I mean as to glory, and as to the recompense owed to each according to his manner of life.

Having therefore become obedient to God the Father even unto death, yea, the death of the cross, according to the words of Paul, He was again highly exalted, receiving the name that is above every name.

For He who was supposed to be a mere man was exceedingly glorified, being shown forth as truly God and in truth the Son of God—not called to a new dignity of being God by nature, but to that which He already was even before the flesh. To this very thing, then, having wholly returned even with the flesh, we shall reckon Him to have been glorified in this respect, although He is the Lord of glory throughout all things.

For nothing new among the God-befitting dignities is found in Christ, but He possesses all things naturally, as God, even before the so-called self-emptying.

But even in respect of the form of a servant which He assumed—since He raised Himself up again to those things, even when He had become man—He is understood to be glorified, and is said to have received.

Christ therefore being glorified, God the Father also is by all means glorified together with Him.

And He was glorified in the Son, not receiving any addition of glory from His own Offspring—

for the divine and ineffable Nature is in need of no such thing at all—

but since it was made known whose Father He is.

For in whatever manner it is glory and boasting to the Son to have such a Begetter by nature, in that same manner, I think, it is also glory and boasting to the Father Himself to have from Himself His own such a Son.

For this reason He says, 'And God was glorified in Him, and God will glorify Him in Himself, and straightway will glorify Him.'

For at the same time the Father was glorified through the Son, and straightway He glorified the Son in return.

For the name of glory runs upon both through both.

But that we may also bring down the force of the discourse to our own case, begetting an occasion of profit for those who hear, we will add this to what has been said.

If we glorify God in ourselves, let us expect that we shall be glorified by Him.

'For as I live, saith the Lord, them that glorify Me will I glorify, and they shall not be brought to nought.'

And God is glorified through us and in us, whenever, having thrust away the filth that comes from sin, we make our own life to shine bright through every good work.

For thus do we live unto His glory.

In the rank of little children, and among newborn babes, He places the disciples, although they had leapt up to so great a measure of virtue and possessed an understanding attained by few—

showing thereby, and very clearly, that even he who is deemed exceedingly perfect among men is an infant before God, and short in mind.

For what is man's understanding compared with the wisdom of the Artificer of all things? For this reason one singing psalms said to God, 'I became as a beast before Thee.' And surely no one, if he has any sense, will say that the psalmist called himself beast-like by reason of his being joined to God—

for this would be a bitter accusation against the divine Nature, and would be seen to contain much absurdity.

For he who is joined to a wise man, and comes to be beside him—

for I think the wording of the psalm must be fitted together according to the need—

would never become beast-like, but rather sharp-witted and intelligent and keen in understanding.

And if one should say, and very justly, that this is true, how would he not think it folly—he to whom it belongs to reason—to say that one who has come to be beside the wisdom of God will be beast-like and mindless? What then, he says, does it mean, that even he who is exceedingly wise among men, if he be compared with the wisdom of God, will be seen to be beast-like and reckoned among those who have no mind? For just as the smallest of the stars would not contend with the beams of the sun, nor yet a heavy stone with the mountain that surpasses all, so man's understanding could never be compared with the wisdom of God—rather, it will be as nothing at all in relation to that wisdom altogether.

So then, even the perfect man is a little child.

For yet a little while, Christ said, He would be together with His own disciples—not as one about to depart utterly, nor as being wholly and altogether estranged—

for He is with us all the days, even unto the consummation of the age, according to His own word—

but that He will not be with them in the flesh, as yesterday and the day before.

For at the doors, or rather within the doors, was the time of His departure hence to the Father and of His ascent into heaven.

And I say it is necessary that those who think rightly and have their faith firmly established should be so disposed, that even if He is absent from us in the flesh, having set out on His journey to God the Father, yet by His divine power He encompasses the universe and is present together with those who love Him.

For on this account He also said, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.' For just as while yet dwelling among men and being upon earth with the flesh, He filled the heavens and was then present with the holy angels and was not absent from the regions above—

so also now, being in the heavens with His own flesh, He fills the earth and is present with those who are His acquaintances.

And observe how, although expecting to be separated only according to the flesh—

for He is with us continually by the power of the Godhead—

He says He will be with us yet a little while, signifying Himself wholly and entirely from the part, that no one may attempt to divide the one Christ into a duality of sons, but may understand and receive Him as one thing—both the Word begotten of God the Father and the temple taken from the holy Virgin—not that they are of the same essence, but that after the ineffable union the doctrine of severing is impious.

For Christ is one out of both.

'Ye shall seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, Whither I go ye cannot come, so now I say to you also.'

He says that His departure—that is, His own—will not be altogether without harm to His disciples.

First, because they will be consumed with grief over this, and will find the burden of the bitterness hence hard to bear.

For it is not doubtful that they will again thirst to be with Him and will wish to dwell with Him continually—just as indeed the divinely-inspired Paul, preferring to be with Christ even above the life here, said that it was better to depart and to be with Christ. Foreseeing these things, and not being ignorant of the hearts of those who loved Him, Christ said that His ascent would not be without grief for the disciples.

Besides this there is also another true occasion compelling the holy disciples to seek to be with Christ.

For they were soon to encounter no small dangers, and to be flung about often by the ungovernable madnesses of the Jews, and also to fall into the frenzies of certain others, running about the whole inhabited world and proclaiming to those still wandering astray the word of the Saviour—so as to experience prisons, and not to be exempt from insult and maltreatment, and to come no less into the trial of other tortures—

and yet they had experienced none of such things before, while they were with Christ.

Ye shall seek, He says, then indeed My company most of all, whenever the manifold waves of temptations trouble you.

But this was not of one leading them to cowardice, or breaking down the disciples beforehand with fear—

but rather of one anointing them for the recovery of vigour, and, as it were, teaching them to be prepared beforehand for the endurance of the things expected to come.

For we shall not find it profitless—rather, one might see that saying which is sung in the Psalms to hold much benefit: 'I was prepared and was not troubled.' For that which is altogether unhoped-for from those accustomed to do wrong is terrible for causing tumult, and has, as it were, an unexpected onset—

but that which by anticipation, and by the fact of its having been foreknown by some, has already spent beforehand the greater part of the fear, does not have unmixed power against those upon whom it may come, since the mind has rehearsed it beforehand and has often received it as though already present, so far as pertains to the power of thought.

For just as if some blood-drinking and savage beast, rising up out of the midst of a well-wooded and dense thicket, should leap upon one of those who do not see it, it rends in pieces one who does not expect the onset, and destroys him, having caught him unprepared for the fight—

but he who is seen from afar, and is known that he will be present, meeting an armed man, will either do less harm perhaps, or, prevailing not at all, will go his way—

in the same manner, I think, also in the case of temptations: that which was not at all expected to come will assail us more hotly and more savagely than that which was already expected.

Usefully, therefore, our Lord Jesus Christ, by saying 'Ye shall seek Me,' hints at the things that will befall His disciples from His being no longer with them, and the tumults from those who will war against them, preparing them beforehand by the foretelling for the recovery of courage—

And He usefully adds to these also what will lie right at their feet, hindering them from following Him for the present.

For what I said to the Jews, He says, this I now say also to you: 'Whither I go ye cannot come.'

For the time was not yet at hand for the holy apostles to come to the mansions above, since they had not yet ministered.

For it was carefully reserved that they too should pass on to this at the fitting time.

But this again must be noted, that in speaking to the Jews and signifying this very thing, He said, 'Ye shall seek Me, and shall not find Me;'

yet to His own disciples He says only 'Ye shall seek Me,' and fittingly is silent about the 'ye shall not find.'

And for what cause? For it will befit those to fail to find Him, both because of their measureless unbelief and the excess of their impiety toward Him;

but to those who have a genuine mind toward Him and have preserved unadulterated their love, it could no longer fittingly be said, 'Ye shall not find Me.'

For He was with them, and will be with them continually.

'A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another;

even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.'

Well and truly does the divinely-inspired Paul write: 'Wherefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature;

the old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.' For He renews us, and refashions us, in a manner, unto newness of life—a life untrodden and unworn by those others to whom it is dear to order their conduct by the law and to attend upon the commandments given through Moses.

For the law made nothing perfect, according to that which is written;

but one might behold the fullest measure of godliness toward God in the ordinances of our Saviour.

...of the heavens. For we do not strive after the manner of the Jews; rather, unless we exceed by far the righteousness that is in the Law, I do not think we shall ever enter into the kingdom of the heavens.

And we do not thereby declare the Law given through Moses to be wholly useless or unprofitable;

for it brought in to us the good, even if not perfectly; yet it is found to be a tutor unto the learning of the evangelical way of life, and, introducing through enigmas and types an image of the true piety, it somehow engraved upon our minds the shadow of the instruction that is through Christ.

For this very reason He Himself also said: 'For I say unto you that every scribe who has been made a disciple unto the kingdom of the heavens is like a rich man who brings forth out of his treasure things new and old.' For it is indeed a truly spiritual wealth, and greatly so, to have been well-versed in the words given through Moses, and for a man to have their profit treasured up in his mind, having taken in besides also the beauty of the evangelical instruction, so that he is doubly enriched, in the knowledge both of the ancient and of the new laws.

Therefore our Lord Jesus Christ, showing that the commandment which comes from Him is better than the ancient one, and that to those who lived their lives under the Law the saving proclamation was still, as it were, untrodden ground, when He was about to ascend into the heavens, laid down beforehand, as a foundation and groundwork of every good thing, the law of love — of love, however, not that which is according to the Law, but that which is above the Law.

For this reason He says: 'A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another.'

Then how, tell me, might someone perhaps say, has He called this commandment new, when He who spoke through Moses said to those of old: 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself'? For behold, behold, having set before the others and placed first, as was fitting, the love toward God, He brought in as its neighbour the love toward one another, and yoked, as it were, to the love toward God the love toward our own selves — inasmuch as not even the love toward God would be rightly ordered otherwise, unless there attended it also that which is owed to one's neighbour.

For we are all brethren of one another.

And indeed the most wise John, both knowing this most excellently and teaching others, says: 'He who loves his brother loves God.'

How then is it a new commandment through Christ, seeing that it was proclaimed in the ancient laws? But observe for me the precision, behold the addition.

For He was not content to say 'A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another,' but, showing the newness of the word, and that His own love has something far greater than that ancient love — I mean the love toward one another — He immediately added: 'Even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.'

We must therefore search, in order clearly to understand the force of what has been said, how Christ loved us.

For then, yes then, and very easily, we would discern the new and altered character of the commandment now given.

Therefore, 'being in the form of God, He counted it not a thing to be grasped to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.' Nay, and 'being rich, He became poor,' as again Paul has testified to us.

Do you see the newness of the love toward us? For the Law commanded that a man ought to love his brother as himself;

but our Lord Jesus Christ loved us more than Himself.

For He would not, being in the form and equality of God and the Father, have come down to our lowliness, nor would He have submitted to so bitter a death of the flesh on our behalf, nor would He have endured the Jewish buffetings, the shame and mockery and all the rest — lest, by enumerating each of the things done to Him, we stretch the discourse to no end;

nor, being rich, would He have become poor, unless He had loved us exceedingly, more than Himself.

Strange, then, is the measure of this love.

...wealth, but being not even reluctant, if need be, to go down even to the very death of the flesh, that we may gain the salvation of our neighbour;

which indeed also the blessed disciples of our Saviour did, and those who followed in their footsteps — and, better still,

reckoning the salvation of others of more worth than their own life, and enduring every toil, and coming into the uttermost evils, that they might rescue the souls of those who were perishing.

And indeed Paul says at one time, 'I die daily,' and at another again, 'Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I am not inflamed?' Therefore the Saviour enjoined us to practise the love that is above the Law, as the root of the most perfect piety toward God;

for in this way, and in no other, He knew that we should be most approved before God, and, tracking out the beauty of the love which He has planted in us, should come to be established in great and perfect good things.

'By this shall all know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.'

He says: You shall inscribe upon your own heads a mark unassailable and beyond dispute — that you have been made My disciples — if you press on to walk in the footsteps of My way of life, so far as is possible to your nature and to the measures of humanity, so as to hold the bond of love toward one another unbroken, and to be well fitted together in one another, according, that is, to the principle of mutual affection and the incomparable boast that springs from tender love;

for this will accurately mark out for us the glory of the Teacher.

And most rightly indeed, good sir, shall we say, will you frame the discourse that follows upon these things.

For the fruit of the supreme Essence is that which belongs to it properly and in the strict sense.

But it is possible, upon careful examination, to perceive that every kind of virtue is a fulfilment of love, and that everything which might seem to be a good rightly performed somehow looks toward it and is turned toward it.

For this reason the pre-eminent and first commandment according to the Law is to love the Lord your God with all your soul and with all your heart and with all your mind;

and the second, sister and neighbour to that one, is the love toward one's neighbour, which contains the whole fulfilment of the Law.

And indeed the divinely-inspired Paul, gathering every commandment into a summary unto this, writes: 'For this, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not swear falsely, and if there be any other commandment, it is summed up in this word, in the You shall love your neighbour as yourself.'

Love, therefore, is the fulfilment of the Law. And that within its own bounds it has made the form of every virtue, and, taking hold of the good things as with an embrace, holds them together, Paul himself again, the most wise, will bear witness, crying aloud: 'Love vaunts not itself, is not puffed up, does not behave unseemly, seeks not its own,' and the things joined to these;

for it would be a long thing to tell the measure of love.

Moreover, I say that it especially befits and inheres in those who have chosen to love, in that they have become disciples of Christ, to be recognized everywhere by this — to be adorned with the crown of love, and to bear mutual affection as, so to speak, a seal of the matter;

and for what reason, this also I say in few words.

For if one of us should take up the coppersmith's craft, or that of the weaver, would he not be seen, and that most plainly, to have become the disciple of some coppersmith or weaver? And what of the man not without experience in carpentry? Would he not on this account proclaim that he is able to accomplish well the things of the craft, because he had for his guide a carpenter skilled in the art? By the same reasoning, I think, those who have within themselves the power of the God-loving love brought to fulness will without effort make it known that they have become disciples of love — that is, of Christ, who possesses love in the highest degree;

and that He laid down His very life on His own behalf, and endured the savagery of the Jewish outrages;

and He will testify, Himself saying to His own disciples that 'Greater love has no man than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.' For since God is love, according to the voice of John, being the Son of love — that is, of the God who is by nature and alone and true — He too has been manifested as love, holding His dignity not as one exercised in words and made brilliant through the pomp of phrases, but in very works and deeds, having shown Himself to be the fruit of the essence of Him who begot Him.

For we shall in no way suppose that the Essence which is above all others is receptive of good things, nor shall we say that in it the form of all good things is acquired from without, as in us, nor yet as something that happens to be conceived as one thing in another, in the way one might speak of the knowledge of some subject in a man;

for a man is not knowledge in himself, but rather receptive of knowledge;

but that very All-Good, whatever it is believed to be, this we affirm the divine and ineffable Nature properly to be, having in itself, as a kind of fountain, every form of virtue, and welling it forth out of itself.

Most reasonably, then, He Himself will be the fruit of love, being Himself also love, according as the Son is from the Father whose He is; and it is chiefly through love that He will be imprinted upon our souls, and He engraves upon the good the tokens of kinship with Himself — namely, to cling fast to mutual affection.

Besides, if, according to the voice of Paul, Christ is our peace;

for in Him all things were joined together, the things below with the things above, and through Him we were reconciled to God and the Father, though at the beginning we practised much apostasy through our running off into evil, and were once divided into two peoples, into the Gentiles and Israel — in Him we were created into one new man;

for the middle wall of partition has been broken down, and the power of the enmity has been abolished, the Law having been silenced by evangelical decrees;

how then could they be known to have become disciples of peace, who do not have peace toward one another? For what else, perhaps, would the tearing apart of love be, than the birth of war, and the overthrow of peace, and the origin of all double-mindedness? For just as, in the unbreakable bond of love, the good things that come from peace are preserved for us;

in the same way, I think, in the severing of love, the evil that comes from war creeps in.

And what follows from this? Insults and contentions and jealousies and angers and wraths and whisperings and slanders and envyings and every form of baseness come to light.

Since, therefore, every virtue is summed up and fulfilled in the form and manner of love, let no one among us think highly of himself for fastings and sleeping on the ground, or for any other of the toils that come from ascetic discipline, if he does not well preserve the love toward his brother.

For he is carried outside the turning-post of the goal, after the manner of the more unlearned charioteers, and he goes astray like a helmsman who indeed holds the rudder of the ship, but, through ignorance, has not kept safe the mark set before him for the voyage.

For this reason, he too who ventured to say, 'Since you seek a proof of Christ speaking in me?' — I mean the divinely-inspired Paul — took pride not simply in pressing on, but in doing this according to the mark;

for to glory, I think, in bodily labours, while falling away from the more capital and more necessary good things — that is, not to press on according to the mark.

And he knew in this way that love lies upon all the virtues like a kind of crowning ornament, so that, having contended most beautifully concerning it, he says: 'Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, I profit nothing;

though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.' The boast of love, therefore, is a face and image within us of the Saviour Christ.

According to what is fitting, as the saying holds, bringing in a most fervent eagerness for needing to follow Christ.

And in this the rank of the disciples is worthy of admiration.

For no one, surely, would say that, while the others understood, the one set in first place alone happened to be ignorant, and for this reason kept asking.

Rather, they yield to him, as to one holding pre-eminence, the beginning of speech, and the boldness, I mean, that lies in the questioning.

For to speak into the ears of a teacher is not without danger, even for those who seem to be something.

But Peter is no less admirable, being sought out not from shame at seeming to be sluggish in the knowledge of things unknown, but as one running keenly toward the need to be made wise, and having reckoned the profit from love of learning to be better than untimely shame, that in this too he might become a pattern for those after him.

For I think we ought not to let the words of our teachers pass by, if they should not be very clear, in order that we may seem to be some who are very quick-witted and keen of understanding;

but rather we ought to inquire into and knowledgeably dig up, unto profit, what was accepted at the beginning.

For the knowledge of what is profitable is far better than empty conceit of wisdom; and than the seeming to know something thoroughly, to learn truly would be the better thing.

'Jesus answered him: Where I go, you cannot now follow Me, but you shall follow afterward.'

Knowing that He would implant in His own disciples a grief heavy and hard to bear if He said openly that He would indeed ascend into the heavens, but would leave them upon the earth bereft of His presence — even though He would again be with them as God — He, in view of the present, makes use of the word guardedly, gently stealing away from their mind the exactness of the meaning.

And indeed, seeing that they did not understand, He allows them to remain in that very state.

For it is not without practice for the wise at times to overshadow with weightier words the things that are wont to cause grief.

For even though, most of all, bringing Himself up to God and the Father as a firstfruits of humanity, He was setting out on the journey to the upper region and to the heavens, and the thing being done was for the benefit of all;

For He inaugurated for us a way which human nature did not know before.