約翰福音註釋 第 1 章 第 67/94 段

And what then, most excellent sirs, do we say, when Philip said: 'Lord, show us the Father'—did not Christ, setting all the holy apostles as an exact image and likeness of the One conceived of, say: 'Have I been so long time with you, and hast thou not known the Father?' Nay, He admits none of the others together with Himself, but setting Himself alone beside the Father alone, as though our things run past as very small indeed, and not wishing that the divine essence should be accurately imaged in these things, He has reserved to Himself alone the likeness that reaches to its very summit.

For 'he that hath seen Me,' He says, 'hath seen the Father.'

Then straightway He added to these words: 'Believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me.' For where He is unvaryingly like in respect of the likeness that reaches to the utmost, how would He not thenceforth have the Father within Himself, and be held, as it were, by the Father? For consider some such thing, and receive it as a proof of what has been said.

For if someone were to bring into the midst a child, say of Abraham or of some other man, and then were to inquire about the nature of the one who begot it, and wished to learn who altogether and of what sort the father might be, would not the child reasonably have spoken—or rather, would it not have displayed its own nature, saying: 'He that hath seen me hath seen the father'?

But rather to bring forward, from among the works proper to Him, the demonstration of their identity.

Why then do those who pervert what is rightly held persuade their own disciples not to walk the straight path of these doctrines, but, having thrust them from the royal and well-trodden way, coming by the untrodden and rugged road, have unawares both perished themselves and crushed those who think they must follow them? But we, not coming by this road, will walk the straight and direct one, and, being persuaded by the sacred writings, believe that the Son begotten of Him by nature is equal in power and of one substance with God and the Father, and is His image, and that for this reason He Himself is in the Father, and the Father in Himself.

'Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.'

The discourse would indeed be long and profound, if one thinks it right to extend it to the full breadth of the doctrines here set forth.

But, considering what is more profitable for our hearers, we shall deem it fitting to grasp only the essential meanings, cutting short the great length of the discourse.

For thus especially would the doctrine be readily received by the many.

Wishing therefore to show that He is of one substance with His own Begetter, and that He is His impress—borne as in an archetype in the Father, yet having within Himself the archetype, as an impress naturally and substantially, and not according to some fashioning conceived of in the moulding of a form;

for the Divine is above all shapes, since it is also incorporeal;

'I,' He says, 'am in the Father, and the Father in Me.' But in order that we may not seek the equality of the likeness and the exact conformity in any other way than from those prerogatives alone which belong to Him by nature;

for from thence it was possible to behold the likeness as substantial and natural.

'But if not,' He says, 'believe Me for the very works' sake.'

For He deemed it very rightly that if anyone should behold Him at all shining forth in achievements equal to those of God and the Father, he would truly receive Him as the natural impress and image of His essence.

For that which is not of God by nature could never do things equal to God's; nor could it ever belong to any of the created things to be able at any time to work wonders in equal measure with the divine nature.

For utterly untrodden and untouchable to those who have been called out of non-being into being are the good things that belong properly to the One who ever is.

And that the word of the Saviour will be altogether above reproach, at least among the right-minded, it was likely that none would anywhere doubt.

Nevertheless, that even what is rightly spoken would become to those who hold the contrary opinions an occasion and pretext for heterodox teaching, He, as God, was not ignorant.

Therefore, in order that no room for shameless babbling might in these matters be left to those who pervert what is right, nor that they might say that the Son became the worker of the miracles not from the strength that is in Him, nor from His own power, but because He had within Himself the Father working the works—even as He Himself said and affirmed—the Lord has of necessity provided a remedy by the addition of these thoughts.

For He promises that He Himself will be, in these matters, the supplier to those who believe on Him of whatever things they may wish to ask; and He promises to supply them not only such great power and authority, but that in abundant measure.

'For greater things,' He says, 'than those which I have done shall he do.'

You see, then, how usefully He checks the boldness of the adversaries, and in a manner reins back those who come, by their refutations, against the rocks. For someone will say to them: O foolish and blind, having supposed that the Son could accomplish nothing of Himself, but rather that the power and authority over all things wondrously wrought had been supplied to Him by the Father—

how does He promise that He will give to those who believe on Him the power to accomplish even greater things? How shall another accomplish what He Himself has not done, having borrowed the power from Him? For observe how He has not said in these words that the Father will supply power to those who believe, but: 'Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, I will do.'

How could He Himself have been supplied with the ability by another? Therefore the doctrines of those men are utter nonsense and idle drivel and inventions of a devilish perversity.

But no one could ever behold the power of the Son as limited, nor as reaching to some of the things that are while not sufficing for those that are still greater; rather, as easily doing as many things as He may wish, and graciously granting to the worthy to glory in seats perhaps equal to, or even surpassing, those of others.

And let no one suppose that we mean that the power will ever belong to any of those who have honoured faith in Him, to create heaven, or to display the sun and moon, or the resplendent choir of the stars, or perhaps to make angels, or the earth, or the things in it.

For the aim of the discourse is not directed to these things, but is stretched toward those things which were likely, and does not overrun the measure of the splendour befitting man—in glory, I mean, and in sanctification.

For on this account, checking as it were the course of the discourse toward whatever anyone might wish, and setting the magnitude of the still greater things over against those things alone which were wondrously wrought by Him upon the earth when He became man, He says: 'The things that I have done shall he do, and greater things than these.'

For it was not because He was too feeble for the greater things that He set His own power to a halt at the things accomplished; rather, having accomplished the things that were needful and as many as the occasion perhaps brought forth into the midst, He usefully teaches, through the words spoken, that it is not merely to those things that the inconceivable magnitude of the authority within Him is able to reach.

But, in order that, keeping the order of the things set before us, we may fix the mind of the hearers upon the contemplation of the text: 'Verily,' He says, 'I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father.'

Then what does this mean—so one of the more reasonable hearers might say—this saying that the Son goes to the Father, with a view to the believers on Him being able to accomplish even the greater things than those displayed by Him? Surely, then, the saying introduces some hidden contemplation.

What then is it that He means? Receive Him as saying perhaps thus: O ministers of My words and genuine disciples, so long as I made My sojournings with you upon the earth, I conducted Myself as a man, and did not display to you the unmingled authority of the Godhead;

I both spoke and acted in a manner fittingly suited to the measure of the abasement and to the form of a servant.

But since henceforth those things have been duly accomplished, and the mystery of the dispensation with the flesh has been fulfilled by Me;

for very soon now I shall suffer death, and shall be raised;

and I promise to grant unto you also to be able to fulfil even the greater things than the miracles wrought through Me, the season being still present and the bounteous liberality for these things.

For I go to the Father, to sit in council with Him, that is, and to reign together with Him, as God from God, with unveiled power and authority.

It belongs to My own nature to give good things to My true ones.

Whatsoever ye shall ask, He says, in My name, that will I do, the season having been fulfilled during which it was necessary, He says, to appear in the form of abasement.

I have kept what was befitting, for the sake of the dispensation;

but now henceforth I promise to work the things of God unveiledly as God—not thrusting the Father out of glory so befitting God, but that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

For when the Offspring is glorified, altogether in Him also shall be glorified the One who begat Him.

For the Son, being God by nature, has been made manifest through many other things as well;

and no less also through His receiving the prayers of the saints, and supplying to them whatever they might ask and wish.

How then would the Father not be glorified in Him? For just as He would reasonably have been reproached, had the Offspring that came forth from Him not been God by nature;

so shall He be exceedingly full of glory, having a true God, even the fruit that came forth from His essence, who is able to do all things and at once also to grant them graciously to others.

What manner of reasoning shall deliver from punishment the heretic, who has not feared in many ways to belittle Him with shameless blasphemies? But I will say beside these things yet another, which contends not moderately, as I think, against their ignorance.

For if we pray to the Son and seek from Him our requests, and He Himself promises to give, how would He not be God by nature and begotten of God who is God by nature? For if they do not suppose Him to be thus, but say that He is created, in what respect shall we still differ from those who call upon the sun, or the heaven, or some other one of the creatures? For if, exceedingly maliciously, being ashamed of the ugliness of their own irrationality, they say that He is a creature on a par with the other creatures, yet possesses some incomparable pre-eminence over all—

yet let them know that they no less outrage the glory of the Father—that is, the Son—so long as they say that He is to be numbered among the things that have been made.

For the question is not whether He is perchance a great or a small thing made, but whether He is at all created, and rather not God by nature—which He indeed is, and it is the truth.

'If ye shall ask anything in My name, that will I do.'

Openly and without disguise He now says that, being true God, He will receive most readily the prayers of His own, and will supply most eagerly whatever they may wish to receive—spiritual gifts, that is, and worthy of the liberality from above.

And He says such things not as a minister of another's love toward man, nor yet as a servant of another's gentleness, but as having all things in authority together with the Father, and being Himself the One through whom are all things—both from us unto God, and unto us from Him.

For this reason Paul also ever prays for the supplies of good things to be joined together for the worthy, saying: 'Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' And no one having sense will again suppose that the Father gives some grace separately, and separately again, as it were by turns, the Son;

but it is one and the same, even if it is said to be through both.

Nevertheless, all things are wrought by the Father through the Son for those who are worthy, and the distribution of the divine gifts is likewise accomplished — the Son being taken up, not in the rank of a subordinate, as we have said, but as one who is understood, and who truly is, a fellow-giver and fellow-bestower.

For the nature of the Godhead is one, and is so believed.

For though it be extended into Father and Son and into the Holy Spirit, yet it does not admit of any utter and complete rending asunder — I mean the rending into each of the persons signified.

For we shall be rightly minded if we hold that the Son is from the Father and is naturally in the Father, and out of Him and in Him, and that the Spirit which is proper both to Him and to the Son — that is, the Holy Spirit — is likewise so related.

Since therefore the Godhead according to nature is one and is so understood, through the Son from the Father in the Spirit shall the gifts be bestowed upon the worthy, and our offerings shall be borne up to God — the Son plainly acting as mediator.

For no one comes to the Father except through Him, as indeed He Himself has plainly confessed.

The Son therefore has become, and is, the door and the way of friendship with, and of access to, God the Father; and He is the fellow-giver and distributor of the gift that comes from Himself, as proceeding from one and common bounty.

For the nature of the Godhead is one, in the person and hypostasis of Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

But since it was somehow unfamiliar to the men of former times, and as yet unpractised, to draw near to the Father through the Son, He usefully teaches this also; and, as it were, laying beforehand among His own disciples a certain foundation for the matter, together with faith and instruction concerning it, He transmits to us as well both the manner of prayer and the declaration of hope.

For He Himself promises to grant us the things asked in prayer — a proof of His Godhead according to nature and of the kingly authority that dwells in Him — adding this also to the rest.

If you love Me, keep My commandments.

It being the custom of those who love to find fault to utter unholy slanders.

For it is possible to see, especially from the sacred writings themselves, that some do come forward and make petition in His name, yet by no means receive; for God, who is not ignorant of what befits each man and of what is profitable to those who ask, does not grant it.

Therefore, in order that our Lord Jesus Christ might clearly show to whom His word was and is addressed, and to whom the grace of the promise is owed — that it may truly come to pass — He at once brought forward the character of those who love, and yokes to His word the exact keeper of the law, showing that it is to them and to no others that the promise of His gentleness and the bestowal of spiritual goods through Him shall hold good and come to pass.

For that the bountiful hand of God is often withdrawn in reluctance, shutting off from those who wish to ask amiss the fulfillment of the things hoped for, you will easily understand from what Christ's disciple sets forth, writing thus: You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it upon your pleasures. Wherefore again, concerning those who are wont to be double-minded, he says: For let not that man think that he shall receive anything from the Lord.

For a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. For to those who ask, not for the accomplishment of virtue by the grace from above, but for the enjoyment of fleshly pleasure and worldly desires, God well-nigh stops His ear, and grants absolutely nothing.

For the things which He rejects and casts away because of the loathsomeness that is in them — how should He bestow them on any? And how should the fount of all sweetness itself pour forth a bitter stream? But that to those who love the spiritual gifts He distributes good things with a rich and most ready hand, you will easily perceive when you hear Him saying to them, through the prophet Isaiah: While you are yet speaking I will say, What is it? and through the voice of the psalmist: For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears unto their supplication. Having therefore determined and expressly said that to those who love Him there is owed, and shall wholly belong, the delighting in the good things from above — plainly bestowed through Him by the Father — He at once inscribes also the power of love, and how we should practise it, teaching most excellently and blamelessly, for our profit.

For if anyone should say that he loves God, he will not by any means thereby carry off the reputation of truly loving; since the power of virtue does not lie in bare word, nor is the beauty of piety toward God shaped in naked utterances, but rather it is discerned exceedingly well from good results and from a mind willing to hear; and the keeping of the divine commandments most excellently portrays love toward the Divine, and sets forth a virtue wholly living and true — one not merely sketched in the sounds from the tongue, as we have said, but shining forth as with splendid colours in the forms of works, and blazing out in full.

And so our Lord Jesus Christ, plainly showing this to us, says: Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. For faith is proved not in idle flatteries of words, but in the qualities of deeds done.

And so the divine Scripture says that this faith, when works do not accompany it, is dead.

For to know, he says, that God is one, we shall find not only in human minds, but even in the very unclean demons themselves, which both shudder at, and yet unwillingly acknowledge, the power of Him who made them.

But to make the brightness that comes from deeds run together with faith would be seen as fitting and shining forth in those alone who truly love God.

Therefore the proof of love and the most perfect definition of faith is the keeping of the evangelical doctrines and the guarding of the divine commandments.

And perhaps it would not be difficult to say other things besides these, having a kindred sense; save that I think it is not for the present occasion.

Wherefore let us again betake ourselves to what is more befitting the subjects before us: If you love Me, He says, you will keep My commandments.

Conversing with His own disciples, or even with the Jews themselves, He used to say: The words which I speak are not Mine, but His who sent Me. And again: Of Myself I speak not, but the Father who sent Me, He has given Me commandment what I should say and what I should speak. And again: The things therefore which I speak are not Mine, but His who sent Me. But now again, though up and down He has confessed that the words which He made to us belong to God the Father, He says that the things He has spoken to us are His own commandments.

And no one who has understanding will suppose that He speaks falsely.

For may this never enter a Christian's mind!

But He will again speak the truth, inasmuch as He Himself also is the Truth.

For not after the manner of one of the prophets, as in the rank of a minister and servant, did He convey to us the word from the Father, but as having likeness to Him — so that not even in word perchance is He seen to differ, but so is He by nature to speak as the Father Himself might perhaps discourse.

For the invariableness of the substance persuades the Son to say the very same things as the One who begot Him.

But inasmuch as He is Himself the Word and Wisdom and Will of God the Father, He says that He has received commandment what He should say and what He should speak.

Since we ourselves also, each of us, see our own mind well-nigh even giving command to the uttered word, which goes forth by means of words, that it should interpret to the outside the things that are in it.

And small indeed, as compared with God, is the force of the illustration; yet nonetheless, receiving the image found among our own affairs unto the fuller assurance of the things above these, we understand the divine mysteries as in a mirror and in a riddle.

And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it beholds Him not, neither knows Him.

But you know Him, for He abides with you, and shall be in you.

Again He mingles the human with the God-befitting, and neither soars up to the unmixed glory of the Godhead, nor yet wholly lingers within the measures of manhood, but proceeds through both in a paradoxical and, as it were, blended manner, since He is in one and the same both God and man.

For God He was by nature, inasmuch as He is fruit from the Father and the effulgence of His substance;

and man again, inasmuch as He became flesh.

He speaks, therefore, as at once God and man; for thus was it fitting well to preserve, in the dispensation with flesh, words befitting each.

But this we say, searching out the force of the matter before us:

that here too our Lord has of necessity brought in the mention of God the Father, for the building up of faith and for what is exceedingly profitable to the hearers, as indeed the discourse will show as it goes on.

For since He commanded us to ask in His name, and ordained, along with the other things, the manner of prayer that was unfamiliar to the ancients, having most readily promised to give whatever we should wish to receive;

lest through these things He should seem to thrust aside the person of God the Father, or to take away the authority of Him who begot Him — I mean the authority over the bestowals upon the saints — He said that He would usefully be a fellow-bestower and would join in giving to us the Comforter.

The phrase 'I will ask' He again takes up as man, individually ascribing to the whole divine and ineffable nature that which most befits it, as in the person of God the Father.

For this is His custom, as we have already often said before.

He calls the Spirit 'another Comforter,' of the substance of God the Father — or rather of His own.

For one is the account of the substance in both, He not placing it outside, but granting the account of otherness to be understood only in this: that it is and subsists in its own distinct existence.

For the Spirit is not the Son, but truly, being and subsisting in its own proper way as that which it is, we shall receive it in faith;

for it is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son.

But knowing that He Himself also is in truth a comforter, and is so named in the sacred writings, He calls the Spirit 'another Comforter,' not as knowing it to work in the saints anything different from what He Himself would, whose Spirit it both is and is called.

The Son — as John will testify, saying in his own writings: These things I say to you, that you may not sin;

and if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins. He therefore calls the Spirit 'another Comforter,' wishing it to be understood in its own hypostasis, yet as having so great a likeness to Him, and as able to work invariably the very things which He Himself might perhaps work, that it seems to be the Son Himself, and nothing else.

And so He named it the Spirit of truth, since through the foregoing words He declares Himself to be the Truth.

But someone will fittingly say to those who reckon the Son to be alien from the substance of God the Father: And how, tell me, does the Father give the Spirit of truth — that is, the Spirit of the Son — not as something strange or alien, but as His own Spirit, and this though (according to you) He has an account of substance in the Son marked off as distinct, and the Spirit is of the Son? For that it is so is not even a matter of dispute.

And how again, if the Son is of another substance, does He give the Spirit of the Father as His own? For it is written that He breathed on the disciples, saying: Receive the Holy Spirit. Will not someone then think — and very justly, or rather will be firmly persuaded — that the Son, being essentially a partaker of the natural goods of God the Father, has the Spirit in that manner in which the Father too would be understood to have it, not as adventitious nor from without?

For it is silly — or rather insane — to think thus.

But just as each of us contains his own breath within himself, and pours it forth from the innermost parts to the outside,

for this very reason Christ also breathed bodily, showing that just as the breath proceeds bodily from the human mouth, so also from the divine substance there is poured forth, in a manner befitting God, that which is from Him.

Since therefore the Spirit itself is both of God the Father and of the Son, how shall they not in every way have one authority, at once distinctly and conjointly? For the Father is Father and not Son, and the Son is Son and not Father;

yet the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father.

The Father indeed gives the Comforter, that is, the Holy Spirit — not the Father separately and the Son separately — but rather it is bestowed upon the saints from the Father through the Son.

For on this account, when the Father is said to give, it is the Son through whom He gives all things;

and when the Son is said to give, it is the Father out of whom the Son gives all things.

And that the Spirit is divine, and not of another substance — I mean as compared with the Father Himself and the Son — I think is doubtful to none of the right-minded, and a necessary argument will persuade us of it.

For if anyone says that it is not of the substance of God, how could the creation still be a partaker of God when it has received the Spirit? And in what manner shall we be called, and be, temples of God, if we receive a created or alien-born spirit, and not rather that which is from God? And how are the partakers of the Spirit partakers of the divine nature, according to the words of the saints, if it is numbered among things made, and does not rather proceed unto us from the very divine nature — not passing through it unto us as something alien, but, so to speak, becoming in us like a certain quality of the Godhead, dwelling in the saints, and abiding for ever, if by cleansing the eye of their own understanding through all forbearance, and by unrelenting zeal for every virtue, they preserve the grace within themselves?

For Christ says that it is uncontainable and unbeholdable by those in the world — that is, by those who mind the things in the world and have chosen to love the things of earth — but containable and easily seen by the saints.

For what cause? Because those who have an uncleanness hard to wash away, and who have filled their own mind as it were with some rheum, do not survey the beauty of the divine nature, nor yet receive the law of the Spirit, being wholly tyrannized by the passions of the flesh;

receiving thence a reward greatly to be envied.

For He will sanctify them, and will make them accomplishers of all good things together, and will put away the shame of the servitude that befits mere manhood, and will clothe them with the dignity of adoption as sons.

And Paul bears witness, saying: 'And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.' 'I will not leave you orphans; I am coming to you.'

Of necessity our Lord Jesus Christ now also weaves together His discourse concerning the holy and consubstantial Trinity.

For He had already shown before, setting forth for the full assurance of those who love Him both words and deeds, that He both is by nature God and was begotten of God the Father, and is equal in power and equal in mind with Him.

For this reason He also said at one time: 'What I speak, I do not speak from Myself'; and at another again: 'If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me;'

'but if I do them, even though you do not believe Me, believe the works.' But upon these things it was in no small degree necessary that even concerning the Holy Spirit Himself men should receive the glory that is rightly and blamelessly held.

For thus the mind of the hearers was to be wholly directed unto the rightness of faith.