約翰福音註釋 第 1 章 第 83/94 段

And what is the Saviour's aim in saying these things? He was calling upon ourselves the sanctification that is in the Spirit and through the Spirit from the Father, and He wills that what was in us from the first times of our origin and in the beginnings of our being made by God, this should again be rekindled in us.

And we say these things inasmuch as the Only-Begotten mediates and fulfils the person of the Comforter on our behalf before the Father who is in the heavens.

But in order that, freeing our discourse upon this matter also from obscurity, we may render the force of what has been said easy for the hearers to discern, come, let us say a little concerning the first-formed man.

The divinely-inspired Moses, then, said concerning him, that God, taking dust from the earth, formed the man.

Then, bringing the living being to its perfect completion, and teaching how and in what manner it was ensouled, he says: He breathed into his face the breath of life—signifying that the soul was given to the man not apart from the sanctification through the Spirit, nor that it was set up bare or wholly destitute of the divine nature.

For it would never have been seen as according to the highest image, having so lowly an origin, had it not received and obtained by lot the formation through the Spirit as a most beautiful mask, evidently by the will of God.

For since His Spirit is the pure image of the essence of the Only-Begotten—according to what is written through Paul: 'For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son'—those in whom it comes to dwell it renders conformed to the image of the Father, that is, to the Son; and thus all things are led back through the Son, by the Spirit, to the Father from whom He is.

Therefore He asks that the nature of man be renewed and somehow refashioned unto that first image, through participation in the Spirit, so that, having clothed ourselves in that first grace and having recovered the formation unto Him, we may now be found better and mightier than the sin that reigns in this world, and may attend to the love of God alone, being wholly devoted with longing toward every good whatsoever, and having a mind superior to fleshly affection, that we may keep within ourselves the beauty of the implanted image unaltered.

For this is the spiritual life, this is the power of the worship that is in spirit.

The gift—that is, the sanctification through the Spirit and the fellowship of the divine nature—Christ called upon us, as upon the firstfruits of those who receive it, in His own disciples; since indeed the saying is also true, that the labouring husbandman must first partake of the fruits. But that even in this He might be seen to hold the first place—

For it was fitting that He who is the firstborn, being still conceived as among many brethren and among us, on account of His likeness to us, should be seen as having become and existing for us the beginning and the door and the way of every good.

He necessarily added what follows, that is: 'For their sake I sanctify Myself.'

And what has been said is somehow hard to expound and difficult to understand.

But the Word who enlightens all things and reveals deep things out of darkness will make clear to us this mystery also.

To be sanctified, then, is said according to the legal custom, of that which is brought by someone to God as sacred, in the manner of some votive offering or gift; even as, without doubt, is every firstborn that opens the womb among the sons of Israel.

'Sanctify unto Me every firstborn that opens the womb,' He said to the excellent Moses—that is: 'Set apart and assign and enroll it as sacred.'

For surely we do not say, nor would we accept it even if perhaps someone else said it, that God commanded Moses to lay the sanctification that is through the Spirit upon certain persons.

For the measure of created nature does not reach unto being able to accomplish any such thing; but this will befit God alone and be reserved to Him in a special manner.

And indeed, when He willed to appoint the elders together with him, He did not command Moses himself to lay the sanctification upon those who were chosen, but rather said plainly that He would take from the Spirit that was upon him and would give to each of those who were designated.

For the ability to sanctify through participation in the Spirit belongs to that nature alone which rules over all things.

But the sense of being sanctified—clearly, I say, as in the legal custom—Solomon himself will also make most manifest to us, saying: 'It is a snare for a man too hastily to sanctify something of his own, for after making the vow comes repentance.' Since, then, 'to sanctify' is understood according to the custom, in the sense of dedicating and setting apart, we say that the Son sanctified Himself on our behalf.

For He offered Himself as a sacrifice and a holy victim to God the Father, reconciling the world to Him, and gathering into friendship that which had slipped away from it—that is, the human race.

For He Himself is our peace, according to that which is written.

And indeed our restoration unto God could not be conceived as accomplished through Christ who saves us in any other way than through the fellowship and sanctification that is in the Spirit.

For that which binds us together and, as it were, unites us to God is the Holy Spirit, whom indeed having received, we are shown to be partakers and sharers of the divine nature, and we receive the Father Himself through the Son and in the Son.

The wise John therefore writes to us concerning Him: 'By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.' And what besides does Paul add to this? 'Because you are sons,' he says, 'God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father'; so that if it had come to pass that we remained without share in the Spirit, God would not at all have been known to dwell within us, and if we had not been enriched with the Spirit that ranks us among sons, we should not at all have been sons of God.

What kind of taking-up, then, is this, or how could we too have been declared partakers of the divine nature, if neither God were in us, nor we joined to Him, through being called unto participation in the Spirit? But now we are both partakers and sharers of the substance that transcends all things, and are called temples of God.

…to hold fast to the fellowship, that is to say through participation in the Holy Spirit, who transforms us unto righteousness and sanctification and unto the first image.

For if sin separates and divides man from God, righteousness will assuredly join him again, and with nothing intervening will in some way present him to God.

And we have been justified through faith in Christ, who was delivered up for our trespasses, according to that which is written, and was raised for our justification. For the whole nature of man was in Him restored to newness of life, as in a first-fruits of the race, and ascending as it were to its own beginning was refashioned unto sanctification.

'Sanctify them therefore, O Father,' He says, 'in Thy truth,' that is, in Me.

'For Thy word is truth,' that is, again, Myself.

'For I sanctify Myself on their behalf,' that is, I have consecrated and offered Myself, one dying for all, that I may transform them unto newness of life and that they may be sanctified in truth, that is, in Me.

Now that the text before us has been made clear and received into understanding, according to the sense we have just now set forth, we shall not shrink from proceeding through other considerations as well.

For the eager pursuit, in the manner of a hunt, of those thoughts that are not easily grasped would, I think, prove most precious, both to those who wish to do this and to the more diligent among the hearers.

Our Lord Jesus Christ therefore said that He sanctifies Himself on our behalf, that we too may be sanctified in truth.

How then is He sanctified, seeing that by nature He is holy, in order that we too may be sanctified? Come now, once more holding fast to the doctrines of the Church, and not running past the right rule of the faith, let us examine this as well as we may.

We say therefore that the Only-begotten, being God by nature and in the form and equality of God the Father, emptied Himself according to the Scriptures, and became man of a woman, taking upon Himself all that befits man, apart from sin alone, and ineffably uniting Himself to our nature by voluntary will, that He might restore it, first in Himself and through Himself, back to that beauty—I mean the beauty that was in the beginning—and, being found a second Adam for us, that is, a heavenly man, first of all and the first-fruits of those being created anew unto newness of life, that is, in incorruption and righteousness and the sanctification conceived through the Spirit, He might henceforth transmit through Himself the good things to the whole race.

For this reason, although He is Life by nature, He came to be among the dead, that having abolished our death in us, He might refashion us unto His own life.

And He Himself, being the righteousness of God the Father, became sin for our sake.

For according to the voice of the prophet, 'He bears our sins, and was reckoned among the lawless together with us,' that He might justify us through Himself, tearing up the handwriting that was against us and nailing it to His own cross, according to that which is written.

And again, being holy by nature as God, and granting to the whole creation, for its continuance and constitution and sanctification, to have the Holy Spirit by participation, He is sanctified for our sake in the Holy Spirit, no other sanctifying Him, but rather Himself effecting the sanctification of His own flesh.

For He receives His own Spirit, and takes Him inasmuch as He was man, yet gives Him to Himself as God.

And He did this for our sake, not for His own.

…that, the matter having received its beginning from Him and in Him as the first, the grace of being sanctified might thus henceforth pass over to the whole race.

For just as through Adam's transgression and disobedience, our nature, as in a first-fruits of the race, was condemned to death, hearing through the one first man, 'Earth thou art, and unto earth shalt thou return'; in the same way, I think, through the obedience and righteousness of Christ, inasmuch as He became under the law, though as God He is the Lawgiver, the blessing and the quickening through the Spirit would pass through into the whole nature.

For the Spirit transforms unto incorruption that which had been corrupted by sin, and refashions unto newness of life that which had grown old through slothfulness and had passed into destruction.

You will say: How then was He who is holy by nature sanctified, and this by participation? And in what manner does He who gives His own Spirit to all who are worthy to receive it, both those above, I mean, and those on earth, bestow this upon Himself? Such things are indeed very hard to attain and hard to comprehend, and do not have an untroublesome explanation, when you conceive of the Word who shone forth from God as still bare and, as it were, standing apart from the humanity that is being sanctified.

But when you marvel at the incomprehensible union and the coming-together into flesh, and when it falls under your mind that He who is God by nature became man like us, you will no longer be perplexed; and having removed all confusion of your understanding, and having placed before your contemplations the Son as being at once God and man, you will not reckon as things to be rejected those things that befit the humanity, even though they are borne unto the person of the one Son who is by nature—I mean, of Christ.

For shall we suppose that to die is altogether alien to the Word who gives life to all things? But you will say that He suffered this according to the flesh, for the body is capable of receiving death, and on this account He is said to have died.

For His own body died.

The consideration is excellent for you, for you speak rightly.

For indeed in truth, having by the dispensation given over His own body to die for our sake, He again implanted in it His own life, not, that is to say, delivering Himself from the bonds of death, inasmuch as He is understood to be God.

For He sojourned here and became man, not for His own sake.

…but rather making a way, through Himself and in Himself, for human nature—the escape from death and the return to the incorruption that was from the beginning.

Come then, according to the same analogy of what has been said, to the manner of being sanctified.

For do we say at all that the body which is from earth is holy, according to the principle of its own nature, even if it should not receive sanctification from the God who is holy by nature? And how could this be so? For what difference would there any longer be conceived between the earth-born flesh and the substance that is by nature both holy and sanctifying? But if it is true to say that every rational creature, and in a word whatever is called into being and belongs among created things, does not have sanctification as a fruit of its own nature, but borrows the grace, as it were, from Him who is holy by nature, how would it not be among the most absurd things to conceive the flesh as having no need of the God whose nature it is to sanctify all things? Since therefore the flesh is not holy of itself, on this account it was sanctified also in Christ, the Word who dwelt in it sanctifying His own temple through the Holy Spirit, and transforming it unto the energy of His own nature.

For on this account the body of Christ is understood to be holy and sanctifying, inasmuch as, just as I was saying a moment ago, it has become a temple of the Word who was bodily united to it, as Paul says.

For this reason the Holy Spirit descends upon Him from heaven in the form of a dove.

And the wise John bore witness to this, saying so.

That we may again know that, as in a first-fruits of the nature being renewed, in Christ as the first, the Spirit descended, inasmuch as He appeared as man, receptive of being sanctified.

And we by no means say again that Christ, according to the flesh, then became holy when the Baptist beheld the Spirit descending.

For He was holy even in the embryo and in the womb.

And indeed it was said to the blessed Virgin: 'The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee.' But the sight was given to the Baptist for a sign.

We reckon nonetheless, all the same, that the flesh was sanctified through the Spirit, after the likeness of the rest of creation, the Word who is holy by nature and is of the Father anointing His own temple in it.

For He works in no other way than through the Son.

And everything that the Son may do is referred back to the Father from whom He is.

For the Father is, as it were, a kind of root and fountain of His own Offspring.

The Scriptures call Him Father, although He is God by nature.

But I think that one might rightly and justly attribute these things to the needs of the humanity and to the condition that befits us, and would not err from what is fitting.

Just as therefore He died according to the flesh for our sake, as man, though by nature He exists as God;

and just as, being ranked among created things and placed under the yoke for the sake of the humanity, though He is Lord of all, He calls the Father His own God;

so He affirms that He sanctifies Himself for our sake, that when the matter has run over into us as well, as in a first-fruits of the nature being renewed, we too in Him may be sanctified in truth, that is, in the Holy Spirit.

For the Spirit is the truth, according to the voice of John.

For His Spirit is not other than the Son, according to the principle of essence, inasmuch as He both exists in Him and proceeds through Him.

And He says that He was sent into the world, although before the incarnation He was in it.

For He was in the world, even though the world knew Him not, according to that which is written, signifying that the manner of the sending came to pass in no other way than that He was anointed with the Holy Spirit, inasmuch as He became man and appeared as the Angel of the Great Counsel, after the likeness of a prophetic ministry.

And saying that in imitation of Himself He appointed the disciples and that they were sent forth from Him to proclaim to the world the evangelical and heavenly preaching, He says that they of necessity have need of being sanctified in truth, that they may also be able most excellently and vigorously to run through the course of their own apostleship.

That the Son is by nature one with His own Father, God, and He Himself is in the Father, and the Father in Him, according to the essential bond and manner of the unity;

and likewise we ourselves also, having received the faith in Him, are shown to be one both toward one another and toward God, bodily and spiritually.

'And I ask not concerning these only, but also concerning those who believe in Me through their word, that all may be one, even as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.'

As a first-fruits, then, of those being created anew unto newness of life, Christ appeared, and He Himself is the first heavenly man.

For according to the voice of Paul, 'the second Adam is the Lord from heaven'; on this account He also said, 'And no one has ascended into heaven, except He who descended out of heaven, the Son of Man.' And near to the first-fruits, and far more than the others neighbours to Him, were the first chosen unto discipleship, who obtained the dignity of following, and who became eye-witnesses and beholders of His glory, ever waiting upon Him and living together with Him and gathering into their own souls the first-fruits of the benefit.

They therefore were, and are, after the Head that is over all things and above all, the honourable and more noteworthy members of the body of the Church.

And indeed He asks that upon them the blessing and sanctification through the Spirit be sent down from His own Father, yet altogether through Himself.

For it could not be otherwise, seeing that He Himself is the living and true and all-working and effective Wisdom and Power of Him who begat Him.

But lest any of those who have not practised listening to the God-inspired Scripture with sufficient fairness should lightly suppose that the descent of the divine Spirit was called down upon the disciples alone, and nothing concerning us who came after them, that is, in the first times, He who is Mediator of God and men, the Paraclete and High Priest of our souls, of necessity checking beforehand the senseless suspicions of such persons, added to what had been said that which lies before us, that is: 'And I ask not concerning these only, but also concerning those who believe in Me through their word.'

For it would have been somehow absurd that through one, the first, I mean Adam, condemnation should pass through unto all, and that even those who had not sinned should bear the most inglorious image of the man of dust—clearly at that time in which the forefather slipped from the commandment given to him;

…and yet, when the heavenly man appeared, that all those called through Him unto righteousness should not again take on His image—clearly, the righteousness that is through faith—this would be absurd.

And just as we say that the most unlovely image of the man of dust is seen through types and a form of such a kind, which has both the defilement of sin, and the weakness of death and corruption, and the uncleanness of fleshly pleasure-loving and of an earthly mind;

so again, on the other hand, we think that the image of the heavenly One, that is, of Christ, is distinguished by purity and sincerity, by the incorruption in every respect whatsoever, and by life and sanctification.

But it was in no other way possible for us, who had once fallen away through the transgression in the first man, to be brought back unto the beauty that was from the beginning, unless we had obtained the ineffable fellowship and the union with God.

For in this way also, in the beginning, was the nature of the things upon the earth set in order.

But union with God cannot come to any in any other way than through partaking of the Holy Spirit, who implants in us the sanctification proper to His own nature, and refashions unto His own life the nature that had fallen under corruption, and thus leads back to God and to His likeness that which had been stripped of the glory belonging to this state.

For the Son is the pure and unalloyed Image of the Father, and the Spirit is the natural likeness of the Son.

Therefore, transforming as it were into itself the souls of men, it engraves upon them the divine impress, and marks them with the imprint of the Essence that is highest of all.

Our Lord Jesus Christ therefore makes His request, not on behalf of the twelve disciples alone, but rather concerning all who in each successive age were destined to yield and be persuaded by the words that had come from them—words that whet the hearers toward the reception of sanctification which is through faith, and toward the purification wrought through participation in the Spirit.

And He deemed it right not to leave the matter of the request obscure even to us ourselves,

so that through this we might learn what manner of persons we ought to appear, and what path of righteousness we should walk in order to fulfil the things that are pleasing to Him.

What then, or of what kind, is the manner of the request? 'That they may be one,' He says, 'even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us.'

He therefore requires a bond of love, of concord, and of peace, gathering those who believe into spiritual unity, so that, in the manner of the natural and essential unity—that, plainly, which is conceived to exist between Father and Son—they may imitate its characteristics, namely, their coming together into unity through an agreement in all things and through undivided oneness of soul.

And surely the bond of love among us and the power of concord will not contend so as to hold in altogether unaltered fashion, in the very manner in which the Father and the Son are, who preserve the mode of unity in the identity of essence.

For the one is conceived as natural and true, and is contemplated in the very account of its being;

but the other merely imitates the outward form of the true unity.

For how could the copies be entirely on a par with the archetypes? Since the resemblance is not the same, in respect of conception, as the truth itself of the truth.

Yet in equal forms they are seen, though nevertheless they stand apart by differences that are not chanced upon idly.

Whenever, therefore, one of the heterodox supposes that he is able to overturn the natural identity of the Son with God the Father, and the unity that flows therefrom, and then, for the demonstration and buttressing of his own ill counsel, brings forward our own case, saying: 'Just as we all are one, not by an identity of bodies conceived as into one, nor yet by a mingling of souls into one another, but by relation and disposition according to love, by unanimity of purpose and by consent unto the will of God—so also is the Son one with the Father';

we shall assuredly thrust him aside as being wholly unlearned and utterly witless.

And for what reason? Because the things that are above us will by no means follow after the things that pertain to us; nor will the incorporeal submit to the necessity of bodies, nor will the things of God accompany human things.

For if there is nothing at all that separates or wholly divides us and God into difference, then let the things concerning God also be conceived after our own manner;

but it is found—what?—that they set the deficiencies of our nature as a rule and standard for God, subjecting the nature that is superior to all necessity to necessities drawn from what is impossible for us; and would they not further be caught doing a thing absurd and utterly unreasonable? For from things of like stamp they shape the archetypes, and from a likeness that is by imitation they fashion the truth;

honouring by the second things those that hold the first rank, while transferring to the second things that come after the estimation due to the first.

But, lest by tarrying too long in discourses about these matters we should seem to go somewhere outside the subject before us, that point again we shall of necessity state: that Christ, taking essential unity—the unity which the Father has toward Him, and which He in turn has toward the Father—as an image and type of the indissoluble friendship, concord, and unity that is conceived in oneness of soul,

He wills that we too should in a certain manner be mingled with one another—plainly by the power of the Holy and consubstantial Trinity—so that the whole body of the Church may be conceived as one, ascending through the coming-together and concurrence of the two peoples into the constitution of one perfect man in Christ.

For as Paul says: 'For He is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition, the enmity, in His flesh, having abolished the law of commandments contained in ordinances; that He might create in Himself of the two one new man, so making peace; and that He might reconcile both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.' And this indeed has been accomplished, when those who believed in Christ became of one soul with one another and took, as it were, a single heart, through their complete conformity in godliness and through the obedience of faith and a virtue-loving mind.

And these things, for my part, I consider not to be off the mark of what is fitting, but rather to have been fittingly spoken now.

But since the force of the matters before us in a manner compels us to enter within deeper considerations, and the Saviour especially whets us on, having said: 'As Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us,'

we must very carefully survey what kind of account it is fitting for us to render concerning these things as well.

For in what has already been passed over, we said, not without understanding, that the unity of believers according to concord and oneness of soul ought to imitate the mode of the divine unity, the essential identity of the Holy Trinity, and its utterly complete interweaving;

but in what now follows we are already in some way eager to show also a natural unity, according to which both we are bound to one another and all are bound to God—not falling short, perhaps, even of the unity that is according to the body, I mean the unity toward one another, even though we are held apart by the difference of bodies, each of us withdrawing, as it were, into his own circumscription and hypostasis.

For Peter would not be, nor perhaps be called, Paul, nor Paul again be Peter, even though both are conceived as one by the mode of the union that is through Christ.

Since, therefore, the natural unity is confessed in the case of the Father and the Son—and plainly also of the Holy Spirit—

for one Godhead is believed and glorified in the Holy Trinity—

come now, let us again consider in what manner we ourselves also, both toward one another are found to be one, bodily and spiritually, and toward God.

The Only-begotten, therefore, having shone forth to us from the very essence of God the Father, and having wholly the One who begot Him in His own nature, became flesh, according to the Scriptures, mingling Himself as it were with our nature through the ineffable coming-together and union with this body which is from the earth; and thus He who is by nature God has been named, and has truly become, a heavenly man—not a God-bearer, as certain of those who did not accurately understand the depth of the mystery would have it—

but being in one and the same both God and man, in order that, having united in Himself as it were the things widely distinguished according to nature and standing apart from mutual kinship, He might show man to be a partner and partaker of the divine nature.

He is conceived after our manner—that is, as man—being anointed and sanctified, even though He is by nature God, inasmuch as He appeared from the Father, Himself sanctifying by His own Spirit His own temple and all the creation that came to be through Him, in the manner in which it would befit each to be sanctified.

Thus, then, the mystery in Christ became as it were a beginning and a way for us also to partake of the Holy Spirit and of union with God;

for we all are sanctified in Him, according to the manner already spoken of before.