On the Trinity 28

I will further add that passage too, in which, while the heretic rejoices as if in some eye of his own truth and light, which he has in fact lost, he may recognize the whole blindness of his error. For again and again he objects that it was said, “Have I been with you so long, and you do not know me? Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Father also.” But let him learn what he does not understand. Philip is blamed, and rightly and deservedly, for having said, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” For when had he heard or learned from Christ that Christ was the Father? On the contrary, he had often heard and often learned rather that he was the Son, not the Father. For when the Lord said, “If you have known me, you have known my Father too, and from now on you know him and have seen him,” he had not said this in order to be understood as the Father himself; but because whoever has approached the Son of God deeply and fully, with all faith and all devotion, will in every way come to the Father through the Son in whom he so believes, and will see him. “For no one,” he says, “can come to the Father except through me.” And therefore he will not only come to God the Father and know the Father himself, but he ought also to hold it so, and so to take it for granted in heart and mind, as if he had already known and seen the Father.

For the divine Scripture often announces things not yet done as done, because they are going to be so; and things that are certainly to happen it does not foretell as future but narrates as done. Thus, when in the times of the prophet Isaiah Christ had not yet been born, he said, “For a child has been born to us”; and when there had not yet been an approach to Mary, he said, “And I went in to the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son.” And when Christ had not yet made known the bosom of the Father, he declared, “And his name will be called the Angel of great counsel.” And when he had not yet suffered, he proclaimed, “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter.” And when the cross as yet was nowhere, he said, “All day long I have stretched out my hands to an unbelieving people.” And when he had not yet been given drink with insult, he said, “In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” And when he had not yet been stripped, he said, “For my clothing they cast lots; and they counted my bones; they dug through my hands and feet.” For the divine Scripture, foreseeing, speaks as done of what it knows will be, and speaks as completed of what it holds as future, which will come without doubt. And therefore the Lord said in the present passage, “From now on you know him, and have seen him.” For he was saying that the Father would be seen by whoever had followed the Son; not as though the Son himself were the Father who was seen, but because whoever chose to follow him and be his disciple would obtain as a reward the power to see the Father. For he is also the image of God the Father; and to this is added that as the Father works, so the Son also works. And the Son is the imitator of all the Father's works, so that each one may hold himself as though he had already seen the Father, since he sees him who in all his works always imitates the invisible Father.

But if Christ is himself the Father, how does he at once add and say, “Whoever believes in me will himself do the works that I do, and will do greater than these, because I go to the Father”? And he further joins on: “If you love me, keep my commandments; and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate.” After this he also joins on: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” He also added this: “But that Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send, will teach you and remind you of all that I have said.” He further puts forward this passage, to show that he is the Son, and rightly adds and says: “If you loved me, you would rejoice that I go to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.” And what when he also joins on this: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser: every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every fruitful one he cleanses, so that it may bear more fruit”? He presses on further and adds: “As the Father has loved me, so I too have loved you: remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love.” Further he urges and says: “But I have called you friends, because all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” He adds this too: “But they will do all these things to you because of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.” The Lord would never have added these things after those, bearing clear witness that he is not the Father but the Son, if he had been conscious of being the Father or wished to be understood as the Father; except that he wished to express this: that each one ought already to hold, when he sees the image of God the Father through the Son, that he has seen the Father; since each one who believes in the Son is trained in the contemplation of the image, so that, grown used to seeing divinity in the image, he may be able to advance and grow even to the perfect contemplation of God the Father almighty. And since whoever has drunk this in with heart and mind, and has believed that it will be so in every respect, may hold the Father whom he will see as though he had already in some way seen him, and may hold it here already as though he possessed what he knows for certain he will have.

But if he had been the Father himself, why did he promise as a future reward what he had already granted and given? For since he says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”, he is found to promise the contemplation and sight of the Father; therefore he had not yet given it: for why would he promise it if he had already given it? For he would have given it if he were the Father; for he was being seen and touched. But when Christ himself, while he is being touched and seen, nonetheless promises and says that whoever is pure in heart will see God, by this very fact he proves that he is not the Father, since, while present and being seen, he promised that whoever was pure in heart would see the Father. It was, then, not the Father but the Son who made these promises: because he who was the Son promised what was yet to be seen; and his promise would have been pointless had he not been the Son. For why did he promise the pure in heart that they would see the Father, if those who were present were already then seeing Christ, the Father? But because he was the Son, not the Father, rightly the Son, as the image of God, was then seen; and the Father, as invisible, is promised and marked out to the pure in heart, that he may be seen. Let this suffice, then, to have been said even against this heretic: a few things out of many. For a field, and a wide and spacious one, will open if we choose to pursue this heretic more fully; since in these two passages, deprived, as it were, of his eyes, which have been dug out, he has been wholly overcome in the blindness of his doctrine.