Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 104–112

“But all this took place so that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.” It is a large task now to select from the prophets which sayings of the prophets were then fulfilled, when Christ said that he was suffering these things; and it is the work of a studious and learned man to gather the words of the prophets that were fulfilled. In the hundred and eighth psalm you will perhaps find many things fitting those who came with Judas to arrest Jesus, as other things about Judas are also said in that same psalm. “Then all, forsaking him, fled.” So, fearing the crowds and their leader Judas, they fled. For they did not yet have the Spirit, since Jesus had not yet been glorified, nor the Spirit of power and love. If they had had him, they would not have been weakened, nor done anything else outside divine love.

“And those who had seized Jesus led him to Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and the elders had gathered.” I think that the teaching of the Jewish service, which those now forsaken profess to serve, is Caiaphas, who fights against the truth of Jesus and is called high priest. But Jesus, the Word of God, is in truth the priest, under whom are placed all who acceptably … high priest, there the scribes gather, that is, the men of letters, who preside over the letter that kills. And in keeping with the character of the scribes' letter are the elders, who recline not in the truth but in the oldness of the bare letter, and wish to trade in nothing more.

“But Peter followed him at a distance as far as the courtyard of the high priest; and going inside he sat with the attendants to see the outcome.” While the Master was being led away, Peter did follow, but he could not follow him closely, walking with him or beside him; following from a distance, he came to the courtyard of the high priest. And Peter went in and sat inside, neither serving as those attendants served, nor doing what Jesus had taught, but waiting, wishing to see the outcome of all these things, since he did not yet understand or see where the outcome of Christ's dispensations was leading. For their outcome is not in the courtyard of Caiaphas, nor where the scribes and elders of that people gather. But if anyone sees the end itself properly, he will see the Word of God and Wisdom saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” “Now the chief priests and the elders and the whole council sought false testimony against Jesus, so as to put him to death, and they found none; and many false witnesses came forward, and they found none.” By this it is plain that Jesus committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth. That his life was most pure and wholly irreproachable, and removed the pretexts of those who seek pretexts, is shown by the fact that his adversaries found nothing they could say against him or give any colour to; all the priests and the whole council searched, and could find nothing. For false testimonies have room when they are brought with some colour of plausibility; but against Jesus not even a colour could be found that might support lies against him; and this though there were many who wished to do a favour to Caiaphas and the chief priests and the scribes and elders and the whole council, who longed to hear just that. Whoever considers this gives the highest praise to Jesus for his life and his teaching, since he said and did everything so irreproachably that they found in him no semblance of a ground for reproach: neither wicked men, nor many, nor men so clever and ingenious.

“At last two false witnesses came forward and said: This man said, I can destroy the temple of God and rebuild it after three days.” Do not think that Matthew called these two witnesses false without cause, though their testimony seemed true from what John relates that Christ said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” where it is also added, “But he spoke of the temple of his body.” But see the craftiness of the two false witnesses: using a plausibility drawn from a true saying of Jesus, they fabricated false testimony. Jesus did not say, “I destroy this temple, and in three days I raise it up,” but, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The false witnesses reported that he had said what he had not said; nor did he say, “I can destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.” He left the impiety of destroying the temple to those fit for such a work, saying, “Destroy this temple”; what he reserved for himself was this: “and in three days I will raise it up.” And what he said of the temple of his body, the Jews, hindered by their malice, twisted and understood of that temple of stone; which is plain from their answer, “This temple was built in forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” And consider that not just one false witness came forward with this testimony; for one was not enough for those who wished to kill Jesus, since the law commanded, “One witness shall not stand to give testimony against a man.” Nor were there three; for though many false witnesses came, scarcely two were found who seemed to say anything. Nor was even their testimony consistent, as Mark relates. For he says this: that the chief priests and the whole council sought testimony against Jesus to put him to death, and found none. “For many bore false testimony against him, and their testimonies were not consistent. And some rose and bore false testimony against him: We heard him say, I will destroy this temple made with hands, and in three days I will make another not made with hands. But not even so was their testimony consistent.” For testimony is consistent when they say the same things; but it is not consistent when they disagree with one another, as did the testimonies of those who testified against Jesus. And if Matthew and Mark speak truly, as we must believe, let us try to show how the testimonies of those two also were not consistent, since they did not say the same thing. For according to Matthew they said, “This man said, I can destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days”; but according to Mark, “We heard him say, I will destroy this temple made with hands, and in three days I will build another not made with hands.” So either both said both things at the time, and since they did not say the same thing their testimonies were not found consistent; or one said what Matthew relates and the other what Mark wrote, and for that reason their testimonies were not consistent.

“And the high priest rose and said to him: Do you answer nothing to what these men testify against you? But Jesus was silent.” In this the prophecy can be understood to have been fulfilled which says, “While the sinner stood against me, I was dumb and humbled, and kept silent from good things”; so that the sinner foretold in these words is understood to be Caiaphas, who stands against Jesus. At the same time we learn from this passage to despise the words of slanderers and false witnesses, so as not … ourselves by answering, when what is said against us is not consistent. For what need is there to resist those who resist themselves by contradicting one another? Especially when it is greater to keep silent freely and bravely than to defend oneself without any profit, so that we may not be humbled by false witnesses and wicked slanderers.

“And the high priest said to him: I adjure you by the living God, tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God. And Jesus said to him: You have said it.” In the law we do find the practice of adjuring. For in Numbers the law says that the priest shall adjure her, that is, the woman concerning whom a spirit of jealousy has come upon her husband, and the priest shall say to the woman: “If no one has slept with you, and if you have not transgressed so as to be defiled by a man not your own, you shall be free from this water of conviction that brings the curse.” And a little later: “And the priest,” it says, “shall adjure the woman with the adjurations of this curse.” Again, in the third book of Kingdoms, King Ahab said to Micaiah: “I adjure you to speak the truth to me in the name of the Lord.” The king adjured the prophet, but not as the priest in Numbers did; for the priest did so by the precept of the law, the king by his own choice. And now in the present passage the priest adjures Jesus by the living God. But I think that a man who wishes to live according to the Gospel should not adjure another. For it is like what the Lord himself says in the Gospel: “But I say to you, do not swear at all”; and so, do not adjure at all. For if, according to Christ's gospel commandment, it is not permitted to swear, it is true that it is not permitted to adjure another either. Therefore it is plain that the high priest adjured Jesus unlawfully, even though he seems to have adjured him by the living God. Someone will ask whether it is fitting even to adjure demons. One who looks to the many who have dared to do such things will say that it is not done without reason. But one who looks to Jesus, who commanded the demons and also gave his disciples power over all demons and to heal diseases, will say that adjuring demons is not in keeping with the power given by the Saviour: for it is Jewish. And even if something of this kind is sometimes done by our people, it resembles the way demons are commonly adjured with the adjurations written by Solomon. But those who use those adjurations sometimes use books that are not properly established; and some adjure demons with formulas taken from the Hebrew. Yet it was not fitting for our Lord to respond to the high priest's adjuration as though forced by the adjurer against his own will. That is why he neither denied that he was the Christ, the Son of God, nor openly confessed it; but, as it were taking the adjurer himself as witness that he is the one who, in the priest's question, was declared to be the Christ, the Son of God, he said: “You have said it.” And since everyone who commits sin is born of the devil … of the priests plotting against Jesus, and therefore he was born of the devil, and, as one born of the devil, imitated his own father, who in doubt asked the Saviour, “If you are the Son of God,” as is written in the account of his temptations. For “If you are the Son of God” and “If you are the Christ, the Son of God” are alike. One may rightly say in this passage that to doubt whether the Son of God is the Christ is the work of the devil, and of the high priest plotting against our Lord. But Peter was not found to be such; for without any doubt he declared, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” and did not put an “if” there; that is why he was called blessed, because flesh and blood had not revealed it to him, but God the Father who is in heaven. But those who say with doubt, “If you are the Son of God,” are strangers to all blessedness. Since the high priest was not worthy of Christ's teaching, Christ does not teach him, nor say, “I am”; but, taking the word of his mouth to refute him, he turned it back, saying, “You have said it,” so that in this way he might be seen to be refuted, not taught.

“Truly I say to you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” It is not written “at the right hand of God,” but in all the evangelists that the Son of Man sits at the right hand of power; and again, three evangelists alike write, “you will see him sitting.” To the simple, who can hear nothing lofty in the word “sitting,” it is granted to take it as if he said, “established upon power.” But for those who are able by the Spirit to search all things, even the depths of God, there is also what is written: “You who sit upon the cherubim, appear”; and, “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up”; and, “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet”; and other such things said of God sitting, which are likewise said of Christ. These must be compared with the present saying, so that, leaving a lowly and fanciful notion, we may see what the sitting of Christ, spoken of in human fashion, signifies. It seems to me that the sitting of the Son of Man signifies a certain foundation and royal firmness. So, beside the Power, who alone is power and is properly so named, he is both established at the right hand and has received all power from the Father, as in heaven so on earth. And this establishment even his adversaries will see [at some time], after the blessed have seen him with joy. According to Mark, however, there is no “from now on,” but simply, “You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power”; and by that reading nothing will contradict what we have set out. But according to Matthew, who says, “From now on you will see,” and according to Luke, who says, “From now on the Son of Man will be,” and the rest, we must ask whether “from now on” … the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power. And we say that it can be seen to have been fulfilled, since from then, that is, from the time of the dispensation, the Son of Man sat at the right hand of power, and the disciples saw him rising from the dead, and through this saw him established at the right hand of power, as we explained above. Or thus: see whether you can measure the hour and the day, not by the shortness of hours and days among men, but by the length they have with the everlasting Lord, for whom the time from the foundation of the world to its consummation is one day; as the parable shows, where it speaks of those hired into the vineyard in the morning, and at the third hour, and the sixth, and up to the eleventh. So it is no wonder that the “from now on” the Saviour speaks of here is a very short interval until then, the interval in which he said, “You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power,” to those who heard him then; perhaps at that time when “the Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet”; and among these enemies were those to whom he said, “From now on you will see.” For Caiaphas too, who plotted against Christ, was an enemy. And he foretold that they would see him not only sitting at the right hand of power, but also coming, as Matthew says, on the clouds of heaven. What are the clouds on which he who is established at the right hand of power will come, or with which he will come, or to which the truth of God reaches, according to what is written, “And your truth reaches to the clouds”? These are living clouds: the prophets of God and the apostles of Christ, whom he commands to rain when it is needed, or not to rain upon the vineyard that bears no fruit. Whether he wishes any other clouds to be such, on which and with which the Son of Man will come and appear, he himself knows. For he always comes on them and with them, showing his coming to those worthy of him: God the Word, and Wisdom, and Truth, and Righteousness. And these clouds of which we have spoken, as bearing the image of the heavenly, are clouds of heaven, the abiding throne of God; they are honoured with the kingdom of God, as heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, and they reign with him.

“Then the high priest tore his garments, saying: He has blasphemed.” While the Lord was prophesying these things, that priest, the Lord's enemy, as one not near enough to see the Son of Man and the Power at whose right hand he sat, as one bent down and unable to look up, not hearing what he was saying, tore his garments, showing his own shame and the nakedness of his soul, and making plain a mystery: that the old priesthood was to be torn, and the robe of its priesthood, and the worship that had been according to the letter. He thought the greatness of Christ's words to be blasphemy, judging Christ's words, which for those able to understand were witnesses of his divinity, sufficient as testimony against him; and he says to those who thought as he did: “Behold, now you have heard his blasphemy. What do you think?” And they too, answering against their own souls, declare of Jesus that he is guilty of death. How great an error do you think it was to declare the very source of the life of all guilty of death, and, with the testimony of so many who had been raised, not to see the fountain of life, from which life flowed into all the living? For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son also to have life in himself.