Commentary on the Gospel of John

Just as, I think, the people of old who were called “the people of God” was divided into twelve tribes, and, besides the other tribes, into the Levitical order, which itself served the divine in several priestly and Levitical ranks, so I consider that the whole people of Christ, according to “the hidden person of the heart”, being called a Jew in secret and circumcised in spirit, has the characteristics of the tribes in a more mystical way. One can learn this more plainly from John in the Revelation; nor have the other prophets kept silent about such things for those who know how to listen.

John speaks thus: “And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God; and he cried out with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was given to harm the earth and the sea, saying: Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we seal the servants of our God on their foreheads. And I heard the number of those sealed, a hundred and forty-four thousand sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel: from the tribe of Judah twelve thousand sealed, from the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand.”

And after listing the remaining tribes, except Dan, he adds a little later: “And I looked, and behold, the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him the hundred and forty-four thousand, having his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven like the sound of many waters and like the sound of great thunder; and the voice I heard was like harpists playing on their harps. And they sing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders; and no one could learn the song except the hundred and forty-four thousand who have been redeemed from the earth. These are those who were not defiled with women, for they are virgins. These are those who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These were redeemed from among men as firstfruits for God and for the Lamb; and in their mouth no

lie was found; for they are blameless.” That these things are said in John about those who have believed in Christ, and that these too come from the tribes, even if their bodily descent does not seem to go back to the seed of the patriarchs, can be reasoned out thus: “Do not harm,” it says, “the earth or the sea or the trees until we seal the servants of our God on their foreheads. And I heard the number of those sealed, a hundred and forty-four thousand sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel.”

Therefore those from every tribe of the sons of Israel who are sealed on their foreheads are a hundred and forty-four thousand in number; and these hundred and forty-four thousand are said in what follows in John to have the name of the Lamb and of his Father written on their foreheads, and to be virgins not defiled with women.

What else, then, would the seal on the foreheads be than the name of the Lamb and of his Father? For in both places the foreheads are said to have, in the one case the seal, in the other the letters containing the name of the Lamb and the name of his Father.

But if those “from the tribes” are the same as the “virgins”, as we have shown, and a believer from Israel according to the flesh is rare, so that one might perhaps venture to say that not even the number of a hundred and forty-four thousand is filled up from the believers of Israel according to the flesh, it is clear that the hundred and forty-four thousand who are not defiled with women are made up of those from the Gentiles who come to the divine word. So one who says that the virgins of each tribe are its firstfruits would not fall from the truth.

For indeed it is written: “These were redeemed from among men as firstfruits for God and for the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found; for they are blameless.” We must not fail to recognize that the account of the hundred and forty-four thousand virgins admits a higher sense. But it is superfluous now, and not in keeping with our present subject, to set out prophetic passages that teach us the same thing about those from the Gentiles.

“What, then, is the point of all this for us?” you will say as you read these words, Ambrose, truly a “man of God” and a “man in Christ”, eager to be “spiritual”, no longer merely human. Those from the tribes bring tithes and firstfruits to God through the Levites and priests, though not everything they have is firstfruits or tithes; but the Levites and priests, who live on tithes and firstfruits for everything, bring tithes to God through the high priest, and, I think, firstfruits as well.

Of us who come to the teachings of Christ, most, who give much of their time to ordinary life and dedicate few actions to God, would perhaps be those from the tribes, who have little fellowship with the priests and support the service of God only in small ways. But those devoted to the divine word, and given genuinely to the service of God alone, will not unfittingly be called Levites and priests, according to the difference in their impulses toward it.

And perhaps those who surpass everyone, and hold, as it were, the first place in their generation, will be high priests according to the order of Aaron, and not according to the order of Melchizedek. For if anyone objects to this, thinking that we are impious in applying the name of high priest to human beings, since Jesus is in many places prophesied as the great priest (for “we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God”), we must say to him that the apostle pointed out that the prophet had said of Christ, “You are a priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek”, and not according to the order of Aaron. Taking our cue from this, we say that human beings can be high priests according to the order of Aaron, but the Christ of God according to the order of Melchizedek.

Since, then, all our action and our whole life, as we press on toward better things, is dedicated to God, and we wish to have the whole of it as firstfruits of many firstfruits (if indeed we are not mistaken in thinking so), what should our chief occupation be, now that we have been separated from one another in body, other than the examination of the Gospel? For we must venture to say that the Gospel is the firstfruits of all the Scriptures.

What other firstfruits of our activities, then, since we have been residing in Alexandria, ought there to have been than the work devoted to the firstfruits of the Scriptures? But we must know that firstfruits and first-born produce are not the same thing: the firstfruits are offered after all the crops, but the first-born produce before them all.

Of the Scriptures in circulation, then, and believed in all the churches of God to be divine, one would not be wrong to call the law of Moses the first-born produce, and the Gospel the firstfruits. For after all the fruits of the prophets up to the Lord Jesus, the perfect Word sprang up.

If anyone objects, on the basis of our explanation of firstfruits, saying that the Acts and the letters of the apostles come after the Gospels, and that for this reason what was said above about firstfruits, that the Gospel is the firstfruits of all Scripture, can no longer stand, we must answer either that the letters in circulation contain the mind of men wise in Christ, men who had been helped by it, but who need, in order to be believed, the testimonies found in the words of the law and the prophets; so that the apostolic writings are wise and trustworthy and very well said, yet not comparable to “Thus says the Lord Almighty.”

And in this regard consider whether, when Paul says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and useful,” he includes his own writings as well; or whether “I say, and not the Lord,” and “So I order in all the churches,” and “What I suffered in Antioch, in Iconium, in Lystra,” and similar things he sometimes wrote, have indeed … apostolic authority … but not the purity of words from divine inspiration.

Or we must also establish this: that the Old Testament is not gospel, since it does not show “the one who is coming” but proclaims him in advance; whereas the whole New Testament is the gospel, not only because, like the beginning of the Gospel, it says, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” but also because it contains various praises and teachings of him on whose account the gospel is gospel.

Further, if God appointed in the church apostles and prophets and evangelists, pastors and teachers, then when we examine what the work of the evangelist is (namely, that it is not only to narrate how the Savior healed a man blind from birth, raised a dead man who already stank, or did some other wonder), we shall not hesitate, since the evangelist is characterized also by exhortation meant to bring people to faith in what concerns Jesus, to say that what the apostles wrote is in a sense gospel.

But as for the second answer: to one who objects that we did not do well in calling the whole New Testament “gospel”, since the letters are not entitled “gospel”, we must say that in many places in the Scriptures, when two or more things are called by the same name, the name belongs more properly to one of them. For example, although the Savior says, “Do not call anyone teacher on earth,” the apostle says that teachers too have been appointed in the church.

These, then, will not be teachers in the strict sense of the Gospel's saying. So too, not every writing in the letters will be gospel when compared with the narrative of Jesus' deeds, sufferings, and words. Nevertheless, the Gospel is the firstfruits of all Scripture, and we offer the firstfruits of all the actions we pray to perform in work on the firstfruits of the Scriptures.

And I think that, since there are four Gospels, as it were the elements of the church's faith (the elements of which the whole world, reconciled to God in Christ, is composed, as Paul says, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself”, the world whose sin Jesus took away; for the written saying is about the world of the church: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”), the firstfruits of the Gospels is the one you have instructed us to search out as far as we are able, the Gospel according to John, which speaks of the one whose genealogy is traced and yet begins from the one without genealogy.

For Matthew, writing for the Hebrews who were expecting the son of Abraham and David, says, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham”; and Mark, knowing what he is writing, narrates “the beginning of the gospel”, perhaps because we find its end in John … the Word who was “in the beginning”, God the Word. And Luke too … but he keeps for the one who reclined on Jesus' breast the greater and more perfect words about Jesus. For none of them revealed his divinity so purely as John, who presents him saying, “I am the light of the world”, “I am the way and the truth and the life”, “I am the resurrection”, “I am the door”, “I am the good shepherd”, and in the Revelation, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end,

the first and the last.” We must venture, then, to say that the Gospels are the firstfruits of all the Scriptures, and that the Gospel according to John is the firstfruits of the Gospels. No one can grasp its meaning who has not reclined on Jesus' breast and received from Jesus Mary, to be his mother too. And the one who is to be another John must become so great that, as it were, John is shown by Jesus to be Jesus. For if, according to those who think soundly about her, Mary had no son but Jesus, and Jesus says to his mother, “Behold your son,” and not “Behold, this one too is your son,” he has said the equivalent of “Behold, this is Jesus, whom you bore.” For everyone who has been made perfect “no longer lives”, but “Christ lives” in him; and since “Christ lives” in him, it is said of him to Mary, “Behold your son”: the Christ.

How great a mind, then, do we need to be able to draw out, as it deserves, the meaning stored up in the earthen treasures of humble diction, in the letter read by all who come upon it and heard as a word perceptible through the voice by all who lend their bodily ears! What need is there even to say it? For one who is to grasp these things exactly must say in truth, “But we have the mind of Christ, that we may know the things freely given to us by God.”

One may also adduce, for the view that the whole New Testament is the Gospels, what Paul says when he writes somewhere, “According to my gospel.” For in Paul's writings we have no book commonly called a gospel; rather, everything he preached and said was the gospel. And what he preached and said, he also wrote; so what he wrote was gospel.

And if Paul's writings were gospel, it follows that Peter's too were gospel, and, in a word, whatever sets forth Christ's sojourn, prepares for his coming, and produces it in the souls of those who are willing to receive the Word of God, who stands at the door and knocks and wishes to enter their souls.

It is now time to examine what the name “gospel” means, and why these books bear this title. The gospel, then, is a word containing a report of things that, with good reason, gladden the hearer, because they benefit him once he accepts what is reported; and such a word is no less a gospel if it is also considered in relation to the disposition of the hearer. Or a gospel is a word containing the presence of a good thing for the one who believes, or a word announcing that the good thing expected is present.

All the definitions we have given fit the books entitled Gospels. For each Gospel, being a collection of reports beneficial to one who believes and does not misinterpret them, produces benefit and thus gladdens, since it teaches the saving sojourn among human beings, for their sake, of Christ Jesus, “the firstborn of all creation”. And it is plain to every believer that each Gospel is a word teaching the sojourn of the good Father in the Son among those willing to receive him.

That the good thing expected is also announced through these books is not unclear. For John the Baptist, taking up, as it were, the voice of the whole people, says when he sends to Jesus, “Are you the one who is coming, or are we to expect another?” For the Christ was the good thing expected by the people. The prophets proclaimed him, and all who were under the law and the prophets, down to the humblest, placed their hopes in him, as the Samaritan woman testifies when she says, “I know that the Messiah is coming, who is called Christ; when he comes, he will tell us all things.”

Simon and Cleopas too, talking “with one another about all the things that had happened” to Jesus, say to the risen Christ himself, not yet knowing that he had been raised from the dead, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” When he said, “What things?”, they answer: “The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.”

Besides these, Andrew the brother of Simon Peter, finding his own brother Simon, says, “We have found the Messiah, which translated is Christ.” And shortly afterward Philip, finding Nathanael, says to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote, Jesus the son of Joseph, from Nazareth.”

But someone might seem to object to the first definition, since writings not entitled gospels also fall under it. For the law and the prophets are believed to be words containing a report of things that, with good reason, gladden the hearers because they benefit them, once they accept what is reported.

To this it might be said that before Christ's sojourn the law and the prophets, since the one who would make clear the mysteries in them had not yet come, did not have the promise contained in the definition of the gospel. But the Savior, having come to dwell among us and having willed that the gospel be given a body, made all things, as it were, gospel by the gospel.

And I would not be off the mark to use the example of “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.” For … the sons of men by his divinity, taking away the veil in the law and the prophets, he showed the divine character of them all, clearly presenting to those who wished to become disciples of his wisdom what the true realities of the law of Moses are, of which those of old served “a copy and shadow”, and what the truth is of the events in the histories, which “happened to them as types, but were written for us, on whom the ends of the ages have come.”

At any rate, everyone to whom Christ has come worships God neither in Jerusalem nor on the mountain of the Samaritans, but, having learned that “God is spirit”, serves him spiritually, “in spirit and truth”, and no longer worships the Father and Maker of all things in types.

Therefore, before the gospel that came about through Christ's sojourn, none of the things of old was gospel. But the gospel, which is the new covenant, having removed us from the oldness of the letter, has made shine with the light of knowledge the never-aging newness of the Spirit, which belongs to the new covenant and was laid up in all the Scriptures. And it was fitting that the gospel which makes what is thought to be gospel even in the old covenant into gospel should be called “gospel” in a special sense.

Still, we must not fail to recognize that even before his bodily sojourn Christ came in a spiritual way to the more perfect, who were no longer infants nor under “tutors” and “guardians”, and for whom the spiritual fullness of time had arrived: for example, to the patriarchs, to Moses the servant, and to the prophets who beheld Christ's glory.

And just as, before his visible and bodily sojourn, he came to the perfect, so also after the coming that has been proclaimed, to those who are still infants, being “under guardians and stewards” and not yet having reached the fullness of time, the forerunners of Christ have come: words suited to souls that are still children, who might reasonably be called “tutors”. But the Son himself, the glorified God the Word, has not yet come to them, waiting for the necessary preparation to take place in the men of God who are to receive his divinity.

This too one ought to know: that just as there is a “law containing a shadow of the good things to come”, which are made plain by the law proclaimed according to truth, so also the gospel which all its readers think they understand teaches a shadow of the mysteries of Christ.

But what John calls “the eternal gospel”, which might properly be called the spiritual gospel, clearly presents to those who understand “all things plainly” concerning the Son of God himself: both the mysteries presented by his words and the realities of which his deeds were riddles. It follows from this that, just as one is a Jew outwardly, and … and another in secret, so it is with the Christian and with baptism.

Paul and Peter, who were at first Jews outwardly and circumcised, afterward received from Jesus to be such in secret as well; and being Jews outwardly, by a wise accommodation for the salvation of many, they not only acknowledged in words but also showed by deeds. The same must be said of their Christianity.

And just as Paul could not benefit the Jews according to the flesh unless, when reason required it, he circumcised Timothy, and when it was reasonable, shaved his head and made an offering, and in a word became a Jew to the Jews in order to win Jews, so one who is set to benefit many cannot, by hidden Christianity alone, improve those who are being taught the elements in outward Christianity, and lead them on to what is better and higher.

Therefore it is necessary to be a Christian both spiritually and bodily. Where one must preach the bodily gospel, saying among those who are fleshly that one “knows nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified”, this must be done. But when people are found fully trained in the Spirit, bearing fruit in it, and in love with the heavenly wisdom, one must give them a share in the Word, who returns from having become flesh to what “he was in the beginning with God”.

In examining these matters concerning the gospel, we do not think we have spoken in vain, since we distinguish in thought, as it were, a perceptible gospel from an intelligible and spiritual one.

For our present task is to transform the perceptible gospel into the spiritual one. For what is the narrative of the perceptible gospel, if it is not transformed into the spiritual? Either nothing, or little, and something belonging to ordinary people who have persuaded themselves that they take in from the wording what is meant.

But our whole struggle is to try to reach the depths of the meaning of the gospel and to search out the truth in it, stripped of types.

Since, then, what is announced as gospel is understood as an announcement of good things, the apostles announce Jesus as good news. They are also said to announce the resurrection as good news, and the resurrection is in a sense Jesus himself; for Jesus says, “I am the resurrection.” And Jesus announces to the poor the things laid up for the saints, calling them to the divine promises.

And the divine Scriptures bear witness to the good news announced by the apostles and to that announced by our Savior. David speaks of the apostles, and perhaps also of the evangelists: “The Lord will give a word to those who announce good news with great power; the King of the powers of the beloved”, teaching at the same time that it is not the composition of speech, the delivery of words, or practised elegance of style that succeeds in persuading, but the supply of divine power. That is why Paul too says somewhere:

“I will find out not the talk of those who are puffed up but their power; for the kingdom of God is not in talk but in power”; and elsewhere: “My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.”

Bearing witness to this power, Simon and Cleopas say, “Was not our heart burning on the road, as he opened the Scriptures to us?” And the apostles (since the amount of power supplied by God differs among those who speak) had, according to what David says, “The Lord will give a word to those who announce good news with great power”, great power. And Isaiah, saying:

“How beautiful are the feet of those who announce good things”, understanding the preaching of the apostles, who walked the way of him who said, “I am the way”, as beautiful and timely, praises the “feet” that travel by the spiritual way, Christ Jesus, and enter to God through the door. And those whose feet these are announce “good things”: Jesus.

And let no one be surprised that we have taken the plural noun “good things” to mean that Jesus is announced. For when we consider the realities to which the names by which the Son of God is called refer, we shall understand how Jesus, whom those with beautiful feet announce, is many good things. One good thing is life, and Jesus is life.

Another good thing is “the light of the world”, being the “true” light and “the light of men”: all of which the Son of God is said to be. And another good thing, distinct in concept from life and light, is truth; and a fourth besides these is the way that leads to it. Our Savior teaches that he is all these, saying, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”

And how is it not a good thing to shake off the dust and deadness and to rise again, obtaining this from the Lord inasmuch as he is the resurrection, who also says, “I am the resurrection”? And the door, too, through which one enters into the highest blessedness, is a good thing; and Christ says, “I am the door.”

And what need is there to speak of wisdom, which “God created as the beginning of his ways for his works”, in which her Father rejoiced, delighting in her richly varied spiritual beauty, seen by spiritual eyes alone and summoning to heavenly love the one who contemplates the divine beauty? For the wisdom of God is a good thing, which, together with those already mentioned, is announced by those whose “feet are beautiful”.

And the power of God is now listed by us as an eighth good thing, which is Christ.

Nor must we keep silent about God the Word, who is after the Father of all things; for this good is less than no other good. Blessed, then, are those who have made room for these good things and received them from those whose feet are beautiful and who announce them.

Yet even if someone is a Corinthian, when Paul judges it right to know nothing among him “except Jesus Christ and him crucified”, and learns and receives the one who became man for our sake, he comes to be “in the beginning” of the good things: through the man Jesus he becomes a “man of God”, and through his death he dies to sin. For “the death he died, he died to sin once for all.”

And from his life, since Jesus, “the life he lives, he lives to God”, everyone who has been conformed to his resurrection receives the power to live to God. And who doubts that righteousness itself is a good thing, and sanctification itself, and redemption itself? These too are what those who announce Jesus announce, saying that he has become for us righteousness from God, and sanctification, and redemption.

From the almost countless things written about him, one can see how Jesus is a multitude of good things, and from them one can conjecture those that are indeed in him, in whom all the fullness of the Godhead was “pleased” to dwell “bodily”, but which cannot be contained in writings.

And why do I say “in writings”, when John says of the whole world, “I suppose that not even the world itself could contain the books that would be written”?

It is the same, then, to say that the apostles announce the Savior and that they announce the good things. For he is the one who received from the good Father to be the good things, so that each person, receiving through Jesus the good thing or things he has room for, may be among good things.

But the apostles, whose “feet are beautiful”, and those who imitate them, could not announce the good things unless Jesus had first announced them to them, as Isaiah says: “I myself who speak am here, like springtime on the mountains, like the feet of one who announces news of peace, like one who announces good things; for I will make your salvation heard, saying, Zion, your God shall reign.”

For what are the mountains on which the speaker himself confesses that he is present, if not those who are in no way inferior to the highest and greatest things on earth? These must be sought out by capable ministers of the new covenant, so that they may keep the command that says, “Go up on a high mountain, you who announce good news to Zion; lift up your voice with strength, you who announce good news to Jerusalem.”

It is not surprising that Jesus announces the good things to those who are to announce the good things, since they are nothing other than himself: for the Son of God announces himself to those who are able to learn of him not through others. Yet the one who goes up on the mountains and announces to them the good things, having been taught by the good Father, who makes “the sun rise on the evil and the good” and sends rain “on the just and the unjust”, does not disdain the poor in soul.

For to them too he announces good news, as he himself testifies when he took Isaiah and read, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to announce good news to the poor; he has sent me to proclaim release to captives and recovery of sight to the blind.” For having “rolled up” the book and “given it back to the attendant, he sat down”, and while all were gazing at him he said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

But it is necessary to know that every good action done toward Jesus is also included in so great a gospel: as with the woman who had done evil deeds and repented, who, because of her genuine turning away from evil, was able to pour fragrance over Jesus and to make the scent of the ointment perceptible to all in the whole house.

That is why it is written, “Wherever this gospel is preached among all the nations, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.” And it is clear that what is done to those who have become his disciples is also done to Jesus; at any rate, pointing to those who had been treated well, he says to those who had done it, “What you did to these, you did to me.” So every good action we perform toward our neighbor is counted as part of the gospel, which is written on the tablets of heaven and read by all who have been counted worthy of the knowledge of all things.

But, on the other side, part of the gospel also serves to accuse those who committed sins against Jesus.

At any rate, the betrayal by Judas, and the outcry of the impious people saying, “Away with such a man from the earth” and “Crucify, crucify him”, and the mockery of those who crowned him with thorns, and things like these, are woven into the Gospels.

It follows from this to understand that everyone who betrays the disciples of Jesus is reckoned to be a betrayer of Jesus. At any rate, to Saul, while he was still persecuting, he said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” and “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”

And who are those who have the thorns with which they dishonor and crown Jesus? Those who, having received the word of God, are choked “by cares and riches and pleasures of life” and “bring no fruit to maturity”.

So we must be on guard lest we too, crowning Jesus with our own thorns, be recorded as such and read as such by those who learn about Jesus, who is in all and among all rational or holy beings, and how he is anointed with ointment, given supper, and glorified, or, on the contrary, dishonored, mocked, and beaten.

We have had to say these things to show that our good actions and the sins of those who stumble are recorded in the gospel, either “to eternal life or to reproach and eternal shame”.

If among human beings there are those honored with the ministry of evangelists, and Jesus himself announces good things and announces good news to the poor, those whom God made “spirits, his angels”, and who are “a flame of fire”, “ministers” of the Father of all things, ought not to be deprived of being evangelists themselves.

That is why an angel, standing by the shepherds and making glory shine around them, says, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I announce to you good news of great joy which will be for all the people: for to you is born today a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David.” And at that time, when human beings did not yet understand the mystery of the gospel, those who are greater than they, the heavenly army of God, praising God say, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men.”

And having said this, the angels go away from the shepherds into heaven, leaving us to understand how the “joy” announced to us through the birth of Christ Jesus is “glory to God in the highest”: those who had been humbled to the dust return “to their rest” and are to glorify God “in the highest” through Christ.

And the angels also marvel at the peace that is to come on earth through Jesus, since the region of war, into which “the morning star, rising at dawn” fell “from heaven”, is being crushed by Jesus.

In addition to what has been said, one must also know this about the gospel: that primarily the gospel belongs to the head of the whole body of the saved, Christ Jesus, as Mark says, “The beginning of the gospel of Christ Jesus”; but it also belongs to the apostles, which is why Paul says, “According to my gospel.”

But the beginning of the gospel (for, given its greatness, it has a beginning, what follows, a middle, and an end) is either the whole Old Testament, of which John is a type, or, because of the connection of the new with the old, the end of the old presented through John.

For the same Mark says, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet: Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way. The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare

the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Hence I am led to wonder how the heterodox attribute the two covenants to two gods, when they are refuted no less by this passage. For how can John be the beginning of the gospel if, as they suppose, he belongs to another god, being the Creator's man and, as they think, ignorant of the new divinity?

Angels are not believed to have only a single, brief ministry of the gospel, nor only the one that took place for the shepherds. For at the end an angel flying in mid-heaven, having a gospel, will announce it to every nation, since the good Father has not wholly abandoned those who have fallen away from him.

At any rate, John the son of Zebedee says in the Revelation: “And I saw an angel flying in mid-heaven, having an eternal gospel to announce to those who dwell on the earth and to every nation and tribe and tongue and people, saying with a loud voice: Fear God and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come; and worship him who made heaven and earth and the sea and springs of water.”

Since, then, according to one interpretation, we have shown that “the beginning of the gospel” is the whole Old Testament, signified by the name of John, so that this interpretation may not be without testimony we shall cite what is said in the Acts about the eunuch of the queen of the Ethiopians and Philip: “Beginning,” it says, “from the Scripture of Isaiah, He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer, Philip announced to him the Lord Jesus.” For how does he announce Jesus beginning from the prophet, unless Isaiah was some part of the beginning of the gospel?

At the same time what we said at the start, that all divine Scripture can be gospel, can be shown from this. For if the one who announces good news “announces good things”, and all those before Christ's bodily sojourn announce Christ, who is “the good things”, as we have shown, then the words of all of them are in some way part of the gospel.

This gospel, which is said to be spoken in the whole world, we understand to be proclaimed in the whole world: not only in the region around the earth, but in the whole system of heaven and earth, or of the heavens and earth.

And why need we lengthen further the discussion of what the gospel is? Enough has been said, and from this those who are not unskilled can gather similar things from the Scriptures and see what the glory of the good things in Jesus Christ is from the gospel, ministered by human beings and angels, and, I think, also by principalities and powers and thrones and dominions “and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come”, and indeed by Christ himself. Here, then, we shall end our remarks before reading the text together.

Now let us ask God to help us through Christ in the Holy Spirit to unfold the mystical meaning stored up in the words. John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word.”

It is not only the Greeks who say that the term “beginning” has many meanings. For if anyone should gather this word from everywhere and, examining it carefully, wish to understand to what it refers in each passage of the Scriptures, he will find that, according to the divine word too, the term has many meanings.

One kind of beginning is that of a passage, that is, of a way and a length; this is shown by “The beginning of a good way is to do what is just.” For since the “good way” is very long, one must understand the practical to lie in its first parts, which is presented by “to do what is just”, and the contemplative in the parts that follow. In this, I think, its end too comes to rest, in the so-called restoration, because no enemy will then be left, if indeed it is true that “he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet; and the last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

For then there will be one activity for those who have come to God through his Word: that of contemplating God, so that, being thus formed in the knowledge of the Father, they may all become exactly a son, as now the Son alone has known the Father.

For if one should examine carefully when those to whom the Son, who has known the Father, reveals him will know the Father, and should see that now the one who sees sees “through a mirror and in a riddle”, not yet having known “as one ought to know”, he would not be wrong in saying that no one, whether apostle or prophet, has known the Father, until they become one as the Son and the Father are one.

If someone should think that we have digressed, since we were explaining one meaning of “beginning” and said these things, we must show that the digression was necessary and useful for the subject. For if “beginning” can be that of a passage, a way, and a length, and “the beginning of a good way is to do what is just”, one may know that every good way in some sense has as its “beginning” “doing what is just”, and after the beginning, contemplation; and in what way contemplation.

“Beginning” is also that of coming into being, which might seem to be meant in “In the beginning God made heaven and earth”; but I think this meaning is proclaimed more clearly in Job, in the words “This is the beginning of the Lord's creation, made to be mocked by his angels.”

For someone might suppose that, of the things in the creation of the world, “heaven and earth” were made first, “in the beginning”. But it is better, with reference to the second passage, to say that, of the many beings that have come to be in bodies, the first of those in a body is the one called the dragon, also named somewhere “the great sea monster”, which the Lord has tamed.

And one must consider whether the one called the dragon, while the saints were living an entirely immaterial and bodiless life in blessedness, fell from the pure life and deserved, before all others, to be bound to matter and a body, so that for this reason the Lord, speaking through whirlwind and clouds, says, “This is the beginning of the Lord's creation, made to be mocked by his angels.”

It is possible, however, that the dragon is not simply the beginning of the Lord's creation, but that, since many have been made in a body “to be mocked by the angels”, he is the beginning of such beings, while some can exist in a body not in this way. For the soul of the sun too is in a body, as is the whole creation of which the apostle says, “The whole creation groans and labors together until now.”

And perhaps it is concerning that creation that it is said, “The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it … in hope,” so that bodies, and doing bodily things, may be the futility, which is necessary … for one in a body … One who is in a body does the things of the body unwillingly; that is why the creation was subjected to futility not willingly.

And one who unwillingly does the things of the body does what he does because of hope, as we might say that Paul wished “to remain in the flesh” not willingly but because of hope. For although in itself he preferred “to depart and be with Christ”, it was not unreasonable for him to wish “to remain in the flesh” for the benefit of others and for progress in the things hoped for, not only his own but also that of those he helped.

According to this meaning of “beginning”, that of coming into being, we shall be able to understand also what is said by Wisdom in Proverbs: “God,” she says, “created me as the beginning of his ways for his works.” It can, however, also be referred to the first meaning, that of a way, because it says, “God created me as the beginning of his ways.”

And not unfittingly someone will say, putting it plainly, that the God of all things is a beginning: that the Father is the beginning of the Son, the Creator the beginning of the things created, and, in a word, God the beginning of all that exists. He will support this by “In the beginning was the Word,” understanding the Word as the Son, who is said to be in the beginning because he is in the Father.

A third meaning is “that from which”, as from underlying matter: a beginning for those who hold that matter is unbegotten, but not for us, who are persuaded that God made the things that are out of things that are not, as the mother of the seven martyrs in Maccabees and the angel of repentance in the Shepherd taught.

Besides these, a beginning is also “that according to which”, as in the form: thus, if the firstborn of all creation is the image of the invisible God, the Father is his beginning. Likewise Christ too is the beginning of those who have come to be according to the image of God.

For if human beings are “according to the image”, and the image is according to the Father, then, as “that according to which”, the Father is the beginning of Christ, and Christ the beginning of human beings, who were made not according to that of which he is the image, but according to the image. And “In the beginning was the Word” will fit the same pattern.

There is also a beginning of learning, in the sense in which we say that the letters are the beginning of grammar. In this sense the apostle says, “Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need again for someone to teach you the elements of the beginning of the oracles of God.”

The beginning of learning is twofold: the one by nature, the other in relation to us. For example, we might say of Christ that by nature his beginning is his divinity; but in relation to us, who cannot begin the truth about him from his greatness, it is his humanity, according to which Jesus Christ, and him crucified, is proclaimed to infants. So in this sense we may say that the beginning of learning is by nature Christ as “the wisdom and power of God”, but in relation to us “the Word became flesh”, that he might dwell among us, who can only at first receive him in this way.

And perhaps for this reason he is not only the firstborn of all creation but also Adam, which is translated “man”. That he is Adam, Paul says: “The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” There is also a beginning of action, where in an action there is some end after the beginning. And consider whether Wisdom, being the beginning of God's works, can be understood as a beginning in this sense.

So many meanings of “beginning” having occurred to us for the present, we ask in which sense we must take “In the beginning was the Word.” It is clear that it is not in the sense of a passage or of a way and a length; and it is not unclear that it is not in the sense of coming into being either.

It is possible, however, that it is in the sense of “that by which”, namely the maker, if indeed “God commanded and they were created.” For Christ is in a sense the Creator, to whom the Father says,

“Let there be light” and “Let there be a firmament.” But Christ is Creator as beginning inasmuch as he is Wisdom; by being Wisdom he is called beginning. For Wisdom says in Solomon, “God created me as the beginning of his ways for his works,” so that “the Word may be in the beginning”, in Wisdom: Wisdom being understood with respect to the structure of the contemplation and thoughts about all things, and the Word being taken with respect to the communication of what has been contemplated to rational beings.

And it is not surprising if, as we have said before, the Savior, being many good things, has in himself aspects that are first, second, and third. At any rate, John adds concerning the Word, “What came to be in him was life.” So life came to be in the Word. And neither is the Word other than Christ, God the Word, who is with the Father, through whom all things came to be, nor is the life other than the Son of God, who says, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” As, then, life came to be in the Word, so the Word was in the beginning.

But consider whether it is possible for us to understand “In the beginning was the Word” in this sense too, so that all things come to be according to Wisdom and the patterns of the system of thoughts in it.

For I think that, just as a house or a ship is built or constructed according to the architect's patterns, the house and the ship having as their beginning the patterns and principles in the craftsman, so all things have come to be according to the principles of what would be, sketched out beforehand by God in Wisdom. For “he made all things in wisdom.”

And we must say that God, having created, so to speak, a living Wisdom, entrusted to her, from the patterns in her, the task of giving to the things that exist and to matter both their formation and their forms; and I raise the question whether their substances too.

It is not difficult, then, to say more crudely that the Son of God is the beginning of all that exists, since he says, “I am the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last.” But it is necessary to know that he is not the beginning in respect of everything he is called.

For how can he be the beginning inasmuch as he is life, since life came to be in the Word, who is clearly its beginning? And it is still clearer that he cannot be the beginning inasmuch as he is “the firstborn from the dead”.

And if we examine carefully all his aspects, he is the beginning only inasmuch as he is Wisdom, not even inasmuch as he is the Word, since “the Word was in the beginning.” So one might boldly say that Wisdom is prior to all the aspects conceived in the names of the firstborn of all creation.

God, then, is altogether one and simple; but our Savior, because of the many, since God “set him forth as a propitiation” and firstfruits of all creation, becomes many things, or perhaps even all these things, according as the whole creation that can be set free has need of him.

And for this reason he becomes the light of men, when human beings, darkened by wickedness, need the light that shines in the darkness and is not overcome by the darkness; had human beings not come to be in darkness, he would not have become the light of men.

The same may be understood of his being the firstborn from the dead. For if, supposing it so, the woman had not been deceived and Adam had not fallen, and the human being created for incorruption had kept hold of incorruption, he would neither have gone down “into the dust of death” nor died, there being no sin, for which, out of love for humanity, he had to die. And had he not done these things, he would not have become “the firstborn from the dead”.

And we must examine whether he would not have become a shepherd either, had man not been “compared to the senseless cattle and become like them”. For if God saves “men and cattle”, what he saves as cattle he saves by granting them a shepherd, since they cannot receive the king.

So we must gather the names of the Son and test which of them were added, and would not have been so many had the saints begun and remained in blessedness. For perhaps he would have remained Wisdom only, or also Word, or also Life, and certainly also Truth; but not the other names he took on for our sake.

And blessed indeed are those who, needing the Son of God, have become such that they no longer need him as a physician who heals the sick, nor as shepherd, nor as redemption, but as wisdom and word and righteousness, or whatever else he is for those who, through their perfection, can receive his fairest aspects. So much for “In the beginning”.

Let us look more carefully at what the Word in it is. I am often led to wonder, as I consider what is said about him by some who wish to believe in Christ, why, when countless names are applied to our Savior, they pass over most of them in silence, and even if they sometimes mention them, they interpret them as naming him not properly but figuratively; while stopping at the single title “Word”, they say that the Christ of God is, as it were, only a “word”, and do not, as with the other names, search out from the term “Word” the force of what it signifies.

What I say I wonder at in the many (I shall put it more clearly) is this. The Son of God says somewhere, “I am the light of the world”; and elsewhere, “I am the resurrection”; and again, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” It is also written, “I am the door.” And it has been said, “I am the good shepherd.” And to the Samaritan woman, who says, “We know that the Messiah is coming, who is called Christ; when he comes, he will tell us all things,” he answers,

“I who speak to you am he.” Besides these, when he washed his disciples' feet, he acknowledges that he is their Lord and Teacher in these words: “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you speak rightly, for so I am.”

And he plainly proclaims himself to be the Son of God, saying, “Do you say of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, You blaspheme, because I said, I am the Son of God?” and “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you.” And we find him proclaiming himself king too,

as when, answering Pilate's question, “Are you the king of the Jews?”, he says, “My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but now my kingdom is not from here.”

We have read also, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser”; and again,

“I am the vine, you are the branches.” Let there be counted with these also “I am the bread of life”; and again, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven” and “gives life to the world”. These we have set down from the Gospels as they occurred to us for the present: so many things the Son of God says that he is.

And in John's Revelation too he says, “I am the first and the last and the living one; I was dead, and behold, I am alive for ever and ever.” And again, “I have become the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

One who reads the holy books attentively can also find not a few similar names in the prophets: for example, that he calls himself “a chosen arrow”, “a servant of God”, and “a light of the nations”.

Isaiah says thus: “From my mother's womb he called my name, and he made my mouth like a sharp sword, and hid me under the shelter of his hand; he made me like a chosen arrow and hid me in his quiver, and he said to me, You are my servant, Israel, and in you I will be glorified.”

And a little later: “And my God will be my strength. And he said to me, It is a great thing for you to be called my servant, to establish the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the dispersion of Israel; behold, I have made you a light of the nations, that you may be for salvation to the end of the earth.” And in Jeremiah too he compares himself to a lamb thus: “I was like an innocent lamb led to be sacrificed.”

These, then, and similar things he says of himself. But one can also gather from the Gospels, from the apostles, and through the prophets countless titles by which the Son of God is called: either as the Gospel writers set out their own understanding of what he is, or as the apostles glorify him from what they have learned, or as the prophets proclaim beforehand his coming sojourn and announce what concerns him under various names.

For example, John proclaims him “the Lamb of God”, saying, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”, and calls him a “man” in these words: “This is he of whom I said, After me comes a man who ranks before me, for he was before me; and I did not know him.”

And in the catholic epistle John says that he is an “Advocate” for our souls with the Father, saying, “And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father,

Jesus Christ the righteous.” And he adds that “he is the propitiation for our sins.” Similarly Paul says that he is a “propitiation”, saying, “whom God set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood, because of the passing over of former sins in the forbearance of God.”

And according to Paul he is proclaimed to be the wisdom and power of God, as in the letter to the Corinthians, that Christ is the power and wisdom of God; and besides, that he is also “sanctification” and “redemption”: “who became for us,” he says, “wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”

He also teaches us that he is a great high priest, writing to the Hebrews: “Having, then, a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.”

Besides these, the prophets call him by other names too. Jacob, in his blessing of his sons, calls him Judah; for the words “Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hands shall be on the back of your enemies; the sons of your father shall bow down to you. A lion's whelp is Judah; from a shoot, my son, you have gone up; lying down you slept like a lion and like a whelp; who shall rouse him?” … It is not the right time now to show word for word how what is said to Judah concerns Christ.

But the objection that can reasonably be raised, “A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs,” will be taken up more fittingly elsewhere.

And Isaiah knows that the Christ is named Jacob and Israel, saying, “Jacob my servant, I will help him; Israel my chosen, my soul has accepted him; he will announce judgment to the nations. He will not quarrel or cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets; a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings forth judgment to victory; and in his name the nations will hope.”

For that it is Christ of whom these things are prophesied, Matthew clearly shows in the Gospel, recalling part of the passage and saying, “That what was spoken might be fulfilled: He will not quarrel or …” and so on.

And Christ is also called David, as when Ezekiel, prophesying to the shepherds, adds in the person of God, “I will raise up David my servant, who will shepherd them.” For it is not David the patriarch who will rise to shepherd the saints, but Christ.

Further, Isaiah names Christ a “rod” and a “flower” in the words, “A rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall come up from the root; and the Spirit of God shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and godliness, and the Spirit of the fear of God shall fill him.”

And in the Psalms our Lord is said to be a “stone”, thus: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner; this was from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

The Gospel shows, and Luke in the Acts, that the stone is none other than Christ. The Gospel says: “Have you never read, The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner? Everyone who falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will crush him.”

And in the Acts Luke writes, “This is the stone that was despised by you, the builders, which has become the head of the corner.” Now one of the names given to the Savior, not spoken by him but recorded by John, is also “the Word who was in the beginning with God, God the Word”.

And it is worth drawing the attention of those who pass over so many of his names and use this one as special, and who seek an explanation of the others if anyone brings them up, but accept this one as clear, to the question of what the Son of God, called the Word, is. This is especially so since they constantly use “My heart has uttered a good word”, thinking that the Son of God is a paternal utterance, lying as it were in syllables; and accordingly, if we question them closely, they do not grant him a subsistence of his own, nor do they make clear his being: I do not yet say a being of this or that kind, but any being at all.

For even for an ordinary person it is impossible to understand how a word that is spoken can be a son. And let them tell us whether such a Word lives by himself, and is either not separate from the Father, and so, not subsisting, is not a Son either, or is both separate and possessed of being, God the Word.

We must say, then, that just as with each of the names mentioned above we must unfold from the name the concept of what is named, and apply it with demonstration, showing how the Son of God is said to be this name, so we must do also with his being called the Word. For what arbitrary choice is it not to stop

at the wording in each other case, but to inquire, for example, how he is to be understood as “door”, in what way as “vine”, and for what reason as “way”, and yet not to do the same only with his being recorded as “Word”?

So that we may receive with less resistance what will be said about how the Son of God is the Word, we must begin from the names of his that we set out at the start.

We are not unaware that to some this will seem very digressive; but to one who pays attention, it will be useful for the subject at hand to test the concepts to which the names apply, so that understanding of the realities may prepare the way for what follows.

And once we have entered on the theology of the Savior, by necessarily finding out with inquiry, as far as we can, what concerns him, we shall understand him more fully, not only as Word but in his other aspects too.

He said, then, that he is “the light of the world”; and we must examine together the titles related to this name, which some might think are not only related but the same.

There is “the light of men”, “the true light”, and “the light of the nations”. “Light of men” occurs at the beginning of the present Gospel: “What came to be in him,” it says, “was life, and the life was the light of men; and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” “True light” is written further on in the same Scripture: “The true light, which enlightens every man, was coming into the world.” And “light of the nations” is in Isaiah, as we said before when quoting, “Behold, I have made you a light of the nations, that you may be for salvation to the end of the earth.”

Now the perceptible light of the world is the sun, and after it the moon and stars will, not inappropriately, be called by the same name.

But the lights said by Moses to have come into being on the fourth day, being perceptible light, inasmuch as they illuminate the things on earth, are not the true light. The Savior, shining on rational and ruling faculties so that their mind may see its own proper objects, is the light of the intelligible world: I mean of the rational souls in the perceptible world, and of whatever else besides these fills up the world from which the Savior teaches that he is. Perhaps he is its most important and distinguished part and, so to speak, the sun that makes the great day of the Lord.

Because of this day he says to those who share in his light, “Work while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” And further he says to the disciples, “You are the light of the world” and “Let your light shine before men.”

What corresponds to the moon and stars we take to be the Church, the bride, and the disciples, who have a light of their own, or one acquired from the true sun, so that they may enlighten those who have not been able to produce a source of light within themselves. For example, we shall call Paul and Peter “the light of the world”, and the ordinary people among their disciples, who are enlightened but not able to enlighten others, the world of which the apostles were the light.

But the Savior, being the “light” of the “world”, enlightens not bodies but, by a bodiless power, the bodiless mind, so that each of us, enlightened as by the sun, may be able to see the other

intelligible things. And just as, when the sun gives light, the ability of the moon and stars to give light is dimmed, so those who are illumined by Christ and have received his rays have no need of the ministry of apostles and prophets (for one must venture to speak the truth), nor of angels; and I will add, not even of the higher powers, since they are taught by the firstborn light himself.

But to those who cannot receive the sunlike rays of Christ, the saints, ministering, give an illumination far less than that just mentioned, since they can scarcely receive even this and are filled by it.

And Christ, being the light of the world, is the true light in contrast with the perceptible, since nothing perceptible is true. But it does not follow that because the perceptible is not true, the perceptible is false; for the perceptible can have an analogy to the intelligible, and falsehood cannot soundly be predicated of everything that is not true.

I ask whether “the light of the world” is the same as “the light of men”, and I think that a greater power of the light is presented when he is called “the light of the world” than “the light of men”; for “the world”, in one interpretation, is not only “men”.

And Paul will show that the world is more than, or other than, human beings, when he says in the first letter to the Corinthians, “We have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men.”

And consider whether, in one interpretation, the world is the creation that is being set free “from the bondage of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God”, whose “eager expectation” awaits “the revelation of the sons of God”.

We added “consider” because of the adjacent saying that may be joined with “I am the light of the world”, spoken by Jesus of the disciples: “You are the light of the world.”

For there are some who suppose that the human beings who have genuinely become disciples of Jesus are less than the other created beings, some because such creatures were made so by nature, others also in view of their harder struggle.

For the toils are greater, and the life of those in flesh and blood more precarious, than that of those in an ethereal body; the luminaries in heaven, had they taken up earthly bodies, would not have passed through this life without danger and altogether without sin. But those who take the other view appeal to the passages of Scripture that make the greatest declarations about human beings, which say that the unsurpassable promise reaches man, but do not proclaim the same about the creation, or, as we have taken it, the world.

For “As I and you are one, that they too may be one in us” and “Where I am, there will my servant be also” are clearly written about human beings; but about the creation, that it is set free from the bondage of corruption “into the freedom of the glory of the children of God”. And they will add that if it is set free, it does not follow that it already shares in the glory of “the children of God”.

Nor will these people pass over in silence the fact that the firstborn of all creation, because of the honor given to man above all things, became a man, and not one of the living beings in heaven; while the star that appeared in the east was fashioned as second to, and minister and servant of, the knowledge of Jesus, either being like the other stars or perhaps even better, since it became the sign of the one who excels all.

And if the boasts of the saints are in afflictions, since they know “that affliction produces endurance, and endurance proven character, and proven character hope, and hope does not put to shame”, then the creation that is not afflicted will have neither endurance nor proven character nor hope equal to theirs, but of another kind, since “the creation was subjected to futility, not

willingly but because of him who subjected it, in hope.” But one who does not dare to grant such great things to man will face the problem directly and say that the creation, subjected to futility, is afflicted, groaning more than those in the tent groan, since it has served futility for a very long time, many times longer than the human struggle.

For why does it do this “not willingly”, unless because it is against its nature to be subjected to futility and not to have its original state of life, which it will regain when it is set free at the corruption of the world and released from the futility of bodies?

But since we seem to be saying more than, and beside, the problem at hand, we shall return to where we began, recalling why the Savior is called “the light of the world”, “the true light”, and “the light of men”. It has been explained that he is called “true light” because of the perceptible light of the world, and that the light of the world is either the same as the light of men or admits examination as not the same.

These things have necessarily been investigated because of those who have drawn nothing out of the Savior's being the Word, so that we may be persuaded not to stop arbitrarily at the notion of “Word” … without the interpretation that it can receive, while taking in a higher sense and allegorizing the term “light of the world” and the rest of the many names we have set out.

And just as, by enlightening and shining upon the ruling faculties of human beings, or in a word of rational beings, he is “the light of men”, “the true light”, and “the light of the world”, so, from causing the putting off of all deadness and bringing about what is properly called life, when those who have genuinely received him rise from the dead,

he is called “the resurrection”. And he does this not only in the present for those who can say, “We were buried with Christ through baptism” and rose with him, but much more when someone, having completely put off all deadness, walks in the newness of life of the Son himself. “We always carry about here in the body the dying of Jesus” (when we have been worthily helped), “so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our bodies.”

And the journey in wisdom and the practical life of those being saved in him, in keeping with the discourses about truth in the divine word and the actions in accordance with true righteousness, lets us understand how he himself is the way. On this way one must carry nothing, neither bag nor tunic; one must not travel with a staff, nor have sandals bound on one's feet.

For the way itself suffices instead of all provisions, and everyone who sets foot on it lacks nothing, being adorned with the garment with which one who goes to the wedding feast should be adorned; and nothing harmful can meet him on this way. For it is impossible, according to Solomon, to find the ways of a serpent on a rock, and I say, of any wild beast whatever.

That is why there is no need of a staff on a way that has no tracks of enemies and, because of its firmness (for which it is also called a rock), does not admit the worse.

And the Only-begotten is truth, since he has embraced with all clarity the whole account of the universe according to the will of the Father, and imparts it to each according to his worth, inasmuch as he is truth.

But if anyone asks whether our Savior knows everything whatever that is known by the Father according to the depth of his riches and wisdom and knowledge, and, under the impression of glorifying the Father, declares that some things known by the Father are unknown to the Son, who would not be sufficient to be made equal to the comprehensions of the unbegotten God, we must make him reflect on the fact that the Savior is truth, and add that, if truth is complete, it is ignorant of nothing true, lest truth should limp, lacking the things it does not know, which on their view are found in the Father alone; or else let him show that there are things which, when known, do not receive the name of truth but are beyond it.

And it is clear that the beginning of life in the proper sense, life pure and unmixed with anything else, is in the firstborn of all creation; receiving from him, those who share in Christ live the life that is truly life, while those who are thought to live apart from him, as they do not have the true light, so neither do they have true life.

And since it is not possible to come to be in the Father, or with the Father, without first ascending from below to the divinity of the Son, through whom one can be led by the hand to the blessedness of the Father as well, the Savior is recorded as the door.

And being a lover of humankind, and welcoming in whatever way the inclination toward the better of those souls that do not hasten toward reason but, like sheep, have a gentleness and mildness that is not examined but without reason, he becomes a shepherd. “For the Lord saves both men and beasts”; and both Israel and Judah are sown with the seed not only of men but also of beasts.

In addition to these, we must examine from the beginning the title “Christ,” and take with it the title “King,” so that by setting them side by side their difference may be understood. It is said, then, in the forty-fourth psalm, that the one who has loved righteousness and hated lawlessness, beyond his partners, has as the reason for his having been anointed the fact that he so approached righteousness and hated lawlessness; so that he did not receive the anointing as coexisting and created together with his being. This anointing is a symbol of kingship among those who are begotten, and sometimes also of priesthood. Is the kingship of the Son of God, then, something added later, and not innate to him?

And how is it possible that the firstborn of all creation, not being king, later became king because he loved righteousness, and that when he is righteousness? Perhaps it escapes us that his human being is Christ, understood above all with respect to the soul, which because of its humanity became troubled and very sorrowful, while he is King with respect to the divine.

I support this from the seventy-first psalm, which says: “O God, give your judgment to the king, and your righteousness to the son of the king, to judge your people in righteousness and your poor in judgment.” For although the psalm is clearly headed “For Solomon,” it prophesies about Christ.

And it is worth seeing to which king the prophecy prays that judgment be given by God, and to which son of a king, and the righteousness of what sort of king.

I think, then, that “king” is said of the preeminent nature of the firstborn of all creation, to which, because it excels, judging is given; and that the human being whom he assumed, formed by that nature according to righteousness and

shaped, is “the son of the king.” And I am led to accept that this is so from the fact that both are gathered into one account, and that what follows is no longer reported as of two things but as of one.

For the Savior has made “both one,” having first of all done this in himself, as the firstfruits of those in whom both come to be. And I say “both” also of human beings, in whom each one's soul has been blended with the Holy Spirit, and each of those who are being saved has become spiritual.

Just as, then, there are some who are shepherded by Christ because of their own character, which, as we said before, is gentle and steady but less rational, so there are also those who are ruled as by a king, according to the more rational element, in their reverence for God.

And there are differences among those who are ruled as by a king: some are ruled in a more mystical, more secret, and more godlike way, others in a lesser way.

And I would say that those who have contemplated the things beyond bodies, which Paul calls “invisible” and “not seen,” having come to be outside everything perceptible by reason, are ruled as by a king by the preeminent nature of the Only-begotten; but those who have reached only as far as the account of perceptible things, and through them glorify the Maker, being themselves also ruled by reason, are ruled by Christ. But let no one take offense when we distinguish the aspects of the Savior, thinking that we do the same with his substance as well.

And it is quite clear even to ordinary people how our Lord is teacher and one who makes plain the things that lead to godliness, and Lord of the servants who have “a spirit of slavery leading to fear.” But of those who make progress and hasten toward wisdom and are counted worthy of it (since “the servant does not know what his lord wills”), he does not remain Lord, but becomes their “friend.”

And he himself teaches this, when those who heard him were still servants, saying, “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you speak well, for so I am”; but elsewhere: “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his lord's will is; but I call you friends,” because you have remained “with me in all my trials.”

Those, then, who live according to fear, which God demands from servants who are not good, as we read in Malachi, “If I am Lord, where is my fear?”, are servants of the Lord, and their Savior is called Lord.

But through all these the nobility of the Son is not clearly shown; it is when “You are my Son, today I have begotten you” is said to him by God, for whom it is always “today.” For God has no evening, and, I think, no morning either; but the time that stretches alongside his unbegotten and eternal life, if I may put it so, is for him the day “today,” in which the Son has been begotten; so that the beginning of his begetting is not found, as neither is the beginning of that day.

To what has been said we must add how the Son is “the true vine.” This will be plain to those who understand, in a manner worthy of prophetic grace, the words “Wine gladdens the heart of man.”

For if the heart is the thinking faculty, and what gladdens it is the most drinkable Word, which lifts it out of human things and makes it inspired and drunk with a drunkenness that is not irrational but divine (with which I think Joseph too made his brothers drunk), then fittingly the one who bears the wine that gladdens the heart of man is the “true vine”: “true” because he bears the truth as grapes, and has as branches the disciples, who imitate him and themselves also bear the truth as fruit.

It is a task to set out the difference between bread and vine, since he says that he is not only “the vine” but also “the bread of life.”

Consider whether, just as bread nourishes and strengthens and is said to sustain the heart of man, while wine pleases and gladdens and relaxes it, so moral teachings, which procure life for the one who learns and practices them, are the bread of life (these could not be called fruits of the vine), while the secret and mystical contemplations, which gladden and inspire, and which come to those who delight themselves in the Lord and long not only to be nourished but also to delight, come from the “true vine” and are called “wine.”

In addition to these, … how he is recorded in the Revelation as “the first” and “the last,” being different in that he is first from the Alpha and the Beginning, and as last not the same as the Omega and the End.

I think, then, that since rational living beings are characterized in many kinds, there is a first among them, and a second and a third and so on, down to a last.

And to say precisely what is first and what sort is second, and of whom “third” is true, and so to reach the last, is not at all a human matter but beyond our nature. But we will try to pause and discuss what bears on the subject as best we can.

There are some gods of whom God is God, as the prophecies say: “Give thanks to the God of gods,” and “The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken and called the earth.” But God, according to the Gospel, “is not the God of the dead but of the living”; so the gods too, of whom God is God, are living.

And the apostle too, writing in the letter to the Corinthians, “As there are many gods and many lords,” has taken the name of gods in the prophetic sense, as of beings that exist.

And besides the gods of whom God is God, there are some others who are called “thrones,” and others called “principalities,” and besides these others, “dominions” and “authorities.”

And because of the words “above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come,” we must believe that there are other rational beings besides these, not at all usually named by us. One kind of them the Hebrew called Sabai, from which Sabaoth is formed, who is their ruler and none other than God. And last of all is man, a mortal rational being.

The God of the universe, then, made a certain rational kind first in honor, which I think are those called gods; and a second, which for the present let us call “thrones”; and a third, no doubt, “principalities.” And so we must descend in the rational order down to the last rational being, which is perhaps nothing other than man.

The Savior, then, far more divinely than Paul, became “all things to all,” so that he might either “gain” or perfect “all”; and clearly he became a man to men and an angel to angels.

And about his having become a man none of the believers will hesitate; but about his having become an angel let us be persuaded by observing the appearances and words of angels, when in certain places of Scripture, where angels are speaking, the authority of the angels is seen to be his, as in “An angel of the Lord appeared in a flame of fire from the bush. And he said, ‘I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.’” And Isaiah too says, “His name is called Angel of great counsel.”

The Savior, then, is first and last, not in the sense that he is not the things between, but he is named by the extremes, so that it may be shown that he became “all things.” But consider whether “the last” is man, or the so-called beings under the earth, among whom are the demons, either all or some of them.

We must inquire into what the Savior became when he came among these as well, since he says through the prophet David, “And I became like a man without help, free among the dead.” For as he had more than other human beings in his birth from a virgin and in the rest of his life lived among wonders, so among the dead he was free, being the only one there who was; his soul was not abandoned to Hades. In this way, then, he is “first and last.”

And if there are letters of God, as there are, by reading which the saints say they have read what is written on the tablets of heaven, those letters, by which heavenly things are read, are the concepts of the Son of God, broken up into Alpha and the rest down to Omega.

Again, the same one is beginning and end, but not the same according to his aspects. For he is beginning, as we have learned in Proverbs, inasmuch as he is wisdom; at least it is written, “God created me the beginning of his ways, for his works.” But inasmuch as he is the Word, he is not the beginning: “In the beginning

was the Word.” So his aspects have a beginning, and something second beside the beginning, and a third, and so on up to the end; as if he said: I am beginning inasmuch as I am wisdom; second, perhaps, inasmuch as I am invisible; and third inasmuch as I am life, since “what came to be in him was life.”

And if anyone is able, by testing the sense of the Scriptures, to see it, he will perhaps find much of the order and the end; for I do not think he would find all. But more plainly, “the beginning” and “the end” seem, in ordinary usage, to be said of something united, as the beginning of a house is the foundation and its end the coping.

And because Christ is the “cornerstone,” we must apply the illustration to the whole united body of those who are being saved. For Christ the Only-begotten is “all” and “in all”: as beginning in the man he assumed, and as end, clearly, in the last of the saints, and also in those between; or as beginning in Adam, and as end in his coming, according to the saying, “The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” However, this text will fit the

explanation of “first and last,” while keeping what has been said about “first and last” and about “beginning and end,” where in one case we referred the account to kinds of rational beings, and in the other to the different aspects of the Son of God; and so we have the difference between “first” and “beginning,” and between “last” and “end,” and further between “Alpha” and “Omega.”

Nor is “the living one” and “dead” unclear, and after being dead, living for ever and ever. For since we were not benefited by his prior life, having come to be in sin, he came down to our deadness, so that, since he died to sin, we, carrying about the dying of Jesus in the body, might in due order make room for his life after deadness for ever and ever. For those who always carry about the dying of Jesus in the body will also have the life of Jesus made manifest in their bodies.

These things, then, he said about himself from the books of the New Testament. But in Isaiah he said that his mouth was made by the Father “like a sharp sword,” and that he was hidden “under the shelter of his hand,” made like a chosen arrow “and hidden in the quiver” of the Father, called by the God of the universe his “servant” and “Israel” and “a light of the nations.” The mouth of the Son of God, then, is a sharp sword,

since “the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and a judge of the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” And besides, having come not to bring peace on the earth, that is, on bodily and perceptible things, but a sword, and cutting through, so to speak, the harmful friendship of soul and body, so that the soul, giving itself to the Spirit that wars against the flesh, might become a friend of God, he had a mouth that was a sword, or like a sharp sword, according to the prophetic word. And whoever sees so many wounded by divine love, like the one who confesses in the Song of Songs that she has suffered this, saying “For I am wounded by love,” will find that the arrow that wounded the souls of so many toward love of God is none other than the one who said, “He has made me like a chosen arrow.”

Further, everyone who understands how Jesus has become to those who are being taught not as the one who reclines at table but as the one who serves, he who, being God's, took the form of a servant for the freedom of those enslaved to sin, will not fail to know in what way the Father says to him, “You are my servant,” and shortly after, “It is a great thing for you to be called my servant.”

For we must dare to say that the goodness of Christ appears greater and more divine and truly in the image of the Father when “he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross,” than if he had “counted equality with God a thing to be grasped” and had not been willing to become a servant for the salvation of the world.

For this reason, wishing to teach us that he received a great gift from the Father in having served in this way, he says: “And my God shall be my strength. And he said to me, ‘It is a great thing for you to be called my servant.’” For had he not become a servant, he would not have raised up “the tribes of Jacob” nor turned back “the dispersion of Israel,” nor would he have become “a light of the nations,” “to be for salvation to the end of the earth.”

And his becoming a servant is a modest thing, even if the Father says it is great, in comparison with his being an innocent lamb and a sheep. For the Lamb of God became like an innocent lamb led to be slaughtered, so that he might take away “the sin of the world”; he who supplies reason to all was made like a lamb dumb “before its shearer,” so that by his death we might all be cleansed, his death being given like a medicine against the opposing powers and against the sin of those who are willing to receive the truth. For the death of Christ has made powerless the powers that war against the human race, and … the life in each believer from sin by an unspeakable power.

And since he takes away sin until every enemy of his is abolished, and the last is death, so that the whole world may come to be without sin, for this reason John, pointing him out, says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”: not the one who will take it away but is not already taking it away, and not the one who has taken it away but is no longer taking it away.

For the taking away is at work in each one of those in the world, until sin is removed from the whole world and the Savior hands over a prepared kingdom to the Father, when there is not even the slightest sin present to prevent it from being ruled by the Father, and it again receives all things of God in its whole and entire self, when the words are fulfilled, “So that God may be all in all.”

But besides these he is also called “a man” coming after John, having come to be before him and existing before him, so that we may be taught that the human being of the Son of God, the one blended with his divinity, is older than his birth from Mary; this man the Baptist says he “did not know.”

But how did he not know him, he who leapt for joy while still a baby in the womb of Elizabeth, when “the voice of the greeting” of Mary “came into the ears” of Zechariah's wife?

Consider, then, whether “I did not know” can refer to what was before the body. And if he did not know him before he came into a body at that time, but knew him while he was still in his mother's womb, perhaps he learns something about him beyond what he knew: that “he on whom the Spirit descends and remains, this is the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit and fire.”

For even if he knew him from his mother's womb, he did not know all the things about him; and perhaps he was also ignorant that “this is the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit and fire,” until he saw “the Spirit descending and remaining on him.” … that he was a “man,” and at first John did not know him.

None of the names mentioned before shows his advocacy for us with the Father, as he intercedes on behalf of human nature and makes propitiation, as do “the Advocate” and “propitiation” and “the mercy seat.” He is called Advocate in the letter of John: “For if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins”; and propitiation in the same letter, where he is said to be “the propitiation for our sins”; and likewise in the letter to the Romans, “mercy seat”: “whom God put forward as a mercy seat through faith.” Of this mercy seat the golden mercy seat, placed on the two cherubim in the innermost place, the Holy of Holies, was a kind of shadow.

How could he have become Advocate and propitiation and mercy seat without a power of God that wipes out our weakness, flowing into the souls of believers and ministered by Jesus, of which he is the first, he who is the very power of God, through whom one might say, “I can do all things in Christ Jesus who strengthens me”?

Therefore, as for Simon the magician, who proclaimed himself “the power of God that is called great,” we know that he went to destruction together with his silver; but confessing Christ to be truly “the power of God,” we believe that all things that are empowered anywhere share in him inasmuch as he is “power.”

Nor let us pass over in silence that he is rightly “the wisdom of God” and for that reason is said to be so. For the wisdom of the God and Father of the universe does not have its subsistence in mere impressions, like the images that correspond to human thoughts.

But if anyone is able to conceive of a bodiless subsistence of manifold contemplations containing the principles of the universe, living and, as it were, ensouled, he will know the Wisdom of God that is above all creation, rightly saying of herself: “God created me the beginning of his ways, for his works.” Through this creation all creation too has been able to subsist, not being incapable of receiving divine wisdom, according to which it has come to be; for according to the prophet David, God made all things in wisdom.

But many things have come to be by participation in wisdom without grasping the wisdom by which they were created, while very few grasp not only the wisdom concerning themselves but also concerning many other things, Christ being the whole of wisdom.

And each of the wise, insofar as he receives wisdom, shares that much in Christ, inasmuch as he is wisdom; just as each of those who have greater power has shared in Christ, inasmuch as he is power, to the extent that he has received power.

Something similar must be understood also about sanctification and redemption. For Jesus has become for us sanctification itself, from which the saints are sanctified, and redemption; and each of us is sanctified by that sanctification and redeemed according to that redemption.

But consider whether it is not without purpose that “for us” is added by the apostle when he says, “who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption”; and whether, if it had not been said elsewhere of Christ, without qualification, that he is “wisdom” and “power” (“Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God”), we might have supposed that he is not wisdom or power of God absolutely, but only “for us.” As it is, of “wisdom” and “power” the unqualified statement is recorded besides “for us,” but of “sanctification” and “redemption” the same statement has not been made.

See, therefore, since “he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one,” whether the Father is the “sanctification” of him who is our sanctification, just as, Christ being our head, his Father is his head.

And Christ is the redemption of us, who needed redemption because we had been taken captive; but I do not look for a redemption of him who was tempted in all things in the same way, “without sin,” and was never held captive by the enemies.

Once “for us” and “absolutely” have been distinguished, “sanctification” and “redemption” being “for us” and not absolutely, and “wisdom” and “power” being both for us and absolutely, we must not leave unexamined the account of righteousness. That Christ is righteousness “for us” is clear from “who became for us wisdom from God,

and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” But if we do not find him called “righteousness” absolutely, as he is absolutely “wisdom” and “power of God,” we must test whether, just as the Father is “sanctification” to Christ himself, so also the Father is his “righteousness.” For there is no unrighteousness with God, and the Lord is righteous and holy, and his judgments are in righteousness; and being righteous he governs all things righteously.

The thing that led those from the heresies to call the righteous one different from the good one, which was not made clear among them, so that they supposed the Creator to be righteous and the Father of Christ good, I think can, when tested precisely with examination, be said of the Father and the Son: the Son being righteousness, who received authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of Man and will judge the world in righteousness; and the Father doing good, after the kingdom of Christ, to those who have been trained in the righteousness of the Son, and showing by his works the title “good,” when God becomes “all in all.”

And perhaps the Savior by his righteousness prepares all things at fitting times, with reason and order and punishments and, if I may put it so, his spiritual medical remedies, so that in the end they may receive the goodness of the Father. Understanding this goodness, when someone said to the Only-begotten, “Good Teacher,” he says: “Why do you call me good?

No one is good but one, God the Father.” And we have shown something similar elsewhere also concerning the claim that there is someone greater than the Creator, taking the Creator to be Christ and the Father to be greater than he. He himself, then, who is so many things, “the Advocate,” “the propitiation,” “the mercy seat,” having sympathized “with our weaknesses” by having been tempted “in all” human things “in the same way, without sin,” is a “great high priest,” having offered himself as the sacrifice offered once for all, not for human beings only but for every rational being. For “apart from God he tasted death for everyone”; which in some copies of the letter to the Hebrews reads “by the grace of God.”

Whether “apart from God he tasted death for everyone,” he died not only for human beings but also for the other rational beings; or whether “by the grace of God he tasted death for everyone,” he died for all apart from God: “for by the grace of God he tasted death for everyone.”

For it would be absurd to say that he tasted death for human sins, and no longer also for any other being besides man that has come to be in sins, such as the stars, since not even the stars are wholly clean before God, as we read in Job: “And the stars are not clean before him”; unless perhaps this is said by hyperbole.

For this reason he is a “great high priest,” since he restores all things to the kingdom of the Father, arranging that what is lacking in each of the things that have come to be is filled up, so that they may receive the Father's glory.

This high priest, according to another aspect besides those mentioned, is named “Judah,” so that those who are Jews inwardly may be called Jews not after Judah the son of Jacob but after him, being his brothers and praising him, grasping the freedom with which they have been set free by him, rescued from their enemies, when he put his hands on their backs and subdued them.

But also, having supplanted the opposing power, and alone seeing the Father, when he became a man he is “Jacob” and “Israel.” From him, just as we become light because he is the light of the world, so we are called “Jacob” because he is called Jacob, and “Israel” because he is named Israel.

Further, he receives the kingdom from the king whom the sons of Israel made king for themselves, … not through God, having made him ruler and not having made it known to God; and he wages the wars of the Lord and prepares peace for his son, the people. Perhaps for this reason he is called “David,” and afterward “rod” for those who need a toilsome and harsher discipline and have not given themselves to the love and gentleness of the Father.

For this reason, if he is called a “rod,” he will “come forth”; for he does not remain in himself, but seems to be outside his former state.

But having come forth and become a “rod,” he does not remain a “rod,” but after the “rod” he becomes a “flower” that rises up; and the “flower” is shown as the goal of his being a “rod” to those who have received visitation through his having become a “rod.” For God will visit with a rod, that is, with Christ, “their lawless deeds,” those whom he will visit; but his mercy he will not scatter from him. For he has mercy on him, when the Father has mercy on those whom the Son wishes to receive mercy. It is also possible to take it that he becomes “rod” and “flower” not for the same people, but “rod” for those who need punishment and “flower” for those who are being saved; but I think the former is better.

But this must be added on the passage: perhaps because of the end, if he becomes a “rod” to someone, he will certainly be a “flower,” but not, if he is a “flower” to someone, will he certainly also be a “rod” to him; unless, since there is something more perfect than the flower (the flower being named from blossoming in those who do not yet bear fruit perfectly), the perfect receive what is beyond the flower of Christ, while those who have experienced his rod will, along with the rod, share not in his perfection but in the flower that comes before his fruits.

Lastly, before “the Word,” Christ was the “stone,” rejected by the builders and set as the head of the corner. For since living stones are built on the foundation of other stones, the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus our Lord himself being the cornerstone, he is called a “stone” because he is part of the building made of living stones “in the land of the living.”

All this we have said wishing to refute the arbitrary and unexamined opinion of the many, who, though so many names are referred to him, stop at the one name “Word” alone, without examining why ever “the Son of God” is recorded as being the Word, God, in the beginning with the Father, through whom all things came to be.

Just as, then, from the activity of enlightening the world, of which he is the light, he is called “light of the world”; and from making those who genuinely come to him put off deadness and take up newness of life as they rise, he is called “resurrection”; and from another activity “shepherd” and “teacher” and “king,” “chosen arrow” and “servant,” and besides these “Advocate” and “propitiation” and “mercy seat”: so too he is called “Word,” taking away everything irrational in us and making us truly rational, doing all things for the glory of God, down to eating and drinking, and performing through the Word, to the glory of God, both the more common and the more perfect works of life.

For if by sharing in him we rise and are enlightened, and perhaps also are shepherded or ruled as by a king, it is clear that we also become rational in a divine way, as he does away with what is irrational in us and with our deadness, inasmuch as he is “Word” and “resurrection.”

But consider whether all human beings share in him in some way, inasmuch as he is Word. That is why the apostle teaches us that he is sought not outside those who seek, by those who choose to find him, when he says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’, that is, to bring Christ down; or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’, that is, to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does the Scripture say? ‘The word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart,’”

since Christ and the word that is sought are the same. And also when the Lord himself says, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin,” nothing else must be understood than that the Word says that those in whom he has not yet been completed have no sin, but that those are liable to it who, having already shared in him, act against the notions from which he is completed in us; and only thus is it true that “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin.”

For come, let this be examined with regard to the visible Jesus, as the many will suppose: how is it true that those to whom he did not come have no sin? For all who lived before the Savior's coming will be free of every sin, since Jesus, seen according to the flesh, had not yet come.

And also all to whom nothing at all was announced about him will not have sin, and clearly those who do not have sin are not subject to judgment.

But the “word” in human beings, in which we have said our race shares, is spoken of in two ways: either according to the completion of the notions, which occurs in everyone who has passed beyond childhood, prodigies excepted, or according to its highest point, which is found only in the perfect.

According to the first, then, the words “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin” must be taken; and according to the second: “All who came before me are thieves and robbers, and the sheep did not listen to them.”

For before the perfecting of the word, everything in human beings is blameworthy, being deficient and lacking; the irrational elements in us, called “sheep” in a more figurative way, do not perfectly obey them. And perhaps according to the first “The Word became flesh,” and according to the second “The Word was God.”

It follows from this to inquire whether there is something between “The Word became flesh” and “The Word was God” to be seen in human matters, as though the Word were being resolved back from having become flesh and little by little refined, until it becomes what it was in the beginning, God the Word who is with the Father; the glory of which Word John saw, truly the glory of the Only-begotten as from the Father.

The Son can also be the Word because he announces the hidden things of that Father, by analogy with the Word, which is called Son, being the Word of the mind. For just as the word in us is a messenger of the things seen by the mind, so the Word of God, having known the Father, since none of the things that have come to be can approach him without a guide, reveals the Father whom he knew.

“For no one has known the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son reveals him.” And inasmuch as he is “Word,” he is the “Angel of great counsel,” “whose rule came to be upon his shoulder”; for he reigned by having suffered the cross. And in the Revelation “the Word, faithful and true,” is said to sit on a white horse, representing, I think, the clarity of the voice on which the Word of truth that comes to us rides.

It is not the right time now to show that in many places of Scripture the name “horse” is used of the voice, in which are the things set before us, through which, hearing divine teachings, we are benefited. We need only recall one or two: “A horse is a false hope for salvation,” and “Some in chariots and some in horses, but we will be magnified in the name of the Lord our God.”

But the words “My heart has belched forth a good word; I speak my works to the king,” recorded in the forty-fourth psalm, and very constantly cited by the many as if understood, we must not leave unexamined. For let it be granted that the Father says them.

What, then, is his heart, so that the “good word” may appear in keeping with the heart? For if the “word” needs no explanation, as they suppose, clearly neither does the “heart”; but it is most absurd to think that the heart is a part of God as in our body.

But we must remind them that, just as a hand and an arm and a finger of God are named, and we do not fix our understanding on the bare expression but examine how these must be taken soundly and worthily of God, so too the heart of God must be taken as his power of thinking and of purposing concerning the universe, and the Word as that which announces what is in it.

And who announces the Father's counsel to those of the created beings who are worthy of it, and who has come among them, but the Savior? And perhaps “belched forth” is not said without purpose; for countless other things could have been said instead of “belched forth”: “my heart put forth a good word,” “my heart spoke a good word.” But perhaps, just as a belch is the coming forth into the open of some hidden air of the one who belches, as though he breathed out through it, so the Father, not holding in the contemplations of truth, belches them forth and makes their imprint in the Word, and for this reason he is called the image of the invisible God. These things we have said so that, going along with the interpretation of the many, we may accept that “My heart has belched forth a good word” is said by the Father.

But we must not concede to them entirely, as if it were agreed that God announces these things. For why should it not be the prophet who says, filled with the Spirit and bringing forth a good word about the prophecy concerning Christ, unable to hold it in, “My heart has belched forth a good word; I speak my works to the king; my tongue is the pen of a swift scribe. You are beautiful beyond the sons of men”; and then to Christ himself: “Grace has been poured out on your lips”?

For how, if the Father were saying these things, would “Therefore God has blessed you for ever” follow “Grace has been poured out on your lips,” and shortly after, “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your partners”?

But someone who wishes the things in the psalm to be announced by the Father might object with “Hear, daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and forget your people and your father's house”; for the prophet will not say “Hear, daughter” to the church.

But it is not hard to show from other psalms too that there are frequent changes of speaker, so that here too it can be the Father who speaks from “Hear, daughter” onward.

We must also set beside the examination of the Word the text “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and by the spirit of his mouth all their power.” Some think this refers to the Savior and the Holy Spirit, though it can mean that the heavens were made firm by the word of God, as if we were to say that a house came to be by the principle of architecture and a ship by the principle of shipbuilding. So, then, the heavens, being of a more divine body and for this reason called firm, not having the very fluid and easily dissolved character of the other and lower things, were made firm by the word of God, and because of this difference they had it in a special way from the divine Word.

Since, then, the task set before us is to see clearly “In the beginning was the Word,” and “beginning” has been shown, with testimonies from Proverbs, to be said of wisdom, and wisdom is conceived before the Word that announces it, we must understand that the Word is always in the beginning, that is, in wisdom; and that, being in wisdom, which is called “beginning,” he is not prevented from being “with God,” being himself God; and that he is not simply “with God,” but, being “in the beginning,” in wisdom, he is “with God.”

At any rate he adds and says, “He was in the beginning with God.” For he could have said, “He was with God”; but just as he “was in the beginning,” so too he “was in the beginning” “with God”; and “all things came to be through him,” who was “in the beginning”; for according to David God made “all things” “in wisdom.”

And further, so that we may accept that the Word has his own circumscription, as living in his own right, we must speak also of powers, not only of one power. For “Thus says the Lord of powers” occurs in many places, certain divine rational living beings being called powers, of which Christ was the highest and best, being called not only “wisdom of God” but also “power.”

Just as, then, there are many powers of God, each existing with its own circumscription, among which the Savior excels, so also Christ will be understood as “Word”, even though the word in us does not exist with a circumscription outside us, because of what has been examined before, having his subsistence “in the beginning,” in wisdom. This will suffice us for the present on “In the beginning was the Word.”

John 1:1: “And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Having grasped sufficiently, as far as our present ability allows, holy brother Ambrose, you who have been formed according to the Gospel, in the preceding discussion what the Gospel is and what the beginning is in which the Word was, and who the Word in the beginning is, we now, in due order, examine how “the Word was with God.”

It is useful, then, to gather for this purpose the word that is recorded as having come to certain people, such as “The word of the Lord which came to Hosea, the son of Beeri,” and “The word that came to Isaiah, son of Amoz, concerning Judea and concerning Jerusalem,” and “The word that came to Jeremiah concerning the drought.”

We must examine, then, how “the word of the Lord” came to Hosea, and the word is that which came to Isaiah, son of Amoz, and again “the word to Jeremiah concerning the drought,” so that by comparison it may be found how “the Word was with God.”

The ordinary person will take what is said about the prophets rather simply, as the word of the Lord or the Word having come to them. But perhaps, just as we say that such a person comes to such another, so the Son, now spoken of in theology as “Word,” came to Hosea, sent by the Father to him: according to the history, to the son of Beeri, the prophet Hosea; but according to the mystical sense, to the one who is being saved (for Hosea means “one being saved”), the son of Beeri, which means “wells.” For each of those being saved becomes a son of the spring gushing up from the depth, the wisdom of God.

And there is nothing surprising that the saint is thus a son of wells, since he is often named a son from his noble deeds: a son “of light,” because his works shine “before men”; a son “of peace,” because he has “the peace of God that surpasses all understanding”; and further, because of the benefit from wisdom, a “child of wisdom.” “For wisdom,

it says, is justified by her children.” So, then, the one who searches all things by the divine Spirit, even the depths of God, so as to exclaim, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God,” can be a “son of wells,” to whom the word of the Lord comes.

Likewise the word comes also to Isaiah, teaching what will befall Judea and Jerusalem in the last days; and in the same way to Jeremiah, lifted up by a divine exaltation; for his name means “Exaltation of Iao.”

But to human beings, who were not previously able to receive the coming of the Son of God, who is Word, the Word comes to be; but he does not come to be “with God,” as though he were not with him before; rather, because he is always with the Father, it is said, “And the Word was with God”; for it is not said “came to be with God.”

And the same verb “was” is predicated of the Word both when he “was in the beginning” and when he “was with God”: he is neither separated from the beginning nor absent from the Father; and again, he does not come to be “in the beginning” from not being “in the beginning,” nor pass from not being “with God” to being “with God.” For before all time and age “in the beginning was the Word,” and “the Word was with God.”

Since, then, to find the meaning of “And the Word was with God” we have set out prophetic expressions of how the word came to Hosea and Isaiah and Jeremiah, and have observed the considerable difference between “came” and “was,” we shall add that in coming to the prophets he enlightens them with the light of knowledge, making them see, as it were, what lay ahead, which they had not perceived before him; but with God … he is “God” from being with him.

And perhaps John, seeing some such order in the Word, did not put “The Word was God” before “The Word was with God,” though as far as the statements themselves go, nothing in the sequence would have prevented us from seeing the force of each proposition by itself. For one proposition is “In the beginning was the Word,” a second “The Word was with God,” and next “And the Word was God.”

But since perhaps an order is indicated by placing first “In the beginning was the Word,” and next “And the Word was with God,” and third “and the Word was God,” for this reason, so that the Word may be understood to become God from being “with God,” it is said, “And the Word was with God,” and then, “and the Word was God.”

And John, very carefully and not as one ignorant of precision in Greek, used the articles in some places and omitted them in others: adding “the” to “Word,” but with the title “God” in some places using it and in others taking it away.

For he puts the article when the name “God” is applied to the unbegotten cause of the universe, but omits it when the Word is named “God.” And as “the God” and “God” differ in these places, so perhaps “the Word” and “Word” differ.

For in the way that the God over all is “the God” and not simply “God,” so the source of the reason in each rational being is “the Word,” while the reason in each would not properly be named and called “the Word” like the first.

And what troubles many who wish to be lovers of God, who are cautious about proclaiming two gods and on this account fall into false and impious doctrines, either denying that the Son has an individuality distinct from that of the Father, while confessing that he is God whom they call “Son” in name only, or denying the divinity of the Son while positing his individuality and his being, circumscribed, as distinct from the Father's: this can be resolved from here.

For we must say to them that God, on the one hand, is God-in-himself, which is why the Savior too says in his prayer to the Father, “That they may know [you, the only true God]”; but [everything besides God-in-himself that is made divine by sharing in] his divinity would more properly be called not “the God” but “God.” Of these the firstborn of all creation is altogether more honored, inasmuch as he was first, by being with God, to draw divinity into himself, and it was he who ministered to the other gods beside him (of whom God is God, according to the saying, “The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken and called the earth”) their becoming gods, drawing from God for their deification and ungrudgingly sharing it with them according to his own goodness.

The true God, then, is “the God,” and those formed after him are gods as images of a prototype; but again, the archetypal image of the many images is the Word who is with God, who was “in the beginning,” and by being “with God” always remains “God.” He would not have this if he were not with God, and he would not remain God if he did not continue in the unceasing contemplation of the Father's depth.

But since it is likely that some will take offense at what has been said, since one true God, the Father, is proclaimed, and besides the true God many gods come to be by sharing in God, and they are cautious about making the glory of him who surpasses all creation equal to the others who bear the title “God,” we must set out this further point in addition to the difference already given, according to which we said that God the Word is the minister of divinity to all the other gods.

For the reason in each rational being has the same relation to the Word who is in the beginning with God, the Word who is God, as God the Word has to God. For as the Father is God-in-himself and true God in relation to the image and the images of the image (which is why human beings are said to be “according to the image,” not “images”), so is the Word-in-himself in relation to the reason in each. For both hold the place of a source: the Father of divinity, the Son of reason.

Just as, then, there are many gods, but for us “one God, the Father,” and many lords, but for us “one Lord, Jesus Christ,” so there are many words, but for us we pray that there may be the Word who was in the beginning, who is with God, God the Word.

For whoever cannot receive this Word, the one in the beginning with God, will either attach himself to him as he became flesh, or will share in one of those who have shared in this Word; or, falling away from sharing even in one who has shared, he will be in what is called a word but is wholly alien to the Word.

What has been said will become clear from examples concerning God and the Word of God, and gods who either share in God or are so called but are in no way gods; and again, concerning the Word of God and the Word who became flesh, and words that either share in some way in the Word, being second or third words besides the one before all, or are thought to be words but are not truly words but, so to speak, altogether irrational words; just as, in the case of those called gods but not being gods, one might put “no-gods gods” in place of “irrational words.”

The God of the universe, then, is the God of the elect, and much more of the Savior of the elect; then he is the God of those who are truly gods, and in a word he is the God of the living and not of the dead. But God the Word is perhaps the God of those who set their all in him and consider him their Father.

And the sun and moon and stars, as some before us have explained, were allotted to those who were not worthy to have the God of gods inscribed as their God. They took it so, moved by the words in Deuteronomy which run thus: “Do not, looking up to heaven and seeing the sun and the moon and all the ornament of heaven, be led astray and worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God allotted to all the nations. But to you the Lord your God did not give it so.”

For how did he allot the sun and moon to all the nations, … to Israel? In that those who cannot run up to the intelligible nature, being moved concerning divinity through perceptible gods, might be content to stop at least at these and not fall to idols and demons.

So some have as God … the Son of God, his Christ; and third are those who have the sun and the moon and all the ornament of heaven, having strayed from God, though with a straying far different from and better than that of those who call gods the works of human hands, gold and silver, products of craft. And last are those devoted to so-called gods which are in no way gods.

So, then, some share in the Word himself who is “in the beginning,” the Word “with God,” the Word who is “God,” like Hosea and Isaiah and Jeremiah and anyone else who has shown himself such that “the word of the Lord” or “the word” came to him;

others, who know nothing “except Jesus Christ and him crucified,” thinking that the Word become flesh is the whole of the Word, know Christ only according to the flesh; and such is the multitude of those who are thought to have believed.

And third are those who have given heed to words that share somewhat in the Word, as though these surpassed every word; and perhaps these are those who follow the esteemed and distinguished schools of philosophy among the Greeks.

And fourth besides these are those who have believed in words wholly corrupt and godless, which do away with the evident and almost perceptible providence and accept some end other than the good.

Even if we seemed to have digressed, I think we have done this appropriately, in order to see clearly four ranks according to the name “God” and four according to the name “Word.” For there was “the God” and “God,” then “gods” in two senses, … of the God of the universe. And again there was “the Word,” and perhaps also “Word,” like “the God” and “God,” and “the words” in two senses. Of those who worship: some belong to the Father, being his portion; and next to these, those whom the argument now presents to us more clearly, who have reached the Savior and set their all in him; and third, those mentioned before, who think the sun and moon and stars are gods and stop at them; and last of all, in the

lowest place, those who are devoted to lifeless and dead idols. And we find the analogous thing also in what concerns the Word. For some are adorned by the Word himself; others by something next to him that seems to be the first Word himself: those who know nothing “except Jesus Christ and him crucified,” who see the Word as flesh; and others by what seems to be a word, those whom we mentioned a little before. And what need is there to speak of those who are thought to be in the word but have fallen away not only from the good itself but even from the traces of those who share in it? John 1:2: “He was in the beginning with God.”

Having taught us three ranks through the three propositions stated before, the evangelist sums up the three into one, saying, “He was in the beginning with God.”

First of the three we have learned in what the Word was, namely “in the beginning”; and with whom he was, namely “with God”; and who the Word was, namely “God.” As if pointing, then, to the God the Word already mentioned by “He,” and gathering into a fourth proposition both “In the beginning was the Word” and “The Word was with God, and the Word was God,” he says: “He was in the beginning with God.”

The name “beginning,” however, can also be taken of the beginning of the world, as we learn from what is said that the Word was older than the things that came to be from the beginning. For if “in the beginning God made the heaven and the earth,” and “In the beginning was” is clearly older than what was made in the beginning, the Word is older not only than the firmament and the dry land but than heaven and earth.

Perhaps someone might not unreasonably ask why it is not said, “In the beginning was the Word” of God, “and the Word” of God “was with God, and the Word” of God “was God.” It follows that whoever asks why it is not written “In the beginning was the Word of God” must also ask whether one is the Word of God, and another, let us say, the word of angels, and another of human beings, and so on with the other words.

And if there are several words, perhaps also several “wisdoms” and “righteousnesses.” But it is absurd to say that several beings properly bear the title “Word,” and “Wisdom,” and “Righteousness.” And we shall be struck, from the example of truth, by the conclusion that we must not seek several words and wisdoms and righteousnesses that are properly so named.

For anyone whatever would agree that truth is one. For no one would dare to say of it that the truth of God is one thing, that of angels another, and that of human beings another; for in the nature of things the truth about each thing is one.

And if truth is one, clearly its establishment and demonstration, being wisdom, would reasonably be understood as one, since all so-called wisdom that does not hold the truth would not soundly be called wisdom either. And if truth is one and wisdom is one, the Word too who announces truth and wisdom, simple and plain, to those able to receive them, would be one.

And we do not say these things denying that the truth and the wisdom and the Word are God's, but showing the usefulness of the silence about “of God,” and of its not being written, “In the beginning was the Word of God.”

The same John in the Revelation names him with the addition “of God,” saying: “And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and the one sitting on it called faithful and true, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems; he has a name written which no one knows but himself, and he is clothed in a garment … sprinkled with blood, and his name was called ‘The Word of God.’ And his armies in heaven followed him on white horses, clothed in fine linen … pure. And from his mouth goes out a sharp sword, so that with it he may strike the nations, and he will shepherd them with a rod of iron; and he treads the winepress of the wine of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. And he has on his garment and on his thigh a name written: ‘King of kings and Lord of lords.’”

Necessarily, then, he is called both “Word” absolutely and, with the addition, “Word of God.” If either of these had been left unsaid, we would have had occasions for misinterpreting and falling away from the truth about the Word. For if “Word” had been written but “Word of God” not said, we would not have learned clearly that this Word is the “Word of God.”

And again, if he had been called “Word of God” but not said to be “Word” absolutely, we might have invented many words according to the relation to each rational being, and wrongly accepted many as properly so named.

Well indeed does the apostle and evangelist, and now also the prophet of the Revelation, describe the things concerning the Word of God in the Revelation, saying that he saw the Word of God riding on a white horse in the opened heaven.

We must consider what is hinted at by the opening of heaven and the white horse, and by the one called the Word of God sitting on it, who besides being the Word of God is said to be faithful and true and to judge and make war in righteousness, so that we may advance still further in grasping the things concerning “the Word of God.”

I think heaven is shut to the ungodly and to those who bear the image of the man of dust, but opened to the righteous and to those adorned with the image of the heavenly man. For to the former, since they are below and still in the flesh, the better things are closed, as they cannot understand them or their beauty, since they will not consider them but stoop down and do not give themselves to looking up. But to those who excel, since they have their citizenship in heaven, the heavenly things are opened with the key of David to be contemplated, the divine Word opening and making them clear by riding on a horse, that is, on voices that announce what is signified; white, because of the clarity and the whiteness and brightness of knowledge.

And the one called “faithful” sits on the white horse, seated more securely and, so to speak, more royally on voices that cannot be overturned, running more swiftly and quickly than any horse, and surpassing in their course every rival that pretends to be the Word, the word so considered, and the truth that seems to be truth.

And the one on the white horse is called “faithful” not so much because he believes as because he is believable, that is, worthy of being believed; for according to Moses the Lord is faithful and true. And he is “true” in contrast to shadow and type and image, since such is the Word in the opened heaven; for the Word on earth is not such as the Word in heaven, since he became flesh and speaks through shadows and types and images.

But the multitudes of those who are thought to have believed are taught by the shadow of the Word, and not by the true Word of God who is in the opened heaven. That is why Jeremiah says: “The breath of our face is Christ the Lord, of whom we said, ‘In his shadow we shall live among the nations.’”

This Word of God, then, who is called faithful, is also called true, and judges and makes war in righteousness, having received from God the ability, by righteousness itself and judgment itself, to assign to each being what it deserves and to judge.

For none of those who share in righteousness and in the power of judging will be able so completely to stamp the imprints of righteousness and of judging on his own soul as to fall short in nothing of righteousness itself and judgment itself, just as a painter will not be able to give his painting all the characteristics of what he paints.

That is why I think David says, “No living being will be justified before you.” For he did not say simply “every man” or “every angel,” but “every living being,” because even if someone shares in life and has shaken off all deadness, not even so will he be able to be justified before you as life is; nor is it possible for one who shares in life, and is for this reason called living, himself to become life, or for one who shares in righteousness, and is for this reason called righteous, to be made entirely equal to righteousness.

And it is the work of the Word, as to judge in righteousness, so also to make war in righteousness, so that, from his so warring against the enemies with reason and righteousness, when the irrational things and those called injustice are destroyed, he may dwell in and justify the soul, casting out what is opposed from the soul of one who has, so to speak, been taken captive by Christ for salvation.

Still more can one see the war that the Word wages when he himself pleads for the truth, while the one who pretends to be the word, not being the word, and she who proclaims herself truth, not being truth but falsehood, claims to be the truth. For then the Word, arming himself against falsehood, “will destroy it with the breath of his mouth and abolish it by the appearing of his coming.”

And see whether these things can be represented in their spiritual sense by the apostle in the letter to the Thessalonians. For what is it that is destroyed by the breath of the mouth of Christ, Christ being Word and truth and wisdom, but falsehood? And what is abolished by the appearing of the coming of Christ, understood as wisdom and Word, but everything that professes to be wisdom and is one of those whom God catches “in their craftiness”? Further, John very marvelously says, in what concerns the Word riding the white horse, also, “His eyes are like a flame of fire.”

For as the flame has at once brightness and the power to give light, and further is fiery and consumes the more material things, so the eyes of the Word, so to speak, by which he sees, and so does everyone who shares in him, besides grasping intelligible things through the eyes that are in him, consume and do away with the more material and coarser of thoughts. And everything that is in any way false has escaped the fineness and subtlety of the truth.

And in very good order, after the one judging in righteousness, and making war as he judges in righteousness, and next after his making war, enlightening, it is added that on his head are many diadems. For if falsehood were one and of one form, over which, defeated, the victorious “faithful and true” Word received the crown, it would reasonably have been recorded that the Word who prevailed over the enemies of God wore one diadem.

But now, since the falsehoods that profess the truth are many, against which the Word campaigns and is crowned, the diadems placed on the head of him who conquers all are many; and, prevailing over each rebellious power, he is crowned with many diadems for his victory.

Next after the diadems he is recorded as having “a name written which no one knows but himself.” For this living Word alone knows certain things, since, because of the inferiority of their nature, none of the beings that come after him can receive the contemplation of all that he comprehends. And perhaps also those who share in that Word alone, as compared with those who do not share, know the things that do not reach the others.

But the Word of God riding the horse is not seen by John naked; for he is clothed in a garment … sprinkled with blood, since the Word who became flesh bears traces of that suffering, having died because he became flesh, so that his blood too was poured out on the earth when the soldier pierced his side. For perhaps, even if we should come in some way to the highest and loftiest contemplation of the Word and of the truth, we shall not entirely forget our introduction, which came about through him in the body.

This Word of God is followed by all the armies in heaven, following the Word as their leader and imitating him in all things, and especially in having mounted white horses as he did; for all things are plain to those who understand. And just as “pain and sorrow and sighing have fled away” at the end of things, so I think obscurity and perplexity have fled away, all the mysteries of the wisdom of God being set forth carefully and clearly.

And consider the white horses of those who follow the Word, clothed in “fine linen, white and pure”: whether, since linen comes from the earth, the linen garments are types of the earthly languages with which the voices that signify things purely are clothed. These things have been said at greater length from the Revelation, which teaches about the Word of God, so that we may understand more precisely what concerns him. John 1:2: “He was in the beginning with God.”

To those who do not examine precisely the different propositions in what is stated, the evangelist will seem to repeat himself, saying nothing more in “He was in the beginning with God” than in “And the Word was with God.”

But we must observe that in “The Word was with God” we do not learn when or in what he “was with God,” which is added in the fourth proposition. For there are four propositions here, which some call premises, of which the fourth is “He was in the beginning with God.”

And “The Word was with God” is not the same as “He was,” not simply with God, but when or in what he was with God; for, it says, “He was in the beginning with God.” But also “He,” spoken as a pointing word, will be thought, by one who does not examine more finely, to refer to the Word or to God, so that he may find a combining of the earlier ones in the name “he,” of the aspect “Word” and of the aspect “God,” so that the pointing gathers into one what differs in aspect. For the aspect “God” is not in the aspect “Word,” nor the aspect “Word” in that of “God.”

And perhaps “He was in the beginning with God” is a summing up of the three propositions into one. For insofar as “in the beginning was the Word,” we had not learned that he was “with God”; and insofar as the Word was “with God,” we did not know clearly that he was with God in the beginning; and insofar as “the Word was God,” it was shown neither that he was “in the beginning” nor that he was “with God.”

But in the statement “He was in the beginning with God,” when “He” is understood of the Word and God, and “in the beginning” is thus joined to it and “with God” is added, nothing of what was in the three propositions is left out that is not summed up, gathered into one.

But see whether, because “in the beginning” is named twice, we can learn two things: one, that “in the beginning was the Word,” as though he existed by himself and not necessarily with anyone; the other, that “in the beginning” he “was with God.” And I think it is not false to say of him that “he was in the beginning” and “in the beginning” “with God,” being neither only “with God,” since he also “was in the beginning,” nor only “in the beginning” and not “with God,” since “He was in the beginning with God.” John 1:3: “All things came to be through him.”

“Through whom” never has the first place, but always the second; as in the letter to the Romans: “Paul,” he says, “a servant of Christ Jesus, called an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who came from the seed of David according to the flesh, who was designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship for the obedience of faith among all the nations for his name's sake.”

For God promised his gospel beforehand through the prophets, the prophets serving and having the role of “through whom”; and again God gave “grace and apostleship for the obedience of faith among all the nations” to Paul and the others, and gave it through Christ Jesus the Savior, who has the role of “through whom.”

And in the letter to the Hebrews the same Paul says: “In these last days he has spoken to us in a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also made the ages,” teaching us that God made the ages through the Son, the Only-begotten having the role of “through whom” in the making of the ages. So, then, here too, if all things came to be through the Word, they did not come to be by the Word, but by one better and greater than the Word. And who else could this be but the Father?

We must examine, since “All things came to be through him” is true, whether the Holy Spirit too came to be through him. For I think that one who says the Spirit has come to be and accepts “All things came to be through him” must necessarily accept that the Holy Spirit too came to be through the Word, the Word being older than it. But one who does not want the Holy Spirit to have come to be through Christ must, if he judges what is in this Gospel to be true, call it unbegotten.

There will be also a third besides these two, besides the one who accepts that the Holy Spirit came to be through the Word and the one who supposes it to be unbegotten: one who teaches that the Holy Spirit has no being of its own subsisting distinct from the Father and the Son. But perhaps he would rather agree, if he thinks the Son is distinct from the Father, that the Spirit is the same as the Father, since a distinction of the Holy Spirit from the Son is admittedly shown in “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not

have forgiveness either in this age or in the one to come.” We, however, being persuaded that there are three subsistences, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and believing that nothing is unbegotten except the Father, accept as more reverent and true that, all things having come to be through the Word, the Holy Spirit is more honored than all, and first in order of all the things that have come to be from the Father through Christ.

And perhaps this is the reason why the Spirit too is not called Son of God, since only the Only-begotten is by nature Son from the beginning. The Holy Spirit seems to need him, as he ministers to its subsistence, not only for its being but also for its being wise and rational and righteous and whatever else we must understand it to be by sharing in the aspects of Christ we mentioned before.

And I think the Holy Spirit provides, so to speak, the material of the gifts from God to those who are called saints through it and through sharing in it, the said material of the gifts being worked by God, ministered by Christ, and subsisting according to the Holy Spirit.

And what moves me to suppose that this is so is Paul, writing somewhere about gifts thus: “There are distributions of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are distributions of ministries, and the same Lord; and there are distributions of workings, and it is the same God who works all things in all.”

But there is a difficulty, because of “All things came to be through him” and the consequence that the Spirit, being originated, came to be through the Word: how is it that in some Scriptures it is, as it were, preferred to Christ? In Isaiah Christ confesses that he was sent not by the Father only but also by the Holy Spirit, for he says, “And now the Lord has sent me, and his Spirit”; and in the Gospel he promises forgiveness for sin against himself, but declares of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit that there will be no forgiveness for the one who has slandered it, not only “in this age” but not even “in the one to come.”

And perhaps it is not at all because the Holy Spirit is more honored than Christ that there is no forgiveness for the one who has sinned against it, but because all rational beings share in Christ, and pardon is given to them when they turn from their sins; whereas it is reasonable that those who have been counted worthy of the Holy Spirit should obtain no pardon, if, after so great and such an inspiration toward the good, they still fall away and turn aside from the counsels of the Spirit dwelling in them.

And if, according to Isaiah, our Lord says that he has been sent by the Father and his Spirit, here too we can give an account of the Spirit's sending Christ: not as though it differed in nature, but because of the dispensation that took place in the incarnation of the Son of God, the Savior having been made lower than it.

And if anyone takes offense at our saying that the Savior, having become man, was made lower than the Holy Spirit, we must bring him to what is said in the letter to the Hebrews, where Paul declares that Jesus became lower even than the angels because of the suffering of death. For he says: “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death.”

Or perhaps this too can be said: creation needed, in order to be set free from the bondage of corruption, and the human race too needed, a blessed and divine power becoming human, which would set right also the things on earth; and this task fell, as it were, in some way to the Holy Spirit; and, being unable to bear it, the Spirit puts forward the Savior as the only one able to endure so great a contest; and when the Father, as the leader, sends the Son, the Holy Spirit sends him along with him and escorts him, promising to come down in due time upon the Son of God and to work with him for the salvation of human beings.

And this it did when, in bodily form like a dove, it flew down upon him after the washing and, having rested on him, did not pass on; perhaps it had done this among men who were not able to bear its glory continually. That is why John, in indicating how to know who the Christ is, marks not only the descent of the Spirit upon Jesus, but besides the descent its remaining on him.

For it is written that John said: “He who sent me to baptize said, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, this is the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit and fire.’” For it is not said only “he on whom you see the Spirit descending,” since it had perhaps descended on others as well, but “descending and remaining on him.”

These things have been examined at length for those who wish to see more clearly how, if all things came to be through him, the Spirit too came to be through the Word, being one of all things and understood as lower than him through whom it came to be, even if some expressions seem to draw us to the opposite.

And if anyone accepts the Gospel according to the Hebrews, where the Savior himself says, “Just now my mother, the Holy Spirit, took me by one of my hairs and carried me off to the great mountain Tabor,” he will be puzzled how the Holy Spirit, which came to be through the Word, can be “mother” of Christ.

But these words too are not hard to interpret. For if the one who does “the will of the Father who is in heaven” is his “brother and sister and mother,” and the name “brother of Christ” extends not only to the human race but also to beings more divine than it, there will be nothing absurd in the Holy Spirit's being “mother,” more than anyone who is called “mother of Christ” because of doing the will of the Father in heaven.

Further, on “All things came to be through him,” these things too must be inquired into. In aspect the Word is different from the life, and what came to be in the Word “was life, and the life was the light of men.” Did, then, as all things came to be through him, the life too come to be through him, which is “the light of men,” and the other aspects of the Savior? Or must “All things came to be through him” be understood with the exception of the things in him? This seems to me better.

For even if it be granted, because the life became the light of men, what must be said about the wisdom that is conceived before the Word? For surely what is prior to the Word did not come to be through the Word. So, apart from the aspects of Christ, all things came to be through the Word of God, the Father having made them in wisdom. For, it says, “You made all things in wisdom,” not “You made them through wisdom.”

Let us see why “And without him nothing came to be” is added. To some, “Without him nothing came to be,” following “All things came to be through him,” might seem superfluous. For if everything whatever has come to be “through the Word,” nothing has come to be “without the Word.” But it does not follow, from nothing having come to be without the Word, that all things came to be through the Word; for it is possible, while nothing has come to be without the Word, that not all things came to be only through the Word, but some also by the Word.

We must know, then, how “all” is to be heard and how “nothing.” For from not having made both expressions clear it is possible to take it that, if all things came to be through the Word, and vice and the whole flood of sin and evil things are among all things, these too came to be through the Word. But this is false. For it is not absurd that all creatures came to be through the Word (and it is necessary to understand that the noble deeds and all right actions of the blessed have also been accomplished through the Word), but not so the sins and failures.

Some, then, have taken it, because vice has no real existence (for it neither was from the beginning nor will be for ever), that these are the “nothing.” And just as some of the Greeks say that genera and species, such as “animal” and “man,” belong to the “not-somethings,” so they supposed that everything which has not received its apparent existence from God or through the Word is “nothing.”

And let us consider whether it is possible to establish this most forcibly from the Scriptures. As far, then, as the meanings of “nothing” and “what is not” are concerned, they will seem to be synonyms, what is not being called “nothing” and nothing being “what is not.” And the apostle plainly names as “things that are not” not what in no way at all exists, but what is wicked, considering evil things “things that are not.” For “God,” he says, “called the things that are not as though they were.”

But also Mordecai, in Esther according to the Seventy, calls the enemies of Israel “those who are not,” saying, “Do not give up your scepter, Lord, to those who are not.” And it is possible to show how the wicked, because of their wickedness, are called “those who are not,” from the name of God recorded in Exodus: “For the Lord said to Moses,

‘He who is: this is my name.’” And according to us who pray to be of the church, it is the good God who says these things, whom the Savior glorifies when he says, “No one is good but one, God the Father.” So “the good” is the same as “he who is.” And the opposite of the good is evil or wickedness, and the opposite of “what is” is “what is not”; from which it follows that wickedness and evil are “what is not.”

And this is what moved those who said that the devil is not a creation of God. For insofar as he is devil he is not God's creation; but the one to whom it has happened to be devil, being originated, since there is nothing created except by our God, is God's creature; as if we were to say that the murderer too is not God's creation, without denying that, as a human being, he was made by God.

For, holding that insofar as he is a human being he has received his being from God, we do not hold that insofar as he is a murderer he has received this from God. All, then, who share in “Him who is” (and the saints share) would reasonably be called “beings”; but those who have turned away from sharing in “Him who is” have, by being deprived of “Him who is,” become “non-beings.”

We said before that “what is not” and “nothing” are synonyms, and for this reason “those who are not” are “nothing,” and all vice is “nothing,” since it is also “what is not”; and being called “nothing” it came to be without the Word, not being counted among “all things.” We, then, have shown as far as possible what the “all things” are that came to be through the Word, and what it is that came to be without him, yet never is, and for this reason is called “nothing.”

But I think that Heracleon, who is said to be an acquaintance of Valentinus, in explaining “All things came to be through him,” violently and without evidence took “all things” to be the world and the things in it, excluding from “all things,” as far as his hypothesis is concerned, what is superior to the world and the things in it. For he says: not the Aeon, or the things in the Aeon, came to be through the Word; these he thinks came to be before the Word. And standing up more shamelessly to “And without him nothing came to be,” not heeding “Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar,” he adds to “nothing”: “of the things in the world and in the

creation.” And since what he says is obviously very forced and set out against the evidence, if the things he thinks divine are excluded from “all things,” while the things that, as he thinks, perish entirely are properly called “all things,” we need not linger over refuting what shows its absurdity at once. So it is, for instance, when Scripture says, “Without him nothing came to be,” that he adds, without any support from Scripture, “of the things in the world and in the creation”; nor does he declare it with any persuasiveness, expecting to be believed like the prophets or apostles, who with authority and without being called to account left saving writings to those of their own time and after them.

Further, he understood “All things came to be through him” in a peculiar way, saying: “The one who provided the cause of the world's coming into being to the Demiurge, being the Word, is not the one ‘from whom’ or ‘by whom,’ but the one ‘through whom’”; taking what is written contrary to ordinary usage. For if the truth of things were as he thinks, it should have been written that all things came to be through the Demiurge by the Word, not the reverse, through the Word by the Demiurge.

And we, using “through whom” in keeping with ordinary usage, did not leave our interpretation without evidence; but he, besides not supporting his own sense from the divine writings, seems also to have suspected the truth and shamelessly set his face against it. For he says: “Not as though another were at work and the Word himself made, so that ‘through him’ should be understood thus; but while he was at work, another made.”

It is not the right time now to refute the view that the Demiurge, having become the servant of the Word, made the world, and to show that the Word, having become the servant of the Demiurge, fashioned the world. For according to the prophet David, “God spoke and they came to be; he commanded and they were created.” For the unbegotten God “commanded” the firstborn of all creation, “and they were created”: not only the world and the things in it, but also all the rest, “whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities; for all things were created through him and for him, and he is before all things.”

Further, on “Without him nothing came to be,” we must not leave the account of vice unexercised; for even if it seems very incongruous, it does not seem to me altogether contemptible. For we must inquire whether vice too has come to be through the word, now taking “word” in the immediate sense of the reason in each person, as this too has come to be in each from the Word who is “in the beginning.”

The apostle, then, says, “Apart from the law sin is dead,” and adds, “But when the commandment came, sin revived,” teaching generally about sin that it has no activity before law and commandment. And how … the word being law and commandment; and there would be no sin if there were no law (“for sin is not reckoned where there is no law”), and again there would be no sin if there were no word (“For if I had not come,” he says, “and spoken to them, they would not have sin”).

For every excuse is taken away from the one who wishes to defend himself for sin, when, though reason is present within and points out what must be done, one does not obey it. Perhaps, then, all things, even the worse, have come to be through the word, and “without him,” if we take “nothing” more simply, “nothing came to be.”

And the Word is not at all to be blamed if “all things came to be through him” and “without him nothing came to be,” just as the teacher who has shown the student what he ought to do is not to be blamed when, because of his lessons, no place is left for the one who sins to plead ignorance; especially if we think of a teacher inseparable from the student.

For the reason present in the nature of rational beings is like a teacher inseparable from the student, always suggesting what must be done, even if we disregard its commands, giving ourselves up to pleasures and dismissing its best counsels. And just as we use the eye, given us as a servant for better things, also for things we do not see rightly, and likewise the hearing when we give ourselves to listening to useless songs and forbidden things, so, abusing the reason within us and not using it as we ought, we transgress through it, since it is present for judgment in those who sin, and for this reason judges the one who has not preferred it to all things.

Hence he also says, “The word that I have spoken will itself judge you,” teaching the equivalent of: I, the Word, always sounding within you, will myself condemn you, who have no place of defense left. This interpretation will seem rather forced, however, since we have taken the Word “in the beginning,” “with God,” God the Word, in one way, and now understand him in another, when we said that “All things came to be through him” is said not only of the principal creations but also of all that is done by rational beings, without which reason we commit no sin.

And we must inquire whether the word in us too must be called the same as the Word who is in the beginning, with God, and God, especially since the apostle seems to teach, not as though it were different from the Word in the beginning with God: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’, that is, to bring Christ down; or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’, that is, to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does the Scripture say? ‘The word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart.’” John 1:3–4: “What came to be in him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

There are certain doctrines among the Greeks called paradoxes, which, according to them, attach a great many things with some demonstration or apparent demonstration; according to which they say that the wise man alone, and every wise man, is a priest, because the wise man alone, and every wise man, has knowledge of the service of God; and that the wise man alone, and every wise man, is free, having received from the divine law the authority to act on his own; and they define authority as lawful permission.

And what need is there for us now to speak of the so-called paradoxes, since there is much treatment of them, and what they declare in the paradoxes needs comparison with the intention of Scripture, so that we may be able to show in which matters the teaching of godliness agrees and in which it means the opposite of what they say?

We have mentioned these because, as we inquire into “What came to be in him was life,” one following Scripture could, as it were in the manner of the paradoxes and, if one must say it, more paradoxically than what they say, show many such things. For if we understand the Word in the beginning, with God, God the Word, perhaps we shall be able to say that only the one who shares in him, as such, is “rational,” so that one might also declare that only the saint is rational.

Again, if we understand the life that came to be in the Word, who said, “I am the life,” we shall say that none of those outside faith in Christ lives, but that all who do not live to God are dead, and that their living is a living of sin, and for this reason, if I may put it so, a living of death.

And consider whether the divine Scriptures do not show this in many places: in one place, the Savior says, “Or have you not read what was said at the bush, ‘I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living”; and, “No living being will be justified before you.” And what need is there to speak of God himself or of the Savior? For it is disputed which of the two the voice belongs to that says in the prophets, “I live, says the Lord.”

And first let us see that “He is not the God of the dead but of the living” is equivalent to “He is not the God of sinners but of saints.” For it is a great gift to the patriarchs that God, instead of a name, attached their name to his own title “God,” as Paul too says:

“Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God.” So he is the God of the fathers and of all the saints; and it would not be found written anywhere that God is the God of any of the ungodly. If, then, God is the God of saints and is said to be God of the living, the saints are living and the living are saints: there is no saint outside the living, nor is anyone called living only who does not, besides living, also have holiness.

Something similar can also be seen in “I will be well pleasing to the Lord in the land of the living,” as if he said “in the rank of the saints” or “in the place of the saints,” since being well pleasing in the proper sense occurs either in the rank of the saints or in the place of the saints, and one who has not entered the rank of the saints or come into the place of the saints is not yet supremely well pleasing; into which everyone must enter who has already received in this life, as it were, the shadow and image of true well-pleasing.

And “No living being will be justified before God” shows that, in comparison with God and the righteousness in him, none even of the most blessed will be justified; as if we were to say something similar with another example: no lamp will give light before the sun. For every lamp will give light, but when it is not outshone by the sun; and every living being will be justified, but not before God, rather when it is compared with those below and held by darkness, among whom their light will shine.

And see whether the saying in the Gospel must be understood in this way: “Let your light shine before men.” For it does not say “Let your light shine before God”; for if he commanded this, he would be giving an impossible command, as if he gave living lamps the command to make their light shine before the sun.

Not only ordinary living beings, then, will not be justified before God, but also those who excel among the living over the lesser; or, what is more likely, the righteousness of all the living together will not be justified in comparison with the righteousness of God; as if, gathering all the night lights on earth together, I said they cannot give light in comparison with the rays of this sun.

And, ascending from what has been said, we must understand “I live, says the Lord”: perhaps, from what has been said about living, living in the proper sense belongs above all to God alone. And see whether for this reason the apostle, having understood the surpassing excellence of the life of God and grasping “I live, says the Lord” in a manner worthy of God, could say of God, “who alone has immortality,” since none of those who live besides God has a life wholly unchangeable and unalterable. And why do we hesitate about the others, when not even Christ had the immortality of the Father? For he tasted death for everyone.

And at the same time, examining what concerns the living God and the life which is Christ, and the living who are in their own land and the living who are not justified before God, and setting beside these “who alone has immortality,” we shall take in what is implied: that no rational being whatever has blessedness essentially, as an inseparable attribute.

For if it had blessedness and the principal life inseparably, how would what is said of God still be true, “who alone has immortality”? We must know, however, that the Savior is some things not for himself but for others, and some things both for himself and for others; and we must inquire whether he is some things for himself and for no one else. For clearly he is a “shepherd” for others, not like human shepherds taking profit for himself from shepherding, unless perhaps, out of love for humankind, he should count the benefit of those he shepherds as his own.

But he is also “way” for others, and likewise “door,” and admittedly “rod”; but for himself and for others he is “wisdom,” and perhaps also “Word.” And we must inquire whether, since there is a system of contemplations in him inasmuch as he is “wisdom,” there are some contemplations that cannot be received by the rest of begotten nature besides him, which he knows for himself.

And we must not leave the question unexamined out of reverence for the Holy Spirit. That it too is taught by him is clear from what is said about the Advocate and Holy Spirit: “For he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.” But whether, being taught, it receives everything that the Son knows as he gazes on the Father from the beginning, must be inquired into more carefully.

If, then, the Savior is some things for others, and some things perhaps for himself and either for no one or for one or for a few, we must test, inasmuch as he is the “life” that came to be in the Word, whether he is life for himself and others, or for others; and if for others, for which ones. If indeed “life” and “the light of men” are the same (for it says, “What came to be in him was life, and the life was the light of men”), and the light of men is the light of certain beings, and this not of all rational beings, as far as the word “men” is concerned, but is the light “of men,” it would also be the life of men, of whom it is also the light; and inasmuch as he is life, the Savior would be said to be life not for himself but for others, of whom he is also light.

This life, then, comes upon the Word, being inseparable from him once it has come. For the word that cleanses the soul must first be present in the soul, so that, according to it and to the cleansing that comes from it, when all deadness and weakness have been removed, pure life may come to be in everyone who has made himself able to receive the Word insofar as he is God.

We must observe the two “in”s and examine their difference: first in “the Word in the beginning,” second in “life in the Word.” But the Word did not come to be “in the beginning,” for there was never a time when the beginning was without the Word, which is why it is said, “In the beginning was the Word”; while life was not in the Word, but life came to be, if indeed “life is the light of men.” For when there was not yet a human being, there was not yet the light “of men” either, since the light of men is understood in relation to human beings.

But let no one trouble us by supposing that we are stating these things in terms of time, since order requires a first and a second and what follows, even if no time is found when the third and fourth things set beneath the Word did not exist. In the way, then, that “all things came to be through him,” and not “all things were through him,” and “without him nothing came to be,” not “without him nothing was,” so “what came to be in him,” not “what was in him,” “was life.” And again, not “what came to be in the beginning was the Word,” but “what was in the beginning was the Word.”

Some copies, however, have, and perhaps not unpersuasively, “What came to be in him is life.” And if life is the same as the light of men, no one who is in darkness lives, and none of the living is in darkness, but everyone who lives is also in light, and everyone who is in light lives; so that only the one who lives, and every such one, is a son of light; and a son of light is one whose works shine before men.

Again, since it is possible to understand the opposites that are left unsaid from what is said about their opposites, and it is said about life and the light of men, while the opposite of life is death and the opposite of the light of men is the darkness of men, it can be seen that the one who is in the darkness of men is in death, and the one who does the works of death is nowhere else than in darkness. But the one who remembers God, if we understand what it is to remember him, is not in death, according to the saying, “There is no one in death who remembers you.”

And whether it is the darkness of men or death, these are not such by nature … “We were once darkness, but now light in the Lord,” even if we are now called above all saints and spiritual. And just as Paul, being darkness, became capable of becoming light in the Lord, so can anyone whatever who is darkness. But according to those who think there are spiritual natures, like Paul and the holy apostles, I do not know whether it is maintained that the spiritual man was once darkness and later became light.

For if the spiritual man was once darkness, what is the earthly man? And if it is true that darkness has become light, what is the arbitrary allotment by which not all darkness can become light? For if it had not been said of Paul that “we were once in darkness, but now are luminous in the Lord,” but of those natures which they suppose to be perishing that they were darkness or are darkness, the hypothesis about natures might have had some place.

But as it is, Paul says he was “once darkness, but now light in the Lord,” since it is possible for darkness to change into light. And it is not hard, from what has been said, to see carefully what concerns all the darkness of men and the death which is the same as the darkness of men, seeing the possibility of each one's change toward the worse and the better.

Heracleon, handling the passage very forcibly, took “What came to be in him was life” as “in him” meaning “for the spiritual men,” as if he thought the Word and the spiritual men were the same, even if he has not said this clearly; and, as though giving the reason, he says: “For he provided them with the first formation, that according to their coming into being, bringing what was sown by another into form and illumination and a distinct outline of its own, and displaying it.”

But he did not observe what Paul says about the spiritual, that he left unsaid that they are human beings: “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him; but the spiritual judges all things.” For we say that not without purpose did he not add “man” to “the spiritual”; for the spiritual is better than “man,” since man is characterized either in soul or in body or in both, but not also in the Spirit, more divine than these, by a prevailing share in which the spiritual person is so called.

At the same time he declares the points of such a hypothesis without even an apparent demonstration, not being able to reach even ordinary plausibility in his account of them. So much, then, about him.

Come, let us too inquire into this: whether the life was the light of men only, and not of every being whatever that is in blessedness. For if “life” and “light of men” are the same, and the light of Christ belongs to men alone, the life too belongs to men alone. But to suppose this is at once foolish and impious, since the other Scriptures testify against this interpretation, if indeed, when we make progress, we shall be equal to angels.

The difficulty must be resolved thus: it is not the case that, if something is said of certain beings, what is said belongs to them alone. So, then, it is not the case that, if it is called the light of men, it is the light of men alone; for it could have been added, “The life was the light of men alone.” For it is possible for the light of men to be the light also of others besides men, just as it is possible that these animals and these plants, which are food for men, are the same food for others besides men.

And this example is from ordinary usage; but it is right to compare a similar one from the divinely inspired words. Here, then, we are asking whether anything prevents the light of men from being the light of others too, saying that no: because it is called the light of men, it is not already excluded from being the light of others besides men, whether better than men or like them.

It is recorded that God is the God “of Abraham and God of Isaac and God of Jacob.” Whoever wishes (since it is said, “The life was the light of men”) the light to be that of no one else but men will, by the same reasoning, think that the God of Abraham and God of Isaac and God of Jacob is God of no one but these three fathers only. But he is also the God of Elijah, and, as Judith says, of her father Simeon, and the God of the Hebrews. Likewise, if nothing prevents him from being the God of others too, nothing prevents the light of men from being light for others besides men.

But someone else, using “Let us make man according to our image and likeness,” will say that everything that has come to be “according to the image and likeness” of God is man, using countless examples for this, to show that it makes no difference to Scripture whether it says man or angel. For the titles “angel” and “man” are applied to the same subject, as with the three who were entertained by Abraham and the two who came to Sodom; and throughout the whole sequence of Scripture they are sometimes said to be men and sometimes angels.

However, whoever thinks this will say that, just as among those who are admittedly men there are angels (as Haggai says, “Angel of God: I am with you, says the Lord Almighty,” and John, of whom it is written, “Behold, I send my angel before your face”), so the angels of God are named from this work, and not from their nature, though they are called “men.”

And he will support it still more by saying that among the higher powers the names are not names of natures of living beings but of ranks, which this or that rational nature has obtained from God. For “throne” is not a species of living being, nor “principality,” nor “dominion,” nor “authority,” but these are names of the offices to which those so called have been appointed, whose subject is nothing other than man, and it is incidental to the subject to be a throne or dominion or principality or authority.

And in Joshua son of Nun it is written, “A man appeared to Joshua at Jericho,” who says, “I am the commander-in-chief of the army of the Lord; now I have come.”

On this view, then, he will take “the light of men” as equivalent to the light of every rational being, since every rational being is a man by being “according to the image and likeness” of God. The same thing, however, is named in three ways: “the light of men,” and simply “light,” and “the true light.” The light of men, then, either (as was shown before, since nothing prevents us from taking the light to be the light also of others besides man), or of all rational beings, since they are called men because they came to be “according to the image of God.”

And since here the Savior is simply called “light,” while in the catholic letter of the same John God is said to be light, someone thinks that it is established from this too that the Father does not differ in being from the Son. But another, observing more precisely and speaking more soundly, will say that the light that shines in the darkness and is not overcome by it is not the same as the light in which there is no darkness at all.

For the light that shines in the darkness, as it were, advances upon the darkness, and, pursued by it and, so to speak, plotted against, it is not overcome; but the light in which there is no darkness neither shines in the darkness nor is pursued by it at all, so that it should be recorded as conquering by not being overcome by the darkness that pursues it.

Third, this light was called “the true light.” But by the same reasoning by which the Father of truth, God, is more and greater than truth, and the Father of wisdom is better and more excellent than wisdom, by this he surpasses being “the true light.”

We shall know more vividly that the Father and the Son are two lights from David, since he says in the thirty-fifth psalm: “In your light we shall see light.” And this same light of men, which shines in the darkness, the true light, is proclaimed in what follows in the Gospel as “the light of the world,” when Jesus says:

“I am the light of the world.” Let us not leave this unmarked either: although it could have been written, “What came to be in him was the light of men, and the light of men was life,” he did the reverse. For he puts life before the light of men, even though “life” and “light of men” are the same, because in those who share in the life, which is also the light of men, living the divine life mentioned before comes before being enlightened. For living must come first, so that the one who lives may become enlightened; it would not be consistent for one not yet understood to be living to be enlightened, and for living to come after being enlightened.

For even if life and the light of men are the same, the aspects are taken in different respects. This light of men is also called “light of the nations” in the prophet Isaiah, according to “Behold, I have set you for a covenant of the race, for a light of the nations”; and trusting in this light David says in the twenty-sixth psalm, “The Lord is my illumination and my Savior; whom shall I fear?”

And against those who have fabricated the mythology about Aeons in pairs, and think that the Word and Life were put forth by Mind and Truth, it is not unreasonable to raise these difficulties too. For how does the Life that, on their view, is the partner of the Word receive its coming into being in its partner? For “What came to be,” it says, “in him” (clearly the Word mentioned before) “was life.” Let them tell us, then, how the Life, the partner of the Word, came to be in the Word, and how the Life rather than the Word is the light of men.

But it is likely that the more reasonable among them, overturned in their inquiries and struck by the difficulty, will ask us in return, pressing us too, unless we find a reason why the light of men is not called “Word” but the “life” that came to be in the Word. To them we will answer thus: “life” here is not the life common to rational and irrational beings, but the life that comes upon the word that is completed in us, the sharing being received from the first Word. And by turning away from the life that seems to be but is not truly, and longing to receive the true life, we first share in it; and when it comes to be in us, it becomes also the ground of the light of knowledge.

And perhaps this life is light potentially and not actually among some, those not eager to examine the matters of knowledge, but among others it becomes light actually as well, namely among those in whom Paul's command is fulfilled, “Earnestly desire the better gifts.” And the greater of the gifts is the one placed first of all, which is “the word of wisdom,” and the one that follows, “the word of knowledge.” About the difference between them, since the meanings of “wisdom” and “knowledge” lie close to one another, it is not the right time now to speak. John 1:5: “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Further, since it has been set before us, we are inquiring about the light of men, and I think also about its opposite, called “darkness.” … “of men,” I mean, that perhaps the light of men is a genus of two particular things, and likewise also their darkness. For it is possible for the one who possesses the light of men and shares in its rays to perform “works of light” and, being enlightened, to know the light of knowledge; and the analogous thing must be understood from the opposites, wicked action and so-called knowledge, which is not knowledge in truth, having the character of darkness.

And that the commandments are light the sacred word knows, for Isaiah says, “For your commandments are light upon the earth,” and David in the eighteenth psalm, “The commandment of the Lord is bright, enlightening the eyes.” And that besides the commandments and precepts there is a light of knowledge we have found in one of the Twelve: “Sow for yourselves unto righteousness, gather the fruit of life, light for yourselves the light of knowledge.”

For “Light for yourselves a light” is said as though there were also another light of knowledge besides the commandments: not simply “light” but a certain kind of light, namely “of knowledge.” For if every light which a man lights for himself were “a light of knowledge,” it would have been added in vain, “light for yourselves the light of knowledge.” Again, that darkness is used of wicked works, the same John teaches in the letter, saying, “If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not do the truth”; and again, “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is in the darkness until now”; and further, “But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”

For walking in darkness indicates blameworthy action; and hating one's brother is a falling away from what is properly called knowledge. But that the one who is ignorant of divine things walks in darkness by that very ignorance, David says: “They did not know nor understand; they walk in darkness.”

And consider “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all,” whether it is said for this reason, that there is not one darkness, but either two because of the genus, or, because in each of the species there are many wicked actions and many false doctrines, there are many darknesses, none of which is in God. This could not be said of the saint, to whom the Savior says, “You are the light of the world,” that the saint is the light of the world “and there is no darkness in him at all.”

But someone will ask, if “There is no darkness in him at all” is said of the Father, how we shall say that this is peculiar to him, since we understand the Savior too to be wholly without sin, so that it could be said of him too that “He is light and there is no darkness in him at all.” We have partly shown the difference in what was said above; and now we shall add more boldly to that, that if God “made him who knew no sin to be sin for us,” namely Christ, it could not be said of him, “There is no darkness in him at all.” For even if Jesus condemned sin “in the likeness of sinful flesh,” by having taken the likeness of sinful flesh, the words “There is no darkness in him at all” will no longer be said of him with complete soundness.

And we shall add that “he took our weaknesses and bore our diseases,” both the weaknesses of the soul and the diseases of the hidden man of our heart. Because of these weaknesses and diseases, having carried them away from us, he confesses that his soul is very sorrowful and troubled, and in Zechariah he is recorded as clothed in filthy garments, which, when he was about to take them off, are said to be sins. At any rate it adds there: “Behold, I have taken away your sins.”

For because he took up the sins of the people who believe in him, he says in many places, “Far from my salvation are the words of my transgressions,” and, “You know my folly, and my faults are not hidden from you.”

But let no one suppose that we say these things out of impiety toward the Christ of God. For in the same way that the Father alone “has immortality,” since the Lord out of love for humankind took upon himself death for us, so the Father alone has “There is no darkness in him at all,” since Christ, for his kindness to human beings, took our darknesses upon himself, so that by his power he might abolish our death and wipe out the darkness in our soul, so that what is in Isaiah might be fulfilled: “The people sitting in darkness saw a great light.”

This light, then, which came to be in the Word, being also life, “shines in the darkness” of our souls, and has come to dwell where the world-rulers of this darkness are, who, by wrestling with the human race, strive … to bring into darkness those who do not stand firm in every way, so that, being enlightened, they may be called sons of light. And this light, shining in the darkness, is pursued by it but not overcome.

And if anyone thinks we are adding what is not written, that the light is pursued by the darkness, let him hear that “The darkness did not overcome it” would be said in vain if the darkness had nowhere pursued the light. But John wrote “The darkness did not overcome it” for those who have a mind able to take in, in keeping with what is written, what seems to have been left out; for if it “did not overcome,” it pursued and “did not overcome.”

And that the darkness pursued the light is clear from what the Savior suffered and those who received his teachings, his own children, when the darkness acted against the sons of light and wished to drive the light away from human beings. But since, if “God is for us,” no one, even if he wishes, will be able to be “against us,” the more they humbled them, the more they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong.

The darkness failed to overcome the light in two ways: either falling far behind it and, because of its own slowness, not being able to keep up at all with the swiftness of the light's course; or, if the light at some point wished to lie in wait for the darkness and by design waited for it to approach, the darkness, drawing near the light, vanished. In either way the darkness did not overcome the light.

Having come to these matters, we must necessarily note that it is not always the case that, wherever “darkness” is named, it is taken in the worse sense; sometimes it is written also in the better sense. The heterodox, not distinguishing this, accepted most blasphemous doctrines about the Creator and departed from him, giving themselves up to fabrications of myths. How, then, and when the name of darkness is used also in the better sense, we must now show.

Darkness, gloom, and storm are said in Exodus to be around God, and in the seventeenth psalm: “He made darkness his hiding place; around him was his tent, dark water in clouds of the air.” For if anyone considers the multitude of the contemplations and knowledge about God, which cannot be grasped by human nature, and perhaps not by other originated beings besides Christ and the Holy Spirit, he will know how darkness is around God, in that the rich account worthy of him is unknown; in which darkness “he set his hiding place,” having done this so that what concerns him, being beyond grasp, is unknown.

And if anyone takes offense at such interpretations, let him be led on from the dark sayings, and from the dark treasures, hidden and invisible, given by God to Christ. For I think the dark treasures revealed in Christ are nothing other than “God made darkness his hiding place,” or “The holy man will understand a parable and a dark saying.” And see whether it is for this reason that the Savior says to the disciples, “Therefore whatever you have heard in the darkness, speak in the light.”

For he commands them, now enlightened and for this reason said to be in the light, to proclaim to everyone who becomes light the mysteries handed down to them in secret and out of the hearing of the many, hard to know and obscure. And I would say, still more paradoxically, of the praiseworthy darkness, that it hastens toward the light and overtakes it, and what was once darkness because it was unknown to one who did not see its power is so changed that the one who has learned declares that what was once darkness to him has, now known, become light. John 1:6: “There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.”

One who hears “sent” more precisely, since whoever is sent is sent from somewhere to somewhere, will ask from where John was sent and to where. The “to where” being clear (according to the history, to Israel and those willing to hear him, as he stayed in the desert of Judea and baptized at the river Jordan; according to a deeper account, into the world, “world” being taken as the place around the earth where human beings are), he will examine how the “from where” must be taken. And testing the expression further, he perhaps also declares that, just as it is written of Adam,

“And the Lord God sent him out of the paradise of delight to till the earth from which he was taken,” so John too was sent, either from heaven or from paradise or from some other place besides this place on earth; and he was sent that he might testify about “the light.”

But the argument meets an objection not to be despised, since in Isaiah too it is written, “Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people?” when the prophet answers, “Here I am; send me.”

For the one who opposes the deeper sense that appears will say that, just as Isaiah was sent, not from another place besides this world, but, after he had seen “the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up,” to the people, so that he might say, “You will hear with hearing and not understand,” and so on, so also John, the beginning of whose mission, analogous to the mission of Isaiah, is passed over in silence, is sent to baptize and to prepare “for the Lord a people made ready,” and to testify “about the light.”

These things having been said in answer to the first account, such solutions are offered as draw assent to the deeper view of John. At once it follows, “He came for testimony, to testify about the light”; for if he came, he came from somewhere. And to the one who is reluctant to accept this, we must cite what John says in what follows about having seen the Holy Spirit descending like a dove upon the Savior; for he says, “He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, this is the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’” And when? For when did he give this command, having sent him? But it is likely one would answer this question that whenever he sent him to begin baptizing, then the one who spoke to him said this word.

Still more forcibly in favor of John's having been sent from somewhere else, when he took a body, having no other purpose for his coming into life than the testimony about the light, is his being filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb, as Gabriel said when he announced to Zechariah the birth of John and to Mary the coming of our Savior among men; and also “Behold, when the voice of your greeting came into my ears, the baby leapt for joy in my

womb.” For one who holds that God does nothing unjustly, or by chance, or by arbitrary allotment, must accept that John's soul was older than his body and, having subsisted before it, was sent for the ministry of testimony about the light. Besides these, “He is Elijah who is to come” must not be despised.

But if the general account of the soul prevails, that it is not sown together with the body but exists before it and for various causes is clothed with flesh and blood, “sent from God” will no longer seem to be said specially of John. At any rate the worst of all, “the man of sin, the son of perdition,” is said by Paul to be sent by God: “For this reason,” he says, “God sends them a working of error, so that they believe the lie, in order that all may be judged who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness.”

But see whether we shall be able to resolve the question thus: just as, in a simpler sense, every human being is a man of God by having been created by God, yet not every human being is called “man of God,” but only one dedicated to God (as Elijah and those recorded in the Scriptures as “men of God”), so in the more common sense every human being can have been sent from God, but in the proper sense no one else is said to have been sent by God than one who comes into life for a divine ministry and service for the salvation of the human race.

At any rate we have not found “being sent from God” used of anyone other than the saints: of Isaiah, as we cited before; of Jeremiah, “To all to whom I send you, you shall go”; and of Ezekiel, “Behold, I send you to the nations that have rebelled and revolted against me.”

But these examples will seem to have been adduced not to the point under inquiry, which is a sending into life, since they speak of a sending that is not simply from outside life into life. Yet even so it is not unpersuasive to bring the argument round to what was inquired into, saying that, as God is said to send only the saints in the cases we cited, so it must be understood also of those sent into life.

And since we are, in short, on the subject of John, inquiring into his mission, it will not be untimely to add our own conjecture about him. Since we have read a prophecy about him, “Behold, I send my angel before your face, who will prepare your way before you,” we consider whether, being one of the holy angels, he is sent down for ministry as the forerunner of our Savior.

And it is nothing surprising that, when the firstborn of all creation took a body out of love for humankind, some became emulators and imitators of Christ, loving to serve his goodness toward human beings through a body like his. And whom would it not move that he leapt for joy while still in the womb, as though surpassing the common nature of human beings?

And if anyone accepts also, of the apocrypha in use among the Hebrews, the one entitled the Prayer of Joseph, he will take this doctrine from it stated outright and clearly: that those who from the beginning had something exceptional compared with human beings, being much better than the other souls, have come down from being angels into human nature.

At any rate Jacob says: “For I who speak to you, Jacob and Israel, am an angel of God and a ruling spirit; and Abraham and Isaac were created before every work. But I am Jacob, who was called Jacob by men, but my name is Israel, who was called Israel by God, a man seeing God, because I am the firstborn of every living being given life by God.”

And he adds: “And when I was coming from Mesopotamia of Syria, Uriel the angel of God came out and said that I had come down to earth and had dwelt among men, and that I had been called by the name Jacob. He was envious and fought with me and wrestled with me, saying that his name would be above my name and that of the angel before all. And I told him his name and what rank he has among the sons of God: ‘Are you not Uriel, the eighth after me, and I Israel, archangel of the power of the Lord and chief captain among the sons of God? Am I not Israel, the first minister before the face of God, and did I not call upon my God by the unquenchable name?’”

For it is likely, if these things were truly said by Jacob and for this reason written down, that “In the womb he took his brother by the heel” also came about with understanding. And consider whether the celebrated question about Jacob and Esau has a solution, since “though they were not yet born and had done nothing good or bad, in order that God's purpose according to election might stand, not from works but from him who calls, it was said, ‘The greater will serve the lesser,’ as it is written, ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’ What then shall we say? Is there injustice with God? By no means.”

If, then, we do not have recourse to works before this life, how is it true that there is no injustice with God when the greater serves the lesser and is hated before he has done what deserves servitude and what deserves hatred? We have digressed at some length in taking up the account of Jacob and in calling to witness a writing not to be despised, so that the account of John might be more convincing, establishing, according to the voice of Isaiah, that he was an angel who came to be in a body in order to testify to the light. So much, then, about John the man.

I think that, just as in us voice and word differ (for a voice that signifies nothing can sometimes be uttered without a word, and a word can be expressed to the mind without a voice, as when we reason within ourselves), so, since the Savior in one aspect is Word, John differs from him, being a voice by analogy with Christ, who is Word.

John himself, whoever he may be, invites me to this, when he answers those who questioned him, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” And perhaps for this reason Zechariah, disbelieving in the birth of the voice that points to the Word of God, loses his voice, receiving it back when the voice, forerunner of the Word, is born. For one must hear a voice so that afterward the mind may be able to receive the Word pointed out by the voice.

That is why John is a little older than Christ in birth, for we perceive a voice before a word. But also John points out Christ, for the Word is presented by a voice. And Christ is baptized by John, who confesses that he needs to be baptized by him; for among men the word is purified by a voice, though by the nature of the Word it purifies every voice that signifies. And, in short, when John points out Christ, a man points out God and the bodiless Savior, and a voice points out the Word.

It would be useful, just as with many names their meaning is instructive, to see also in this passage what John and Zechariah signify. For as if there were something not to be despised in the giving of the name, the relatives want him to be called Zechariah, surprised that Elizabeth wants to name him John; and Zechariah, writing, “His name will be John,” is released from his painful silence.

We found, then, in the interpretation of names that “Joan,” without the “-es,” is rendered [“grace”], which we think is the same as “Joannes” (John), since the New Testament has hellenized other Hebrew names as well, giving them a Greek form, such as “Jacobos” for “Jacob,” and “Simon” for “Symeon.” And “Zechariah” is said to mean “remembrance,” and “Elizabeth” “oath of my God” or “seventh of my God.”

From God, then, as “grace,” out of “remembrance” of God, according to our God's “oath” concerning the fathers, John was born, to prepare “for the Lord a people made ready,” coming at the end of the old covenant, which is the crown of the Sabbath-keeping. That is why he cannot have been born from the “seventh of our God,” since our Savior brings about the rest after the Sabbath, according to his own rest, in those who have been conformed to his death and for this reason also to his resurrection. John 1:7: “He came for testimony, to testify about the light, that all might believe through him.”

Some of the heterodox, who say they believe in Christ, and who, because they fabricate another God besides the Creator, consistently do not accept that his coming was foretold by the prophets, try to overturn the testimonies about Christ through the prophets, saying that the Son of God does not need witnesses, having what makes him worthy of belief both in the saving words full of power that he proclaimed and in wondrous works able by themselves to astound anyone whatever.

And they say: “If Moses was believed because of his word and his mighty works, not needing any witnesses before him to announce him, and each of the prophets too was received by the people as sent from God, how can he who is far superior to Moses and the prophets not accomplish what he wishes and benefit the human race without prophets testifying about him?”

They think, then, that it is superfluous that he is thought to have been announced beforehand by the prophets, this having been contrived (as they would say) by those who did not wish believers in Christ to accept the newness of the Godhead, but to arrive at the same God whom Moses and the prophets taught even before Jesus.

We must say to them, then, that since many causes can arise that summon people to believe, and some at times are not struck by this proof but by another, God is able to give human beings many occasions for accepting that God, who is above all originated things, became man.

At any rate one can clearly see some coming to admiration of Christ from the prophetic predictions, astounded that the voice of so many prophets before him establishes the place of his birth and his country, the power of his teaching, the working of marvelous deeds, and a human suffering undone by resurrection.

And this too must be considered: the wondrous deeds could summon to faith those who lived in the Lord's time, but they did not keep their vividness after many years, and were already suspected of being myths. For prophecy, now examined together with the mighty works, has more power to persuade than the works done then, and it prevents those works from being disbelieved by those who investigate them.

And perhaps the prophetic testimonies not only proclaim that Christ will come, teaching us this and nothing else, but also much theology and the relation of the Father to the Son and of the Son to the Father can be learned no less from the prophets, through what they announce about him, than from the apostles, who describe the majesty of the Son of God.

And one may dare, even apart from these, to say something like this: there are witnesses of Christ who are adorned by bearing witness about him, and who do not by any means confer a favor on him by bearing witness about the Son of God, as all would agree concerning those specially called witnesses of Christ.

What, then, is surprising if, just as many of Christ's genuine disciples were adorned by being witnesses of Christ, so the prophets, having understood that they were to announce Christ beforehand, received this as a gift from God, teaching not only those after Christ's coming what must be thought about the Son of God, but also those in the generations before them?

For just as whoever does not now know the Son does not have the Father either, so it must be understood of earlier times too; which is why “Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Christ, and he saw it and was glad.” Whoever, then, wishes that the prophets should not have testified about Christ wishes to rob the choir of the prophets of their greatest grace. For what would prophecy from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit have had that was so great if what concerns our Lord's dispensation were removed from it?

For just as the worship of God is adorned in those who approach the God of the universe through a mediator and high priest and Advocate and … knowingly, and would limp if one did not enter to the Father through the door, so also the worship of God of the men of old was holy and acceptable to God through the understanding of, faith in, and expectation of Christ. For we have observed that God confesses himself a witness, and declares the same of Christ, calling all to become imitators of him and of Christ by bearing witness to what they ought; for he says: “Become my witnesses, and I am a witness, says the Lord God, and the servant whom I have chosen.”

And everyone who bears witness to the truth, whether by words or by deeds or in any way whatever supporting it, would reasonably be called a “witness.” But now, properly, the custom of the brotherhood, struck with admiration at the disposition of those who have contended to death for truth or courage, has come to name as “martyrs” in the proper sense only those who have borne witness to the mystery of godliness by shedding their own blood, though the Savior names as a “witness” everyone who bears witness to what is proclaimed about him.

At any rate, when he was taken up, he says to the apostles: “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.” Further, just as the cleansed leper brings the gift commanded by Moses, doing this “for a testimony” to those who have not believed in Christ, so the martyrs bear witness for a testimony to the unbelievers, and all the saints, whose works shine “before men.” For they live as citizens boldly in the cross of Christ and bear witness about the true light.

And John, then, came to testify about the light; who, testifying, “cried out, saying”: “He who comes after me has come to be before me, because he was before me. For from his fullness we have all received, and grace for grace; for the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.”

At any rate this whole passage is spoken in the person of the Baptist testifying to Christ, which escapes some, who think that from “From his fullness we have all received” to “he has made him known” is spoken in the person of John the apostle.

Besides the aforementioned testimony of the Baptist, beginning from “He who comes after me has come to be before me” and ending at “he has made him known,” there is this second testimony of John after it, when to the priests and Levites whom the Jews sent from Jerusalem he confesses, not denying the truth, that he was not the Christ nor Elijah nor the prophet, but “the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as Isaiah the prophet said.”

After these there is another testimony of the same Baptist about Christ, teaching further his principal subsistence, which pervades the whole world in rational souls, when he says: “Among you stands one whom you do not know, coming after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” And consider whether, because the heart is in the middle of the whole body, and the ruling faculty is in the heart, “Among you stands one whom you do not know” can be understood of the word in each person.

A fourth testimony of John about Christ besides these, now describing also his human suffering, is when he says: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, After me comes a man who has come to be before me, because he was before me; and I did not know him, but so that he might be revealed to Israel, for this reason I came baptizing with water.”

And a fifth testimony is recorded in the words: “I have seen the Spirit descending like a dove from heaven, and it remained on him. And I did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, this is the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”

Sixth, John testifies to Christ before two disciples, when, looking at Jesus walking, he says, “Behold the Lamb of God.” After this testimony, when the two disciples of John had heard and followed Jesus, Jesus turned and, seeing the two following, answered, saying, “What are you seeking?”

And perhaps not without purpose, after six testimonies John stops testifying, and Jesus in the seventh place puts forward “What are you seeking?” And fitting to those who had been benefited by John's testimony is the voice that proclaims Christ as teacher and confesses a longing to see the dwelling of the Son of God; for they say to him, “Rabbi (which translated means Teacher), where are you staying?” And since “everyone who seeks finds,” he shows John's disciples, who sought Jesus' dwelling, saying to them, “Come and you will see”: perhaps by “Come” calling them to the practical life, and by “you will see” indicating that contemplation, which follows the right ordering of actions, will certainly come to those who wish it, taking place in Jesus' dwelling.

It lay before those who had sought where Jesus stays, having followed the Teacher and seen, to remain with Jesus and spend that day with the Son of God. And since the number ten is regarded as holy, not a few mysteries being recorded as having taken place in the ten, it must be understood that not without purpose the Gospel too records the tenth hour for the stay of John's disciples with Jesus. So Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one who, having been benefited by staying with Jesus, found his own brother Simon (perhaps he had not been found before) and says that he has found the Messiah, which translated is Christ.

For since “he who seeks finds,” and he sought where Jesus stays, and having followed and seen his dwelling, stays with the Lord in the tenth hour and finds the Son of God, the Word and Wisdom, and is ruled by him as king, for this reason he says, “We have found the Messiah.” And this word could be said by everyone who has found the Word of God and is ruled as king by his divinity.

And at once he brings his brother to Christ as fruit, and to Simon Jesus graciously granted that he looked at him, which is, through looking, to visit and enlighten his ruling faculty. And through Jesus' having looked at him, Simon was able to be made firm, so that he became named after the work of firmness and solidity and was called “Peter.”

But someone will say: why ever, when the task was to explain “He came for testimony, to testify about the light,” have we gone through all these things? We must say that it was necessary to present John's testimonies about the light, and to set out their order and the benefit from Jesus that followed for those to whom he testified, which came after John's testimony, so that the effectiveness of John's testimony might be shown.

And before the testimonies here, the Baptist's leaping for joy in Elizabeth's womb at Mary's greeting was a testimony about Christ, testifying to the divinity of his conception and birth. And indeed, is John not everywhere the witness and forerunner of Jesus, anticipating his birth and dying a little before the death of the Son of God, so that, coming before Christ not only to those in the world but also to those awaiting freedom from death through Christ, he might everywhere prepare for the Lord a people made ready? And John's testimony reaches also to the second and more divine coming of Christ: “For if you are willing,” he says, “to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Since there is a beginning, in which the Word is (which we showed from Proverbs to be wisdom), and there is also the Word, and life came to be in him, and the life is the light of men, I ask why ever the “man sent from God, whose name was John, came for testimony, to testify about the light.”

Why, at any rate, not “to testify about the life,” or “to testify about the Word,” or “about the beginning,” or any other aspect of Christ? Consider whether it is because “the people sitting in darkness saw a great light,” and because “the light shines in the darkness” and is not overcome by it: those in darkness, that is, human beings, need light.

For if the light of men “shines in the darkness,” … where there is no activity of darkness at all, we shall share in the aspects of Christ, not now sharing in them properly and precisely. For how do we who are still clothed with the body of death share in life, we whose life “is hidden with Christ in God”? For when Christ, our life, is revealed, then we too will be revealed with him in glory. It was not

possible, then, for the one who came to testify about the life that is still hidden with Christ in God; but neither did he come for testimony, to testify about the Word, understanding by the Word the one in the beginning with God and God the Word; for on earth “the Word became flesh.” And even if there seemed to be a testimony about the Word, it would properly be said to be about the Word become flesh, not about the Word of God; that is why he did not come to testify about the Word.

And how could testimony about wisdom be given to those who, even if they seem to know, do not perceive the pure truth but see through a mirror and in a riddle? It is likely, however, that before the second and more divine coming of Christ, John or Elijah will come to testify about the life shortly before Christ, our life, is revealed, and then will testify about the Word and present the testimony about wisdom. It needs testing whether John's testimony is, as it were, a forerunner for each of Christ's aspects. So much for “He came for testimony, to testify about the light.” Next we must consider what must be understood of “that all might believe through him.”

Whoever distinguishes in his own mind the sound, the things signified, and the realities to which the things signified refer, will not stumble at the solecism of the words, when on inquiry he finds that the realities to which the words refer are sound; especially since the holy men confess that their word and their proclamation are “not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” [Then, having mentioned the evangelist's solecism, he goes on:]

Since the apostles are not unaware of the points at which people stumble, and of the matters they have not studied, they say they are unskilled “in speech, but not in knowledge.” For we must suppose this would be said not by Paul alone but also by the other apostles. And we have taken “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power may be God's and not from us” thus: “treasure” means the treasure, elsewhere mentioned, of hidden knowledge and wisdom, and “earthen vessels” the style of the Scriptures, cheap and contemptible among the Greeks, in which the surpassing greatness of God's power is truly shown, since the mysteries of the truth and the power of what is said, not hindered by the cheap diction, were able to reach the ends of the earth and to bring under the word of Christ not only the foolish things of the world but sometimes also its wise. For we see our calling: not that no one is wise according to the flesh, but “that not many are wise according to the flesh.” But Paul too, proclaiming the gospel, is a “debtor” to hand on the word not only to “barbarians” but also to “Greeks,” and not only to the “foolish,” who assent more easily, but also to the “wise”; for he had been made competent by God to be a “minister of the new covenant,” using “demonstration of the Spirit and of power,” so that the assent of believers might be “not in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” For perhaps, if Scripture had beauty and elegance of style like the things admired among the Greeks, one might suspect that it was not the truth that had prevailed over men, but that the apparent coherence and the beauty of the style had charmed the hearers and, having deceived them, won them over.

Since, not content with having taken on the present work in our presence as one of God's taskmasters, you also demand that even when I am away I spend most of my time on you and on my duty to you, I, shrinking from the toil and trying to avoid the danger from God that besets those who have given themselves to writing on divine things, might plead my own case from Scripture in declining to make many books. For Solomon says in Ecclesiastes: “My son, beware of making many books; there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” For we, unless the text before us has some hidden sense still unclear to us, have openly transgressed the commandment by not taking care to avoid making many books. [Then, having said that four volumes had been completed by him on a few sayings of the Gospel, he goes on:]

For as far as the wording goes, two things are signified by “My son, beware of making many books”: one, that one must not possess many books; the other, that one must not compose many books. And if not the first, certainly the second; but if the second, not necessarily the first. In either case we shall seem to learn that one must not make many books. I could, standing on what now confronts us, have sent you the text as a defense, and, establishing the matter from the fact that not even the saints spent their time composing many books, have stopped dictating, for the future, what was to be sent to you under the agreements we made with one another; and perhaps you, struck by the text, would have granted us this for the future. But since Scripture must be examined conscientiously, without rashly flattering oneself that one has understood it by taking the bare wording, I do not endure it, lest I set forth what seems to me a defense of myself that you might use against me if I acted contrary to our agreements. And first, since history seems to support the text, none of the saints having published many treatises or set out his mind in many books, we must speak about this. Whoever accuses me of going on to compose many works will say that the great Moses left only five books. [And in the fifth book of his commentaries on the Gospel according to John the same author says this about the apostles:]

But Paul, who was made competent to be a minister of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit, who fully preached the gospel from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum, did not write to all the churches he taught; and to those he wrote to he sent a few lines. And Peter, on whom the church of Christ is built, against which the gates of Hades will not prevail, left one acknowledged letter; perhaps a second too, for it is disputed. What need to speak of him who leaned on Jesus' breast, John, who left one Gospel, confessing that he could have written so much that not even the world could contain it? He also wrote the Revelation, being ordered to keep silence and not to write the voices of the seven thunders. He left also a letter of very few lines, perhaps also a second and a third, since not all say that these are genuine; but both together are not a hundred lines … [Then, having listed prophets and apostles, each of whom wrote little or nothing at all, he goes on after this:]

Again after this, dizziness comes over me and my head swims, lest in obeying you I have not obeyed God, nor imitated the saints. Unless, then, I am mistaken in pleading my own cause because I love you so much and wish to grieve you in nothing, I find such defenses as these. First of all we cited the saying from Ecclesiastes: “My son, beware of making many books.” Against this I set a text from Proverbs of the same Solomon, who says: “From much speaking you will not escape sin, but sparing your lips you will be wise.” And I ask whether to say many things of whatever kind is “much speaking,” even if one says many holy and saving things. For if this is so, and the one who goes through many useful things speaks much, Solomon himself did not escape sin, having spoken “three thousand parables and five thousand songs, and about the trees from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop that comes out through the wall; and also about beasts and birds and reptiles and fish.” For how can teaching accomplish anything without what is simply understood as much speaking, when Wisdom herself says to those who are perishing, “I stretched out words and you did not heed”? And Paul is seen continuing until midnight in teaching, when also Eutychus, borne down by deep sleep, fell and alarmed the hearers as if he were dead.

If, then, “From much speaking you will not escape sin” is true, and it is also true that Solomon did not sin in declaring many things about the subjects mentioned, nor Paul in continuing until midnight, we must inquire what “much speaking” is, and from there pass to seeing what the “many books” are. The whole Word of God, the Word who is in the beginning with God, is not much speaking; for he is not words. For he is one Word, composed of many contemplations, each of which is part of the whole Word. But those outside this which claim to contain some exposition and account, even if they are words as though about truth, and I will say something more paradoxical, none of them is a word, but each is words. For nowhere is there the unity, nowhere the harmonious and one; but by being torn apart and fighting, the one in them has perished and they have become numbers, and perhaps infinite numbers. So in this sense we might say that whoever utters anything foreign to godliness speaks much, but whoever speaks the things of truth, even if he says everything so as to leave nothing out, always speaks one word; and the saints do not speak much, holding to the aim that accords with the one Word. If, then, much speaking is judged by the doctrines and not by uttering many words, see whether we can thus call all holy things one book, and the things outside them many.

But since I need testimony from the divine Scripture, consider whether I can show this most forcibly by establishing that, according to us, what concerns Christ is not written in one book, taking “books” in the ordinary sense. For it is written in the Pentateuch, and spoken of in each of the prophets and in the Psalms, and in short, as the Savior himself says, in all the Scriptures, to which he refers us, saying: “Search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify about me.” If, then, he refers us to “the Scriptures” as testifying about him, he does not send us to this one and not to that, but to all that speak of him, which in the Psalms he calls the head of a book, saying, “In the head of a book it is written of me.” For whoever wishes to take “in the head of a book” simply of some one of the books that contain what concerns him, let him declare by what reason he prefers this book to another. For even if someone supposes that the saying refers us to the book of Psalms itself, we must say to him that it should have been said, “in this book it is written of me.” But as it is, he calls all of them one head, because the account of himself that has come to us is summed up into one. And what of the book seen by John, written inside and on the back, and sealed, which no one could read or loose its seals except the lion from the tribe of Judah, the root of David, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and shuts and no one will open? For the whole of Scripture is what is indicated by the book, written on the front because of its ready interpretation, and on the back because of its withdrawn and spiritual sense.

We must further observe whether it can serve as proof that the holy things are one book, and the opposite ones many, that for the living there is one book, from which those who have become unworthy of it are blotted out, as it is written, “Let them be blotted out of the book of the living,” while for those subject to judgment books are brought; for Daniel says, “The court sat, and books were opened.” And Moses also bears witness to the singular of the divine book, saying, “If you will forgive the people their sin, forgive; but if not, blot me out of your book which you have written.” I take the saying in Isaiah in the same way: for it is not peculiar to his prophecy that the words of the book are sealed, and are neither read by one who does not know letters, because he does not know letters, nor by one who knows them, because the book has been sealed. This is true also of all Scripture, which needs the Word who closed it and will open it: “For he will shut and no one will open”; and when he opens, no one can any longer bring perplexity against the clarity that comes from him; which is why it is said that “he will open and no one will shut.” I take the book mentioned in Ezekiel in a similar way, in which “lamentation and song and woe were written.” For every book contains the “woe” of those who are perishing, the “song” about those being saved, and the “lamentation” about those in between. And John too, eating the one roll in which were written “the things on the back and the things in front,” understood the whole Scripture as one book, very sweet in its beginnings, when one chews it, but bitter as it appears to each who has known it, in his awareness of himself. I will further add to the proof of this an apostolic saying not understood by the followers of Marcion, who for this reason reject the Gospels. For because the apostle says, “according to my gospel in Christ Jesus,” and does not say “gospels,” they, fixing on this, say that the apostle would not have said “the gospel” in the singular if there were more gospels; not understanding that, as the one whom many proclaim is one, so the gospel written by many is one in power, and the Gospel that is truly through four is one.

If, then, these things can persuade us what the one book is and what the many are, I am now more anxious, not because of the quantity of what is written but because of the force of what is understood, lest I fall into transgressing the commandment if I set out anything contrary to the truth as truth, even in one of my writings; for then I shall have written many books. And now, when the heterodox, on the pretext of knowledge, rise up against the holy church of Christ and bring forth works in many books, promising an explanation of the words of the Gospels and the apostles, if we keep silent and do not set against them the true and sound doctrines, they will prevail over greedy souls, which, for lack of saving food, hasten to forbidden and truly unclean and abominable foods. Therefore it seems to me necessary that one who is able to plead for the church's teaching without falsifying it, and to refute those who handle the knowledge falsely so called, should stand against the heretical fabrications, setting against them the loftiness of the gospel proclamation, full of the agreement of doctrines common to the so-called Old and the so-called New Testament. You yourself at any rate, for lack of those who plead for the better things, not bearing an irrational and uneducated faith, out of love for Jesus once gave yourself to their teachings, which later, using the understanding given you as you ought, you condemned and abandoned. These things I say, as it seems to me, in defense of those able to speak and write; but in my own defense, lest perhaps, not being of the disposition that one made competent by God as a minister of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit, ought to have, I give myself too boldly to dictating.

Every house that is to be built as firmly as possible is built in fair weather and calm, so that it is not hindered from taking on the proper solidity, and so that it can become such as to withstand the rush of a flood and the dashing of a river and all that a storm, when it comes, usually does to expose the unsound among buildings and to show those structures that have their own excellence.

And especially the rational building that receives the contemplations of truth, a building as in speech and writing, is built well above all, with God building together with the one who has set himself to complete this best of works, when the soul is calm, enjoying the peace that surpasses all understanding, estranged from all disturbance and in no way tossed by waves.

The servants of the prophetic Spirit and the ministers of the gospel proclamation seem to me to have perceived this precisely, and to have made themselves worthy to receive the hidden peace from him who always gives it to the worthy, who said: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you; not as the world gives peace do I give peace.”

Consider whether the history of David and Solomon concerning the temple hints at something of this kind. For David, fighting the wars of the Lord and standing against many enemies of himself and of Israel, wishing to build a temple to God, is prevented by God through Nathan, who says to him, “You shall not build me a house, because you are a man of blood.”

But Solomon, having seen God in a dream and received wisdom in a dream (for the waking vision was reserved for the one who says, “Behold, something greater than Solomon is here”), being in the deepest peace, so that each then rested under his vine and under his fig tree, and being named after the peace of his times (for Solomon means “peaceable”), because of the peace had leisure to build the famous temple to God. And in the times of Ezra too, when truth conquers wine and the hostile king and women, the temple is rebuilt for God.

These things we have said in our defense to you, holy Ambrose, since, wishing to build the gospel tower in writing according to your holy exhortation, we sat down and counted the cost, whether we have what is needed to complete it, so that we may not be mocked by onlookers who condemn us for having laid a foundation and been unable to finish the work;

and having counted, we did not find that we had ready what is needed to complete the building, but we have trusted in God, who enriches in all speech and all knowledge, that he will enrich us as we strive to keep the spiritual laws, and that, advancing in the building from what he supplies, we shall reach also the parapet of the building, which keeps from falling the one who has gone up to the roof of the Word; since only from buildings lacking the parapet do people fall, because of their incompleteness, becoming causes of murder and falls to those in them.

And up to the fifth volume, even though the storm in Alexandria seemed to oppose us, we dictated what was given, as Jesus rebuked the winds and the waves of the sea; and having gone some way into the sixth, we were drawn out of the land of Egypt, God rescuing us, who brought his people out of it.

Then, when the enemy campaigned most bitterly against us through his new writings, truly hostile to the gospel, and stirred up all the winds of wickedness in Egypt against us, reason summoned me rather to stand for the contest and to guard my ruling faculty, lest wicked thoughts should prevail to bring the storm into my soul too, rather than, untimely, before my mind had found calm, to join on the continuation of the writing. And my usual shorthand writers, not being present, prevented me from keeping to the dictation.

But now, when God has quenched the many fiery darts against us and they have been blunted, and our soul, grown accustomed to what has happened, is enabled by the heavenly Word to bear more easily the plots that were made, having gained, as it were, some fair weather, we wish no longer to postpone dictating what follows, praying that God may be present as a teacher sounding within the sanctuary of our soul, so that the building of the exposition of the Gospel according to John may be completed.

May God hear our prayer, so that we may be able to join together the body of the word, with no further circumstance intervening that could cause any interruption of the writing whatever. And know that out of great eagerness I am making this second beginning of the sixth volume, because what we had dictated before in Alexandria has, I do not know how, not been brought here.

For I thought it better, so that this time too should not pass idle for this work, to begin the rest now, and not, waiting in uncertainty whether what we had dictated before would be found, to lose no small part of the intervening days. Let this suffice as preface; now let us hold to the text. John 1:19: “And this is the testimony of John.”

This is the second recorded testimony of John the Baptist about Christ, the first having begun from “This was he who said, He who comes after me,” and ended at “the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” Heracleon does not soundly suppose that “No one has ever seen God,” and what follows, was said, as he claims, not by the Baptist but by the disciple.

For if, even according to him, “From his fullness we have all received, and grace for grace; for the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” was said by the Baptist, how is it not consistent that the one who received from the fullness of Christ, and a second grace in place of a first grace, and who confesses that the law was given through Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, should have understood, from what had come to him from the fullness, how “no one has ever seen God,” and that the Only-begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, has handed on the explanation to him and to all who have received from the fullness?

For “he who is in the bosom of the Father” did not make things known now for the first time, as though no one fit had existed before to receive what he related to the apostles; since, existing before Abraham came to be, he teaches us that Abraham rejoiced to see his day and was glad. And “From his fullness we have all received” and “grace for grace,” as we said earlier, show that the prophets too received the gift from Christ's fullness and received the second grace in place of the first; for they too, led by the hand by the Spirit, had arrived, after the vision in types, at the contemplation of the truth.

That is why not all the prophets but “many” longed to see what the apostles saw. For if there was a difference among the prophets, those who had been perfected and excelled did not long to see what the apostles saw, for they had contemplated it; but those who had not reached, like them, the height of the Word, came to desire what was known to the apostles through Christ. For we have taken “to see” as not said bodily, and have understood “to hear” as spoken spiritually, since only the one who has acquired ears is prepared to hear the words of Jesus; which does not happen all at once.

Further, that the saints before the bodily coming of Jesus, having something more than the many believers, understood the mysteries of divinity, since the Word of God taught them even before he became flesh (for he was always working, imitating the Father, of whom he says, “My Father is working until now”), one can conclude also from these words:

he says somewhere to the Sadducees, who did not believe the teaching about resurrection: “Have you not read what was spoken at the bush by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob’? But he is not the God of the dead but of the living.” If, then, God “is not ashamed to be called the God” of these men, and they are counted among the living by Christ, and all who believe are sons of Abraham, since all the nations are blessed in faithful Abraham, whom God appointed father of the nations, do we hesitate to accept that the living knew the teachings of the living, having been taught by Christ, who was begotten before the morning star, before he became flesh?

And they lived for this reason, since they shared in him who said, “I am the life.” And as heirs of such great promises they received the appearance not only of angels but also of God in Christ; and perhaps, seeing the image of the invisible God (since whoever has seen the Son has seen the Father), they are recorded, having understood God and heard God's words in a manner worthy of God, as having seen God and heard him.

And I think that those who are perfectly and genuinely sons of Abraham are sons of his deeds understood spiritually and of the knowledge revealed to him, what he knew and did coming to be in those called sons of the patriarch, according to what he teaches those who have ears, saying, “If you were children of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham.”

And if “The wise man will understand what comes from his own mouth, and on his lips he will carry discernment,” it is necessary either rashly to declare of the prophets that they were not wise, if they did not understand “what comes from their own mouth,” or, accepting what is reverent and true, that the prophets were wise, to confess that they understood what came from their own mouth and carried discernment on their lips.

And it is clear that Moses saw with his mind the truth of the law and the allegories, according to the higher sense, of the histories recorded by him; and Joshua understood the true distribution of the inheritance that took place after the overthrow of the twenty-nine kings, being more able than we to see of what true realities the things accomplished through him were shadows.

And it is clear that Isaiah too saw the mystery of the one seated on the throne and of the two seraphim and their wings, and of the altar and the tongs, and of the covering of the face and the feet by the seraphim; and Ezekiel the cherubim and their movement and the firmament above them and the one seated on the throne. What could be more glorious and loftier than these?

And so that I may not prolong my discourse by speaking of each one, wishing to establish that the perfect in earlier generations knew no less than what was revealed to the apostles by Christ, since the one who taught the apostles the secret mysteries of godliness revealed them to them, I will add a few more things and leave it to readers to judge and to consider what they wish about these things.

For Paul says in the letter to the Romans: “Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret for long ages but now manifested through the prophetic Scriptures and the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” For if the mystery long kept silent has been manifested to the apostles through the prophetic Scriptures, and the prophets understood “what comes from their own mouth,” being “wise,” the prophets knew what has been manifested to the apostles.

But since it was not revealed to the many, Paul says for this reason: “In other generations it was not made known to the sons of men as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and of the same body.” But see (if it is possible thus to take this text, “what is revealed,” against the objection that will be raised by those who do not accept our account) whether “what is revealed” can be seen in two ways: in one way when it is understood, in another if … it is prophesied, so that it comes to be and is fulfilled; for then it is revealed, when it is accomplished by being fulfilled.

So, then, that “the Gentiles are fellow heirs and of the same body and fellow partakers” of the promise in Christ: as far as the knowledge goes that “the Gentiles” would be “fellow heirs and of the same body and fellow partakers,” and when they would be, and why, and being what, and how, being strangers to the covenants and aliens to the promise, they would later be “of the same body and fellow partakers,” the prophets knew, since this was revealed to them.

But the things to come are not revealed in the same way to those who understand but do not see the prophecies fulfilled as to those who behold their outcome before their eyes, which happened with the apostles. For thus, I think, they understood the realities no more than the fathers and prophets, but it is true of them that “what was not revealed to other generations as now to the apostles and prophets, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and of the same body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ,” in that, besides understanding the mysteries, they also perceived the vividness of the matter as it was accomplished.

And “Many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it” can have a similar explanation, as though they too longed to see the mystery of the Son of God's embodiment and his descent to the dispensation of his suffering, which is saving for the many, being carried out. As an example we took something else of this sort: suppose one of the apostles, understanding “the unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to speak,” not seeing the second bodily and glorious coming of Jesus proclaimed among believers, longs to see it; and another person, not only not having grasped and understood the same things as the apostle, but holding to the divine hope much less than he, is present at the second coming of our Savior, which, in our example, the apostle has longed for but not seen.

We shall not speak falsely, then, if we say that these two … have seen what the apostle, or even the apostles, longed to see, and it is by no means necessary on that account to call them wiser or more blessed than the apostles. So neither must the apostles be called wiser than the fathers or Moses and the prophets, and especially those who for their virtue were counted worthy of more divine appearances and manifestations and revelations of great mysteries.

We have spent longer examining these things because, under the impression of glorifying Christ's coming, some, saying that the apostles were much wiser than the fathers and the prophets, have even fabricated another, greater God, while others, not daring to do this, as far as their own argument goes, through their unexamined doctrines defraud the fathers and prophets of the gift given them by God through Christ, through whom “all things came to be.” And if all things, clearly also the good things revealed to them and the deeds done as symbols of the mysteries of holy godliness.

And since the noble soldiers of Christ must fortify themselves on every side for the truth, as far as possible allowing no entrance anywhere to the plausibility that comes from falsehood, come, let us consider these things too.

For perhaps they will say that John's first testimony about Christ is “He who comes after me has come to be before me, because he was before me,” and that “For from his fullness we have all received, and grace for grace,” and what follows, was said in the person of the disciple.

It is necessary, even so, to refute this interpretation as forced and inconsistent. For it is very forced to think that the Baptist's speech is suddenly, as it were, interrupted out of season by the speech of the disciple; and to anyone who knows even a little how to hear the connection of what is said, the sequence of the text is clear: “This was he who said, He who comes after me has come to be before me, because he was before me.”

And the Baptist teaches how Jesus has come to be before him, by being first of him (since he is the firstborn of all creation), through “For from his fullness we have all received.” For this reason, he says, “he has come to be before me, because he was before me.” And for this reason I understand him to be first of me and more honored with the Father, since from his fullness both I and the prophets before me have received the more divine and greater, prophetic grace in place of the grace that was accepted by him according to our free choice.

And for this reason too “he has come to be before me, because he was before me,” since, having received from his fullness, we have also understood that the law was given “through Moses,” not “by Moses,” and that the truth through Jesus Christ was not only given but also came to be, his God and Father having given the law through Moses, but having made through Jesus Christ the grace and truth that reached human beings.

For if we hear more considerately the text that says, “Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,” we shall not be troubled, as though by a contradiction, by the saying, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” For if Jesus is the one who says, “I am the truth,” how does the truth come through Jesus Christ? For no one comes to be through himself.

But we must understand that Truth itself, the essential Truth and, so to speak, the prototype of the truth in rational souls, from which truth images of it, as it were, have been imprinted on those who think the truth, did not come to be through Jesus Christ, nor through anyone at all, but was begotten by God; just as the Word who is in the beginning with God is not through anyone, and wisdom, which “God created the beginning of his ways,” is not through anyone, so neither is truth through anyone.

But the truth among human beings came to be through Jesus Christ; for example, the truth in Paul and in the apostles came to be through Jesus Christ. And it is not surprising that, truth being one, many truths are said, as it were, to have flowed from it. At any rate the prophet David knows many truths, saying, “The Lord seeks truths.” For the Father of truth does not seek the one truth, but the many, through which those who have them are saved.

And we find something similar to the account of truth and truths said about righteousness and righteousnesses. For the essential Righteousness itself is Christ, “who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” And from that righteousness the righteousness in each is shaped, so that many righteousnesses come to be in those who are saved; which is why it is written, “For the Lord is righteous, and he loved righteousnesses.” For so we found it in the accurate copies and in the other editions besides the Seventy, and in the Hebrew.

And consider whether likewise the other things that Christ is said to be in the singular can, when multiplied, be named analogously in the plural; for example, “Christ is our life,” as the Savior himself says, “I am the way and the truth and the life,” and the apostle, “When Christ, your life, is revealed, then you too will be revealed with him in glory”; but in the Psalms again it is written, “Your mercy is better than lives.” For because Christ, who is life, is in each person, the lives are multiplied.

And perhaps “Since you seek proof of the Christ who speaks in me” must be inquired into in this way. For Christ is found, as it were, in each saint, and through the one Christ there come to be many christs, his imitators, formed according to him, who is the image of God; whence God says through the prophet, “Do not touch my anointed ones.” What we seemed to have passed over in explaining “Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,” we have now unfolded as it occurred to us; and at the same time we have shown that the voice is that of John the Baptist, still testifying through these words to the Son of God.

Let us now see John's second testimony. The Jews from Jerusalem, as kinsmen of the Baptist, who was of priestly descent, send priests and Levites to inquire who John was. And he, saying “I am not the Christ,” by this very thing made a confession of the truth, and did not, as one might suppose, deny by saying “I am not the Christ”; for it is not a denial to say for the glory of Christ that one is not the Christ.

Once the priests and Levites sent from Jerusalem heard that he was not the expected Christ, they inquire about the second honored name hoped for among them, Elijah, whether he was that one. And he says he is not Elijah, again confessing the truth by “I am not.”

And since, though there were many prophets in Israel, one in particular, foretold by Moses, was specially expected, according to the text that says, “The Lord our God will raise up for you a prophet from your brothers like me; you shall listen to him. And every soul that does not listen to that prophet will be utterly destroyed from his people,” third they ask, not whether he was a prophet, but whether he was “the” prophet.

And since they did not apply this name to Christ but thought that he was another besides the Christ, he, knowing that the one whose forerunner he is is both the Christ and this prophet who was foretold, says “No”; perhaps he would have answered “Yes” if they had asked without the article; for he was not unaware that he was a prophet.

And in all these answers John's second testimony is not yet complete, until to those who asked for an answer to report to those who sent them he declared himself from the prophetic voice of Isaiah, which runs thus: “A voice of one crying in the wilderness: Make straight the way of the Lord.”

It is worth inquiring whether the second testimony has ended, and a third takes place for those sent from the Pharisees who wished to learn why he baptizes when he is neither the Christ nor Elijah nor the prophet, in the words, “I baptize with water; but among you stands one whom you do not know, who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie”; or whether what is said to the Pharisees is also part of the second.

I, as far as one can conjecture from the text, would say that the word to those sent from the Pharisees is a third testimony. We must observe, however, that the first testimony presents the divinity of the Savior, the second removes the suspicion of those who wondered whether John might be the Christ, and the third proclaims the one who is invisibly present among men, and all but about to come.

Before the following testimonies, in which he is borne witness to by being pointed out, let us look at each phrase of the second and third testimony, first observing this: that two missions are sent to the Baptist, one from Jerusalem, the Jews sending “priests and Levites to ask him, Who are you?” and another from the Pharisees, who raise questions about the answer given to the priests and Levites.

Observe, then, how, fitting the character of priests and Levites, “Who are you?” is said with gentleness and eagerness to learn, and “What then? Are you Elijah?” and “Are you the prophet?” and after these, “Who are you, so that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?” For there is nothing arrogant or bold in their inquiry, but everything is fitting for exact servants of God.

But those sent from the Pharisees, not having concerned themselves at all with what the Levites and priests had said, bring to the Baptist words that are, as it were, insulting and more foolish, through “Why then do you baptize, if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” And they send almost not wishing to learn, as the priests and Levites mentioned before did, but to stop him from baptizing, perhaps thinking that baptizing was the work of no one else than the Christ and Elijah and the prophet.

And everywhere the one who will read Scripture precisely must take care, since it is necessary to observe by whom and when things are said, so that we may find throughout the holy books that words are fittingly assigned to the persons. John 1:19–20: “Then the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who are you? And he confessed and did not deny, and confessed, I am not the Christ.”

And what envoys ought to have been sent to John from the Jews, and from where, if not those thought to excel by God's choice, from the place chosen out of all the so-called good land, Jerusalem, where the temple of God was? They inquire of John, then, with such great honor; but nothing of the kind is recorded as having been done by the Jews regarding Christ. Rather, what the Jews do to John, John does to Christ, inquiring through his own disciples, “Are you the one who is coming, or shall we look for another?”

And John, having confessed and not denied to those who came, afterward declares, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness”; but Christ makes his answer as one who has a greater testimony than John's, in words and deeds, saying, “Go and tell John what you see and hear: the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the poor have good news preached to them.” These we shall treat more opportunely, God granting, in their own places.

Perhaps someone might not unreasonably ask why, when the priests and Levites asked John not whether he was the Christ but “Who are you?”, the Baptist does not answer what he should have to “Who are you?”, namely “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness,” but what would have been fitting if they had asked, “Are you the Christ?” For to “Are you the Christ?” the fitting answer was “I am not the Christ,” and to “Who are you?” “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.”

We must say to this that, as is likely, he saw from the question the caution of the priests and Levites, who showed a suspicion that the one baptizing might be the Christ, but guarded against naming it too openly so as not to seem rash. So, reasonably, in order first to remove all their false suspicion about himself, and then to present the truth, he declares first of all that he is not the Christ.

That they suspected something of this kind is shown by the second question, and further by the third. For since they supposed that he might be Elijah, the second in honor, hoped for and honored by them after the Christ, when John declared that he was not the Christ, they asked:

“What then? Are you Elijah? And he said, I am not.” Third they wish to learn whether he is the prophet; and when he answered “No,” having no longer a particular name of one hoped to come to them, they say, “Who are you, so that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?”, showing this: you are not those whom Israel expects to come; but who you are, that you baptize, we do not know. Therefore teach us this, so that we may have something to report to those who sent us to you for this purpose.

Further, we shall add this too, connected with the matters before us: that the time of Christ's coming, already somehow at hand, stirred the people, around the years from the birth of Jesus and a little earlier until the beginning of his preaching.

Therefore, as is likely, since the scribes and lawyers, having worked out from the divine Scriptures the time of the one hoped for, were already expecting him, Theudas sprang up, having gathered, I think, no small multitude as the Christ, and after him “Judas the Galilean in the days of the census.” Reasonably, then, since Christ's coming was expected and talked about more warmly, the Jews from Jerusalem send the priests and Levites to John, wishing to learn by “Who are you?” whether he would confess that he was the Christ. John 1:21: “And they asked him, What then? Are you Elijah? He says, I am not.”

Who among those who hear Jesus saying of John, “If you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come,” would not ask how John says “I am not” to those who ask, “Are you Elijah?” And how must we understand that John is himself Elijah who is to come, according to what was said by Malachi, which runs thus: “And behold, I send you Elijah the Tishbite before the great and glorious day of the Lord comes, who will turn the heart of the father to the son and the heart of a man to his neighbor, lest I come and strike the earth utterly”?

And the word of the angel of the Lord who appeared to Zechariah, standing at the right of the altar of incense, to Zechariah shows something similar to what Malachi said, in these words: “And your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John”; and shortly after, “He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of fathers to children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”

To the first point, then, someone will say that John did not know that he himself was Elijah; and perhaps those who support the doctrine of transmigration of souls will use this, as though the soul puts on bodies one after another and does not always remember its former lives. These same people will also say that some of the Jews, agreeing with the doctrine, said of the Savior that he was one of the ancient prophets risen, not from the tombs but by birth.

For how could they, when his mother Mary was plainly known and Joseph the carpenter was supposed to be his father, think that he was one of the prophets raised from the dead? And using what is written in Genesis, “I will blot out every raising up,” these same people will force the one who has taken care to refute deceptive plausibilities drawn from the Scriptures into a contest, standing against the doctrine.

But another, a churchman, rejecting the doctrine of transmigration as false and not accepting that John's soul was ever Elijah, will use the angel's word mentioned before, since the angel did not name the soul of Elijah at John's birth, but the spirit and power, through “And he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of fathers to children”; being able to show from countless Scriptures that the spirit is different from the soul, and that what is called power is different from both the spirit and the soul. It is not timely now to cite many passages about these, lest we draw the discussion too far aside.

For the present it will suffice, to show that power differs from spirit, to cite “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you”; and to show that the spirits in the prophets, since they were given to them by God, are named as their possessions, as it were, “The spirits of prophets are subject to prophets,” and “The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha.” So, he says, there will be nothing absurd in John, turning the hearts of fathers to children in the spirit and power of Elijah, being called, because of this spirit, Elijah who is to come.

And in support of these he will use this argument: if the God of the universe, making himself the saints' own, becomes their God, and is thus named God of Abraham and God of Isaac and God of Jacob, how much more will the Holy Spirit, made the prophets' own, be able to be called their spirit, so that the Spirit is thus called the spirit of Elijah and the spirit of Isaiah?

And this same churchman will say that those who supposed Jesus to be one of the prophets risen from the dead may have been deceived both in the aforementioned doctrine and in supposing him to be one of the prophets; and that, besides stumbling and holding false opinion in thinking him one of the prophets, they may have been ignorant of his so-called father and his real mother, and thought he had risen from the tombs.

And to the passage in Genesis about “raising up” the churchman will respond using “For God has raised up for me another seed in place of Abel, whom Cain killed,” where “raising up” is used also of birth. This man, then, defending himself on the first difficulty differently from the one who supposes transmigration, will say that, because of what has just been established, John is in some sense Elijah who is to come, but that he answered the priests and Levites “I am not,” aiming at the intention of their question.

For the inquiry made of John by the priests and Levites did not intend to learn whether the same spirit was in both, but whether John was himself Elijah, who had been taken up, now appearing, as the Jews expected, without birth, of which perhaps those sent from Jerusalem were also ignorant. To this question he reasonably answers, “I am not”; for Elijah, who had been taken up, had not come, having changed his body, named John.

But the first, whose view we set out, who thinks that transmigration is established from this, continuing to test the text, will say to the second that it is not consistent that the son of so great a priest as Zechariah, born in the old age of both parents beyond all human expectation, should be unknown to so many Jews in Jerusalem and to the Levites and priests sent by them, as though they did not know that he had been born in this way; especially since Luke testifies that “fear came on all who lived around them” (clearly Zechariah and Elizabeth) “and all these things were talked about through all the hill country of Judea.”

And if John's birth from Zechariah was not unknown, yet the Jews from Jerusalem sent through the Levites and priests to ask, “Are you Elijah?”, clearly they said this thinking that the doctrine of transmigration was true, as being ancestral and not foreign to their secret teaching. For this reason, then, John says “I am not Elijah,” since he does not know his own former life.

Since these arguments have a plausibility not to be despised, the churchman will again object to the former: is it fitting for the prophet enlightened by the Spirit and foretold by Isaiah, announced before his birth by so great an angel, who received from the fullness of Christ, shared in so great a grace, understood that truth came through Jesus Christ, and related so much about God and the Only-begotten who is in the bosom of the Father, to lie, and not even to suspend judgment about what he did not know?

For about more obscure matters he ought to have confessed that he suspended judgment, and neither … nor … the proposition. And how would it not have been reasonable, if this doctrine was held by many, for John to suspend judgment about himself, whether perhaps his soul had once been in Elijah?

And the churchman will also appeal to history, challenging the former to inquire of those among the Hebrews who profess to know the secret teachings whether there is any such doctrine among them. For if it does not appear to be so at all, clearly the former's argument has been scattered.

None the less the churchman will use the solution given before, being himself required to show the intention of those who asked. For if, as the other argued, those who sent knew that John was born of Zechariah and Elizabeth, and much more those sent, being of priestly family, from whom the extraordinary gift of a child to so distinguished a kinsman as Zechariah would not have been hidden, with what thought do they ask, “Are you Elijah?”, men who had read that he was taken up, as it were into heaven, and were expecting his coming?

Perhaps, then, since they expect Elijah at the consummation before the Christ, and after him the Christ, they seem to ask more figuratively: Are you the one who announces beforehand the word that will come before the Christ at the consummation? And to this he answers knowingly, “I am not.”

Further, the churchman, standing against what the other examined in trying to show that John's birth, having been so famous, could not have escaped the priests because “all these things were talked about in the hill country of Judea,” will say that a similar mistake arose among many about the Savior too, since “some said he was John the Baptist, others Elijah, … others Jeremiah or one of the prophets,” as the disciples said when the Lord asked them in the region of Caesarea Philippi.

And Herod too, saying “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised from the dead,” seems not to have known about Christ what was said by those who said, “Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us?”

It is nothing surprising, then, that, just as with the Savior, though many knew of his birth from Mary, others were deceived, so also with John, his birth from Zechariah was not hidden from some, while others wondered whether the expected Elijah had appeared in John

(and the question about John, whether he might be Elijah, has no more room than that about the Savior, whether he might be John), since of Elijah they knew the appearance only from the text, and not from sight, … because of “a hairy man with a leather belt around his waist”; while John's appearance was perhaps known beforehand and not even similar to Jesus' appearance, yet it gave some the suspicion that John had risen from the dead and was renamed Jesus.

For about a change of name too, as in secret traditions, the Hebrews, moved by I know not what, hand down that Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, who admittedly prolonged his life through many judges, as we read in Judges, is himself Elijah, and that immortality was promised to him in Numbers through the so-called peace, because, being zealous and moved by divine zeal, he pierced the Midianite woman and the Israelite and stopped what is called the wrath of God, according to what is written: “Phinehas son of Eleazar son of Aaron stopped my wrath, because he was zealous with my zeal.”

It is nothing surprising, then, if those who supposed Phinehas and Elijah to be the same (whether rightly or not; for it is not our task now to examine this) thought that John and Jesus were the same, or at least were in doubt about this and wished to learn whether John and Elijah are the same.

But principally, elsewhere, we must examine more carefully and investigate further the account of the substance of the soul, and of the beginning of its constitution, and of its entry into the earthly body, and of the allotments of each one's life, and of its departure from here; and whether it can enter a body a second time or not, and in the same period and the same world-order or not, and in the same body or another; and if in the same, whether the same in substance but changed in quality, or the same both in substance and quality; and whether it will always use the same body or change it.

In these we shall need to examine also what transmigration properly is, how it differs from embodiment, and whether it follows for one who holds transmigration that the world is kept incorruptible. In these it will be necessary also to set out the arguments of those who wish, according to the Scriptures, that the soul is sown together with the body, and what follows from their view.

And, in short, the account of the soul, being extensive and hard to interpret, and to be gathered from what lies scattered in the Scriptures, needs a treatise of its own. Therefore, having now examined the problem briefly as it arose from the questions about Elijah and John, let us pass on to what follows. John 1:21: “Are you the prophet? And he answered, No.”

If the law and the prophets were until John, what else would we say John is but a prophet? As his father Zechariah too, filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesying, says: “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways”; unless someone will seize on “will be called,” since “you will be” was not said, and especially because the Savior said to those who thought him a prophet, “But what did you go out to see? A prophet?

Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.” We must observe that by “Yes, I tell you” he affirms that John is a prophet, and does not deny that he is a prophet. And if, besides being a prophet, he is also called by the Savior “more than a prophet,” how then, if he is a prophet, did he answer “No” to the priests and Levites who asked, “Are you the prophet?” We must say to this that “Are you the prophet?” is not the same as “Are you a prophet?” We have observed similar things in examining how “the God” differs from “God” and “the Word” from “Word.”

Since, then, it is written in Deuteronomy, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from your brothers like me; you shall listen to him; and every soul that does not listen to that prophet will be utterly destroyed from his people,” a certain prophet was specially expected, having something like Moses: to mediate between God and men, and, having received a covenant from God, to give the new covenant to those who become disciples. And the people of Israel knew of each of the prophets that none of them was the one foretold by Moses.

Just as, then, they doubted about John whether he was perhaps the Christ himself, so also whether he was “the prophet.” And it is not surprising if they did not know precisely that the Christ is the same as the prophet, doubting about John whether he was the Christ himself; for it follows from the doubt about this that the same one is the Christ and the

The difference between “the prophet” and “prophet” escaped the many, as it escaped Heracleon too, who says in these very words that “John confessed that he was not the Christ, nor even a prophet, nor Elijah.” And having taken it so, he ought to have examined the passages, whether John speaks truly in saying he is not a prophet nor Elijah, or not. But not having attended to the passages, in the commentaries he has left he has passed over such important matters without examination, saying very little, and that untested, in what follows, about which we shall speak at once. John 1:22: “So they said to him, Who are you? So that we may give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

Those who were sent say this in effect: What we suspected you to be, and came to learn, we have learned you are not; it remains after this to hear from you who you are, so that we may report your answer about yourself to those who sent us. John 1:23: “He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as Isaiah the prophet said.”

Just as the one who is properly Son of God, being no other than the Word, uses a word (for he himself was the Word in the beginning, the Word with God, the Word God), so John, the servant of that Word, if we hear Scripture properly, being no other than a voice, uses a voice that points to the Word.

He, understanding the prophecy about himself spoken in Isaiah, says that he is a voice, not crying in the wilderness, but “of one crying in the wilderness,” of him who stood and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink,” and who says, “Make straight the way of the Lord, make his paths straight; every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill brought low, and all the crooked shall become … straight.”

For just as it is written in Exodus that it is said to Moses by God, “Behold, I have made you a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother will be your prophet,” so we must understand something analogous to these, even if not entirely alike, in the Word in the beginning, God, and John; for John was a voice that pointed out and presented that Word.

That is why, very fittingly, Zechariah is surrounded by no other punishment, when he said to the angel, “By what shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in her days,” than the loss of his voice, because of his unbelief in the birth of the voice, according to what Gabriel said to him: “Behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day these things happen, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.” This Zechariah, when “asking for a writing tablet he wrote, saying, His name is John, and they all marveled,” recovered his voice: “For his mouth was opened immediately and his tongue, and he spoke, blessing God.”

Just as, in treating how the Son of God is to be understood as Word, we have made clear what presented itself, so, in fitting sequence, since John “came for testimony,” “a man sent from God,” “to testify about the light, that all might believe through him,” we must understand that John is the only voice able to receive worthily the Word who is proclaimed.

And we shall understand this especially if we recall what we cited earlier in explaining “that all might believe through him,” about “This is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my angel before your face, who will prepare your way before you.” And it is well too that he is not the voice “of one speaking in the wilderness” but “of one crying in the wilderness”; for the one who cries “Make straight the way of the Lord” also speaks; but the same person can speak without crying.

And he cries and shouts, so that those far from the speaker may hear, and those hard of hearing may understand the greatness of what is said, announced with greatness of voice, helping both those who stand far from God and those who have lost sharpness of hearing. For this reason too “Jesus stood and cried out, saying, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” For this reason also “John testifies about him and cried out, saying.” For this reason also God commands Isaiah to cry, in the voice of one saying, “Cry! And I said, What shall I cry?”

But if the spiritual voice of those who pray is not altogether great and not small, even if they raise their shout and cry, God does not hear those who pray thus; God, who says to Moses, “Why do you cry to me?”, when he had not cried aloud perceptibly (for this is not recorded in Exodus), but had cried greatly, through prayer, with the voice heard by God alone. For this reason David too says, “With my voice I cried to the Lord, and he heard me.”

There is need of the voice of one crying in the wilderness, so that the soul that is deprived of God and a wilderness of truth (for what other wilderness is harsher than a soul deserted by God and by all virtue?), needing teaching because it still walks crookedly, may be summoned to make straight the way of the Lord. This way is made straight by one who in no way imitates the crookedness of the serpent's course, while the one opposed to this perverts it. That is why such a person, along with those like him, is rebuked by the words, “Why do you pervert the straight ways of the Lord?”

The way of the Lord is made straight in two ways: in contemplation, made clear in truth unmixed with falsehood; and in practice, after sound contemplation of what must be done, when action harmonious with the sound account of what must be done is rendered. And so that we may understand “Make straight the way of the Lord” more precisely, it will be timely to cite what is said in Proverbs: “Do not turn aside to the right or to the left.” For whoever turns aside to either has lost straightness, no longer being worthy of oversight when he departs from the straightness of the course; “for the Lord is righteous and loved righteousnesses, and his face has seen uprightness.”

And what he sees he enlightens. That is why the one who is watched over, perceiving the benefit of the oversight, says, “The light of your face has been signed upon us, Lord.” Let us stand, then, according to the words of Jeremiah, on the ways, and, seeing, ask for the eternal paths of the Lord, and see which is the good way, and walk in it; as the apostles stood and asked the patriarchs and prophets for the eternal paths of the Lord, whose writings they questioned and later, having understood them, saw the good way, Jesus Christ, who said, “I am the way,” and walked in it.

For the good way is the one that leads to the good Father, to the good man who brings good things out of the good treasure, and to the good and faithful servant. This way is narrow, since the many and the fleshly cannot travel it, and it is a way pressed hard by those who force their way to travel through it, since it is not said “pressing” but “pressed.”

The one who has not taken the sandals off his feet, nor genuinely accepted that “the place” on which he stands, or even walks, “is holy ground,” presses the way, which is living and perceives the character of the one traveling. And it will lead to the life, who is the one who said, “I am the life.”

For the Savior, in whom is all virtue, is many in his aspects. For this reason he is the way to the one who has not yet reached the end but is still making progress, and life to the one who has already put off all deadness. The one who travels this way is taught to take nothing for it, since it has bread and all that is needed for life; and because enemies can do nothing on it, he needs no staff; and since it is holy, no sandals either.

However, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness,” and what follows, can be equivalent to “I am he of whom it is written, a voice of one crying,” so that John is the one crying, and his voice cries in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord.” Heracleon, treating John and the prophets more slanderously, says: “The Savior is the Word; the voice in the wilderness is the one signified through John; and every prophetic order is sound.”

We must say to him that, just as “if the trumpet gives an indistinct sound, no one prepares for battle,” and one who has knowledge of mysteries or prophecy without love has become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal, so, if the prophetic voice is nothing other than sound, how does the Savior refer us to it, saying, “Search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify”; and “If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote about me”; and “Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying,

This people honors me with their lips”? For no one will reasonably accept that a meaningless sound is praised by the Savior, or that it is possible to prepare from the Scriptures, as from the voice of a trumpet, to which we are referred, for the war against the opposing powers, if they were the sound of an indistinct voice. And in what way, if the prophets did not have love and on this account were sounding brass or a clanging cymbal, does the Lord refer us to their sound, as those people take it, to be benefited?

I do not know how, without any argument, he declares that “the voice, being more akin to the word, becomes word, as the woman too is changed into a man.” And as though he had authority to lay down doctrine and to be believed and to make progress, he says that “sound will be changed into voice,” giving the place of a disciple to the voice that changes into word, and of a servant to that which changes from sound into voice. And if he had brought any plausibility at all to establish these things, we would have contended to overturn them;

but his unsupported assertion suffices for its own refutation. What we deferred earlier to examine, how he was moved, come, let us now discuss. For according to Heracleon the Savior calls John both a prophet and Elijah, while John himself denies each of these. And “when the Savior calls him a prophet and Elijah,” he says, “he teaches not about him but about the things around him; but when he calls him greater than the prophets and among those born of women, then he characterizes John himself; but John,” he says, “when asked about himself, answers about himself, not about the things around him.”

Compare how much testing we have made of these matters as far as possible, leaving none of the definitions stated without support, with what Heracleon declared, since he has no authority to say whatever he wishes. For how Elijah and prophet refer to the things around him, and being the voice of one crying in the wilderness refers to himself, he does not attempt to demonstrate even in the slightest; but he uses an example: “the things around him were other than himself, like garments, and if asked about the garments whether he himself were the garments, he would not have answered Yes.”

How being Elijah who is to come is John's garments, I do not at all see on his view; perhaps on ours, as we were able to explain “in the spirit and power of Elijah,” since this spirit of Elijah can in some way be called a garment of John's soul.

Wishing further to show why the questioners sent from the Jews were priests and Levites, he says not badly, “because it was fitting for these, who devote themselves to God, to be concerned and inquire about these things”; but not at all carefully, “because he himself too was of the Levitical tribe,” since, as we examined in raising the difficulty before, if those sent knew John and his birth, how would they have had room to inquire whether he was [Elijah]? And again, in the question “Are you the prophet?”, thinking that something special is signified by the addition of the article, he says that “they asked whether he was a prophet, wishing to learn the more general thing.”

Further, not Heracleon alone, but, as far as my knowledge goes, all the heterodox, not having been able to distinguish a simple ambiguity, have supposed John greater than Elijah and all the prophets because of “Among those born of women there is no one greater than John”; not seeing that “No one is greater than John among those born of women” is true in two ways: not only by his being greater than all, but also by some being equal to him. For if many prophets are equal to him, it is true that, according to the grace given him, no one is greater than he.

And he thinks that his being greater is established by his being prophesied by Isaiah, as though none of those who ever prophesied had been counted worthy of this honor by God. Truly, as one who despises what is called the Old Testament and has not observed that Elijah too was prophesied, he dared to say this; for Elijah too is prophesied by Malachi, who says, “Behold, I send you Elijah the Tishbite, who will restore the heart of the father to the son.”

And Josiah too, as we read in the third book of Kingdoms, is foretold by name by the prophet who came from Judah, saying in the presence of Jeroboam, “Altar, thus says the Lord: Behold, a son is born to David, Josiah is his name.” And some say that Samson too was foretold by Jacob, saying, “Dan shall judge his people, as one tribe in Israel,” since Samson, coming from the tribe of Dan, judged Israel. Let this be said to refute the rashness of the one who declared that no one except John was foretold, having said this in wishing to explain “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.” John 1:24–25: “And those who had been sent were from the Pharisees. And they asked him and said to him, Why then do you baptize, if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?”

Those from Jerusalem who sent the priests and Levites to question John, having learned who John was not and who he was, keep silent most reverently, as though assenting by their silence and showing that they accepted what was said: that baptizing befits the voice of one crying in the wilderness to make straight the way of the Lord.

But the Pharisees, being, as their name indicates, a divided and factious group, show that they are not of one mind with the Jews in the capital and with the ministers of the service of God, the priests and Levites, by sending questioners, as it were reproachfully and, as far as they could, to prevent him from baptizing: “Why then do you baptize, if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” And perhaps, if we wove the things written in the Gospels together into one body, we might say that they said this now, but later, I know not how, gave themselves up to be baptized and heard from John, “Brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit, then, worthy of repentance.”

For these words were said by the Baptist in Matthew when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, clearly without fruits of repentance and boasting in themselves, like Pharisees, of Abraham as their father. That is why they are rebuked by John, who had the zeal of Elijah through sharing in the Holy Spirit. For “Do not presume to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father” is a word of rebuke; and teaching is the word that even those who, because of a heart of stone, are unbelievers called stones can be changed by the power of God from stones into children of Abraham. For they came before the eyes of the prophet, not fleeing the divine sight; which is why he says, “I tell you that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”

And since they come to the baptism without having borne fruit worthy of repentance, most fittingly it is said to them, “Already the axe is laid at the root of the trees; every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” For it is as though he said to them outright: Since you have come to the baptism without bearing fruit of repentance, you are a tree not bearing good fruit, which will be cut down by the sharpest and most vigorous axe of the living and active Word, sharper “than any two-edged sword.”

Luke too presented the Pharisees' self-praise through “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. And the Pharisee, standing, prayed thus to himself: God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of men, robbers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector”; when, because of these words, the tax collector rather than he goes down to his house justified, and it is added that everyone who exalts himself will be humbled. As hypocrites, then (according to the Savior's words of reproof to them), they come to the baptism, not escaping the notice of the one baptizing, still having the venom of vipers under their tongues, and that of asps: “For the venom of asps is under their lips.”

And truly “their anger was like the serpent's,” shown also through this bitter question, “Why then do you baptize, if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” To them I would say, as though the Christ and Elijah and the prophet baptize, while the voice of one crying in the wilderness has not received this authority: O you, you harshly question the angel sent before Christ's face to prepare his way before him, being ignorant of all the mysteries in this passage. For Christ, being Jesus, whether you wish it or not, did not himself baptize, but his disciples;

he himself being “the prophet.” And from where have you come to believe that Elijah, when he comes, will baptize, when he did not even baptize the wood on the altar in the times of Ahab, which needed washing so that it might be burned up when the Lord appeared in fire? For he commands the priests to do this, not only once; for he says, “Do it a second time,” when they did it a second time, and “Do it a third time,” when they did it a third time. How, then, would the one who did not baptize then himself, but left the work to others, baptize when he came according to what Malachi says? Christ, then, does not baptize in water, but his disciples; he reserves for himself baptizing in the Holy Spirit and fire.

Heracleon, accepting the Pharisees' word as rightly spoken, that baptizing belonged to Christ and Elijah and every prophet, says in these very words: “to whom alone baptizing belongs”; and he is refuted both by what we have just said, and especially because he has understood “the prophet” in the more general sense; for he cannot show any of the prophets who baptized. But not unpersuasively he says that the Pharisees inquired “out of their own craftiness, not as wishing to learn.”

And since it seems necessary to us to set the similar expressions of the Gospels beside the texts in hand, and to do this in each case to the end, so that what seems to clash may be shown to agree, and what is similar may each be made clear on its own, come, let us do this here too.

For “A voice of one crying in the wilderness: Make straight the way of the Lord” is spoken in the disciple John in the person of the Baptist; but in Mark it is recorded, as the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, according to the writing of Isaiah, thus: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet: Behold, I send my angel before your face, who will prepare your way; a voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

Yet “Make straight the way of the Lord,” which … Mark cited, is not in the prophet. Perhaps, then, John, abbreviating “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God,” wrote “Make straight the way of the Lord”; while Mark, gathering into one two prophecies spoken in different places by two prophets, made: “As it is written in Isaiah the prophet: Behold, I send my angel before your face, who will prepare your way. A voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

For “A voice of one crying in the wilderness” is written immediately after the history of Hezekiah, who rose from his illness, while “Behold, I send my angel before your face” is by Malachi.

And what John did in abbreviating the text he cited, Mark too showed in another expression. For the prophet says, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God”; but Mark, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” And he made a similar abbreviation also in “Behold, I send my angel before your face, who will prepare your way”; for he did not cite “before me,” which is in the text.

Further, examining “They had been sent from the Pharisees, and they asked him,” we placed the Pharisees' question, which is passed over in silence in Matthew, before … what Matthew records as having happened: “John, seeing many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to the baptism, said to them, Brood of vipers,” and so on. For it is consistent that they first inquired, and then came.

And this too must be observed: Matthew says that Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan, going out to John to be baptized in the river Jordan and confessing their sins, heard no word of rebuke or reproof from the Baptist, but that only the many Pharisees and Sadducees whom he saw coming heard “Brood of vipers” and what follows; while Mark says that nothing rebuking was said by John to those who came, who were all Judea and all the people of Jerusalem, and were baptized by him in the Jordan confessing their sins, consistently with his not having named the Pharisees and Sadducees at all.

Further, it is necessary for us to set this out too: both Matthew and Mark say that all Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan, or all the Judean country and all the people of Jerusalem, were baptized confessing their sins; but Matthew introduces the Pharisees and Sadducees as coming to the baptism, yet not confessing their sins. That is why it is likely that this too is a reasonable cause of their hearing “Brood of vipers.”

Do not suppose that we have cited what comes from the other Gospels out of season in examining what concerns those sent from the Pharisees and asking John. For if we have rightly fitted the Pharisees' question, recorded in the disciple John, to their baptism set down in Matthew, it followed that we should examine what is in these passages and set out the observations we found.

Likewise Luke too, like Mark, mentions “A voice of one crying in the wilderness” in his own person, thus: “The word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness, and he went into all the region around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet: A voice of one crying in the wilderness:

Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” And Luke added also what follows in the prophecy: “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill brought low, and the crooked shall become straight ways, and the rough places smooth ways; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God”; writing, like Mark, “Make his paths straight,” abbreviating, as we said before, “Make straight the paths of our God.”

And instead of “all the crooked shall become straight,” he set down the phrase without “all,” and besides changed the singular “straight” into the plural “straight ways.” Further, instead of “the rough into plains,” he made “and the rough places smooth ways”; and omitting “And the glory of the Lord shall be seen,” he cited what follows, “And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” These observations are useful for demonstrating that the evangelists abbreviate the prophetic texts.

Further, this too must be observed: Matthew says that “Brood of vipers” and what follows was said to the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to the baptism, who were different from those who confessed their sins and heard nothing of the kind; but Luke records that it was said to the crowds going out to be baptized by him, not making two ranks of the baptized, which we found in Matthew.

And reasonably he too, since the crowds are not placed in a praiseworthy light, as will be clear to those who observe, introduces the Baptist saying “Brood of vipers” and what follows to the crowds. Further, to the Pharisees and Sadducees it is said in the singular, “Bear fruit worthy of repentance,” but to the crowds in the plural, “fruits worthy of repentance.”

For perhaps the Pharisees are required to bear the special fruit of repentance, which is none other than the Son and faith in him; while the crowds, not having even a beginning of good things, are required to bear all the fruits of repentance; that is why the plural is spoken to them.

Besides these, it is said to the Pharisees, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father”; for the crowds now make a beginning, seeming to be introduced to the divine word, of approaching the truth, which is why they begin to say in themselves, “We have Abraham as our father”; while the Pharisees do not begin, but have held this opinion for a long time. In any case, both hear that the stones pointed out can be raised up as children to Abraham, rising from insensibility and deadness.

Observe that to the Pharisees, who, according to what is said in the prophet, “You have eaten false fruit,” have fruit but false fruit, it is said, “Every tree, then, that does not bear good fruit is cut down”; but to the crowds, who bear no fruit at all, “Every tree, then, that does not bear fruit is cut down.” For what has no fruit does not have good fruit either, which is why it deserves cutting down. But what has fruit does not necessarily have good fruit; which is why it too is reasonably felled by the axe.

If we investigate more precisely what concerns fruits, we shall find that it is impossible for what is just beginning to be cultivated, even if it bears fruit, to bring forth good fruits first. The farmer is content first that it bear the fruits fitting to one beginning cultivation, intending later, by the proper purifying methods of cultivation, after fruits of whatever kind, to receive good fruits as well. And the law too testifies to this interpretation of ours, saying that the planter must let what is planted remain uncircumcised for three years, its fruits not being eaten: “For three years,” it says, “its fruit shall be uncircumcised to you; it shall not be eaten; but in the fourth year all its fruit shall be holy, a praise to the Lord.”

Reasonably, then, it is said to the crowds without the addition of “good”: “Every tree, then, that does not bear fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire”; and a tree that bears for a longer time fruit like that of its beginning, being a tree that does not bear good fruit, “is cut down and thrown into the fire,” when, the time for introduction after the three years having come in the fourth, it does not bear fruit holy, a praise to the Lord.

All these things, even if said by us with digression in citing the other Gospels too, do not seem to me untimely or foreign to the present inquiry. For the Pharisees send to John after the priests and Levites sent from Jerusalem to ask him who he was, examining him: “Why then do you baptize, if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” And having examined him here, they next come to be baptized, as Matthew records, and hear what fits their pretension and hypocrisy.

And since what was said to them was similar to what is said to the crowds, it was necessary to compare and clarify the texts; and in doing so the sequence required us to consider more things. Further, we shall fittingly add these to what has been said: two groups of senders to John are recorded, one of the Jews from Jerusalem sending priests and Levites, the other of the Pharisees raising the question why he baptizes.

And we have explained that after the inquiry the Pharisees come to be baptized. Perhaps, then, before them, the Jews who had earlier sent from Jerusalem, having accepted John's words, since they sent before the Pharisees, also come before them.

For Jerusalem, all Judea, and accordingly all the region around the Jordan were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins, or, as … Luke says, “All the country of Judea and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” Yet neither Matthew introduces the Pharisees and Sadducees, to whom “Brood of vipers” is said, nor Luke the crowds who received the same rebuke, as confessing their sins.

It is worth raising the difficulty how, when the whole city of Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan were baptized in the Jordan by John, the Savior says, “John the Baptist has come neither eating nor drinking, and you say, He has a demon”; and to those who asked, “By what authority do you do these things?” he says, “I too will ask you one question; if you tell me, I too will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, where was it from? From heaven or from men?” when, reasoning among themselves, they say, “If we say, From heaven, he will say, Why did you not believe him?”

The difficulty is resolved thus: the Pharisees, as we observed before, who heard “Brood of vipers,” came to the baptism without having believed him, likely fearing the crowd and, in their hypocrisy toward them, thinking it right to be washed, so as not to seem to oppose such people.

At any rate, thinking that he had his baptizing from men and not from heaven, because of the crowd, lest they be stoned, they are afraid to say what they suppose; so what the Savior said to the Pharisees does not contradict what is recorded in the Gospels about the multitude baptized by John. And it belonged to the Pharisees' boldness to say that John had a demon, and to claim that Jesus had worked his mighty works by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons. John 1:26–27: “John answered them, saying, I baptize with water; among you stands one whom you do not know, who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.”

Heracleon thinks that John answers those sent from the Pharisees, not to what they asked, but what he himself wished, not noticing that he accuses the prophet of ignorance, if, being asked about one thing, he answers about another; for this too must be guarded against as a fault in conversation.

But we say that the answer is very much to the point. For to “Why then do you baptize, if you are not the Christ?” what else should he have said than to present his baptism as more bodily? For “I,” he says, “baptize with water.” And having said this to “Why then do you baptize?”, to the second part, “if you are not the Christ,” he sets out a glorification of the principal being of Christ, that he has such power as to be invisible in his divinity, present to every human being and extending together with the whole world; which is shown by “Among you stands.”

And since the Pharisees, who expected the coming of the Christ, saw nothing so great about him, supposing him to be only a perfect holy man, he fittingly refutes the Pharisees' ignorance of his excellence by adding to “Among you stands” the words “whom you do not know.”

And so that no one might suppose that the invisible one who pervades every human being and even the whole world is other than the one who became man and was seen on earth and lived among human beings, he joins to “Among you stands one whom you do not know” the words “who comes after me,” that is, who will be manifested after me.

And understanding his surpassing excellence compared with his own nature, which was doubted by some who wondered whether he himself might be the Christ, and wishing to show how far he falls short of the greatness of Christ, so that no one might think of him beyond what he sees or hears from him, he says also, “the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie,” hinting that he is not able to untie and make clear the account of his embodiment, which is, as it were, bound and hidden to those who do not understand, so as to say anything worthy of so great a coming, contracted into so small a compass.

It is not untimely for us, as we examine “I baptize with water,” to set out the similar expressions of the evangelists about this and compare them with the one before us.

Matthew, then, says: “Seeing many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to the baptism,” after the rebukes we examined, “I baptize you with water for repentance; but he who comes after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; he will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire”; in agreement with the account according to John, which speaks of the confession of the baptism in water to those sent from the Pharisees.

And Mark: “John preached,” he says, “saying, After me comes one mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you in the Holy Spirit”; teaching that these things were proclaimed to more people, and to all who heard.

And Luke says that “as the people were in expectation, and all were reasoning in their hearts about John, whether he might be the Christ, John answered, saying to all, I baptize you with water; but one mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie; he will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire.”

Having, then, the similar expressions of the four, come, let us see as far as possible the sense of each and the differences, beginning from Matthew, who is handed down to have published the Gospel first of the others to the Hebrews, those from the circumcision who believe. “I,” he says, “baptize you with water for repentance”: as it were, cleansing and turning you from worse things and summoning you to repentance. “For to prepare for the Lord a people made ready” I have come, and to make ready a place, through the baptism of repentance, for the one who will come after me, and for this reason is much mightier than my power and will benefit you more; for his baptism is not bodily, since the Holy Spirit fills the one who repents, and a more divine fire does away with everything material and consumes everything earthy, not only from the one who receives it but also from the one who hears those who have it.

And the one who comes after me is so much mightier than I that I am not able to carry even the last things of the clothing of the powers around him, which are not exposed bare, so that even ordinary people could understand them, nor endure to bear them.

I do not know which of the two I should say: whether my own great weakness, unable to bear the humble things of Christ in comparison with the greater things about him, or his divinity, surpassing and greater than the whole world. For I, who received such grace as to be counted worthy of prophecy, which foretold my coming into human life in “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness” and “Behold, I send my angel before your face”; I, whose birth “Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God,” wondrously announced, born to my father in old age; I, at whose name Zechariah at once received back his voice and prophecy through it; I, to whom my Lord bore witness that no one among those born of women is greater than I, am not able even to carry his sandals. For if not even the sandals, what must be said of his garments? Who is this who will be able to keep his cloak whole? Who is it who will understand the tunic woven from the top, seamless because woven throughout, and grasp what meaning it has?

We must observe that, while all four say that John confesses he has come to baptize with water, Matthew alone added to this “for repentance,” teaching that the benefit of baptism depends on the choice of the one baptized, coming to be in one who repents, but for one who does not come in this way it will be for a heavier judgment.

We must know that, just as the wondrous mighty works in the healings done by the Savior, which are symbols of those who are always being freed from every disease and infirmity by the Word of God, none the less, being done bodily as well, benefited those who received the kindness by calling them to faith, so also the washing through water, being a symbol of the cleansing of the soul, which is washed of all filth that comes from wickedness, is none the less also in itself, for the one who gives himself to the divinity of the power of the invocations of the adorable Trinity, the beginning and source of divine gifts; for “there are distributions of gifts.”

My account is confirmed by the history recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, of how visibly the Spirit came upon the baptized at that time, the water having prepared a way for it for those who approached sincerely, so that even Simon the magician was astonished and wished to receive this grace from Peter, though he wished to receive what is most just through the mammon of unrighteousness.

This too must be noted: the baptism of John was inferior to the baptism of Jesus given through his disciples. At any rate, those in the Acts who had been baptized into John's baptism, and had not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit, are baptized a second time by the apostle.

For the washing of regeneration took place not with John but with Jesus through his disciples, and it is called the washing of new birth, taking place with renewal of the Spirit, who even now moves above the water, since he is from God, but who does not come to be in all after the water. So much for the examination of the passage in Matthew.

Now let us consider Mark's account too. He recorded that John, in his preaching, said the same as the others in the words “There comes after me one who is mightier than I” (for this is equivalent to “He who comes after me is mightier than I”), but not the same in the words “I am not [fit] to stoop down and loosen the strap of his sandals.”

For it is one thing to carry the sandals, clearly already loosened from the feet of the one wearing them, and another to stoop down and loosen the strap of the sandals. And it follows, if none of the evangelists erred or lied, as believers would say, that the Baptist said both at different times, moved now by one thought and now by another.

For those who recorded their recollections were not, as some think, carried into different accounts of the same things because their memory was not exact about each thing said or done. It is a great thing, then, to carry Jesus' sandals; and a great thing also to stoop down to his bodily circumstances, which came about somewhere below, in order to behold the image below, and to loosen each of the obscurities concerning the mystery of the incarnation, which are, as it were, the strap of the sandals.

For there is one bond of obscurity, just as there is one key of knowledge, which not even the greatest among those born of women is able of himself to loosen or to open, since the one who bound and shut alone grants to whom he wills to loosen and open the strap of the sandals and the things that are shut.

If the passage about the sandals is mystical, this too must not be passed over. I think, then, that the incarnation, when the Son of God takes up flesh and bones, is one of the sandals, and that the descent into Hades, whatever Hades is, and the journey with the Spirit to the prison, is the other.

About the descent into Hades, the words “You will not abandon my soul to Hades” are spoken in the fifteenth Psalm; and about the journey to the prison with the Spirit, Peter speaks in the catholic epistle: “Put to death,” he says, “in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which he also went and preached to the spirits in prison, who had once disobeyed when the patience of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared.”

He, then, who can worthily set forth the reasons for both sojourns is fit to loosen the strap of Jesus' sandals; he too stooping with his mind and going down with the one who went down into Hades, and coming down from heaven and from the mysteries of Christ's divinity to his sojourn among us, which necessarily took place, when he put on the human being as a sandal.

And he who put on the human being as a sandal also put on the dead: “For to this end Jesus died and rose, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.” And for this reason he put on both the living and the dead as sandals, that is, the one on earth and the one in Hades, “that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.”

Who, then, is fit to stoop down and loosen the strap of such sandals, and, having loosened them, not to leave them but by a second fitness to take them up and carry them, by bearing about in memory what has been understood?

Let it not go unexamined that Luke and John likewise speak without “stooping down.” Perhaps it is possible to loosen them by stooping down, as said before; but it is also possible, keeping the stature of one lifted up by the Word, to find how to loosen the sandals that are bound up in inquiry, so that one who has loosened them may see the Word without the sandals, bare of lesser things, as he is in himself, the Son of God.

Not being “fit” is not the same as not being worthy, as John records. For it is possible for one who is not worthy to become fit, and possible also for one who is worthy not yet to be fit.

For if the gifts are given for what is profitable, and not only according to the proportion of faith, it would be the work of a God who loves humankind, foreseeing harm that would follow from conceit or puffing up, sometimes not to give fitness even to the worthy. But it befits God's goodness to overcome the one he benefits in the benefiting, anticipating the one who will be worthy, and adorning him with fitness before he becomes worthy, so that after fitness he may come to be worthy, and not in every case, from being worthy, getting ahead of the Giver and anticipating his graces, come to be fit.

John, then, says in the three that he is not “fit,” and in John that he is not “worthy.” It is not excluded that he who said he was not yet fit became fit, even if he was not yet worthy; and again that he who said he was not worthy, not being worthy, came at last to be worthy.

Unless perhaps someone will say that since mortal nature cannot attain to worthily loosening and carrying, … it would hold true that it never becomes fit to loosen the strap of the sandals, nor worthy of it. For however much we grasp, there still remain things not yet understood, since “When a man has finished, then he begins, and when he stops, then he will be at a loss,” according to the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach.

Let us further discuss the sandals, named thus in the plural by the three evangelists, comparing them with the one named in the singular by the disciple John: “I am not worthy,” he says, “to loosen the strap of his sandal.”

Perhaps, then, overcome by God's grace, he received it as a gift, not yet being, as far as lay in himself, worthy to loosen the strap of one of the sandals, having understood Christ's sojourn among human beings, to which he also bears witness; but since he still lacked understanding of what followed, not knowing whether Jesus is the one who comes there also, where he was about to go, beheaded, from the prison, or whether one should look for another, for this reason, hinting even now at the perplexity made clearer to us later, he says, “I am not worthy to loosen the strap of his sandal.”

But one who thinks this is said with too much subtlety will take “sandals” and “sandal” as the same, as if he were saying: I am in no way worthy to loosen the strap, not even to begin with, even of one sandal. Or in this way too it is possible for what is said in the four to be brought together into one.

For if John understood what concerned Christ's sojourn here but was perplexed about what followed, he speaks truly in saying that he is not fit to loosen the strap of the sandals (for having loosened that of one he does not loosen both); and he speaks truly also in speaking of the strap of the sandal, since, as said before, he was still in doubt whether he himself is the one who comes, or another, who is to be awaited there too.

Concerning “Among you stands one whom you do not know,” we must understand this about the Son of God, the Word, through whom all things came to be, who subsists in being as a distinct subject, being the same as Wisdom. For he has pervaded the whole creation, so that what comes to be may always come to be through him, and that about anything whatever it may always be true that “All things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be,”

and “In wisdom you have made all things.” And if he has pervaded the whole creation, it is clear that among those who asked, “Why then do you baptize, if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” there stands “among” them the same Word, steadfast, established everywhere by the Father. Or let “Among you stands” be understood to mean: among you human beings, because you are rational, he stands in your midst, since the ruling faculty is shown to be in the middle of the whole body, being, according to the Scriptures, in the heart.

Those, then, who have the Word in their midst, but do not understand his nature, nor from what source and beginning he has come, nor how he came to be established in them, these have him in their midst but do not know him. But John knows him. For the words “whom you do not know,” spoken reproachfully to the Pharisees, show the Word by his having carefully come to know what they did not know.

That is why the Baptist, knowing him, knows that the one who is in the midst comes after him, that is, after him and his teaching in baptism he sojourns among those who have been washed according to reason. The word “after” does not mean the same here as when Jesus sends us after himself.

For there we are commanded to come after him so that, walking in his footsteps, we may arrive at the Father; but here, to show that after John's teachings (since he came “so that all might believe through him”) the perfect Word too sojourns among those who have been prepared beforehand, cleansed beforehand by lesser things.

Primarily, then, it is the Father who stands, being unchangeable and unalterable; but his Word also stands, always in saving, even if he becomes flesh, even if he is among human beings, not comprehended, nor even seen. He also stands teaching, calling all to drink from his abundant spring: “For Jesus stood and cried out, saying, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”

Heracleon says that “Among you stands” means: he is already present, and is in the world and among human beings, and is already manifest to all of you. By these words he removes what was set forth about his having pervaded the whole world.

For we must say to him: when is he not present? When is he not in the world? And this when the Gospel says, “He was in the world, and the world came to be through him.” And for this reason those to whom the words “whom you do not know” were spoken do not know him, since they have not yet gone out of the world,

“and the world did not know him.” And at what time did he cease to be among human beings? Was he not in Isaiah, who says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me,” and “I became manifest to those who did not seek me”? Let them say whether he was not also in David, who says not of himself, “But I was established king by him on Zion, his holy mountain,” and all that is recorded in the Psalms in the person of Christ.

And why must I demonstrate it case by case, when the texts that can clearly show that he was always among human beings are hard to count, in order to refute Heracleon's unsound explanation of “Among you stands” as “He is already present and is in the world and among human beings”? But it is said by him not unpersuasively that “who comes after me” shows that John is the forerunner of Christ; for truly he is like a servant running ahead of his master.

He took “I am not worthy to loosen the strap of his sandal” much more simply, to mean that by these words the Baptist confesses that he is not worthy even of the lowliest service toward Christ. However, after this interpretation he added, not unpersuasively: I am not fit that for my sake he should come down from the Greatness and take flesh as a sandal, of which I cannot give an account, nor describe or explain the dispensation concerning it.

But in a coarser and more grandiose way the same Heracleon, taking the sandal to be the world, went on to declare, more impiously, that all these things must be understood also of the person signified by John.

For he thinks that the Creator of the world, being lesser than Christ, confesses this by these words, which is the most impious thing of all. For the Father who sent him, the God of the living, as Jesus himself testifies, of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, who is Lord of heaven and earth because he made them, he alone is good and greater than the one sent.

And even if, as we said before, Heracleon's coarser understanding is that the whole world is Jesus' sandal, I do not think we should agree. For how, with such an interpretation, will “Heaven is my throne and the earth the footstool of my feet” be preserved, which Jesus testifies was said about the Father? “Do not swear,” he says, “by heaven, for it is the throne of God, nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet.”

And how, with the world understood as Jesus' sandal, will he be able to account for “Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord”? However, it is worth considering whether these sayings should be understood as meaning that the Word and Wisdom has pervaded the whole world, and that the Father is in the Son, as we have set forth; or whether the one who primarily encompasses the whole creation, because the Son is in him, granted to the Savior, who after him is the second, being God the Word, to reach through the whole creation.

And especially for those who can consider the unceasing motion of so great a heaven, carrying round with itself from east to west so great a multitude of stars, it will be worth inquiring what is the power, so great and so mighty, that dwells in the whole world. For to dare to say that it is something other than the Father and the Son is perhaps not pious. [John 1:28:] “These things took place in Bethabara beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing.”

We are not unaware that in almost all the copies it reads, “These things took place in Bethany,” and this seems to have been so even earlier; at any rate we read “Bethany” in Heracleon too. But we were persuaded that we should read not “Bethany” but “Bethabara,” having been in the places to inquire into the footsteps of Jesus, his disciples, and the prophets.

For Bethany, as the evangelist says, the home town of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, is fifteen stadia from Jerusalem, and the river Jordan is far from it, roughly a hundred and eighty stadia. Nor is there any place with the same name as Bethany near the Jordan; but they say that Bethabara is pointed out on the bank of the Jordan, where they relate that John baptized.

And the meaning of the name is in keeping with the baptism of him who was preparing for the Lord a people made ready; for it is translated “house of preparation,” while Bethany means “house of obedience.” For where else should the messenger sent before the face of Christ, to prepare his way before him, baptize, but at the house of preparation?

And what home town is more fitting for Mary, who chose the good part that would not be taken from her, and for Martha, distracted by her hospitality to Jesus, and for their brother Lazarus, called a friend by the Savior, than Bethany, the house of obedience? One who wishes to understand the holy writings without omitting anything must not, then, despise exactness about names.

That names are often in error in the Greek copies one might be persuaded also from these instances in the Gospels. The dispensation concerning the swine driven headlong by the demons and drowned in the sea is recorded to have taken place in the

country of the Gerasenes; but Gerasa is a city of Arabia, having neither sea nor lake nearby. And the evangelists, men who knew the affairs of Judea carefully, would not have said something so manifestly false and so easily refuted. But since we have found in a few copies

“into the country of the Gadarenes,” we must say something to this too. Gadara is indeed a city of Judea, near which are the famous hot springs, but there is no lake with cliffs beside it, nor a sea.

But Gergesa, from which come the Gergesenes, is an ancient city by the lake now called Tiberias, near which is a cliff beside the lake, from which it is shown that the swine were cast down by the demons. And Gergesa is interpreted “dwelling of those who have cast out,” perhaps named prophetically for what the citizens of the swine did toward the Savior, when they begged him to depart from their borders.

One can see the like error about names in many places of the Law and the Prophets, as we have made sure by learning from Hebrews and comparing our copies with theirs, which are confirmed by the editions of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus, not yet corrupted.

We shall set out a few examples, then, so that lovers of learning may become more attentive to these things. The first of the sons of Levi is named … “Geson” in most copies instead of “Gershon,” though he has the same name as the firstborn of Moses, the name being readily available for both because they were born while sojourning in a foreign land.

Again, Judah's second son is said among us to be Aunan, but among the Hebrews he is Onan, which means “toil.” And in the departures of the sons of Israel in Numbers we found, “They set out from Succoth and encamped in Bouthan”; but the Hebrew instead of Bouthan says … “Etham.”

And why must I linger in setting out more, when anyone who wishes can examine and learn the truth about the names? But one must be especially suspicious of those places of Scripture where there is a list of many names together, as in Joshua concerning the distribution of the lots, and in the first book of Chronicles from the beginning right up to about the passage about Anan; and likewise in Ezra.

And the names must not be despised, since they signify things useful for interpreting the passages. But it is not the right time now to examine the account of the contemplation of names, leaving aside what is before us.

Let us, then, look at the wording of the Gospel. Jordan is interpreted “descent.” Neighboring this, so to speak, is the name Jared, which also is interpreted [descent], since he was born to Mahalalel, as is written in Enoch, if anyone cares to accept that book as holy, in the days of the descent of the sons of God upon the daughters of men. Some have supposed that this descent hints at the coming down of souls into bodies, taking “daughters of men” more figuratively to mean the earthly tent.

If this is so, what river would be the “descent,” to which one must come to be cleansed who has descended not a descent of his own but that of human beings, except our Savior, who separates those who received their inheritance from Moses from those who receive their own portions through Joshua?

The streams of this river that has come down gladden, as we found in the Psalms, the city of God: not the sensible Jerusalem (for it has no river beside it), but the blameless church of God, built “upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus” our Lord “being the cornerstone.”

The Jordan, however, must be understood as the Word of God who became flesh and dwelt among us, and Jesus [Joshua] as the humanity he assumed, which distributes the inheritance, which is also “the cornerstone.” This humanity too, having come to be in the divinity of the Son of God by being assumed by him, is washed, and then receives the pure and guileless dove of the Spirit, bound to him and no longer able to fly away. “For on whom,” he says, “you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon him, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” Therefore he received the Spirit remaining upon him, so that he might be able to baptize with the Spirit that remains in him those who come to him.

“Beyond the Jordan,” in the regions sloping toward what lies outside Judea, in Bethabara, John baptizes, being the forerunner of him who came to call “not the righteous but sinners,” who taught that it is not the healthy who need physicians but the sick; for indeed the washing is given “for the forgiveness of sins.”

It is likely that someone who has not understood the different aspects of the Savior will stumble at the interpretation given of the Jordan, because John says, “I baptize with water, but he who comes after me is mightier than I; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

To him we must say that, just as the Word of God, being drink, is water for some, and for others wine that gladdens the heart of man, and for others blood, because of “Unless you drink my blood, you have no life in yourselves”; and just as, when called food, he is not understood in the same way as living bread and as flesh: so the same one is a baptism of water and of Spirit and of fire, and for some also of blood.

About the last baptism, as some say, he speaks in “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!” And in agreement with this the disciple John in his epistle wrote of the Spirit and water and [blood], the three becoming one. And confessing that he is somewhere the way and the door, he clearly is not yet the door for one to whom he is the way, and no longer the way for one to whom he is already the door.

All, then, who are being instructed in the elements of the beginning of the oracles of God, approaching the voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” [are baptized] at the house of [preparation], which is “beyond the Jordan,” so that through the preparation they may be able to receive the spiritual Word, who comes to be in them through the enlightenment of the Spirit.

Next, then, gathering together what concerns the Jordan, we shall understand the river more exactly. God leads the people across the Red Sea through Moses, making the water itself a wall for them on the right and on the left; but across the Jordan through Joshua.

Paul, reading the Scripture, no longer warring according to the flesh (for he knew that “the law is spiritual”), teaches us to take spiritually what concerns the passage through the Red Sea, saying in the first letter to the Corinthians: “For I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them;

and the rock was Christ.” In keeping with this, let us too ask to receive from God the understanding of Joshua's crossing of the Jordan in a spiritual way, saying that Paul would also have said about it: I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, that our fathers all passed through the Jordan, and all were baptized into Jesus in the Spirit and in the river.

And Joshua, who succeeded Moses, was a type of Jesus Christ, who succeeded the dispensation through the law with the preaching of the gospel. Therefore, even if all those were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, their baptism has something bitter and salty, since they still feared their enemies, and cried out to the Lord and said to Moses: “Because there were no graves in Egypt, you have brought us out to kill us in the wilderness. What is this you have done to us, bringing us out of Egypt?”

But the baptism into Jesus in the truly sweet and drinkable river has many excellences beyond that one, piety now becoming clear and taking a fitting order. For the ark of the covenant of the Lord our God, and priests and Levites, go before, the people following the servants of God, and they in turn following those who keep the command about purity. And Joshua says to the people, “Purify yourselves for tomorrow; the Lord will do wonders among us.”

And he commands the priests with the ark of the covenant to go before the people, when the mystery of the Father's dispensation toward the Son is also shown, the Son being highly exalted by him who gives the gift “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

For this is shown by the words recorded in Joshua: “And the Lord said to Joshua: On this day I will begin to exalt you before the sons of Israel.” And we must hear our Lord Jesus saying to the sons of Israel: “Come here and hear the word of the Lord our God; by this you will know that the living God is among you.” For in being baptized into Jesus we shall know that the living God is among us.

And there, having kept the Passover in Egypt, they make the beginning of the exodus; but with Joshua, after the crossing of the Jordan, on the tenth of the first month they encamped in Gilgal, when one had first to take the lamb and name those who would feast, after the baptism into Jesus. And with a knife of sharp rock the sons of Israel, as many of those who came out of Egypt as were uncircumcised, are circumcised by Joshua; the Lord removed the reproach of Egypt on the day of baptism into Jesus, when Jesus cleansed the sons of Israel.

For it is written: “And the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun: On this day I have taken away the reproach of Egypt from you.” Then the sons of Israel kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month, much more joyfully than in Egypt, when they also ate unleavened bread and new grain from the wheat of the holy land, a food better than the manna.

For when they have received the land according to the promise, God does not feast them with lesser things, nor through so great a Jesus do they obtain an inferior bread. This is clear to one who has understood the true holy land and the Jerusalem above. That is why in this same Gospel it is written: “Your fathers ate the manna in the

wilderness and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.” For the manna, though given by God, was bread of progress, bread supplied to those still under instruction, bread most fitting for those under guardians and stewards. But the new bread in the holy land, reaped from the grain of the land through the agency of Jesus, others having labored and his disciples reaping, was a bread more life-giving than that, given to those able to receive the Father's inheritance because of their perfection.

Therefore one who is still being educated by that bread … can receive death, but one who has reached the bread that comes after it will eat it and live forever. I think all this has not been set out inappropriately, while examining the baptism at the Jordan performed by John in Bethabara.

This too must be observed: when Elijah was about to be taken up in a whirlwind as into heaven, he took his mantle, rolled it up, and struck the water, which was divided this way and that, and both crossed over, namely he and Elisha. For he became more fit to be taken up by being baptized in the Jordan, since Paul, as we set out before, called the more wonderful crossing through water a baptism.

Through this same Jordan Elisha receives the gift he wished to receive through Elijah, saying, “Let a double portion of your spirit be upon me.” And perhaps for this reason he received the gift twofold in the spirit of Elijah upon himself, since he crossed the Jordan twice: once with Elijah, and a second time when, taking Elijah's mantle, he struck the water and said, “Where is the God of Elijah, even he? And he struck the waters and divided them this way and that.”

If anyone stumbles at “he struck the water,” because of what has been handed down to us about the Jordan, which was a type of the Word who descended our descent, we must say that in the apostle the rock was clearly Christ, which is struck twice with the rod so that they might drink from “the spiritual rock that followed them.”

There is, then, also a blow from those who love, in the questioning before one learns what is sought, when they put forward objections to the conclusion of the argument. From these God frees us, where people thirst, by giving drink, and where the [river] is impassable for us and uncrossable because of its depth, by making it passable through the dividing of the Word, most things being made clear to us by reasoning that distinguishes.

Further, to accept the interpretation of the most drinkable and gracious Jordan, it is useful to set out the case of Naaman the Syrian, cleansed of leprosy, and what is said about the rivers of the enemies of piety.

About Naaman it is written that “he came with horse and chariot and stood at the doors of Elisha's house. And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, Go and wash seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will return to you and you will be clean.” Then Naaman is angry, not understanding that it is our Jordan that releases from uncleanness and heals those unclean through leprosy, and not the prophet; for it is the prophet's work to send to what heals.

Not understanding, then, the great mystery of the Jordan, Naaman says: “Behold, I said that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and lay his hand on the place and take away the leprosy.” For to lay a hand on leprosy and cleanse it was the work of my Lord Jesus alone, who not only said to the one who asked with faith, “If you will, you can make me clean,” the words “I will; be clean,” but in addition to the word also touched him, and he was cleansed of his leprosy.

Still going astray, and not seeing how far the other rivers fall short of the Jordan for healing the afflicted, Naaman praises the rivers of Damascus, Abana and Pharpar, saying, “Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, good, beyond all the waters of Israel? Shall I not go and wash in them and be clean?” For just as no one is good but one, God the Father, so among rivers none is good but the Jordan, which can deliver from leprosy one who washes his soul with faith into Jesus.

I think it is because of this river that those who remembered Zion are recorded as weeping while they sat by the rivers of Babylon. For having tasted other waters after the holy Jordan, those taken captive through wickedness come to remember and long for their own saving river. Therefore by the rivers of Babylon they say, “There we sat,” clearly because they could not stand, “and wept.”

And Jeremiah rebukes those who wish to drink Egyptian water and abandon the Jordan, which comes down from heaven and is named for [descent], saying, “What have you to do with the way of Egypt, to drink the water of Gihon, and to drink the water of rivers?” or, as the Hebrew has it, “to drink the water of Shihor”; about which it is not our business to speak now.

That the principal meaning intended by the Spirit who speaks in the inspired Scriptures does not concern sensible rivers can be seen also from what is prophesied in Ezekiel against Pharaoh king of Egypt, which runs thus: “Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lies in the midst of his rivers, saying, The rivers are mine, and I made them. And I will put hooks in your jaws, and make the fish of the river stick to your fins, and I will bring you up out of the midst of your river, and all the fish of your river; and I will cast you down quickly, and all the fish of the river; you will fall on the face of the plain, and you will not be gathered or buried.”

For what bodily dragon has ever been reported seen in the bodily river of Egypt? But perhaps the river of Egypt, which was able to kill the infant Moses, is the place of our enemy the dragon. And just as a dragon is in the Egyptian river, so God is in the river that gladdens the city of God; for the Father is in the Son.

That is why those who enter it to be washed put away the reproach of Egypt, become more fit to be taken up, are cleansed from the foulest leprosy, receive a double portion of gifts, and become ready to receive the Holy Spirit, since the spiritual dove does not fly down upon any other river.

Therefore, having understood in a manner more worthy of God the Jordan, the washing in it, Jesus washed in it, and the house of preparation, let us draw from the river as much of such benefit as we need. [John 1:29:] “The next day he sees Jesus coming toward him.”

Earlier, as soon as she conceived him, the mother of Jesus visited the mother of John, who was also pregnant, when the one being formed gives the one being formed a more exact formation, making him conformed to his glory, so that because of the likeness of form John was suspected to be the Christ, and Jesus was thought to be John risen from the dead by those who do not distinguish the image from what is according to the image. But now Jesus, after John's testimonies about him examined above, is himself seen by the Baptist coming toward him.

It must be observed that there, because the voice of Mary's greeting reached Elizabeth's ears, the infant John leaps in his mother's womb, she then receiving the Holy Spirit as from the voice. “It came about,” it says, “when Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and cried out with a loud cry and said.” Here: “John sees Jesus coming toward him and says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” For one is first taught about the greater things by hearing, and afterwards becomes an eyewitness of them.

That John was, however, helped toward his formation by the Lord, who was still being formed, … having come in his mother to Elizabeth, will be clear to anyone who has grasped what was said about John being a voice and Jesus the Word. For a loud voice comes about in Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit through Mary's greeting, as the wording itself shows: “And she cried out with a loud cry,” clearly the voice, “and said.”

For the voice of Mary's greeting, coming into Elizabeth's ears, filled the John within her. That is why John leaps and his mother becomes, as it were, the mouth of her son and a prophetess, crying out with a loud cry and saying, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

Now, then, it can become clear to us why Mary made her hurried journey into the hill country, entered the house of Zechariah, and greeted Elizabeth: all this happened so that Mary might impart to John, still in his mother's womb, from the power she had from the one she had conceived, and so that he might impart to his mother from the prophetic grace he had received.

And very reasonably such dispensations are carried out in the hill country, since nothing great is received by those who, because of their lowness, will be called valleys. And here, after John's testimonies (the first spoken by one crying out and speaking of God, the second to the priests and Levites sent from Jerusalem by the Jews, and the third to those of the Pharisees who questioned him more bitterly), Jesus is now seen by the one who bore witness, coming to him while he is still advancing and growing better. The symbol of this advance and improvement is the day named “the next day.” For as in a following illumination and a second day beyond the former, Jesus comes, not only known as standing in the midst even of those who do not know him, but now also seen arriving by the one who earlier declared these things.

On the first day, then, the testimonies are given, and on the second Jesus comes to John. On the third John, standing with two disciples and looking at Jesus as he walked, says, “Behold the Lamb of God,” and urges those present to follow the Son of God. And on the fourth, wishing to go out into Galilee, he who came out to seek what was lost “finds Philip and says to him,

Follow me.” And on the third day from the fourth, which is the sixth of those we have listed from the beginning, the wedding takes place in Cana of Galilee, about which we shall learn when we come to the passage. This too must be observed: the superior Mary comes to the inferior Elizabeth, and the Son of God to the Baptist; by which we are helped toward readiness to benefit those who are lesser, and toward modesty.

Since in the disciple John it is not said from where the Savior comes to the Baptist, we learn this from what Matthew wrote: “Then Jesus comes from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him.”

Mark added also the place in Galilee, saying: “And it came about in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John.” Luke passed over in silence the place from which Jesus comes,

leaving that to those who had already told it; but what we have not learned from them he himself teaches us: that after the baptism, while he was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit came down in bodily form like a dove.

Again, no one added to Matthew's account that John tried to prevent the Lord, saying to the Savior, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”, so as not to repeat him. And the Lord's words to him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness,” Matthew alone recorded. [John 1:29:] “And he says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

Since five animals are offered on the altar, three land animals and two birds, it seems to me worth asking why the Savior is called “lamb” by John and none of the others, and, since among the land animals each is offered at three ages, why he named the lamb from the kind of the sheep. These five animals are: calf, sheep, goat, turtledove, dove.

And these are the three ages of each land animal: calf, ox, young calf; ram, lamb, little lamb; he-goat, goat, kid. Of birds, a pair of young doves only, a pair of full-grown turtledoves. One who wishes to grasp exactly the spiritual meaning of the sacrifices must therefore inquire of what heavenly things these were a copy and shadow, and for what purpose the Word legislates that each of the animals be sacrificed; and must gather separately what concerns the lamb.

That the account of the sacrifices ought to be understood of certain heavenly mysteries the apostle says somewhere: “who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things”; and again: “It was necessary, then, for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.”