On “By what authority do you do these things?” 5–8

Tell me how the Savior came in when the doors were shut, how the body came in. The nature of the body denies it, … the Gospels. If I follow faith, the truth does not lie. How did he come in when the doors were shut? For it was not a bodiless nature, nor one that cuts through all bodies; but there was the body together with the bodiless nature, and this was the instrument of the bodiless nature. For the Savior had this human body. Indeed the disciples, looking at the strangeness of the miracle, thought that it was a spirit, since the thing before them overcame the nature of the body. But he … says to those who doubted: “Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” How did he come in? Did the planks dissolve like air? Or was the body made fine, and so passed through the thickness of the wood? But neither can you say, nor am I able to explain; Scripture has handed down to me none of these things; I do not pry; I follow what it proclaimed, even if I do not wish to. That he came in, I believe; how, I do not pry into. Do not suppose … of the doors he came in. It did not say, “He came in when the door was thinned or dissolved,” but, “when they were shut.” It proclaimed what happened; it did not show what the manner of what happened was. Peter went out of prison; but the gates were opened for him, and Scripture marked it, saying: “The iron gate opened for them of its own accord.” It did not say, “It received Peter passing through it of its own accord,” for his body was human and of human dough. But the body of Christ was human, because of its kinship with us, and divine, both because of its union with God the Word and because of the strange childbirth of the virgin. How did he come in when the doors were shut? How did he go up when the heavens were shut? O the absurdity of those who say these things! But what does the objector say? “We do not find faith safe everywhere; we have found it slipping too. One must not believe without examination, but with careful examination.” And many of those outside agree with them. For the opinions of the heretics and of the Greeks are sisters: the one are the inventions of demons, and the other the teachings of demons. Some of those who attack the faith say that its lack of reasoning is harmful, and that unless examined reasoning is joined to faith, it brings no gain anywhere to the one who believes. “From what point,” he says, “do you want to examine the nature of faith? Do you want to begin from the creation itself? Look at the one you call the first-formed man: I find him fallen through faith.” See the words of the wicked demon, who dares to attempt everything easily: what he dares, what he utters, what he proposes! “You say,” he says, “that the serpent said to him: In the day you eat, you will be like gods, knowing good and evil. He believed the serpent; believing, he perished. So faith is the beginning of evils.” This is what those enemies of the truth say to us, who do not know the true definition of faith or what they are proposing. Do we say that everyone who believes everything has faith and is proclaimed faithful? No: not the one who believes anyone whatever is faithful, but the one who truly believes God. Did you show that he perished by believing God? He fell by believing the devil; he slipped by disbelieving God. Why do you twist the words? As Jeremiah says: “Hear me, you who hate judgment, who twist everything that is straight.” Rather you ought to have said: “Unbelief is the beginning of evils.” For if he had believed God when he said, “In the day you eat, you shall surely die,” he would not have slipped, but would have had faith, a faith safe for salvation. Never slander the name of faith. For not the one who believes everything is faithful, but the one who believes God: he alone both is and is called faithful. Leave off inquiries and embrace faith. Faith enlightens all things, faith sanctifies all things, faith makes one worthy of the Holy Spirit; for Stephen was “full of faith and power.” If faith had not shone first, power would not have followed the saint. Where there is faith, there is power too; where there is unbelief, there is weakness too. Faith is the beginning of good things; faith is the fountain of good things. Let us take up the weapon of salvation. Why are you a slave to words, and flee the truth? Why do you bring forward what not even the nature of the angels dares to search out? Why do I say the nature of the angels? What not even demons dare. You do not want to follow Peter? You do not want to follow Paul? Not the angels? Not the cherubim? Not the seraphim? Then become at least a disciple of the demons. The demons saw the Savior and said to him: “Ah, what have we to do with you, Son of God?” The demons confess the Son, and you, heretic, blaspheme? The demons make him equal, and you construct inequality? “And what am I to do,” says the heretic, “when the Lord says: That they may know you, the only true God? He said ‘only’; he proclaimed the Father only as the true God. I keep in line with the truth proclaimed by God.” You follow the sound of the word “only,” and are a slave to the expression? Keep the boundaries for me, then, in the things being examined. God says through the prophet: “I am the first, and I am after these things, and there is no other besides me. There is no righteous one and savior apart from me. Turn to me, and you will be saved, from the ends of the earth. I am God, and there is no other. By myself I swear.” “I am the first, and I am after these things.” And he added: “And there is no other besides me.” Do you see how he shows a nature that stands alone, having nothing in common with another nature cut off from it? And God says this: “I am, and there is no other”—he who says through the prophet: “I alone stretched out the heaven.” Pay attention to “alone,” since you bring forward “the only true God.” “I alone stretched out the heaven”; and here likewise, “I am, and there is no other; by myself I swear.” Pay attention also to the sovereignty and the power of the speaker: that he said, “There is no other,” and “I alone am,” and this, “I swore by myself”; and he indicates that there is no one greater than himself who speaks. So the Apostle too says: “Since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself.” So the one who says, “By myself I swear, truly righteousness shall go out of my mouth; my words shall not be turned back,” has no one greater. And what do you swear? “That to me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess” the true God. Who says these things, heretic, the Father or the Son? For me, the believer, and for every godly person, there is the dignity of the Father and the sovereignty of the Son. For keep this observed: that many of the things we say are proclaimed in controversy, not as dogma. For me and for every believer the dogma of godliness stands firm, that where the Father alone speaks, the Son and the Holy Spirit are included with him. Where the Son speaks, there is the sovereignty of the Father; where the Father exercises sovereignty, there is the authority of the Son; where the Holy Spirit works, there is the working of the Father. The glory of the holy Trinity is not cut apart, because the dogma of the truth is not cut apart. Do not confess one kingdom …

Since I am training against the enemy, I have said these things so that none of those who love to slander may say: “See how he said that everything belongs to the Son, and ‘The Son speaks,’ and showed the prophecy to be foreign to the Father and the Son’s own.” For me the boundary of the faith stands unshaken. What is being exercised is a contest. Here I show the Son speaking; and when I persuade you, then I persuade myself that the Father speaks, the Son proclaims, the Holy Spirit gives the oracle. “I am first, and I am after these things, and besides me there is no God. By myself I swear.” Who is it that says, “I am, and there is no other,” and, “Righteousness from my mouth,” and, “My words shall not be turned back; for to me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess the true God”? How did you take the saying? To whom do you apply the name? But neither should you declare what you do not know, nor do I promise what I do not understand. Let us follow a spiritual teacher who can set us in line with godliness. So do not listen to me; listen with me. I know Paul as the teacher of the church’s doctrines. When I say Paul, I proclaim Christ; for it was he who spoke in Paul, as it is said: “Since you seek proof of the Christ who speaks in me.” This prophecy of Isaiah, then, which was quoted before—“I am, and there is no other,” and, “By myself I swear that to me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess the true God”—Paul refers to Christ. And where do you find this proof? Writing to the Romans he says: “But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? Why do you judge one another? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written: As I live, says the Lord, to me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess the true God.” He is the one who says, “I am, and there is no other; by myself I swear that to me every knee shall bow.” If, then, Paul refers the prophecy to Christ, and the one speaking in the prophet is Christ, and Christ says, “I alone am, and there is no other,” does he then cast the Father out of the Godhead? No, he does not cast him out, just as indeed he does not; for the glory is undivided. So it has been clearly demonstrated that, just as the Son, when he says, “I alone am,” does not cast out the Father, so too, when he says of the Father, “That they may know you, the only true God,” he does not separate himself from the truth. And not only does he heal this, but from the testimony itself it is shown that Christ is true God; for it adds: “And every tongue shall confess the true God.” So the one who says, “I alone,” and, “I am true,” is the Son. Why then quarrel about words, when the truth agrees? Why then did he say, “You, the only true God”? Be taught, and do not fight. The Savior is the teacher of the world, the corrector of the inhabited earth, who raises what has fallen, turns back what has strayed, and renews what has grown old. Since he knew that his word would go forth and prevail over all that is under heaven, for the correction of the error of the Greeks and the refutation of the unbelief of the Jews, he brings forth a two-edged word: so that by calling God “the true” and “only” one he might publicly brand the many falsely named gods, and by adding, “and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,” he might refute those who deny the dispensation. He proclaims the only true God, not separating himself, but abolishing the instruments of error. And that you may learn, brother, that he is both true God and the Son of the true God: John the Evangelist, in whom this is written—for in the Gospel according to John it stands, “That they may know you, the only true God”—that same herald who proclaimed these things, writes in his own Epistle (the first Epistle is among those read in the church, not among the apocryphal; for the Fathers exclude the second and third from the canon, but all have agreed with one voice that the first Epistle is John’s). What that saint proclaims in his theology in the Epistle, then, we must attend to: “We know,” he says, “that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know the true one; and we are in the true one, in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.” This man, brothers, both said the one and proclaimed the other. If you will, let us reason further about “alone,” and contend. Let many arrows be sent against the unbeliever—arrows, not to wound bodies but to correct minds. Let words be sent to the faithful, but arrows to the unbelievers: “The arrows of the mighty one, sharpened; peoples shall fall beneath you, in the heart of the enemies.” Blessed Jeremiah says, then—or rather Baruch his disciple, as Elisha was Elijah’s: “He who prepared the earth for all time filled it with cattle and four-footed beasts; he sends forth the light, and it goes; he called it, and it obeyed him with trembling. The stars shone in their watches and rejoiced.” “He called them,” it says, the stars, “and they said, Here we are”; and they shone with gladness for the one who made them. And after so much theology it says: “This is our God; no other shall be reckoned beside him.” Pay careful attention to how he shuts out the other: “No other shall be reckoned beside him. He found out the whole way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel whom he loved. After this he appeared on earth and lived among human beings.” This is our God, beside whom “no other shall be reckoned”: he “appeared on earth and lived among human beings after this.” Do you see the truth made secure? See how it gives no entrance to error, so that a Jew may not slander the truth and say that God appeared to Moses; for God appeared on the mountain. Beside him there is no other; and yet he does not cast the Father out of the divine dignity. If the Father is called “alone,” does he banish the Son from fellowship in the dignity? When God says that he is one and alone, whether Father or Son, he does not deny the kinship of his own nature. The Father does not cast out the Son, nor does the Son set aside the Father; but when such things are said, the word is directed against the error of idols. Why do you construct blasphemy against the Only-begotten? God does not give his glory to idols; does he then not give it even to the one begotten of him? He does give it, not [only] by grace, but also by fellowship of nature. And where is the proof that Christ receives the glory of the Father? For he said: “My glory I will not give to another.”

Hear how the Savior himself, speaking to the apostles, says: “When the Son of Man comes in the glory of his Father,” though the other had said before, “My glory I will not give to another.” Search the saying, and you will find the sense. He did not say, “My glory I will not give to my Son,” but, “I will not give it to another.” And “another” is what is foreign to kinship and cut off from the nature; but the Son is not another, for “I and the Father are one.” It has been demonstrated, then, … God, does not abolish the Son’s being true God. Do not throw the word out as a slander, as if the sense had been left hanging, as some of the brothers felt about the cup. For as though the sense had received no solution, so they brought charges: “He left the examination,” they say, “suspended and hanging.” But what more was there to say, brothers? What was needed for proof beyond what had been said? For first there was, “If it is possible, let the cup pass from me”; and against what the wording suggests—for the wording seems somehow to place the one who entreats under another’s authority—we set that saying of the Lord, truly full of all divine sovereignty and displaying the dignity of the speaker: “I have authority to lay down my life, and I have authority to take it again”; and we said that “I have” is proper to the Godhead, whereas “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me” was said in the person of the flesh, not in the person of the Godhead; and upon these we set the Master’s own testimony as a seal, for which reason he said, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” And we pointed out that it is the height of absurdity, when the Lord himself ascribes it to the flesh, for us to fasten the lowliness of the saying on the sovereignty of the Godhead. And we also presented the Lord’s purpose, why he said, “Let the cup pass from me”: not that he refused death to escape the dispensation of the cross, but that he used this saying because those unacquainted with the dispensation would be scandalized at the cross. And again the testimony followed this sense: “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” Others slandered us as if we had said: “if it is possible to fulfill the dispensation by another manner of death.” But this neither was said nor will be said. I did not say, “by another death”; I said, “that the dispensation be fulfilled in another manner,” that is, without death. For I interpreted the cup; and “otherwise” meant “without death.” And this happened, not because the Lord truly refused death for the world, but because he was confirming the weakness of the flesh: that it was truly flesh that was afraid, that was troubled. For “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” He ascribed the words of weakness to the flesh; he did not wound the sovereignty of the Godhead. Why do you slander what I do not say? Why do you misrepresent what I do not proclaim? I said “another manner”: not of death, but of the dispensation. For it was not said, “If it is possible, let this cup be exchanged.” The weakness belongs to the flesh, the suffering to the incarnation. He utters the words of weakness to show that he has put on this nature, which is afraid of death. And so that you would not again be a slave to the wording, I brought in that further point too, by way of abundance: what reason would there be for the apostles to trample on death nobly, while the Lord of the apostles fears and trembles at the experience of death? And I will say this now too, brothers: Paul is bold not only to be bound but also to die for the name of Christ, and does the Lord of Paul refuse death? Paul’s heart is not crushed, and is Christ’s soul troubled? For “now,” he says, “my soul is troubled.” All this I spoke to you before witnesses. But does this not persuade you? Does “If it is possible” still scandalize you? “Yes,” he says. Let us join battle, brothers, with the contentious man; let us contend by the power of the truth to raise up those who have fallen through the weakness of unbelief. “If Christ had authority, he would not have said, If it is possible, let it pass.” Then accuse God too, for using in the law a certain expression far removed from his authority. For he says to Moses, when he spoke from Mount Sinai in that great and fearful appearance, when all the people trembled, hearing the voice of the living God—he who has authority over all and governs all things in all, God who gives all things, says to Moses: “Who will grant that their heart be so in them, that they fear me and keep my commandments all their days, that it may be well with them and with their children?” God says: “Who will give this people a heart?” And who, O Master, is stronger than you, that he should give it? Are you not the one who gives all things, especially the things that lead to godliness? If you were not the one who gives a good heart to those who love you, if you are not the one who gives, how does David pray to you, “Create a clean heart in me, O God”? The prophets ask from you a clean heart and the other good gifts, and the … purity of heart; and you, using a human expression, say, “Who will give this people a heart?” And who gives more than you? But even if you, being good, spoke thus, blessed Moses did not follow your wording; he proclaimed your dignity, showed your sovereignty, made known your power. He says to the people in Deuteronomy: “The Lord God has given you a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day.”

Do you see that the same one gives heart and eyes and ears and all things? How then did the one who gives all things say, “Who will give this people such a heart?” And again, if he was not the one who gives a heart, how did he say through Ezekiel: “And I will tear out of them the heart of stone, and I will give them a heart of flesh, and I will write my law on their hearts”? So just as there God himself, who is able to give a good heart, says, “Who will give?”, so also the Only-begotten of the Father, who fills the inhabited earth with authority and says with sovereignty, “I have authority to lay down my life, and I have authority to take it again,” answers again in human fashion, speaking in the person of the weakness of the flesh: “If it is possible, let the cup pass from me.” So do not misrepresent what is not said, but keep in line with what is proclaimed; do not slander the teaching when you do not grasp its sense. I know where you slip into slander from; I know where you get this disease. The affliction is human; the disease is envy. For just as the eye, if it is clean, sees and distinguishes everything rightly, but if smoke gets in and spoils the beauty of sight, or dust falls in, it dulls the sight, and it does not see well as it saw rightly before: so now too each of the hearers, as long as he has a clean eye of faith, a clean eyelid of love, sees rightly and purely; but if the smoke of blasphemy gets into what is said, or the dust of envy steals into the soul, it clouds the sight and destroys the purity of the mind, and he hears what he did not hear, and what he did hear he does not understand well. Hence the divine Scripture, foreseeing the stumbling blocks of those who would stumble in mind at the sacred writings, has one of the prophets cry out somewhere, after he had completed the divine proclamation: “Who is wise, and will understand these things? And who is understanding, and will know them? For the ways of the Lord are straight, and the righteous will walk in them.” So, brother, do not snatch words away into stumbling blocks. The word is bare, the truth is bare. Not one, not a second, not a tenth, not a hundredth was the hearer; it is a boundless multitude, a countless multitude. The church is a sea of godliness, not full of waves, but brimming with faith. The ship of teaching does not suffer shipwreck among us; it is not battered, not tossed, not storm-driven, but it comes to anchor as in a calm harbor in the souls of those who love the Lord. But so much for this. One must consider this, however: that the saints of God fall under slanders. What is surprising, then, if we, who are cheap and lowly and, so to speak, nothing, are slandered? Or have you not heard how David says: “Deliver me from the slander of men”? The holy apostles of the Savior were slandered too, as blessed Paul also said: “And not, as we are slandered, and as some say that we say, Let us do evil that good may come.” I am not grieved to be slandered along with the saints, even though I am unworthy of the saints. I have all of you as judges, and before all of you our common father, who judges not by prejudice but by understanding. He knows our thoughts, he recognizes our words too, for it was from him that we were taught these things. We put it to you: if anything was lacking in what was said, he would have corrected what was said; but he raised no objection. For if he had corrected it, it would have been not from hatred but from love; for “whom the Father loves, he reproves,” and the one he does not correct he turns away from. But this wonderful father both accepts what is said well and applies correction to what is in error. For this is proper to a father: to award the prize to what is said well and proclaimed with faith. His verdict, then, suffices instead of all others, and before his again that of the all-holy God. Let us hold fast to godliness; let us keep the faith unshaken. Believe the truth, and do not speak against the truth. Do not set the faith aside; do not pry into the divine nature; do not subject the immortal dignity to mortal reasonings. The road of reasonings is slippery; the understanding of the confession of the faith is safe and firm. True wisdom is faith. Hear what the divine oracle says: “For even if one is perfect among the sons of men, if the wisdom from you is absent, he will be reckoned as nothing.” Flee disputes, and do not prefer words to faith. Have Paul as your teacher, inscribe Peter as your guide; follow their faith. Hear Peter saying: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Follow Paul, who clearly hymns the Son of God, saying in one place that God has spoken to us in his Son, “through whom he also made the ages; who, being the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of his substance, upholds all things by the word of his power”; and proclaiming again in another place, in the passage about the Jews: “Whose are the fathers, from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever and ever. Amen.”