Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
He proclaims the Word incarnate, seen by himself, heard, and handled with his hands, that with Him and through Him we may have fellowship with God the Father. Then, in v. 5, he teaches that God is light, plainly devoid of darkness, and therefore Christians ought to walk in the light of the life of Christ. Thirdly, in v. 8, he teaches that no one is immune from sin, and therefore each one ought to confess himself a sinner: which if he do, the blood of Christ will cleanse him from all sin.
Vulgate Text: 1 John 1:1-10
1. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life: 2. For the life was manifested; and we have seen and do bear witness, and declare unto you the life eternal, which was with the Father, and hath appeared to us: 3. That which we have seen and have heard, we declare unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship may be with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. 4. And these things we write to you, that you may rejoice, and your joy may be full. 5. And this is the declaration which we have heard from Him, and declare unto you: That God is light, and in Him there is no darkness. 6. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth. 7. But if we walk in the light, as He also is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. 8. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all iniquity. 10. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.
Verse 1: That Which Was From the Beginning, Which We Have Heard, Which We Have Seen, Which We Have Looked Upon, and Our Hands Have Handled, of the Word of Life
1. THAT WHICH WAS FROM THE BEGINNING. — Join with what follows, "concerning the Word of life," that is, the Word of life itself, which was from the beginning, we announce to you; yet he says of the Word, not the Word, because the τὸ of the Word depends most closely on what immediately precedes: "our hands have handled," concerning which presently. So Lyranus, Hugo, Catharinus, Gagneius. Hence the Syriac translates, we evangelize to you that which was from the beginning. The beginning of the Epistle is an antistrophe to the Gospel of St. John: "In the beginning was the Word." And again: "Which we have seen with our eyes, and our hands have handled," is an antistrophe to the Gospel ch. I, v. 14: "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; and we have seen His glory, glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father." First, therefore, St. John here, as also in the Gospel, establishes the eternity and divinity of Christ, then His incarnation; which are the two principal mysteries, and as it were the two hinges and the two poles upon which the whole sum and circuit of the Christian faith turns.
Note: For fuit (was), in Greek it is ἦν, that is, erat (was); whence at the beginning of the Gospel the Interpreter so renders: "In the beginning was (Greek ἦν) the Word"; for the word erat "leads us to eternity," says St. Basil in the same place; "that we might understand the Word coeternal with the Father to have preceded all times," says Bede. For whatever time you may assign, or imagine by anticipation, it is always true to say: Even then the Word was. For in the beginning of the world the Word was; a thousand years before the world the Word was; a thousand millions of years before the world the Word was; and however many years by anticipation you go back, I shall always truly say: Even then the Word was, because the Word preceded all imaginable years, and was from eternity.
Furthermore, ἦν erat does not signify that the Word preceded that beginning of which it is said: "In the beginning was the Word," so that by "beginning" must be understood the beginning of time and the world, before which the Word existed, but rather that in the beginning of duration, or of eternity (for thus we imagine the first beginnings of eternity in our mind, although on the side of the thing itself it had no first beginnings, no beginning) — than which the Word was not prior or anterior, except by reason only, that is, that already long ago from all eternity the Word was. Where note that it is rather said "the Word was" than "the Word existed," because "existed" signifies that the thing has passed by, while "was" still signifies being, or perennial being. So St. Chrysostom, Cyril, Theophylact, and others on ch. I of the Gospel of St. John. St. John placed τὸ "was" against the future Arians, whose voice was this: "There was when He was not," that is, there was a time when the Word was not, because before He was born He was not: for they denied the Word to be eternal. Hence the Council of Nicaea condemns this voice of theirs, just as does St. John at the beginning of the Gospel, where accordingly he four times repeats τὸ "was, was, was, was," as if to say: Whatever time you may think of, the Word was already in it; whatever age, the Word was already; whatever you anticipate, the Word was already: so St. Basil, bk. II Against Eunomius: "However far," he says, "you wish by inquiry of mind to run back, yet you cannot pass beyond that which was, and be borne by your thoughts beyond it."
Secondly, "was" signifies the eternal generation of the Word. For "in the beginning was the Word" is the same as "from eternity the Word has been begotten": for this generation is included in the notion of the divine Word, as I shall presently say.
Thirdly, Elias of Crete on Nazianzen's 4th Theological Oration notes that the substantive verb "I am, is, was" is proper to God. For God is the fullness and immensity of substance or being, as it were an immense sea of essence and an ocean of being: and hence in Hebrew He is called Jehovah, that is, He who is, in Greek ὁ ὤν, Exodus ch. III, v. 14, and ch. VI, v. 3; whence Didymus here, and Cyril, bk. I on John, ch. 1, and Ambrose, bk. I On the Faith, ch. v, shrewdly observe that of individual creatures it is said only that they are something, but of God alone it is said absolutely that He is.
Fourthly, τὸ "was" signifies that the Word so existed that it nevertheless still remains and perseveres; for this perseverance is signified by the imperfect tense, as St. Thomas teaches on ch. I of St. John, and even Pliny, Preface to the Natural History. "Was," therefore, is the same as "was, is, and will be," as if to say: The Word always was, always is, always will be, and is utterly eternal. Hear St. Basil, bk. On the Holy Spirit, ch. VI: "When John said: In the beginning was the Word, with two words he enclosed thought within prescribed limits. For this word, was, gives no exit to thought; just as this, beginning, gives no passage to the human mind's thought; for however much you run in thought to anteriorities, you do not exceed was; and however much you press on to see what may be beyond the Son, yet you cannot surpass the beginning." Although if we speak properly of God, His eternity cannot be circumscribed by any time; for, as St. Gregory Nazianzen says: "God both always was, and is, and will be; or, to speak more rightly, He always is: for 'was' and 'will be' are segments of this our time and of fluxile and perishable nature; but He always is, and in this manner He names Himself when He gave the oracle to Moses."
Approving this, St. Augustine says: "For with the gaze of mind I separate all mutability from eternity, and in eternity itself I discern no spaces of time, because the spaces of time consist in past and future motions; but nothing passes by in the eternal, and nothing is future, because what passes ceases to be, and what is future has not yet begun to be; but eternity simply is, neither was as if it were not, nor will be as if it were not yet." And so Plato: "Was," he says, "and will be, which are species of generated time, we do not rightly assign to eternal substance; for we say of it: It is, was, and will be; but to it in truth being alone properly belongs: but to have been and to be hereafter we ought to refer to generation proceeding in time. For those two are certain motions; but eternal substance, since it always perseveres the same and immovable, neither becomes older than itself nor younger, nor has been hitherto, nor will be hereafter, nor receives any of those things to which corporeal and movable things are subjected by the very condition of generation."
You will say: Why then does the Latin interpreter translate τὸ ἦν, that is, "was" (erat), in this passage as "was" (fuit)? I reply, because the preterite "fuit" is required by the other preterites which John subjoins, namely "which we have seen, which we have heard, which we have looked upon," that there may be a fitting connection of words of the same tense. Secondly, because by the force of "fuit" it more clearly signifies that the Word never began, as Ebion would have it, but was from eternity. Thirdly, "fuit" is often taken for "erat," and "erat" for "fuit"; whence St. Ambrose, bk. I On the Faith, ch. v, here as in the Gospel translates, "which was in the beginning." Finally, Scripture sometimes attributes to God and the Word the verb "is," sometimes "was" (erat), sometimes "was" (fuit), sometimes "will be," because the eternity of God embraces and encompasses all times. Hear St. Augustine, tract. 99 on John: "Although the nature of God, immutable and ineffable, does not admit of 'was' and 'will be,' but only of 'is' — for it truly is, because it cannot be changed — yet on account of the mutability of the times in which our mortality and mutability are engaged, we do not falsely say both 'was' and 'will be' and 'is';" was (fuit), because He has never been wanting; will be, because He shall never be wanting; is, because He always is.
FROM THE BEGINNING. — Ἀπ' ἀρχῆς. In the Gospel John says ἐν ἀρχῇ, that is, in the beginning. He alludes to Gen. ch. I, v. 1. For just as Moses, about to relate the genesis and first beginnings of the world, thus begins: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth"; so John, about to relate the genesis and as it were first beginnings of the Word, thus begins: "In the beginning was the Word," where you see the distinction between "created" and "was": for God created the world in the beginning of time, but begot the Son in the beginning of eternity; and this is signified by τὸ "was." Tertullian rightly asserts, Against Hermogenes, that the Gospel is the supplement of the Old Testament. For thus John supplies the beginning of Moses, while he anticipates his beginning of the creation of the world by the beginning of the Word, by which after many ages the world was created.
You will ask what "beginning" or "principle" here signifies? I reply, first, St. Cyril and Origen on the Gospel of St. John, ch. I, take "principium" as God the Father, as if to say: In the beginning, that is, in the Father and His eternal bosom, was the Word.
Secondly, more simply, St. Augustine and Bede in the same place, and Hilary, bk. II On the Trinity, take principium as the beginning of the world or of all time, even of that which we imagine to have coexisted with the eternity of God before the world: for before all this, the Word was not made, but already was from eternity, because He has never been made, according to that of Psalm CIX: "Before the morning star I begot Thee." And Prov. VIII, 25: "Before the hills I was brought forth. The earth had not yet been made, nor the rivers," etc. Hear St. Hilary: "What is this, In the beginning was? Times pass away, ages are crossed, eras are removed; place anything you will, in your opinion, as the beginning; you do not catch Him by time: for He was." And after some interpositions: "My fisherman (St. John) overcame every beginning: for He was that which He is, nor is He included by any time, so that He should have begun who rather was in the beginning than was being made."
Thirdly and most simply, St. Augustine, Chrysostom, Theophylact on ch. I of the Gospel of St. John, and others say: "In the beginning," that is, before all things, or from the beginning of all duration and eternity, from all eternity, long before all the angels, men, and all created things, the Word was. For John understands a true beginning, not an imaginary one, just as Moses in Gen. I, 1. Hence the Fathers everywhere prove the eternity of the Word against the Arians from τὸ "in the beginning." For John alludes to Prov. ch. VIII, v. 22: "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways, before He made anything from the beginning." Hence also Nonnus of Panopolis, who rendered the Gospel of St. John in heroic Greek verse, expounds τὸ "in the beginning," first, as without time; secondly, as coeval with the Father; thirdly, as equal to the Father in nature; fourthly, as incomprehensible; fifthly, as ineffable: for these four follow in succession and step by step from the first. The words of Nonnus are:
Ἄχρονος ἦν, ἀκίχητος, ἐν ἀρρήτῳ λόγος ἀρχῇ Ἰσοφυής, γενετῆρος ὁμήλικος, υἱός ἀμήτωρ,
that is: Without time was, incomprehensible, in an ineffable beginning, the Word, of equal nature, coeval with the Father, a Son without mother.
Therefore τὸ "in the beginning" is the same as "from eternity," and as Micah says, ch. V, v. 2: "His going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity." For eternity is the beginning without a beginning, and the beginning of every beginning. So St. Athanasius, oration Against the Arians; Clement; Hugo's Gloss; Dionysius; Catharinus, here; and St. Ambrose, bk. I On the Faith, ch. V: "John," he says, "in the epistle says: That which was in the beginning, 'was' is extended indefinitely; whatever you may have thought out, the Son was; that which was in the beginning, is not included by time, is not preceded by any beginning." St. Augustine, serm. 6 On Time: "He who was in the beginning," he says, "includes within Himself every beginning." And Nazianzen, in his Oration On the Faith: "Whatever beginning you may wish to assign, you will find it prejudged, because in the beginning He was." But more expressly St. Cyril, bk. I on John, ch. I: "In the beginning," he says, "if it indeed retains the definition of beginning, nothing is more ancient; for the beginning of a beginning can never be devised: for if something else is understood before the beginning, it will surely fall away and will not truly be a beginning. Moreover, if anything else can be found truly before the beginning, we shall have to proceed to infinity, always seeking another before another, and not stopping at any one single beginning."
Fourthly, τὸ "that which was from the beginning" could be expounded thus: which was the beginning. For the Word was the beginning or principle, both of the spiration of the Holy Spirit and of the creation of all things. For he alludes to Proverbs VIII, 22: "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways," where the Septuagint translates, "The Lord created," that is, made me, "the beginning of His ways unto His works." For the Word was the idea through which and according to which God produced all His works.
Furthermore, St. John by τὸ "in the beginning" establishes the eternity of the Son of God against Cerinthus and Ebion, who at the same time taught that Christ was a mere man, and therefore had received a beginning, when He was born of the Blessed Virgin in the manner of other men. Whence St. Jerome, in the book On Ecclesiastical Writers, on John, testifies that the Gospel was written by St. John against Ebion to establish the divinity of Christ. Paul of Samosata followed this error of Ebion around the year of Christ 196, and Photinus around the year of Christ 350, as Cassiodorus testifies in bk. III of the Tripartite, ch. V. The Arians felt the same in part: for although they conceded that the Word was before He was born in the flesh, yet they denied that He was begotten from eternity, but asserted that He was created in time and was the first creature of God.
Note: This single-membered sentence, "That which was from the beginning," implicitly embraces that triple-membered one in the Gospel of St. John, ch. I, v. 1, namely: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"; whence St. John here tacitly refers the reader to it. For that which was from the beginning, namely from eternity, must necessarily have been with God, and must itself be God: for nothing is eternal except God.
Finally, the first member of the sentence, namely, "In the beginning was the Word," properly and explicitly signifies the when of the Word, namely His eternity. The second, namely "the Word was with God," signifies the where of the Word, and His distinction from the Father. The third, namely "and the Word was God," clearly signifies the essence of the Word, and the identity of His essence with the Father. These three the Word conferred on us in His incarnation, in which He betrothed humanity as a bride to the eternal Word, that He might join and betroth the whole through the human race to the same, so that by this means we who are temporal might become eternal, we earthly might become heavenly, we men might become gods; that is, that our "when," our "where," our essence might be fixed in the divine and eternal Word.
Excellently St. Gregory Nazianzen, oration 38 On the Nativity of Christ: "The very Son of God," he says, "He more ancient than ages, the invisible, the incomprehensible, the incorporeal, that beginning from a beginning, that light from light, the fount of life and immortality, the expression of the archetype, the unmoved seal, the image like in all things, the boundary and reason of the Father — He, I say, betakes Himself to His own image, and bears flesh for the sake of flesh, and is joined with an intellectual soul on account of my soul, that He may purge like by like." And presently: "But God, having advanced with humanity, one out of two contraries to one another, namely flesh and spirit, of which one He deified, the other was deified. O new mixture! O wonderful tempering! He who is, becomes: He who is not created, is created: He who can be contained in no place is contained, through the intervention of an intellectual soul between His divinity and the grossness of flesh. He who enriches others is afflicted with poverty: for He undergoes the poverty of my flesh, that I may obtain the work of His divinity itself. He who is full is emptied: for a brief time He empties Himself of His own, that I may be made a partaker of His fullness. What riches of goodness are these? What mystery surrounds me? I received the divine image, and did not keep it: He becomes a partaker of my flesh, that He may bring both salvation to the image and immortality to the flesh."
WHICH WE HAVE HEARD, WHICH WE HAVE SEEN. — Lyranus refers this to the preaching and witness of Christ borne by John the Baptist. Didymus, Hugo, and others refer it to the oracles of the Prophets, by which they predicted that Christ would appear in the flesh and teach men the way of salvation, as in Baruch ch. III, v. 36, and to the apparitions of God in which He appeared to Adam, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and the Prophets in the Old Testament. For in these, although the whole Trinity appeared, yet specifically there appeared — that is, was represented in them — the Word or Son of God, that He might signify and as it were prelude that in His own time He would truly assume flesh and appear in it, as Clement of Rome teaches, bk. V Constitutions, ch. XXI; Justin Against Trypho; Origen, hom. 1 on ch. VI of Isaiah; Eusebius, I Hist., ch. II; Hippolytus, On the Consummation of the Age; Tertullian, bk. Against the Jews; St. Leo, epist. 13 to Pulcheria; St. Augustine, bk. Against Adimantus, ch. IX; Prudentius in Apotheosis against the Patripassians; St. Jerome on Isaiah VI. For although in all the apparitions of the Old Testament, and especially in that most noble one in which the Law was given by God to Moses and the Hebrews on Sinai, Exodus ch. XIX, properly the person of an angel appeared, not of God, as St. Paul teaches in Galat. ch. III, v. 19, and St. Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, ch. IV; St. Jerome on Galat. III; St. Augustine, bk. III On the Trinity XI; St. Gregory, XXIV Morals II — yet this angel represented God, and specifically the Word, or the Son of God the Father. To these apparitions, then, of God and the Word the authors just cited refer these words of St. John, but less fittingly: for thus the Patriarchs and Prophets heard and saw the Word, but typically and enigmatically, not however John and the Apostles, who clearly and personally saw and heard that very thing which St. John here intends to signify. The sense, then, is, as if to say: We Apostles and disciples of Christ saw the Word clothed in human flesh, and heard Him speaking and teaching with a human mouth, according to that which Paul consonantly says in Hebr. ch. I, v. 1: "In many parts and many ways God formerly spoke to the Fathers in the Prophets, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son." So Bede, Clement, Hugo, Dionysius. He alludes to that saying of God the Father concerning the Word: "This is My beloved Son, hear ye Him," Matth. XVII, 5.
Furthermore, St. John places hearing before sight, saying first: "Which we have heard," then "Which we have seen," both because hearing, says Aristotle, is the sense of discipline and faith: for "faith" is "by hearing," Rom. X, 17; and because his discourse increases gradually, and ascends from lesser and less certain things to greater and more certain things: for sight is more certain than hearing. "For one eyewitness is worth more than many ear-witnesses," says Plautus in the Truculentus: but more certain than either is touch; whence concerning it he subjoins: "And our hands have handled," as if to say: We not only heard the Word incarnate with our ears, and saw Him with our eyes, but also handled and touched Him with our very hands: therefore most firmly believe that He was truly incarnate, love and adore Him.
Excellently St. Augustine, serm. 52 On Various Subjects: "Man," he says, "was not to be followed, who could be seen: God was to be followed, who could not be seen. That therefore there might be exhibited to man one who could both be seen by man and whom man might follow, God was made man." The same in Psalm XXXIII: "Lest man should disdain to imitate a humble man, God was made humble, so that even thus the pride of the human race might not disdain to follow the footsteps of God." And St. Gregory, XXIX Morals, ch. I: "In His divine nativity Christ could not be known by the human race: therefore He came in humanity, that He might be seen; He willed to be seen, that He might be imitated." For this reason in our flesh and blood He willed to become for us a kinsman and brother. For, as St. Augustine says on Psal. XLVIII: "He who says to God, Our Father, says to Christ, Brother." Finally, Hugh of St. Victor in the book of Sentences embracing the causes of the Incarnation in few words: "God," he says, "was made man, first, that the Redeemer might be the same as the Creator; secondly, that of His own" man might be liberated; "thirdly, that God might be more familiarly loved by man, appearing in the likeness of man; fourthly, that both senses might be beatified in Him, and that the eye of the heart might be restored in His divinity, and the eye of the body in His humanity, so that whether one entered or went out, the nature created by Himself might find pasture in Him." This is what Paul, marvelling and conversing sweetly with Christ, says to Titus III: "The kindness appeared," in Greek φιλανθρωπία, that is, that singular love toward men, "of God our Saviour."
WHICH WE HAVE LOOKED UPON. — In Greek ἐθεασάμεθα, that is, "that which we have beheld with our eyes, which we have admired: for θεᾶσθαι is to inspect with admiration and astonishment," says Oecumenius; likewise to inspect and look upon curiously, exactly, sagaciously; finally to inspect publicly as in a theatre a wondrous and novel spectacle, but conspicuous to all: whence Vatablus translates, that which we have beheld as if displayed in this manner. So Paul says: "A spectacle," in Greek θέατρον, that is theatre, "we have been made to the world, and to angels, and to men," 1 Corinthians IV, 9. Whence the word perspeximus pertains not only to the eyes of the body, but also of the imagination and the mind: for by this alone did the Apostles look upon the divinity of Christ, gathering it from Christ's doctrine, holiness, miracles, etc. So Didymus. Note: since the Word is the most subtle Spirit, He cannot be seen in Himself with eyes, or discerned by eyes: whence He assumed flesh, so that through it He might be seen and heard. Therefore through the flesh He was seen and heard, just as a King is seen through purple, and the sun shines through a cloud, fire through heated iron, a burning candle through a lantern, the soul through the flesh, substance through its accidents, an angel through an assumed body: for the Word was covered and clothed by humanity as it were by purple, cloud, iron, lantern, flesh, etc.; for the union of the Word with humanity was similar to all these unions, but far more perfect than they: for all the unions just mentioned, except that of the soul with the flesh and body, are accidental or local, such as is the union of fire with iron: for the substance of the iron remains, but the fire insinuates itself into its pores, so that it is in the same place as the iron, and shines through it: but the union of the Word with humanity is substantial, such as is that of the soul with the body. Whence St. Athanasius in the Symbol: "As," he says, "the rational soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ;" but with this distinction, that the soul is united to the flesh essentially, so that with it it makes one essential composite, and one essence of man: but the Word is not united with the flesh essentially; for He does not inform the flesh as the soul does, nor does He constitute one essence with it, since in Christ the divine essence remains plainly distinct and separate from the human essence; but He is united to it hypostatically or personally: for in the same person of the Word humanity subsists as well as divinity. In a similar manner Christ is seen in the Eucharist, with His deity and humanity hidden under the species of bread and wine: for these are the species, not of bread (since that has now ceased), but of the body of Christ. Whence St. Chrysostom truly said of it, in Homily 60 to the People: "Behold, you see Him (Christ), you touch Him, you eat Him Himself."
AND OUR HANDS HAVE HANDLED. — Ἐψηλάφησαν, that is, they touched, as the blind do when handling, examining, and investigating a thing with their hand. For St. Thomas after the Resurrection touched the body of Christ and His scars, and from being unbelieving became faithful, John XX, 27. Again, the other Apostles on the Lord's Day of the Resurrection seem to have touched Christ, so that being doubtful of His Resurrection they might be made certain of it through the touching of His wounds, and so that they might devoutly venerate them, according to His command: "Handle," He says, "and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones," Luke XXIV, 39. So St. Leo, epistle 97; and St. Augustine, Sermons 147 and 160 De Tempore; St. Athanasius, oration Against the Arians; Bede here; Suarez, Part III, vol. II, disputation 49, section 4; Maldonatus on Chapter XXIV of St. Luke, verse 39; Canisius, Book IV De Beata Virgine, chapter II: although Euthymius judges that Thomas alone touched the wounds of Christ. Finally, at table and in daily conversation, and especially when the Apostles came from elsewhere or were departing, they embraced Christ and handled Him out of love, devotion, and reverence, especially when they recognized Him to be God. "For He was one," says Oecumenius, "undivided, the same visible and invisible, perceptible and imperceptible, tangible and intangible, speaking humanly and working miracles as God."
Finally, it is credible that St. John, peculiarly devoted to Christ, His familiar and friend, in a peculiar manner and affection — both, as Bede says, at the Supper, when he reclined upon Christ's breast, and at other times — handled Him. Whence Clement of Alexandria says here: "It is reported," he says, "in the traditions, that John, touching the very body which was outwardly there, sent his hand into the depths, and that the hardness of the flesh in no way resisted, but yielded a place to the hand of the disciple." Take this with a grain of salt; for Clement seems to say that the wounds of Christ were covered over with flesh and sinews, and therefore hard, but by a miracle yielded to the disciples, so that they seemed to themselves to be touching them as open. For it is certain that the very wounds, that is, the openings of the feet, hands, and side, remained and remain open in the body of Christ, as Saints Augustine, Ambrose, Cyril, Cyprian and others teach, whom Suarez cites and follows, Part III, vol. II, disputation XLVII, section 2.
Note: John insists upon and amplifies the incarnation of the Word and His appearance in the flesh in so many words, for three reasons. The first: that against Basilides, who in that age taught that Christ assumed an apparent and phantastical flesh, not a true one, and consequently was not truly crucified but only in image, he might teach that Christ assumed true and real flesh; and in it truly suffered, truly redeemed and sanctified us. So Epiphanius, Heresy 24.
The second, that he may fully confirm the faithful in the faith of the Incarnation, and persuade the unfaithful of its faith, drawing his argument from the three senses which are accounted the most reliable and the most perspicacious: for such are sight, hearing and touch. He therefore asserts that he with the Apostles saw, heard, attentively beheld and handled the Incarnate Word. Thus Peter proves that Christ rose again by the eye-witness testimony of himself and the Apostles, saying: "Him God raised up on the third day, and gave Him to be manifest, not to all the people, but to witnesses preordained by God, even to us who did eat and drink with Him," Acts X, 40. For, as Tertullian says, in the book De Anima, chapter XVII, "the testimony would surely be false, if the senses of the eyes, ears and hands lie by their nature."
The third, that he may show the condescension of the Word and the dignity of the Apostles. For the Word deigned to descend from heaven to earth, and to associate and bind Himself to clay, that is, to our flesh formed from clay, and to bind God to man in the closest bond of one and the same hypostasis and person, so that all the attributes of God are attributes of man, and vice versa, and so through the attributes of the man He showed His deity and its attributes to the Apostles.
For this cause the Word was made flesh, that the intangible might become tangible, says Nazianzen, oration 38, and thereby knowable. For we cannot form for ourselves in the mind an image of God, since He is a spirit: therefore, that we might conceive, invoke, indeed see, address and touch Him, He was made man. Whence St. Paulinus, in his epistle to Florentinus: "This," he says, "our Lord and God who was seen on earth and conversed among men for us, is sheep and shepherd in us, because He shall rule us within with an invisible staff and saving rod, so that even if we walk in the shadow of death, we shall not fear evils, for God is with us, that Emmanuel, Lord of majesty and son of a handmaid, of which He is one by nature, the other by being made. The same creator of man and redeemer, God of God, man for man; Son of God before the ages, son of man for the age; the form of a servant for the freedom of servants, and made poor, that He might enrich the poor by His destitution; because He Himself is rich in all good things to all, who fills all in all, the fullness of divinity, the hope of all the ends of the earth, and of those that are afar off in the sea, our saving God, mediator of men and of God, the man Christ Jesus, who is in the glory of God the Father above all, God blessed for ever."
Furthermore, that by some reasoning we may conceive and weigh the immensity of the benefit of the Incarnation of the Word, St. John suggests and proposes four of its circumstances to be considered, namely: who, what, to whom, why.
First, who is He who put on our flesh, indeed assumed it? It is the Word, who was from the beginning; it is the eternal Word, He is omnipotent God, creator of heaven and earth, Lord of all things, King of kings and Lord of lords. Behold the eternal Word, through whom all things were made, becomes flesh, becomes man. "And His name shall be called," says Isaiah, "Emmanuel," and this was represented by the marriage of Adam with Eve, of which it was said in Genesis II, 24: "And they shall be two in one flesh." Therefore by the humanity He betrothed to Himself us and our nature, so that He might be a mother to us, He who before had been a father, and thus that we might confidently approach Him. Children who fear the severity of their father are wont to go to the mother, and through her to obtain what they want from the father: for the love of a mother for her son is more tender than that of a father. Thus the faithful and the Churches through the humanity of Christ invoke God, and obtain all things from Him: hence the Church concludes all collects and orations by saying: "Through Christ our Lord." Besides, the humanity of Christ is as it were a mother, because just as a mother carries her infant in the womb with great and continuous pain, forms, brings forth, suckles, swaddles, bears, raises, and forms into a man: so also Christ as a mother for thirty-four years with great and continuous labors and pains, especially on the cross and in death, conceived us, brought us forth, nourished us, fed us, formed us.
Thirdly, because the Incarnation of the Son of God was a work both of supreme mind and wisdom, and of supreme goodness, which is attributed to the Holy Spirit, just as the former is attributed to the Word; but wisdom, or idea, and goodness stand as it were as a mother in respect of omnipotence, which is as it were father; for God the Father by His Word as it were by an idea, mind and matrix conceived, formed and brought forth all things. The same by His goodness as by a mother poured out the bowels of mercy upon us, especially through the Incarnation, of which Zechariah in Luke I, 78: "Through the bowels of the mercy of our God, in which the dayspring from on high hath visited us." Hence God as a mother through Isaiah, chapter XLIX, verse 15, calls men as sons gently to Himself and entices them, saying: "Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? And if she should forget, yet I will not forget thee." Hence also Christ coming in the flesh willed to be born of a mother only without a father, so that, like Melchizedek, He might be apator (without father), just as in heaven He is ametor (without mother), as if He were about to assume motherhood from a mother and to be a mother to us. Whence the Psalmist says of Him: "Taste and see that the Lord is sweet;" and: "His mercies are over all His works." Wherefore the Gentiles fittingly, says Clement in Stromateis Book V, called God metropatora, as it were father-mother, or, as St. Augustine expounds in De Civitate VII, chapter IX, called Him at once progenitor and progenitrix.
This God therefore, who formerly in His deity was only Father, through the humanity assumed became as it were a mother to men, and therefore patrimetor, that is father-mother, not only on account of the four modes and causes which I have recounted on Acts XVII, 24 and 29, but also because God as a Bridegroom most closely coupled to Himself in perpetual marriage, assumed and put on the humanity our mother, as a bride, that is, God with us, "admirable, counsellor, God, strong, prince of peace, father of the world to come, angel of great counsel;" which I have expounded individually on Isaiah IX, 6. This is what the Church sings in the Preface of the Nativity of Christ: "By the mystery of the Incarnate Word a new light of Thy brightness has shone forth on the eyes of our mind, so that while we know God visibly, through Him we may be carried away to the love of invisible things." Furthermore, the divine nature was not changed by the Incarnation, nor did it suffer, but it remained like itself, inviolate and impassible.
St. Leo magnificently in Sermon 10 De Nativitate: "The same," he says, "is in the form of God, who took on the form of a servant. The same remains incorporeal, and assumes a body. The same is inviolable in His own power, and passible in our infirmity. The same is not divided from the paternal throne, and was crucified by the impious upon the wood." Wherefore St. Cyril, in chapter I of the Gospel of St. John, compares the made-man Word to a coal, or to ignited iron. For as fire does not consume ignited iron, but the substance of each remains whole and intact: so neither did the deity change humanity, nor humanity the deity, but each remains whole and intact. This was signified by the fire in the bush which Moses saw, Exodus III, 2: for the fire in the bush is the Word in the flesh; but as the fire did not burn up the bush, so the Word did not injure humanity. See Theodoret in his three Dialogues, first, Immutable; second, Unconfused; third, Impassible, where against Eutyches he beautifully explains from the Fathers how the Word, remaining immutable, unconfused and impassible, was made flesh. Wherefore Damascene, oration 1 De Nativitate: "So great, O Lord," he says, "was Thy love for me, that Thou didst not undertake the business of my salvation through angels, or through any other creature, but Thou didst judge that, as the first fashioning, so also the very restoration was to be accomplished by Thyself." And St. Augustine, sermon 59 De Verbis Domini: "To heal a great sick man," he says, "the omnipotent physician descended, He humbled Himself even to mortal flesh, as it were even to the bed of the sick man."
Secondly, what does God become in the Incarnation? He becomes flesh, that is, man. "The flesh," says St. Augustine, tract 2 on John, "had blinded thee; the flesh heals thee. For the soul had been made carnal by consenting to carnal affections, hence the eye of the heart had been blinded: the Word was made flesh. The Physician made an eye-salve for thee, so that from the flesh He might extinguish the vices of the flesh." For the flesh of man is, beyond all other animals, miserable, infirm, foul, subject to a thousand troubles and diseases, and most corrupt through concupiscence; this the Word assumed; that majesty so inclined Himself, that passing by the Seraphim, Cherubim and the other orders of angels, He descended into this lowest valley of miseries and flesh, and bound it to Himself by the closest bond of hypostatic union. Consider, if a sheep were being led to slaughter, and some man loving and pitying her (as St. Francis used to redeem them with money for love of Christ, who is represented by the Lamb of God) were willing to die for her, indeed to be changed into a sheep, in order to redeem that sheep, would not his love for the sheep be called insane and ecstatic? Far greater was Christ's love for us, when from God He was made man; for God exceeds man infinitely more than man exceeds a sheep. This therefore is "the great Sacrament of piety (and of divine condescension and philanthropy), which has been manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, has appeared to angels, has been preached to the Gentiles, is believed in the world, has been taken up in glory," 1 Timothy chapter III, verse 16. We ought to wonder and be astonished at this with the Seraphim, and when we see the little one in the manger, to say with astonishment: Is then this little one my God, the King of heaven, creator of the Universe? God, says St. Thomas in opusculum 60, communicates Himself, first, to all creatures by presence; secondly and more, to the just by grace; thirdly and most of all, to our flesh by substance, first, naturally; secondly, supernaturally; thirdly, personally, says Cajetan. Furthermore, the Word through His humanity raised to Himself all men, and through them the whole universe (for the bond and chain of this is man, hence called microcosm), and united them to Himself, that He might be God all in all, says Damascene, oration De Transfiguratione; and Cajetan in Part III, Question I, article 1: "The Incarnation," he says, "is the elevation of the whole Universe into a divine person;" indeed, St. Dionysius, in the book De Divinis Nominibus, chapter IV: "What greater communication of God with a creature," he says, "can be thought of than that by which the Word was made flesh?" Again, the Word joined Himself to man, that is, the first to the last: for in creation man was created last by God; and thus God as it were in a circle returned to the point whence He had begun, when, by the Word, He created all things, by the Incarnation, joining man to the Word. So Clichtove on Damascene Book III De Fide, chapter I.
Thirdly, to whom was the Word made flesh? To sinful and most vile man, like a little worm. "For a little child is born to us, and a Son is given to us." Christ therefore did not assume man for His own sake, as if He needed or took delight in that humanity which He assumed, but for our sake. Therefore we are the ultimate end of the Incarnation. For He was born in the flesh bodily, that He might be born spiritually in our soul. Hence the Church chants in the Symbol of the Council of Nicaea: "Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven." St. Anselm, in Book II Cur Deus Homo, chapter XX: "What," he says, "can be understood more merciful than that to a sinner condemned to eternal torments, and having nothing wherewith to redeem himself, God the Father says: Take My Only-Begotten, and give Him for thyself; the Son Himself: Take Me, and redeem thyself?" Celebrated is Codrus, the leader of the Athenians, who, when war had broken out with the Spartans, when the oracle had answered that those would conquer whose leader had perished, having put off his ducal robe, put on the cheap garment of a soldier, and so approaching the camp of the enemies, by a quarrel there provoked them to his slaughter, and dying by his death he won victory, life and liberty for his own people. But what is Codrus compared to Christ? What is man to God, who putting on flesh by His death freed us from eternal death and hell, and made us heirs of the heavenly kingdom and eternal glory?
Fourthly, why was the Word made man? That He might free man from hell, death, sin, and every misery of body and soul. For the Word acquired nothing for Himself except emptying, reproaches, poverty, pains, death and the Cross, in order that through them He might do good to us. "Christ was born in the flesh, that we might be born in the spirit," says St. Gregory Nazianzen: "He was born in time, that thou mightest be born in eternity. He was born in a stable, that thou mightest be born in heaven." Hear St. Augustine, sermon 9 De Nativitate: "Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the eternal creator of all things, today being born of a mother, has been made for us a Savior. He has been born for us today in the rolling of time, that He may bring us to the eternity of the Father. God has been made man, that man might become God: that man might eat the bread of angels, the Lord of angels today has been made man." And Nazianzen in his Distichs: "The Word of the Father is our man, so that by such a mingling He may mingle God with men. He is one God on either side, hitherto made man, that He may make me, from a mortal, into God."
Wherefore Clement of Alexandria, in his Exhortation to the Gentiles, says that Christ by His Incarnation changed earth into heaven, and made of men angels, indeed gods; and therefore that He Himself is the beautiful charioteer who drives the chariot or two-horse team of the faithful, namely of the Jews and Gentiles, into heaven, and directs them to blessed immortality. This is what St. John says in his Gospel I, 12: "He gave them power to become sons of God, to those that believe in His name, etc. And the Word was made flesh," as if to say: For this reason the Word was made flesh, that He might make men sons of God. Hear Origen, homily 2 In Diversos, treating of these words: "If the Son of God was made man, what wonder if man believing in the Son of God should become a son of God? For this indeed the Word descended into flesh, that flesh, that is man, believing in the Word might ascend in Him, so that through the natural only-begotten Son many sons might be made adoptive; not for His own sake was the Word made flesh, but for our sake, who could not otherwise have been transmuted into sons of God except through the flesh of the Word. He descended alone, that He might ascend with many. He makes of men gods, who made of God a man. And He dwelt among us, that is, He possessed our nature, that He might make us partakers of His nature." St. Leo, sermon 6 De Nativitate: "Therefore," he says, "Christ was made the Son of Man, that we might be able to be sons of God." See St. Anselm, book Cur Deus Homo.
See therefore the immensity of this benefit: here God did not rain manna from heaven, but as it were rending open the whole heaven, He poured out upon the earth all the treasures of His deity and the bowels of His mercy, indeed His whole self, however great He is, with all His gifts and graces. This is what Isaiah desired, chapter XLV, verse 8: "Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just; let the earth open and bud forth a Savior." Hear St. Augustine, sermon 27, or by another reckoning 23 De Tempore: "My mouth," he says, "shall speak the praise of the Lord. Of that Lord by whom all things were made, and who was made among all things. Who is the revealer of the Father, the creator of His mother. Son of God of the Father without a mother, son of man of a mother without a father. Great in the day of angels, small in the day of men; the Word of God before all times, the Word made flesh in due time. Founder of the sun, founded under the sun. Ordering all ages from the bosom of the Father, consecrating today's day from the womb of the mother. Remaining there, proceeding hence. Maker of heaven and earth, springing forth on earth under heaven. Ineffably wise, wisely an infant. Filling the world, lying in the manger; ruling the stars, sucking the breast. So great in the form of God, so small in the form of a servant, that neither was that greatness diminished by this smallness, nor was this smallness oppressed by that greatness. For not when He took on human members did He desert divine works; nor did He cease to reach mightily from end to end, and to dispose all things sweetly, when, clothed with the infirmity of the flesh, He was received into the virginal womb, not enclosed; nor was the food of wisdom withdrawn from the angels, while we tasted how sweet the Lord is."
Hear also St. Gregory Nazianzen rejoicing in oration 38: "Christ is born: glorify Him; Christ from the heavens: go forth to meet Him. Christ on earth: be lifted up; sing to the Lord, all the earth. And to bring these two into one, let the heavens rejoice and let the earth exult, on account of the heavenly One, and afterwards the earthly. Christ in the flesh: exult with trembling and joy: with trembling because of sin, with joy because of hope. Christ from a Virgin: women, cultivate virginity, that you may be mothers of Christ. Who does not adore Him who is from the beginning? Who does not praise and celebrate Him who is the last?" And soon after: "All peoples, clap your hands, for a little child is born to us, a son, and is given to us, whose government is upon His shoulder (for He is exalted with the Cross), and His name is called the angel of great counsel, that is, of the Father. Let John cry out: Prepare the way of the Lord; I too shall cry out the force and power of this day. He who is without flesh is incarnated; the Word becomes thick; the invisible is seen; the intangible is touched; He who is free from time takes a beginning; the Son of God becomes the son of man, Jesus Christ yesterday and today, the same forever." And St. Bernard, sermon 1 De Epiphania: "What more declares His mercy than that He took on misery itself? What is so full of piety as that the Word of God, for us, was made hay? For the more He made Himself lesser in humanity, the greater He showed Himself in goodness; and the lower for me, the dearer to me." The same in sermon 46 on the Canticle: "O the sweetness, O the grace, O the power of love! The highest of all became the lowest of all. Who did this? Love that knows no rank, rich in condescension, powerful in affection, effective in persuasion. What is more violent? Love triumphs over God, that you may know it was love's doing; that fullness was emptied out, that loftiness was leveled, that singularity was associated."
Wherefore, that we may receive this immense manna raining down from heaven, let us open wide our whole heart, let us enlarge its bosom by an immense desire for Him, that we may grasp and taste all His abundance, grace and sweetness. Let us imitate the Fathers in limbo, who for three and four thousand years sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, most avidly and with most thirsting souls desired Him, crying out: "Oh that Thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down!" Isaiah lxiv, 1. Let us imitate the Blessed Virgin, who, having conceived the Word, sighed for His birth, wholly torn from the world and wholly united to Christ and transformed into Him, so that the Deity hidden in her womb might shine forth through the body of the Virgin in all her members and movements; and therefore Christ commanded that this His nativity be solemnly recalled and celebrated each year, that He may bestow upon us what He once bestowed upon the Shepherds, the Magi, Anna, Simeon, Joseph, when He was really born; for since we could not be present then, He becomes present to us each year through commemoration, that He may impart the same graces. Let each one therefore set forth his necessities to the new-born Christ, the infirmities of the flesh, and especially the vice and temptation that most besets him, and let him say confidently with St. Catherine of Siena: "Lord, I have Thee present, Thou art mine, I will not let Thee go until Thou hast taken away this temptation, hast given this virtue or grace, until Thou hast possessed my whole heart and imbued it with Thy love." For the Word was made flesh for this reason, that He might cure the toils and infirmities of the flesh by the power of the Word, just as He cured all in that flesh which He assumed. He must be entreated to do the same in our flesh, that dwelling in it He may heal it, sanctify it, and as it were transmute it into spirit; that with a new birth He may give a new life, so that we may live angelically, with the heavenly Angel. So St. Jerome with St. Paula withdrew to Bethlehem, that there they might continually behold with the eyes of the mind Christ being born. So St. Francis at the foot of Mount Greccio solemnly celebrated Christ's nativity with an ox and an ass, and preaching he said nothing else than: "Let us love our little one, the little one from Bethlehem." So also St. Bernard surpasses himself in this mystery, and is wholly mellifluous and divine. Christ gives Himself wholly to you; do you give yourself wholly to Christ. Christ has been born for you, the Word has been incarnated for you, God has been made man for you: do you in turn be born to Christ, engraft yourself upon the Word, expend yourself upon God — nay, deliver and surrender yourself.
Finally, St. Bernard exclaims — or whoever is the author of the sermon on the Wedding at Cana, which is found toward the end of his works, p. 391: "O stupendous mercy of God! The Word put on flesh, God put on ashes, the potter put on clay, life put on a corpse, that beasts of burden might eat the bread of angels. Men were beasts of burden." And further on: "For this reason the heavenly food changed itself into the fodder of cattle, since man had been changed into cattle; for the bread of angels was made hay; the only-begotten of the Father, the son of man: for all flesh is grass, Isaiah xl. The angels therefore eat the Word born of God; men eat the Word made hay. By their bread the angels live in heaven, and are blessed; by their hay men live on earth, and are holy. For that hay, gathered from the meadow of the virginal womb, became the refection of beasts of burden; the Word, that He might become hay, lay hidden in the Virgin — the sun in a star, the craftsman in His work."
AND OUR HANDS HAVE HANDLED OF THE WORD. — That is, the Word Himself whom we have handled, just as we have seen and heard. It is a Hebraism; yet he says "of the Word," not the Word, because the Apostles did not handle the Word Himself in His essence — being divine and spiritual — but His garment, namely His humanity. Therefore they handled not the Word, but something "of the Word," that is, the flesh adjacent to the Word as a garment. Again, "what we have handled," that is, what by handling we found out and ascertained, "of the Word" (it is a metalepsis), namely that the Word truly assumed human flesh, and not a phantasm or empty spectre of flesh. How blessed the Apostles, who deserved to see, hear and touch the Incarnate Word! "Blessed are the eyes that see the things which you see. For I say to you that many Prophets and kings have desired to see the things that you see, and have not seen them; and to hear the things that you hear, and have not heard them," said Christ, Luke x, 23.
Furthermore, Didymus refers all this to the mystery of Christ's resurrection, as if to say: We saw, we heard, we handled Christ after He had risen. Believe therefore that He has risen — for this mystery of the resurrection was new and paradoxical to the world; and therefore SS. Peter and Paul assiduously confirm and inculcate that very thing in the Acts of the Apostles and in their Epistles. The Gloss restricts it to the Transfiguration of Christ: for then John saw the glory of Christ and heard the voice of the Father: "This is My Son." But others better refer it to the whole economy of the Incarnate Word.
OF THE WORD OF LIFE. — The Syriac: Word of life. So Joel says: "I will pour out of My spirit," that is, My spirit, Acts ii, 17. "There shall be given to him of the gold (that is, gold) of Arabia, and they shall adore of him (that is, him)," Psalm lxxi, 15; in Greek περὶ τοῦ λόγου, that is, concerning that Word, namely the surpassing, uncreated, eternal and divine Word — that is, the Son of God, as even the Arians themselves were forced to confess from the fact that this Word is called by the Gospel, ch. 1, just after verse 14, the Only-begotten of God, and is everywhere else called by Scripture the Son of God; for although St. Basil thinks that the Holy Spirit too can be called Word, yet that would be said improperly, says St. Thomas. By Word, understand not the word of the mouth but of the mind. So St. Augustine, Chrysostom and others on chapter I of the Gospel of St. John.
You will ask, first, why does St. John not call the Son of God Son, but Word? I answer first, because at the beginning of his Gospel and Epistle he alludes to the beginning of Moses, where God by His word created the heaven, the earth, and all things that are contained in them. Genesis I, 2.
Secondly, because, as St. Chrysostom teaches on the Gospel of St. John I, this Word who is in the bosom of the Father has all wisdom, and clothed in flesh has narrated the same to us: and St. John has resolved to narrate that wisdom both in his Gospel and in this Epistle. Hence St. John dwells more on setting forth the words and doctrine of Christ, while the other three Evangelists dwell more on the things and deeds of Christ. He calls Christ, therefore, the Word, because he intends to recount to us the words of this Word.
Thirdly, lest, if he had said Son, anyone should imagine Him to be corporeal and passible; for such are the sons we know on earth. So St. Cyril on chapter 1 of the Gospel of St. John. The word Word therefore signifies that the generation of the Son is not human, but spiritual, mental and divine, and therefore pure, whole and incorruptible — namely, that He is begotten from the divine mind as the word of the mind.
Fourthly, because Word in the divine matters signifies son. For Word signifies the mental conception of God the Father, which is the very generation of the Son, who as Word represents and manifests the wisdom and will of the Father. And this is the reason why the Son was incarnated, not the Father or the Holy Spirit: namely, because the Incarnation took place precisely so that through it God might manifest Himself to men — and it belongs to a Word to make a thing manifest. Again, as the Word was begotten by the Father in spirit, so it was fitting that the same be brought forth by a mother in flesh. St. John therefore leads us as it were by the hand to the Word, and through Him to God, that he may teach us to dwell continually with Him, to converse with Him, and to be enraptured by Him. For in John and the like, that saying of Seneca, epistle xli, is true: "Just as the rays of the sun touch the earth indeed, but are there whence they are sent: so a mind great and keen, sent down for the very purpose that we might know divine things more closely, dwells indeed with us, but cleaves to its origin. From thence it hangs, thither it looks and strives;" and, as St. Ambrose says, "it weds the eternal Word;" for, as St. Augustine says in sermon 38 On the Words of the Gospel according to John: "Man becomes blessed by touching that which always remains blessed, and that is perpetual blessedness itself; and whence man becomes alive, is perpetual life; whence man becomes wise, is perfect wisdom; whence man becomes enlightened, is everlasting light."
You will ask, secondly, why is the Son called λόγος, or Word? I answer first, λόγος can be translated reason, because just as reason is most inward to us, so too the Son is most inward to the Father. So Nazianzen, oration 4 On Theology. Secondly, just as reason or knowledge proceeds from the mind, so the Word or the Son proceeds from the Father. So Origen, St. Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euthymius, on chapter 1 of the Gospel of St. John; Nazianzen, oration 4 On Theology; St. Basil on the verse: "In the beginning was the Word." Thirdly, because He removes from us all that is repugnant to reason, and thus makes us obedient to reason, says Origen, book I on John 1; and there too Rupert: "The Word," he says, "is the perpetual reason of God, the everlasting wisdom, etc. Why should not the eternal reason itself, from which rationality is in us, be called Word?" and Eusebius, V Demonstr., v: "The Word," he says, "bears within Himself the reasons of all things that have been made; wherefore He is called both the Wisdom and the Word of God." But reason does not so express procession from the Father as word does, as St. Augustine notes, Question LXIII among the 83. Add that the name of reason is essential, not notional and personal, and is therefore common to the Holy Trinity. Hear St. Dionysius, On the Divine Names, ch. vii: "God," he says, "is called reason in the Holy Scriptures, not only because He is the bestower of the sense of reason and of wisdom, but also because He has uniformly comprehended in Himself beforehand the causes of all things, and because through all things He goes, penetrating to the end of all," Wisdom viii; and above these things also, because beyond all simplicity is the divine reason expanded, and it is by all, above all, absolute by the reason of the supreme substance. Finally, reason can be in one who does not actually understand, as in one asleep; but a word is of him who actually understands, such as God is.
Secondly, λόγος can be translated work; for the Word of the Father is His work, commensurate, coeval and equal to Him, according to that of Wisdom vii, 25: "He is the vapor of the power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the brightness of the Almighty God."
Thirdly, λόγος can be translated power; for the Word is the power, might, arm and right hand of the Father, by which He created and made all things: for the Word, as God, is the power of creating; as man, is the power of redeeming and saving all, according to that saying of Paul, 1 Cor. 1, 23: "But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews indeed a stumbling-block, and to the Gentiles foolishness; but to them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God;" and: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the spirit of His mouth all their power," Psalm xxxii, verse 6; and: "Bearing all things by the word of His power," Hebrews 1, 3.
Fourthly, λόγος can be translated form; for the Word is the form of the Father, His beauty, the brightness of the eternal light, the unspotted mirror of the majesty of God, and the image of His goodness, Wisdom vii, 26 — the splendor (in Greek ἀπαύγασμα, that is, refulgence, resplendence) of glory and the figure of His substance, Hebrews 1, 3. To these add that by the great Dionysius the Areopagite the two divine persons, the Son and the Holy Spirit, are said to have been brought forth as it were certain infinite germinations, as it were certain most fragrant flowers, as it were certain most splendid lights; for in this is called the word of the mind: so the eternal Father, by understanding and comprehending His essence, and all the things that are in it, formed and produced this eternal Word, equal and most similar to Himself, whereby it comes about that this Word is God, and the Son of God begotten of the Father. I said, "all things that are in it," because in the essence of the Father is the power of breathing forth the Holy Spirit, and the omnipotence of producing all possible creatures; wherefore from the cognition of the Holy Spirit and of possible creatures together with the divine essence the Word is produced and proceeds, as Francisco Suarez teaches, book IX On the Triune and One God, chapter IV, V, and VI, and others.
Note here: The Word of God is twofold: one essential, which is the very intellection of the Father, which together with His essence, intellect, and will He communicates to the Son and the Holy Spirit. And this Trismegistus, Plato, and the Philosophers (about whom presently) seem to have understood. Likewise the Arians placed the internal essential Word, that is the intellection of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in the one God as coeternal with Himself; but they added that God began to be Father in time, when He produced a notional Word distinct from Himself, as it were the first creature, and through it the others. The other Word is notional, or personal, which is the Word produced by the Father and begotten of Him, and therefore is itself a subsisting person, namely the Son of God the Father. Of the notional Word St. John speaks both here and in the Gospel. Truly St. Cyril, book VII of the Thesaurus, chapter 1: "The name of Word," he says, "He chose (St. John), because it is most proper and significative of divinity, and of the proper procession of the second person." Whence, in Apocalypse xix, it is said: "And His name was the Word of God." But St. Augustine, book XV On the Trinity, chapter XIV, distinguishing the essential Word from the notional, says thus: "The Father knows all things in Himself, knows them in the Son, but in Himself as Himself," namely essentially; "in the Son as His Word," namely notionally.
Note that λόγος is the same as word, speech, oration. Whence Tertullian, St. Cyprian, St. Ambrose, Jerome, and other ancients often call the Son sermo (speech). Erasmus renewed the same in this age; whence instead of "In the beginning was the Word," he translated, "In the beginning was the Speech," for which innovation he was beaten by the Theologians. Calvin followed and defended Erasmus in chapter 1 of the Gospel of St. John. "I wonder," he says, "what moved the Latins to translate τὸν λόγον as Verbum. For thus rather should τὸ ῥῆμα have been translated. But granting that they followed something probable, yet it cannot be denied that Sermo would suit better; whence it appears what a barbarous tyranny those petty theologians exercised, who so turbulently harassed Erasmus for changing one word for the better." You err, Innovator, when you follow one who errs and innovates.
For that in this passage word suits better than speech is clear first from this, that Word is simpler than speech; for speech is something composed of words: but most simple is the Son of God. Second, because word is more general than speech; for every speech is a word, but not every word is a speech. Third, because the concept of the mind is always called the word of the mind, never the speech. But the Son is the concept of the divine paternal mind. Fourth, as the mind begets the word of the mind, and this becomes vocal when it is brought down into the mouth and fleshly tongue, and is born as it were from the mouth: so the Father begot the mental Word, which became vocal through the incarnation, when, putting on flesh, the mouth and voice of man, He through it spoke and announced to us the will of the Father. And to this Scripture sometimes alludes when it calls Christ, as He is man, the Word, because as man He was the legate, messenger, and interpreter of the will of God among men, as is clear from 1 John v, 7; Apocalypse xix, 13. So St. Chrysostom and Theophylact on chapter 1 of the Gospel of St. John, and St. Epiphanius, heresy 71: "The Son," he says, "is named Word, because He is the interpreter of the wills of God;" and St. Augustine, book On Faith and the Creed, chapter III: "The Word," he says, "is called of the Father, because through Him the Father is made known. As therefore by our words we bring it about that our mind becomes known to the hearer, so that Wisdom which the Father begot, since through it the most secret mind of the Father becomes known, is most fittingly called His Word." But St. John, both here and in the Gospel, calls Christ the Word by reason of His divinity, not His humanity. Fifth, although some in St. Augustine, book On the Principles of Dialectic, chapter VI, derive verbum from verberando (to strike), because every word is uttered when the air within the palate is struck by the tongue, yet St. Augustine himself in book XV On the Trinity, chapter XI, following Varro, Servius, and others, derives verbum from verum and veritas (true and truth), because we conceive and speak the true by the word. The word therefore, as also the true, is most intimate to the mind; but speech rather suggests something thrown outside, and is said from sero (to sow): for speech is sown among many and is often false. For, as Servius says: "Speech is the joining of an oration, and the conversation of two or more." Better therefore is the Son of God called Word than speech.
Fifth, λόγος can be translated as definition, because as it were the definition of all things it expresses the nature of the Father and all things definitely and fully. Whence St. Gregory Nazianzen, oration 4 On Theology: "In the same way," he says, "the Son stands to the Father as a definition to the thing defined; for this too is called λόγος. For he who sees the Son, sees also the Father," John chapter xiv; and a brief and easy declaration of the paternal nature is the Son; so also Euthymius on chapter I of the Gospel of St. John. Again, λόγος can be translated as reckoning, calculation, computation. For the Word is the reckoning and computation of all the angels, the Saints, indeed of the creatures of the whole universe.
Sixth, λόγος can be translated as cause, because the Word is the cause through which individual things have been made and subsist. So St. Jerome, epistle to Paulinus. Philostratus in the Heroica: "To the Trojans," he says, "Hector was the hand, Aeneas the mind;" but the Word was to creatures both hand and mind; both efficient cause and conceiving idea.
Seventh, some translate λόγος as the promised speech, or that which the voices and speeches of the Prophets promised would come as Savior of the world: so Beza, whom our Salmeron rightly refutes, tome II, tract 4. For before the Prophets and their oracles, from eternity the Word was Word, and was with God, as St. John says. In fact therefore Beza denies the Logos, just as the Alogians, according to Epiphanius, heresy 51, and the Magdeburg Centuriators, century 1, book I, chapter IV, who deny that He is called Logos in relation to the Father, as if begotten by Him through cognition. These therefore are enemies of the Word and Son of God, and so semi-atheists.
Eighth and best, with our author and with nearly all the Fathers translate λόγος as word, certainly not of mouth and voice, but of the heart and mind. For just as when we think or understand anything, we form for ourselves a concept of the thing thought of or understood, which is called the word of the mind: so the eternal Father by understanding and comprehending His essence, etc.
St. Dionysius the Areopagite, book On the Divine Names, chapter II, at the end of the first part writes thus: "That the primordial and fountain Deity is the Father, while the Son and the Holy Spirit are (if it is lawful so to speak) shoots planted divinely from the fecund Deity, and as it were flowers, and supersubstantial lights, we have received from the Sacred Scriptures. But in what manner these things are, we can neither express nor understand." Hence also St. Augustine, book VI On the Trinity, chapter X: "A certain one (this is St. Hilary, book On the Synods, not far from the beginning)," he says, "when he wished most clearly to indicate the propriety of each person in the Trinity: Eternity, he says, is in the Father, species in the image (in the Son), use in the gift," namely in the Holy Spirit, who is the gift and grace of the Father and the Son. The same St. Augustine, sermon 38 On the Words of the Gospel according to John: "For the word," he says, "does not increase or grow when one comes to know it, but remains entire if you have remained; entire if you have departed; entire when you have returned, abiding in itself and renewing all things: it is therefore the form of all things, a form not fabricated, without time and without spaces of places."
Finally, describing the dignity and attributes of this Word, St. Basil, book II Against Eunomius, sets forth other similes of this admirable procession in these words: "It is necessary," he says, "to understand a generation worthy of God, impassible, indivisible, undivided, without time, like a ray shining from light; and to understand the image of the invisible God, not as these artificial images later elaborated according to a model; but as existing and consubsisting with the prototype, who gave it substance, and likewise existing with the archetype; not figured by imitation, but as if by some seal the whole nature of the Father is impressed on the Son. Or if you will, such as is the constitution of arts wholly transmitted from teachers to disciples; since nothing is lacking to the teachers, and perfection is present to those who have learned, though that indeed is not so fitting to the comparison, because of the interval of time; this is more apt, such as is the nature of intellection, constituted by the motions of the mind without time." Thus Basil.
Tertullian also uses these comparisons in his book against Praxeas, chapter VIII: "God brought forth the speech, that is, the word, as a root brings forth a shoot, and a spring a river, and the sun a ray; nor is the shoot distinguished from the root, nor the river from the spring, nor the ray from the sun, just as neither is the speech from God," etc.
More divinely St. Gregory Thaumaturgus depicts this Word as well as the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Symbol of faith, which was delivered to him from heaven by our St. John, at the command of the Blessed Virgin, as Gregory of Nyssa writes in the Life of the Thaumaturge. This Symbol, most celebrated throughout the whole East, runs thus: "There is one God, Father of the living Word, of subsisting Wisdom, and of eternal power and figure, perfect begetter of the Perfect, Father of the only-begotten Son. One Lord, alone from alone, God from God, figure and image of the deity, efficacious word, wisdom comprehensive of the constitution of the whole universe, and power producing the whole creation. True Son of the true Father, escaping sight as is He who escapes sight, not subject to corruption as is He who is not subject to corruption, not subject to death as is He who is not subject to death, and eternal of the Eternal. One Holy Spirit having from God His origin and existence, who appeared through the Son, namely to men, image of the perfect Son, perfect life of the living, cause, fountain, holy, holiness, supplier of sanctification, through whom is manifested God the Father, who is over all and in all; and God the Son, who pervades all things; perfect Trinity, which is not divided in glory and eternity and kingdom, nor alienated."
Moreover, the Gentiles saw the same through a shadow, and they learned it either from the books of Moses and the Hebrews. Whence Plato is called the Attic Moses by Eusebius, book XIII On Preparation, chapter VII; and by Theodoret, book II On the Cure of Greek Affections: "Ocean of Theology, from whom all rivers and seas are derived; for thence Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, and Plato drew certain small lights of truth." Or from the Sibyls, or by the light of nature, or by divine instinct. Hear Lactantius, book IV On Wisdom, chapter IX: "This," he says, "Speech," that is the divine Word, "not even the Philosophers were ignorant of. Indeed Zeno proclaims the disposer of nature and the artificer of the universe to be λόγος," whom he calls also fate, and the necessity of things, and God, and the mind of Jupiter. For Trismegistus, who somehow investigated nearly the whole truth, often described the power and majesty of the Word. For St. Augustine testifies this concerning Mercury Trismegistus, book On the Five Heresies, chapter III. The same Mercury in the Pimander: "Mind," he says, "is God, most full of the fecundity of both sexes, life and light, who together with His word brought forth another mind, the artificer, who indeed is God, the deity of fire and spirit." To these is added that well-known saying of the same: "The Monad begot the Monad, and reflected back upon itself its own ardor;" that is, the one God begot the only-begotten Son, and reflecting love back upon Himself, produced the Holy Spirit. That also is in the Pimander: "Mind is your God, and the shining offspring of the Mind is the Son of God." Likewise Theodoret, book II On Principles: "Plotinus," he says, "and Numenius, explaining Plato's mind, say that three eternal things were posited by Plato, namely the good itself, the mind, and the soul of this universe; for he calls good Him whom we call Father; mind or intellect Him whom we call Son and Word; but the power that animates and vivifies all things. He calls soul that which the sacred Letters call the Holy Spirit. And these very things, as I have often said, are derived from the wisdom and Theology of the Hebrews." But Cardinal Bessarion rightly notes, book II Apology for Plato, chapter IV, that Plato spoke of the Son and the Holy Trinity not in a Christian way, but in an Arian way; for he set degrees in the divinity. For he established as the first of beings the first God, after Him as if in an inferior degree he placed the mind produced by Him; and finally in the third place and degree he places the soul of the world, which animates and vivifies this universe as if it were an animal. Plato therefore taught that the unbegotten God first begot the Mind; second, the Soul of the world. Wherefore he Arianizes; for he posits the Mind and Soul of the world as things distinct from the unbegotten God, and lesser than Him. To this purpose comes that oracle of Serapis given to a certain Egyptian king:
"In the beginning is God, then the Word, and to these is added the Spirit: these are coeval, and tend into one."
Thus also Orpheus and the other Greeks, Chaldeans, and Egyptians called God the Father νοῦν, that is mind, but the Son λόγον, as the offspring of the mind, says Theodoret, book II On Curing Greek Affections, and St. Augustine, book VII of the Confessions, chapter IX. Others called the Father soul, or spirit; but the Son νοῦν, that is the mind and knowledge of the Father. Although many very probably judge that Orpheus, Trismegistus, Plato, and the Platonists understood by νοῦς and λόγος not the notional Word, that is the Son, but the essential, that is, the idea of the divine mind, through which He produced all things. Hence also that of Trismegistus: "The Monad begot the Monad, and reflected back upon itself its own ardor," which many explain thus, as if to say: The Father begot the Son, and loving Him with reflected love breathed forth the Holy Spirit. St. Thomas, on chapter 1 of the Gospel of St. John, explains it thus, as if to say: One God created one world, for the love of Himself. See more in Theodoret, Eusebius, Augustine, in the places cited, and Augustine Steuchus, On the Perennial Philosophy, and our Barredius, tome I, book IV, chapter II.
You will ask, third, whether this divine Word is similar to our word of the mind, or rather dissimilar. I answer, it is partly similar, partly dissimilar. It is similar first because, as ours is immaterial and spiritual, so also is the divine. Second, as man brings forth by mind a concept or word of the mind, so the Father by His intellect and intellection comprehending His essence and all its attributes, begets the Word. The Word therefore is the knowledge and notion of the Father. Whence St. Augustine, sermon 38 On the Words of the Gospel according to John: "Let us understand," he says, "the Word of God to be born of God incorporeally, inviolably, immutably, without temporal nativity." Third, as through our word we conceive all things, so also does God through His. Fourth, as ours is internal to the mind, so also God's: for it is with the Father and in the bosom of the Father, John 1:18, as ours adheres to the mind and is most intimate to it. Fifth, as ours is an idea according to which we fabricate and make all things, so also is God's, according to that: "All things were made through Him, and without Him was nothing made," John 1. Hence Timaeus the Platonist calls God and the Word of God κόσμον ἐνδαλματικόν, the exemplary world; because the Word is the uncreated and immense world, which is the idea and exemplar of the created world. The Word therefore is the greatest world of wisdom, holiness, intelligence, life, reasons, forms; for, as Plato says: "All intelligible animals, however many there are, He embraces in Himself, preserves and contains; not otherwise than as the world encompasses us and all created things, whatever are perceived, with its circuit." Sixth, as our mental word becomes vocal when we speak: so the divine Word became vocal when it spoke in assumed flesh. Seventh, as our word is the image of the thing that is understood, so the divine Word is the image of God the Father. Eighth, as the word, namely our concept, lasts as long as the intellection lasts, so also the divine Word. But the Father's intellection abides eternally: wherefore eternally also is His Word begotten and abides, which is produced through it; for since the Father's intellection is always in act, hence also the Word's generation is always in act. Wherefore this proposition is true: The Word is always being begotten, and is always begotten; because in divine matters to be becoming and to have been done are the same. This is what Micah says, chapter v, verse 2: "His going forth," Hebrew goings-forth, "is from the beginning, from the days of eternity." Whence the Fathers of the council of Ephesus: "Let the splendor announce to you," they say, "that the Son always coexists with the Father and is coeternal; let the Word show the impassibility of His nativity; let the name of Son disclose the consubstantiality." And St. Basil, homily I on John: "Why Word? to show that He proceeded from the mind. Why Word? because He was born without passion. Why Word? because He is the image of His begetter, showing the whole begetter in Himself." Ninth, as the concept of the mind precedes the work, so also the Word precedes the work of God. For, as St. Augustine says, XV On the Trinity, XI: "There are no works of man which are not first spoken in the heart." Whence it is written: "The beginning of every work is the word." And not much later: "There is," he says, "also in this similitude of our word a likeness of the Word of God, because there can be a word of ours which is not followed by a work; but no work can exist unless a word precedes: so also the Word of God could exist with no creature existing; but no creature can exist except through Him through whom all things were made."
It is dissimilar first because our word, like that of the angels, is an accident, namely a vital act, inhering as it were in the mind as subject: but the Word of God is substance and a subsisting person. So St. Athanasius, sermon 1 Against the Arians, and St. Chrysostom, homily 1 on John: "This divine Word," he says, "is a certain substance in person, proceeding from the Father Himself without passion." Hence follows another distinction, namely that the created word is a created form constituting in second act the one understanding, by whom it is produced. For through the word which he conceives and produces, he actually understands. But the divine Word is not the form of the Father who understands, by whom it is produced, because it is a thing subsisting through itself, which cannot be the form of another distinct thing. So Suarez, book IX On the Triune God, chapter II.
Second, our word is temporal and posterior to the mind: the Word of God is eternal and coeval with God. Again, our word is produced from the need of the one understanding, because without it he cannot actually conceive and understand a thing; and the Word of God is produced not from need or potentiality, but from the infinite perfection and fecundity of the paternal intellect, and therefore presupposes it as constituted not only in first act, but also in second act of understanding.
Third, our word is imperfect and changeable, and therefore varied and multiple: the Word of God is perfect, and therefore constant, immutable, one and simple, "since in the One are all things," as St. Augustine says on Psalm XLIV, and St. Athanasius, sermon 3 Against the Arians.
Fourth, our word is distinct from the mind and ἑτερούσιον, that is of another nature: the Word of God is ὁμοούσιον and consubstantial with God the Father. So St. Anselm in the Monologium, chapter XXVIII.
Fifth, our word is in our hypostasis: the Word of God is a hypostasis and person distinct from the Father, through whom the Father spoke and made all things.
Sixth, our word is not our son: the Word of God is the Son of God. Again, the Father in producing the Word communicates His very own intellection to the Word, which our mind does not do with its word, but rather conversely is itself constituted by the word in the second act of understanding. So Suarez in the place cited. Hence the Son is called begotten Wisdom. Whence St. Augustine, Question XXIII among the LXXXIII, says that the Father is wise by begotten wisdom, in this sense that He has begotten her. But retracting this phrase, in book I of the Retractations, chapter XXVI, in book VI On the Trinity, I: "Therefore the Father," he says, "is Himself the wisdom by which He is wise. But the Son is called the wisdom of the Father and the power of the Father, not because the Father is wise or powerful through Him, but because the Son is wisdom and power from the Father who is wisdom and power. From these things therefore it appears that the Father is not wise by begotten wisdom, but Himself by unbegotten wisdom."
Seventh, our word is impotent and ineffectual: the Word of God is effectual and omnipotent; for He spoke, and immediately all things were made, Gen. I.
Eighth, our word, both of mouth and of mind, as soon as it is uttered and born, slips away and flows off: the Word of God is eternal, because eternal is the intellection, namely the speaking and generation of the Father. "The sound of voice and the eloquence of thought cease," says St. Hilary, book II On the Trinity: "this Word is a thing, not a sound; a nature, not a speech; God, not emptiness." See more on the Word in St. Thomas and Suarez in the place cited.
Therefore although in some way we may ascend from the word of our mind to the Word of God, yet this ascent by the light of nature is made only to the essential Word. For through this God conceives, understands, and produces all things; but that the intellection of God is a speaking, that is a production, whereby He has spoken, produced, and begotten the notional Word as a Son, this is incomprehensible, and is known and believed by faith alone, only through the revelation of God: for it surpasses every angelic and human intellect, that in the Most Holy Trinity "propriety be adored in the persons, and unity in the essence, and equality in the majesty," as the Church sings on the feast of the Most Holy Trinity. Therefore she is rather to be admired and adored with chaste and silent silence than to be scrutinized and declared with curious and meager wit, that with the wondering Seraphim we wondering may cry out to her: "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory," Isaiah VI. "This (the Word of God) the learned Plato did not know, this the eloquent Demosthenes was ignorant of. I will destroy," He says, "the wisdom of the wise, and I will reject the prudence of the prudent," says St. Jerome to Paulina. "My heart has uttered a good word; I speak my works to the King," says the Psalmist, Psalm XLIV, 1. "You see that this Word is the Son of God, whom we believe to have come forth from no other place than the paternal breast, and so to speak, from the womb of the heart of God," says Nazianzen On Faith, according to that: "From the womb before the morning star I begot You," Psalm CIX; where St. Jerome: "He begot Him from the womb," he says, "that is, from His nature, from His bowels, from His substance: from the womb, that is, from the marrow of His divinity, the Father gave to the Son the whole of whatever He is in divinity."
Tropologically: how the Word speaks to the heart of men is explained by St. Augustine in Confessions XI, IX, and St. Bernard, sermon 45 on the Canticle: "His beauty," he says, "is His love, and therefore the greater, because preventing. Therefore by the marrow of the heart and by the voices of the inmost affections, the soul cries out so much the more amply and ardently that He must be loved by it, the more it has felt itself loving before being loved. So the speaking of the word, the infusion of the gift, the response of the soul, with the giving of thanks is admiration. And therefore she loves the more, because she feels herself overcome in loving; and therefore the more she wonders, because she recognizes herself as one anticipated." And St. Ambrose, III On Virgins: "The Word of God wounds," he says, "but does not ulcerate. It is the wound of good love, they are the wounds of charity. And therefore she said (the bride in Canticle II), I am of wounded charity. She who is perfect is of wounded charity. Therefore good are the wounds of the Word, good are the wounds of the lover."
Of the Word of life. — "For as the Father has life in Himself, so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself," John v, 26: hence to the Father is attributed being, to the Word living, to the Holy Spirit loving.
Note: There are three kinds of life: divine, angelic, human. Divine is most perfect, immense, eternal, uncreated, the origin and fountain of angelic and human life. Angelic is created, but spiritual. Human is partly spiritual, partly corporeal. And it is twofold, natural and supernatural. Natural in turn is threefold: vegetative, sensitive, and rational. Supernatural is twofold: inchoate by grace, by which the just man through faith, hope, and charity serves God, and lives a supernatural life in God by believing, hoping, and loving Him above all things supernaturally; the other supernatural life is consummate through glory, by which the Blessed enjoy God, delight in Him, and are blessed eternally. Furthermore the divine life is twofold: formal and causal. Formal is that by which God in Himself lives the divine, uncreated, supremely immortal, holy, joyful, perfect, blessed, and eternal life. Causal is twofold: natural and supernatural. Natural which causes the natural life of all plants, animals, men, and Angels; supernatural, which causes supernatural life, both of grace and glory, both of men and Angels. See St. Dionysius, book VI On the Divine Names, where he teaches that God is the original life, first of angelic life; second of human; third of animals; fourth of plants; fifth of the just; sixth of the Blessed. He is called therefore the Word of life, that is, vital and vivifying, because He has life in Himself, indeed He Himself in Himself is divine life, both formal and causal as already said. John alludes to, indeed cites, that of his Gospel chapter 1, verse 4: "In Him was life," which interpreters explain in three ways concerning the threefold life. First, of formal life, as if to say: The very substance of the Word is life, the Word itself is subsisting life, says Oecumenius. The Word itself essentially and through essence is life: for His very essence is to live and life: for in God and the Word all things are of the essence of God and of the Word; for there is no accident there. Hence God and the Word through essence are wisdom, life, goodness, power, virtue, etc.; for although these are accidents in us, in God they are essential, and so really are the same as the essence of God. So St. Dionysius in the place cited, and St. Thomas, Part I, Question XXVIII. He alludes to that of Psalm XXXV: "With You is the fountain of life, and in Your light we shall see light," this is, as Theodoret says: "With You is the eternal Word, the fountain of life, and in the light of the Holy Spirit we shall behold the light of Your only-begotten."
Second, it can be taken of life not causal, but natural, as if to say: In the Word is life, that is, in the Word as in an idea live the eternal reasons of all things, as St. Augustine says. For the Word is the idea of all creatures: but the idea is the very essence and life of God. So St. Augustine, tract I on John: "The Wisdom of God," he says, "according to art contains all things: you see earth, heaven, sun, moon; these things are in the art: but outside they are bodies, in the art they are life." But in another place: "For this reason," says John, "what was made, in Him was life; all things which were made and do not have life, in the Word of God Himself are life, in themselves they are not life." The same the author of the homilies from various sources, which are attributed to Origen, seems to have felt. "Heaven," he says, "and earth, the abyss and whatever is in them, live in the Word, and are life, and subsist eternally, and the things which seem to us to lack all vital motion, live in the Word." Again: "All things which were made through the Word, in Him subsist vitally and uniformly and causally." Finally: "In Him we live, are moved, and are," Acts chapter XVII, verse 28.
Excellently Philo, book On the Creation of the World: "When He decreed," he says, "to found this great city, He first conceived its forms, from which, after He had constituted the intelligible world, He founded this sensible world according to its exemplar." And after many things: "If anyone," he says, "likes to use plainer words, he would say that the intelligible world is nothing other than the Word of God now founding the world." Again, somewhat later: "It is clear, however, that the archetypal seal, which we say to be the intelligible world, is itself that archetypal exemplar, the idea of ideas, the Word of God."
Again in the Word as in an efficient cause is life, that is the vigor, duration, and preservation of all things, because these come about through the Word: for the Word gives to all things to be vigorous, to live, to endure, and to remain. So St. Chrysostom, St. Cyril, Theophylact, Euthymius on chapter 1 of the Gospel of St. John, verse 4. Whence Jansenius in the same place expounds it thus, as if to say: The natural life of living things depends on the Word, as if John gradually descended from the life of living things to man and his life received from the Word, and Clement of Alexandria, book Exhortation to the Gentiles: "The Word," he says, "which was with God, appeared as teacher, the Word through which all things were fabricated, and which together with Him who fashioned them also bestowed life, as artificer; He taught to live well, when He had appeared as master, that afterwards as God He might supply to live forever."
Third, and more genuinely, both here and in the Gospel, by life you may take supernatural causal life; as if to say: in the Word as in a fountain and cause was our true life, both of grace and of glory. Whence in order to communicate this life and light to men, He descended to them in flesh, made man, that, as through the Word this great world saw it, we testify and announce to you the eternal life, which was with the Father, and now in the end of the ages through the flesh He has assumed has appeared to us. This is what Isaiah foretold, chapter XL, verse 5: "The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see together that the mouth of the Lord has spoken;" namely, as St. Luke explains, chapter III, verse 6: "And all flesh shall see the salvation of God," that is, every man shall see Christ of God, says St. Ambrose in the same place. The same St. Ambrose on Psalm XXXVI, 19: "They shall not be confounded in the evil time. He (Christ)," he says, "is our life in all things; His divinity is life, His eternity is life, His flesh is life, His passion is life. Whence Jeremiah also says: Under His shadow we shall live; the shadow of the wings, the shadow of the cross, is the shadow of His passion. His death is life, His wound is life, His blood is life, His burial is life, His resurrection is the life of all. Do you wish to know that His death is life? In His death," he says, "we are baptized, that we may walk with Him in newness of life. And He Himself says: Amen, amen, I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit. He, the grain, was loosed in body and died for us, that He might bring forth much fruit in us; therefore His death is the fruit of life."
AND WE TESTIFY, — as it were martyrs, that is witnesses of God, both by voice, by life, and by passion, death and martyrdom, as St. John, on account of this testimony concerning Christ, was sent by Domitian at Rome into a cauldron of boiling oil, but coming out unharmed from it, was banished to Patmos, where writing the Apocalypse, he begins about himself thus in verse 2: "Who has borne witness to the Word of God, and the testimony of Jesus Christ, whatsoever he saw;" and verse 9: "I, John, your brother, and partaker in tribulation and the kingdom, and patience in Christ Jesus, was in the island which is called Patmos, for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus." Again "we testify;" that is, we attest and we adjure, threatening unbelievers with the terrible judgment of God. So Cassian, book V On the Incarnation, chap. VI: "Then," he says, "he adds the Word of life, and life manifested: that he had seen this; that he announces this, that he attests this, fulfilling at once the office of faith and instilling terror in unbelief: that since he indeed attests himself to preach, he might impute his own peril to him who refused to listen to him." Thus of Heliodorus scourged by angels it is said, 2 Machabees III, 36: "He bore witness (that is, he attested, celebrated, glorified) however to all the works of the great God which he had seen under his own eyes."
AND WE ANNOUNCE TO YOU ETERNAL LIFE (namely Christ, who, as the Word of God, is eternal life, uncreated and by essence), WHICH WAS WITH THE FATHER, AND HAS APPEARED TO US; — that from invisible He might become visible to us through the incarnation, preaching, miracles, and especially through the transfiguration; therefore God the Father is the luminous and first light, e.g., the solar light producing light. The Son is the direct light, first produced, commensurate and adequate to His own light. The Holy Spirit is as it were the reflected light, namely splendor; for He is produced from the mutual, and therefore reflected, love of the Father and the Son. The Gentiles saw the same through a shadow. Parmenides defined God "to be a crown containing burning, an orb of light which encircles heaven." Democritus said God "to be a mind in an orbicular fire." For the Egyptians the hieroglyph of God was a star: "A star depicted by the Egyptians signifies God," says Horus Apollo, Hieroglyphics book II, chap. I.
The Gentiles saw the same through a shadow, who therefore called Jove in Greek Ζῆνα, that is life. Hear Aristotle, book On the World: καλοῦσι δὲ τὸν θεὸν Ζῆνα καὶ Δία, παραλλήλως χρώμενοι τοῖς ὀνόμασιν, ὡς κἂν εἰ λέγοιμεν δι' ὃν ζῶμεν, that is "they call God both Zēna and Dia, with the names compounded and brought together side by side, as if by these two words they wished to signify Him through whom we live." These are the later Greeks: for the earlier ones called Jove Zēna for another reason, which Lactantius assigns, book I, chap. XI: "He himself," he says, "having been preserved by stealth and secretly nurtured, was called Zeus or Zas: not, as those people think, from the heat of celestial fire (as if from ζέειν, to seethe), nor because he is the giver of life, nor because he breathes souls into living things, which power belongs to God alone: for how can he inspire a soul who himself receives it from elsewhere? But because he first lived among the male offspring of Saturn."
Verse 2: And the Life Was Manifested; and We Have Seen, and Do Bear Witness, and Declare Unto You the Life Eternal, Which Was With the Father, and Hath Appeared to Us
2. AND THE LIFE WAS MANIFESTED. — As if to say: The Word, which is immortal and blessed life, both formal and causal, as I have already said, but hidden with God in the bosom of the Father, has now through the incarnation manifested itself, and offered itself to men as visible and tangible; and so we, the Apostles, who have seen it, testify and announce to you the eternal life, which was with the Father, and now in the end of the ages through the flesh He has assumed has appeared to us. He alludes — indeed, says Cajetan — to the resurrection and ascension into heaven: for there Christ will show that He, not only as the Word but also as man, lives a glorious and eternal life.
Note: That which was with the Father alludes to what He says in the Gospel, chapter 1, verse 1: "And the Word was with God," which Nonnus beautifully renders: Πατρός ἐὼν ἀμέριστος, ἀτέρμον σύνθρονος ἕδρα, "From the Father It was undivided, sitting eternally in one seat."
St. John meets an objection. For someone will say: If the Word existed from eternity, where was He, when there was nothing, or no place at all in the nature of things? John answers that the Word did not need a place, but was with God the Father, as the One from whom He drew His origin, that is, He was in the bosom of the Father, as he explains in verse 18, or also in the paternal house, which is God Himself, hidden from us. Therefore the preposition with marks three things: first, that the Word is a person distinct from the Father, against Sabellius: thus St. Chrysostom, Cyril, Theophylact, and Leontius on John's Gospel chapter 1, verse 1; secondly, "with" signifies the loving and supreme conjunction of the Son with the Father; thirdly, "with" signifies the equality of the Son with the Father. For to be with God is to be next to God, or to sit at the right hand of God: for there He is said to have returned after the ascension, Mark 16:19, and elsewhere. Hence falls the heresy of Eunomius, who said the Son is not the Word. For he posited a twofold Word: one internal, ὁμοούσιον with God, the other external, which would receive from the internal Word the things It would announce to us, and this was created, and was Christ. St. John refutes this by saying that the very same Word, which was with the Father, has appeared to us through flesh. Furthermore, lest the Arians and Eunomius infer: The Word was with God, therefore He Himself was not God; John forestalls this by adding in the Gospel: "And the Word was God." For thus the divine persons are distinct from one another, and one is with another, yet so that all have one and the same numerical essence, namely divinity. Wherefore that Arian was foolish, of whom St. Fulgentius speaks in book III Against Monimus, chapters 2 and 3, who, snatching the cap from the head of a Catholic, said: "This cap, is it with you or with me?" And when the Catholic answered: "It is with you;" he replied: Therefore the Word that was with God was external to Him, not ὁμοούσιον and consubstantial. Rightly does St. Fulgentius reply that the Word is not with the Father as the cap is with me: for the cap is a thing distinct from me; but the Son is one thing and essence with the Father, and therefore is said to be in the bosom of the Father. Therefore the Son is with the Father in the manner that heat is with brightness in the same fire, or rather in the manner that memory is with intellect in the same mind and soul, especially if with some Philosophers we say that the powers — namely intellect, memory, will — are not distinguished from the soul, but really are one and the same with it.
AND HE APPEARED TO US. — The word appeared signifies that in Christ's incarnation ἐξαίφνης τὸ ἀφανὲς (suddenly the unseen) became ἐμφανές (manifest), says St. Dionysius, epistle 3 to Caius, namely that "the Invisible suddenly appeared visible, and from the obscure secret of the deity He who surpasses all essence, having been made man, came forth into our sight. Yet God is hidden even after that declaration itself, or, to put it more divinely, in the declaration itself. For this divinity of Jesus is hidden, nor by any word or cognition is the mystery of what was accomplished about Him brought forth, or led out of darkness; but even when spoken of, it remains inexplicable; and when understood, hidden." The same writer, in epistle 4 to the same person, speaking of Christ: "When He came to take on essence," he says, "He received essence, He who is above all essence; and the things that belong to man, He performed above man: which the Virgin too declares, who gives birth above nature." Whence he adds that the mystery of the incarnation, just like that of the deity, is known more by negation than by affirmation. "For," he says, "He was not even man, not because He was not a man, but because, born of men, He far surpassed men, and above man was truly made man: and He performed divine works, not insofar as He is God; nor human works, insofar as He is man, but after God was made man (more meaningfully in Greek ἀνδρωθέντος Θεοῦ, that is, God clothed with manhood, God made human, God arrayed with man), He instituted among us a certain new θεανδρικὴν, that is, divine-virile, or composite from divine and human, operation."
Verse 3: That Which We Have Seen and Have Heard, We Declare Unto You, That You Also May Have Fellowship With Us, and Our Fellowship May Be With the Father, and With His Son Jesus Christ
3. THAT YOU ALSO MAY HAVE FELLOWSHIP WITH US. — "Fellowship," in Greek κοινωνίαν, that is, communion, commerce, fellowship, namely in the same faith, religion, and Church of Christ, where all share the same Sacraments: this is the communion of Saints which we mention in the Creed: "I believe in the holy Catholic Church, the communion of Saints." Furthermore we add the goods and fruits of this fellowship and communion when we say: "the forgiveness of sins," which is through the grace of Christ, "the resurrection of the flesh and life everlasting": see our Cansius, Louis of Granada and others on the Creed. Moreover "may have," that is, may continue to have and in it advance and be confirmed; for a continuous and growing act is signified, not one just begun. For He speaks to the faithful, who already had this fellowship. Yet Oecumenius refers it also to the unbelievers, as if John wished to draw them to the faith and Church of Christ. This is what Paul says, Hebrews 12:22: "You have come to Mount Sion (that is, to the Church which began in Sion), and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to many thousands of angels in throng, and to the Church of the firstborn, who are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new testament, and to the sprinkling of blood, which speaketh better than Abel." With all these in the Church we have fellowship, namely with the angels, with the Apostles, with the first Christians, with just and perfect men, with the Blessed, with Christ and God. Whence John adds:
AND OUR FELLOWSHIP MAY BE WITH THE FATHER, AND WITH HIS SON Jesus Christ, — not with the God of Simon Magus and his mediating angels, whom he, with Plato, brings in as if demigods. Therefore the fellowship of the Church is fellowship with God and Christ, "nor can anyone have fellowship with God who is not first united to the fellowship of the Church," says Bede. For, as St. Cyprian says, in the book On the Unity of the Church: "Whoever is separated from the Church and is joined to an adulteress, is separated from the promises of the Church; nor will he attain to the rewards of Christ; he who leaves the Church of Christ is a stranger, profane, an enemy; he can no longer have God for his Father, who does not have the Church for his mother. If anyone outside the ark of Noah could escape, then he too escapes who is outside the Church. The Lord warns, and says: He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me, scatters; he who breaks the peace and concord of Christ, acts against Christ; he who gathers elsewhere apart from the Church, scatters Christ's Church." And shortly after: "They cannot remain with God, because they refused to be of one mind in God's Church. Though they burn in flames, and lay down their souls handed over to fires or thrown to beasts, that will not be the crown of faith, but the punishment of perfidy; nor the glorious exit of religious virtue, but the destruction of despair: such a one can be killed, but cannot be crowned." Hence the excommunicated, separated from the Church, are likewise separated from God and Christ. The Greek has it more meaningfully and effectively: καὶ ἡ κοινωνία δὲ ἡ ἡμετέρα μετὰ τοῦ Πατρὸς καὶ μετὰ τοῦ Υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ; which you would render thus: but our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. So Vatablus and others. For he explains the nobility of the Church's fellowship, namely that it is fellowship with Christ Himself and God: for the Church is His bride. Hence in her we are made "partakers of the divine nature," 2 Peter 1:4. For "he who cleaves to the Lord, is one spirit," 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 17. This is what Paul, marveling, celebrates and exclaims with congratulations, 1 Corinthians 1:9: "Faithful is God, through whom you have been called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord." All the faithful therefore are companions of Christ and God through faith, hope, and charity; but they have so much greater fellowship with Him, as they advance more in faith, hope, and charity in Him, and the more they imitate His life and morals, especially by celebrating His faith and glory, and more and more propagating it, as the Apostles did, who therefore in this fellowship were the first and highest, because they did and suffered many things for Christ, and so wholly devoted themselves to His glory and the salvation of souls.
Therefore this fellowship is friendship with God: for that this truly subsists between a holy soul and God, John here teaches, and consequently it contains all the conditions of true friendship which Aristotle, Cicero, and other Ethicists list, in the treatise On Friendship, namely reciprocal love, mutual conversations, offices, joys, sharing of goods, etc.: which is indeed a marvelous and divine dignity of the soul, as well as benefit. Whence St. Augustine, tract 76 on John: "The Holy Spirit makes," he says, "with the Father and the Son a dwelling in the Saints, within indeed, as in His own temple. God the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, come to us, as we come to them; they come by helping, we come by obeying; they come by illumining, we come by gazing; they come by filling, we come by receiving: so that for us their vision is not foreign, but internal, and in us their dwelling is not transitory, but eternal." See what was said on what is said of Abraham, James 2:23: "And he was called the friend of God." See also Dionysius the Carthusian here, after the middle of chapter 1, where he beautifully and piously explains how the faithful as companions and friends ought to act and converse with God.
Furthermore, John Hesselius, Doctor of Louvain, rightly remarks, and from him our Lorinus: This our fellowship, he says, or communion with Christ both as man and as God, is like that of master and servant, father and adopted son, illuminator and illumined, justifier and justified, ruler and subject, giver and receiver, invoker and hearer, bestower of gifts and giver of thanks, beatifier and blessed; in short, that one cleaving to God may be one spirit with Him, and walking in light, as He Himself is in light, may have fellowship with Him. According to His human nature, our fellowship is with Christ as that of teachers to disciples, of a priest to those for whom he sacrifices and intercedes; of one paying for another the punishment due, and meriting or obtaining unmerited grace; of one giving thanks together with those for whom he gives thanks; again, of king and subjects. The Scriptures explain such fellowship by the parable of the Shepherd and the sheep, of the head and the members, of food and those who eat it, of the vine and the branches, and others of the same kind; finally, those who are companions in sufferings, companions also in consolations. Christ also called us His friends, brothers, sisters, mothers; called the same God His God and our God, His Father and our Father. This is what Paul says, Ephesians chapter 2, verse 19: "You are fellow citizens of the Saints, and members of the household of God;" and 1 John III, 1: "See what charity the Father has given us, that we may be called and be the Sons of God." Again Paul, 2 Corinthians 11:2: "I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you a chaste virgin to Christ;" and Hosea chapter 2, verse 19: "And I will espouse you to Me forever, and I will espouse you to Me in justice and judgment, and in mercy, and in compassions; and I will espouse you to Me in faith."
Verse 4: And These Things We Write to You, That You May Rejoice, and Your Joy May Be Full
4. AND THESE THINGS WE WRITE TO YOU THAT YOU MAY REJOICE (in the fellowship of the Church of Christ and of God, and in the goods of His grace which you receive, and the glory which you will receive in heaven), AND YOUR JOY MAY BE FULL, — namely, that day by day it may become greater and fuller, until in heaven it becomes most full, through your daily growing and advancing in this fellowship, according to that of St. Paul, Philippians chapter 2, verse 2: "Fulfill my joy, that you may be of one mind, having the same charity, of one accord, agreeing in sentiment;" and that of Christ, John 17:13: "These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and your joy may be filled." This joy rests on and is born from the testimony of a good and holy conscience, which, trusting that it is in God's grace, hopes from Him every good and blessed glory, according to that of Paul, 2 Corinthians 1:12: "Our glory is this, the testimony of our conscience." Truly St. Bernard to Eugenius: "What is richer, what on earth is more peaceful and secure than a good conscience? It fears not the loss of goods, not the insults of words, not the tortures of the body, which is rather raised up than cast down by death itself." Likewise M. Tullius (Cicero) in the second Tusculan: "No theater for virtue," he says, "is greater than conscience." Again in Cato the Elder: "The consciousness of a life well lived and of many good deeds is most pleasant." And likewise that excellent passage in the speech for Cluentius: "If," he says, "in our whole life the witness of the best counsels and deeds shall be our conscience, we shall live without any fear, with the highest honor. In short, the consciousness of a right will is the greatest consolation in adverse circumstances." And Horace, book 1, epistle 1: "Let this be a wall of bronze, To be conscious of no fault, to grow pale at no guilt." The same, ode 22, book 1: "The man upright in life and pure from wickedness needs not the javelins of the Moor, nor bow, nor a quiver heavy with poisoned arrows, O Fuscus. Whether he is going to make his way through sweltering Syrtes, or through the inhospitable Caucasus, or through the places which the fabled Hydaspes laps." Deservedly therefore the Apostle promises hope and confidence to a whole and pure conscience. For Augustine truly wrote: "The very charity of one acting well gives him the hope of a good conscience; for a good conscience bears hope: as a bad conscience is wholly in despair, so a good conscience is wholly in hope."
Again, "full," that is, real and solid, is the "joy" of the faithful: for this satisfies and fills the mind, such as is joy in the Lord; whereas joy in the delights, riches, and honors of the world tickles the mind but does not fill it. Hear St. Gregory, homily 11 on the Gospels: "Because perpetual lamentations follow present joys, here, dearest brethren, flee vain joy, if you dread to weep there; for no one can both rejoice here with the world, and reign there with Christ. Therefore restrain the fleeting flow of temporal happiness, subdue the pleasures of the flesh; whatever in the mind smiles from the present age, let it grow bitter from the consideration of the eternal fire; whatever in the mind grows childishly cheerful, let the censorship of youthful discipline restrain it, so that while you flee temporal things voluntarily, you may take eternal joys without labor." And St. Chrysostom, homily 18 to the People: "He who rejoices in the Lord, can fall from this pleasure by no accident; for all other things in which we rejoice are mutable, nor do they bring us such pleasure that they drive away and overshadow the sadness arising from other things. But the fear of God has both these qualities; for it is stable and unmoved, and it emits so great a joy, that no perception of other evils takes hold of us. For he who fears God as he ought, and trusts in Him, has gained the root of pleasure, and has every fountain of joy. And as a spark falling into the boundless sea is quickly easily extinguished: so however many things may strike one who fears God, falling as if into a vast sea of joy, they are extinguished and lost. And in truth, this is most marvelous, that when those things are present which usually sadden, he himself remains rejoicing." And St. Augustine, book 10 of the Confessions, chapter 22, distinguishing true joy from false: "Far be it," he says, "Lord, far be it from the heart of Your servant who confesses to You, far be it that I should think myself blessed for any joy whatever; for there is a joy which is not given to the impious, but to those who worship You freely, whose joy You Yourself are; and the blessed life itself is to rejoice toward You, of You, and on account of You; this it is, and there is no other; but those who think there is another, pursue another joy, and not the true one;" and after some lines: "For the blessed life is joy from the truth; this is the joy from You, who are the truth, God, my illumination, the salvation of my face."
Verse 5: And This Is the Declaration Which We Have Heard From Him, and Declare Unto You: That God Is Light, and in Him There Is No Darkness
5. AND THIS IS THE ANNOUNCEMENT. — In Greek the compound ἐπαγγελία, that is, promise, is put for the simple ἀγγελία, that is, announcement. So Oecumenius. Now "announcement" is put for the thing announced, by metonymy, by which the act is put for the object. Thus God is called our hope, fear, and love, that is, the object of our hope, fear, and love, or He in whom we hope, whom we fear and love. St. John shows that the fellowship of the faithful with God consists in this, that they walk in the light of the knowledge, obedience, and love of God, because God is light itself; in which if we remain, we are made invincible against sin, says Oecumenius.
BECAUSE GOD IS LIGHT, AND IN HIM THERE ARE NO DARKNESSES AT ALL. — He alludes to the Gospel 1:4, where St. John, explaining that: "In Him was life," immediately adds: "And the life was the light of men," to signify, says Toletus, that for attaining life it is necessary that there be a light by which this Word may shine in our hearts; for He does not give life except by what Christ illumines by His faith; therefore in John 8 He said: "He who follows Me does not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life;" which He explained more plainly in John 17: "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent;" as if He were saying: I am Life only to those for whom I am Light. Whence Gregory Nazianzen, oration 4 of Theology, rightly interpreted these words of John thus: "Because He was Light, He was Life." The Word therefore is the light of men, by which men are spiritually illumined through faith, hope, and charity: for that this concerns spiritual, not natural, light of reason, is clear from what follows. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Our life, which I said is in the Word, indeed is the Word itself, is this illumination of the Word, by which He illumines men with the knowledge of God and of their salvation. And this is the reason why the Word was made flesh, and manifested Himself to men in the flesh, namely, that He might give them eternal life.
How God and the Word is light, not accidental and created, as ours is, but substantial and uncreated, and that threefold: first, formal; secondly, ideal; thirdly, causal of all corporeal and spiritual light of men and angels, of the just and of the blessed, of grace and glory — see in St. Dionysius, On the Divine Names chapter II, verses 4 and 7: "By the name of light," he says, "the Good itself is celebrated, as the first exemplar expressed in image." Hence God is said to be "clothed with light as with a garment," Psalm 103; hence too He is called "Father of lights" by James, chapter 1, verse 17, and by Paul is said to "dwell in inaccessible light," 1 Timothy 6:16. See what is said in both passages. For light is a most noble quality, which most of all represents the dignity and endowments of God and of His illumination and grace. Between God therefore, and God's grace and light, there are the greatest and most beautiful analogies: for light is heavenly and the most noble among natural qualities, swiftest, most efficient, impassible, purest, which can be defiled by no impurities even when mixed with them, bringing heat, splendor, joy, making all things visible; bringing life and vigor to all living things. Such too is God and God's grace: the contrary is in sins, of which therefore darkness is the symbol. Add that grace leads to eternal light and glory, sins to the deepest and uttermost darkness.
Hear St. Dionysius, chapter 15 of the Celestial Hierarchy, recounting thirty-one properties of fire and light, marvelously congruent with God and grace: first, "fire (and light)," he says, "is poured forth in all things and through all things without admixture; secondly, it is separated from all things; thirdly, it shines wholly all at once; fourthly, it is hidden, and remains unknown of itself, unless matter is supplied, in which it may declare its force and action; fifthly, it cannot be restrained or conquered; sixthly, it possesses all things of itself; seventhly, those things in which it is, it changes to its own force and action; eighthly, it makes a partaker of itself whatever in any way is brought close to it; ninthly, it renews all things with vital heat; tenthly, it illuminates with open light; eleventhly, it cannot be held; twelfthly, nor mixed; thirteenthly, it has the power of dissipating; fourteenthly, it cannot be changed; fifteenthly, it is borne upward; sixteenthly, it is endowed with great speed; seventeenthly, it is sublime, and cannot bear any lowliness; eighteenthly, it is immovable; nineteenthly, it moves by itself; twentieth, it brings motion to other things; twenty-first, it has the power of comprehending; twenty-second, it itself cannot be comprehended; twenty-third, it does not need another; twenty-fourth, secretly it amplifies itself; twenty-fifth, in materials capable of it, it declares its magnitude; twenty-sixth, it has effective power; twenty-seventh, it is powerful; twenty-eighth, it is in all things, and is not seen; twenty-ninth, if it is neglected, it seems not to exist; thirtieth, by attrition as if by a kind of inquiry it suddenly appears, and again flies away so that it can neither be comprehended nor delineated; thirty-first, in all its communications it cannot be diminished."
Finally, fittingly Damascene, book 2 On the Faith, chapter 11, compares the Holy Trinity to light, or rather to the sun reflected in a cloud, as in a parhelion, in which three suns are seen, when in reality there is only one sun. "For indivisible," he says, "is the divinity in the divine persons, and just as in three suns inseparably cohering with one another by a connection, the tempering and conjunction of light is one and the same." So too St. Dionysius, chapter 2 On the Divine Names, represents the Holy Trinity by three lights illumining the same house, with one light, and a certain indistinct distinction. And for this reason that light of the Deity and Trinity, although in itself it is most clear, yet for us is dark gloom, because our gaze is unable, with the straight and unaverted eyes of the mind, to behold and look upon that sun so brilliant, so sublime, so supernatural. Whence to contemplate it, we must enter into the cloud with Moses. Hear St. Dionysius: "The cloud," he says, "is light, both invisible, on account of the excelling brightness which exceeds substance; and inaccessible, by reason of the immense abundance of supersubstantial light flowing from itself. To this whoever has merited to know and see God reaches and is absorbed; and by this very fact, that he neither sees nor knows (that is, does not comprehend), he is more familiarly joined to God, who transcends sight and all knowledge, knowing this very thing, that He is after and above all things which fall under sense; and when the Prophet exclaims: Your knowledge from me is wonderful, it is strengthened, and I shall not be able to attain it; and the Apostle, recognizing it, has testified to its inscrutable ways, its unsearchable judgments, its unspeakable gift, the peace surpassing every understanding." God the Father therefore is the luminous and first light, e.g., the solar light producing light. The Son is the direct light, first produced, commensurate and adequate to His own light. The Holy Spirit is as it were the reflected light, namely splendor; for He is produced from the mutual, and therefore reflected, love of the Father and the Son. The Gentiles saw the same through a shadow. Parmenides defined God "to be a crown containing burning, an orb of light which encircles heaven." Democritus said God "to be a mind in an orbicular fire." For the Egyptians the hieroglyph of God was a star: "A star depicted by the Egyptians signifies God," says Horus Apollo, Hieroglyphics book II, chap. I.
Note: Christ, as God and Word, is the formal uncreated light; as man, He is created light, because full of wisdom, grace and glory; He is also the causal light, because He is the cause of all our wisdom, grace and glory. Whence St. John in his Gospel chap. I calls Christ as man light, because "He enlightens every man coming into this world;" not only giving them the natural light of reason, as Origen and Cyril explain, but also and rather giving them the supernatural light of faith and wisdom. Whence by Malachi, chap. IV, verse 2, He is called "sun of justice." See what is said there. But Manichaeus raved, when he held that this material sun was Christ, as St. Augustine attests, tract. 34 on John. Christ therefore shone most after the incarnation; yet He was also light before it from the beginning of the world; for as the sun before it climbs the horizon sends ahead some rays of dawn with which it illuminates the world, so also Christ. So St. Augustine, tract. 2 on John. This is what the Father says to Christ: "I have given Thee for a light of the Gentiles, that Thou mayest be My salvation even to the end of the earth," Isaiah XLIX, 6; and Christ: "I am the light of the world," John VIII; and of Him Simeon: "A light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel," Luke II, 32. Beautifully St. Augustine, homily 43 of the 50: "Therefore," he says, "Christ came as illuminator, because the devil had been the blinder. The supreme physician made a collyrium of infinite price, that He might heal the blinded eyes. See what kind, and how salutary, a collyrium He made, from the Word and the flesh. The Word," he says, "was made flesh, etc. The eyes of the man restored are such, and so illumined, that they can equal the eyes of angels and behold the heavenly glory of God Himself."
This light Christ communicates to His faithful, especially to apostolic men, so that they too are the light of the world, according to that of Job XXXVIII: "Your light shall be taken away from the impious;" and: "O Lord, they shall walk in the light of Your countenance," Psalm LXXXVIII. And Christ to the Apostles: "You are the light of the world. So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven," Matt. V. The same of John the Baptist: "He was a burning and shining lamp," John V. And Paul, Ephes. V, 8: "You were heretofore darkness, but now light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. For the fruit of the light is in all goodness, and justice, and truth, proving what is well-pleasing to God."
AND THERE ARE NO DARKNESSES IN HIM. — As light is the symbol of God, wisdom and grace: so darkness is the symbol of the devil, of ignorance and sin, which therefore are far from God. Thus Didymus and Oecumenius, who citing that of the Gospel of St. John chap. I, verse 5, The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it: "He calls," he says, "our sinful substance darkness, in which Christ was born, that is, which having been assumed, Christ was not partaker of its defilements; for He did not commit sin." Thus David: "Upright is the Lord our God, and there is no iniquity in Him." And Moses: "God," he says, "is faithful, without any iniquity." And again David: "You are not a God that wills iniquity." And elsewhere: "Holy in all His works." Finally Habakkuk: "Your eyes are pure, that they may not see evil." This is what St. James says, chap. I, verse 17: "With whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration." Truly St. Thomas, on 1 Timothy VI: "Things," he says, "which are indeed acts, but not pure, only shine, but are not also light; but the divine essence, since it is pure act, is light. Whence of the most holy of men it is said: He was not the light; but of the Word of God: He was the true light, enlightening every man." And St. Gregory Nazianzen, oration 40: "God," he says, "is the highest and inaccessible light, which cannot be perceived by the mind, nor explained in words, illuminating every nature endowed with reason, being in intelligible things what the sun is in sensible things; offering Himself the more to be contemplated by us, the more accurately we have purged our souls; the more again to be loved, the more we have contemplated; lastly the more to be known, the more we have loved; beholding and comprehending Himself, and through small things diffusing Himself to outward things. Now I call light this which is considered in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, whose richness is the identity of nature, and one and the same outpouring of splendor." All which things plainly indicate that it was truly said by John that God is light wholly without any darkness, and a light, as Oecumenius says, intelligible, which illuminates the eyes of our soul to its perception, and calling us away from all these material things, incites our appetite to it alone with a loving affection.
This statement is the antistrophe of that of chap. I of the Gospel, 4: "And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it," concerning which St. Gregory of Nyssa, oration On the Nativity of Christ: "Purity," he says, "dwells in our filth; but filth does not touch purity, as the Gospel says, that the light is in the darkness and the darkness has not embraced it." And St. Augustine, epistle 120 to Honoratus: "The Son of God," he says, "is not absent even from the minds of the impious, although they do not see Him; as neither is that light, presented to the eyes of the blind, seen." The same, book I On the Merit of Sins, chap. XXV: "As the sun is not comprehended by the blind, although it in some way clothes them with its rays, so the light of God is not comprehended by the darkness of folly." But the light of the Word shines in the darkness of impious men through the light of reason, through the voices of creatures, which all proclaim that there is a Creator, and that He is to be venerated and loved, through the law of nature inscribed on the mind, through the new law, through Scripture, doctors, preachers, holy inspirations, etc.
Whence the same Augustine, tract. 2 on John: "Do not fall," he says, "into sin, and this sun shall not set for you. If you make a fall, it will make a setting for you." If you desire to see the light, be also yourself light; for if you love darkness and darksome desires, they will darken, nay rather blind you.
The Gentiles saw this through a shadow, whom Clement of Alexandria cites, book IV of the Stromata. Antiphanes, he says, said: "Plutus (that is, riches) when he has received some who see more than others, makes them blind: hence by the Poets he is proclaimed blind from his birth;" so Venus, Bacchus, and every desire blinds those who see. Then he cites Aristophanes, saying: "Come on, men of obscure life, like the generation of leaves, weak, figments of wax, returning leaves like a shadow, fleeting, swathed, living a life of only one day."
Furthermore, ridiculous and foolish, equally as much as blasphemous, are the Talmudists, who say that God like the moon suffers eclipse and darkness, and namely suffered them when He unjustly attributed to the sun the light taken away from the moon, and therefore for the expiation of this fault of His own instituted the feast of the New Moon, or new moon festival, in which by sacrifices appointed by Himself at the beginning of each month He would purge this sin, as Sixtus of Siena reports, book II.
Verse 6: If We Say That We Have Fellowship With Him, and Walk in Darkness, We Lie, and Do Not the Truth
6. IF WE SAY THAT WE HAVE FELLOWSHIP WITH HIM, AND WALK IN DARKNESS (of ignorance of God and Christ, of errors and sins), WE LIE. — "For what fellowship has light with darkness?" 2 Cor. VI, 14. "To walk in darkness" is to live in sins, and in them to advance for the worse and to heap up sins upon sins. He attacks the Gnostics teaching at that time (as in ours the Lutherans and Calvinists teach) that all the faithful are predestined, and saved by faith alone, and therefore even if they sin and live shamefully, they nevertheless remain in God's predestination and grace, and shall certainly be saved. Likewise the Ebionites, who walking in darkness boasted that they pleased God, and like the other Judaizers thought that they washed away their sins by frequent washings and baptisms. Note: Sins are throughout called by St. John in the Gospel and here darkness, on account of many analogies on both sides. The first is: as darkness is the privation of light, so sins are the privation of grace. The second: as one walking in darkness sees nothing, and frequently stumbles: so those sinning in the way of salvation are blind, and frequently stumble. The third: as nightbirds, like owls, hate the light: so also sinners hate the light of God and of men, according to that of Christ: "He that does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his works be reproved. But he that does the truth, comes to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they are wrought in God," John III, 20. The fourth: because sins are the works of the prince of darkness, namely the devil; for as he is the first author of sin, so he instigates all to sin. The fifth: because most sins happen in darkness, according to that of Ovid: "Night and love, and wine, urge nothing moderate: She is empty of shame, and Bacchus and love of fear."
The sixth: because sins arise from darkness, namely from practical error, by which the sinner judges that here and now he should indulge a paltry desire at the loss of God, of heaven and of eternal goods, which is surely the highest blindness and stupidity. "Blindness of mind," says St. Augustine, book V Against Julian, "which only the illuminator God removes, is both sin, by which God is not believed in; and punishment of sin, by which a proud heart is punished with worthy chastisement; and a cause of sin, when something evil is committed by the error of a blind heart." The seventh: because they darken and blind the mind more. The eighth: because they lead to the eternal darkness of Gehenna: "A land, I say, of misery and darkness, where the shadow of death and no order, but everlasting horror dwells," Job X, 22. As therefore light is salutary and vital to living things and all things, but darkness is harmful and deadly: so the faith and grace of Christ are salutary, and bring eternal life; but sins are pestilent and create eternal death. Whence Horus Apollo, book I of the Hieroglyphics, chap. LXVII: "The Egyptians," he says, "when signifying darkness, paint the tail of a crocodile. For not otherwise does a crocodile bring to destruction and slaughter whatever animal it has seized, unless first having struck it with its tail, it has rendered it weak; for in this part of its body is the chief force and strength of the crocodile." As therefore the crocodile is destructive, so also is darkness.
Hence darkness is called "the shadow of death," according to that of Zechariah: "To enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death," Luke I, 79; and that of Isaiah IX, 2: "The people that walked in darkness, has seen a great light; to those dwelling in the region of the shadow of death, light is risen to them."
WE LIE, AND DO NOT DO THE TRUTH. — "We lie" in word, and "the truth," which we speak and profess, "we do not do" in deed; for truth here is understood not so much as the speculative truth of the mind and mouth, as the practical truth of work and conduct. The true therefore is the honorable good, or the duty of each which he ought to perform; if he does not perform it, he does not do the truth, that is, what is just and right, even if he simulates it, and therefore he is a masked hypocrite, and an ape clothed as a man, as Nyssen says in his epistle to the Council of Trent, session VI, chapter VII, where it asserts that no one can be just, "unless to him are communicated the merits of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ;" and that this happens in the justification of the impious, "while by the merit of the same most holy Passion the charity of God is poured forth through the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who are justified, and inheres in them." Furthermore Clement VI, in the Extravagans Unigenitus, on punishment and remission, asserts that one drop of Christ's blood could have redeemed the whole world, because it was the blood of the Word through the hypostatic union.
Wherefore St. Gregory Nazianzen says: "Nothing is to be compared with the miracle of my salvation, in which the small drops of blood restored the whole world, and accomplished for men the same thing that rennet does for milk, joining and binding us together into one." And St. Augustine on Psalm LXV: "You ask what He has bought? See what He has given, and you will find what He has bought. The blood of Christ is the price; how much is it worth? What but the whole world, what but all the nations?" Elsewhere, in Sermon 128 De Tempore: "The price of our life is the blood of the Lord, and the everlasting safety of the whole world; that money is the abundant possession of the whole world."
And St. Ambrose, in Book III On Virgins: "We have all things therefore in Christ; let every soul approach Him, whether sick with bodily sins, or fixed by certain nails of worldly desire, or still imperfect yet making progress through intent meditation, or already perfect in many virtues — every soul is in the Lord's power, and Christ is all things to us. If you desire to heal a wound, He is the physician; if you burn with fevers, He is the fountain; if you are weighed down by iniquity, He is justice; if you need help, He is strength; if you fear death, He is life; if you desire heaven, He is the way; if you flee darkness, He is the light; if you seek food, He is nourishment."
Note secondly: "the blood cleanses us," that is, the shedding of blood, namely the Passion and death of Christ: for this is the ransom and price for the sins of the whole world; it is a metonymy. Hence it follows that the blood of Christ cleanses sins not physically, but meritoriously. For Christ by the shedding of His blood, by His Passion and death, made satisfaction for our sins, and merited pardon of them for us. St. Thomas adds, III part, Question XLVIII, article 6, and Question L, article 6, that there is also in the blood and flesh of Christ a physical power of sanctifying, in that they are the physical instrument of the divinity for sanctifying men, on which the Theologians dispute in that same place.
But hear St. Thomas, Question XLVIII, article 6: "To the third it must be said, that the Passion of Christ, according as it is compared to His divinity, acts by way of efficiency; insofar as it is compared to the will of Christ's soul, it acts by way of merit; according as it is considered in the very flesh of Christ, it acts by way of satisfaction, insofar as through it we are freed from the guilt of punishment; by way of redemption, insofar as through it we are freed from the bondage of fault; and by way of sacrifice, insofar as through it we are reconciled to God, as is said below."
Harm. Thus it is said of the devil in John chapter VIII, verse 44: "He did not stand in the truth," because he did not persevere in the integrity, perfection, and angelic office in which he had been created; hence he became "a liar and the father of lies."
Verse 7: But if We Walk in the Light, as He Also Is in the Light, We Have Fellowship One With Another, and the Blood of Jesus Christ His Son Cleanseth Us From All Sin
7. BUT IF WE WALK IN THE LIGHT (of reason, faith, the Gospel, virtue, grace), AS HE (God) ALSO IS IN THE LIGHT (that is, He is luminous, indeed substantial and divine Light Himself, and therefore He does all His works in the light of divine wisdom, prudence, and holiness), WE HAVE FELLOWSHIP ONE WITH ANOTHER. — Vatablus says: mutual, that is, both with one another and consequently with God, as he said in verse 3. So Dionysius. Truly St. Augustine, Book IV of the Confessions, chapter IX: "Blessed," he says, "is the man who loves Thee, and his friend in Thee, and his enemy for Thy sake. For he alone loses no one dear to him, to whom all are dear in Him who is not lost." This is what the Wise Man says, Proverbs IV, 18: "The path of the just goes forth as a shining light, and grows even unto perfect day. The way of the wicked is darksome, they know not where they fall." And Paul, Philippians II, 25: "You shine as lights in the world in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation." Hear St. Augustine, Sermon 15 On the Words of the Apostle: "You see," he says, "that we are travelers. What is it to walk? I say briefly, to make progress, lest perhaps you do not understand and walk too sluggishly; always be displeased with what you are, if you wish to attain to what you are not yet. For where you have pleased yourself, there you have remained. But if you have said: It is enough, you have perished; always add, always walk, always advance; do not remain on the way, do not turn back, do not stray. He remains, who does not advance; he goes back, who returns to what he had already left behind; he strays, who apostatizes. The lame man on the road goes better than the runner off the road."
AND THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST, HIS SON, CLEANSES US FROM ALL SIN. — Not as if it made us incapable of sinning, as the heretics dream: for St. John teaches the contrary in the words immediately following; but "cleanses," that is, He has cleansed us from sins through baptism, and He cleanses in the present from venial sins, without which this mortal life is not led, and He will cleanse in the future from those same sins, and from the dangers of mortal sins. Finally in heaven He will cleanse us, not only from every fault and punishment, but also from all concupiscence. For this reason St. John uses the present "cleanses," so that under it as a kind of middle term he may include both the past and the future. So says St. Augustine, and from him Bede here, and St. Jerome, Book II Against the Pelagians: "What is written, 'And the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin,' is to be understood both in the confession of baptism, and in the clemency of penance." Therefore "cleanses," that is, has the power of cleansing, and can and is wont to cleanse like lye.
Note first: God does not merely scrape away sins, as the heretics will have it, but He utterly cleanses, that is, He purges and abolishes them, just as a stain is wiped from the face, mud from a garment, filth from a house — these are swept away and cleansed. So the Council of Trent.
Verse 8: If We Say That We Have No Sin, We Deceive Ourselves, and the Truth Is Not in Us
8. IF WE SAY THAT WE HAVE NO SIN, WE DECEIVE OURSELVES. — What and what sort of sin? First, Cajetan takes it as original sin; for we all contract this from Adam, with the exception of the Blessed Virgin, as the pious sense of the faithful holds, and is openly gathered from St. Augustine, Book V Against Julian, chapter XV, where he asserts that one who is without actual sin has also been without original sin; but the Blessed Virgin was without actual sin, as the Church teaches: therefore she was also without original sin. "The Most High has sanctified His own tabernacle," Psalm XLV, 5, because "in Him dwells the fullness of the divinity bodily," as Paul says, Colossians II, 9. Indeed, He took the most pure flesh from her flesh, which was likewise most pure. She therefore surpasses in purity all the angels, both Cherubim and Seraphim, says St. Chrysostom in the Liturgy, Nazianzen in his Tragedy, near the end; Ephrem in the Praises of the Mother of God, and St. Ambrose, Book II On Virgins: "What," he says, "is more noble than the Mother of God? What is more splendid than the Mother of God? What is more splendid than she whom Splendor itself has chosen?" St. Anselm, On the Conception of the Virgin, chapter XVIII: "It was fitting," he says, "that with that purity, than which a greater under God cannot be understood, that Virgin should shine, to whom God the Father had so disposed to give His only Son, whom He loved as begotten from His heart equal to Himself as Himself." Finally it is said of her in Canticles IV: "Thou art all fair, My love, and there is no spot in thee."
Secondly, Lyranus takes it as mortal sin; for although the just are without it, nevertheless because no one knows with certainty that he is in the grace of God and is just, hence likewise no one ought to presume and assert with certainty that he is free from mortal sin.
Thirdly, Hugh, Dionysius and others everywhere take it as venial sin: for although an infant or an adult recently baptized, or one fully contrite and absolved from all sins, is without every sin, even venial; nevertheless throughout one's whole life, indeed for a long time, one cannot be without it without quickly slipping into some sin: so the Council of Trent defines, session VI, canon 23, where however it excepts the Blessed Virgin: "If anyone," it says, "shall say that a man once justified, etc., can throughout his whole life avoid all sins, even venial ones, except by a special privilege of God, as the Church holds concerning the Blessed Virgin, let him be anathema." Note here that John says "we have" in the first person, signifying that he also, equally with the rest of the Apostles, has sin; for although they were confirmed in grace, so that they did not sin mortally, they could nevertheless sin, and sometimes did sin venially: how much more, then, do we, born and nourished in sins, commit many and grave sins? Whence we must continually humble ourselves and lament them, as Bellarmine excellently shows, in his book On the Dove's Lament, near the beginning of book II.
Fourthly, others by "sin" understand not only the fault, but also the guilt or obligation to temporal punishment, which usually remains after the fault and the eternal punishment have been remitted. So St. Thomas in IV, distinction 21, Question II, article 1, to 4.
Fifthly, others by "sin" understand concupiscence, which is sometimes in Scripture, as Romans VII, 13 and 17, and by St. Augustine called sin — not that it is properly and formally sin, as the heretics will have it, but by metonymy, because it is the effect, the punishment, and the cause of sin. For concupiscence, the fault being remitted, remains in all the regenerate and the justified, as the Council of Trent and experience itself teach. To this is added Gennadius, in the book On Ecclesiastical Dogmas, chapter LXXXVI (which book is falsely ascribed to St. Augustine), where he teaches that all truly assert themselves to be sinners, "because in truth they have something to lament, if not from the reproof of conscience, certainly from the mobility and mutability of a transgressor nature."
I confess that we may embrace all these meanings together, so that we take St. John's general statement generally of any sin and its effect, namely guilt and concupiscence, and then the verb "have" is taken broadly, and is to be extended to past and future — as if to say: We have had original sin, and we have or shall have some actual sin, if we live long. Hence soon in verse 10 he changes the present into the past, saying: "If we say that we have not sinned," etc.; for he wishes to teach that all are subject to sin, and need Christ as Redeemer: for His blood cleanses us from every sin, both as to fault and as to punishment and concupiscence, as he just said. Therefore, just as the blood of Christ cleanses us from every sin — original, mortal, venial, etc. — so likewise that "every" can here be taken: yet properly and directly here "sin" is to be understood as actual sin, whether it be mortal or venial. For only this must be confessed, as John adds about this sin: "If we confess our sins," etc.; and only of this is true what he adds in verse 10: "If we say that we have not sinned," that is, that we have not committed actual sin.
The sense therefore is: "If we say that we have no sin," that is, that we do not commit sin, do not commit it sometimes, but live without sin, and are ἀναμάρτητοι, that is, free from sin, or incapable of sinning, "we deceive ourselves." To have no sin, then, is the same as not to sin; just as to have hope is the same as to hope, Proverbs XXIII, 18; to have faith is to believe; to have rest is to rest, Apocalypse IV, 8; to have an end is to end, Mark III, 26. By "sin," therefore, understand actual sin, especially venial, because men, even the just, frequently fall into it, so that they are scarcely without all venial sin even for a short time; and so of it it can be said in the present, that "we have sin," that is, we frequently sin venially: thus the Council of Milevis explains and defines, canon 6; the Council of Trent, session VI, canon 23; St. Augustine, On the Perfection of Justice, chapter XXI; St. Jerome, dialogue 3 Against the Pelagians; St. Basil, homily On Penance; St. Cyprian, book III to Quirinus, chapter LIV; St. Gregory, XVIII Morals, IV; St. Ambrose, On Fleeing the World, chapter I, and others. St. James reinforces this, saying chapter III, 2: "In many things we all offend." See what is said there. For John, equally with James, takes to task the Simonians, the Gnostics, and other heretics of that age who taught that infidelity alone was sin; for to the faithful, they said, all things are clean, even if he lives shamefully. The same was taught in this age by Luther and the Libertines. The Beghards and Beguines indeed thought that they and their like could ascend to such great perfection that they would become impeccable, no matter how great a temptation might arise. Pelagius too taught that all sins, even venial, could be avoided without the grace of Christ, by the powers of nature alone — all of which St. John here condemns.
Not far from these stands Durandus in II, distinction 28, Question III, who thinks that all deliberate venial sins can be avoided, but not all indeliberate venial sins, which happen by surreption. This is what the Wise Man says, Ecclesiasticus VII, 21: "There is not a just man upon earth that doth good, and sinneth not." And Proverbs XXIV, 16: "A just man shall fall seven times, and shall rise again."
This therefore is our humiliation in the midst of ourselves, that we must continually acknowledge that we are sinners, and therefore daily according to Christ's teaching pray: "Forgive us our debts, etc., and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." Hear St. Augustine, On Nature and Grace, chapter XXXVI: "With the exception," he says, "of the Holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom, for the honor of the Lord, I wish no question whatever to be raised when sins are discussed; for from this we know that more grace was conferred upon her for conquering sin in every part, who merited to conceive and bear Him who is known to have had no sin. With this Virgin excepted, then, if we could gather all those holy men and women while they lived here, and ask them whether they were without sin, what do we think they would have answered? What this man says, or what John the Apostle says? I ask you, however great may have been their excellence of holiness in this body, if they could have been asked this, would they not with one voice have cried: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us'?" And St. Gregory, homily 39 on the Gospel: "He could not be without fault in the world," he says, "who came into the world with fault."
You then who are puffed up because of knowledge, who because of talent, wealth, strength, beauty, dignity, raise up your neck — lay aside your crests, look at your feet with the peacock. Do you know who you are? You are a sinner. Do you know what sin is? It is the greatest baseness of man, the greatest misery, the greatest evil of the world; for it is supremely opposed to the supreme Good. For sin is the supreme contempt of God, the supreme ingratitude, the supreme hatred, the supreme offense — so much so that it is Christ-killing, indeed as it were God-killing. For if God could be killed, He would surely be slain by no other weapon than sin.
Furthermore Cassian, in Conference XXIII, chapter XIX, gives the example of prayer, in which there is scarcely anyone whose mind does not wander, and who does not venially offend. Yet he must be read with caution, chapter V and following, where he seems to assert that whatever distracts us, even unwillingly, from continual contemplation of God is evil — such as eating, drinking, sleeping, working with the hands, as St. Paul did to procure his sustenance; but it must be explained of the evil of punishment, from which however the evil of fault may easily arise. For the Apostle explains it thus, Romans VII, 19: "For the good which I will, I do not, but the evil which I will not, that I do;" and by "good" he understands the continual memory and presence of God, by "evil" the distraction of the mind from this presence of God — as if to say, the Apostle: I would wish continually to contemplate God present, but because of the necessities of corrupt nature I cannot do so, and therefore I incur the danger of fault.
WE DECEIVE OURSELVES, — we deceive ourselves and are deceived, because we persuade ourselves of what is false, to the destruction of our soul. So Oecumenius. For he who thinks himself entirely pure from sin neglects to seek a remedy for his sin, on account of which he must be punished. Again, in saying that he is without all sin, he errs proudly and presumptuously; for he contradicts Scripture which asserts that we are all sinners, and he empties out the grace and Passion of Christ, saying that he has no need of the cleansing of His blood; therefore he is blasphemous and ungrateful: wherefore unless he repent, he shall be condemned.
AND THE TRUTH IS NOT IN US. — As if to say, "We lie," as Cyril reads, Catechesis 5. Hence St. Augustine in the Sentences, sentence 365: "It was divinely said," he says, "Ecclesiasticus chapter VII, 47: 'Be not over just,' because this is not the justice of the wise man, but the pride of the presumptuous. He therefore who in this way becomes too just, by that very excess becomes unjust. But who is it that makes himself just, except he who says that he has no sin?"
Verse 9: If We Confess Our Sins, He Is Faithful and Just, to Forgive Us Our Sins, and to Cleanse Us From All Iniquity
9. IF WE CONFESS. — St. John suggests the remedy of the sin of which he has said all are guilty, namely true acknowledgement of it, and humble confession and penance; for through this the blood of Christ is applied to us, which cleanses us from it, as he said in verse 7. But what kind of confession does St. John require — only the general one which is made to God, or the special one which is made to a priest in the sacrament of Penance? The heretics admit only the general one made to God; Catholics require also the special one. I answer that St. John requires both: the general for light sins, the special for grave ones: for it is not enough to confess mortal sins to God, but the same must be confessed to priests, that we may be absolved by them; for to them alone Christ has given the power of absolving, saying, John XX, 23: "Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; whose sins you shall retain, they are retained." Wherefore since St. John in this place is not contrary either to himself in the Gospel or to Christ, it must be said that it must be so explained, as if to say: If we confess our sins, namely in the manner in which Christ willed and instituted — that is, by confessing mortal sins to a priest, venial ones to God Himself, or even to a priest if we wish — God is faithful to remit them to us when we confess. So Thomas Anglicus, Dionysius and Serarius here, and Bellarmine, Book I On Penance, chapter XIII, and Book III, chapter IV, who at length confirm the same point.
Hear St. Cyprian, sermon On the Lapsed: "This very thing (sin)," he says, "sorrowing before the priests of God and simply confessing, they make the exomologesis of their conscience, they lay bare the burden of their soul, they seek a saving remedy even for their small and slight wounds." And Tertullian, book On Penance, chapter VIII: "Confession of offenses," he says, "relieves as much as concealment aggravates; for confession is the counsel of satisfaction, concealment of contumacy." Then he adds the acts of the penitent which are signs and companions of true confession: "Therefore the exomologesis is a discipline of prostrating and humbling a man, enjoining a manner of life that lures forth mercy. Concerning his very dress and food it commands him to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to darken the body with filth, to cast down the mind with sorrow, to change those things in which he has sinned by harsh treatment, to know food and drink only as pure — not for the belly's sake, namely, but for the soul's. For the most part, indeed, to nourish prayers with fasting, to groan, to weep, and to lament day and night to the Lord thy God; to fall down before the presbyters, and to kneel before the dear ones of God, and to enjoin upon all the brethren the embassies of his entreaty." Briefly St. Chrysostom, homily On Penance: "Penance," he says, "is contrition in the heart, confession in the mouth, and in deed entire humility."
Morally: See here how useful confession is, which immediately appeases the wrath of God and obtains His grace, according to that of Isaiah XLIII, 26, according to the Septuagint: "Tell thou first thy sins, that thou mayest be justified." So David: "For I," he says, "know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me," Psalm L, 4; and Psalm XXXI, 5: "I said: I will confess against myself my injustice to the Lord, and Thou hast forgiven the wickedness of my sin." See St. Chrysostom on Psalm L, and St. Augustine, homily 12 among the 50. Hear Origen, homily 2 on Psalm XXXVII: "Just as those who have within them undigested food enclosed, or humors, or phlegm pressing heavily and troublesomely on the stomach, are relieved if they vomit: so too those who have sinned, if indeed they conceal and retain sin within them, are pressed inwardly and almost suffocated by the phlegm or humor of sin; but if a man becomes his own accuser, while he accuses himself and confesses, he at once vomits up the debt and digests every cause of the disease." Hence St. Diadochus, in his book On Spiritual Perfection, last chapter, explaining this passage of St. John of the confession which a religious makes to his director and spiritual father by manifesting to him his temptations and falls, teaches that it is the singular remedy of all temptations and sins. And St. Francis from St. Augustine in the Sentences: "If you excuse yourself," he says, "God accuses you; and if you accuse yourself, God excuses you."
Furthermore St. John teaches that, because we sin frequently, we ought frequently to confess; for though the sins be light, yet if they are neglected, they grow many and grave. "Many light things make one great thing, many drops fill a river, many grains make a mass," says St. Augustine here. The same, epistle 108: "For what does it matter as regards shipwreck, whether the ship be overwhelmed by one great wave, or whether water creeping in little by little, neglected and despised through carelessness, fills the ship and sinks it?" This is what Ecclesiasticus XIX, 4 says: "He that contemneth small things, shall fall by little and little." And, as Gregory says: "If we neglect to cure small things, insensibly seduced we boldly perpetrate even greater ones." And elsewhere: "For he who neglects to weep over and to avoid the smallest sins, falls from the state of justice not indeed suddenly, but wholly piece by piece. Those are to be admonished who frequently transgress in the smallest matters, that they consider carefully that sometimes one sins worse in a small matter than in a greater one. For the greater fault, the more quickly it is recognized as a fault, the more quickly it is also amended; but the lesser one, while it is believed to be as nothing, by so much is held more dangerously in use, as it is more securely. Hence it generally happens that the mind, accustomed to light evils, no longer shudders at greater ones, and arriving by faults at a kind of authority of wickedness, despises to be afraid of greater things by so much as it has learned by not fearing to sin in the smallest."
HE IS FAITHFUL. — "Because He who admonished us to pray for our debts and sins promised paternal mercy, and pardon to follow," says St. Cyprian, On the Lord's Prayer.
AND JUST. — How just? For God is not bound by justice to remit sin to the sinner, even one who is penitent; for to remit and pardon that is of His pure mercy and clemency alone. I answer, "just," that is, equitable. For it is equitable and fitting and worthy of God that He should remit sin to the penitent, both because He Himself promised this to the penitent — not as the wage of a work, but as a gift and reward of penance, John XX, 23; Ezekiel XVIII, 32, and elsewhere: now what is promised is a debt, which therefore it is just to pay; and also because it is fitting and worthy of God and of the divine goodness and clemency, that He receive the penitent into grace and reconcile them to Himself. "It is just," says St. Anselm, Proslogion, chapters IX and X, "O God, that Thou shouldest spare the wicked, but it is also just that Thou shouldest punish the wicked." Hence some explain, "just," that is, kind and merciful; for mercy especially befits God; and finally because penance, as it were by the nature of the thing, is the proximate disposition to reconciliation and grace. Just as therefore it is naturally just that into wood heated to as it were eight degrees — as having the ultimate disposition — the form of fire be introduced: so supernaturally it is equitable that, when penance has been placed as it were as the ultimate disposition, the form of grace be introduced, by which the sinner is reconciled to God. So Lyranus and Dionysius. This belongs to vindictive justice, and consequently to commutative justice broadly taken, such as piety, observance, religion, which fall short of the strict notion of justice, because they regard a greater debt than that of justice, and because they regard God, between whom and man there is not the equality which justice requires. Indeed Durandus, in IV, dist. 14, Question II, holds that penance is commutative justice itself, insofar as the theological virtues command it to render to God the satisfaction owed (such as it can) for the offense. But others everywhere more truly hold that penance is a special virtue, distinct from strict justice and the other moral virtues. Richard adds in IV, dist. 15, art. 1, Question II, in the body and to objection 1, that with the merits of Christ presupposed, the penitent can satisfy for sins out of justice; and dist. 17, art. 2, Question VII, he asserts that contrition, if it precedes the remission of sins, merits it condignly. Thus also some others teach that contrition is equivalent to mortal sin, and satisfies for it on equal terms, and they deduce this from the principles of St. Thomas. For St. Thomas in I-II, Question CXIII, art. 8, teaches that in the justification of a sinner, first comes the infusion of sanctifying grace, then contrition and the remission of sin; for from sanctifying grace contrition flows, and from contrition the remission of sin. The disciples of St. Thomas teach the same, as Cajetan and Medina there, the Ferrariensis, book III Against the Gentiles, chap. CLIII; D. Soto, book II On Nature and Grace, chap. XVII. With this presupposed, it follows that contrition merits the remission of sin as if on equal terms. For if contrition flows from sanctifying grace, and precedes the remission of sins, therefore it merits the same, just as it merits eternal glory, by the opinion of St. Thomas; for sanctifying grace naturally and as it were by its own right expels sin, indeed does so per se and formally, and therefore without the intermediary of contrition.
But other Doctors universally hold the contrary, namely that contrition does not flow from sanctifying grace, but from a special help, or from prevenient and exciting grace. The reason is that no disposition can flow from the form to which it disposes, as is evident from induction of other dispositions and forms. Therefore since contrition is a disposition to sanctifying grace, it cannot flow from it; but necessarily goes before and precedes it, as the Council of Trent expressly teaches, session VI, chap. VI, VII and VIII, where consequently it teaches that we are justified gratis, and therefore do not merit the justice which includes the remission of sins. So likewise teach Scotus in IV, dist. 14, Question II; Gabriel, ibid. Question I; Durandus in IV, dist. 17, Question II; Andreas Vega in the Council of Trent, book VI, chap. XXVIII and XXIX; Bonaventure in IV, dist. 15, art. 1, Question I, Almain, Marsilius and others ibid. The Fathers teach the same, as St. Augustine, Ambrose, Tertullian, Chrysostom, treatise On Penance.
Secondly, "just," because Christ by His blood and death merited for us this pardon, and God promised it to Him. Just therefore is, and owed by justice, this remission of sins, but to Christ, not to us: so Cajetan. Furthermore Christ communicates His merits to the penitent, applies them, and as it were appropriates them, so that the penitent may offer them to God as it were as his own ransom for his sins. Wherefore God is just, who receiving this ransom remits the sins; but because these merits are Christ's own, and only appropriated by Him to us, that is, applied, hence the notion of justice in the remission of sins is properly with respect to Christ, not us, both because the merits are His; and because He promised the remission to Him, and God renders it from a pact, not to us; otherwise not Christ alone, but we ourselves also would be our redeemers, which is impious and injurious to Christ.
Thirdly, more subtly our Suarez, part 3, vol. III, disp. XI, sect. 1, concl. 3: "Faithful," he says, is God when He pardons mortal sins to the penitent; "just," when He pardons venial sins to the just: namely because the just by works of penance, of charity, etc., merit condignly this pardon, as St. Augustine teaches, On Correction and Grace, chap. XIII.
Fourthly, in a certain manner God is also just when He pardons mortal sins to the penitent and confessing, in that confession, and the acts of his penance, recounted a little before from Tertullian, are as it were a certain satisfaction, by which we satisfy God for the offense committed against Him. For as one offending who despises his neighbor justly satisfies him, when he humbles himself and seeks pardon from him; whence the offended is held by justice to accept this satisfaction: so also the penitent in some way satisfies God when he humbly confesses the offense, and seeks pardon with groaning, tears, and especially if he does so from true and perfect contrition of mind. For contrition, since it proceeds from love of God above all things, is as it were a certain compensation for the injury by which the sinner despised God and put Him after the creature, which by sinning he loved excessively; for the love of God loving Him above all creatures compensates as it were the hatred of God, and the honor and price of God compensates His being despised and contemned, though not on equal terms.
Wherefore in some manner it is just that God pardon the offense to the penitent on account of these acts; and for this reason penance is placed by the Theologians as a virtue akin and connected to justice, and a potential part of it. Whence St. Thomas, III part, Question LXXXV, art. 3, teaches that penance is a part and species of justice.
MAY HE CLEANSE US FROM ALL INIQUITY. — "Iniquity" signifies more than sin, says St. Gregory, XI Morals, chap. XXI or XXII, because anyone more easily bears being called a sinner than iniquitous. St. Ambrose denies this, On the Apology of David; nay rather, he says, it is more shameful to be and to be called a sinner than iniquitous. But whatever may be the case in this matter, often these two are taken for the same; hence here they are placed as it were as synonyms.
Verse 10: If We Say That We Have Not Sinned, We Make Him a Liar, and His Word Is Not in Us
10. IF WE SAY THAT WE HAVE NOT SINNED. — First, by original sin, by which we sinned long ago in Adam, and which we contracted in ourselves, when we were first conceived and animated: so some. But for what purpose would St. John inculcate here original sin while omitting actual sins? Secondly, "we have sinned," that is, we have been able to sin by actual mortal sin on account of innate concupiscence. But who does not know this? Wherefore it is truer that St. John speaks of venial sins; for in his manner he repeats, and says and inculcates the same thing here as what he said in verse 8: "If we say that we have no sin." Whence the Syriac translates, if we say that we are not sinners, or that we do not sin. St. John Hebraizes; for the Hebrews use the past for the present which they lack, and for the future. For the past among them is the theme itself and root verb from which they derive the other tenses, moods, and persons.
St. Ambrose illustrates this very thing with various examples, book I On Abraham, chap. VIII, as in John XV, 8: "In this is My Father glorified (that is, is glorified and shall be glorified), that you bring forth very much fruit, and become My disciples." Luke I, 47, the Blessed Virgin sings: "My soul magnifies the Lord; and my spirit hath exulted," that is, exults, "in God my Saviour." Matt. XXIII, 2: "Upon the chair of Moses have sat down," that is, sit, "the Scribes." The sense therefore is: "If we say that we have not sinned," that is, that we do not sin, that we live without sin both venial and mortal, that we have neither sinned, nor are accustomed to sin. Yet he says we have sinned in the past, because he writes to the Parthians (as I said in the preface), who recently converted from paganism to Christ, had committed many grave sins in paganism. Again, among those formerly converted there were some who long deferred baptism, even up to death, and so were baptized while sick in bed, so that being expiated by baptism from all fault and penalty they might immediately fly pure into heaven, and from this they were called Clinics, that is Bedridden, against whom the Fathers gravely inveigh, as St. Ambrose, sermon On the Saints; St. Basil, Nazianzen and Nyssen, oration On Baptism. These, surely before baptism, being in original sin and destitute of the grace of God, were committing many sins. But those who as children had been baptized, when already adults committed many sins at least venial. For he speaks to adult Christians. Wherefore he truly asserts that all have sinned in the past, because he wishes to warn them, that henceforth in the future, as already reborn in Christ, they may zealously beware of sins; whence soon at the beginning of chap. II, he adds: "My little children, these things I write to you, that you may not sin any more."
WE MAKE HIM A LIAR (because God in the Scriptures asserts that all men are sinners, and do not live without sin, as in Eccles. VII, 21; Proverbs XXIV, 16; Psalm CXLI, 2; James III, 2, and elsewhere. And He teaches us to pray daily: "Forgive us our debts." Wherefore) HIS WORD IS NOT IN US. — As if to say: We do not understand, do not embrace, do not retain His true doctrine, or certainly we forget it; we do not believe the Scriptures and the word of God, which asserts all to be liable to sin, but we make that word, and God Himself, a liar. So Clement, Didymus, Cajetan, Dionysius and Catharinus. Otherwise the Gloss: "The Word of God," it says, that is Christ through whom the remission of sins is made, does not remain in us, since we are unbelievers and proud, because we overturn the mystery of Christ's redemption, and say that we as just men did not need, nor need, the Redeemer Himself. Or "the word" which God spoke in Ecclesiasticus III, 20: "The greater you are, humble yourself in all things," does not remain in us, because we do the contrary; for since we are small and sinners, we wish to be great and impeccable.