7.

Chapter XXIV .— Texts Explained; Eighthly, John xvii. 3 . and the Like.Our Lord’s divinity cannot interfere with His Father’s prerogatives, as the One God, which were so earnestly upheld by the Son. ‘One’ is used in contrast to false gods and idols, not to the Son, through whom the Father spoke. Our Lord adds His Name to the Father’s, as included in Him. The Father the First, not as if the Son were not First too, but as Origin.

Now that this is the sense of the Prophet is clear and manifest to all; but since the irreligious men, alleging such passages also, dishonour the Lord and reproach us, saying, ‘Behold God is said to be One and Only and First; how say ye that the Son is God? for if He were God, He had not said, “I Alone,” nor “God is One ¹;”’ it is necessary to declare the sense of these phrases in addition, as far as we can, that all may know from this also that the Arians are really contending with God ². If there then is rivalry of the Son towards the Father, then be such words uttered against Him; and if according to what is said to David concerning Adonijah and Absalom ³, so also the Father looks upon the Son, then let Him utter and urge such words against Himself, lest He the Son, calling Himself God, make any to revolt from the Father. But if he who knows the Son, on the contrary, knows the Father, the Son Himself revealing Him to him, and in the Word he shall rather see the Father, as has been said, and if the Son on coming, glorified not Himself but the Father, saying to one who came to Him, ‘Why callest thou Me good? none is good save One, that is, God ⁴;’ and to one who asked, what was the great commandment in the Law, answering, ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One Lord ⁵;’ and saying to the multitudes, ‘I came down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me ⁶;’ and teaching the disciples, ‘My Father is greater than I,’ and ‘He that honoureth Me, honoureth Him that sent Me ⁷;’ if the Son is such towards His own Father, what is the difficulty ⁸, that one must need take such a view of such passages? and on the other hand, if the Son is the Father’s Word, who is so wild, besides these Christ-opposers, as to think that God has thus spoken, as traducing and denying His own Word? This is not the mind of Christians; perish the thought; for not with reference to the Son is it thus written, but for the denial of those falsely called gods, invented by men.