Homilies on John 15.1–15.2

“No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, [who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him] known.” God wishes us to attend to the names and words found in the Scriptures not casually but with great understanding. That is why blessed David in many places prefixed to his psalms, “For understanding,” and said, “[Open my eyes, and I] will consider the wonders of your law.” And after him his son too, giving counsel, shows that we must seek wisdom like silver, or rather trade for it above gold. And the Lord too, exhorting the Jews to search the Scriptures, leads us further into inquiry. For he would not have spoken so if they could be grasped straightaway at the first reading. For what lies in the open and is at hand no one would ever search for, but rather what is veiled and is found with much inquiry. That is why he calls them a hidden treasure, rousing us to search. These things have been said to us so that we may not approach the words of the Scriptures casually or at random, but with great exactness. For if someone were to listen without examination to what is said in them and accept everything just as it is said, according to the letter, he would suspect many absurd things about God. For he will accept that he is a man, that he is made of bronze, that he is irascible and wrathful, and many doctrines still worse than these about him. But if he learns the sense that lies in the depth, he will be freed from all this absurdity. For the passage now before us also says that God has a bosom, which is proper to bodies. But no one is so mad as to suspect that the Incorporeal is a body. So that we may take the whole in a manner worthy of its spiritual meaning, come, let us search the passage from the top.

“No one has ever seen God.” From what line of thought did the evangelist come to this? Having shown the great surpassingness of Christ’s gifts, so that the difference between them and what was administered through Moses is infinite, he now wishes to state a reasonable cause of the difference as well. For Moses, being a servant, was the minister of lesser things; but this one, being Master and King and the King’s Son, brought us far greater things, being always with the Father and seeing him continually. That is why he went on to say, “No one has ever seen God.” What, then, shall we say to Isaiah, the most loud-voiced of prophets, when he says, “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up”? And to John, when he testifies of him that he said these things when he saw his glory? And to Ezekiel? For he too sees him seated above the Cherubim. And to Daniel? For he too says, “The Ancient of Days was seated.” And to Moses himself, saying, “Show me your glory, that I may see you so as to know you”? And Jacob took his name from this, being called Israel; for “Israel” means “one who sees God.” And others too have seen him. How, then, did John say, “No one has ever seen God”? To show that all those were acts of condescension, not a sight of the naked essence itself. For if they had seen the nature itself, they would not have beheld it in different ways. For it is simple, without form, uncompounded, and uncircumscribed; it does not sit, or stand, or walk; for all these things belong to bodies. How it is, he alone knows. Showing this through one of the prophets, God the Father said, “I multiplied visions,” he says, “and by the hands of the prophets I was represented in likenesses”; that is, “I condescended; I did not appear as what I was.” For since his Son was going to appear to us in real flesh, he trained them from of old to see the essence of God as far as it was possible for them to see it. For what God is in himself not only the prophets have not seen, but neither the angels nor the archangels; if you ask them, you will hear them answer nothing about the essence, but only singing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men.” And if you wish to learn something from the Cherubim or the Seraphim, you will hear the mystical song of the sanctification, and that “heaven and earth are full of his glory.” If you inquire of the higher powers, you will find nothing other than that they have one work, to praise God: “Praise him,” it says, “all his powers.” The Son alone sees him, and the Holy Spirit. For how could the whole of created nature see the Uncreated? For if we cannot receive a clear sight of any incorporeal power whatever, even though it is created (and this was shown often in the case of the angels), much less can we of the essence that is both incorporeal and uncreated. That is why Paul too says, “whom no man has seen or can see.” Does this privilege, then, belong to the Father alone, and not to the Son? Far from it; it belongs to the Son too. That it belongs to him too, hear Paul showing it and saying, “who is the image of the invisible God.” And he who is the image of the invisible is himself also invisible; otherwise he would not be an image. And if elsewhere he says, “God was manifested in the flesh,” do not be surprised; for the manifestation came about through the flesh, not according to the essence. For Paul shows that he too is invisible, not only to men but also to the powers above. For having said, “He was manifested in the flesh,” he added, “He was seen by angels.”

So he was seen by the angels too at that time, when he put on flesh; before this they did not see him in this way, since the essence was invisible to them too. “And how,” someone says, “did Christ say, Do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven?” What? Does God have a face, and is he circumscribed in heaven? But no one would be so mad as to say this. What, then, is meant? As when he says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” he means the sight of the mind that is possible for us, and our thought about God, so one may say of the angels that, because of their pure and wakeful nature, they picture nothing else but God continually. That is why he himself says again, “No one knows the Father except the Son.” What then? Are we all in ignorance? God forbid! But no one knows him as the Son does. As, then, many saw him with the sight that was permitted them, but no one beheld the essence, so now too we all know God, but no one knows what his essence is except only the one begotten from him. For by knowledge he means here exact vision and comprehension, as great as the Father has of the Child: “As the Father knows me, so I know the Father.” That is why, see with what abundance the evangelist speaks. Having said, “No one has ever seen God,” he did not say, “The Son, having seen, has made him known,” but set down something more than seeing, saying, “who is in the bosom of the Father.” For to dwell in the bosom is far more than to see. For one who simply sees does not necessarily have exact knowledge of what appears to him; but one who dwells in the bosom will be ignorant of nothing. When you hear, then, that “No one knows the Father except the Son,” lest you should say that, though he knows the Father more than all, he does not know how great he is, for this reason the evangelist says that he dwells in the bosom of the Father, and Christ himself says that he knows him as much as the Father knows the Son. Ask the one who contradicts, then: “Tell me, does the Father know the Son?” And he will certainly say, unless he is mad, “Yes.” After this let us ask him again: “What then, does he see and know him with exact vision and knowledge, and does he know clearly what he is?” And he will certainly say this too. From this, then, gather the Son’s exact comprehension of the Father. For he himself said, “As the Father knows me, so I too know him”; and elsewhere, “Not that anyone has seen God except he who is from God.” That is why, as I said, the evangelist mentions the bosom, showing us everything through this one word: that the kinship and oneness of the essence are great, that the knowledge is exactly alike, that the power is equal. For the Father would not have one of another essence in his bosom; nor would one who was a servant and one of the many have dared to move about in his Master’s bosom; for this belongs only to a genuine son, who has great freedom with his begetter and has nothing less than he. Would you learn his eternity too? Hear what Moses says about the Father. When he asked what he should answer the Egyptians if they asked him who had sent him, he is commanded to say, “He who is has sent me.” And “He who is” signifies being always, and being without beginning, and being truly and in the proper sense. This is what “In the beginning was” shows too, since it indicates being always. This is the expression John uses here, showing that the Son is in the bosom of the Father without beginning and eternally. So, lest because of the sharing of the name you should think him one of the sons who have become so by grace, first, the article is added, distinguishing him from those who are sons by grace. And if this is not enough for you, but you still stoop downward, hear a name more proper than this, “Only-begotten.” And if even after this you look downward again, I will not decline to use even a human expression about God, that of the bosom, only so that you may suspect nothing lowly. Do you see the loving-kindness and care of the Master? God applies to himself words unworthy of him, so that even in this way you may see through to the truth and conceive something great and lofty; and do you remain below? For tell me, why is “bosom,” this gross and fleshly word, used here? So that we may suspect God to be a body? Away with the thought! By no means, he says. Why, then, is it said? For if it neither presents the genuineness of the Son nor shows that God is not a body, the expression has been thrown in superfluously, filling no need. Why, then, is it said? For I will not stop asking you this. Is it not clear that it is so that through it we may understand nothing else than the genuineness of the Only-begotten and his co-eternity with the Father?

“He has made him known,” it says. What did he make known? That “no one has ever seen God”; that God is one. But this the rest of the prophets, and Moses too, cry out again and again: “The Lord your God, the Lord is one”; and Isaiah, “Before me there was no other God, and after me there is none.” [3.] What more, then, did we learn from the Son, as from one who is in the Father’s bosom? What from the Only-begotten? First, that these very things were the work of his operation; then, that we received a far clearer teaching, and learned that “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth”; and further, this very thing, that it is impossible to see God, and that no one knows him except the Son; and that he is the Father of a genuine Only-begotten; and the other things he taught about him. “He has made him known” shows the clearer and plainer teaching, which he gave, and with success, not to the Jews only but to the whole world. For not even all the Jews attended to the prophets; but to the Only-begotten of God the whole world yielded and was persuaded. So the making known here shows the greater clearness of the teaching; that is why he is also called the Word and the Angel of Great Counsel.

Since, then, we have been counted worthy of a greater and more perfect teaching, God having spoken to us in these last days no longer through prophets but through the Son, let us show a way of life far greater and worthy of the honor. For it is absurd that he condescended so far as to wish to speak to us no longer through his servants but through himself, while we show nothing more than those who came before. They had Moses as teacher, we the Master of Moses. So let us show a philosophy worthy of this honor, and have nothing in common with the earth. For this is why he brought us teaching from heaven above: to move our minds there, so that we may become imitators of our Teacher as far as we are able. “And how,” someone says, “is it possible to become imitators of Christ?” By doing everything for the common good and not seeking our own. “For Christ too,” it says, “did not please himself; but as it is written, The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.” Let no one, then, seek his own. For in fact one seeks his own when he looks to his neighbor’s; for what is theirs is ours. We are one body, and parts and members of one another. Let us not, then, be disposed as though torn apart, and let no one say, “So-and-so is not my friend, nor my relative, nor my neighbor, nor have I anything in common with him; how shall I approach him? How shall I speak to him?” For even if he is not a relative or a friend, he is a man, sharing the same nature as you, having the same Master, your fellow servant and fellow tenant; for he was born into the same world. And if he shares the same faith too, see, he has become your member. For what friendship could produce so great a union as the kinship of faith? For we must have toward one another not the closeness that friends ought to show to friends, but that of member to member. For no one could ever find a closer intimacy than this kind of friendship and fellowship. As, then, you could not say [of one of your own members], “What intimacy or closeness have I with it?” (for that would be ridiculous), so neither can you say this of your brother. “For we were all baptized into one body,” it says. Why into one body? So that we may not be torn apart, but by our coming together and friendship with one another may preserve the coherence of one body. Let us not, then, despise one another, lest we neglect ourselves. “For no one ever hated his own flesh,” it says, “but nourishes and cherishes it.” That is why God gave us this world as a single house, distributed everything equally, kindled one sun for all, stretched out one roof, the heaven, set out one table, the earth. He gave another table too, far greater than this, but this too is one (the initiated know what I mean); he granted all one manner of birth, the spiritual; there is one homeland for all, that in heaven; we all drink from the same cup. He did not give more and more precious things to the rich man and meaner and fewer to the poor, but called all equally; he supplied the things of the flesh with equal honor, and the things of the spirit alike. Where, then, does the great inequality in life come from? From the greed and arrogance of the rich. But no, brothers, let this no longer happen; and when the universal and more necessary things bring us together, let us not be divided by earthly and mean things: wealth, I mean, and poverty, and bodily kinship, and enmity and friendship. For all these things are a shadow, and meaner than a shadow, to those who have the bond of love from above. Let us keep this unbroken, then, and none of the evil spirits that divide so great a union will be able to enter. May we all attain it, by the grace and loving-kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom and with whom be glory to the Father together with the Holy Spirit, now and always and to the ages of ages. Amen.