Commentary on Luke (Greek fragments) 11.46–12.15

He weaves his discourse to them as from a plain example. The law was admittedly burdensome to those of Israel; and the divine disciples too confessed this, saying in the Acts: “Now, then, why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?” And Christ himself taught us this, calling out and saying: “Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest; take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” He says that those under the law are those who labour and are heavy laden, and he named himself meek, since the law did not have this quality. For, as Paul says, “Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.” “Woe to you, then, lawyers; for you tie up burdens hard to bear and lay them on those under the law, but you yourselves do not touch them.” For they commanded that the commandment of Moses be kept inviolate and brought punishment on those who set it aside, while they themselves thought it of no account to do any of what was ordained. The most wise Paul too rebukes those accustomed to do this, saying: “You who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who say one must not steal, do you steal? You who say one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law, do you dishonour God by transgressing the law?” For the teacher is unapproved when his way of life does not agree with his word; and the Saviour himself has hung a bitter penalty on such a one, saying that “he who teaches and does will be called great; but whoever teaches and does not do will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.” “Woe to you, for you build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them” (11:47). Having exposed the most wicked workshop of the lawyers too, he weaves a rebuke common to all the leaders of the Jews. Let us search exactly what he says. The fathers of the Jews killed at various times the holy prophets, who brought them the divine word; and those born of them, confessing that the prophets were august and honourable, built tombs, or monuments, round them, paying them the honour most fitting for saints. So their fathers killed them, but they, believing them to be prophets and holy men, became judges of those who killed them; for by the very means by which they resolved to honour those who had been slain, they accuse the slayers of impiety. But those who condemned their own fathers for such terrible murders were to be caught in the same evils and to go through the same offences, or rather still worse ones. For as long as one examines the wrongs of others, judging by natural reason, one sees the evil and blames it; but when led on to the same passions of soul oneself, one is carried to them as if blind. For they killed the Author of life; and to their impieties against him they added the murders of his divine disciples. For the Saviour, the Wisdom of God, says to them: “I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill and persecute,” and what follows. By prophets here he means the apostles, and the successors of the apostles, the pastors and teachers of the churches, adorned with the gifts of the Spirit in prophecy and teaching. He foretells, then, the evils that were to overtake the generation of the Jews because of their insatiable murderousness; for the blood of all the prophets shed from the foundation of the world was to be required of this generation. By Zechariah here it is consistent to understand the father of the Forerunner, whom unwritten tradition records the Jews killed between the temple and the altar because he prophesied—or rather pointed out—the Mother of God, and the God and Saviour Jesus Christ to be born of her, as one to be sent as King and Lord over their nation; and because he did not remove the holy Virgin herself, after her conception by the Holy Spirit, from the place of the virgins, which was in the temple between the sanctuary and the altar, as though she were married, but recognized her as still a virgin and allowed her to stand in the usual place. For these reasons, then, those who heard fell into anger and armed — [Of the Nyssene. This Zechariah was a priest, led by the gift of prophecy to the knowledge of hidden things; who, having been initiated into the mystery of virginity in the incorrupt birth, did not exclude the unwed mother from the place in the temple allotted by the law to virgins, teaching the Jews that the girl was a virgin, and that the one to be born of her, Jesus Christ, was great God and Saviour; and this place was the space between the sanctuary and the altar. When they heard this, for fear of becoming subject to a king, they made away with him who bore witness to these things, sacrificing the priest at the altar itself. — Severus too says on the same passage that unwritten tradition records that the Jews killed the priest Zechariah, John’s father, between the sanctuary and the altar, for the same reason that the Nyssene gave. Of Origen. We find in the Kingdoms a Zechariah, a priest, slain near the sanctuary and the altar by Joash king of Judah; but Josephus relates that Zechariah son of Barachiah was himself the father of the Baptist; for they cannot …]

their hands against him, fearing the king expected from his prophecy, for fear of becoming subject to one who would rule over them. So they made away with him who bore witness to these things about the birth, sacrificing the priest at the altar itself. “Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation” (11:51). … that he says demonstratively “of this generation,” we say does not perhaps mark out only those then present and listening, but every murderer and everyone who falls into bloodguilt; for like will be ranked with like, as a brother and kinsman, according to the saying, “This is the generation of those who seek the Lord,” and, “You will keep us from this generation.” “You have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves,” and so on (11:52). By the key of knowledge we say he means the law, and justification in Christ—through faith in him, clearly. For though the law is in shadow and type, yet the types shape the truth, and the shadows depict for us in many ways the mystery of Christ. A lamb was slaughtered according to the law of Moses; they ate its flesh and anointed the doorposts with its blood, and they overcame the destroyer. But the blood of a common sheep could not have overthrown death; Christ, then, was being depicted as in a lamb, enduring slaughter for the life of the world and saving by his own blood those who partake of him. One could say very much more besides, through which the mystery of Christ can be seen depicted through the shadow of the law. And he himself said somewhere, speaking to the Jews: “It is Moses who accuses you, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me.” And again: “Search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and these are they that bear witness about me; and you are not willing to come to me that you may have life.” For every word of the divinely inspired Scripture looks to him and is directed toward him. Those called lawyers, then, since they busied themselves with the law of Moses and were not ignorant of the words of the holy prophets, ought in a way to have opened to the crowds of the Jews the doors of knowledge. For the law is a tutor to Christ, and the godly proclamations of the holy prophets lead to the knowledge of him. But the so-called lawyers did not do this; on the contrary, they took away the key of knowledge—that you may understand the guidance through the law, or faith, clearly faith in Christ; for the knowledge of the truth comes through faith. And indeed the prophet Isaiah says somewhere: “And if you do not believe, neither will you understand.” “For without faith it is impossible ever to please.” The lawyers took away the key of knowledge, then; for they did not allow any to believe in Christ the Saviour of all. He worked wonders in many ways; but they, though they ought to have admired him for them, disparaged the divine signs, and, scandalizing the peoples under their hand, said: “This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons.” Do you see them in this taking away the key of knowledge? He taught in the synagogues, he made plain to his hearers the will of the Father, good and perfect and acceptable; but they are found not to have left even this teaching of his without blame; for they called out to the crowds: “He has a demon and is mad; why do you listen to him?” They truly took away, then, the key of knowledge; they did not enter themselves, and they hindered others too. “The scribes and Pharisees began to press him hard and to provoke him to speak about many things” (11:53). Vexed at the rebukes, it says, they began to press him hard. “Press hard” means to lie in wait for, to bear a grudge, or to be hostile. And they tried, it says, to make him speak offhand about many things. And what is “to make him speak offhand”? They demanded that he answer their crafty questions on the spot and as it were without consideration, thinking that he would certainly slip and say something not free from blame. But they did not know that he was God; or rather they had become despisers, boasters and insolent. Therefore Christ charged his followers, that is, his disciples, to beware of them; hear, then:

“First, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees” (12:1).

Of which the Lord wishes the disciples to beware, calling hypocrisy leaven here; for the thing is hateful to God; and though it sometimes escapes notice for a little while, it falls away, and before long. For that what we do cannot escape the eye of the Godhead he showed by saying: “Nothing is covered that will not be revealed.” For every word and every deed of ours will be manifest on the day of judgment; hypocrisy, then, is useless, and we must be seen to be true worshippers. — Perhaps too, according to the former interpretation, he teaches that what we say and do in secret will be plain to the eye that sees all things, and will be revealed to the others as well. “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body” (12:4).

… he anoints those who love him for spiritual courage. “For I tell you,” he says, “my friends.” The saying about these things, then, would not suit all without distinction, it seems, but rather those in whom love for him from the whole heart is seen to be present; to whom it is fitting to say: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or nakedness, or sword?” For those who are not such are very easily led astray and readier for apostasy; but those who think as he does and are eager to follow in his footsteps would say with the divine Peter: “Since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same thought for him.” For he willingly endured death for us, having an incomparable love for us. We have heard him say plainly: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” Then how would it not be most absurd not to repay Christ, as one of the most necessary debts, what we received from him? And in another way too, being shield-bearers of life, we must not fear death, but rather imitate the faith of the holy fathers. The patriarch Abraham, when tested, offered his only son, I mean Isaac, reckoning that God is able to raise even from the dead. What, then, will be the dread of death to us, when life abolishes it? We should also consider this: crowns are found through toils; and men extend their anger only as far as the body, and the end of their plotting against us is the death of the flesh; but when God punishes, the loss will not stop at the flesh alone, but the immortal soul too is carried along with it into torments. Let death with glory come, then, rather, bringing us to the beginnings of endless life, the good things of the divine bounty being surely prepared too. — And so that he might grant another help to our minds as well, he added necessarily: “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God.” And he added that “even the hairs of your head are all numbered.” Do you see how great care he takes of those who love him? For if it extends even to things so worthless, and as it were comes down to the smallest of all living things, how would he forget those who love him, or be ignorant of anything that befalls them, he who takes such care of them as to know all their affairs minutely and to have, as it were, their hairs numbered? For either he will not let them fall into temptation, or, if by the economy he does, it is so that by suffering we may be approved; for he who allows one to fall into the snare will surely supply the power to endure it. “Everyone who confesses me before men,” and so on (12:8).

But first of all it is worth seeing who it is that confesses Christ, and how one might confess him rightly. The all-wise Paul writes to us, then: “Do not say in your heart, Who will ascend into heaven?—that is, to bring Christ down—or Who will descend into the abyss?—that is, to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart—that is, the word of faith that we proclaim; because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses unto salvation.” In these words the whole mystery of Christ is very well interpreted. For one must first confess the Son who appeared from God the Father, the only-begotten God the Word from his essence, as Lord of all—not as having obtained lordship from outside and as something brought in, but as being this by nature and in truth, just as the Father is; and then believe that God raised him from the dead—having become man, clearly, and suffered in the flesh for us; for so he was raised from the dead. The Son, then, as I said, is Lord, not ranked with the others to whom the name of lordship is given and brought in; for alone Lord by nature is God the Word, who is beyond all that has come to be: “For there is one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.” But neither will the Father be excluded from being Lord, being God by nature, nor would the Son slip from being God; for he is Lord by nature. To the divine essence alone, highest of all, belongs being wholly free, lying outside yoke and slavery, and having rather the creation subject under its feet as a slave. For this reason, though the only-begotten Word of God became as we are and, as far as the measure of humanity went, was brought under the yoke and slavery, and by the economy paid the double drachma to the tax collectors of the Jews according to the law of Moses, he did not hide the splendour of the glory in him. For he asked the blessed Peter: “From whom do the kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their sons, or from others?” And when he said, “From others,” “Then,” he says, “the sons are free.” The Son, then, is Lord by nature, as free. And the wise Paul taught us this again, having written thus: “And we all, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord, the Spirit.” And a little before: “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” See how he says that the Spirit is the Lord—not as in sonship (for he is Spirit, and not Son), but as consubstantial with the Son, who is Lord and free, and attested, by his natural identity with him, as having the freedom befitting God. Whoever, then, confesses Christ before men—as God, clearly, and Lord—will be confessed by him before the angels of God. Where and how? Surely at the time when he comes down from heaven with the angels in the glory of his Father, at the end of the present age; there he crowns the true confessor. But the others, that is, those who denied and dishonoured him, will be denied, the Judge all but saying to them what was said through the holy prophets of some: As you have done, so it will be done to you: “Your recompense shall return on your own head.” And he will deny them, saying: “Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness; I do not know you.” And who would these be? First, those who, when persecution overtook them, cast away the faith; and likewise the children and teachers of heretics deny him, the Arians and the disciples of the empty chatter of Nestorius. “Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man,” and so on (12:10). How, then, should this be understood? If the Saviour wishes to show by this that if any insulting word is spoken by us against a common man, he will have forgiveness if he repents, the saying is free of all difficulty; for God, being good by nature, frees from charges those who choose to repent. But if the saying refers to Christ the Saviour of all himself, how is he who spoke a word against him unaccountable and outside punishment? We say, then, that when someone who has not yet learned the force of the mystery concerning him, nor known that, being God by nature, he lowered himself into our condition and was reckoned a man, says something moderate about him and such as deserves pardon, God forgives these things to those who have sinned in ignorance. For example: Christ said somewhere, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven and gives life to the world”; but some, not knowing his glory and thinking him a common man, said: “Is not this the son of the carpenter, whose father and mother we know? How then does he say, I have come down from heaven?” And again: he stood once teaching the mysteries in the synagogue, and was admired by all; but some, it says, said: “How does this man know letters, having never studied?” For they did not know that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge lay hidden in him. These things deserve pardon, as said carelessly out of ignorance. But for those who blaspheme against the Godhead itself the penalty is inescapable and the punishment perpetual, both in this world and in the one to come. By “Spirit” here he means not only the Holy Spirit, but the whole nature of the Godhead. For the Saviour himself said somewhere that God is spirit; so blasphemy against the Spirit would be against the whole essence that is highest of all; for the nature of the Godhead is understood as one in the holy and worshipful Trinity.

“Do not be anxious how or what you will answer” (12:11). Having hung so great a fear over them, and prepared them to resist nobly those who would draw them away from the right confession, the Lord bids them not be anxious about the rest, that is, about their defence; because in those disposed faithfully and lovingly the Spirit works the fitting words, dwelling within like a teacher. “Who made me a judge or divider over you?” (12:14). The Son was appointed by God the Father, when he appeared as we are, ruler and king on Zion his holy mountain, according to the Psalmist’s word. And what he was to accomplish he himself again declares: “For I have come,” he says, “announcing the decree of the Lord.” And what is this? Our Master, who loves virtue, wishes us to withdraw from every earthly and temporary thing, not quarrelling with brothers but rather yielding to them even if they wish to take more than their share. “For from him who takes away what is yours,” he says, “do not demand it back”; but rather to seek what is useful and necessary for the salvation of the soul. For those accustomed to live so, Christ lays down laws by which they may become illustrious and admired; he said, then: “Do not acquire silver or gold, nor two tunics, nor a bag, nor copper in your belts.” And again: “Make for yourselves purses that do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail.” And again, when a young man came and asked, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” he said: “Go, sell your possessions and give to the poor.” So to those who bring the neck of their mind obediently under him he gives commands, makes laws, divides the heavenly inheritance and distributes the spiritual blessings; but to those who mind only earthly things he will fittingly say: “Who made me a ruler or divider over you?” He shakes that man off, then, as troublesome and unwilling to learn anything he ought to know. Yet he does not leave us unadmonished, but, as though seizing a good occasion, weaves a discourse, all but solemnly charging us:

“And he said to them: Take care and be on your guard against all greed,” and so on (12:15). For he has shown us a diabolical pit, greed, which the wise Paul calls, as we have said, idolatry, as befitting perhaps only those who do not know God, or as equal in profanation to some worshipping wood and stones. Therefore he says: “Take care and be on your guard against all greed,” that is, small and great. For the one who is defrauded is certainly weak, and lifts his eyes only to the one who can be indignant at what he has suffered. And he, since he is just and good, receives the supplication and brings punishment on those who have done wrong. And you will learn this from his saying through the voice of the holy prophets: “Therefore, because you struck the heads of the poor with your fists and took choice gifts from them, you shall build houses of hewn stone and shall not dwell in them; you shall plant pleasant vineyards and shall not drink their wine; for I know your many impieties, and your sins are mighty.” And again: “Woe to those who join house to house and bring field near to field, to take something from their neighbour. Will you dwell alone on the earth? For these things were heard in the ears of the Lord of hosts. For if your houses become many, they shall become a desert; great and fair, and there shall be no one dwelling in them. For where ten yoke of oxen plough, it will yield one jar; and he who sows six artabas will yield three measures.” So greed is useless in every way; and in another way too it is unprofitable. “For one’s life,” he says, “does not consist in the abundance” of something; that is, the measure of life is not extended along with wealth. And the Saviour showed us this clearly and plainly, having composed very well the parable joined to what has been said. Christ teaches the most excellent of all things, and before all the virtues the chief of them, love, whose fairest part is almsgiving. But Satan, who hates the good, the inventor of all wickedness, the sower of the tares, the enemy of all virtue, who fights those who win approval, sometimes works a harmful reluctance in those able to do good. The law of God rouses to mercy, saying: “You shall surely open your heart to him who is in need among you”; but he persuades one to resist and to draw back the hand, to heap up on earth, to propose fleshly luxuries; he leads to forgetfulness of death and does not let one see the future, nor reckon anything human. And see the thing painted as in an image.