Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John: Tractate XXIII
This, brethren, is the Christian religion, which is preached through the whole world, while its enemies are dismayed; who, where they are conquered, murmur, and fiercely rage against it where they prevail. This is the Christian religion, that one God be worshipped, not many gods, because only one God can make the soul happy. It is made happy by participation of God. Not by participation of a holy soul does the feeble soul become happy, nor by participation of an angel does the holy soul become happy; but if the feeble soul seeks to be happy, let it seek that by which the holy soul is made happy. For thou art made happy, not of an angel, but the angel as well as thou of the same source.
6. These things being premised and firmly established,—that the rational soul is made happy only by God, that the body is enlivened only by the soul, and that the soul is a something intermediate between God and the body,—direct your thoughts to, and recollect with me, not the passage read to-day, of which we have spoken enough, but that of yesterday, which we have been turning over and handling these three days, and, to the best of our abilities, digging into until we should come to the rock. The Word Christ, Christ the Word of God with God, Christ the Word and the Word God, Christ and God and Word one God. To this press on; O soul, despising, or even transcending all things else, to this press on. There is nothing more powerful than this creature, which is called the rational mind, nothing more sublime: whatever is above this, is but the Creator. But I was saying that Christ is the Word, and Christ is the Word of God, and Christ the Word is God; but Christ is not only the Word, since “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us:” therefore Christ is both Word and flesh. For when “He was in the form of God, He thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” And what of us in our low estate, who, feeble and crawling on the ground, were not able to reach unto God, were we to be abandoned? God forbid. “He emptied Himself, taking upon Him the form of a servant;” not, therefore, by losing the form of God. He became man who was God, by receiving what He was not, not by losing what He was: so God became man. There thou hast something for thy weakness, something for thy perfection. Let Christ raise thee by that which is man, lead thee by that which is God-man, and guide thee through to that which is God. And the whole preaching and dispensation by Christ is this, brethren, and there is not another, that souls may be raised again, and that bodies also may be raised again. For each of the two was dead; the body by weakness, the soul by iniquity. Because each was dead, each may rise again. What each? Soul and body. By what, then, can the soul rise again but by Christ God? By what the body, but by the man Christ? For there was also in Christ a human soul, a whole soul; not merely the irrational part of the soul, but also the rational, which is called mind. For there have been certain heretics, and they have been driven out of the Church, who fancied that the body of Christ did not have in it a rational mind, but, as it were, the animal life of a beast; since, without the rational mind, life is only animal life. But because they were driven out, and driven out by the truth, accept thou the whole Christ, Word, rational mind, and flesh. This is the whole Christ. Let thy soul rise again from iniquity by that which is God, thy body from corruption by that which is man. There, most beloved, hear ye what, so far as it appears to me, is the great profundity of this passage; and see how Christ here speaks to the effect, that the only reason why He came is, in order that souls may have a resurrection from iniquity, and bodies from corruption. I have already said by what our souls are raised, by the very substance of God; by what our bodies are raised, by the human dispensation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
7. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing; for what things soever He has done, these also the Son doeth in like manner.” Yes, the heaven, the earth, the sea; the things that are in heaven, on the earth, and in the sea; the visible and invisible, the animals on the land, the plants in the fields, the creatures that swim in the waters, that fly in the air, that shine in heaven; besides all these, angels, virtues, thrones, dominations, principalities, powers; “all were made by Him.” Did God make all these, and show them when made to the Son, that He also should make another world full of all these? Certainly not. But, on the contrary, what does He say? “For what things soever He has made, these,” not others, but “these also the Son doeth,” not differently, “but in like manner.” “For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him all things which Himself doeth.” The Father showeth to the Son that souls may be raised, for souls are raised up by the Father and the Son; nor can souls live except God be their life. If souls, then, cannot live unless God be their life, just as themselves are the life of bodies; what the Father shows to the Son, that is, what He doeth, He doeth through the Son. For it is not by doing that He shows to the Son, but by showing He doeth through the Son. For the Son sees the Father showing before anything is done; and from the Father’s showing and the Son’s vision, is done what is done by the Father through the Son. So are souls raised up, if they can see that conjunction of unity, the Father showing, the Son seeing, and the creature made by the Father’s showing and the Son’s seeing; and that thing made by the Father’s showing and the Son’s seeing, which is neither the Father nor the Son, but beneath the Father and the Son, whatever is made by the Father through the Son. Who sees this?
8. Behold, again we humble ourselves to carnal notions, and descend to you, if indeed we had at any time ascended somewhat from you. Thou wishest to show something to thy son, that he may do what thou doest; thou art about to do, and thus to show the thing. Therefore, what thou art about to do, in order to show it to thy son, thou doest not surely by thy son; but thou alone doest that thing which, when done, he may see, and do another such thing in like manner. This is not the case there; why goest thou on to thy own similitude, and blottest out the similitude of God within thee? There, the case is wholly otherwise. Find a case in which thou showest to thy son what thou doest before thou doest it; so that, after thou hast shown it, it will be by the son thou doest. Perhaps something like this now occurs to thee: Lo, sayest thou, I think to make a house, and I wish it to be built by my son: before I build it myself, I point out to my son what I mean to do: both he doeth, and I too by him to whom I pointed out my wish. Thou hast retreated, indeed, from the former similitude, but still thou liest in great dissimilitude. For, lo, before thou canst make the house, thou dost inform thy son, and point out to him what thou meanest to do; that, upon thy showing before thou makest, he may make what thou hast shown, and so thou mayest make by him: but thou wilt speak words to thy son, words will have to pass between thee and him; between the person showing and the person seeing, between speaker and hearer, flies articulate sound, which is not what thou art, nor what he is. That sound, indeed, which goes out of thy mouth, and by the concussion of the air touches thy son’s ear, and filling the sense of hearing, conveys thy thought to his heart; that sound, I say, is not thyself, nor thy son. A sign is given from thy mind to thy son’s mind, but that sign not either thy mind or thy son’s mind, but something else. Is it thus that we think the Father has spoken to the Son? Were there words between the Father and the Word? Then how is it? Or, whatever the Father would say to the Son, if He would say it by a word, the Son Himself is the Word of the Father, would He speak by a word to the Word? Or, since the Son is the great Word, had smaller words to pass between the Father and Son? Was it so, that some sound, as it were a temporal, fleeting creature, had to issue from the mouth of the Father, and strike upon the ear of the Son? Has God a body, that this should proceed, as it were, from His lips? And has the Word the ears of a body, into which sound may come? Lay aside all notions of corporeal forms, regard simplicity, if thou art single-minded. But how wilt thou be single-minded? If thou wilt not entangle thyself with the world, but disentangle thyself from the world. For by disentangling thyself, thou wilt be single-minded. And see, if thou canst, what I say; or if thou canst not, believe what thou dost not see. Thou speakest to thy son; thou speakest by a word: neither art thou, nor is thy son, the word that sounds.