John 10:38Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

At first, so that His word might be received, He spoke with a certain condescension. But at last He rose higher and said: "If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe Me, believe My works" (vv. 37-38).

Do you see how He proves what I said above, namely that He is in no way less than the Father, but equal in all things? Since it was impossible to see His essence, He presents the equality and identity of works as proof of the equality of His power.

Although We are distinguished by Persons, the Persons are inseparable and undivided. The Father and the Son abide in one another without confusion. Among us, a father exists separately from his son, although they are one by nature.

But in the divine Persons it is not as among us. They abide in one another without confusion. Therefore of us it is said, "three men," because we are separate persons and do not properly constitute one. But of the Holy Trinity it is said, "one" God, not three, because the Persons co-abide with one another without confusion.

Add to this the identity of will and desire.

So also among us, the essence of our father is known in the one begotten of him. Again, in the begetter the essence of the one begotten is disclosed.

This is because there is one definition of nature for all, and all are one by nature.

But since we are separated by bodies, the many are no longer one. This cannot be said of God by nature, for the Divine is bodiless.

Yet we conceive the Holy Trinity in distinct existences, or hypostases, ἐν ἰδιαζούσαις ὑπάϱξεσι.

Thus the Father is Father and not Son. The Son, again, is Son and not Father. And the Spirit is distinctly the Holy Spirit.

Yet They are not in separation, ἐν διαστάσει, because of Their communion and unity with one another.

The Holy Trinity is known in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. By names They are distinguished from one another numerically, but without division into parts.

In each, each is wholly known, for God is indivisible and not spatial, while possessing distinct and hypostatic being.

Since there is one Godhead in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we say that the Father is seen in the Son, and the Son in the Father.

It is also necessary to know the following.

The Son does not say in the Gospel, "I am in the Father and the Father in Me" (Jn 14:10), and "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10:30), merely because He has the same will, βούλεσϑαι ταὐτά, and one purpose with the Father.

Rather, He says this because, being the true offspring of the Father's essence, He manifests the Father in Himself, just as He Himself is manifested in the Father.

If He says that He wills, speaks, and acts the same as the Father, and easily accomplishes what the Father wills and does, this is so that He may be shown in all things consubstantial with Him.

He is the true fruit of His essence, not one who has only a relative unity with Him in similar wishes and laws of love. We affirm that such unity belongs also to creatures.

Moreover, the Son in the Father and the Father in the Son are understood in this way.

The Son did not pass like creatures from nonbeing into being, nor did He receive existence from somewhere outside. Rather, He came forth from the essence of the Father, as radiance from light or as a river from a source.

Therefore those who behold the Son can see the essence of the Father and understand from Him the property of the Begetter.

Since the whole being of the Son comes from the essence of the Father, He is in the Father. Conversely, the Father is in the Son.

For what He is by nature, this also is the Word that has come forth from Him.

He is revealed and exists in the Son, as the source that sends forth a river is in the river.

The property of the Father's essence is set in the Son, and the form, so to speak, of the Godhead shows Him again in Him.

One must bear in mind that the Savior did not speak these words in vain or by chance.

Wishing to show the identity of His nature with the Begetter, He said, "I and the Father are one."

Yet someone might suppose that Father and Son are divided into a pair only by names, but are not such hypostatically.

Therefore, judging it necessary to interpret these words and present them more clearly to His hearers, He adds, "I am in the Father and the Father in Me."

By the manifestation of This One in That One, and That One in This One, He indicates the identity of the Godhead and the unity of essence.

Because One is in the Other, no single numerically one being is meant, now called Father, now Son.

Rather, He shows most clearly that the Father truly exists distinctly and hypostatically, and that the Son exists distinctly.

For the Father and the Son are one by nature, but two in number.

Yet one is by no means divided into two parts, so that They remain without participation in one another by communion and relation.

Nor is one and the same called by two names, so that the meaning of duality would be limited to a name alone.

We by no means call one and the same now Father and now Son. This is the teaching of Sabellius.

Rather, They are two in number. The Father is always Father and never changes into the Son. Likewise the Son is always Son and never passes over into the Father.

If this is so, then even with duality of number, one nature remains in Both, and one and the same will and Godhead.

For the offspring always has a natural likeness to the one who begets.

The Son is the image, radiance, and reflection of the Father's essence.

Thus we affirm that God is one because of the identity of the Father's nature with the Son, and of the Son's nature with the Father.

No one will call the light and radiance sent from the sun another light by nature, different from the sun, or one that becomes such from it by some participation or relation.

Rather, it truly proceeds from it by nature. These two lights are two only in thought, but are one by nature.

So also, if the Father and the Son are numerically distinguished as two, there will be no reason to call the Son something other than the Father with respect to the Godhead and identity of essence.

As the sun is in the radiance that proceeds from it, and the radiance is in the sun from which it proceeded, so the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father.

They are numerically distinguished as two and are such hypostatically, while by identity of nature They are united in one Godhead.

He says this also against the Arians, and to show that it is not like what was said to the disciples.

For when the Lord said to them, "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love" (Jn 15:10), He explains that the one who fulfills His commandments will abide in Christ's love.

This does not raise the disciples to consubstantiality with the Son.

They could have found themselves outside His love if they no longer wished to fulfill His commandments.

The Son, however, unchangeably does what is pleasing to the Father as God by nature, although He says this as man for our benefit, that we may imitate Him as far as possible.

Therefore we discern "to will" or "not to will" not in essences or in the concept of nature, but in deliberate choice, προαίρεσις.

Such choice belonged to the disciples, but not to the Son.

For we discern that the Son is consubstantial with the Father from the natural goods that are in Him, not from what comes to be or is absent in us.

On verses 37-38.

That those who by nature stand apart from mutual kinship also have different activity, the Savior shows most clearly by what He said.

"For if, looking at the poverty of the flesh," He says, "you do not believe in Me, yet the greatness of My works is exceedingly weighty and sufficient to persuade you that I am God, from God."

For how will He who is equal to the Father in works be second after Him in nature?

How can He who is clothed with one and the same power and energy as He is become alien in nature from Him?

More than this, how can He fail to be like Him in every respect, and so be well disposed toward essential likeness with the Father?

He has in Himself by nature the whole distinctiveness of Him who begot Him, so that He abides in the Father and likewise has the Father in Himself.

Who, then, by daring to call the Image of the Father a creature, will not thereby blaspheme the Father Himself?

The Son says, "The Father is in Me and I in Him," not as men can say this about themselves. For if we think well, we abide in God. If we live well, God abides in us.

We, the faithful, participants in His grace and enlightened by Him, abide in Him, and He in us. But it is not so with the Only-begotten Son. He is in the Father and the Father in Him, as an equal in Him to whom He is equal.

Finally, we may sometimes say, "We abide in God and God in us." But can we say, "I and God are one"? You are in God because God shares Himself with you. God is in you because you have become the temple of God.

Yet because you are in God and God is in you, you can never say, "He who has seen me has seen the Father," as the Only-begotten said: "He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (Jn 14:9). Nor can you say, "I and the Father are one" (cf. Jn 10:30).

Acknowledge the prerogative of the Lord and the mercy granted to the servant. The prerogative of the Lord is equality with the Father. The mercy granted to the servant is participation in the Savior.

Therefore, whoever knows the Son knows the Father. Whoever has known the Father has also known the Son. Or, to put it another way, the Son abides in the Father as the beauty of an image abides in its archetype. The Father abides in the Son as the beauty of the archetype abides in the image. And we call the Son the image of the Father, not in a simple and ordinary sense, but as in all things like Him.

At the same time, He testifies that He does not do His own works, but the works of the Father, lest the greatness of the works obscure the properties of nature. Since, in the mystery of the reception of the body and of the man born of Mary, they did not see the Son of God, faith is imparted to us from the works.

He does not wish to be regarded as the Son of God except from the Father's works, which He performs. If He performs the works, and because of the humility of the body is not deemed worthy of faith and acknowledgment, then He demands faith from the works.

Why should the mystery of His human birth hinder the understanding of His divine birth, when the divine nature performs every work of its own through the assumed humanity? Therefore, if there is no faith in the man from His works that He is the Son of God, let them believe from the works that they are the works of the Son of God. For it is impossible to deny that they are God's works.

The Son of God has in Himself by birth everything that belongs to God. Therefore the work of the Son is the work of the Father, because birth does not abandon the nature from which it proceeds. It has that nature in itself, the nature from which it came.

This expression can also be taken in the sense of moral unity in dispositions, aims, and actions (cf. Jn 17:11, 21-23), and not in the sense of unity according to essence. Yet in the thought of the Lord, without doubt, it designated His unity with the Father according to essence, as in Jn 10:30.

"For I am not something other than the Father, but the same, while I remain the Son. And He is not something other than I, but the same, while He remains the Father. Whoever has known Me has known the Father and has understood the Son" (Chrysostom).

The words "the Father is in Me and I in Him" explain the words "We are one." Chrysostom says: "I am nothing other than the Father according to essence, only I remain the Son, and the Father remains the Father."

All these are the works of the Lord. To every unbeliever one may say: if you do not believe the word, believe these works. They bear loud witness to the Godhead of our Lord Jesus Christ. And once you believe, receive the whole of His truth.