Such people do not understand that some things can be named only by the names of other things with which they have some likeness. But there will be those who murmur and ask: “What fault is there in the Jews, if it was necessary that the words of Isaiah be fulfilled: ‘Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?’” (Is 53:1).
To them we answer that God, foreseeing the future, foretold through the prophet the unbelief of the Jews, but He was not its cause. God impels no one to sin. He knows that they will sin. He foreknows their sins, not His own. Thus the Jews committed sin, and that sin was foretold by Him from whom nothing is hidden.
The Lord Christ foretold His Passion and fruitful death on the Cross when He said that He would draw all things after Himself. Since the Jews understood that He was speaking of His death, they asked Him how He could speak of His death, when they had heard in the Law that the Christ remains forever.
He summoned them, while the light was still with them for a little while, to walk by that light through which they knew that the Christ remains forever. In this way they might come to know all things and not be overtaken by darkness. When He had said this to them, He hid Himself from them.
You learned this from the preceding Sunday readings and discourses. Then the Evangelist speaks the words with which today’s reading began: “Though He had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in Him, that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled: ‘Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?’” (cf. Jn 12:37-38).
Here it is entirely clear that the Son of God is called the arm of the Lord. This does not mean that God the Father is represented in the form of human flesh, and that the Son is joined to Him like a member of His body. Rather, because all things were created through Him, He is called the arm of the Lord.
For just as your hand is called that by which you act, so the Word of God is called the hand of God, because the world was created through the Word. Why does a man stretch out his hand to do something, unless because what he has spoken does not immediately come to pass?
But if he had such power that what he said happened without any bodily movement, then his word would be his hand. Yet the Lord Jesus, the Only-begotten Son of God the Father, is not a member of the Father’s body.
Nor is He a word that has been thought out, uttered, and conveyed. But because all things were created through Him, He was the Word of God. Therefore, when we hear that the hand of God the Father is God the Son, let our habit of thinking carnally not trouble us.
Rather, as far as we can by His gift, let us understand here the Power and Wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24), through whom all things were created. Certainly such a hand is not stretched toward a distant object, nor does it seize and draw it.
He Himself is not the Father, but He and the Father are one (cf. Jn 10:30). Being equal to the Father, He is in every respect as the Father is. Therefore let there be no occasion for the detestable error of those who say there is only the Father, but that in different situations He is called now the Son and now the Holy Spirit.
Regarding these words, they dare to say: “See, there is only the Father, if the Son is called His hand. A man and his hand are not two persons, but one.” This refers to the followers of the heresy of Sabellius, who denied the hypostatic reality of the Persons of the Holy Trinity and taught a God of only one person.
They do not understand or consider how a word denoting one thing, because of some likeness between that thing and another, is transferred to the other thing even in everyday speech about visible and very familiar matters. How much more may such a likeness be used to express things ineffable to us, whose true meaning cannot be conveyed at all?
A man also calls another man, through whom he usually does something, his hand. If he loses him, he says with grief, “I have lost my hand.” And to the one who has taken that helper away, he says, “You have deprived me of my hand.”
Let those who are in error understand how the Son is called the Father’s hand, through whom the Father has made all things. If they do not understand this, they remain in the darkness of their error and become like the Jews, of whom it was said: “and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” (Jn 12:38).
Here we meet another question. To say anything fitting about it, and worthily to consider and examine all its hidden depths, I think I have neither the strength nor sufficient time. Nor are you fully able to grasp it.
Nevertheless, since we cannot, against your expectation, pass on to another matter without saying anything about this question, hear what we can say. If in anything we cannot satisfy your expectation, ask help from Him who appointed us to plant and water.
For, as the Apostle says, “neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but God who gives the growth” (1 Cor 3:7). Some whisper among themselves, and sometimes, when they can, declare aloud and even enter into heated disputes, saying: “What did the Jews do, or what fault was theirs, if it was necessary that the word of Isaiah the prophet be fulfilled: ‘Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?’”
We answer them that the Lord, foreseeing the future, foretold through the prophet the unbelief of the Jews. He foretold it, but did not cause it. For God compels no one to sin, because He already knew the future sins of men.
He foreknew that these were their sins, not His, and not the sins of someone else, but their own. Therefore, if the sins which He foreknew were not their sins, He would have foreseen falsely. But since His foreknowledge cannot be false, without doubt it is not another who sins, but precisely those whom God foreknew would sin.
Thus the Jews committed sin. He did not compel them to commit it, since sin is hateful to Him. But He foretold that they would commit it, because nothing is hidden from Him. Therefore, if they had wished to do good instead of evil, they would have met no obstacle.
Yet what they would do was known to Him who knows what every man will do, and what will be rendered to him according to his works.
THEOSIS