The meaning of the words cited is somewhat difficult to grasp and requires, as it were, a keen investigation. It causes a considerable delay in our discourse. Nevertheless, we believe that Christ will again guide us to the truth.
Some, even among those who once held first place among the impious heretics, wickedly refuse to confess that the Son is from the essence of God the Father. Therefore they think that He has only an external or relative union with Him, not a natural one.
They have written, vomiting from their own mind and not speaking from the Holy Spirit, that the Son is in the Father because He is loved by the Father and in turn Himself loves the Father.
As if giving an inescapable proof, these senseless men bring forward the words about us and about Him that are joined to the cited saying.
Having propped up their blasphemies with something like a reed, they assert this. As we are called those who are in Him and have Him in ourselves, yet are not united with Him in essence, and as the form of union consists in our loving and in love being mutually present in us, so also, they say, the Son does not have the essence of God the Father.
They say that He is wholly separated from Him by nature and entirely different, but is conceived in the Father only according to the law of love.
Their aim, as we said shortly before, is to declare the Only-begotten a creature and a created being that received existence in time. They grant Him certain advantages over other creatures, yet place Him outside the essence of God the Father.
Since we have already had a long discourse on this matter, where we proved as far as our strength allowed that the Son is in the Father by nature and has essential union with Him, we will not now expatiate further on this.
Yet in order not to leave the field wholly open to the assaults of the opponents, without any verbal resistance, we will make a few brief objections. We will show, as far as possible, how malicious and ignorant is the foul device of their wickedness.
If the Son is in the Father only because He is loved and loves, and if for the same reason we are in Him and He is in us. And if no other bond is acknowledged that joins either the Son to the Father or us to Him and Him to us, then how, or on what basis, tell me, does He say that “in that day” we will know this mystery?
It would seem that we have not yet understood that the Father loves the Son and that He also loves the Father. Indeed, it seems that we have not yet learned this even about ourselves.
Some empty thought deceitfully makes us think that the Son has loved us and thereby gained us for the Father, and that we also have loved Him.
For by saying, “In that day you will know,” He presents the time of knowledge as not yet having come. Why then does the Lord instruct us in vain when He says, “The Father loves the Son” (Jn 3:35)?
Who would not say that He Himself also loves the Father? Tell me, did He not give a clear proof of His love for us by wishing to suffer for us?
“For greater love has no one than this,” He says, “that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13). Why did He clearly demand love for Himself from us, wishing us willingly to fulfill His will?
“He who loves Me,” He says, “will keep My commandments” (cf. Jn 14:15). When shall we keep the divine commandment if we neglect it at the present time?
If, then, it is necessary to believe that the Son loves the Father and also loves us, as we love Him, should we not think that the Son wishes to indicate something else?
He does not define the form of union by the law of love, but clearly presents it in another way when He says to us, “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”
The opponent may say that Christ spoke this to us before the Passion. That is, He said that He loves the Father and is mutually loved by the Father, and that He loves us as we love Him.
But after the Passion and His rising from the dead, once we saw Him breaking the bonds of death, we knew that He is “in the Father,” namely as loved by Him and therefore raised from the dead.
For the same reason of love, He is in us and we are in Him. To this we answer as follows. Your objection is empty talk, wholly senseless, and expressed in rotten words.
Yet consider, most dear ones, that after Christ’s resurrection we did not need to learn what we had truly understood before His resurrection from the dead.
If we had imperfectly believed that the Son has love from His Father and Himself loves the Father, then it would indeed have been necessary to await the resurrection, so that from that time we might have perfect knowledge.
But if the Father is trustworthy when, before the resurrection, He says, “This is My beloved Son” (Mt 3:17), and if the Savior Himself speaks truth when He says, “The Father loves the Son” (Jn 3:35), and if love must rightly be conceived as perfect in all things (Col 3:14), why do you weary our hearing with your chatter?
Why, rejecting the beauty of truth, do you invent for us a shapeless lie? Why do you tear from the Father’s essence the Son Who is from Him and through Him?
Why do you devise very rotten words and contrive intricate webs of absurd syllogisms?
For anyone wishing to penetrate the very nature of truth can readily and easily see that the Only-begotten has loved us and that we have loved Him.
Being in the form of God the Father, He “did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:6-7).
Tell me, what was the cause of such self-emptying? Was it not love for us? Can anyone doubt this?
Our desire and readiness to hand over even our soul to persecutors for Christ, so as not to deny our Lord, is this not a clear proof of love for Him?
Everyone must either acknowledge this as true or accuse the holy martyrs of having struggled for Christ without any benefit and of having undergone so great a danger in vain.
If it has been shown with complete clarity that the Father has most perfect love for the Son, and likewise that He Himself loves the Father, as we love Him and He loves us, then what basis remains for thinking that knowledge of this belongs to another time?
For the Lord says, “In that day you will understand that I am in the Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” Let their chatter and their invention of God-hating arguments perish.
Relying on the illumination of the Holy Spirit, we will not delay in saying what seems right to us for explaining the words under interpretation.
First He said, “I and you shall live” (Jn 14:19). Then immediately He appears to have added, “In that day you will understand that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”
To which of those who exist and are accustomed to think rightly will it not be entirely clear that by “day” He defines the time of this knowledge?
In that time we too, transformed according to Him, will ascend to eternal life and escape the curse of death.
That Christ seems to me to indicate precisely this is shown by one Apostle, I mean Paul. Revealing the divine mystery to us, he writes in one Epistle: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory” (Col 3:3-4).
For He will transform the body of our humiliation, this very body and no other, into conformity with His glory. By ineffable power He will change it into man’s original nature, easily turning all things into whatever He wills, without any hindrance.
For He is true God, “making and changing all things” (Amos 5:8), as it is written.
Therefore “in that day,” or time, when you yourselves “will live,” because “I live,” though I have become man like you and have put on a body subject by its own nature to corruption, then, He says, “you will clearly understand that I am in the Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”
We must accept that the Lord says this to us so that we should not think He exists in the Father only by a relation of love, as the opponents thought they should reason.
Rather, He exists according to the meaning of a deep mystery, which is difficult to understand and not easy to express. Nevertheless, as far as I am able, I will try to explain it.
The exact exposition of this, I suppose, greatly surpasses every mind of those who dwell on earth. Yet, moved by the fire of love to understand and express it even a little, I will now consider the purpose of the Incarnation of the Only-begotten.
Let us inquire why, being in the form of God the Father as God, He “did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:6-7), and “endured the cross, despising the shame” (Heb 12:2).
Then the depth of the matter before us will be understood a little, insofar as it is accessible to us.
Let us try to understand how the Son is in the Father, evidently by nature and not through some relation invented by the opponents, according to which He loves and is loved.
Let us also understand how we in turn are in Him in the same way, and He in us.
Therefore the wise Paul, disclosing to us the one true and common cause of the Only-begotten’s becoming man, said that God the Father was well pleased “to recapitulate all things in Christ” (Eph 1:10).
The term and concept of recapitulation mean the raising up again and return to the original state of what had slipped away toward another end.
Then, wishing to make clear to us the particular forms of recapitulation, he said in one place: “Because of the weakness of the law, in that it was weakened through the flesh, God. Sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom 8:3-4).
And again in another place: “Since the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver those who through fear of death were all their life subject to bondage” (Heb 2:14-15).
Paul explained to us these two forms of recapitulation, which necessarily contain the work of the Only-begotten’s becoming man.
The wise Evangelist John explains the form that embraces both when he writes of Christ: “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, He gave them authority to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jn 1:11-13).
Thus it is evident, and I think clear to all, that chiefly for these reasons the Only-begotten, being God and from God by nature, became man.
He did this in order to condemn sin in the flesh, to slay death by His own death, and to show us to be sons of God, regenerating those on earth in the Spirit to a dignity above their nature.
In this very way, without doubt, the fallen race, that is, mankind, could be wholly recapitulated again and restored to its original condition.
Let us again discuss each of the reasons just mentioned and say what corresponds to them.
We must examine how to understand that “God the Father condemned sin in the flesh by sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.”
The true God by nature, Who appeared from His essence and naturally possesses the immutability of His property, and therefore could in no way fall into sin or turn aside into unrighteousness, was made by God the Father willingly to descend into the sin that had attached itself to the flesh.
By making it His own flesh, He transformed it into His own natural property, that is, into not sinning.
Indeed, if we think rightly, we cannot admit that the Only-begotten became man in order to arrange this only for His own temple, His body.
Where then would be the magnificence and benefit of His coming to us, if He saved only His own body?
THEOSIS