John 14:9Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

The prophet said to the Jews, "You had the forehead of a harlot; you refused to be ashamed" (Jer 3:3). It seems fitting to say this not only to that people, but to all who shamelessly oppose the truth.

When Philip said, "Show us Your Father," Christ answered, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip?" And yet there are people who, even after these words, separate the Son from the Father.

What greater closeness than this can one seek? Some, because of this saying, even fell into the disease of Sabellius. But let us leave both groups aside.

They hold opinions wholly opposite to one another, yet equally impious. Let us examine the true meaning of the words spoken.

Philip had heard that the prophets saw God, and he himself desired to see Him in the same bodily way. He did not know that the visions of the prophets were acts of condescension.

Therefore, teaching Philip that God cannot be seen bodily, Christ says: "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip?"

Observe: He did not say, "you have not seen," but "you have not known," in order to turn Philip away from an earthly thought and from the desire to see the Father bodily.

For with respect to God, one speaks of knowing, not of seeing bodily.

Then He adds: "He who has seen Me has seen the Father." The words have this meaning: Philip, you desire to see the Father with a bodily eye and think that you have already seen Me.

He shows the disciple that his ignorance is without excuse. Even the most difficult contemplations, which require the subtlest inquiry before the mind can receive them, become accessible to lovers of knowledge over a long period of time.

Those matters, however, in which there is nothing difficult, and which are open to direct knowledge, anyone may understand without trouble. What, then, Philip, prevents you from knowing Me exactly? Tell Me.

So long a time has already passed, during which “I am with you.” It has been sufficient to assure you of what you ought to know. Yet you still doubt. More than this, you have proved ignorant of who I am by nature and whence I am.

You see Me as the Creator of works so wondrous to you. How, then, do you not know that he who has seen Me beholds the Father? You suppose that the Jews once saw the divine nature on Mount Sinai and heard Its words when It gave laws for action.

Yet you yourself have not yet been persuaded that through Me and in Me you behold the Father. For “he who has seen Me has seen the Father.”

That Christ is not referring to bodily sight needs, I think, no lengthy proof for hearers. No one with understanding will say that the nature of God is subject to bodily vision.

Indeed, even with spiritual eyes one can contemplate only what is scarcely accessible, as in a mirror. For “we see in a riddle” (1 Cor 13:12). Even one who boasts of very great knowledge, I think, has but scant thoughts concerning God.

Yet to the enemies of truth, who sharpen their tongue against us, or rather against the very essence of the Only-begotten, we shall again say this.

If the Son is not from the very essence of God the Father, being by generation what He is, that is, God by nature and truly, then He merely shines with an external appearance.

If He gleams only with acquired glory, and is not adorned with it as a natural dignity, then only in that sense does He portray the Father in Himself and appear as the unchanging image of God.

In that case, first, He would not be Son by nature, nor the true offspring of God the Father. He would be a creature like us, or something of that kind.

If we accept this and believe so, we must also regard as wholly true that the Father is not Father by operation and nature, but only by will, and perhaps by opinion, as He is also called our Father.

What follows from this? A triad would have to be confessed, and would almost necessarily appear, in the Godhead.

Then our faith would no longer be in the Holy Trinity, but rather in three. For They would not abide essentially in one another. Each would be separated, as it were, from His own names into the property of His own nature.

By nature, He would not be what is given in the names Father and Son, and He would be wholly cut off from the Other. Yet the meaning of this contemplation compels us to say somewhat more about it.

If we grant this as true, call it real, and acknowledge the Son as wholly alien from the essence of God the Father, will He not prove a liar when He says, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father”?

If the Father is God by nature, how can the Son, who according to them is not God by nature, show the Father in Himself? How can we contemplate the uncreated in what is created?

In one who once was not, since He is considered created, how can the One who always is be seen? Let none of those who utter these blasphemies distort the truth and say this to me.

They may say that, since He has the glory of God the Father, His power, His wisdom, His goodness, His omnipotence, and His might to bring into being what once did not exist, He is therefore His image.

But let such a man first prove whether He is God by nature, and in so true a sense that no defect at all exists in the common and complete likeness of the Image to the Archetype.

If, against his will, he proves unable to show this, then, secondly, we shall require him to say on what ground One who is not God by nature, according to their babble, can have the power to accomplish the works of the Godhead.

For this is what it means to bear the image of the Father.

If the Son, lacking within Himself power sufficient for this, receives from the Father and is endowed by Him with wisdom and power, so as to do what befits the Father’s nature alone, He will be speaking falsely concerning the image and likeness.

If we cannot allow that He speaks falsely, being, as we have said, the true image of God, and if we must agree with Him as speaking truth, then we shall find ourselves injuring the very glory of God the Father.

How so? I shall explain.

Either we must say that He speaks falsely concerning the image of God the Father, since He does not possess within Himself sufficient power for the works, but is endowed with it by another. For the Archetype is not such.

Or, if His words are true, and the Father is the One speaking in Him, and nothing at all distinguishes Their being, mediates between Them, or alters Their complete likeness, then we must finally say, even unwillingly, that the Father Himself has power received from another.

For in this way He wished to show Himself to us in the Image of His nature or glory.

Will not someone finally say to them, “Do you not see where your reasoning turns away from the straight path, and into what thickets it leads those who think so?”

But they will say, “The Son, though created, can perform the works of the divine nature, if this is pleasing to God the Father.” Yet what could be more impious than this?

In that case nothing greater or higher will remain in God than in the creature, once we attribute to the creature the power and glory of the Godhead.

Let no one, in his great corruption of mind, consider it wondrous and great to think or say of the Son that, although He is a creature, He is not like one of the creatures.

Let him know that he inflicts no small injury on His glory. We must inquire not whether He has a nature more excellent than other creatures, but whether He is created at all.

Indeed, can anything escape being a creature, even if it is the fairest of all creatures? When the glory of the Son is abased by ranking Him among creatures, why vainly point, as if in some defense of Him, to His higher place than others?

Therefore we shall injure the essence of God the Father if, by their ignorant and senseless reasoning, we attribute to the Son the power to perform such divine works while calling Him created.

We must not allow their claim that the Son performs the works of the Godhead while being a creature by nature, because this is pleasing to God the Father.

If they can prove this from divine Scripture, let them bring forward whatever they wish. Only let them preserve for us the sayings of the saints unadulterated.

If even here they fashion arguments that are images of their own opinion, we shall gently say, “Woe to those who prophesy from their own heart” (Ezek 13:3).

We must agree that the Father always wills what can preserve His divine glory unchanged and what maintains the correctness of the doctrines concerning Him.

Therefore, having taken leave of their folly, let us turn to the true doctrine concerning Him. We believe that the Son is truly begotten from the essence of God the Father, and is God from God by nature.

Thus, being the image and likeness of God the Father, He proves true when He says, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father. How then do you say, Show us the Father?”

For you, Philip, He says, can contemplate in Me the nature of the Father, and from what I Myself am perceive the Begetter. I have appeared, and truly and essentially am, His exact image and similar image.

I inscribe in Myself the whole nature of God the Father. What other form of seeing God will you seek, if the ability to think rightly is already yours?

Or what other contemplation, tell Me, do you require? Do you think that something higher and more exact was given to the ancients when God descended in the form of fire on Mount Sinai?

The Jews are accustomed especially to boast of this. Such, we may suppose, was Christ’s reasoning.

Now I think it necessary to say at once that the manifestation of our Christ’s wonders is higher, in communicating knowledge of God the Father, than what took place on Mount Sinai.

In this way you will see that Philip, since the true Image was before him, had no need to require another kind of contemplation of God the Father, such as was given to the ancients on Mount Sinai.

There the Lord descended in the form of fire, as it is written (Ex 19:18). That is how the Israelites beheld Him.

But I think no one could ever, through this, attain true conceptions of God or rise to the proper notion of the Godhead.

For how, by means of fire as from an image, could we arrive at the Archetype, that is, the Father and God?

God is good by nature. Moreover, He is Creator, calling what once was not into being. He sustains all things for existence and gives life. He is wisdom and power, kind, compassionate, and merciful.

None of this is in fire at all. No one with understanding can think that fire is kind and loving toward mankind. No prudent person will say that it is creative, wise, and life-giving.

Then how, tell me, could anyone receive conceptions of the true Godhead by means of fire? Or how could one see, in a mirror and riddle, any of His natural properties?

What, then, they will ask, was the ground and cause that moved God to assume the appearance of fire on Mount Sinai?

We answer that at that very time the education of Israel by God was beginning. A guiding law was being given to them as a kind of rule for their own life.

Therefore God had to appear to them then chiefly as chastening and fearful, so that transgressors might know that they had to do with fire.

For this reason the great Moses proclaimed to the Israelites, “Our God is a consuming fire” (Deut 4:24; cf. Heb 12:29).

We certainly cannot maintain that so wise a man as Moses, while explaining the nature of God, would liken it to fire. Rather, he called God this because of His exceedingly great aversion to evil.

Like an all-consuming fire, He does not refuse to destroy and abolish those who despise Him. Therefore God is not known through fire according to what He is by nature, nor from that aspect.

He allowed Himself to be called and to appear thus for the benefit of those who heard and saw, the Israelites of Moses’ time.

Let us finally turn to the true and most exact contemplation of the Father, that is, to the Son. We shall see in Him the image of the Begetter, if we direct the eyes of the mind to the excellences that belong to Him.

God the Father is good by nature. We shall find the Son also such. For is He not good who endured such abasement for our sake, “came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim 1:15), and laid down His soul for them?

The Father is also almighty. So is the Son. For what could be mightier than He who commanded even the elements, rebuked the sea and the winds, and transformed the nature of things as He willed?

He commanded the leper to be cleansed and gave sight to the blind by His divine authority. The Father is life by nature. The Son also is life, giving life to those who had decayed, destroying the dominion of death, and therefore raising the dead.

Rightly, then, He says to Philip, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” If you can fully perceive the Begetter in Me and through Me, what other kind of vision of God do you require?

You have received something far better than what was given to the ancients, and you are with the truest Image, that is, with Me.

If the Son is the unchanging image, eikon aparallaktos, of the Father, so that He manifests Him in Himself, according to the saying, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father,” then one must say that He who proceeds from the uncreated Father is uncreated.

For how could the uncreated be visible in what is created? If the archetype appears in the likeness, then the second will certainly correspond to the first.

"He who has seen Me has seen the Father." He has seen not an imprint, nor an image, for the divine nature admits no composition in itself. Rather, he has seen the goodness of the will, which is contemplated in the Father and in the Son as something accompanying the essence, like and equal to it, or better, identical with it.

Therefore the Lord gave him an answer about the vision of the Godhead, which is perceived by the eyes of the mind. He did not say to him, "You have not seen," since He had revealed Himself to him in outward form. Rather, He says, "You have not known Me," because His majesty was hidden. That is: if you had known Me, though I am not manifest, you would also have seen My Father, Who is not outwardly revealed. And the Apostle, speaking of the Lord, bears witness: "He is the image of the form of the invisible God" (cf. Col 1:15).

What, then, does it mean to see God? I do not want you to ask me. Ask the Gospel, ask the Lord Himself, ask Him who says: "Philip, he who has seen Me has seen the Father who sent Me.

How then do you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in Me?" (Jn 14:9-10).

Certainly a body cannot be seen in another body, and a spirit cannot be seen in another spirit. Yet this Father alone is seen in the Son, and this Son is seen in the Father.

For what is unlike cannot be seen in what is unlike. But where there is unity of operation and power, there the Son is seen in the Father, and the Father in the Son.

Therefore the Son also said, "What I do, He also does" (cf. Jn 5:19). Jesus is seen in His works, and in the works of the Son the Father is known.

"He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (Jn 14:9). By these sayings the Lord clearly showed the indistinguishable likeness.

For when Philip asked Him to show the Father, He pointed to Himself, teaching thereby that He Himself is the living image of Him who begot Him, clearly showing in Himself the features of Him who begot Him.

Therefore He said to Philip, "So long a time I have been with you, and you have not known Me, Philip?" (Jn 14:9). That is, looking upon Me, you still desire to see the Father. This means you have not known Me.

If you had known Me, you would not have desired to see the Father, because the Father is contemplated in Me. For this reason He added, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father."

So long as, in the utterance of Holy Scripture, we see the Word of God incarnate through various allegories, we do not yet discern with our spiritual eye the bodiless, simple, unique, and one Father in the bodiless, simple, unique, and one Son.

This accords with what is written: "He who has seen Me has seen the Father," and, "I am in the Father, and the Father in Me."

Great skill is required, after first penetrating beneath the coverings of the words that surround the Word, then to behold Him Himself with naked mind.

He exists in the purity of His own Being, when the Word clearly reveals the Father in Himself, insofar as this is accessible to human perception.

"Jesus said to him: Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip?"

These words must be read as a question. Have I been with you so long, performing signs befitting God, and have you not learned from these signs who I am in dignity and power?

Have you not learned that I am almighty God? Of course you have learned this. And if you have known Me, then you have known the Father also, because I am the image of the Father, in no way different from Him.

"He who has seen Me has seen the Father." Whoever has known My dignity and power has known the dignity and power of the Father, because We are wholly alike and are known one through the other.

"How then can you say, 'Show us the Father'?" Why do you wish to know Him whom you already know?

"He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (Jn 14:9). That is, whoever has been counted worthy to understand My Godhead has plainly known the Godhead of the Father as well, because the Father and the Son have one Godhead and one glory. "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10:30).

"He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (Jn 14:9). He said this not concerning the sight of His body, but concerning the revelation of His Godhead.

[...] "He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (Jn 14:9). He said this not to one who was looking at Christ's body, but to one who contemplated His Godhead.

For if we suppose that Christ the Lord said this to one who was looking at His body, it would follow that those who crucified Christ also saw the Father. They saw Christ according to the body.

Then there would be no difference between believer and unbeliever, and the former would have no advantage over the latter. All alike would have obtained the blessedness they desired. All would have seen God.

"So long a time I have been with you, and you do not know Me, Philip? The works that I do, I do not do from Myself. The Father who abides in Me does them.

The words that I speak to you, I also do not speak from Myself. It is the Father who speaks in Me.

It is time for you not only to believe My words, but even to be convinced by My works that I am in the Father and the Father in Me.

Consequently, he who has seen Me has also seen the Father. Yet you ask Me to show you the Father."

By these and many other explanations, Christ defined His equality with the Father and declared Himself consubstantial with the Father.

He confirmed these definitions of His relation to the Father by His works. In deed He manifested the authority that belongs to God.

"So long a time I have been with you," and so forth, expresses amazement and, at the same time, something like regret at Philip's lack of understanding.

"You do not know": that is, you do not rightly understand who I am in My essence and in relation to God the Father.

"He who has seen Me," that is, he who has looked rightly upon Me as the incarnate Son of God, has also seen the Father. For in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col 2:9).

"He saw not an imprint, not an image, because the divine nature admits no composition in itself, but the goodness of the will. This is contemplated in the Father and in the Son as something accompanying the essence, like and equal to it, or rather, identical with it" (Basil the Great).

How, then, after this do you say, "Show us the Father"? He who knows Me ought to know that in Me he also sees My Father.

The Savior answers the good-hearted Philip kindly. Yet He reproves him for what Philip had not seen in himself. Philip thought that he knew his Lord, and he thought that the other disciples knew Him also.

But it proved otherwise. Philip, like the other disciples, had had enough time to know his Lord. Yet his words showed that he had not looked upon his Lord as attentively, nor known Him as closely, as he ought.

Christ Jesus was still not known by the disciples. Jewish prejudices still hid His greatness from their sight.

Philip was deceived about himself. He thought so highly of himself that he considered himself and his fellow disciples capable of the visions of God granted to Moses.