You may wish to know what the apostles were then unable to bear. Yet who among us would dare to say that he can bear what they could not? Therefore you should not expect me to say what I myself perhaps could not understand, if someone else said it to me. Nor could you bear it, even if I were able to bring to your hearing what is above your understanding. It may be that some among you are able to understand what is still inaccessible to others. But what He Himself chose not to say, it would be rash even to wish to guess.
Someone may therefore say that Christians need not be told what the Lord wished to say here, even if they desire to hear it. Yet if we read something of this kind in books confirmed by canonical authority and written after the Lord's Ascension, that judgment would not be enough for us. It would still need to be indicated there that this was one of the things which the Lord then did not wish to tell His disciples, because they were unable to bear it.
In this chapter of the Holy Gospel, where the Lord said to His disciples, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now," a question first arises before us. How did He say above, "All that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you" (Jn 15:15), while here He says, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now"? Yet we have already explained, as far as we were able, how He speaks as though already accomplished of what He had not yet done. In the same way the prophet bears witness to what will happen as though God had already done it, saying, "He has made the things that shall be" (cf. Is 45:11 LXX).
Now perhaps you wish to know what the apostles could not then bear. But who among us dares say of himself that he has received what they could not receive? Therefore you should not expect me to say what I perhaps would not have understood, had another said it to me. Nor could you understand it, even if I were so gifted that you heard from me what is above you.
It may be that some of you are already able to receive what others still cannot receive. Perhaps not all that the divine Teacher meant when He said, "I still have many things to say to you," but at least something of it. Yet it would be rash to wish to foresee and speak of what He did not say to those apostles.
Indeed, the apostles were not yet able even to die for Christ. It was said to them, "You cannot follow Me now" (cf. Jn 13:36). For this reason Peter, the first of them, who presumptuously said that he was already able, proved to be otherwise than he himself expected.
Yet afterward countless men and women, boys and girls, youths and maidens, old and young, were crowned with martyrdom. The sheep became able to do what the shepherds could not yet bear when the Lord spoke these words.
Would it therefore have been right to say to those sheep, in the hour of trial, when they had to contend for the truth even unto death and shed their blood for the name and teaching of Christ: "Which of you dares consider himself ready to receive martyrdom. For which Peter was not yet ready, though the Lord Himself instructed him face to face"?
Therefore no one should say to Christians who long to hear what it was about which the Lord then said, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now": "If the apostles could not yet bear it, much less can you." For many perhaps can now hear what Peter could not then hear. So also many can be crowned with martyrdom, which Peter could not then undergo. This is even more true after the Holy Spirit had already been sent, who had not yet been sent then. Concerning Him He immediately added, "When He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth" (Jn 16:13). By this He plainly showed that they could not bear what He had to say, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come to them.
The Holy Spirit, whom the Lord promised to send to His disciples, was to guide them into all truth, which they could not bear when He was speaking with them. From this Holy Spirit, as the Apostle says, we have now received the pledge (cf. 2 Cor 1:22). By this word we understand that His fullness is destined for us in another life.
This same Holy Spirit even now guides believers, according as each can receive spiritual things. He inflames their souls with an ever-growing thirst, if each is zealous in that love by which he loves what he knows and thirsts for what he still must know. Thus even regarding what he now knows in some way, he learns that he does not yet know it as it must be known in that life which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man (cf. 1 Cor 2:9).
But if the inward Teacher now willed to speak of this as it must be known, that is, if He willed to disclose and manifest it to our mind, human weakness could not bear it. You remember, beloved, that I have already spoken of this when we interpreted the words of the Holy Gospel in which the Lord said, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now."
Let us not suppose that in these words of the Lord some unknown doctrine lies hidden, which could be uttered by the one teaching but not borne by those being taught. Yet if Christ willed to tell us, in the way He tells the holy Angels in Himself, the only-begotten Word of the Father, coeternal with the Father, the things we read, write, hear, and learn from human conceptions in religious teaching, what men could bear this? They could not bear it even if they were already spiritual men, which the apostles were not when the Lord spoke this to them. They became such later, after the descent of the Holy Spirit.
For everything that can be known about creation is less than the Creator Himself, who is the Most High, true, and unchangeable God. Yet who is silent about Him? Do not readers, disputants, questioners, respondents, those who praise, those who sing, those who speak, and even blasphemers themselves mention Him? Although no one is silent about Him, who knows Him as He ought to be understood, though He is always on the lips and in the hearing of men? Who is the one whose keen mind could draw near to Him? Who could know that He is Trinity, unless He Himself had willed to be so known?
At the same time, who among men is now silent about the Trinity? Yet who among men understands the Trinity as the Angels understand Her? Therefore what is openly and constantly said about the eternity, truth, and holiness of God is understood well by some and badly by others. Rather, it is understood by some and not understood by others. For whoever understands badly does not understand at all.
Among those who understand rightly, some grasp it less vividly with the mind, others more vividly. But no man grasps it as the Angels do. Therefore in the mind itself, that is, in the inner man (Eph 3:16), there is a kind of growth. It is not only that he passes from milk to solid food (cf. 1 Cor 3:2), but that he receives more and more food by himself.
He does not grow in bulk and size, but in clarity of understanding. For his very food is the light that bears knowledge. Therefore, that you may grow and know Him, and that the more you grow the more and more you may know Him, you must turn and place your hope not in the teacher whose word sounds in your ears. That is, not in the one who plants and waters from without, but in Him who gives the growth (cf. 1 Cor 3:6).
Therefore, as I warned you in the preceding discourse, beware, especially those of you who are still little and still need milk, of men who are deceived and deceive others concerning what the Lord said: "I still have many things to say to you. But you cannot bear them now." Do not turn your inquisitive hearing toward the apprehension of unknown things, when your minds are still weak in discerning the true from the false.
Beware of this especially because of shameful abominations, which Satan has taught unstable and carnal souls. God permits this so that fear of His judgment may be preserved everywhere, so that the sweetness of a pure life may be felt by comparison with filthy debauchery. And so that everyone who has resisted that evil and not fallen under Satan's power, or who has been raised from it by God's help, may show reverence toward Him, together with fear and even modesty.
Beware with fear, and pray that the proverb of Solomon may not apply to you. In it a foolish and shameless woman, lacking bread, says to those passing by, "Eat hidden bread with pleasure, and the sweetness of stolen waters" (cf. Prov 9:13-17). This woman signifies the vainglory of the ungodly, who, being utterly foolish, imagine that they know something.
It is not without reason that it is said of that woman that she is "lacking bread." Having no bread, she nevertheless promises bread. That is, not knowing the truth, she promises knowledge of the truth. She promises hidden bread, which, she says, is eaten with pleasure, just as stolen waters are sweet. That is, she calls people to listen to and do, with greater pleasure and sweetness, what is forbidden to be spoken openly and followed in the Church.
Through this secrecy ungodly teachers prepare poison for the curious. They make them think that they are learning something great because it has been deemed worthy to be kept secret. Thus they swallow madness with greater pleasure, honoring it as knowledge which they seize as something forbidden.
For this reason the teaching of magical arts entrusts its impious rites to people deceived by this sacrilegious curiosity, or to those who are yet to be deceived. For this reason unlawful divinations by the entrails of slaughtered animals, by the cries and flight of birds, or by various signs of demons are whispered by lost men into the ears of men going to perdition.
Because of these ungodly and punishable mysteries, that woman is called not only foolish, but also bold. Of course, this is foreign not only to the essence, but even to the very name of our religion. What shall be said of this foolish and bold woman, who under the name of Christianity has produced so many hateful heresies and so many impious fables?
Would that they were such fables as are performed in theaters or mocked in mimed buffoonery, rather than such as, to our grief, folly has been able to invent against God, so that we marvel at its audacity. But all these foolish heretics, who wish to be called Christians, try to make the audacity of their inventions, which makes human feeling tremble, more attractive by appealing to the Gospel saying, "I still have many things to say to you. But you cannot bear them now." They speak as though their inventions are what the disciples could not then bear, and as though the Holy Spirit had taught these heretics what the unclean spirit, despite his audacity, does not dare to preach and teach openly.
Foreseeing such deceived people by the Holy Spirit, the Apostle said, "The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires they will heap up teachers for themselves to tickle their ears. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to fables" (2 Tim 4:3-4).
The mention of secrecy and theft in the words, "Eat hidden bread with pleasure, and the sweetness of stolen waters" (cf. Prov 9:13-17), produces itching ears in spiritually corrupted hearers. It resembles that itch of lust within the flesh which destroys the purity of chastity.
Hear, then, the Apostle, who foresaw such things and beneficially exhorted us to avoid them: "Shun profane novelties of words, for they will advance still more in ungodliness, and their word will spread like a cancer" (cf. 2 Tim 2:16-17). He did not simply say, "novelties of words," but added, "profane."
THEOSIS