John 16:28Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

What the Lord ascribed to Himself, "I came forth from the Father," He also ascribes to the Holy Spirit, saying, "Who proceeds from the Father." Therefore the Spirit is the Spirit of God and the Spirit from God the Father, and He proceeds from the Father.

What does "proceeds" mean? He did not say, "is begotten." What is not written must not be subjected to speculation. The Son is begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father.

You accuse Him as a Sabbath-breaker. If He performed some miracle among you, you say with habitual impiety that He does this also "by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons" (Lk 11:15).

But how, in that case, did He ascend into heaven itself? How did the Father receive upon His throne, when the gates above were opened for Him by the angels, the One who, in your judgment, rebelled against His doctrines and imparted teaching displeasing to the King of all?

Did He ascend secretly? Was there not a great multitude to whom the divine and heavenly angel said: "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw Him going into heaven" (Acts 1:11)?

What else will you say, O Jew? Will you not honor even the voice of the angel with obedient attention? Will you not accept even many eyewitnesses as witnesses? Yet the law clearly says: "By the mouth of two or three witnesses every matter shall be established" (Deut 19:15).

Therefore, should reproaches of false prophecy be referred to Him who returns with authority to the heavenly Father? Or should we not, rather, from the clear proof of the deed, finally believe without doubt that He is from God, plainly from the Father, yet not other in essence than Him whom the law itself and the prophets proclaimed to us?

But although He came, He says, "into" this "world," nevertheless He passes again from the world "to the Father." He did not leave the Father when He became man. Nor did He leave those on earth when He departed with the flesh to the Father. For He is true God, filling all things with ineffable power and leaving none of existing things outside Himself.

On verses 28-30, the testimony of the holy Apostles is most remarkable. They say that at once, and very quickly, they were disposed to believe that the Son shone forth from the Father's essence. For I think the words "I came forth from the Father" mean precisely this and nothing else.

Still, it is worth examining whence this faith came to them, and by what occasion they were counted worthy of understanding. "Now," they say, "we know that You know all things and have no need for anyone to question You. By this we believe that You came forth from God."

From the fact that the Son knows all things, the disciples concluded that He truly shone forth from God the Father. For truly it is a property of the Godhead to be ignorant of nothing, and this was observed in the Son.

Therefore they believed that He is God, shining forth by way of generation, γεννητώς, from the Father, and having in Himself by nature the Father's own properties, τά εκείνου. How, then, will He be created, who shines with the properties of the Godhead?

He not only possesses omniscience, εχων τό πάντα είδέναι, but also proclaims in a great voice: "All things that the Father has are Mine" (Jn 16:15).

Perhaps the Lord here calls "the world" the hard labor of the virtues during spiritual labor. By "the Father" He means the state of the mind beyond the world, free from every material thought. According to this state, the Word of God is born in us, putting an end to the warfare against the passions and demons.

To assure us that this coming from God means His birth from the Father, He says that He came forth from the Father into the world, meaning His Incarnation. When He had said before that He came forth from God, He meant His nature.

Since He first declared that He came forth from God, and then that He came into the world from the Father, the coming forth and the coming cannot be considered the same. To come from the Father and to come forth from God do not mean one and the same thing.

As there is a difference between birth and presence, so these two words also differ. It is one thing to come forth from God, to begin to exist with Him by birth. It is quite another to come from the Father into the world, in order to accomplish the mysteries of our salvation.

As for His words about coming forth from the Father, these words were apparently understood by their hearts and received with joy. For they immediately said to Him: "See, now You speak plainly. Therefore we believe that You came forth from God."

Second, for clarity of understanding in expounding this teaching, one must strictly distinguish the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit from His temporal procession upon creatures, or His mission into the world. The eternal procession is properly His personal property.

The temporal procession does not belong to the very Hypostasis of the Holy Spirit. It is something external and passing, and is ascribed both to the Holy Spirit and to the Son (Jn 16:28-29).

When the Orthodox Church affirms that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, against the teaching of Western Christians that the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son, she has in view precisely the eternal and hypostatic procession of the Holy Spirit.

Concerning His temporal procession, however, the Orthodox, in complete agreement with Western Christians, believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds, that is, is sent into the world, not only from the Father, but also from the Son, or more precisely, through the Son.

Third, in order to preserve complete impartiality in resolving the question that has been the subject of age-old disputes between the Christian East and West, we shall try to set forth the proofs of both teachings.

We shall present, though as briefly as possible, the proofs not only of the Orthodox teaching on the personal property of the Holy Spirit, but also of the non-Orthodox teaching. We shall place them face to face, so that by comparing them everyone may see and decide on which side the truth lies.

"I came forth from the Father," as the eternal Word, the Only-begotten Son of God. "And have come into the world," as the Messiah. Having accomplished the work of the Messiah, "again I leave the world" in My body, "and go to the Father." Even according to humanity, I ascend into the glory that I had from eternity as God (Jn 17:5).

"And I came into the world," by His own will, not subject to necessity. He appeared in the world, and in what world? In a world of sorrows, on an earth cursed for man's sins.

"Again I leave the world and go to the Father." With the same freedom and the same divine authority with which He appeared in the world, He returns to the Father.

The knowledge of the Lord's unity with God the Father now removes from them the thought that the Lord, apart from the flesh, will pray to the Father for them. In the flesh, the God-man, as man, prays to God the Father for believers (cf. Jn 17:20 and the whole chapter). For He was man in soul and body, and as such "fulfilled all human righteousness" (Mt 3:15). Yet as God He will receive prayer.

Being one with the Father, He Himself fulfills their prayer spoken in His name. He thereby points to the distinct honoring of the Hypostases, and also unites Them in the fulfillment of human prayer. This is the prayer which, as we said above, is inspired in us by the Holy Spirit, "interceding in us with groanings too deep for words" (Rom 8:26).

God, manifested to humanity within the limits of space and time, the second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity, who reveals the invisible and incomprehensible God, requires nothing from man except faith and love.

A few simple men, yet chosen by God, loved the incarnate God with their souls and gave Him their souls. This love and faith of mortal creatures toward the immortal God incarnate is rewarded with joyful immortality. The Holy Spirit shows no partiality, says Cyril of Jerusalem, for He seeks not rank, but reverence of soul.

The Lord explains to the disciples: "For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from God." Therefore everyone who believes and loves the Lord Jesus is loved by God, for the Lord Jesus Himself is God.

"I came forth from the Father," says the Lord, "and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father."

The world is one of the glorious manifestations of the will of God, and the laws God established for it are firm and unchangeable. But the material world, with its organic and animal life, is not complete without man. In man, the soul, as a share of divinity granted to him, is the bond of man and of the whole world with God.

This human soul, with its free will, could depart and did depart from the moral laws. It had to be removed from God, the source of all righteousness, as unworthy of God, unless God Himself came to redeem this soul.

He came to make it worthy to be received into communion with the Godhead, "that God may be all in all" (1 Cor 12:6; 15:28; cf. Eph 1:23), by the mercy and sacrifice of the Lord Jesus.

The Lord Jesus, the pre-eternal Word of God, says: "I came forth from the Father and have come into the world." The world is not part of the Godhead, but only a part of infinity and eternity held in the hands of God.

Therefore God, entering the world, takes upon Himself the limitation of time and space. And when He says, "Again, I leave the world and go to the Father," He indicates that He loosens these bonds when, within them, He has fulfilled the dread Sacrifice before the righteousness of God.

Yet the very coming of God into the world illumined the world with radiance. As a human being is illumined by the Holy Spirit, "as when the bright shining of a lamp gives him light" (Lk 11:36), so also the world, by being visited by God in the flesh, received the Holy Spirit. From then and forever, He illumines all human actions.

Let us not be troubled when we see that in some places on earth the light grows dim in souls that surrender themselves to the corruption of unbelief. It shines more brightly in other places, where there is no self-deification of man, that supremely satanic sin.

Let us remember what the Lord said of His Church: "The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it" (Mt 16:18).

We shall end this section on the unity of God the Father and the Lord Jesus, who came into the world and ascends from the world to the Father. With the words of Athanasius the Great: "The distinctive mark of faith in Christ is that the Son of God, the true Word of God (Jn 1:1), the true wisdom and power of the Father (1 Cor 1:24), at the end of the ages became man for our salvation."

"He is true man and, together with this, God, now at the right hand of the Father, being in the Father, and the Father in Him always."