In the same way, though the Son surely surpasses the comparison, we must piously understand that He utters the thoughts and purposes of the Father. For He is the Word and Wisdom of God the Father.
And since He is not without hypostasis, as a human word is, but has essence and life, possessing His own existence in the Father and with the Father, He says here that He is not alone, but that He who sent Him is with Him.
When He says, “with Me,” He again expresses something fitting and mystical. We must not understand His words as though the Father who begot Him were with Him in the way God is with a prophet. God protects such a prophet by His power, helps him by His inspirations, or stirs him to prophecy by revelations through the Spirit.
Here He uses “with Me” in another sense. “He who sent Me,” that is, God the Father, is of one nature with Me.
Understand in the same way what is said of Christ in the prophet Isaiah: “Know, O nations, and be subject, for God is with us” (Isa 8:9-10). These words can certainly also befit those who have placed in Him their hope of salvation.
Yet even they say “God is with us” not because, as one might think, God will be their helper and defender. Rather, “He is with us” means that He is from among us. For the Word of God became man.
Through this we have all received salvation. We have broken the bonds of death and been freed from the corruption of sin. For God the Word, who is in the form of God, came down to us and appeared with us.
Therefore, as in the prophet we understand “God is with us” to mean, “The Word, who is from God the Father, appeared in one nature with us,” so here also, when Christ says, “He who sent Me is with Me, and has not left Me alone,” we must preserve the same exact reasoning.
We must clearly see His mystical indication that, as we have already said, God the Father is of one nature with Me. “And He has not left Me alone,” for it would truly be strange for Me not to have with Myself God the Father, from whom I was begotten.
But perhaps someone will say, and ask out of love for inquiry: Why does the Savior Himself say this, or what moved Him to offer such an explanation? In reply, we shall point out that He added this to what had already been said in a most profitable and necessary way.
Since He said, “As the Father taught Me, so I speak,” by this very thing He necessarily shows that the Father is co-present with Him and consubstantial with Him. Thus He awakens faith in Himself as speaking the Father’s words.
He speaks them as God speaking the words of God. He speaks as One who, from the natural property of His Begetter, is moved to speak what befits God.
In a similar way, human children also possess by nature certain knowledge without instruction, as we said above. They well know what belongs to humanity.
Therefore one must not be scandalized if He says that the Son learned from the Father. By this He is in no way shown to be less than Him, or of another nature, as they suppose.
This may also be established by the following reasoning. Essence is not determined by knowledge or ignorance of anything, but by the nature of each.
Let us take Paul and Silvanus as an example. Suppose that Paul knows the mystery of Christ perfectly, while Silvanus knows it somewhat less than Paul.
Will they cease to be alike in nature? Or will Paul be above Silvanus in essence, because he has understood the depth of the mystery more than Silvanus?
I think no one would reach such folly as to see in them different natures because of greater or lesser knowledge. If, then, as we have said, the properties of essence are not precisely defined by knowledge or learning, nothing prevents the Son from being God by nature.
This remains true even though He says that He learned from His own Father. By this He is not deprived of consubstantiality with Him. Without doubt He remains what He is: God from God, Light from Light.
But perhaps someone will ask, “How is this? Is the Father greater in knowledge, and therefore teaches the Son?” To this we repeat what we have said many times: the Wisdom of the Father has no need of teaching or instruction.
Having composed many arguments on this point, we have already exposed the false doctrine of these questioners, showing that it leads to boundless blasphemy.
Then it seems necessary to add this as well. The Son had great care and deep concern always to lower His own dignity. Because of the form of a servant, and because of the abasement accepted for our sake, He did not always speak fully as befitted Him according to His Godhead.
How otherwise did He descend, or from where and to where did He pass, if He did not also say something humble and not fully corresponding to His divine glory?
For this reason He often assumes the appearance of not knowing as man, though He knew as God. You can see this clearly in the history of Lazarus in Bethany.
By His wondrous power and divine voice, He caused one already four days dead and giving off the odor of corruption to return to life. But look how He acts in this case.
He knew that Lazarus had died and had foretold this beforehand to His disciples as God. Yet in human fashion He asked, “Where have you laid him?” (Jn 11:34).
Wonderful indeed! While dwelling somewhere far from Bethany, He was not ignorant as God that Lazarus had died. Why then did He ask about the place of the tomb?
You may answer quite soundly that He assumed the appearance of one asking, ordering something useful according to the divine economy. Understand the same here according to the divine economy.
As God, He knew what He says He learned from the Father. Yet He did not wish to provoke too greatly the irrationality of the Jews. Restraining the fury of the ignorant, He directs His speech to them in another form.
He does not speak as was proper to Him as God, though it was more fitting for Him to speak in that way. Since they still thought He was a mere man, He mingles divine dignity with words proper to man.
Thus, somewhat beneath His own dignity, and according to the divine economy adapted to the views of the Jews, He adds: “Because I always do what is pleasing to Him.”
Follow me here also in resolving the seeming difficulty. Clearly consider the saying, rightly interpreted: “I do nothing of Myself.”
Therefore, He says, I recently bore witness by telling you that I do nothing of Myself. My custom and way is to do nothing displeasing to God the Father, and nothing that is unpleasant to My Begetter.
Thus here too He plainly indicates that the Son does nothing from Himself alone. He does this precisely by always accomplishing what is pleasing to God the Father.
If He were to do anything not pleasing to God, then He would be doing something “of Himself,” that is, something contrary to the will of His Begetter.
Therefore He did not declare here that He does nothing of Himself because He is lower than the Father’s dignity, or because He cannot accomplish anything by His own power. Rather, He is always of one mind and one will with His Begetter in absolutely all things.
He does not wish to accomplish anything as though alone and separately. Certainly we must not fall into the absurd thought that in these words the Son is pointing to some dignity chosen beforehand and acquired.
On the contrary, He points to the fruit of an unchanging nature, which regards deliberation in action as foreign to the Godhead.
Among creatures, which can change for the worse and are subject to alteration from better to worse, good is the fruit of pious and virtuous intention. But this is not so in the divine Essence that surpasses all.
Since God is altogether removed from every kind of mutability, good is already the fruit of His own immutable essence. It is like heat in fire or cold in snow.
Fire is seen to possess its power not by choice, but as natural and essential. It cannot be otherwise unless compelled by a command of the Creator.
Therefore the Only-begotten says this not as one like us, or like any other rational creature, moved by prior choice and decision toward doing something pleasing to God the Father.
He says it as One who follows the laws of His own nature and can think and do nothing other than the desires of Him who begot Him.
How could the wholly consubstantial and single Godhead ever disagree with Itself? Or how could It do what is displeasing to Itself, if anything could turn It aside toward something else?
For although God the Father exists distinctly and in Himself, and likewise the Son and the Spirit, nevertheless the Holy and Consubstantial Trinity must never be divided into separate parts. Rather, the whole fullness of the Godhead rises into one nature.
In addition, one must also observe that there is no just reason to take from the Son His natural identity with the Father. Since He affirmed that He always does what is pleasing to Him, He is shown all the more to be consubstantial with Him.
Through this He is known as God from God by nature and true. For tell me, who can think the things of God in a manner wholly proper to God, and always unchangeably, unless He Himself is God by nature?
Or who can always do what is pleasing to Him, except the One who has a nature inaccessible to anything evil, and has received the unique dignity of the divine Nature? I mean the impossibility of erring.
For of creatures it is said, “Who will boast that he has a clean heart, or who will dare to say that he is pure from sins?” (Prov 20:9). Strengthening and elevating this thought, divine Scripture says, “Even the stars are not pure before Him” (Job 25:5).
Indeed, although the angels differ greatly from us and have greater stability in virtue, they did not “keep their own beginning” (Jude 1:6). Since some completely tore themselves away from it and fell into sin, the whole nature of rational creatures is accused as accessible to sin.
It is shown unable to be without participation in the capacity to turn toward what is worse. And the rational, Godlike creature on earth fell not long after its creation, but in the first Adam.
Therefore constancy and immovability do not belong to the creature, nor does natural and innate immutability. This is the property of the one true God alone.
It is clearly seen also in the Son, for “He did no sin,” as Paul, or rather Peter, says (1 Pet 2:22), “nor was deceit found in His mouth.”
Therefore the Son is God and from God by nature. He cannot err or change, and He never turns aside from what belongs to His nature.
Therefore, if He acknowledges that He always does what is pleasing to the Father, let no one be scandalized by this. Let no one think that He who is from the Father is less than the Father.
Rather, let him think piously that He, as God from God, rises by nature to identity of will, ταυτοβουλίαν, and, so to speak, identity of action, ταυτουϱγίαν, with His Begetter.
THEOSIS