Those who have chosen the good life and so have received the name of saints may safely call God their Father. They strive, according to the measure possible for men, to imitate Him. So also it is just that “the evil one” should be assigned as father to the wicked.
For in their characters they imprint the image of his wickedness and immorality. Especially in Holy Scripture, a father is not always the one who begets from himself. A father is also one who has people conformed to his own character. For this reason he is called their father.
So also blessed Paul writes to some in an epistle: “For in Christ Jesus I begot you through the Gospel” (1 Cor 4:15). Therefore, let us repeat, through likeness of character and holiness some become conformed to God and to the holy fathers. Likewise, through their own depravity, some become of one mind with the devil and with those of like character with him.
Thus the saints should have holy fathers. The wicked, on the contrary, should have wicked fathers. The former imprint the divine image in their souls as far as possible through holiness. Having the boldness fitting for legitimate sons, they will rightly say: “Our Father in heaven” (Mt 6:9).
The evil, likewise, must belong to the father who corresponds to them. They are, as it were, begotten through likeness to him into equal depravity. Thus Christ determines and names for the Jews another father besides holy Abraham. But who he is, He does not yet state clearly.
“They said to Him: We were not born of fornication. We have one Father, God.”
Before this, on Jn 8:39, I already said that the Jews, brazen in everything, suffered from the disease of extremely impious opinions about Christ the Savior. They thought that the Holy Virgin, the Mother of the Lord, was found to be with child not from the Holy Spirit or from an action from above, but from one of those who dwell on earth.
Being unbelievers and complete fools, they either attached no importance to the prophetic writings, though they had clearly heard, “Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son” (Is 7:14). Or else, looking only at the flesh and following our human laws, they did not acknowledge the Nature that acts beyond reason and beyond nature.
For that Nature nothing is difficult, and everything willed is easily attainable. They therefore thought that a woman could not bear in the womb except through intercourse and union with a man. Subject to this opinion, wretched men, they dared to slander the divine and wondrous birth through the Holy Spirit.
And since He removes them from kinship with Abraham and assigns them to another father, they fall into great rage. Lifting up without restraint the anger native to them, they speak abusively: “We were not born of fornication. We have one Father, God.”
By a veiled hint they speak as though saying this: You Yourself have two fathers, and You were not born of an honorable marriage, but we have one Father, God.
Let everyone see and clearly notice what madness they suffer from here also. Because of their wickedness and depravity, the righteous Judge did not place them among Abraham’s children. Yet they reach such madness that they call God their Father.
Perhaps they were thinking of what is said in the books of Moses: “Israel is My firstborn son” (Ex 4:22). But they did not consider what was said through Isaiah: “Woe, rebellious children, says the Lord” (Is 30:1).
One may rightly ask what moved the Jews in the present case no longer to say, “Our father is Abraham,” or, “We have one father, Abraham,” but to rise directly to “the one God.” It seems to me that they reasoned within themselves in this way.
Since they were reviling the Lord because His Mother had supposedly been corrupted before marriage, and since they attributed two fathers to Him, they tried to name one father for themselves in order to strengthen their malicious thought.
By asserting that they have “one Father, God,” they indirectly shame the Lord with two fathers, setting one in opposition to two. They thought that by saying, “We have one father, Abraham,” they would reject others, I mean Isaac, Jacob, and his twelve sons.
Had they done this, they would already have contradicted themselves and armed themselves against their own desire and boast. They would have deprived Israel of the nobility of its fathers, and thereby finally agreed with the Lord’s words.
Thus, avoiding what seemed to them the difficulty arising from this, they no longer say, “We have one father, Abraham.” Instead they ascribe to themselves “one Father, God.” They are carried away only by the dangerous pleasure of accusation.
They thereby fall under all the greater guilt, since they commit every impiety while daring to receive as their Father the Physician of every impiety.
The Jews, brazen in everything, suffered from the disease of extremely impious opinions about Christ the Savior. They thought that the Holy Virgin, the Mother of the Lord, was found to be with child not from the Holy Spirit or from an action from above, but from one of those who dwell on earth.
Being unbelieving and complete fools, they either attached no importance to the prophetic writings, though they had clearly heard, “Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son” (Is 7:14). Or else, looking only at the flesh and following our human laws, they did not acknowledge the Nature that acts beyond reason and beyond nature.
For that Nature nothing is difficult, and everything willed is easily attainable. They thought that a woman could not bear in the womb except through intercourse and union with a man. Subject to this opinion, wretched men, they dared to slander the divine and wondrous birth through the Holy Spirit.
THEOSIS