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1. We have just heard, brethren, these words of the Lord, which
He addressed to His disciples: "Let not your heart be troubled,
neither let it be afraid. Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go
away, and come unto you: if ye loved me, ye would surely rejoice,
because I go unto the Father; for the Father is greater than I."
Their hearts might have become filled with trouble and fear, simply
because of His going away from them, even though intending to return;
lest, possibly, in the very interval of the shepherd's absence, the
wolf should make an onset on the flock. But as God, He abandoned
not those from whom He departed as man: and Christ Himself is at
once both man and God. And so He both went away in respect of His
visible humanity, and remained as regards His Godhead: He went away
as regards the nature which is subject to local limitations, and
remained in respect of that which is ubiquitous. Why, then, should
their heart be troubled and afraid, when His quitting their eyesight
was of such a kind as to leave unaltered His presence in their heart?
Although even God, who has no local bounds to His presence, may
depart from the hearts of those who turn away from Him, not with their
feet, but their moral character; just as He comes to such as turn to
Him, not with their faces, but in faith, and approach Him in the
spirit, and not in the flesh. But that they might understand that it
was only in respect of His human nature that He said, "I go and
come to you," He went on to say, "If ye loved me, ye would surely
rejoice, because I go unto the Father; for the Father is greater
than I." And so, then, in that very respect wherein the Son is
not equal to the Father, in that was He to go to the Father, just
as from Him is He hereafter to come to judge the quick and the dead:
while in so far as the Only-begotten is equal to Him that begat, He
never withdraws from the Father; but with Him is everywhere perfectly
equal in that Godhead which knows of no local limitations. For
"being as He was in the form of God," as the apostle says, "He
thought it not robbery to be equal with God." For how could that
nature be robbery, which was His, not by usurpation, but by birth?
"But He emptied Himself, taking upon Him the form of a servant;"
and so, not losing the former, but assuming the latter, and emptying
Himself in that very respect wherein He stood forth before us here in
a humbler state than that wherein He still remained with the Father.
For there was the accession of a servant-form, with no recession of
the divine: in the assumption of the one there was no consumption of
the other. In reference to the one He says, "The Father is
greater than I;" but because of the other, "I and my Father are
one."
2. Let the Arian attend to this, and find healing in his
attention; that wrangling may not lead to vanity, or, what is worse,
to insanity. For it is the servant-form which is that wherein the
Son of God is less, not only than the Father, but also than the
Holy Spirit; and more than that, less also than Himself, for He
Himself, in the form of God, is greater than Himself. For the man
Christ does not cease to be called the Son of God, a name which was
thought worthy of being applied even to His flesh alone as it lay in
the tomb. And what else than this do we confess, when we declare that
we believe in the only-begotten Son of God, who, under Pontius
Pilate, was crucified, and buried? And what of Him was buried,
save the flesh without the spirit? And so in believing in the Son of
God, who was buried, we surely affix the name, Son of God, even
to His flesh, which alone was laid in the grave. Christ Himself,
therefore, the Son of God, equal with the Father because in the
form of God, inasmuch as He emptied Himself, without losing the
form of God, but assuming that of a servant, is greater even than
Himself; because the unlost form of God is greater than the assumed
form of a servant. And what, then, is there to wonder at, or what
is there out of place, if, in reference to this servant-form, the
Son of God says, "The Father is greater than I;" and in
speaking of the form of God, the self-same Son of God declares,
"I and my Father are one"? For one they are, inasmuch as "The
Word was God;" and greater is the Father, inasmuch as "the Word
was made flesh." Let me add what cannot be gainsaid by Arians and
Eunomians: in respect of this servant-form, Christ as a child was
inferior also to His own parents, when, according to Scripture,
"He was subject" as an infant to His seniors. Why, then,
heretic, seeing that Christ is both God and man, when He speaketh
as man, dost thou calumniate God? He in His own person commends our
human nature; dost thou dare in Him to asperse the divine?
Unbelieving and ungrateful as thou art, wilt thou degrade Him who
made thee, just for the very reason that He is declaring what He
became because of thee? For equal as He is with the Father, the
Son, by whom man was made, became man, in order to be less than the
Father: and had He not done so, what would have become of man?
3. May our Lord and Master bring home clearly to our minds the
words, "If ye loved me, ye would surely rejoice, because I go unto
the Father; for the Father is greater than I." Let us, along
with the disciples, listen to the Teacher's words, and not, with
strangers, give heed to the wiles of the deceiver. Let us acknowledge
the twofold substance of Christ; to wit, the divine, in which he is
equal with the Father, and the human, in respect to which the Father
is greater. And yet at the same time both are not two, for Christ is
one; and God is not a quaternity, but a Trinity. For as the
rational soul and the body form but one man, so Christ, while both
God and man, is one; and thus Christ is God, a rational soul, and
a body. In all of these we confess Him to be Christ, we confess
Him in each. Who, then, is He that made the world? Christ
Jesus, but in the form of God. Who is it that was crucified under
Pontius Pilate? Christ Jesus, but in the form of a servant. And
so of the several parts whereof He consists as man. Who is He who
was not left in hell? Christ Jesus, but only in respect of His
soul. Who was to rise on the third day, after being laid in the
tomb? Christ Jesus, but solely in reference to His flesh. In
reference, then, to each of these, He is likewise called Christ
And yet all of them are not two, or three, but one Christ. On this
account, therefore, did He say, "If ye loved me, ye would surely
rejoice, because I go unto the Father;" for human nature is worthy
of congratulation, in being so assumed by the only-begotten Word as
to be constituted immortal in heaven, and, earthy in its nature, to
be so sublimated and exalted, that, as incorruptible dust, it might
take its seat at the right hand of the Father. In such a sense it is
that He said He would go to the Father. For in very truth He went
unto Him, who was always with Him. But His going unto Him and
departing from us were neither more nor less than His transforming and
immortalizing that which He had taken upon Him from us in its mortal
condition, and exalting that to heaven, by means of which He lived on
earth in man's behalf. And who would not draw rejoicing from such a
source, who has such love to Christ that he can at once congratulate
his own nature as already immortal in Christ, and cherish the hope
that he himself will yet become so through Christ?
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