AUGUSTINE: FATHER GREATER THAN CHRIST

16. Further, what said the evangelist as he went on? Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but said also that God was His Father; not in any ordinary manner, but how? Making Himself equal with God. For we all say to God, Our Father which art in heaven; we read also that the Jews said, Seeing You are our Father. Isaiah 63:16 Therefore it was not for this they were angry, because He said that God was His Father, but because He said it in quite another way than men do. Behold, the Jews understand what the Arians do not understand. The Arians, in fact, say that the Son is not equal with the Father, and hence it is that the heresy was driven from the Church. Lo, the very blind, the very slayers of Christ, still understood the words of Christ. They did not understand Him to be Christ, nor did they understand Him to be the Son of God: but they did nevertheless understand that in these words such a Son of God was intimated to them as should be equal with God. Who He was they knew not; still they did acknowledge such a One to be declared, in that He said God was His Father, making Himself equal with God. Was He not therefore equal with God? He did not make Himself equal, but the Father begot Him equal. Were He to make Himself equal, He would fall by robbery. For he who wished to make himself equal with God, while he was not so, fell, and of an angel became a devil, Isaiah 14:14 and administered to man that cup of pride by which himself was cast down. For this fallen said to man, envying his standing, Taste, and you shall be as gods; Genesis 3:5 that is, seize to yourselves by usurpation that which you are not made, for I also have been cast down by robbery. He did not put forth this, but this is what he persuaded to. Christ, however, was begotten equal to the Father, not made; begotten of the substance of the Father. Whence the apostle thus declares Him: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. What means thought it not robbery? He usurped not equality with God, but was in that equality in which He was begotten. And how were we to come to the equal God? He emptied Himself, taking upon Him the form of a servant. Philippians 2:6 But He emptied Himself not by losing what He was, but by taking to Him what He was not. The Jews, despising this form of a servant, could not understand the Lord Christ equal to the Father, although they had not the least doubt that He affirmed this of Himself, and therefore were they enraged: and yet He still bore with them, and sought the healing of them, while they raged against Him. (Tractate 17 John 5:1-18)

2. Now the Jews were moved and indignant: justly, indeed, because a man dared to make himself equal with God; but unjustly in this, because in the man they understood not the God. They saw the flesh, the God they knew not; they observed the habitation, of the inhabitant they were ignorant. That flesh was a temple, within it dwelt God. It was not the flesh that Jesus made equal to the Father, it was not the form of a servant that He compared to the Lord; not that which He became for us, but that which He was when He made us. For who Christ is (I speak to Catholics) you know, because you have rightly believed; not Word only, nor flesh only, but the Word was made flesh to dwell among us. I recite again concerning the Word what you know: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: here is equality with the Father. But the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. Than this flesh the Father is greater. Thus the Father is both equal and greater; equal to the Word, greater than the flesh; equal to Him by whom He made us, greater than He who was made for us. By this sound catholic rule, which you ought particularly to know, which you who know it hold fast, from which your faith ought not in any case to slip, which is to be wrested from your heart by no arguments of men, let us measure the things we do understand; and the things which, it may be, we do not understand, let us defer, to be hereafter measured by this rule, when we shall be competent to do this. We know Him, then, as equal to the Father, the Son of God, because we know Him in the beginning as God the Word. Why, then, sought the Jews to slay Him? Because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God: seeing the flesh, not seeing the Word. Let Him therefore speak against them, the Word through the flesh; let Him, the dweller within, speak for through His dwelling-place, that whoever can, shall know who He is that dwells within.

3. What says He then to them? Then answered Jesus, and said to them, being indignant because He made Himself equal with God, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son cannot do anything of Himself, but what He sees the Father doing. What the Jews answered to these words is not written: and perhaps they said nothing. Certain, however, who wish to be esteemed Christians, are not silent, but from these words somehow conceive certain opinions in contradiction to us, which are not to be despised, both for their and for our sakes. The Arian heretics, namely, while they assert that the Son, who took upon Himself flesh, is less than the Father, not by the flesh, but before taking flesh, and not of the same substance as the Father, take a handle of misrepresentation from these words, and reply to us: You see that the Lord Jesus, observing the Jews to be moved with indignation at his making himself equal to God the Father, subjoined such words as these, to show that he was not equal with God. For the Jews, say they, were provoked against Christ, because he made him self equal with God; and Christ, wishing to cure them of this impression, and to show them that the Son is not equal to the Father, that is, to God, says this, as if he said, Why are you angry? Why are you indignant? I am not equal to God, since ‘the Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he sees the Father doing.’ Now, say they, he who ‘cannot do anything of himself, but what he sees the Father doing,’ is surely less, not equal.

4. In this distorted and depraved rule of his own heart, let the heretic hear us, not as yet chiding, but still as it were inquiring, and let him explain to us what he thinks. For, I suppose, whoever you are (for we may regard him as here present in person), you hold with us, that in the beginning was the Word. I do hold it, says he. And that the Word was with God? This too, says he, I hold. Proceed then, and hold the stronger saying that follows, that the Word was God. Even this, says he, I hold: but yet, this, God the greater; that, God the less. Now this somehow smells of the pagan: I thought I was speaking with a Christian. If there is God the greater, and God the less, then we worship two Gods, not one God. Why, says he; do not you, too, affirm two Gods, equal the one to the other? This I do not assert: for I understand this equality as implying therein also undivided love; and if undivided love, then perfect unity. For if the love that God put in men does make of many hearts of men one heart, and does make many souls of men into one soul, as it is written of them that believed and mutually loved one another, in the Acts of the Apostles, They had one soul and one heart toward God: Acts 4:32 if, therefore, my soul and your soul become one soul, when we think the same thing and love one another, how much more must God the Father and God the Son be one God in the fountain of love!

5. But to these words, by which your heart is disturbed, bend your thought, and reflect with me on that which we were seeking out concerning the Word. We already hold that the Word was God: I join to this another thing, that, having said, This was in the beginning with God, the evangelist immediately subjoined, All things were made by Him. Now will I urge you by questioning, now will I move you against yourself, and sue you against yourself: only keep this in memory concerning the Word, that the Word was God, and all things were made by Him. Hear now the words by which you were moved to assert that the Son is less, forsooth, because He said, The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He sees the Father doing. Just so, says he. Explain to me this a little: This is, I presume, how you think, that the Father does certain things, and the Son observes how the Father does, that He may also Himself be able to do those things which He sees the Father doing. You have set up two artisans, as it were: the Father and the Son just like master and learner, like as artisan fathers are wont to teach their sons their craft. Behold, I come down to your carnal sense: for the moment I think as you do, let us see if this our conception finds an issue in harmony with the things which we have just now alike spoken and alike hold regarding the Word, that the Word was God, and that all things were made by Him. Suppose, then, the Father, as an artisan, doing certain works, and the Son as a learner, who cannot of Himself do anything, but what He sees the Father doing: He keenly watches, in a manner, the Father’s hands, that, as He sees Him fashioning anything, so He may Himself in like manner fashion something similar by His own works. But the Father here does all those things that He does, and wishes the Son to give heed to Him, and to do the like also Himself; by whom does the Father? Come! now is the time for you to stand to your former opinion, which you recited with me, and held with me; that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and all things were made by Him. But you, after holding with me, that all things were made by the Word, dost again, with your carnal wit and childish fancy, imagine with yourself God making something, and the Word giving heed; so that when God has made, the Word also may make the like. Now, what does God make without the Word? For if He does anything, then were not all things made by the Word; you have given up the position which you held. But if all things were made by the Word, correct what you understood amiss. The Father made, and made only by the Word: in what way does the Word give heed to see the Father making without the Word, what the Word may do in like manner? Whatever the Father has made, He made it by the Word; else is it false that all things were made by Him. But it is true that all things were made by Him. Perhaps this did not seem enough for you? Well, and without Him was nothing made.

6. Withdraw, then, from this wisdom of the flesh, and let us inquire in what manner it is said, The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He sees the Father doing. Let us inquire, if we are worthy to apprehend. For I confess it is a great thing, and altogether difficult; to see the Father doing through the Son: not the Father and the Son doing each His particular works, but the Father doing every work whatsoever by the Son; so that not any works are done by the Father without the Son, or by the Son without the Father, because all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made. These truths being most firmly established in the foundation of faith, what now is the nature of this seeing? You seek, as I suppose, to know the Son doing: seek first to know the Son seeing. For what, in fact, says He? The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He sees the Father doing. Note what He said, but what He sees the Father doing. The seeing comes first, the doing follows: He sees in order to do. As for you, why do you seek at present to know how He does, while you understand not as yet how He sees? Why do you run to that which comes later, leaving that which comes first? He declares Himself as seeing and doing, not doing and seeing; because He cannot of Himself do anything, but what He sees the Father doing. Will you that I explain to you how He does? Explain to me how He sees. If you can not explain this, neither can I that. If you are not yet competent to understand this, neither am I to understand that. Wherefore let each of us seek, each knock, that each may merit to receive. Why do you, as if you were learned, unjustly blame me who am unlearned? I in respect of the doing, you in respect of the seeing, being both unlearned, let us inquire of the Master, not childishly wrangle in His school. We have already, however, learned together that all things were made by Him. Therefore it is manifest that it is not a different kind of works that the Father does, that, seeing them, the Son may do other works like them; but the very same does the Father by the Son, because all things were made by the Word. Now, as to how God does, who knows? How made He, I will not say the world, but your own eye, in your carnal attachment to which you compare visible things with invisible? For you conceive of God such things as you are wont to see with these eyes. But if God might be seen with these eyes, He would not have said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Accordingly, you have an eye of the body to see an artificer, but you have not yet the eye of the heart to see God: hence, what you are wont to see in an artificer, you would transfer to God. Leave earthly things on the earth; set your heart on high.

7. What then, beloved, are we going to explain that which we have asked, how the Word sees, how the Father is seen by the Word, what the seeing of the Word is? I am not so bold, so rash, as to promise to explain this, for myself or for you: however I estimate your measure, still I know my own. Therefore, if you please, not to delay it longer, let us run over the passage, and see how carnal hearts are troubled by the words of the Lord; to this end troubled, that they may not continue in that which they hold. Let this be wrested from them, as some toy is wrested from children, with which they amuse themselves to their hurt, that, as persons of larger growth, they may have more profitable things planted in them, and may be able to make progress, instead of crawling on the earth. Arise, seek, sigh, pant with desire, and knock at what is shut. But if we do not yet desire, not yet earnestly seek, not yet sigh, we shall only be throwing pearls to all indiscriminately, or finding pearls ourselves, regardless of what kind. Wherefore, beloved, I would move a longing desire in your heart. Good character leads to right understanding: the kind of life leads to another kind of life. One kind of life is earthly, another is heavenly: there is a life of beasts, another of men, and another of angels. The life of beasts is excited with earthly pleasures, seeks earthly pleasures alone, and grovels after them with immoderate desire: the life of angels is alone heavenly; the life of men is midway between that of angels and of beasts. If man lives after the flesh, he is on a level with the beasts; if he lives after the Spirit, he joins in the fellowship of angels. When you live after the Spirit, examine even in the angelic life whether you be small or well-grown. For if you are still a little one, the angels say to you, Grow: we feed on bread; you are nourished with milk, with the milk of faith that you may come to the meat of sight. But if there be still a longing for filthy pleasures, if the thoughts be still of deceit, if lies are not avoided, if perjuries be heaped on lies, shall a heart so foul dare to say, Explain to me how the Word sees; even if I be able to do so, even if I myself now see? And further, though not perhaps of this character myself, and I am nevertheless far from this vision, how must that man be weighed down with earthly desires, who is not yet rapt with this desire from above! There is a wide difference between loathing and desiring; and again, between desiring and enjoying. If you live as do the beasts, you loathe; the angels have full enjoyment. If, on the other hand, you live not as the beast, you have no longer loathing: something you desire, and dost not receive: you have, by the very desire, begun the life of the angels. May it grow in you, and be perfected in you; and may you receive this, not of me, but of Him who made both me and you!

8. Yet the Lord also has not left us to chance, since, in that He said, The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He sees the Father doing, He meant us to understand that the Father does, not some works which the Son may see, and the Son does other works after He has seen the Father doing; but that both the Father and Son do the very same works. For He goes on to say, For whatever things He does, these also does the Son in like manner. Not after the Father has done works, does the Son other works in like manner; but, whatever He does, these also the Son does in like manner. If these the Son does which the Father does, then it is by the Son that the Father does: if by the Son the Father does what He does, then the Father does not some, the Son others; but the works of the Father and of the Son are the same works. And how does the Son also the same? Both the same, and in like manner. In case you should think them the same, but in a different manner, the same, says He, and in like manner. And how could they be the same and not in like manner? Take an example, which I presume is not too big for you: when we write letters they are first formed by our heart, then by our hand. Certainly: why otherwise have you all agreed, but because you perceived it to be so? It is as I have said, it is manifest to us all. The letters are made first by our heart, then by our body; the hand serves, the heart commands; both the heart and the hand make the same letters. Do you think the heart does some letters, the hand some others? The same indeed does the hand, but not in like manner: our heart forms them intelligibly, but our hand visibly. See how the same things are made, but not in like manner. Hence it was not enough for the Lord to say, Whatever things the Father does, these also the Son does; He must add, and in like manner. For what if you should understand this just as you understand whatever your heart does, this also your hand does, but in a different manner? Here, however, he added, These also the Son does in like manner. If He both does these, and in like manner does, then awake; let the Jew be crushed, let the Christian believe, let the heretic be convinced: The Son is equal to the Father.

9. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that Himself does. Here is that shows. Shows, as it were, to whom? Of course, as to one that sees. We return to that which we cannot explain, how the Word sees. Behold, man was made by the Word; but man has eyes, ears, hands, various members in the body: he is able by the eyes to see, by the ears to hear, by the hands to work; the members are diverse, their offices diverse. One member cannot do the office of another; yet, by reason of the unity of the body, the eye sees both for itself and for the ear, and the ear hears for itself and for the eye. Are we to suppose that something like this holds good in the Word, seeing all things are by Him; and Scripture has said in the psalm, Understand, you brutish among the people; and you fools, at length be wise. He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? And He that formed the eye, shall He not see? Hence, if the Word is He that formed the eye, for all things are by the Word; if the Word is He that planted the ear, for all things are by the Word: we cannot say the Word does not hear, the Word does not see; lest the psalm reprove us, and say, Fools, at length be wise. Therefore, if the Word hears and sees, if the Son hears and sees, are we yet to search for eyes and ears in Him in separate places? Does He by one part hear, by another see; and cannot His ear do what His eye does; and cannot His eye do what His ear can? Or is He not all sight, all hearing? Perhaps yes; nay, not perhaps, but truly yes; while, however, that seeing of His, and that hearing of His, is in a way far other than it is with us. Both to see and to hear exist together in the Word: seeing and hearing are not diverse things in Him; but hearing is sight, and sight is hearing. (Tractate 18 John 5:19)

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. You have heard how I said to you, I go away, and come unto you: if you loved me, you 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 you loved me, you 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 begot, 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; Philippians 2:6-7 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 Luke 2:51 as an infant to His seniors. Why, then, heretic, seeing that Christ is both God and man, when He speaks as man, do you calumniate God? He in His own person commends our human nature; do you dare in Him to asperse the divine? Unbelieving and ungrateful as you are, will you degrade Him who made you, just for the very reason that He is declaring what He became because of you? 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 you loved me, you 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 you loved me, you 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? (Tractate 78 John 14:27-28)