John 10:35

At this speech, I and My Father are one, the Jews could not restrain their rage, but ran to take up stones, after their hardhearted way: Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him.

The heretics now, as unbelieving and rebellious against our Lord in heaven, show their impious hatred by the stones, i.e. the words they cast at Him; as if they would drag Him down again from His throne to the cross.

Our Lord remonstrates with them; Many good works have I showed you from My Father, strewing that they had no just reason for their anger.

Healing of the sick, teaching, miracles. He showed them of the Father, because He sought His Father’s glory in all of them. For which of these works do you stone Me? They confess, though reluctantly, the benefit they have received from Him, but charge Him at the same time with blasphemy, for asserting His equality with the Father; For a good work we stone you not, but for blasphemy; and because that You, being a man, make Yourself God.

This is their answer to the speech, I and My Father are one. Lo, the Jews understood what the Arians understand not. For they are angry, for this very reason, that they could not conceive but that by saying, I and My Father are one, He meant the equality of the Father and the Son.

The Jew said, You being a man, the Arian, you being a creature: but both say, You make Yourself God. The Arian supposes a God of a new and different substance a God of another kind, or not a God at all. He said, You are not Son by birth, you art not God of truth; you art a superior creature.

Our Lord did not correct the Jews, as if they misunderstood His speech, but confirmed and defended it, in the very sense in which they had taken it. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law,

i.e. the Law given to you, I have said, you are Gods? God saith this by the Prophet in the Psalm. Our Lord calls all those Scriptures the Law generally, though elsewhere He spiritually distinguishes the Law from the Prophets. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. In another place He makes a threefold division of the Scriptures; All things must he fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms concerning Me. Now He calls the Psalms the Law, and thus argues from them; If he called them gods to whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken, say you of Him whom the Father has sanctified, and sent into tile world, you blaspheme, because I said, I am the Son of God?

Before proving that He and His Father are one, He answers the absurd and foolish charge brought against Him, that He being man made Himself God. When the Law applied this title to holy men, and the indelible word of God sanctioned this use of the incommunicable name, it could not be a crime in Him, even though He were man, to make Himself God. The Law called those who were mere men, gods; and if any man could bear the name religiously, and without arrogance, surely that man could, who was sanctified by the Father, in a sense in which none else is sanctified to the Sonship; as the blessed Paul said, Declared to be the Son, of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness. For or all this reply refers to Himself as man; the Son of God being also the Son of man.

Or sanctified, i.e. in begetting, gave Him holiness, begat Him holy. If men to whom the word of God came were called gods, much more the Word of God Himself is God. If men by partaking of the word of God were made gods, much more is the Word of which they partake, God.

Or, sanctified, i.e. set apart to be sacrificed for the world: a proof that He was God in a higher sense than the rest. To save the world is a divine work, not that of a man made divine by grace.

Or, we must consider this a speech of humility, made to conciliate men. After it he leads them to higher things; If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not; which is as much as to say, that He is not inferior to the Father. As they could not see His substance, He directs them to His works, as being like and equal to the Father’s. For the equality of their works, proved tile equality of their power.

What place has adoption, or the mere conception of a name then, that we should not believe Him to be the Son of God by nature, when He tells us to believe Him to be the Son of God, because the Father’s nature showed itself in Him by His works? A creature is not equal and like to God: no other nature has power comparable to the divine. He declares that He is carrying on not His own work, but the Father’s, lest in the greatness of the works, the nativity of His nature be forgotten. And as under the sacrament of the assumption of a human body in is the womb of Mary, the Son of God was not discerned, this must be gathered from His work; But if I do, though you believe not Me, believe the works. Why does the sacrament of a human birth hinder the understanding of the divine, when the divine birth accomplishes all its work by aid of the human? Then He tells them what they should gather from His works; That you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him. The same declaration again, I am the Son of God: I and the Father are one.

The Son does not say, The Father is in Me, and I in Him, in the sense in which men who think and act aright may say the like; meaning that they partake of God’s grace, and are enlightened by His Spirit. The Only-begotten Son of God is in the Father, and the Father in Him, as an equal in an equal.

Again, whose doctrine does He announce, at which all were astonished? Was it His own or the Father’s? So, when they were in doubt among themselves whether He were the Christ (not as being the Father, of course but as the Son), He says to them “You are not ignorant whence I am; and I am not come of myself, but He that sent me is true, whom ye know not; but I know Him, because I am from Him.” He did not say, Because I myself am He; and, I have sent mine own self: but His words are, “He hath sent me.” When, likewise, the Pharisees sent men to apprehend Him, He says: “Yet a little while am I with you, and (then) I go unto Him that sent me.” When, however, He declares that He is not alone, and uses these words, “but I and the Father that sent me,” does He not show that there are Two, Two, and yet inseparable? Indeed, this was the sum and substance of what He was teaching them, that they were …

In Genesis: “And God said unto Jacob, Arise, and go up to the place of Bethel, and dwell there; and make there an altar to that God who appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of thy brother Esau.” Also in Isaiah: “Thus saith the Lord, the God of Sabaoth, Egypt is wearied; and the merchandise of the Ethiopians, and the tall men of the Sabeans, shall pass over unto Thee, and shall be Thy servants; and shall walk after Thee bound with chains; and shall worship Thee, and shall pray to Thee, because God is in Thee, and there is no other God beside Thee. For Thou art God, and we knew it not, O God of Israel, our Saviour. They shall all be confounded and fear who oppose Thee, and shall fall into confusion.” Likewise in the same: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God. …

If Christ is only man, how is it that He says, “Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true: because I know whence I came, and whither I go; ye know not whence I came, and whither I go. Ye judge after the flesh?” Behold, also He says, that He shall return thither whence He bears witness that He came before, as being sent, to wit, from heaven. He came down therefore from whence He came, in the same manner as He goes thither from whence He descended. Whence if Christ were only man, He would not have come thence, and therefore would not depart thither, because He would not have come thence. Moreover, by coming thence, whence as man He could not have come, He shows Himself to have come as God. …

Now that these things should have occurred at “the third hour,” was not without cause. For the brightness of this fire is shown at the very time when people are not engaged in their works, nor at dinner; when it is bright day, when all are in the market-place. Do you observe also the freedom which fills his speech? “And hearken to my words.” And he added nothing, but, “This,” says he, “is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; And it shall come to pass in the last days.” He shows, in fact, that the consummation is nigh at hand, and the words, “In the last days,” have a kind of emphasis. [“I will pour out,” etc.] And then, that he may not seem to limit the privilege to the sons only, he subjoins, “And your old men shall dream dreams.” Mark the sequence. First sons; just as David said, “Instead of thy fathers, were begotten thy sons.” ( Ps. xlv. …

Ver. 33-36 . “For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy; and because that thou being a man makest thyself God”; hear His answer; “If the Scripture called them gods unto whom the word of God came, how say ye that I blaspheme, because I said, I am the Son of God?” What He saith is of this kind: “If those who have received this honor by grace, are not found fault with for calling themselves gods, how can He who hath this by nature deserve to be rebuked?” Yet He spake not so, but proved it at a later time, having first relaxed and yielded somewhat in His discourse, and said, “Whom the Father hath sanctified and sent.” And when He had softened their anger, He bringeth forward the plain assertion. For a while, that His speech might be received, He spoke in a humbler strain, but afterwards He raised it higher, saying,

39. Therefore He was not man, and then became God, but He was God, and then became man, and that to deify us. Since, if when He became man, only then He was called Son and God, but before He became man, God called the ancient people sons, and made Moses a god of Pharaoh (and Scripture says of many, ‘God standeth in the congregation of Gods’), it is plain that He is called Son and God later than they. How then are all things through Him, and He before all? or how is He ‘first-born of the whole creation,’ if He has others before Him who are called sons and gods? And how is it that those first partakers do not partake of the Word? This opinion is not true; it is a device of our present Judaizers. …

16. If then the Son too were a work, well might God begin to be a Father towards Him as others; but if the Son is not a work, then ever was the Father and ever the Son. But if the Son was ever, He must be the Word; for if the Word be not Son, and this is what a man waxes bold to say, either he holds that Word to be Father or the Son superior to the Word. For the Son being ‘in the bosom of the Father,’ of necessity either the Word is not before the Son (for nothing is before Him who is in the Father), or if the Word be other than the Son, the Word must be the Father in whom is the Son. But if the Word is not Father but Word, the Word must be external to the Father, since it is the Son who is ‘in the bosom of the Father.’ For not both the Word and the Son are in the bosom, but one must be, and He the Son, who is Only-begotten. …

Why then do they go on citing the Synod of Ariminum, at which they were deposed? Why do they reject that of Nicæa, at which their Fathers signed the confession that the Son is of the Father’s Essence and coessential with Him? Why do they run about? For now they are at war not only with the bishops who met at Nicæa, but with their own great bishops and their own friends. Whose heirs or successors then are they? How can they call men fathers, whose confession, well and apostolically drawn up, they will not accept? For if they think they can object to it, let them speak, or rather answer, that they may be convicted of falling foul of themselves, whether they believe the Son when He says, ‘I and my Father are one,’ and ‘he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.’ ‘Yes,’ they must answer, ‘since it is written we believe it.’ But if they are asked how they are one, and how he that hath seen th …