Chapter IV.—Of the Fact that John Undertook the Exposition of Christ’s Divinity.

7. These three evangelists, however, were for the most part engaged with those things which Christ did through the vehicle of the flesh of man, and after the temporal fashion.21    Temporaliter. But John, on the other hand, had in view that true divinity of the Lord in which He is the Father’s equal, and directed his efforts above all to the setting forth of the divine nature in his Gospel in such a way as he believed to be adequate to men’s needs and notions.22    Quantum inter homines sufficere credidit. Therefore he is borne to loftier heights, in which he leaves the other three far behind him; so that, while in them you see men who have their conversation in a certain manner with the man Christ on earth, in him you perceive one who has passed beyond the cloud in which the whole earth is wrapped, and who has reached the liquid heaven from which, with clearest and steadiest mental eye, he is able to look upon God the Word, who was in the beginning with God, and by whom all things were made.23    John i. 1, 3. And there, too, he can recognise Him who was made flesh in order that He might dwell amongst us;24    John i. 14. [that Word of whom we say,] that He assumed the flesh, not that He was changed into the flesh. For had not this assumption of the flesh been effected in such a manner as at the same time to conserve the unchangeable Divinity, such a word as this could never have been spoken,—namely, “I and the Father are one.”25    John x. 30. For surely the Father and the flesh are not one. And the same John is also the only one who has recorded that witness which the Lord gave concerning Himself, when He said: “He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father also;” and, “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me;”26    John xiv. 9, 10. “that they may be one, even as we are one;”27    John xvii. 22. and, “Whatsoever the Father doeth, these same things doeth the Son likewise.”28    John v. 19. And whatever other statements there may be to the same effect, calculated to betoken, to those who are possessed of right understanding, that divinity of Christ in which He is the Father’s equal, of all these we might almost say that we are indebted for their introduction into the Gospel narrative to John alone. For he is like one who has drunk in the secret of His divinity more richly and somehow more familiarly than others, as if he drew it from the very bosom of his Lord on which it was his wont to recline when He sat at meat.29    John xiii. 23.

CAPUT IV. Joannes ipsius divinitatem exprimendam curavit.

7. Tres tamen isti Evangelistae in his rebus maxime diversati sunt, quas Christus per humanam carnem temporaliter gessit: porro autem Joannes ipsam maxime divinitatem Domini, qua Patri est aequalis, intendit, eamque praecipue suo Evangelio, quantum inter homines sufficere credidit, commendare curavit. Itaque longe a tribus istis superius fertur, ita ut hos videas quodammodo in terra cum Christo homine conversari; illum autem transcendisse nebulam, qua tegitur omnis terra, et pervenisse ad liquidum coelum, unde acie mentis acutissima atque firmissima videret, in principio Verbum Deum apud Deum, per quem facta sunt omnia; et ipsum agnosceret carnem factum, ut habitaret in nobis (Joan. I, 1, 3, 14): quod acceperit carnem, non quod fuerit mutatus in carnem. Nisi enim carnis assumptio servata incommutabili divinitate facta esset, non diceretur, Ego et Pater unum sumus (Id. X, 30): neque enim Pater et caro unum sunt. Et hoc de seipso Domini testimonium solus idem Joannes commemoravit; et, Qui me vidit, vidit et Patrem ; et, Ego in Patre, et Pater in me est (Id. XIV, 9, 10); et, Ut sint unum, sicut et nos unum sumus (Id. XVII, 22); et, Quaecumque Pater facit, haec eadem et Filius facit similiter (Id. V, 19); et si qua alia sunt, quae Christi divinitatem, in qua aequalis est Patri, recte intelligentibus intiment, pene solus Joannes in Evangelio suo posuit: tanquam qui de pectore ipsius Domini, super quod discumbere in ejus convivio solitus erat (Id. XIII, 23), secretum divinitatis ejus uberius et quodammodo familiarius biberit.