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| On St. Philip's Conversation with Christ. He that Hath Seen Me, Hath Seen the Father. This Text Explained in an Anti-Praxean Sense.
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Chapter XXIV.—On St.
Philip’s Conversation with Christ. He that Hath Seen Me, Hath
Seen the Father. This Text Explained in an Anti-Praxean
Sense.
But there were some who even then did not
understand. For Thomas, who was so long incredulous, said: “Lord,
we know not whither Thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus
saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh
unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye would have known the
Father also: but henceforth ye know Him, and have seen
Him.”8092
And now we come to
Philip, who, roused with the expectation of seeing the Father, and not
understanding in what sense he was to take “seeing the
Father,” says: “Show us the Father, and it sufficeth
us.”8093
Then the Lord
answered him: “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast
thou not known me, Philip?”8094
Now whom does
He say that they ought to have known?—for this is the sole point
of discussion. Was it as the Father that they ought to have known Him,
or as the Son? If it was as the Father, Praxeas must tell us how
Christ, who had been so long time with them, could have possibly ever
been (I will not say understood, but even) supposed to have been the
Father. He is clearly defined to us in all Scriptures—in the Old
Testament as the Christ of God, in the New Testament as the Son of
God. In this character was He anciently predicted, in this was He
also declared even by Christ Himself; nay, by the very Father also, who
openly confesses Him from heaven as His Son, and as His Son glorifies
Him. “This is my beloved Son;” “I have glorified Him,
and I will glorify Him.” In this character, too, was He believed
on by His disciples, and rejected by the Jews. It was, moreover, in
this character that He wished to be accepted by them whenever He named
the Father, and gave preference to the Father, and honoured the Father.
This, then, being the case, it was not the Father whom, after His
lengthened intercourse with them, they were ignorant of, but it was the
Son; and accordingly the Lord, while upbraiding Philip for not
knowing Himself who was the object of their ignorance, wished Himself
to be acknowledged indeed as that Being whom He had reproached
them for being ignorant of after so long a time—in a word, as the
Son. And now it may be seen in what sense it was said, “He that
hath seen me hath seen the Father,”8095
—even in the same in which it was said
in a previous passage, “I and my Father are one.”8096
Wherefore? Because “I came forth
from the Father, and am come into the world”8097
and, “I am the way: no man cometh unto
the Father, but by me;”8098
and, “No man
can come to me, except the Father draw him;”8099
and, “All things are delivered unto me
by the Father;”8100
and, “As the
Father quickeneth (the dead), so also doth the Son;”8101
and again, “If ye had known me, ye
would have known the Father also.”8102
For in all these passages He had shown Himself to be the Father’s
Commissioner,8103
through whose
agency even the Father could be seen in His works, and heard in His
words, and recognised in the Son’s administration of the
Father’s words and deeds. The Father indeed was invisible, as
Philip had learnt in the law, and ought at the moment to have
remembered: “No man shall see God, and live.”8104
So he is reproved for desiring to see the
Father, as if He were a visible Being, and is taught that He only
becomes visible in the Son from His mighty works, and not in the
manifestation of His person. If, indeed, He meant the Father to be
understood as the same with the Son, by saying, “He who seeth me
seeth the Father,” how is it that He adds immediately afterwards,
“Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in
me?”8105
He ought rather to
have said: “Believest thou not that I am the Father?” With
what view else did He so emphatically dwell on this point, if it were
not to clear up that which He wished men to understand—namely,
that He was the Son? And then, again, by saying, “Believest thou
not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me,”8106
He laid the greater stress on His question
on this very account, that He should not, because He had said,
“He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father,” be supposed
to be the Father; because He had never wished Himself to be so
regarded, having always professed Himself to be the Son, and to have
come from the Father. And then He also set the conjunction of the two
Persons in the clearest light, in order that no wish might be
entertained of seeing the Father as if He were separately visible,
and that the Son might
be regarded as the representative of the Father. And yet He omitted not
to explain how the Father was in the Son and the Son in the Father.
“The words,” says He, “which I speak unto you, are
not mine,”8107
because indeed they
were the Father’s words; “but the Father that dwelleth in
me, He doeth the works.”8108
It is therefore by
His mighty works, and by the words of His doctrine, that the Father who
dwells in the Son makes Himself visible—even by those words
and works whereby He abides in Him, and also by Him in whom He
abides; the special properties of Both the Persons being apparent from
this very circumstance, that He says, “I am in the Father, and
the Father is in me.”8109
Accordingly He
adds: “Believe—” What? That I am the Father? I
do not find that it is so written, but rather, “that I am
in the Father, and the Father in me; or else believe me for my
works’ sake;”8110
meaning those works
by which the Father manifested Himself to be in the Son, not indeed to
the sight of man, but to his intelligence.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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