Questions.
14. Question I. It is asked concerning what he says: Without him was made nothing.
Against this it is objected that he who steals has done something; therefore theft is something; therefore it is from God; therefore sins and evils are from God and are not made without God. If you say that sin is nothing, whence the sense is: Without him was made nothing, that is, sin, so that the matter rests there; against this it is further objected: because sin corrupts, and what corrupts acts, and what acts is a being, and what is a being is something; therefore etc.
I respond: It must be said that sin sometimes names an action deprived of some due circumstance; sometimes it names a debt with the privation of the good to which it is ordered; sometimes it names the privation of good itself. In the first way it is something; in the second way it is something in a qualified sense; in the third way it is altogether nothing. Therefore insofar as it involves a good substrate, by reason of that it is from God, but by reason of its deformity, it is not.
As to the objection that sin acts: this is through the nature of the underlying good, as Dionysius says.
15. Question II. Likewise there is a question about what he says: What was made, in him was life.
Against this: All things were made in him; therefore all things are life; in the Psalm: You have made all things in wisdom; therefore a stone lives.
I respond: It must be said that Chrysostom explains that passage thus: What was made, connecting it to the prior clause, so that the period falls thus: without him was made nothing that was made, and the word that is taken implicatively. And then follows: In him was life; and the objection ceases. Hilary however reads it thus: What was made in him — here is the period — namely with respect to his humanity, such as the incarnation, passion, and resurrection, was life, speaking causally, that is, the cause of our life and salvation. Ambrose reads it thus: What was made in him who is life, that is, in him who is life — the construction is appositive — was, namely in God's foreknowledge, before it came to be; and it is a similar manner of speaking to: You have made all things in wisdom. Augustine explains it more elegantly than all of them: What was made, in him was life; because it had in him an exemplar and a living reason; which reason is called living because it is spiritual, not material; because it is unchangeable, not variable; because it is eternal, not corruptible. And this is the meaning of life; for life is a spiritual and continuous act, flowing from a being that is at rest and everlasting.
16. Question III. Likewise there is a question about what he says: The darkness did not comprehend it.
Against this: 1. Corporeal light, while it shines and is present, cannot not be seen; therefore by equal reasoning the same appears to hold of spiritual light and of the intellect.
2. Likewise, why does he speak of darkness ? For no one, not even a good person, comprehends it, since it is incomprehensible.
I respond: It must be said that the case is not the same for corporeal and spiritual light, for a threefold reason: first, on the part of the motive, because corporeal light manifests itself naturally, but spiritual light voluntarily; second, on the part of the eye, because the eye of the intellect is blind with respect to one thing, and yet sees with respect to another, just as we observe that one has ignorance of one thing and knowledge of another; so the eye of the unbeliever is blind with respect to God. The third reason is on the part of the comparison, because there is some proportion between our eye and corporeal light, but spiritual light exceeds it beyond all proportion, and therefore dwells in unapproachable light .
2. As to what is asked concerning comprehension, it must be said that there is comprehension by inclusion, by open vision, and by the adherence of faith and charity. In the first way it is comprehended by no one, in the second way by the Blessed, in the third way by the Saints, and in none of the said ways by the wicked: therefore he says: And the darkness did not comprehend it, that is, they adhered neither by faith nor by love.
Part II. On the Word, insofar as it is united to flesh
THREE THINGS ARE SET FORTH.
17. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He treated above of the Word according to the excellence of the Divinity; in this part he treats according to the assumption of humanity. And because this assumption was made for our salvation, which was accomplished through the passion and consummated through the resurrection, therefore this part has three parts. In the first he treats of the incarnation; in the second of the passion, below at the end of the eleventh chapter: The chief priests therefore gathered; in the third of the resurrection, at the beginning of the twentieth chapter: And on the first day of the week etc.
First the incarnation itself is treated in two ways: first, as considered in itself.
And because the incarnation is of no benefit to us unless it is manifested, therefore first he treats of the incarnation; second, of the manifestation of the incarnation, below in the same chapter: And we saw his glory. But because the coming of Christ in the flesh was the coming of the King, therefore he sent a forerunner before him; thus first there is treatment of the coming of the forerunner, second, of the coming of Christ, at that place: It was the true light etc.
On the coming of the forerunner.
18. (Vers. 6.). The arriving forerunner is therefore described by four conditions, namely by nature, by authority, by name, by office. By nature, when it says: There was a man: the Gloss: "A man, not an Angel, as the heretics would have it." The heretics said this on account of that passage in Malachi 3: "Behold, I send my Angel before your face, who will prepare the way before you." But "Angel is there a name of office, not of nature." By authority he is described, when it adds: Sent from God, not from man, not from himself: Romans 10: "How shall they preach unless they are sent?" Against which it is said of the false prophets in Jeremiah 23: "They were running, and I did not send them." By name he is described, when it says: Whose name was John. This name was authoritative, because it was not imposed by man but by God; in Luke 1 it was said to Zechariah: "Elizabeth, your wife, will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John." By office he is described, when it further adds:
19. (Vers. 7.). He came for a testimony. For his office was to testify concerning the light, not on account of a deficiency of the light, but of the believers; therefore it says: He came for a testimony, to bear testimony concerning the light, that all might believe through him; Acts 19: "John baptized with the baptism of penance the people, saying, in him who was to come after him, that they might believe"; might believe, I say, through him, not in him; because:
20. (Vers. 8.). He was not that light, in which one must believe; but that he might bear testimony concerning the light: which indeed he did; below in chapter 5: "You sent to John, and he bore testimony to the truth."
Questions.
21. Question I. But here a question is raised about this statement: He came for a testimony.
Against: 1. Below in chapter 5: "I do not receive testimony from man"; therefore neither ought he to have been sent by God for this purpose.