AUGUSTINE . (iv. Super Gen. ad litteram [c. xi.]) It may be said then, that the observance of the sabbath was imposed on the Jews, as the shadow of something to come; viz. that spiritual rest, which God, by the figure of His own rest promised to all who should perform good works.
AUGUSTINE . There will be a sabbath of the world, when the six ages, i. e. the six days, as it were, of the world, have passed: then will come that rest which is promised to the saints.
AUGUSTINE . (iv. Gen. ad lit. c. xi.) The mystery of which rest the Lord Jesus Himself scaled by His burial: for He rested in His sepulchre on the sabbath, having on the sixth day finished all His work, inasmuch as He said, It is finished. (c. 19) What wonder then that God, to prefigure the day on which Christ was to rest in the grave, rested one day from His works, afterwards to carry on the work of governing the world. We may consider too that God, when He rested, rested from the work of creation simply, i. e. made no more new kinds of creatures: but that from that time till now, He has been carrying on the government of those creatures. For His power, as respects the government of heaven and earth, and all the things that He had made, did not cease on the seventh day: they would have perished immediately, without His government: because the power of the Creator is that on which the existence of every creature depends. If it ceased to govern, every species of creation would cease to exist: and all nature would go to nothing. For the world is not like a building, which stands after the architect has left it; it could not stand the twinkling of an eye, if God withdrew His governing hand. Therefore when our Lord says, My Father worketh hitherto, he means the continuation of the work; the holding together, and governing of the creation. It might have been different, had He said, Worketh even now. This would not have conveyed the sense of continuing. As it is we find it, Until now; i. e. from the time of the creation downwards.
AUGUSTINE . (Tr. xvii. s. 15) He says then, as it were, to the Jews, Why think ye that I should not work on the sabbath? The sabbath day was instituted as a typed of Me. Ye observe the works of God: by Me all things were made. The Father made light, but He spoke, that it might be made. If He spoke, then He made it by the Word; and I am His Word. My Father worked when He made the world, and He worketh until now, governing the world: and as He made the world by Me, when He made it, so He governs it, by Me, now He governs it.
CHRYSOSTOM . (Hom. xxxviii. 2) Christ defended His disciples, by putting forward the example of their fellow-servant David: but He defends Himself by a reference to the Father. We may observe too that He does not defend Himself as man, nor yet purely as God, but sometimes as one, sometimes as the other; wishing both to he believed, both the dispensation of His humiliation, and the dignity of His Godhead; wherefore He shews His equality to the Father, both by calling Him His Father emphatically, (My Father,) and by declaring that He doeth the same things, that the Father doth, (And I work.) Therefore, it follows, the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was His Father.
AUGUSTINE . (Tr. xvii. s. 16) i. e. not in the secondary sense in which it is true of all of us, but as implying equality. For we all of us say to God, Our Father, Which art in heaven. (Matt. 6) And the Jews say, Thou art our Father. (Isaiah 63:16) They were not angry then because He called God His Father, but because He called Him so in a sense different from men.
AUGUSTINE . (de Con. Ev. l. iv. c. x) The words, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work, suppose Him to be equal to the Father. This being understood, it followed from the Father’s working, that the Son worked: inasmuch as the Father cloth nothing without the Son.
CHRYSOSTOM . (Hom. xxxviii. s. 3) Were He not the Son by nature, and of the same substance, this defence would be worse than the former accusation made. For no prefect could clear Himself from a transgression of the king’s law, by urging that the king broke it also. But, on the supposition of the Son’s equality to the Father, the defence is valid. It then follows, that as the Father worked on the Sabbath without doing wrong: the Son could do so likewise.
AUGUSTINE . (Tr. xvii. s. 16) So, the Jews understood what the Arians do not. For the Arians say that the Son is not equal to the Father, and hence sprang up that heresy which afflicts the Church.
CHRYSOSTOM . (Hom. xxxviii. 3) Those however who are not well-disposed to this doctrine, do not admit that Christ made Himself equal to the Father, but only that the Jews thought He did. But let us consider what has gone before. That the Jews persecuted Christ, and that He broke the sabbath, and said that God was His Father, is unquestionably true. That which immediately follows then from these premises, viz. His making Himself equal with God, is true also.
HILARY . (vii. de Trin. c. 15) The Evangelist here explains why the Jews wished to kill Him.
CHRYSOSTOM . And again, had it been that our Lord Himself did not mean this, but that the Jews misunderstood Him, He would not have overlooked their mistake. Nor would the Evangelist have omitted to remark upon it, as he does upon our Lord’s speech, Destroy this temple. (c. 2.)
AUGUSTINE . (Tr. xvii. s. 16) The Jews however did not understand from our Lord that He was the Son of God, but only that He was equal with God; though Christ gave this as the result of His being the Son of God. It is from not seeing this, while they saw at the same time that equality was asserted, that they charged Him with making Himself equal with God: the truth being, that He did not make Himself equal, but the Father had begotten Him equal.
5:19–20
19. Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.
20. For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.
HILARY . (vii. de Trin. c. 17) He refers to the charge of violating the sabbath, brought against Him. My Father worketh hitherto, and I work; meaning that He had a precedent for claiming the right He did; and that what He did was in reality His Father’s doing, who acted in the Son. And to quiet the jealousy which had been raised, because by the use of His Father’s name He had made Himself equal with God, and to assert the excellency of His birth and nature, He says, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do.
AUGUSTINE . (Tr. xviii. 3, 5) Some who would be thought Christians, the Arian heretics, who say that the very Son of God who took our flesh upon Him, was inferior to the Father, take advantage of these words to throw discredit upon our doctrine, and say, You see that when our Lord perceived the Jews to be indignant, because He seemed to make Himself equal with God, He gave such an answer as shewed that He was not equal. For they say, he who can do nothing but what he sees the Father do is not equal but inferior to the Father. But if there is a greater God, and a less God, (the Word being God,) we worship two Gods, and not onee.
HILARY . (vii. de Tr. c. 17.) Lest then that assertion of His equality, which must belong to Him, as by Name and Nature the Son, might throw doubt upon His Nativityf, He says that the Son can do nothing of Himself.
AUGUSTINE . (Tr. xx. 4) As if He said: Why are ye offended that I called God My Father, and that I make Myself equal with God? I am equal, but equal in such a sense as is consistent with His having begotten Me; with My being from Him, not Him from Me. With the Son, being and power are one and the same thing. The Substance of the Son then being of the Father, the power of the Son is of the Father also: and as the Son is not of Himself, so He can not of Himself. The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do.— (xxi. 4). His seeing and His being born of the Father are the same. His vision is not distinct from His Substance, but the whole together is of the Father.
HILARY . (vii. de Tr. c. 17) That the wholesome order of our confession, i. e. that we believe in the Father and the Son, might remain, He shews the nature of His birth; viz. that He derived the power of acting not from an accession of strength supplied for each work, but by His own knowledge in the first instance. And this knowledge He derived not from any particular visible precedents, as if what the Father had done, the Son could do afterwards; but that the Son being born of the Father, and consequently conscious of the Father’s virtue and nature within Him, could do nothing but what He saw the Father do: as he here testifies; God does not see by bodily organs, but by the virtue of His nature.
AUGUSTINE . (ii. de Tr. c. 3) If we understand this subordination of the Son to arise from the human nature, it will follow that the Father walked first upon the water, and did all the other things which the Son did in the flesh, in order that the Son might do them. Who can be so insane as to think thisd?
AUGUSTINE . (Tr. xx. s. 6) Yet that walking of the flesh upon the sea was done by the Father through the Son. For when the flesh walked, and the Divinity of the Son guided, the Father was not absent, as the Son Himself saith below, The Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works. (c. 14) (s. 9). He guards however against the carnal interpretation of the words, The Son can do nothing of Himself. (v. 19) As if the case were like that of two artificers, master and disciple, one of whom made a chest, and the other made another like it, by adding, For whatsoever things he doeth, these doeth the Son likewise.He does not say, Whatsoever the Father doeth, the Son does other things like them, but the very same things. The Father made the world, the Son made the world, the Holy Ghost made the world. If the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one, it follows that one and the same world was made by the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Ghost. Thus it is the very same thing that the Son doeth. He adds likewise, to prevent another error arising. For the body seems to do the same things with the mind, but it does not do them in a like way, inasmuch as the body is subject, the soul governing, the body visible, the soul invisible. When a slave does a thing at the command of his master, the same thing is done by both; but is it in a like way? Now in the Father and Son there is not this difference; they do the same things, and in a like way. Father and Son act with the same power; so that the Son is equal to the Father.
HILARY . (vii. de Tr. c. 18) Or thus; All things and the same, He says, to shew the virtue of His nature, its being the same with God’s. That is the same nature, which can do all the same things. And as the Son does all the same things in a like way, the likeness of the works excludes the notion of the worker existing aloneg. Thus we come to a true idea of the Nativity, as our faith receives it: the likeness of the works bearing witness to the Nativity, their sameness to the Nature.
CHRYSOSTOM . (Hom. xxxviii. 4) Or thus; That the Son can do nothing of Himself, must be understood to mean, that He can do nothing contrary to, or displeasing to, the Father. And therefore He does not say that He does nothing contrary, but that He can do nothing; in order to shew His perfect likeness, and absolute equality to the Father. Nor is this a sign of weakness in the Son, but rather of goodness. For as when we say that it is impossible for God to sin, we do not charge Him with weakness, but bear witness to a certain ineffable goodness; so when the Son says, I can do nothing of myself, it only means, that He can do nothing contrary to the Father.