If Christ Is Only Man

And still the heretic shrinks back from pressing the point that Christ is God — even though he can see Christ proved to be God by so many words and by so many facts. If Christ is only a man, how is it that when he came into this world he came to what was his own? A man could have made no world. If Christ was only a man, how can the world be said to have been made through him, when the world did not come from a man — man was appointed after the world was already there? If Christ was only a man, why is he not merely of the offspring of David, but also the Word who became flesh and lived among us? For though the first man formed was not born from any seed either, still the first man formed was not made by the joining of the Word and flesh. He is not the Word made flesh, and he did not come to live among us. [a]

If Christ was only a man, how is it that the one “who comes from heaven testifies to what he has seen and heard”? Plainly a man cannot come from heaven, because he cannot be born there. If Christ is only a man, how can “things visible and invisible, thrones, powers, and dominions” be said to have been created by him and in him? The powers of heaven could not have been made by a man, since they must have been there before man was. If Christ is only a man, how is he present wherever he is called on? It is not in the nature of a man to be present in every place, but of God.

If Christ is only a man, why is a man called on in prayer as a mediator, when calling on a man to give salvation is condemned as useless? If Christ is only a man, why is hope placed in him, when hope placed in a man is declared to be cursed? If Christ is only a man, why can he not be denied without the ruin of a person’s soul, when a sin committed against a man is said to be forgivable?

If Christ is only a man, how does John the Baptist bear witness and say, “The one who comes after me has come to be ahead of me, because he was before me”? If Christ were only a man, born after John, he could not be ahead of John — unless he went before him because he is God. If Christ is only a man, how is it that “whatever the Father does, the Son does in the same way”? A man cannot do works like the works God does in heaven. If Christ is only a man, how is it that “just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself”? A man cannot have life in himself the way God the Father has it, because he has no glory in eternity; he was made out of the stuff of mortality. If Christ is only a man, how does he say, “I am the bread of eternal life that came down from heaven”? A man cannot be the bread of life, being mortal himself; and he could not have come down from heaven, since nothing perishable is set in place there.

If Christ is only a man, how does he say that “no one has ever seen God except the one who is from God; he has seen God”? For if Christ is only a man, he could not see God, since no man has seen God. But if, being from God, he has seen God, then he means us to understand that he is more than a man, precisely because he has seen God. If Christ is only a man, why does he say, “What then if you see the Son of Man going up to where he was before”? He did go up into heaven; so he had been there, since he returned to where he was before. And if he was sent from heaven by the Father, he is certainly not only a man, for a man, as we have said, could not come from heaven. So as a man he had not been there before; he went up to a place where he had not been. But it was the Word of God who came down, and the Word had been there — the Word of God, I say, and God, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. It was not a man, then, who came down from heaven, but the Word of God; that is, it was God who came down from there.

If Christ is only a man, how is it that he says, “Even if I testify about myself, my testimony is true, because I know where I came from and where I am going; you do not know where I came from or where I am going. You judge by the flesh”? Notice: he says he will go back to the place he testifies he came from when he was sent — that is, from heaven. So he came down from where he came, in the same way that he goes back to where he came down from. If Christ were only a man, he would not have come from there, and so he would not be going there, because he would never have come from there. But by coming from a place a man could not have come from, he shows that he came as God. The Jews knew nothing of this coming down of his and had never been taught it, and they left these heretics as their heirs; for it was to the Jews that these words were spoken: “You do not know where I come from or where I am going; you judge by the flesh.” Heretics and Jews alike held that Christ’s birth in the flesh was his only birth, and so believed that Christ was nothing but a man. They never took this into account: since a man could not come from heaven in such a way as to go back there, the one who came down from there must be God, because a man could not have come from there. [k]

If Christ is only a man, how does he say, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world”? Now if every man is of this world, and Christ for that reason is in this world, does that make him only a man? Certainly not. Look at what he says: “I am not of this world.” If he is only a man, is he speaking falsely when he says “of this world”? And if he is not speaking falsely, then he is not of this world; and so he is not only a man, because he is not of this world. So that it should be no secret who he was, he stated where he was from. “I,” he said, “am from above” — that is, from heaven, and no man can come from there, since man was not made in heaven. The one who is from above, then, is God, and that is why he is not of this world. And yet in a certain way he is of this world too; so Christ is not only God, but a man as well. Just as, on the side of the Word’s divinity, he is not of this world, so, on the side of the frail body he has taken on, he is of this world. For man is joined to God, and God is bound to man.

But that is why Christ here pressed the one side of himself, his divinity alone, and pressed it harder: because Jewish blindness was looking at only one side of him, the flesh. So in this passage he said nothing about the frailty of the body, which belongs to the world, and spoke only of his divinity, which does not. The further they had leaned toward believing him to be only a man, the further Christ would draw them toward weighing his divinity, so that they might believe him to be God. He wanted to break their unbelief about his divinity, and to do it he left off, for the moment, any mention of his human condition, and set his divinity alone in front of them.

If Christ is only a man, how does he say, “I came out from God and have come”? Plainly a man was made by God; he did not come out from God. But in the very way that a man did not come out from God, the Word of God did come out — the Word of whom it is said, “My heart has poured out a good Word.” And since the Word is from God, it is with good reason also with God. And since it was not uttered to no effect, it rightly makes all things: “For all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” And this Word, through whom all things were made, is God. “And God,” he says, “was the Word.” So God came out from God, in that the Word who came out is God, who came out from God.

If Christ is only a man, how does he say, “If anyone keeps my word, he will never see death”? Never to see death — what is that but immortality? And immortality is the companion of divinity, since divinity is immortal and immortality is what divinity yields. Every man is mortal, and immortality cannot come from what is mortal; so from Christ, if he were a mortal man, immortality could not arise. “But,” he says, “whoever keeps my word will never see death.” So the word of Christ gives immortality, and by immortality gives divinity. No one can maintain that a man who is himself mortal can make another man immortal; yet this word of Christ does not only hold out immortality, it gives it. Certainly the one who gives immortality is not only a man, since if he were only a man he could not give it; and by giving divinity through immortality, he proves himself to be God by offering divinity — which he could not give if he were not God.

If Christ was only a man, how did he say, “Before Abraham came to be, I am”? No man can exist before the one he himself comes from, nor can anyone have been earlier than the man he takes his origin from. And yet Christ, though he is born of Abraham, says that he is before Abraham. So either he says what is not true and is deceiving us — if he was not before Abraham, given that he came from Abraham — or he is not deceiving us, because he is also God and was before Abraham. If that were not so, it would follow that, coming from Abraham, he could not be before Abraham.

If Christ was only a man, how does he say, “And I know them, and my sheep follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they will never perish”? Every man is bound by the laws of mortality and so is unable to keep himself alive forever; much less will he be able to keep anyone else. But Christ promises to give salvation forever. If he does not give it, he is a deceiver; if he gives it, he is God. And he is no deceiver, for he gives what he promises. So the one who holds out eternal salvation is God — a thing a man cannot give to another, since he cannot keep even himself alive forever.

If Christ is only a man, what is he saying when he says, “I and the Father are one”? How can “I and the Father are one” be true unless he is both God and the Son? He can rightly be called one with the Father because he is from him — being his Son, born of him, declared to have come out from him, and by that fact God as well. The Jews took this as an outrage and thought it blasphemy, since in these words he had shown himself to be God; and so they ran at once to stoning and set to work in a passion to throw stones at him. He refuted his opponents forcefully, out of the example and testimony of the Scriptures. “If,” he said, “he called them gods, to whom the words of God were given, and the Scriptures cannot be broken, do you say of the one whom the Father set apart and sent into this world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?” By those words he did not deny that he was God; rather he confirmed the claim that he was God. For if men to whom the words of God were given are certainly called gods, how much more is he God who is found to be above them all.

And even so he answered the charge of blasphemy in a fitting way, by a lawful ordering of his defense. For he wants to be understood to be God in this way, as the Son of God, and he would not want to be understood to be the Father himself. So he said that he had been sent, and showed them that he had done many good works from the Father; by which he meant to be understood not as the Father but as the Son. And in the last part of his defense he made mention of the Son, not the Father, when he said, “You say, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” So where the charge of blasphemy is concerned, he calls himself the Son, not the Father; but where his divinity is concerned, by saying “I and the Father are one,” he proved that he was the Son of God. He is God, then — but God in such a way as to be the Son, not the Father.