The Witness of the New Testament

“That which was from the beginning,” says the apostle John, “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life; for the life was revealed, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and declare to you the eternal life which was with the Father and has appeared to us.” You see how the old testimonies are confirmed by new ones, and the support of the new preaching is given to the ancient prophecy. Isaiah said, “Cease from the man whose breath is in his nostrils, for he is reckoned high.” But John says, “That which was from the beginning, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled.” The first said that as man he would be persecuted by the Jews; the second declared that as man he was handled by men’s hands. The one foretold that he whom he announced as man would be God Most High; the other asserts that he whom he showed to have been handled by men was always God in the beginning. It is as clear as it can be, then, that both of them showed the Lord Jesus Christ to be both God and man, and that the same Person who had always been God was afterward man. And so he was God and man, because God himself became man. [a]

That, then, he says, “which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life; and the life was revealed, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and declare to you the eternal life which was with the Father and has appeared to us.” You see how many proofs, and how many very different ways, that apostle, so dearly loved and so devoted to God, uses to point to the mystery of the divine incarnation. First, he testifies that he who always was in the beginning was seen in the flesh. Then, in case it might not seem enough for unbelievers that he had spoken of him as seen and heard, he backs it up by saying that he was handled, that is, touched and felt by his own hands and by those of others. In showing how he took flesh, he admirably shuts out the view of the Marcionites and the error of the Manichees, so that no one may think that a phantom appeared to men, since an apostle has declared that a true body was handled by him. Then he adds “the word of life; and the life was revealed,” and says that he saw it, announced it and proclaimed it. So at one and the same time he carries out the duties of faith and strikes unbelievers with terror: by declaring that he proclaims him, he brings home to the man who will not listen the danger he stands in. “We declare to you,” he says, “the eternal life which was with the Father and has appeared to us.” He teaches that what was always with the Father appeared to men; that what always was in the beginning was seen by men; and that what was the Word of life, without beginning, was handled by men’s hands.

You see how many, how varied, how detailed and how clear are the ways in which he unfolds the mystery of the flesh joined to God, so that no one could speak of either at all without acknowledging both. As the apostle himself clearly says elsewhere: “For Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” This is what he said in the passage given above: “That which was from the beginning, our hands have handled.” Not that a spirit can by its own nature be handled, but that the Word made flesh was in a sense handled in the manhood to which it was joined. And so Jesus is “the same yesterday and today”: that is, the same Person before the beginning of the world as in the flesh; the same in the past as in the present; and the same also forever, for he is the same through all the ages as he was before all the ages. And all this is the Lord Jesus Christ.