Known Only Through the Son

The Lord was showing his disciples that he himself is the Word who gives knowledge of the Father, and he was correcting the Jews, who supposed they had God while they were rejecting his Word — the one through whom God is made known. So he declared: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son has chosen to reveal him.” That is how Matthew sets it down, and Luke the same way, and Mark exactly the same; John leaves the passage out. But those who would be wiser than the apostles write the verse like this: “No one knew the Father except the Son, nor the Son except the Father, and the one to whom the Son has chosen to reveal him.” And they explain it as though the true God were known to nobody before our Lord came, and they claim that the God announced by the prophets is not the Father of Christ. [a]

Suppose Christ did only begin to exist when he came into the world as a man. Suppose the Father only remembered, in the days of Tiberius Caesar, to provide for people. Suppose his Word had not always existed alongside his creatures. Even then, what would follow is not that some other God has to be announced, but that we ought to look into the reasons for such long carelessness and neglect on his part. For it is not right that any such question should arise and gather strength enough to change God himself and to destroy our faith in the Creator who supports us by means of his creation. Just as we direct our faith toward the Son, so we should also hold a firm and unshakable love toward the Father. Justin puts it well in his book against Marcion: “I would not have believed the Lord himself if he had announced any God other than the one who shaped us, made us, and feeds us. But because the only Son came to us from the one God — who both made this world and formed us, and who holds and manages everything, gathering up his own handiwork into himself — my faith toward him is steady and my love toward the Father unshakable, since God grants us both.”

For no one can know the Father except through the Word of God — that is, unless the Son reveals him — and no one can know the Son except by the Father’s good pleasure. And the Son carries out the Father’s good pleasure: the Father sends, and the Son is sent and comes. His Word knows that his Father is, so far as we are concerned, invisible and without limit; and since no one else can declare him, the Word declares him to us himself. On the other side, it is the Father alone who knows his own Word. Our Lord has stated both of these. So the Son reveals knowledge of the Father by showing himself; for the showing of the Son is the knowledge of the Father, since everything is shown through the Word. To let us know that the Son who came is the one who gives knowledge of the Father to those who believe in him, he said to his disciples, “No one knows the Son but the Father, nor the Father but the Son, and those to whom the Son will reveal him.” In saying it he set out both himself and the Father as the Father really is, so that we would take no other Father than the one the Son reveals.

And this Father is the Maker of heaven and earth, as his own words show — not the false father invented by Marcion, or by Valentinus, or by Basilides, or by Carpocrates, or by Simon, or by the rest of those wrongly called Gnostics. None of these men was the Son of God; Christ Jesus our Lord was, and it is against him that they set their teaching, daring to preach an unknown God. They ought to hear the objection turned back on themselves. How is he unknown, if they know him? Whatever is known even to a few is not unknown. The Lord did not say that the Father and the Son cannot be known at all, for in that case his coming would have been pointless. Why did he come here? To say to us, “Never mind searching for God; he is unknown, and you will not find him” — the way the followers of Valentinus falsely claim Christ said to their Aeons? That would be empty. What the Lord taught us is that no one is able to know God unless God teaches him, that is, that God cannot be known apart from God — but that it is the Father’s express will that God should be known. For those to whom the Son has revealed him will know him.

And this is why the Father revealed the Son: so that through him he might be shown to everyone, and might receive into freedom from decay and everlasting joy those who do what is right and believe in him — and to believe in him is to do his will — while he justly shuts out into the darkness they have chosen for themselves those who do not believe and who therefore keep clear of his light. So the Father has revealed himself to everyone by making his Word visible to everyone; and in turn the Word has declared both the Father and the Son to everyone, since he has become visible to everyone. That is why God’s just judgment falls on all who saw what others saw, but did not believe as others believed.

Through the creation itself the Word reveals God the Creator; through the world he declares the Lord who made the world; through the shaping of man, the craftsman who shaped him; and through the Son, the Father who begot the Son. All of this addresses everyone in the same way, but not everyone believes it in the same way. Through the law and the prophets the Word preached both himself and the Father alike, and all the people heard him alike, but they did not all alike believe. And through the Word himself, once made visible and able to be touched, the Father was displayed — though not everyone believed in him equally. Still, all saw the Father in the Son: for the Father is the invisible of the Son, and the Son is the visible of the Father. That is why everyone spoke with Christ while he was here, and called him God. Even the demons cried out when they saw the Son: “We know who you are — the Holy One of God.” And the devil, looking at him and testing him, said, “If you are the Son of God…” — all of them seeing and speaking of the Son and the Father, and not all of them believing.

It was fitting that the truth should have testimony from everyone, and should become the ground of judgment — for the salvation of those who believe, and for the condemnation of those who do not — so that everyone would be judged fairly, and so that faith in the Father and the Son would be approved by everyone; that is, established by everyone, receiving testimony from all sides: from those who belong to it, since they are its friends, and from those who have no part in it, though they are its enemies. Evidence that draws striking testimony in its favor even out of its opponents is true and cannot be contradicted. Such men are convinced about the matter by their own plain sight of it, and they bear witness to it and say so openly. But after a while they burst out into hostility, become accusers of what they had approved, and want their own testimony not to be counted as true.

So the one who was known is not a different being from the one who said, “No one knows the Father.” They are one and the same, the Father having put all things under him. And he received testimony from everyone that he was truly man and truly God — from the Father, from the Spirit, from angels, from the creation itself, from human beings, from rebel spirits and demons, from the enemy, and last of all from death itself. The Son, who manages all things for the Father, works from the beginning right through to the end, and without him no one can arrive at the knowledge of God. For the Son is the knowledge of the Father, and the knowledge of the Son is in the Father and has been revealed through the Son. That is why the Lord declared, “No one knows the Son but the Father, nor the Father but the Son, and those to whom the Son will reveal him.” The words “will reveal” were not said of the future alone, as though the Word had only begun to show the Father when he was born of Mary; they hold equally throughout all time. For the Son has been present with his own handiwork from the beginning, and he reveals the Father to all — to whom he wills, and when he wills, and as the Father wills. So then, in all things and through all things there is one God, the Father, and one Word, and one Son, and one Spirit, and one salvation for all who believe in him.

So Abraham too knew the Father through the Word who made heaven and earth, and confessed him to be God. And when he learned, by an announcement made to him, that the Son of God would be a man among men, and that by his coming Abraham’s offspring would be like the stars of heaven, he longed to see that day, so that he might embrace Christ himself. Seeing it by the spirit of prophecy, he rejoiced. That is why Simeon, one of his descendants, carried the patriarch’s rejoicing all the way out when he said: “Lord, now you are letting your servant go in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.” In the same way the angels announced news of great joy to the shepherds who were keeping watch by night. And Mary said: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my salvation.” Abraham’s rejoicing was coming down on those who sprang from him — the ones who were watching, who saw Christ and believed in him — and their rejoicing ran back the other way as well, from the children to Abraham, who had himself longed to see the day of Christ’s coming. So our Lord rightly bore witness to him when he said: “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad.” [o]

He did not say this for Abraham’s sake alone, but also to point out that everyone who has known God from the beginning, and who foretold the coming of Christ, received that revelation from the Son himself. In the last times the Son was also made visible and able to suffer, and spoke with the human race, so that he might raise up children to Abraham out of the stones, and fulfill the promise God had given him, and make his offspring like the stars of heaven — as John the Baptist says, “God is able to raise up children to Abraham out of these stones.” Jesus did this by drawing us away from the worship of stones, bringing us over from hard and barren thinking, and setting in us a faith like Abraham’s. Paul bears witness to the same thing when he says that we are Abraham’s children because our faith is like his, and because of the promised inheritance.

So it is one and the same God who called Abraham and gave him the promise. And he is the Creator, who through Christ also prepares lights in the world — that is, those from among the nations who believe. He says, “You are the light of the world”: that is, like the stars of heaven. I have rightly shown, then, that he is known to no one except through the Son, and by those to whom the Son will reveal him. The Son reveals the Father to everyone he wills to have know him; and without the Father’s goodwill, and without the Son doing it, no one can know God. That is why the Lord said to his disciples: “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father too; and from now on you both know him and have seen him.” From these words it is plain that he is known through the Son — that is, through the Word.

This is why the Jews have departed from God: they would not receive his Word, but imagined they could know the Father by himself, apart from the Word, that is, apart from the Son. They did not know the God who spoke in human form to Abraham, and again to Moses, saying, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people in Egypt, and I have come down to rescue them.” For the Son, who is the Word of God, arranged all this beforehand from the beginning. The Father had no need of angels in order to call the creation into being and to form man, for whom the creation was made; nor did he need any instrument for the framing of created things, or for the ordering of the things that had to do with man — and this though he has a vast and untellable number of servants. For his own offspring and his own likeness serve him in every respect: the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Word and Wisdom, whom all the angels serve and to whom they are subject. So those who bring in another, unknown Father on the strength of that saying, “No one knows the Father but the Son,” are talking to no purpose.