Tractates on the Gospel of John

² He had said, “The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He sees the Father doing.” We, however, understood it not that the Father does something separately, which when the Son sees, Himself also does something of the same kind, after seeing His Father's work; but when He said, “The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He sees the Father doing,” we understood it that the Son is wholly of the Father— that His whole substance and His whole power are of the Father that begot Him.

But just now, when He had said that He does in like manner these things which the Father does, that we may not understand it to mean that the Father does some, the Son others, but that the Son with like power does the very same which the Father does, while the Father does through the Son, He went on, and said what we have heard read today: “For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that Himself does.” Again mortal thought is disturbed. The Father shows to the Son what things Himself does; therefore, says some one, the Father does separately, that the Son may be able to see what He does.

Again, there occur to human thought, as it were, two artificers— as, for instance, a carpenter teaching his son his own art, and showing him whatever he does, that the son also may be able to do it. “Shows Him,” says He, “all things that Himself does.” Is it therefore so, that while He does, the Son does not, that He may be able to see the Father do? Yet, certainly, “all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made.” Hence we see how the Father shows the Son what He does, since the Father does nothing but what He does through the Son.

What has the Father made? He made the world. Hath He shown the world, when made, to the Son in such wise, that the Son also should make something like it? Then let us see the world which the Son made. Nevertheless, both “all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made,” and also “the world was made by Him.” If the world was made by Him, and all things were made by Him, and the Father does nothing save by the Son, where does the Father show to the Son what He does, if it be not in the Son Himself, through whom He does?

In what place can the work of the Father be shown to the Son, as though He were doing and sitting outside, and the Son attentively watching the Father's hand how it makes? Where is that inseparable Trinity? Where the Word, of which it is said that the same is “the power and the wisdom of God”? Where that which the Scripture says of the same wisdom: “For it is the brightness of the eternal light?” Where what was said of it again: “It powerfully reaches from the end even to the end, and orders all things sweetly”? Whatever the Father does, He does through the Son: through His wisdom and his power He does; not from without does He show to the Son what He may see, but in the Son Himself He shows Him what He does.