Homilies on the Gospel of John

“O righteous Father, the world has not known You.”

What means this? What connection has it? He here shows that no man knows God, save those only who have come to know the Son. And what He says is of this kind: “I wished all to be so, yet they have not known You, although they had no complaint against You.” For this is the meaning of, “O righteous Father.” And here He seems to me to speak these words, as vexed that they would not know One so just and good. For since the Jews had said that they knew God, but that He knew Him not, at this He aims, saying, “For You loved Me before the foundation of the world”; thus putting together a defense against the accusations of the Jews. For how could He who had received glory, who was loved before the foundation of the world, who desired to have them as witnesses of that glory, how could He be opposed to the Father? “This then is not true which the Jews say, that they know You, and that I know You not; on the contrary, I know You, and they have not known You.”

“And these have known that You have sent Me.”

Do you see that He alludes to those, who said that He was not from God, and all is finally summed up to meet this argument?