{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/003/0030671.htm","path":"chr/ecf/003/0030671.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/003/0030671.htm","text":"Chapter XXIV.\u2014On St. Philip\u2019s Conversation with Christ. He that Hath Seen Me, Hath Seen the Father. This Text Explained in an Anti-Praxean Sense.\nBut there were some who even then did not understand. For Thomas, who was so long incredulous, said: \u201cLord, we know not whither Thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye would have known the Father also: but henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him.\u201d 8092 And now we come to Philip, who, roused with the expectation of seeing the Father, and not understanding in what sense he was to take \u201cseeing the Father,\u201d says: \u201cShow us the Father, and it sufficeth us.\u201d 8093 Then the Lord answered him: \u201cHave I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?\u201d 8094 Now whom does He say that they ought to have known?\u2014for this is the sole point of discussion. Was it as the Father that they ought to have known Him, or as the Son? If it was as the Father, Praxeas must tell us how Christ, who had been so long time with them, could have possibly ever been (I will not say understood, but even) supposed to have been the Father. He is clearly defined to us in all Scriptures\u2014in the Old Testament as the Christ of God, in the New Testament as the Son of God. In this character was He anciently predicted, in this was He also declared even by Christ Himself; nay, by the very Father also, who openly confesses Him from heaven as His Son, and as His Son glorifies Him. \u201cThis is my beloved Son;\u201d \u201cI have glorified Him, and I will glorify Him.\u201d In this character, too, was He believed on by His disciples, and rejected by the Jews. It was, moreover, in this character that He wished to be accepted by them whenever He named the Father, and gave preference to the Father, and honoured the Father. This, then, being the case, it was not the Father whom, after His lengthened intercourse with them, they were ignorant of, but it was the Son; and accordingly the Lord, while upbraiding Philip for not knowing Himself who was the object of their ignorance, wished Himself to be acknowledged indeed as that Being whom He had reproached them for being ignorant of after so long a time\u2014in a word, as the Son. And now it may be seen in what sense it was said, \u201cHe that hath seen me hath seen the Father,\u201d 8095 \u2014even in the same in which it was said in a previous passage, \u201cI and my Father are one.\u201d 8096 Wherefore? Because \u201cI came forth from the Father, and am come into the world\u201d 8097 and, \u201cI am the way: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me;\u201d 8098 and, \u201cNo man can come to me, except the Father draw him;\u201d 8099 and, \u201cAll things are delivered unto me by the Father;\u201d 8100 and, \u201cAs the Father quickeneth (the dead), so also doth the Son;\u201d 8101 and again, \u201cIf ye had known me, ye would have known the Father also.\u201d 8102 For in all these passages He had shown Himself to be the Father\u2019s Commissioner, 8103 through whose agency even the Father could be seen in His works, and heard in His words, and recognised in the Son\u2019s administration of the Father\u2019s words and deeds. The Father indeed was invisible, as Philip had learnt in the law, and ought at the moment to have remembered: \u201cNo man shall see God, and live.\u201d 8104 So he is reproved for desiring to see the Father, as if He were a visible Being, and is taught that He only becomes visible in the Son from His mighty works, and not in the manifestation of His person. If, indeed, He meant the Father to be understood as the same with the Son, by saying, \u201cHe who seeth me seeth the Father,\u201d how is it that He adds immediately afterwards, \u201cBelievest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?\u201d 8105 He ought rather to have said: \u201cBelievest thou not that I am the Father?\u201d With what view else did He so emphatically dwell on this point, if it were not to clear up that which He wished men to understand\u2014namely, that He was the Son? And then, again, by saying, \u201cBelievest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me,\u201d 8106 He laid the greater stress on His question on this very account, that He should not, because He had said, \u201cHe that hath seen me, hath seen the Father,\u201d be supposed to be the Father; because He had never wished Himself to be so regarded, having always professed Himself to be the Son, and to have come from the Father. And then He also set the conjunction of the two Persons in the clearest light, in order that no wish might be entertained of seeing the Father as if He were separately visible, and p. 621 that the Son might be regarded as the representative of the Father. And yet He omitted not to explain how the Father was in the Son and the Son in the Father. \u201cThe words,\u201d says He, \u201cwhich I speak unto you, are not mine,\u201d 8107 because indeed they were the Father\u2019s words; \u201cbut the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works.\u201d 8108 It is therefore by His mighty works, and by the words of His doctrine, that the Father who dwells in the Son makes Himself visible\u2014even by those words and works whereby He abides in Him, and also by Him in whom He abides; the special properties of Both the Persons being apparent from this very circumstance, that He says, \u201cI am in the Father, and the Father is in me.\u201d 8109 Accordingly He adds: \u201cBelieve\u2014\u201d What? That I am the Father? I do not find that it is so written, but rather, \u201cthat I am in the Father, and the Father in me; or else believe me for my works\u2019 sake;\u201d 8110 meaning those works by which the Father manifested Himself to be in the Son, not indeed to the sight of man, but to his intelligence.","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol III: Tertullian: Part II: On St....","type":"page"}