The Authority of the 'I' and the Unity of Will

I possess no command from the Lord, but I offer an opinion. You permit Paul to offer an opinion even without a command, yet you exclude Christ under a yoke of slavery, following the word that says, 'I speak nothing of myself.' Furthermore, as he said, he discourses one way to the companions of the truth, and another way to those who have distanced themselves; for did the Jews not suspect him to be the Son of God? Did the Jews not take God the Word into their understanding? Did you not hear what they say about him: 'This man is not from God, because he does not keep the Sabbath'? They did not take him as a man of God, and did they not conceive him as the Only-begotten? Thus the same people said again concerning the Savior: 'We know that this man is a sinner, because he does not keep the Sabbath.' Having glory concerning a sinner and concerning a man distanced from the truth, did they not move toward any random fantasy, even of divinity?

To those disposed in this way, he descends in tone and teaches them not to contradict the apparent form which is thought by them to be separate from the will of God, saying: 'I speak not of myself, he gave me a command, what shall I say and what shall I speak?' But toward the children of faith, see how he sets aside the suspicious tone and clothes himself in the authority of divine dignity and says: 'You have heard that it was said to the ancients: You shall not commit adultery; but I say...' See how where there is faith, the authority is naked, and where there is a suspicious listener, the teaching is shaped toward an economy?

And when a little child was being distressed in the crowd, he said: Disturbance always falls upon the hearing of the divine word. For the enemy of souls, the devil, seeing the word being struck by arrows sent against his own deception, continually attacks the listeners so that they might flee the reproof of the truth. Some fortunate youth distracted Paul's teaching, and there a certain youth distracted the hearing of the people, so that the intention of the listeners might be more exercised. But we, brothers, fleeing the dizziness of the waves, let us steer the vessel toward the fair harbor of the truth. For I do not wish to hinder the deviation of the dolphin from the things set before us. Where there is a suspicious listener, the teaching is shaped toward an economy.

Where truth is a companion of piety, authority stands naked. To the Jews he says, 'I speak nothing of myself'; to those of the household of faith, 'Hear, for it was said to the ancients: You shall not commit adultery. But I say.' The 'I' demonstrates the authority of the one speaking; for everywhere the 'I' bears witness to authority for the speaker, as when he says, 'I am, I am,' and 'until you reproach me, I am.' Again, to the Jews he says, 'I came not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.'

The reading of the gospels today dissolves the perplexity of heretical suggestion. For when the leper approached him—he who was leper in body but bright in soul—he said to him, 'Lord, if you will, you are able to cleanse me.' Here, seek the rule of the heretics; for it was necessary then to speak words following his own voice: 'I do not will, the Father wills, be cleansed; for I came not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me; did you not hear me saying, I came not to do my own will?' If, therefore, a will is subject to an authority—according to the logic of the ungodly—why do you demand authority from the subject through the authority of the Father?

But the Savior said none of these things to him who approached him with sincere faith, but, accepting his sincere faith, he gives him sincere and genuine salvation: 'You came to me faithfully, receive faithfully the medicine; by my will you inscribe the benefit, from my will you receive salvation.' 'Lord, if you will, you are able to cleanse me'; 'I will, be cleansed.' Does not this stand against the heretics of ungodliness? See that it is subject by word, and by a personal will it is authoritative. And when I say these things, I am not separating the will of the Son from the will of the Father. For whatever you call the will of the Son, you call the will of the Father; and whatever you call the will of the Father, you proclaim the authority of the Son; and if you say the authority of the Son, you manifest the power of the Holy Spirit; for the authority is one, and the kingdom is indivisible.

But he says, 'You have set aside the word concerning the Spirit'; for from the apostolic voice I find the Spirit subjected to Christ; for Paul said, 'When he says that all...'