Church Fathers Commentary John 5:19-20

"Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing: for what things soever he doeth, these the Son also doeth in like manner. For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth: and greater works than these will he show him, that ye may marvel." — John 5:19-20 (ASV)

St. Hilary of Poitiers: He refers to the charge of violating the Sabbath, which was brought against Him. My Father works until now, and I work, meaning that He had a precedent for claiming the right He did. What He did was, in reality, His Father’s doing, who acted in the Son. To quiet the jealousy that had been raised because He had made Himself equal with God by using His Father’s name, and to assert the excellence of His birth and nature, He says, Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Some who claim to be Christians, namely the Arian heretics who say that the Son of God who took our flesh upon Him was inferior to the Father, use these words to discredit our doctrine. They say, "You see that when our Lord perceived the Jews were indignant because He seemed to make Himself equal with God, He gave an answer that showed He was not equal." For they say that he who can do nothing but what he sees the Father do is not equal but inferior to the Father. But if there is a greater God and a lesser God (the Word being God), we worship two Gods, and not one.

St. Hilary of Poitiers: So that His assertion of equality—which must belong to Him as the Son by name and nature—would not cast doubt on His divine birth, He says that the Son can do nothing of Himself.

St. Augustine of Hippo: It is as if He said: Why are you offended that I called God My Father and that I make Myself equal with God? I am equal, but equal in a sense that is consistent with His having begotten Me—with My being from Him, not Him from Me. With the Son, being and power are one and the same thing. The substance of the Son, then, being from the Father, the power of the Son is also from the Father. And as the Son is not of Himself, so He cannot act of Himself. The Son can do nothing of Himself but what He sees the Father do. His seeing and His being born of the Father are one and the same. His vision is not distinct from His substance; rather, the whole of what He is comes from the Father.

St. Hilary of Poitiers: So that the wholesome order of our confession—that is, that we believe in the Father and the Son—might remain, He shows the nature of His birth: namely, that He derived the power to act not from a new supply of strength given for each work, but from His own knowledge in the first place. This knowledge did not come from observing specific, visible examples, as if the Son could only later do what the Father had already done. Rather, the Son, being born of the Father and consequently conscious of the Father’s power and nature within Him, could do nothing but what He saw the Father do, as He here testifies. God does not see with physical organs, but by the power of His nature.

St. Augustine of Hippo: If we understand this subordination of the Son to arise from His human nature, it would follow that the Father first walked on the water and did all the other things that the Son did in the flesh, in order for the Son to do them. Who can be so insane as to think this?

Yet that walking of the flesh upon the sea was done by the Father through the Son. For when the flesh walked and the Divinity of the Son guided, the Father was not absent, as the Son Himself said, The Father that dwells in Me, He does the works. He guards, however, against a carnal interpretation of the words, "The Son can do nothing of Himself." This is not like the case of two craftsmen, a master and a disciple, where one makes a chest and the other makes another like it. He prevents this misunderstanding by adding, For whatever things He does, these also the Son does likewise.

He does not say, "Whatever the Father does, the Son does other things like them," but the very same things. The Father made the world, the Son made the world, and the Holy Spirit made the world. If the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one, it follows that one and the same world was made by the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Thus, it is the very same thing that the Son does.

He adds "likewise" to prevent another error. The body may seem to do the same things as the mind, but it does not do them in a like way, since the body is subject while the soul governs; the body is visible, the soul invisible. When a slave does something at his master's command, the same thing is done by both, but is it done in a like way? In the Father and the Son, however, there is no such difference; they do the same things, and in a like way. The Father and Son act with the same power, so that the Son is equal to the Father.

St. Hilary of Poitiers: Or, to put it another way: He says "all things" and "the same" to show the power of His nature—that it is the same as God's. That nature is the same which can do all the same things. And as the Son does all the same things in a like way, the likeness of the works excludes the notion of the worker existing alone. Thus we arrive at a true understanding of His divine birth, as our faith receives it: the likeness of the works testifies to His birth, while their sameness testifies to His nature.

St. John Chrysostom: Or, to put it another way: that the Son can do nothing of Himself must be understood to mean that He can do nothing contrary to the Father or that displeases Him. Therefore, He does not say that He does nothing contrary, but that He can do nothing contrary, in order to show His perfect likeness and absolute equality to the Father. Nor is this a sign of weakness in the Son, but rather of goodness. For when we say that it is impossible for God to sin, we do not charge Him with weakness but bear witness to a certain ineffable goodness. So when the Son says, I can do nothing of Myself, it only means that He can do nothing contrary to the Father.

St. Augustine of Hippo: This is not a sign of failure in Him, but of His abiding in His birth from the Father. And it is as high an attribute of the Almighty that He does not change as it is that He does not die. The Son could do what He had not seen the Father doing if He could do what the Father does not do through Him—that is, if He could sin, a supposition inconsistent with the immutably good nature that was begotten from the Father. Therefore, this "cannot" should be understood not as a deficiency in Him, but as a testament to His power.

St. John Chrysostom: And this is confirmed by what follows: For whatever He does, these also the Son does likewise. For if the Father does all things by Himself, so does the Son also, if this "likewise" is to hold true. You see how high a meaning these humble words bear. He purposely clothes His thoughts in humble language, for whenever He expressed Himself loftily, He was persecuted as an enemy of God.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Having said that He did the same things that the Father did, and in a like way, He adds, For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that Himself does. This phrase, "and shows Him all things that Himself does," refers back to the words above, but what He sees the Father do.

But again, our human ideas are perplexed. One might say, "So then, the Father first does something so that the Son may see what He does," just as a craftsman teaches his son his art, showing him what he makes so that he can make the same thing after him. On this assumption, when the Father does something, the Son is not doing it, because the Son is only watching what His Father does.

But we hold it as a fixed and incontrovertible truth that the Father makes all things through the Son. Therefore, He must show them to the Son before He makes them. And where does the Father show the Son what He makes, except in the Son Himself, by whom He makes them? For if the Father makes something as a pattern, and the Son attends to the workmanship as it goes on, where is the indivisibility of the Trinity? The Father, therefore, does not show the Son what He does by doing it; rather, by showing it, He does it through the Son. The Son sees and the Father shows before a thing is made, and from the showing of the Father and the seeing of the Son, that which is made is made—made by the Father, through the Son.

But you will say, "I show my son what I wish him to make, and he makes it, and I make it through him." True, but before you do anything, you show it to your son so he may follow your example, and you work through him. But you speak to your son with words that are not yourself, whereas the Son Himself is the Word of the Father. Could the Father speak by the Word to the Word? Or, because the Son was the great Word, did lesser words—some temporary, audible creation—have to pass from the Father's mouth to strike the Son's ear?

Put away these physical notions. If you cannot comprehend what God is, at least comprehend what He is not. You will have advanced a long way if you think nothing that is untrue of God. Consider this example from your own mind: you have memory and thought. Your memory shows Carthage to your thought. Before you perceive what is in your memory, it shows it to your thought, which is turned toward it. The memory has shown, the thought has perceived, and no words have passed between them; no outward sign has been used.

However, whatever is in your memory, you receive from the outside. That which the Father shows to the Son, He does not receive from the outside. The whole process goes on within, since no creature exists outside of God except what the Father has made by the Son. And the Father makes by showing, in that He makes by the Son who sees. The Father’s showing begets the Son’s seeing, just as the Father begets the Son. Showing begets seeing, not the other way around. But it would be more correct, and more spiritual, not to view the Father as distinct from His showing, or the Son from His seeing.

St. Hilary of Poitiers: It must not be supposed that the Only-Begotten God needed this showing because of ignorance. For the "showing" here is simply the doctrine of His divine birth: the self-existing Son from the self-existing Father.

St. Augustine of Hippo: For to see the Father is to see His Son. The Father so shows all His works to the Son that the Son sees them from the Father. For the birth of the Son is in His seeing: He sees from the same source from which He exists, is born, and remains.

St. Hilary of Poitiers: Nor did this heavenly discourse lack the caution needed to prevent us from inferring any difference in nature between the Son and the Father from these words. He says that the works of the Father were shown to Him, not that strength was supplied to Him for doing them. This is to teach that the "showing" is substantially nothing other than His birth, because the Son's knowledge of the works the Father will do through Him is born simultaneously with the Son Himself.

St. Augustine of Hippo: But now, from Him whom we called co-eternal with the Father—who saw the Father and existed in that He saw—we return to matters of time. He says, And He will show him greater works than these. But if He will show Him, meaning He is about to show Him, then He has not yet shown Him. And when He does show Him, others also will see, for it follows, that you may believe.

It is difficult to see what the eternal Father can show in time to the co-eternal Son, who knows all that exists within the Father’s mind. For as the Father raises up the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom He will. To raise the dead was a greater work than to heal the sick. But this is explained by considering that He who a little before spoke as God, now begins to speak as man.

As man, and therefore living in time, He will be shown greater works in time. Bodies will rise again by the human dispensation through which the Son of God assumed manhood in time, but souls are raised by virtue of the eternity of the Divine Substance. This is why it was said before that the Father loved the Son and showed Him whatever He did, for the Father shows the Son that souls are raised up, since they are raised by the Father and the Son and cannot live unless God gives them life.

Alternatively, the Father is about to show this to us, not to Him, according to what follows: that you may believe. This would be the reason why the Father would show "Him" greater things than these. But why did He not say, "shall show you," instead of "the Son"? Because we are members of the Son, and He, as it were, learns in His members, just as He suffers in us. For as He says, Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these My brethren, you have done it to Me, so if we ask Him how He, the Teacher of all things, learns, He replies, "When one of the least of My brethren learns, I learn."