John 8:45 — Community Reflections

JOHN 8:45 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.”

And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not — the logical consequence: Jesus tells truth, yet they do not believe (pisteuete). The world (and its ruler) is fundamentally opposed to truth. Jesus's speaking truth should produce belief, but it produces rejection. The perversity is that truth-telling is met with disbelief, while lying would be believed. This explains the spiritual blindness: the world has its own logic, rooted in the devil's nature, which is hostile to truth.

Church Fathers on John 8:45

Our Lord, having already cut off the Jews from relationship to Abraham, overthrows now this far greater claim, to call God their Father, You are of your father the devil.
Chrysostom · 4th century

Here we must guard against the heresy of the Manicheans, who hold a certain original nature of evil, and a nation of darkness with princes at their head, whence the devil derives his existence. And thence they say our flesh is produced; and in this way interpret our Lord’s speech, You are of your father the devil: viz. to mean that they were by nature evil, drawing their origin from the opposite seed of darkness.
Augustine · 4th century

And this seems to be the same mistake, as if one said, that an eye which saw right was different in kind from an eye which saw wrong. For just as in these there is no difference of kind, only one of them for some reason sees wrong; so, in the other case, whether a man receives a doctrine, or whether he does not, he is of the same nature.
Origen · 3rd century

Read all 21 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain

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