João 10
Athanasius of Alexandria · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
João 10:18
To be troubled was proper to the flesh, and to have power to lay down his life and take it again when he wanted was no property of people but of the Word's power. For human beings die not by their own power but by necessity of nature and against their will. But the Lord, being himself immortal but having mortal flesh, had power as God to become separate from the body and to take it again when he wanted to. Concerning this David speaks in the psalm: "You shall not leave my soul in hades, neither shall you suffer your holy One to see corruption." For it was appropriate to the flesh, corruptible as it was, that it should no longer after its own nature remain mortal, but because of the Word who had put it on, it should remain incorruptible. For since he was conformed to our condition, having come in our body, so we when we receive him partake of the immortality that is from him. — Discourses Against the Arians 3.29.57
João 10:35
Christ was not man [first], and then became God. Rather, he was [first] God, and then he became man, and that to deify us. When he became man, he was called Son and God, but before he became man, God had called the ancient people sons. In fact, he made Moses a god to Pharaoh, and Scripture says of many, "God stands in the congregation of gods." Since this is so, it is plain that he is called Son and God later than they are. How then are all things through him, and how is he before everything? Or, how is he "firstborn of the whole creation" if he has others before him who are called sons and gods? And how is it that those first partakers do not partake of the Word?This opinion is not true; it is a device of our present Judaizers. For how in that case can any at all know God as their Father? For there can be no adoption apart from the real Son, who says, "No one knows the Father except the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him." And how can there be deifying apart from the Word and before him? And yet, he says to their brothers the Jews, "If he called them gods, to whom the Word of God came." And if all who are called sons and gods, whether in earth or in heaven, were adopted and deified through the Word, and the Son himself is the Word, it is plain that they all exist through him, and he himself is before all. Or rather, he himself is the only true Son, and he alone is very God from the very God, not receiving these prerogatives as a reward for his virtue or being another beside them, but being all these by nature and according to essence. For he is offspring of the Father's essence, so that one cannot doubt that after the resemblance of the unalterable Father, the Word also is unalterable. — Discourses Against the Arians 1.11.39
João 10:38
By the works he did in the body [he] showed himself to be not man but God the Word. But these things are said about him because the actual body that ate, was born and suffered belonged to none other but the Lord. And he had become a man; it was proper for these things to be predicated of him as a man in order to show that he really had a body, and not just one in appearance. But just as from these things he was known to be bodily present, so from the works he did in the body he made himself known to be the Son of God.… For just as, though invisible, he is known through the works of creation; so, having become man and being in the body unseen, it may be known from his works that he who can do these is not man but the power and Word of God. — On the Incarnation of the Word 18.1-3