TABLE OF CONTENT

TABLE OF CONTENT.................................................................................................ii

FATHERS OF THE CHURCH ON JOHN 5:1-18

Introduction....................................................................................................................3

1.1. Father’s Perspective on the Unnamed Feast.......................................................3

1.2. Tertullian’s Interpretation of the Healing in Connection with Baptism.............4

1.3. St. Athanasius Explains the Divine Sonship of Christ........................................4

1.4. St Augustine’s Exegetical Notes on the Passage................................................5

1.5. St. John Chrysostom’s Annotations on Thirty-Eight Years of Waiting..............6

1.5.1. Comparative analysis of John 5:8 with Matt 9:2.........................................6

Conclusion......................................................................................................................7

BIBLIOGRAPHY..........................................................................................................8
 FATHERS OF THE CHURCH ON JOHN 5:1-18
Introduction

The Fourth Gospel, usually referred to as the Gospel of John, is a distinctive New
Testament work that stands apart from the Synoptic Gospels, due to its unique
content. It is renowned for its rich symbolism and theology. John teaches his audience
that Jesus is the Word made flesh, that He is the Son of God, and that those who
believe in him will have eternal life. John is an eyewitness of Christ and has
personally experienced the manifestation of his love through different signs. After the
Evangelist Fathers of the Church were the ones who received the testimony of the
Gospel and interpreted it and transmitted the message of Christ for the future
generations. Therefore, for any Biblical scholar it is his/her prime duty to consider the
Patristic-Exegesis as the ground for his/her interpretation. With the passage of time
the perspectives have changed, yet we must know what the fathers have said on a
particular passage. As I am doing my research on John 5:1-18, I have explored the
writings of the Father of the Church to know their perspective and interpretation of
this pericope.

1.1. Father’s Perspective on the Unnamed Feast

The pericope begins with the remark that Jesus went to Jerusalem for an unnamed
feast of the Jews. Down the centuries the exegetes have tried to identify the unnamed
feast. “The Fathers, particularly Greek Fathers - Epiphanius, Chrysostom, Cyril, and
Erasmus, teach that the feast was Pentecost. 1 This feast is the OT Pentecost (also
called the “Feast of Weeks”), which celebrates the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai.
The references to the Law of Moses later in this chapter confirm this interpretation.”2

Hoskyns is of the opinion that the referred feast was the Passover, and the definite
article was later omitted in order to avoid allusion to one Passover in John 2:13, and
4:45, another one in 6:4 and then this one, which would make the chronology of the
Fourth Gospel very difficult to follow. Thus, according to him the tendency to avoid
repeated references to the Passover would seem to be supported by the apparent
1
Bengel, Johann Albrecht, “Commentary on John 5,” Bengel’s Gnomon of the New
Testament. https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/jab/john-5.html. 1897.
2
Peter E. Gillquist, and Allen J., ed., “The Gospel According to John,” in The Orthodox Study
Bible (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008), 205–68, 223.
omission by Irenaeus and Origen of the reference to the Passover.3

1.2. Tertullian’s Interpretation of the Healing in Connection with

Baptism

Tertullian calls the place with name Bethsaida. This name is variously found in
different variants: Βηδσαιδαν, Βηθεσεδα, Βηζαθα, Βησθεσδα, Βιθεσθα, Βησσαιδα,
Βιθεσδα, and Βηθεσθα.4 He elucidates that At Bethsaida, an angel intervened and
stirred the water (3). They were crying over their health as they kept an eye out for
him because whoever entered the water first stopped whining after washing. He
believed that That figure of physical healing was a foreshadowing of spiritual healing,
according to the norm that things carnal always come before things spiritual.

When the grace of God afterwards advanced among men, it came more fully
upon the waters and the angel: and they who formerly healed bodily ills now
heal the spirit; they who worked temporal salvation now renew the eternal;
they who set free only one and only once a year now save whole people daily,
taking away death by the washing away of sins. The guilt being removed, the
penalty, of course, is also removed.5

Tertullian is concerned primarily with the typological significance of the angel at the
pool as a feature of the pre-Christian dispensation, and does not refer directly to
Christ’s act of healing.6 His interpretation of the angel’s action was that it was a
prophetic indication of the efficacious sacrament of baptism. This figure of physical
healing spoke of a spiritual healing according to the rule that things, carnal are always
antecedent as figurative of things spiritual.7

1.3. St. Athanasius Explains the Divine Sonship of Christ

In John 5:17 responding to the objection from the Jewish leaders regarding working
on the Sabbath, Jesus says, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” St.
Athanasius explains the dynamism of the oneness of the Father and the Son. He says
3
Edwyn Clement Hoskyns, The Fourth Gospel, ed. Francis Noel Davey, 2d ed. (London:
Faber and Faber, 1967), 264.
4
Robin Thompson, “Healing at the Pool of Bethesda: A Challenge to Asclepius?,” Bulletin
for Biblical Research 27.1 (2017): 65–84, 67.
5
William A. Jurgens, “Tertullian,” in The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 1 (Bangalore:
Theological Publication in India, 2019), 126.
6
Maurice Wiles, The Spiritual Gospel: The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel in the Early
Church (Cambridge: University Press, 1960), 51.
7
Charles Kannengiesser, Handbook of Patristic Exegesis: The Bible in Ancient Christianity,
The Bible in Ancient Christianity vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 598.
that the Word did not develop into a creator by learning how to create. He acts in the
Father’s ways because He is the wisdom and image of the Father. Furthermore, the
Son was not produced by the Father to carry out the job of creation; rather, the Father
is seen working even as the Son exists, as the Lord Himself declares: “My Father is
still working, and I also am working.”8

1.4. St Augustine’s Exegetical Notes on the Passage

The text reads in John 5:2 – “Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool,
called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes.” Augustine saw in the five
porches a symbol of the five books of the Mosaic Law: “These five porches signified
the law which bears the sick but does not heal them, discovers them but does not cure
them.” 9

According to Augustine, just as thirty-eight is two short of the holy number forty, the
paralysis symbolises the illness brought on by a breach of the two cardinal
imperatives: love of neighbour and love of God.10

Augustine explains, the reason why Jesus performed miracle even on the Sabbath,
which was supposed to be a day of rest. Jesus did so, by participating in the act of
God the Father. He says:

It is also possible to understand that God rested from the creating of different
kinds of creatures, insofar as He created no kinds additional to those He had
already created; but thereafter and even until now He worked the management
of those kinds already created. It is not, at rate, that on the seventh day His
power to govern the heavens and the earth and all that He had created would
cease; otherwise, everything would immediately vanish.11

As a result, the Lord’s remark, “My Father is still working,” (John 5:17) is
demonstrative of His work, by which He sustains and governs all creation. Since
Jesus said My Father is still working, it must be interpreted differently because what
He says is, ‘still or even until now,’ in which case it is clear that He has been working
8
William A. Jurgens, “St. Athanasius: Discourse Against the Arians,” in The Faith of the
Early Fathers, vol. 1 (Bangalore: Theological Publication in India, 2019), 329.
9
Allan D. Fitzgerald, ed., Homilies on the Gospel of John 1-40, trans. Edmund Hill, vol. 12 of
The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Brooklyn: New City Press, 1990),
305.
10
Allan D. Fitzgerald, ed., Edmund Hill, trans., Homilies on the Gospel of John 1-40, in The
Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (New York: New City, 2009), 307.
11
William A. Jurgens, “St. Augustine of Hippo”, in The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 3
(Bangalore: Theological Publication in India, 2019), 83.
at all times since He first did the job of creation. 12 Origen explains the Johannine
Christology found in John 5:17 in the following words: “My Father worked when He
made the world, and hitherto now worketh while He rules the world: therefore, by me
He made when He made, and by me He rules while He rules.”13

1.5. St. John Chrysostom’s Annotations on Thirty-Eight Years of

Waiting

According to St. John Chrysostom, Jesus chose the man who had waited for thirty-
eight years to teach us perseverance and as a judgement against those who lose hope
or patience in far less serious troubles that last far less time.14 He admires at the
patient waiting of the man for a long period of thirty-eight years. He compares the
perseverance of the man with the people of his time and exhorts them saying:

Let us be ashamed then, beloved, let us be ashamed, and groan over our
excessive sloth. ‘Thirty and eight years’ had that man been waiting without
obtaining what he desired, and withdrew not. And he had failed not through
any carelessness of his own, but through being oppressed and suffering
violence from others, and not even thus did he grow dull; while we if we have
persisted for ten days to pray for any- thing and have not obtained it, are too
slothful afterwards to employ the same zeal. 15

He exhorts them to never give up hope and to never lose heart. He encourages them to
have a firm faith, to have patience, and to persevere in their faith. Wait for God to
intervene when the time is right.

1.5.1. Comparative analysis of John 5:8 with Matt 9:2

Chrysostom says that many people think that the man from Matthew 9 and John 5 is
the same person. According to him that it is not so, as is clear in many ways: 1) The
man in John had no one to put him into the water whereas the man in Matthew had his
friends to help him to reach to Jesus. 2) From the manner of answering; the other man
uttered no word but this man relates his whole case. 3) In accordance with the season
and the time, this man was healed during a feast and on the Sabbath, whereas the

12
Jurgens, “St. Augustine of Hippo”, 3: 83.
13
Origen and Ronald E. Heine, Commentary on the Gospel According to John Books 1-10,
The Fathers of the Church (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 172-73.
14
Gillquist, The Orthodox Study Bible, 224.
15
Philip Schaff, ed., St. John Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of St. John and the Epistle
to the Hebrews, vol. 14 of NPNF (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1889). 126-27.
other man was healed on a different day. 4) The places too were different; one was
cured in a house, the other by the pool. 5) The way of the cure was also altered; in
John, instead of saying, ‘Your sins be forgiven you,’ Christ strengthened the body
first, and then cared for the spirit. In the case of Matthew, there was remission of sins
(since He says, ‘Your sins be forgiven you). On the other hand, in John there was
a warning and threat to strengthen the man for the future; ‘Do not sin anymore, so that
nothing worse happens to you.’ (John 5:14).16 Cyprian connects this exhortation (Do
not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.) to the necessity for
persistence after baptism as a requisite for salvation.17

Chrysostom correlates sin and suffering and says that sin is a terrifying thing and
destructive to the spirit. It has frequently overflowed and harmed people’s bodies as
well. He says that when the soul is diseased, we feel no pain, but if the body receives
even minor pain, we use every effort to free it from its infirmity, because we are
aware of the infirmity. God frequently punishes the body for the transgressions of the
soul, so that by scourging the inferior part, the better part may also receive some
healing.18

Conclusion

The Fathers were the intellectual giants of their era. They were delivering the
authentic message of Christ with the appropriate doctrinal and ethical interpretation,
in addition to defending the Christian religion. Studying John 5:1–18 in the context of
the Patristic–Exegesis has shown how much they contributed to the passage. The
Fathers adhered quite closely to the Gospel’s original text. The orthodoxy of their
interpretation of God’s Word is evident. They taught the masses that the Word of God
was their source of life and held it in the highest regard.

16
Schaff, St. John Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of St. John, 128-29.
17
Wiles, The Spiritual Gospel: The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, 51.
18
Schaff, St. John Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of St. John, 132.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fitzgerald, Allan D., ed. Homilies on the Gospel of John 1-40. Translated by Edmund
Hill. Vol. 12 of The Works of Saint Augustine A Translation for the 21st
Century. Edited by Boniface Ramsey. Brooklyn: New City Press, 1990.

Gillquist, Peter E., ed. “The Gospel According to John.” Pages 205–68 in The
Orthodox Study Bible. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008.

Hoskyns, Edwyn Clement. The Fourth Gospel. Edited by Francis Noel Davey. 2d ed.
London: Faber and Faber, 1967.

Jurgens, William. A. “Tertullian.” The Faith of the Early Fathers. Vol. 1. Bangalore:
Theological Publication in India, 2019.

Kannengiesser, Charles. Handbook of Patristic Exegesis: The Bible in Ancient

Christianity. The Bible in Ancient Christianity v. 1. Leiden: Brill, 2006.

Origen, and Ronald E. Heine. Commentary on the Gospel According to John. The
Fathers of the Church v. 80, 89. Washington: Catholic University of America
Press, 1989.

Schaff, Philip, ed. Homilies on the Gospel of St. John and the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Vol. 14 of NPNF. Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1889.

Thompson, Robin. “Healing at the Pool of Bethesda: A Challenge to Asclepius?” BBS

27.1 (2017): 65–84.

Wiles, Maurice. The Spiritual Gospel: The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel in the
Early Church. Cambridge: University Press, 1960.

Albrecht, Bengel Johann. “Commentary on John 5.” Bengel’s Gnomon of the New
Testament. https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/jab/john-5.html.
1897.