John 8:21 Douay-Rheims

Again therefore Jesus said to them: I go, and you shall seek me, and you shall die in your sin. Whither I go, you cannot come.

Origen

c. A.D. 184–253 Patristic

(tom. xix. in Joan. s. 4.) May they not however have a higher meaning in saying this? For they had opportunities of knowing many things from their apocryphal books or from tradition. As then there was a prophetical tradition, that Christ was to be born at Bethlehem, so there may have been a tradition also respecting His death, viz. that He would depart from this life in the way which He declares, No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. (c. 10:18) So then the question, Will He kill Himself, is not to be taken in its obvious sense, but as referring to some Jewish tradition about Christ. For His saying, I go My way, shews that He had power over His own death, and departure from the body; so that these were voluntary on His part. But I think that they bring forward this tradition which had come down to them, on the death of Christ, contemptuously, and not with any view to give Him glory. Will He kill Himself? say they: whereas, they ought to have used a loftier way of speaking, and have said, Will His soul wait His pleasure, to depart from His body? Our Lord answers, Ye are from beneath, i. e. ye love earth; your hearts are not raised upwards. He speaks to them as earthly men, for their thoughts were earthly.

Source details
A.D. 253 · as excerpted in the Catena Aurea on John 8:21-24

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.

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