He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
All Commentaries on John 1:10 Go To John 1
Cyril of Alexandria
AD 444
And the world was made by Him.
The Evangelist in these words needfully indicates that the world was made through the Very Light, that is, the Only-Begotten. For although, having called Him most distinctly Word at the beginning, he affirmed that all things were made through Him, and that without Him nothing was brought into being, and demonstrated thereby that He was their Maker and Creator: yet it was necessary now most particularly to take this up again anew, that no room of error and perdition might be left to those who are wont to pervert the uprightness of the Divine dogmas. For when he said of the Light that it was in the world, that no one wresting the saying to senseless conceptions, should make the Light connumerate with the visible portions of the universe (as sun and moon and stars for example are in the world, but as parts of the universe, and as limbs of one body), profitably and of necessity does the Evangelist introduce the Only-Begotten as Fashioner and Artificer of the whole universe, and thereby again fully stablishes us and leads us into an unerring and right apprehension of the truth. For who would be so silly or have such great folly in his mind, as not to conceive that wholly other than the universe is He through Whom it is said to have been made, and to put the creature in its own place, to sever off the Creator in reasoning and to conceive that His Nature is Divine? For the thing made must needs be other in nature than the Maker, that maker and made appear not the same.
For if they be conceived of as the same, without any inherent distinction as to the mode of being, the made will mount up to the nature of the Maker, the Creator descend to that of the creatures, and will no longer have Alone the power of bringing into being, but this will be found to exist in potential in things made also, if nothing at all severs them from being consubstantial with God: and so at length the creature will be its own creator and the Evangelist will endow the Only-Begotten with a mere title of honour when he says that He was in the world, and the world, was made by Him. But he knows that the Creator of all things is One in Nature. Not as the same then will made and Maker, God and creature be conceived of by those who know how to believe aright, but the one will be subject as a bondman, acknowledging the limit of its own nature: the Son will reign over it, having Alone with the Father the power both to call things which he not as though they were and by His ineffable Power to bring that which is not yet into being.
But that the Son being by Nature God, is wholly Other than the creature, we having already sufficiently gone through in the Discourse of the Holy Trinity, will say nothing more here. But we will add this for profit, that in saying that the world was made through Him he brings us up to the thought of the Father, and with the "Through Whom" brings in also the "Of Whom." For all things are from the Father through the Son in the Holy Ghost.
