And he could there do no mighty work, except that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.
All Commentaries on Mark 6:5 Go To Mark 6
Gregory the Theologian
AD 390
One meaning of “could not” is simply the limits of some human will. Take, for example, the point that Christ “could not” fulfill any signs in Nazareth was due to disbelief on their part. Something essential for healing is required on both sides—faith on the part of the patients, power on that of the healer. So one side without its counterpart “could not,” so to speak, perform them. As this can be seen in medical care, it can also be seen in moral transformation. Similarly involving the limits of the will are the texts: “The world cannot not hate you” and “How can you speak good, being evil?” The metaphor of “impossibility” here must mean free refusal by the will. The same idea applies to those passages which say that what is impossible for humanity is possible for God. Note also those passages that say that a person “cannot” (in one sense) be born a second time and a needle’s eye “cannot” let a camel through. What would stop these events happening if God willed them directly? Besides all these there is, as in the case we are presently considering, a “cannot” in the sense of that which is totally inconceivable. We cannot conceive that God can be evil or fail to exist. It is inconceivable that reality cannot exist or two times two is fourteen. So here it cannot be the case that the Son would do anything which the Father would not do. Oration , On the Son
