Which of you convicts me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do you not believe me?
Read Chapter 8
Arnobius of Sicca
AD 330
Can accuse of any crime?.
For we shall show that Christ did not teach the nations impiety, but delivered ignorant and wretched then from those who most wickedly wronged them.
If I say the truth, why do ye not believe Me?
He goes often through the selfsame words, when He sees that they understand nought: for this too is a thing most befitting for teachers, not to shrink from manifoldly revolving the instruction which at the first was not taken in, in order that it may be fixed in the souls of the hearers. When therefore the liar (He says) speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar just as his father:----why do ye reasoning and acting not conformably to what I say, not believe Me, albeit I say the truth, [imagining] that I am therefore speaking apart from the truth, seeing that I am even so True as is the Father also? It is (I suppose) likely that He is convicting the Jews of being therefore infirm in the power of containing the words of the truth, because they are not sons of the truth. To no purpose do they falsely call God their Father, saying, We have One Father, God. For God (He says) being wholly Truth, rejoices in the truth and wills t...
Which of you convinceth Me of sin?
The question is not that of one who looketh to be convicted, but rather of One Who takes away and utterly denies the possibility of Very God Who beamed forth of God, falling into sin: for Christ did no sin. For all sin takes its rise from the turning aside from the better unto that which is not so, and is produced in those whose nature it is to turn and who are recipient of change unto what they ought not. For how will he be conceived to even sin who knows no turning nor is recipient of change to ought that is not convenient, but rather is steadfast in His own innate Good, and that not from another but from Himself? The Lord then enquires of the Jews if they can at all convict Him of sin. And the word used for this will go through every transgression universally: but connecting it fitly with what is before us, we say that He does not at present ask it of every sin and do this as fearing to be convicted, but we consider it in this way, that since He...
Then they said, We be not born of fornication. Yet in fact many of them were born of fornication, for they practiced unbefitting unions. Still He does not convict them of this, but sets Himself to the other point. For when He has proved them to be, not of God, but of the devil, by all these signs, (for to do murder is of the devil, and to lie is of the devil, both which you do,) then He shows that to love is the sign of being of God. Why do ye not understand My speech? Since they were always doubting, saying, What is it that he says, 'Whither I go ye cannot come'? therefore He tells them, You do not understand My speech, because you have not the word of God. And this comes to you, because that your understanding is groveling, and because what is Mine is far too great for you. But what if they could not understand? Not to be able here means not to be willing; for you have trained yourselves to be mean, to imagine nothing great. Because they said that they persecuted Him as being themse...
