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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - John 15:26 - 15:26
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26. ἐγὼ πέμψω. Ἐγώ is an emphatic claim to Divinity. Here it is the Son who Bends the Advocate from the Father (see on Joh 1:6). In Joh 14:16 the Father sends in answer to the Son’s prayer. In Joh 14:26 the Father sends in the Son’s name. These are three ways of expressing that the mission of the Paraclete is the act both of the Father and of the Son, Who are one. see on Joh 1:33. For τ. πν. τ. ἀληθ. see on Joh 14:17.
ὃ π. τ. πατρὸς ἐκπορεύεται. It seems best to take this much discussed clause as simply yet another way of expressing the fact of the mission of the Paraclete. If the Paraclete is sent by the Son from the Father, and by the Father in the Son’s name and at the Son’s request, then the Paraclete ‘proceedeth from the Father.’ If this be correct, then this statement refers to the office and not to the Person of the Holy Spirit, and has no bearing either way on the great question between the Eastern and Western Churches, the Filioque added in the West to the Nicene Creed. The word used here for ‘proceed’ is the same as that used in the Creed of Nicea, and the Easterns quote these words of Christ Himself as being against not merely the insertion of the clause ‘and the Son’ into the Creed (which all admit to have been made irregularly), but against the truth of the statement that the Spirit, not only in His temporal mission, but in His Person, from all eternity proceeds from both the Father and the Son. On the whole question see Pearson On the Creed, Art. viii.; Reunion Conference at Bonn, 1875, pp. 9–85, Rivingtons; Pusey On the Clause “and the Son,” a Letter to Dr Liddon, Parker, 1876. Ἐκπορεύεσθαι occurs in this Gospel only here and Joh 5:29, but is frequent in the other Gospels and in Revelation (Mat 3:5; Mat 4:4; Mat 15:11; Mat 15:18; Mar 7:15; Mar 7:18; Mar 7:20-21; Mar 7:23; Luk 4:22; Luk 4:37; Rev 1:16; Rev 4:5, &c.), and there seems to be nothing in the word itself to limit it to the Eternal Procession. On the other hand the παρά is strongly in favour of the reference being to the mission. Comp. Joh 16:27, Joh 17:8. In the Creeds ἐκ is the preposition invariably used of the Eternal Procession, τὸ ἐκ τ. πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον: and “the Greek Fathers who apply this passage to the eternal Procession instinctively substitute ἐκ for παρά” (Westcott). For ἐκεῖνος see on Joh 1:18; He in contrast to the world which hates and rejects Christ. Christ has the witness of the Spirit of truth, and this has the authority of the Father: it is impossible to have higher testimony than this.