35, 36. While all Catholic commentators and theologians contend that Christ does not in these two verses withdraw His claim to true Divinity, yet they differ as to the sense of His reply, and hence as to the interpretation of the verses. (1) Some, as Franzelin, hold that Christ here proves both that He is God, and that He has a right to call Himself God. The argument then is according to these: if your judges could be called gods, even in an improper sense, how much more _in the strictest sense_ can He be called and is He God, whom the Father generated _holy with His own holiness_, and sent into the world? (2) Others, as Maran, Jungmann, &c., explain the argument here from the context in the 81st Psalm. Christ, they say, reasons thus. If men could be called gods, as they are in Sacred Scripture (and the Sacred Scripture cannot be gainsaid), how much more, in a strict sense, can He be called God, and is He God, whom the same Scriptures address in the 8th verse of the same 81st Psalm: “Arise, _O God_, judge Thou the earth, for Thou shalt inherit among the nations”? (3) Others hold that Christ in these two verses does not insist upon the _nature_ of His Sonship, but contents Himself with showing that He has a right to _call_ Himself God; then in the following verses He shows that He is God in the strictest sense. In this view Christ prescinds in these verses from the sense in which He is God, and shows that _in some sense_, as the legate of the Father, He has a right to be called God. This was sufficient for the moment to shut the mouths of His adversaries. Whether He is God in the truest and strictest sense, or only in an improper sense, He does not here insist, though His language shows that even in these verses He speaks of Himself as truly God. For the argument shows that in concluding, in verse 36, that He has a right to call Himself “Son of God,” He means to justify his original statement: “I and the Father are one” (verse 30); but these statements are synonymous, and the one justifies the other only when there is question of natural Sonship. No merely adopted son of God could say that He is one with the Father. Any of these answers solves the objection drawn from these verses against Christ’s Divinity; but we prefer the last, and hold, therefore, that Christ first proves against the Pharisees that He has a right to _call_ Himself God, and then goes on to show in what sense He is God. 37. Si non facio opera Patris 37. If I do not the works of mei, nolite credere mihi. my Father, believe me not. 38. Si autem facio, et si mihi 38. But if I do, though you non vultis credere, operibus will not believe me, believe credite, ut cognoscatis et the works: that you may know credatis quia Pater in me est, and believe that the Father is et ego in Patre. in me, and I in the Father.