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What the Fathers say
Eastern Fathers
John Chrysostom
"Then said the Jews, Will he kill himself?" What then doth Christ? To remove their suspicion, and to show that such an act is sin, He saith, "Ye are from beneath." What He saith, is of this kind: "It is no wonder that ye imagine such things, ye who are carnal men, and have no spiritual thoughts, but I shall not do anything of the kind, for, "I am from above; ye are of the world." Here again He speaketh of their worldly and carnal imaginations, whence it is clear that the, "I am not of this world," doth not mean that He had not taken …
Cyril of Alexandria
And He said unto them, YE are from beneath, I am from above. Some one haply of those who have a more studious mind and are wont to approve the more subtle of the Divine Thoughts, will enquire what it was that induced our Lord Jesus Christ, Who but now addressed the Jews and said, I go My way, and ye shall seek Me, to add as something necessary, YE are from beneath, I am from above. For these words seem somehow not to harmonise altogether with those above, but they are replete with a hidden economy. …
Theophylact of Ohrid
Rejecting such a supposition of theirs and showing that suicide is a criminal act, the Lord says: "You are from beneath, and cannot conceive of anything divine, therefore it is natural for you to think this way; but I am not of this world, that is, I care for nothing worldly and earthly, and therefore I can never reach such madness as to kill Myself. …
Western Saints
Augustine of Hippo
And what said the Lord to those who savored of the earth? "And He said unto them, Ye are from beneath." For this cause ye savor of the earth, because ye lick dust like serpents. Ye eat earth! What does it mean? Ye feed on earthly things, ye delight in earthly things, ye gape after earthly things, ye have no heart for what is above. "Ye are from beneath: I am from above. Ye are of this world: I am not of this world." For how could He be of the world, by whom the world was made? …
Bede
And Who was before the world, whereas they were of the world, having been created after the world had begun to exist.
Thomas Aquinas
Then (v 23), he proposes the remedy for escaping from the darkness. First, he mentions his own origin, and then theirs; secondly, he concludes to his point (v 24). With respect to the first, he distinguishes his own origin from theirs in two ways. First, because he is from above, and they are from below. Secondly, because they are of this world, and Christ is not. As Origen says, to be from below is not the same as to be of this world, for "above" and "below" refer to differences in place. …
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