and I teach them. The particle bāʾ here denotes causation, for it is through His messengers that God guided and instructed His servants, and the messengers in turn taught those absent from them by means of the present believers who conveyed their message.

As for his statement, “so that they may be one,” he intended thereby that their truthfulness, commands, and aims be in harmony—this is already explained. He also said, “so that they themselves may be one, just as I am one,” thus requesting for them the same unity that exists between him and his Lord.

This clarifies that his words, “just as I am one,” mean: I concur with You in Your commands and prohibitions, in Your love and Your good pleasure. He was not speaking of a fusion of his essence with God, any more than he desired the disciples’ essences to fuse with one another; rather, he sought for them the same concord with God’s command, prohibition, love, and pleasure that he himself had attained.

He added: Or perhaps he was alluding to a subtle meaning that he does not know; yet in any case your interpretation that he was intermixed with the Almighty in the Godhead is nullified by his very words about his disciples—that he is with them just as his Father is with him—for should anyone take his description of God as “his Father” and “his Father with him” to imply a participation with Him in