Tractates on the Gospel of John 113.1–115.5

After the persecutors, with Judas betraying him, had seized and bound the Lord, who "loved us and gave himself up for us", and whom the Father "did not spare, but delivered him up for us all" (so that Judas may be understood to be not praiseworthy for the usefulness of this handing over but damnable for the will of his crime), "they led him," as John the evangelist tells, "first to Annas." Nor is he silent about why this was done: "For he was," he says, "the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was high priest that year. Now it was Caiaphas," he says, "who had given the Jews the counsel that it was expedient that one man should die for the people." Matthew, wishing to tell it more briefly, rightly records that he was led to Caiaphas; for he was taken first to Annas only because Annas was his father-in-law; from which it is to be understood that this same Caiaphas wished it to be done.

"And Simon Peter followed Jesus," he says, "and another disciple." Who this disciple is ought not to be rashly asserted, since it is not said. This same John, however, is accustomed to indicate himself in this way, adding "whom Jesus loved". Perhaps, then, it is he here too; but whoever he is, let us look at what follows. "Now that disciple," he says, "was known to the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the high priest's courtyard; but Peter stood outside at the door. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the doorkeeper and brought Peter in. Then the maid who kept the door said to Peter, Are you not also one of this man's disciples? He said, I am not." See, the firmest pillar trembled entirely at the push of a single breath of air. Where is that boldness of the one who promised, and who trusted so much in himself? Where are those words of his when he said, "Why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you"? Is this following the master, to deny being a disciple? Is this how one lays down one's life for the Lord, to fear the voice of a maidservant lest one have to lay it down? But what wonder if God foretold what was true and man presumed what was false? Indeed, in this denial of the apostle Peter which has now begun, we ought to notice that Christ is denied not only by one who says that he is not the Christ, but also by one who, being a Christian, denies that he is a Christian. For the Lord did not say to Peter, "You will deny that you are my disciple", but "You will deny me." So he denied him when he denied that he was his disciple. And what else was this but denying that he was a Christian? For although the disciples of Christ were not yet called by that name (it was after his ascension, at Antioch, that the disciples first began to be called Christians), yet the thing itself that was afterwards to be called by that name already existed; there were already disciples who were afterwards called Christians, and they handed on this common name, like the common faith, to those who came after. So whoever denied that he was a disciple of Christ denied the very thing whose name is "Christian". How many afterwards, not only old men and old women, in whom weariness of this life could more easily despise death for confessing Christ, and not only the youth of both sexes, of which age courage seems fittingly to be required, but even boys and girls were able to do, and a countless company of holy martyrs, entering the kingdom of heaven bravely and by force, did what he could not do then, he who received the keys of his kingdom! See why it was said, "Let these go away", when he who redeemed us with his blood gave himself up for us, "that the word might be fulfilled which he had spoken: Of those whom you have given me I have not lost one." For certainly, if Peter had departed from this life after denying Christ, what else would he have done but perish?

"Now the servants and officers were standing by a charcoal fire, because it was cold, and were warming themselves." It was not winter, yet it was cold, as sometimes happens even at the spring equinox. "And Peter too was with them, standing and warming himself. The high priest then asked Jesus about his disciples and about his teaching. Jesus answered him, I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in the synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews gather, and I have said nothing in secret. Why do you ask me? Ask those who have heard what I said to them: see, they know what I have said." A question arises here that must not be passed over: how the Lord Jesus said, "I have spoken openly to the world", and above all what he said, "I have said nothing in secret". Did he not, in that very recent discourse which he spoke to the disciples after supper, say to them, "I have said these things to you in figures; the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures, but will tell you plainly of my Father"? If, then, he did not speak openly even to his closest disciples, but promised an hour when he would speak openly, how did he speak openly to the world? Again, to those very disciples of his, as the authority of the other evangelists too testifies, he certainly spoke much more plainly, compared with those who were not his disciples, when he was alone with them, apart from the crowds; for then he opened to them the parables which he put forth closed to others. What, then, does "I have said nothing in secret" mean? But it must be understood that he said, "I have spoken openly to the world", as if he had said, "Many have heard me." And that very "openly" was in one way open and in another way not open. It was open because many heard; and again it was not open because they did not understand. And what he spoke to the disciples apart, he certainly did not speak in secret. For who speaks in secret when he speaks in the presence of so many people, since it is written, "In the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall stand", especially if he says to a few what he wants to be made known through them to many? As the Lord himself said to those whom he still had as a few: "What I tell you in the darkness, say in the light; and what you hear in the ear, proclaim on the housetops." So even what seemed to be said by him in secret was in a sense not said in secret, because it was not said so that those to whom it was said should keep silent about it, but rather so that it should be proclaimed everywhere. So something can be said both openly and not openly at the same time, or in secret and not in secret at the same time, as it was said, "that seeing they may see and not see." For how do they see, unless because it is open, not in secret? And how do the same people in turn not see, unless because it is not open but in secret? Yet the very things which they had heard and not understood were such that they could not justly and truthfully be made a charge against him; and as often as they tested him by questioning, to find something to accuse him of, he answered them in such a way that all their tricks were blunted and their slanders frustrated. That is why he said, "Why do you ask me? Ask those who have heard what I said to them: see, they know what I have said."

"When he had said these things, one of the officers standing by struck Jesus with his hand, saying, Is that how you answer the high priest? Jesus answered him, If I have spoken wrongly, bear witness to the wrong; but if rightly, why do you strike me?" What could be truer, gentler, more just than this answer? For it belongs to him of whom the prophetic voice had gone before: "Set out, and proceed prosperously, and reign, because of truth and gentleness and justice." If we consider who received the blow, would we not wish the one who struck him to be consumed by fire from heaven, or swallowed up by the earth opening, or seized by a demon and rolled about, or punished with some other penalty of this kind, or an even heavier one? For which of these could he not have commanded by his power, through whom the world was made, had he not preferred to teach us the patience by which the world is overcome? Here someone will say: why did he not do what he himself commanded? For he ought not to have answered the one who struck him in this way, but to have offered the other cheek. What of the fact that he both answered truly, gently, and justly, and prepared not only his other cheek for the one who would strike again, but his whole body to be nailed to the wood? And by this he rather showed what had to be shown: that those great precepts of patience are to be carried out not by a display of the body but by the preparation of the heart. For it can happen that a man offers the other cheek visibly and yet is angry. How much better, then, is it that he both answers the truth calmly and is made ready, with a tranquil mind, to bear heavier things? For blessed is he who, in all that he suffers unjustly for the sake of justice, can truly say, "My heart is ready, O God, my heart is ready." For from this comes what follows: "I will sing and make melody", which Paul and Barnabas were able to do even in the hardest chains.

But let us return to the sequence of the Gospel narrative. "And Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest." He was being led to him from the beginning, as Matthew says, since he was the chief priest of that year. For it is to be understood that the two high priests, that is, chief priests, who were at that time Annas and Caiaphas, were accustomed to serve in alternate years. Luke the evangelist records them when he tells at what time John, the Lord's forerunner, began to preach the kingdom of heaven and to gather disciples. For he says: "Under the chief priests Annas and Caiaphas, the word of the Lord came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness," and so on. Accordingly, these two high priests held their years in turn, and it was the year of Caiaphas when Christ suffered. That is why, according to Matthew, when he was seized he was led to him; but according to John they came with him first to Annas, not because he was his colleague but because he was his father-in-law. And we should believe that this was done in accordance with the will of Caiaphas, or else that their houses were so placed that Annas could not be passed by those going past.

But when the evangelist had said that Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas, he returned to the point in the narrative where he had left Peter, to explain what had happened in the house of Annas concerning his threefold denial. "Now Simon Peter," he says, "was standing and warming himself." He repeats what he had already said before; then he adds what followed. "So they said to him, Are you not also one of his disciples? He denied it and said, I am not." He had already denied once; see, now a second time. Then, that the third denial may be completed, "one of the high priest's servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, said, Did I not see you in the garden with him? Again, then, Peter denied, and at once the cock crowed." See, the physician's prediction is fulfilled, the sick man's presumption is exposed. For what this one had said did not happen, "I will lay down my life for you"; but what that one had foretold happened, "You will deny me three times." But now that Peter's threefold denial is complete, let this sermon too be completed, so that we may consider from another beginning what was done concerning the Lord before Pontius Pilate the governor.

Let us next see what was done with our Lord Jesus Christ, or concerning him, before Pontius Pilate the governor, as far as John the evangelist indicates. For he returns to the point in his narrative where he had left it in order to explain Peter's denial. He had already said, "And Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest"; and having gone back from there to where he had left Peter warming himself at the fire in the courtyard, after he had finished the whole of his denial, which was made three times, he says, "So they led Jesus to Caiaphas, into the praetorium." For he had said that he was sent to Caiaphas by Annas, his colleague and father-in-law. But if to Caiaphas, why into the praetorium? This means nothing other than the place where Pilate the governor lived. So either Caiaphas, for some pressing reason, had gone from the house of Annas, where both had come together to hear Jesus, to the governor's praetorium, and had left Jesus to his father-in-law to be heard; or else Pilate had taken his praetorium in the house of Caiaphas, and the house was so large that it held its owner living in one part and the judge in another.

"Now it was early morning; and they themselves," that is, those who were leading Jesus, "did not enter the praetorium", that is, into that part of the house which Pilate occupied, if it was the house of Caiaphas. And explaining why they did not enter the praetorium, he says, "so that they might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover." For they had begun to keep the days of unleavened bread, during which it was defilement for them to enter the dwelling of a foreigner. O ungodly blindness! Would they be defiled, forsooth, by another's dwelling, and not defiled by their own crime? They feared to be defiled by the praetorium of a foreign judge, and did not fear to be defiled by the blood of an innocent brother: to say only this for the present, as far as their guilty conscience of evil was concerned. For that he who was being led to death by their ungodliness was also the Lord, and that the giver of life was being killed, let that be put down not to their conscience but to their ignorance.

"So Pilate went outside to them and said, What accusation do you bring against this man? They answered and said to him, If this man were not an evildoer, we would not have handed him over to you." Let them be asked and let them answer, those freed from unclean spirits, the sick healed, the lepers cleansed, the deaf hearing, the dumb speaking, the blind seeing, the dead rising, and, what surpasses all, the foolish made wise: whether Jesus is an evildoer. But they were saying these things, of whom he himself had already foretold through the prophet: "They repaid me evil for good."

"So Pilate said to them, Take him yourselves and judge him according to your law. The Jews then said to him, It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death." What is this that insane cruelty is saying? Were they not putting to death the one whom they were offering to be put to death? Or perhaps the cross does not kill? So those grow foolish who do not follow wisdom but persecute it. But what does "It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death" mean? If he is an evildoer, why is it not lawful? Did not the law command them not to spare evildoers, especially (and such they thought him) those who lead people away from their God? But it must be understood that they said it was not lawful for them to put anyone to death because of the holiness of the feast day, which they had already begun to celebrate, on account of which they were also afraid of being defiled by entering the praetorium. Have you grown so hard, you false Israelites? Have you so lost all sense through excessive malice, that you believe yourselves unpolluted by the blood of the innocent because you have handed him over to another to shed it? Is Pilate too going to kill with his own hands the one who is thrust upon his authority by you to be killed? If you did not want him killed, if you did not lay ambushes for him, if you did not buy his betrayal to you with money, if you did not seize him, bind him, lead him off; if you did not offer him with your hands to be killed and demand it with your voices, then boast that he was not killed by you. But if, besides all those earlier deeds of yours, you also shouted, "Crucify, crucify", hear what the prophet too cries out against you: "The sons of men, their teeth are weapons and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword." See with what weapons, with what arrows, with what sword you have killed the righteous one, when you said that it was not lawful for you to put anyone to death. That is why, although the chief priests had not come to seize Jesus but had sent others, Luke the evangelist nevertheless says at the same point in his narrative: "And Jesus said to those who had come to him, the chief priests and the officers of the temple and the elders, Have you come out as against a robber", and so on. So, just as the chief priests came, not in person but through those whom they had sent to seize Jesus, and yet what else did they do but come themselves in the power of their command? so all who shouted with ungodly voices for Christ to be crucified killed him, not indeed in person, but yet themselves, through him who was driven to this crime by their shouting.

As for what John the evangelist adds, "that the word of Jesus might be fulfilled which he spoke, signifying by what death he was going to die": if we wish to take this here as the death of the cross, as though the Jews said, "It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death", because to be put to death is one thing and to be crucified another, I do not see how this can be understood consistently, since they gave this answer to the words of Pilate in which he had said to them, "Take him yourselves and judge him according to your law." Could they not, then, have taken him and crucified him themselves, if they wished to avoid putting anyone to death by such a kind of punishment? And who does not see how absurd it is that it should be lawful for them to crucify anyone, when it is not lawful for them to put anyone to death? And what of the fact that the Lord himself calls this same death of his, that is, the death of the cross, a putting to death, as we read in Mark, where he says: "See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the Gentiles; and they will mock him and spit on him and scourge him and kill him, and on the third day he will rise again"? Clearly, then, by saying these things the Lord signified by what death he was going to die: not that he wished the death of the cross to be understood here, but that the Jews were going to hand him over to the Gentiles, that is, to the Romans. For Pilate was a Roman, and the Romans had sent him as governor to Judea. So, in order that this word of Jesus might be fulfilled, that is, that the Gentiles might kill him when he was handed over to them, as Jesus had foretold would happen, when Pilate, who was a Roman judge, wished to give him back to the Jews so that they might judge him according to their law, they refused to take him, saying, "It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death." And so the word of Jesus which he foretold about his death was fulfilled, that the Gentiles should kill him when handed over by the Jews; with less guilt than the Jews, who in this way wished to make themselves strangers, as it were, to his killing, so that not their innocence but their madness might be shown.

What Pilate said to Christ, and what he answered Pilate, is to be considered and treated in this sermon. For when it had been said to the Jews, "Take him yourselves and judge him according to your law", and they had answered, "It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death", "Pilate entered the praetorium again, and called Jesus, and said to him, Are you the king of the Jews? And Jesus answered, Do you say this of yourself, or did others tell you about me?" The Lord certainly knew both what he himself asked and what the other would answer; yet he wished it to be said, not that he himself might know, but that what he wished us to know might be written. "Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me: what have you done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would certainly fight, so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but now my kingdom is not from here." This is what the good master wished us to know; but first men's empty opinion about his kingdom had to be shown to us, whether of the Gentiles or of the Jews, from whom Pilate had heard it: as though he deserved to be punished with death because he had aimed at an unlawful kingdom; or since those who reign are wont to envy those who are going to reign, and it was evidently to be guarded against that his kingdom might be hostile either to the Romans or to the Jews. The Lord could have given his answer, "My kingdom is not of this world", and the rest, to the governor's first question, when he said to him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" But by asking him in turn whether he said this of himself or had heard it from others, he wished, through Pilate's answer, to show that this had been laid against him before Pilate by the Jews as a crime; laying open to us the thoughts of men, which he himself knew to be vain; and after Pilate's answer, replying now more opportunely and fittingly to Jews and Gentiles alike, "My kingdom is not of this world." But if he had answered Pilate at once when he asked, he would have seemed to answer not the Jews as well but only the Gentiles, as holding this opinion of him. But now, since Pilate answered, "Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me", he removed from himself the suspicion that he might be thought to have said of himself that Jesus was king of the Jews, showing that he had heard it from the Jews. Then, by saying, "What have you done?", he showed clearly enough that this had been laid against him as a crime; as though he were saying, "If you deny you are a king, what have you done to be handed over to me?" As if it were no wonder that one who called himself a king should be handed over to a judge for punishment; but if he did not say this, it had to be asked of him what else he had perhaps done for which he deserved to be handed over to a judge.

Hear, then, Jews and Gentiles; hear, circumcision; hear, uncircumcision; hear, all earthly kingdoms: "I do not hinder your rule in this world: my kingdom is not of this world." Do not fear with that utterly empty fear with which the elder Herod was terrified when Christ's birth was announced, and killed so many infants so that death might reach him, more cruel from fear than from anger. "My kingdom," he says, "is not of this world." What more do you want? Come to the kingdom which is not of this world; come by believing, and do not rage from fear. He does indeed say in prophecy concerning God the Father, "But I have been established by him as king over Zion, his holy mountain"; but that Zion and that mountain are not of this world. For what is his kingdom but those who believe in him, to whom he says, "You are not of the world, just as I too am not of the world"? Although he willed them to be in the world; which is why he said of them to the Father, "I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from evil." So here too he does not say, "My kingdom is not in this world", but "is not of this world". And when he proved this by saying, "If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would certainly fight, so that I would not be handed over to the Jews", he did not say, "But now my kingdom is not here", but "is not from here". For his kingdom is here until the end of the age, having weeds mixed within it until the harvest; for the harvest is the end of the age, when the reapers will come, that is, the angels, and gather out of his kingdom all causes of stumbling; which certainly would not happen if his kingdom were not here. But yet it is not from here, because it is a pilgrim in the world; for he says to his kingdom, "You are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world." So they were of the world when they were not his kingdom but belonged to the prince of the world. Whatever of mankind, then, was created indeed by the true God, but was begotten of the stock of Adam, corrupted and condemned, is of the world; but whatever has been reborn from it in Christ has become a kingdom no longer of the world. For thus God "rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love": of which kingdom he says, "My kingdom is not of this world", or, "My kingdom is not from here."

"So Pilate said to him, So you are a king? Jesus answered, You say that I am a king." Not because he was afraid to confess that he was a king; but "You say" is so balanced that he neither denies that he is a king (for he is a king whose kingdom is not of this world), nor confesses that he is the kind of king whose kingdom is thought to be of this world. For that is the kind the one had in mind who had said, "So you are a king?", to whom the answer was, "You say that I am a king." For "You say" was said as though it had been said, "Being carnal, you speak carnally."

Then he adds: "For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth." The syllable of this pronoun, where he says "In hoc natus sum", is not to be lengthened, as though he said, "I was born in this thing", but shortened, as though he said, "I was born for this thing", or "for this I was born", as he says, "for this I came into the world." For in the Greek Gospel there is nothing ambiguous about this expression. From this it is clear that he is here recalling his temporal birth, by which, incarnate, he came into the world, not that birth without beginning by which he was God, through whom the Father founded the world. So he said that he was born for this, that is, born on account of this, and that he came into the world for this, namely by being born of the Virgin, to bear witness to the truth. But since not all have faith, he added and said: "Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice." He hears, of course, with the inner ears, that is, he obeys my voice; which would mean as much as if he said, "He believes me." So when Christ bears witness to the truth, he surely bears witness to himself; for his is the voice, "I am the truth"; and he also said in another place, "I bear witness about myself." But when he says, "Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice", he commends the grace by which he calls according to his purpose. Of this purpose the apostle says, "We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to the purpose of God": the purpose, that is, of him who calls, not of those called; which is put more plainly elsewhere thus: "Labour with the gospel according to the power of God, who saves us and calls us with his holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace." For if we consider the nature in which we were created, since the truth created all, who is not of the truth? But not all are those to whom it is granted by the truth itself to hear the truth, that is, to obey the truth and believe in the truth; without doubt with no merits going before, lest grace be no longer grace. For if he had said, "Everyone who hears my voice is of the truth", he would be thought to be called "of the truth" because he obeys the truth. But he did not say this; he said, "Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice." And so he is not of the truth because he hears its voice, but he hears because he is of the truth, that is, because this gift has been bestowed on him by the truth. And what is this but that, by Christ's gift, he believes in Christ?

"Pilate said to him, What is truth?" Nor did he wait to hear the answer; but "when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews and said to them, I find no case against him. But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover; do you want me, then, to release for you the king of the Jews?" I believe that when Pilate had said, "What is truth?", the custom of the Jews at once came to his mind, by which one man was usually released to them at the Passover; and so he did not wait for Jesus to answer him what truth is, so that there should be no delay, once he had remembered the custom by which Jesus could be released to them at the Passover; which it is plain he greatly wished. Yet it could not be torn out of his heart that Jesus was king of the Jews, as though the very truth about which he had asked what it was had fixed this there, as on the title. But when this was heard, "they all cried out again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber." We do not blame you, O Jews, for releasing a guilty man at the Passover, but for killing an innocent one; and yet, if this were not done, the true Passover would not take place. But the shadow of the truth was held by the erring Jews, and by a wonderful arrangement of divine wisdom the truth of that same shadow was being fulfilled through deceived men; because, that the true Passover might take place, Christ was being sacrificed like a sheep. From here follow the insults which Pilate and his cohort heaped on Christ; but they are to be treated in another discourse.