Tractates on the Gospel of John 19.3–19.14

“For the Father loves the Son, and shows him all things that he himself does.” To what he said above, “but what he sees the Father doing,” this too seems to belong: “he shows him all things that he himself does.” But if the Father shows what he does, and the Son cannot do anything unless the Father has shown it, and the Father cannot show unless he has done it, it will follow that the Father does not do all things through the Son. If, on the other hand, we hold it fixed and unshaken that the Father does all things through the Son, then he shows them to the Son before he does them. For if the Father shows them to the Son after he has done them, so that the Son does the things shown, which, having been shown, are already done, then without doubt the Father does something without the Son. But the Father does nothing without the Son, because the Son of God is the Word of God, and all things were made through him. It remains, then, perhaps, that what the Father is about to do he shows as things to be done, so that they may be made through the Son. For if the Son does the things that the Father shows as already done, then the things the Father shows as done he certainly did not make through the Son. For they could not be shown to the Son unless they were done, and the Son could not do them unless they were shown: therefore they were made without the Son. But it is true, “All things were made through him”: therefore before they were made, they were shown. But we said that this must be postponed, to be returned to when the reading has been gone through, if, as we said, any time or strength remains to us for going back over what we have deferred.

Hear something further and harder: “And greater works than these,” he says, “will he show him, that you may marvel.” Greater than these: than which? The answer readily occurs: than these that you have just heard, the healings of bodily sicknesses. For the whole occasion of this discourse arose from the man who had been thirty-eight years in his infirmity and was healed by Christ's word; and on account of this the Lord could say, “Greater works than these will he show him, that you may marvel.” For there are works greater than these, and the Father will show them to the Son. He did not say “he has shown,” as of the past, but “he will show,” of the future, that is, he is going to show. Again a difficult question arises. Is there something with the Father that has not yet been shown to the Son? Is there something with the Father that was still hidden from the Son when the Son was saying these things? For if “he will show,” that is, he is going to show, then he has not yet shown; and he is going to show it to the Son at the same time as to these men, for there follows, “that you may marvel.” And this too is hard to see: how the eternal Father shows something, as if in time, to the coeternal Son, who knows all things that are with the Father.

Yet what are those greater works? For perhaps this is easy to understand. “For as the Father,” he says, “raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he will.” Raising the dead, then, is a greater work than healing the sick. But “as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he will.” Some, then, the Father, and others the Son? But all things are through him; so the Son gives life to the very same ones as the Father, since he does not do other things, nor otherwise, but “these the Son also does likewise.” This is plainly how it must be understood and held. But remember that “the Son gives life to whom he will.” Hold here, then, not only the power of the Son but also his will. The Son gives life to whom he will, and the Father gives life to whom he will; and the Son to the same ones as the Father; and thus the power and the will of the Father and the Son are one and the same. What, then, is it that follows? “For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son as they honor the Father.” He added this as though giving the reason for the preceding statement. It is very perplexing; be attentive. The Son gives life to whom he will, the Father gives life to whom he will; the Son raises the dead, as the Father raises the dead. “For the Father judges no one.” If the dead are to be raised at the judgment, how does the Father raise the dead, if he judges no one? For he has given all judgment to the Son. But at that judgment the dead are raised, and some rise to life, others to punishment. If the Son does all this, and the Father does not, because “the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son,” it will seem contrary to what was said: “As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he will.” So they raise together. If they raise together, they give life together. Therefore they judge together. How, then, is it true: “For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son”? Let the questions set before you stir you for the present; the Lord will grant that they delight you when solved. So it is, brothers: no question delights when it is explained, unless, when it was proposed, it made the hearer attentive. Let the Lord himself go on, then, in case in what he adds he may open himself somewhat. For he veils his light with a cloud, and it is hard, after the manner of the eagle, to fly above all the mist by which the whole earth is covered and to see in the words of the Lord the purest light. In case, then, by the heat of his rays he may disperse our darkness and deign to open himself somewhat in what follows, let us put these questions off and look at what follows.

“He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” This is true, and it is plain. For he has given all judgment to the Son, as he said above, “that all may honor the Son as they honor the Father.” What if some are found who honor the Father and do not honor the Son? It cannot be, he says: “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” No one, then, can say, “I was honoring the Father, because I did not know the Son.” If you did not yet honor the Son, neither were you honoring the Father. For what is honoring the Father, except honoring him as having a Son? For it is one thing when God is commended to you because he is God, and another when God is commended to you because he is Father. When he is commended to you because he is God, the Creator is commended to you, the Almighty is commended to you, a certain supreme spirit, eternal, invisible, unchangeable, is commended to you; but when he is commended to you because he is Father, nothing else is commended to you than the Son as well, because he cannot be called Father if he has no Son, just as neither can the Son be called Son if he has no Father. But in case you perhaps honor the Father as greater and the Son as lesser, so as to say to me, “I honor the Father, for I know that he has a Son; and I do not err in the name of Father, for I do not understand the Father without the Son; yet I honor the Son as lesser”: the Son himself corrects you and calls you back, saying, “that all may honor the Son,” not lower, but “as they honor the Father.” “He, then, who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” “I,” you say, “want to give greater honor to the Father, lesser to the Son.” You take honor away from the Father at the very point where you give lesser honor to the Son. For when you think this way, what else does it seem to you but that the Father either was unwilling or was unable to beget a Son equal to himself? If he was unwilling, he begrudged it; if he was unable, he was deficient. Do you not see, then, that by thinking this way, where you want to give greater honor to the Father, there you insult the Father? Therefore honor the Son in the same way as you honor the Father, if you want to honor both the Father and the Son.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, that he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed”—not “is now passing,” but “has already passed”—“from death into life.” And notice this: “He who hears my word”; and he did not say “believes me,” but “believes him who sent me.” Let him hear the word of the Son, then, in order to believe the Father. Why does he hear your word and believe another? When we hear someone's word, do we not believe the very one who utters the word, and give our trust to the one speaking to us? What, then, did he mean by saying, “He who hears my word and believes him who sent me,” except that his word is in me? And what is “hears my word,” except “hears me”? “And believes him who sent me”: because when he believes him, he believes his Word; and when he believes his Word, he believes me, because I am the Word of the Father. There is peace, then, in the Scriptures, and all things are well ordered, in no way quarrelling. Cast away the strife of your heart; understand the harmony of the Scriptures. Would the truth say things contrary to itself?

“He who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.” You remember what we set down above: “As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he will.” He now begins to open himself and to speak of the resurrection of the dead, and behold, the dead are already rising. “For he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and will not come into judgment.” Prove that he has risen. “But he has passed,” he says, “from death into life.” He who has passed from death to life has, beyond anyone's doubt, risen. For he would not pass from death to life unless he were first in death and not in life; but when he has passed, he will be in life and will not be in death. He was dead, then, and has come back to life; he was lost, and is found. A kind of resurrection, then, is already taking place, and people pass from a certain death to a certain life: from the death of unbelief to the life of faith; from the death of falsehood to the life of truth; from the death of iniquity to the life of righteousness. This too, then, is a kind of resurrection of the dead.

Let him open it more fully, and let it dawn on us, as it has begun to. “Amen, amen, I say to you, that the hour is coming, and now is.” We were expecting the resurrection of the dead at the end, for so we have believed; or rather, it is not that we were expecting it, but we plainly ought to expect it; for we do not believe a falsehood when we believe that the dead will rise at the end. When the Lord Jesus, then, wished to make known to us a certain resurrection of the dead before the resurrection of the dead—not like that of Lazarus, or of the widow's son, or of the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, who rose only to die again (for of these dead too there was a kind of resurrection before the resurrection of the dead), but as he says here: “He has,” he says, “eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” To what life? To eternal life. Not, then, like the body of Lazarus; for he too passed from the death of the tomb to the life of men, but not to eternal life, since he was to die again; whereas the dead who are to rise at the end of the world will pass into eternal life. When, then, our Lord Jesus Christ, the heavenly teacher, the Word of the Father and the Truth, wished to show us a certain resurrection of the dead to eternal life before the resurrection of the dead to eternal life, he said, “The hour is coming.” You, no doubt, steeped in faith in the resurrection of the flesh, were expecting that hour of the end of the world, the day of judgment; so that you would not expect it in this place, he added, “and now is.” So when he says, “The hour is coming,” he does not speak of that last hour, when “at the command, and with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, the Lord himself will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.” That hour will come, but it is not now. But consider what this hour is: “The hour is coming, and now is.” What takes place in it? What, except the resurrection of the dead? And what kind of resurrection? That those who rise may live for ever. This will also be so in the last hour.

What then? How do we understand these two resurrections? Is it perhaps that those who rise now will not rise then, so that the resurrection of some takes place now, and of others then? It is not so. For by this resurrection, if we have believed rightly, we have risen; and we ourselves, who have already risen, await another resurrection at the end. Now, too, we have risen to eternal life, if we abide perseveringly in that faith; and then we shall rise to eternal life, when we are made equal to the angels. Let him himself distinguish, then; let him himself open what we have dared to speak of: how a resurrection takes place before the resurrection, not of some and then of others, but of the same people; and not such as that of Lazarus, but to eternal life. He will open it plainly. Hear the teacher as he dawns, our Sun gliding into our hearts; not the sun that the eyes of the flesh desire, but the one for whom the eyes of the heart burn to be opened. Let us hear him, then: “Amen, amen, I say to you, that the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead”—see how a resurrection is expressed—“when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” Why did he add, “Those who hear will live”? Could they hear unless they were living? It would have been enough, then, to say, “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God”; we would already understand that they were living, since unless they were living they could not hear. No, he says, it is not because they live that they hear, but by hearing they come back to life: “they will hear, and those who hear will live.” What, then, is “they will hear,” except “they will obey”? For as far as the hearing of the ear is concerned, not all who hear will live; for many hear and do not believe; by hearing and not believing they do not obey; by not obeying they do not live. So here “those who hear” is nothing else than “those who obey.” Those who obey, then, will live: let them be sure, let them be secure, they will live. Christ is preached, the Word of God, the Son of God, through whom all things were made, who for the sake of the dispensation assumed flesh and was born of the Virgin: an infant in the flesh, a young man in the flesh, suffering in the flesh, dying in the flesh, rising in the flesh, ascending in the flesh, promising resurrection to the flesh, promising resurrection to the mind—to the mind before the flesh, to the flesh after the mind. He who hears and obeys will live; he who hears and does not obey, that is, hears and despises, hears and does not believe, will not live. Why will he not live? Because he does not hear. What is “does not hear”? He does not obey. Therefore, “those who hear will live.”

Attend now to what we said must be deferred, so that now, if possible, it may be opened. He immediately added, concerning this very resurrection, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself.” What is “the Father has life in himself”? He has life nowhere else but in himself. For his living is in him; it is not from elsewhere, not another's. He does not, as it were, borrow life, nor become, as it were, a partaker of life, of a life that is not what he himself is; but he has life in himself, so that the life itself is he himself. If I can say a little more on this, setting out examples to shape your understanding, I shall be able to with the Lord's help and the devotion of your attention. God lives, and the soul lives too; but the life of God is unchangeable, the life of the soul is changeable. God neither increases nor decreases; he himself is always in himself, he is as he is: not one way now, another later, another earlier. But the life of the soul is very much one way and then another: it lived foolish, it lives wise; it lived unjust, it lives just; now it remembers, now it forgets; now it learns, now it cannot learn; now it loses what it had learned, now it grasps what it had lost: changeable is the life of the soul. And when the soul lives in iniquity, that is its death; but when it becomes just, it becomes a partaker of another life, which is not what it itself is; for by lifting itself up to God and clinging to God, it is justified by him. For it is said, “To him who believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.” By falling away from him it becomes unjust; by advancing toward him it becomes just. Does it not seem to you like something cold that grows hot when brought near the fire and grows numb when removed from the fire? Does it not seem to you like something dark that grows bright when brought near the light and grows black when removed from the light? The soul is something of this kind; God is nothing of this kind. A man too can say that he has light now in his eyes. Let your eyes, then, say, as if with a voice of their own, if they can: “We have light in ourselves.” The reply is: You do not properly say that you have light in yourselves. You have light, but in the sky; you have light, if it happens to be night, but in the moon, in lamps, not in yourselves; for when closed you lose what you perceive when open. You do not have light in yourselves: when the sun sets, keep the light, if you can; it is night, enjoy the night's light; when the lamp is taken away, keep the light; but since, when the lamp is taken away, you remain in darkness, you do not have light in yourselves. This, then, is to have light in oneself: not to need light from another. See where, if one understands, he shows the Son equal to the Father, when he says, “As the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself”: so that this alone is the difference between the Father and the Son, that the Father has life in himself which no one gave him, while the Son has life in himself which the Father gave.

But here too a certain cloud arises that must be dispersed. Let us not grow faint; let us be attentive. These are pastures of the mind; let us not disdain them, that we may live. “See,” you say, “you yourself confess that the Father gave life to the Son, so that he has it in himself, just as the Father has life in himself; that as the one does not lack, so the other may not lack; that as the one is life, so the other may be too; and both joined together are one life, not two, because there is one God, not two gods, and this is what it is to be life. How, then, did the Father give life to the Son?” Not as if the Son had previously been without life and received life from the Father in order to live; for if this were so, he would not have life in himself. See, I was speaking of the soul. The soul exists: even if it is not wise, even if it is not just, it is a soul; even if it is not devout, it is a soul. So it is one thing for it to be a soul, another to be wise, to be just, to be devout. There is, then, a state in which it is not yet wise, not yet just, not yet devout; yet it is not nothing, it is not no life at all; for by certain works of its own it shows itself to be life, even if it does not show itself wise, devout, just. For unless it lived, it would not move the body; it would not command walking from the feet, work from the hands, looking from the eyes, hearing from the ears; it would not open the mouth for speech or move the tongue to distinguish sounds. By these works, then, it shows that it lives and that it is something better than the body. But does it by these works show itself wise, devout, just? Do not the foolish, the ungodly, and the unjust also walk, work, see, hear, speak? But when it lifts itself up to something that it itself is not, which is above it and from which it is, it receives wisdom, justice, devotion; while it was without these, it was dead, and did not have a life by which it itself might live, but only one by which it might give life to the body. For that in the soul by which the body is given life is one thing; that by which the soul itself is given life is another. The soul is better than the body; but God is better than the soul. The soul, then, even if it is foolish, unjust, ungodly, is the life of the body. But since its life is God, just as when it is in the body it furnishes the body with vigor, comeliness, mobility, and the functions of the limbs, so when God, its life, is in it, he furnishes it with wisdom, devotion, justice, love. So what is furnished to the body by the soul is one thing; what is furnished to the soul by God is another. The soul gives life and is given life; even when dead it gives life, if it itself is not given life. So when the word comes and is poured into the hearers, and they have become not only hearers but also obeyers, the soul rises from its death to its life; that is, from iniquity, from folly, from ungodliness, to its God, who is its wisdom, justice, brightness. Let it rise to him; let it be enlightened by him. “Come to him,” he says. And what will we have? “And be enlightened.” If, then, by coming you are enlightened, and by withdrawing you are darkened, your light was not in you but in your God. Come, that you may rise again; if you withdraw, you will die. If, then, by coming you live and by withdrawing you die, your life was not in you. For your life is the same as your light: “For with you is the fountain of life, and in your light we shall see light.”

Not, then, as the soul is something else before it is enlightened, and becomes better when it is enlightened by participation in what is better, so also was the Word of God, the Son of God, something else before he received life, so as to have life by participating; but he has life in himself, and for this reason he himself is life itself. What, then, does he mean by “He has given to the Son to have life in himself”? Let me say it briefly: He begot the Son. For he was not without life and then received life; but by being born he is life. The Father is life not by being born; the Son is life by being born. The Father is from no father; the Son is from God the Father. The Father, in what he is, is from no one; but that he is Father, he is because of the Son. The Son, however, both is Son because of the Father and, in what he is, is from the Father. So this is what he said: “He gave life to the Son, that he might have it in himself”; as though he said, The Father, who is life in himself, begot the Son, who would be life in himself. For he wished “gave” to be understood in place of “begot.” It is as if we said to someone, “God gave you being.” To whom did he give it? If he gave being to someone already existing, he did not give him being, since there was already someone, before it was given him, who could receive it. So when you hear, “He gave you being,” you were not there to receive it, and by coming into existence you received being. A builder gave this house being. But what did he give it? That it should be a house. To whom did he give it? To this house. What did he give it? That it should be a house. How could he give the house that it should be a house? For if it was a house, to whom would he give being a house, when it was already a house? What, then, is “He gave it that it should be a house”? He made it that it should be a house. What, then, did he give the Son? He gave him that he should be the Son; he begot him that he should be life; that is, “he gave him to have life in himself,” so that he would be life not needing life, lest he be understood to have life by participation. For if he had life by participation, he could also, by losing it, be without life: do not accept this of the Son, do not think it, do not believe it. The Father, then, remains life, and the Son remains life: the Father life in himself, not from the Son; the Son life in himself, but from the Father; begotten by the Father, that he might be life in himself; but the Father, unbegotten, is life in himself. Nor did he beget a lesser Son, who would become equal by growing. For he through whom, being perfect, the times were created was not helped by time toward his own perfection. Before all times he is coeternal with the Father. For the Father was never without the Son; but the Father is eternal; therefore the Son too is coeternal. What about you, soul? You were dead, you had lost life: hear the Father through the Son. Rise, take back life, so that in him who has life in himself you may receive the life you do not have in yourself. So the Father and the Son give you life; and the first resurrection takes place when you rise to participate in a life that you are not, and by participating are made living. Rise from your death to your life, which is your God, and pass from death to eternal life. For the Father has eternal life in himself; and unless he had begotten such a Son as would have life in himself, the Son would not give life to whom he would, as the Father raises the dead and gives them life.

What, then, about that resurrection of the body? For these who hear and live—how do they live, except by hearing? For “the friend of the bridegroom stands and hears him, and rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice,” not because of his own voice; that is, they hear and live by participation, not by their own being; and all who hear live, because all who obey live. Say something, Lord, about the resurrection of the flesh too. For there have been those who denied it and said that the only resurrection is the one that comes about through faith. The Lord has just mentioned this resurrection and set us on fire, that certain dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and live. It is not that of those who hear some will die and others live; but all who hear will live, because all who obey will live. See, we behold the resurrection of the mind; let us not therefore lose faith in the resurrection of the flesh. And unless you, Lord Jesus, speak of it, whom shall we set against those who contradict it? For all the sects that have presumed to implant some religion in men have not denied this resurrection of minds, lest it be said to them: “If the soul does not rise, why do you speak to me? What do you want to do in me? If you do not make me better from worse, why do you speak? If you do not make me just from unjust, why do you speak? But if you make me just from unjust, devout from ungodly, wise from foolish, you admit that my soul rises, if I obey you, if I believe you.” So all who have founded the sect of any religion, even a false one, wanting to be believed, could not deny this resurrection of minds; all agreed about it. But many denied the resurrection of the flesh; they said that the resurrection had already taken place in faith. Such people the apostle resists, saying, “Among whom are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and they are overturning the faith of some.” They said that the resurrection had already taken place, but in such a way that no other was to be hoped for; and they found fault with people who hoped for the resurrection of the flesh, as though the resurrection that had been promised were already fulfilled in the mind by believing. The apostle rebukes them. Why does he rebuke them? Were they not saying what the Lord was just now speaking: “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live”? “But I am still speaking of the life of minds,” Jesus says to you; “I am not yet speaking of the life of bodies, but of the life of the life of bodies, that is, of souls, in which is the life of bodies. For I know that there are bodies lying in tombs; I know that your bodies too will be in tombs. I am not yet speaking of that resurrection; I am speaking of this one: rise in this one, lest you rise to punishment in that one. But that you may know that I am speaking of that one, what do I add? ‘For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself.’” This life that the Father is, that the Son is—to what does it belong? To the soul or to the body? For the body does not perceive that life of wisdom, but the rational mind does. For not every soul can perceive wisdom. A beast too has a soul; but the soul of a beast cannot perceive wisdom. So the human soul can perceive this life that the Father has in himself and has given to the Son to have in himself; because that is “the true light that enlightens”—not every soul, but—“every man coming into this world.” When, then, I speak to the mind itself, let it hear, that is, obey, and live.