Tractates on the Gospel of John 23.2–23.12

Today's reading has spoken to us about the Lord's testimony: that he does not need testimony from men, but has a testimony greater than men; and he said what that testimony is: “The works,” he says, “which I do bear witness of me.” Then he added: “And the Father who sent me bears witness of me.” The very works that he does, too, he says he received from the Father. So the works bear witness, the Father bears witness. Did John bear no witness? He plainly did, but as a lamp, not to satisfy friends but to confound enemies; for it had been foretold long before in the person of the Father: “I have prepared a lamp for my Christ; his enemies I will clothe with confusion, but upon him shall my sanctification flourish.” Suppose you were placed as if in the night: you looked at the lamp, you admired the lamp, and you rejoiced at the light of the lamp; but that lamp tells you there is a sun in which you ought to rejoice; and though it burns in the night, it bids you wait for the day. So it is not that there was no need of that man's testimony. For why would he be sent, if there was no need? But lest a man stay with the lamp and think the lamp's light enough for him, the Lord neither says that that lamp was superfluous, nor yet says that you ought to stay with the lamp. The Scripture of God speaks another testimony: there certainly God bore witness to his Son; and in that Scripture the Jews had placed their hope, namely in the law of God ministered to them through Moses, the servant of God. “Search the Scriptures,” he says, “in which you think you have eternal life; they bear witness of me; and you will not come to me that you may have life.” Why do you think you have eternal life in the Scripture? Ask it to whom it bears witness, and understand what eternal life is. And because on account of Moses they wanted to reject Christ, as an adversary of the institutions and precepts of Moses, he again convicts them, as if by another lamp.

For all men are lamps, because they can be both lit and put out. And lamps, when they are wise, shine and are fervent in spirit; but if they used to burn and have been put out, they even stink. For the servants of God remained good lamps by the oil of his mercy, not by their own strength. For the free grace of God—that is the oil of the lamps. “For I labored more than all of them,” says a certain lamp; and lest he seem to burn by his own strength, he added, “yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” All prophecy, then, before the Lord's coming, is a lamp; of which the apostle Peter says, “We have the more sure prophetic word, to which you do well to attend, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” So the prophets are lamps, and all prophecy is one great lamp. What of the apostles? Are they not lamps too? Plainly lamps. For he alone is not a lamp. For he is not lit and put out, because “as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son to have life in himself.” So the apostles too are lamps; and they give thanks, because they have been lit by the light of Truth, and are fervent with the Spirit of love, and the oil of God's grace is supplied to them. If they were not lamps, the Lord would not say to them, “You are the light of the world.” For after he said, “You are the light of the world,” he showed that they should not think themselves such a light as that of which it was said, “That was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world.” But this was said of the Lord when he was being distinguished from John. For of John the Baptist it had been said, “He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light.” And lest you say, “How was he not the light, of whom Christ says that he was a lamp?”—in comparison with the other light he was not light. For “that was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world.” So when he said to the disciples too, “You are the light of the world,” lest they think something had been attributed to them that was to be understood of Christ alone, and so the lamps be put out by the wind of pride, having said, “You are the light of the world,” he at once added, “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor do they light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a lampstand, that it may give light to all who are in the house.” But what if he did not call the apostles the lamp, but the lighters of the lamp that they were to set on the lampstand? Hear that he called them the lamp: “Let your light so shine,” he says, “before men, that seeing your good works they may glorify,” not you, but “your Father who is in heaven.”

So Moses too bore witness to Christ, and John bore witness to Christ, and the other prophets and apostles bore witness to Christ. Above all these testimonies he sets the testimony of his own works. For through those men too it was none other than God who bore witness to his Son. But God bears witness to his Son in another way: through the Son himself God makes the Son known; he makes himself known through the Son. If a man can reach him, he will not need lamps, and, truly digging deeper, he will carry his building down to the rock.

Today's reading, then, brothers, is easy; but because of yesterday's debt (for I know what I deferred, not took away, and the Lord has deigned to grant me to speak to you today too), remember what you ought to demand back, if in some way, keeping devotion and wholesome humility, we may stretch ourselves not against God but toward God, and lift up our soul to him, pouring it out above ourselves, like the one in the psalm to whom it was said, “Where is your God?” “These things,” he says, “I meditated, and poured out my soul above me.” Let us lift up the soul, then, to God, not against God; for this too has been said: “To you, O Lord, I have lifted up my soul.” And let us lift it with his help; for it is heavy. Why is it heavy? Because “the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks many things.” Perhaps, then, we may be able to gather our mind from many things to one, and, pulling it away from many things, raise it to the one (which indeed we shall not be able to do, as I said, unless he helps who wills our souls to be lifted up to him), and touch in some measure how the Word of God, the only Son of the Father, coeternal and equal with the Father, does nothing but what he sees the Father doing, while yet the Father himself does nothing except through the Son who sees. It seems to me that the Lord Jesus in this place, wishing to make known something great to the attentive and pour it into the capable, and to rouse the incapable to study, so that those not yet understanding may become capable by living well, has made known to us that the human soul and the rational mind, which is in man and not in a beast, is not given vigor, not made blessed, not enlightened, except by the very substance of God; and that this soul does something through the body and from the body, and has the body subject to it, and that the senses of the body can be soothed or offended by bodily things; and that because of this, that is, because of a certain partnership and embrace of soul and body in this life, the soul is delighted when the bodily senses are soothed and saddened when they are offended; but that its blessedness, by which the soul itself is made blessed, does not come about except by participation in that ever-living, unchangeable, eternal substance which is God: so that, as the soul, which is inferior to God, makes to live that which is inferior to itself, namely the body, so nothing makes the same soul live blessedly except what is superior to the soul itself. For the soul is superior to the body, and God is superior to the soul. It furnishes something to its inferior; something is furnished to it by its superior. Let it serve its Lord, lest it be trampled by its servant. This, my brothers, is the Christian religion, which is preached throughout the whole world, while its enemies shudder; and where they are defeated, they murmur; where they prevail, they rage. This is the Christian religion: that one God be worshipped, not many gods, because none but the one God makes the soul blessed. It becomes blessed by participation in God. A weak soul does not become blessed by participation in a holy soul, nor does a holy soul become blessed by participation in an angel; but if the weak soul seeks to be blessed, let it seek that from which the holy soul is blessed. For you are not made blessed by an angel; but from the source from which the angel is blessed, from that source are you also.

These things being set out first and most firmly established—that the rational soul is made blessed only by God, that the body is given vigor only through the soul, and that the soul is a kind of middle between God and the body—attend and recall with me, not today's reading, of which we have said enough, but yesterday's, which, see, we have now been turning over and treating for three days and digging into as best we can, until we reach the rock. Christ the Word, Christ the Word of God with God, Christ the Word and the Word God, Christ and God and the Word one God. Go there, soul, despising the rest, or even passing beyond them; go there. Nothing is more powerful than this creature called the rational mind, nothing more sublime than this creature: whatever is above it is now the Creator. I was saying, though, that Christ is the Word, and Christ is the Word of God, and Christ is God the Word; but Christ is not only the Word, because “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us”: so Christ is both Word and flesh. For “though he was in the form of God, he did not think it robbery to be equal with God.” And what about us below, who, weak and crawling on the ground, could not reach God—were we to be abandoned? Far from it. “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant”—not, then, losing the form of God. So he who was God became man, by taking what he was not, not by losing what he was: thus God became man. There you have something for your weakness; there you have something else for your perfection. Let Christ raise you through what he is as man, let him lead you through what he is as God-man, let him bring you through to what he is as God. And the whole preaching and dispensation through Christ is this, brothers, and there is no other: that souls may rise, and bodies too may rise. For both were dead: the body from weakness, the soul from iniquity. Because both were dead, both will rise. What, both? Soul and body. Through what, then, does the soul rise, except through Christ as God? Through what the body, except through Christ as man? For in Christ there was a human soul, a whole soul: not only the irrational part but also the rational part, which is called mind. For there were certain heretics, and they were driven out of the church, who thought that the body of Christ did not have a rational mind but something like a beast's soul; for without the rational mind, life is a beast's life. But because they were driven out, and driven out by the truth, accept the whole Christ: Word, rational mind, and flesh. This whole is Christ. Let your soul rise from iniquity through what he is as God; let your body rise from corruption through what he is as man. Therefore, dearest ones, hear the great depth of this reading, as it seems to me; and see how Christ speaks here of nothing other than why Christ came: that souls might rise from iniquity, and bodies rise from corruption. I have already said through what souls rise: through the very substance of God; and through what bodies rise: through the human dispensation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, these things the Son also does likewise.” Heaven, earth, sea; what is in heaven, what is on earth, what is in the sea; things visible and invisible; animals on land, shrubs in the fields, things swimming in the waters, things flying in the air, things shining in the sky; besides all these, angels, virtues, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers: all were made through him. Did God make all these things, and show them, once made, to the Son, so that he too might make another world full of all these things? Certainly not. But what? “For whatever he does, these”—not other things, but these—“the Son also does,” not unlike, but “likewise. For the Father loves the Son, and shows him all things that he himself does.” The Father shows the Son that souls are to be raised, because souls are raised through the Father and the Son; and souls cannot live unless God is their life. If, then, souls cannot live unless God is their life, as they themselves are the life of bodies, what the Father shows the Son, that is, what he does, he does through the Son. For he does not show the Son by doing, but by showing he does it through the Son. For the Son sees the Father showing before anything is made, and from the Father's showing and the Son's seeing comes about what is made by the Father through the Son. So souls are raised, if they can see this conjunction of unity: the Father showing, the Son seeing, and through the Father's showing and the Son's seeing the creature being made; and that what is made through the Father's showing and the Son's seeing—whatever is made by the Father through the Son—is neither the Father nor the Son, but beneath the Father and the Son. Who sees this?

See, again to carnal senses; see, again we humble ourselves and come down to you, if indeed we had ever ascended somewhat from you. You want to show something to your son, so that he may do what you do: you are going to do it, and so show it. What you are going to do in order to show your son, then, you certainly do not do through your son; but you alone do what he is to see done, and he does another such thing likewise. This is not so there: why do you go to your own likeness and blot out in yourself the likeness of God? There it is not so at all. Find some way to show your son what you do before you do it, so that, when you have shown it, you may do through your son what you do. Now perhaps something like this occurs to you: “See,” you say, “I am thinking of making a house, and I want it to be built through my son: before I build it myself, I show my son what I want to make; and he makes it, and I through him, to whom I have shown my will.” You have indeed withdrawn from the former likeness, but you still lie in great unlikeness. For see, before you make the house, you indicate to your son and show what you want to make, so that, as you show it before you make it, he may make what you have shown, and you through him; but you will speak words to your son; words will run between you and him; and between the one showing and the one seeing, or the one speaking and the one hearing, an articulate sound flies, which is not what you are, not what he is. For that sound which goes out of your mouth, and, having struck the air, touches your son's ear, and, having filled the sense of hearing, carries your thought to his heart—that sound is not you yourself, not your son himself. A sign has been given from your mind to your son's mind, which sign is neither your mind nor your son's mind, but something else. Are we to think, then, that the Father spoke with the Son in this way? Were there words between God and the Word? How is that? Whatever the Father wished to say to the Son, if he wished to say it by a word—when the Son himself is the Word of the Father—would he speak to the Word through a word? Or because the Son is the great Word, were lesser words to run between the Father and the Son? Was some sound, a kind of temporal and fleeting creature, to go out of the Father's mouth and strike the Son's ear? Does God have a body, so that this might proceed as if from his lips; and does the Word have bodily ears into which sound might come? Remove all bodily things; see simplicity, if you are simple. But how will you be simple? If you do not entangle yourself in the world, but disentangle yourself from the world: for by disentangling yourself you will be simple. And see, if you can, what I am saying; or, if you cannot, believe what you do not see. You speak to your son; you speak with a word: the word that sounds is neither you nor your son.

“I have another way to show him,” you say; “for my son is so well trained that he does not even hear me speaking, but I show him by a nod what he is to do.” See, show by a nod what you will; certainly your mind wants to show what it has within itself. With what do you make the nod? With the body: with the lips, the face, the eyebrows, the eyes, the hands. All these are not what your mind is; these too are intermediaries. Something was understood through these signs, which are not what your mind is nor what your son's mind is; but all this that you do with the body is beneath your mind and beneath your son's mind; nor can your son know your mind unless you give him signs from the body. What, then, am I to say? This is not so there; there is simplicity. The Father shows the Son what he does, and by showing begets the Son. I see what I have said; but because I also see to whom I have said it, may this understanding come about in you some day. Now, if you cannot comprehend what God is, at least comprehend what God is not: you will have made much progress if you think nothing of God other than what he is. You cannot yet reach what he is; reach what he is not. God is not a body, not the earth, not the heaven, not the moon, not the sun, not a star, not these bodily things. For if not heavenly things, how much less earthly? Take away every body. Hear something further: God is not a changeable spirit. For I confess, and it must be confessed, since the Gospel says it, “God is spirit.” But pass beyond every changeable spirit; pass beyond the spirit that now knows, now does not know, now remembers and forgets, wills what it did not will, does not will what it willed—whether it already suffers these changes or can suffer them: pass beyond all these. You find nothing of changeableness in God, nothing that is one way now and was another way a little before. For where you find “one way and then another,” a kind of death has taken place there: for death is not to be what one was. The soul is called immortal; and so it is, because the soul always lives, and there is in it a certain lasting life, but a changeable life. According to the changeableness of this life it can also be called mortal: because if it was living wisely and becomes foolish, it has died for the worse; if it was living foolishly and becomes wise, it has died for the better. For Scripture teaches us that there is a death for the worse and a death for the better. Certainly those had died for the worse of whom it is said, “Let the dead bury their dead,” and, “Arise, you who sleep, and rise from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you,” and in this reading, “When the dead will hear, and those who hear will live.” They had died for the worse; therefore they come back to life. By coming back to life they die for the better, because by coming back to life they will not be what they were; and not to be what one was is death. But perhaps, if it is for the better, it is not called death? The apostle called it death: “But if you have died with Christ to the elements of this world, why do you still decide as though living in this world?” and again, “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” He wants us to die that we may live, because we have lived that we might die. Whatever, then, dies either from better to worse or from worse to better is not God: because neither can the supreme goodness go to better, nor true eternity to worse. For true eternity is where there is nothing of time. But was something now this and now that? Then time has been let in; it is not eternal. For that you may know that God is not as the soul is—the soul is certainly immortal—what is it that the apostle says of God, “Who alone has immortality,” except that he openly said this: He alone has unchangeableness, because he alone has true eternity? So there is no changeableness there.

Recognize in yourself something that I want to say: within, within in yourself; not in yourself as in your body, for there too one can say “in you.” For health is in you, whatever age you are is in you, but according to the body; your hand, your foot is in you. But it is one thing to be in you within, another to be in you as in your clothing. But leave outside both your clothing and your flesh; go down into yourself; go to your inner chamber, your mind, and there see what I want to say, if you can. For if you yourself are far from yourself, how can you draw near to God? I was speaking of God, and you thought you would understand; I am speaking of the soul, I am speaking of you: understand; there I will test you. For I do not go very far for examples when I want to give from your mind some likeness to your God; because certainly it was not in the body but in the mind itself that man was made to the image of God. Let us seek God in his likeness; let us recognize the Creator in his image. There within, if we can, let us find what we are speaking of: how the Father shows the Son, and the Son sees what the Father shows, before anything is made by the Father through the Son. But when I have said it and you have understood, do not even then think that that reality is something of this kind, so that you may keep there the devotion that I want you to keep and that I especially urge: that is, if you cannot comprehend what God is, do not think it a small thing to know what he is not.

See, in your mind I see two things: your memory and your thought, that is, as it were a kind of eye and gaze of your soul. You see something, and perceive it through the eyes, and commit it to memory: what you committed to memory is there within, stored in hiding, as in a granary, as in a treasury, as in a kind of private chamber and inner sanctum. You are thinking of something else; your attention is elsewhere; what you saw is in your memory, and it is not seen by you, because your thought is directed to something else. I will prove it now; I am speaking to those who know. I name Carthage: all of you who know it have now seen Carthage within. Are there as many Carthages as there are your souls? You have all seen it through this name: through these four syllables known to you, bursting from my mouth, your ears were touched, the sense of the soul was touched through the body, and the mind was turned back from another focus to what was there, and saw Carthage. Was Carthage made there at that moment? It was there already, but it lay hidden. Why did it lie hidden there? Because your mind was attending to something else; but when your thought was turned back to what was in the memory, it was formed from it, and a kind of seeing of the mind came about. Before there was no seeing, but there was memory: when thought was turned back to memory, seeing came about. So your memory showed Carthage to your thought, and what was in it before you attended, it showed to the attention of thought when that was turned toward it. See, a showing was made by memory, a seeing was made in thought; and no words ran between, no sign was given from the body: you neither nodded, nor wrote, nor made a sound; and yet thought saw what memory showed. But what showed and that to which it showed are of the same substance. But for your memory to have Carthage, this image was drawn in through the eyes: for you saw what you would store in memory. So you saw the tree that you remember, so the mountain, so the river, so the face of a friend, so of an enemy, so of father, mother, brother, sister, son, neighbor; so the letters written in a book, so the book itself, so this basilica: you saw all these, and because they already existed when seen, you committed them to memory; and you as it were placed there what you might see by thinking when you wished, even when they were absent from these bodily eyes. For you saw Carthage when you were at Carthage; your soul received its form through the eyes; this form was stored in your memory; and you, a man placed at Carthage, kept something within you that you could see within yourself even when you were not there. All these things you received from outside. What the Father shows the Son he does not receive from outside: the whole takes place within; for no creature would exist outside unless the Father had made it through the Son. Every creature was made by God; before it was made, it did not exist. It was not, then, made, seen, and retained in memory, so that the Father might show it to the Son as memory shows to thought; but the Father showed it as to be made, the Son saw it as to be made, and the Father made it by showing, because he made it through the Son who sees. And therefore it should not trouble us that it was said, “but what he sees the Father doing”: it was not said “showing.” For by this it is signified that for the Father to do is the same as to show; so that from this it may be understood that he does all things through the Son who sees. Neither that showing nor that seeing is temporal. For since all times are made through the Son, things to be made could certainly not be shown to him at some time. But the showing of the Father begets the seeing of the Son, just as the Father begets the Son. For the showing generates the seeing, not the seeing the showing. And if we could look more purely and perfectly, perhaps we would find that the Father is not one thing and his showing another, nor the Son one thing and his seeing another. But if we have barely grasped, and barely been able to explain, how memory shows to thought what it took in from outside, how much less shall we be able to grasp or explain how God the Father shows the Son what he does not have from elsewhere, or what is nothing other than himself? We are little ones; I am telling you what God is not, I am not showing what he is. So, to grasp what he is, what shall we do? Will you be able to from me, through me? Let me say this to little ones, both to you and to myself: there is one through whom we can; we have just sung, we have just heard: “Cast your care upon the Lord, and he will nourish you.” For this is why you cannot, O man: because you are a little one. If you are a little one, you must be nourished: once nourished, you will be grown; and what you could not as a little one, you will see when grown. But that you may be nourished, “cast your care upon the Lord, and he will nourish you.”

Now, then, let us run briefly through what remains, and see here how the Lord makes known the things I have commended. “The Father loves the Son, and shows him all things that he himself does.” He raises souls, but through the Son, so that the raised souls may enjoy the substance of God, that is, of the Father and the Son. “And greater works than these will he show him.” Greater than which? Than the healings of bodies. We have treated this already and should not linger. For the resurrection of the body for eternity is greater than this bodily healing, which was done for a time in that sick man. “And greater works than these will he show him, that you may marvel.” “He will show,” as if in time: as, then, to a man made in time; for the Word, God, was not made, through whom all times were made; but Christ was made man in time. It is known under what consul, on what day, the Virgin Mary bore Christ, conceived of the Holy Spirit: so he through whom, as God, times were made was made man in time. Therefore, as in time, “he will show him greater works,” that is, the resurrection of bodies, “that you may marvel” at the resurrection of bodies brought about through the Son.