Tractates on the Gospel of John 48.1–48.12

What I have already commended to your Love you ought to remember firmly: that the holy evangelist John does not want us always to be fed with milk, but to eat solid food. But whoever is still less fit to take the solid food of the word of God, let him be nourished with the milk of faith, and let him not hesitate to believe the word he cannot understand. For faith is the merit, understanding the reward. In the very effort of attention the eye of our mind toils, so that it may lay aside the specks of human mist and be cleared toward the Word of God. So let the labor not be refused, if love is present; for you know that he who loves does not labor. For every labor is heavy to those who do not love. If greed bears such great labors with the avaricious, will love not bear them with us?

Attend to the Gospel: “Now the Encaenia took place at Jerusalem.” The Encaenia was the festival of the dedication of the temple. For in Greek καινόν means “new”: whenever anything new has been dedicated, it is called Encaenia. Usage already has this word too: if someone puts on a new tunic, he is said to “encaeniate.” For the Jews solemnly celebrated the day on which the temple was dedicated: that very feast day was being kept when the Lord spoke the things that have been read.

“It was winter. And Jesus was walking in the temple, in Solomon's porch. So the Jews surrounded him and said to him, How long will you take away our soul? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” They did not desire the truth but were preparing a false charge. It was winter, and they were cold; for they were sluggish in approaching that divine fire. But to approach is to believe: he who believes approaches; he who denies withdraws. The soul is not moved by feet but by affections. They had grown cold toward the love of loving, and they were burning with the desire to harm. They were far away, and they were there: they did not approach by believing, and they pressed upon him by persecuting. They sought to hear from the Lord, “I am the Christ”; and perhaps they thought of Christ according to man. The prophets preached Christ; but the divinity of Christ, both in the prophets and in the Gospel itself, not even the heretics understand; how much less the Jews, as long as a veil lies over their heart? Indeed, in a certain place the Lord Jesus, knowing that they thought of Christ according to man, not according to God—according to what he was as man, not according to what he remained as God even having taken up man—said to them, “What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They answered according to their opinion: “David's.” For so they had read, and this alone they held, because they read of his divinity but did not understand it. But the Lord, to raise them to seek his divinity, whose weakness they despised, answered them: “How then does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet? If, then, David in the Spirit calls him Lord, how is he his son?” He did not deny; he asked. Let no one, on hearing this, think that the Lord Jesus denied that he was the son of David. If the Lord Christ denied that he was the son of David, he would not have given light to the blind who called on him thus. For once he was passing by, and two blind men sitting by the road cried out, “Have mercy on us, son of David.” Hearing that cry, he had mercy; he stopped, he healed, he gave light, because he recognized the name. The apostle Paul also says, “who was made to him of the seed of David according to the flesh”; and to Timothy, “Remember that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel.” Because the virgin Mary drew her origin from the seed of David, the Lord too is from the seed of David.

This the Jews sought from Christ as a great matter: that if he said, “I am the Christ,” according to what alone they thought—that he was of the seed of David—they might accuse him of claiming royal power for himself. What he answered them was more: they wanted to make a charge about the son of David; he answered that he was the Son of God. And how? Hear: “Jesus answered them, I tell you, and you do not believe; the works that I do in my Father's name, these bear witness of me; but you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep.” You have learned above who the sheep are: be sheep. They are sheep by believing, sheep by following the shepherd, sheep by not despising the redeemer, sheep by entering through the door, sheep by going out and finding pasture, sheep by enjoying eternal life. How, then, did he say to these, “You are not of my sheep”? Because he saw that they were predestined to everlasting destruction, not purchased for eternal life at the price of his blood.

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life.” See, here are the pastures. If you recall, he had said above, “And he will go in, and go out, and will find pasture.” We have gone in by believing; we go out by dying. But as we have gone in through the door of faith, so let us go out of the body as believers; for so we go out through that very door, that we may be able to find pasture. Good pasture is called eternal life: there no grass withers; all is green, all flourishes. There is a certain plant that is called “ever-living”: there alone is living found. “I will give them eternal life,” he says, “to my sheep.” You seek false charges because you think of the present life.

“And they will not perish forever”—understood, as if he had said to them, “You will perish forever, because you are not of my sheep.” “No one will snatch them from my hand.” Take this more attentively: “What my Father has given me is greater than all.” What can the wolf do? What can the thief and the robber do? They destroy none but those predestined to destruction. But of those sheep of whom the apostle says, “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Those whom he foreknew he also predestined; and those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified”—of these sheep the wolf does not seize, nor the thief take, nor the robber kill any. He is sure of their number who knows what he gave for them. And this is what he says, “No one will snatch them from my hand”; and again of the Father, “What my Father has given me is greater than all.” What did the Father give the Son greater than all? That he should be his only-begotten Son. What, then, does “has given” mean? Was there already someone to whom to give it, or did he give it by begetting? For if there was someone to whom to give it, that he might be the Son, then at some time he was, and was not the Son. Far be it that the Lord Christ ever was and was not the Son. This can be said of us: at one time we were sons of men, we were not sons of God. For grace made us sons of God; him, nature, because so he was born. And you cannot say, “He was not before he was born”; for he who was coeternal with the Father was never unborn. Let him who is wise grasp it; let him who does not grasp it believe, be nourished, and he will grasp it. The Word of God is always with the Father, and always the Word; and because the Word, therefore the Son. Always, then, the Son, and always equal. For not by growing but by being born is he equal, who was always born of the Father, Son from Father, God from God, coeternal from eternal. But the Father is not God from the Son; the Son is God from the Father. Therefore the Father, by begetting, gave the Son to be God; by begetting gave him to be coeternal with himself; by begetting gave him to be equal. This is what is greater than all. How is the Son life, and how does the Son have life? What he has, that he is. You are one thing, you have another. For example, you have wisdom: are you wisdom itself? In short, because you are not yourself what you have, if you lose what you have, you come back to not having it; and sometimes you take it up again, sometimes you lose it. So our eye does not have light inseparably in itself: it is opened and takes it in, it is closed and loses it. Not so is God the Son of God, not so is the Word of the Father; not so is the Word, which does not pass away by sounding but abides by being born. He so has wisdom that he himself is wisdom and makes others wise; he so has life that he himself is life and makes others live. This is what is greater than all. John the evangelist himself, wishing to speak of the Son of God, looked at heaven and earth; he looked, and passed beyond them. He thought of the thousands of the hosts of angels above heaven; he thought, and passed beyond the whole: as an eagle passes the clouds, so in his mind he passed beyond creation. He passed beyond all great things, he reached that which is greater than all, and said, “In the beginning was the Word.” But because he whose Word it is is not from the Word, but the Word is from him whose Word it is, therefore he says, “What the Father has given me”—that is, that I should be his Word, that I should be his only-begotten Son, that I should be the brightness of his light—“is greater than all.” Therefore, “No one,” he says, “snatches my sheep from my hand. No one can snatch them from my Father's hand.”

“From my hand,” and “from my Father's hand”: what is this—“No one snatches from my hand,” and “No one snatches from my Father's hand”? Is there one hand of the Father and the Son, or is the Son himself perhaps the hand of his Father? If we understand “hand” as power, the power of the Father and the Son is one, because the divinity is one. But if we understand “hand” as it was said by the prophet, “And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” then the hand of the Father is the Son himself. This was not said as though God had human form and as it were bodily members, but because all things were made through him. For people too are accustomed to say that other people are their hands, through whom they do what they wish. Sometimes also a man's very work is called a man's hand, because it is done by his hand; as someone is said to recognize his hand when he recognizes what he has written. Since, then, the hand even of a man, who properly has a hand among the members of his body, is spoken of in many ways, how much more must it be understood in more than one way when we read of the hand of God, who has no bodily form? And so in this place we better understand the hand of the Father and the Son as the power of the Father and the Son; lest perhaps, if we took the Son himself to be called here the hand of the Father, carnal thinking might begin to seek a Son even for the Son himself, whom it would likewise believe to be Christ's hand. So, “No one snatches from my Father's hand,” that is, no one snatches from me.

But lest you still waver, hear what follows: “I and the Father are one.” Up to this point the Jews could tolerate it; they heard, “I and the Father are one,” and they did not bear it; and, hard as their way was, they ran to stones. “They took up stones to stone him.” The Lord, because he did not suffer what he did not wish to suffer, and suffered only what he willed to suffer, still addresses them as they long to stone him. “The Jews took up stones to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works I have shown you from my Father; for which of those works do you stone me? And they answered, We do not stone you for a good work, but for blasphemy, and because you, being a man, make yourself God.” This they answered to what he had said, “I and the Father are one.” See, the Jews understood what the Arians do not understand. For they were angry precisely because they perceived that “I and the Father are one” could not be said except where there is equality of the Father and the Son.

But see what the Lord answered the slow of heart. He saw that they could not bear the brightness of the truth, and he tempered it in his words. “Is it not written in your Law”—that is, given to you—“I said, You are gods?” God says through the prophet in the psalm to men, “I said, You are gods.” And the Lord called all those Scriptures in general “the Law,” though elsewhere he speaks specifically of the Law, distinguishing it from the Prophets, as in “The Law and the Prophets were until John,” and “On these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets.” Sometimes, however, he divides the same Scriptures into three, where he says, “All things had to be fulfilled that are written in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning me.” But now he has called the Psalms too by the name of the Law, where it is written, “I said, You are gods.” “If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do you say of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, You are blaspheming, because I said, I am the Son of God?” If the word of God came to men so that they were called gods, how is the very Word of God, who is with God, not God? If men become gods through the word of God, if by participating they become gods, is he in whom they participate not God? If lights that are lit are gods, is the light that lights them not God? If those who are in a way warmed by the saving fire are made gods, is that by which they are warmed not God? You approach the light and are lit, and are numbered among the sons of God; if you withdraw from the light, you are darkened and counted in the darkness. But that light does not approach itself, because it does not withdraw from itself. If, then, the word of God makes you gods, how is the Word of God not God? So the Father sanctified his Son and sent him into the world. Perhaps someone says, “If the Father sanctified him, was he then at some time not holy?” He sanctified him as he begot him. For by begetting he gave him to be holy, because he begot him holy. For if what is sanctified was not holy before, how do we say to God the Father, “Hallowed be your name”?

“If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me; but if I do them, even if you will not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in him.” The Son does not say “The Father is in me, and I in him” in the way men can say it. For if we think well, we are in God; and if we live well, God is in us: believers sharing his grace, enlightened by him, we are in him and he in us. But not so the only-begotten Son: he is in the Father, and the Father in him, as an equal in one to whom he is equal. In short, we can sometimes say, “We are in God, and God is in us”; can we say, “I and God are one”? You are in God, because God holds you; God is in you, because you have become a temple of God. But because you are in God and God is in you, can you say, “He who sees me sees God,” as the Only-begotten said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” and “I and the Father are one”? Recognize what is proper to the Lord and what is the gift to the servant. Proper to the Lord is equality with the Father; the gift to the servant is participation in the Saviour.

“So they sought to seize him.” Would that they had seized him—but by believing and understanding, not by raging and killing. For now, my brothers, when I say such things—weak speaking of strong things, small of great, frail of solid—both you, as from the same lump of which I too am made, and I myself who speak to you, all of us together wish to grasp Christ. What is it to grasp? You have understood: you have grasped. But not so the Jews: you have grasped him so as to have him; they wanted to seize him so as not to have him. And because they wanted to seize him in that way, what did he do to them? “He went out of their hands.” They did not seize him, because they did not have the hands of faith. The Word was made flesh; but it was no great thing for the Word to rescue his flesh from hands of flesh. To grasp the Word with the mind: this is to grasp Christ rightly.

“And he went away again beyond the Jordan, to the place where John was first baptizing, and he stayed there. And many came to him and said, John did no sign.” You remember what was said to you about John: that he was a lamp, and bore witness to the day. What, then, did these say among themselves: “John did no sign”? John, they say, showed no miracle: he did not put demons to flight, did not drive out a fever, did not give light to the blind, did not raise the dead, did not feed so many thousands of people with five or seven loaves, did not walk on the sea, did not command the winds and waves; John did none of these; and everything he said bore witness to this man. Through the lamp let us come to the day. “John did no sign. But everything that John said of this man was true.” See, these grasped him—not as the Jews did. The Jews wanted to seize him as he was departing; these grasped him as he remained. Indeed, what follows? “And many believed in him.”