Tractates on the Gospel of John 78.1–81.4

We have received, brothers, the words of the Lord saying to his disciples: "Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid. You have heard that I said to you, I go away, and I come to you. If you loved me, you would surely rejoice, because I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I." Their heart could be troubled and afraid for this reason, that he was going away from them, though he would come to them: lest perhaps in this interval, in the shepherd's absence, the wolf might attack the flock. But those from whom he withdrew as man he did not abandon as God; and the same Christ is man and God. So he both went, by what he was as man, and remained, by what he was as God: he went by that by which he was in one place; he remained by that by which he was everywhere. Why then should the heart be troubled and afraid, when he left their eyes in such a way as not to leave their heart? Yet God too, who is contained by no place, departs from the hearts of those who leave him by their conduct, not by their feet, and comes to those who turn to him not with the face but with faith, and draw near to him with the mind, not with the flesh. But so that they would understand that he said "I go away, and I come to you" according to what he was as man, he added and said, "If you loved me, you would surely rejoice, because I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I." By that in which the Son is not equal to the Father, by this he was going to the Father, from whom he will come to judge the living and the dead; but by that in which the Only-begotten is equal to the one who begot him, he never withdraws from the Father, but is with him everywhere, whole, with equal divinity, which no place contains. For "being in the form of God," as the Apostle says, "he did not think it robbery to be equal to God." For how could that be robbery which was a nature not usurped but born? "But he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant": not losing that form, but taking this one. He emptied himself in such a way that here he appeared less than he remained with the Father. For the form of a servant was added; the form of God did not withdraw: this was assumed, that was not consumed. Because of this he says, "The Father is greater than I"; because of that, "I and the Father are one."

Let the Arian attend to this, and by attending become sane, lest by contending he be vain, or, what is worse, insane. For this is the form of a servant in which the Son of God is less not only than the Father but also than the Holy Spirit; and not only that, but even than himself, since the same one in the form of God is greater than himself. For the man Christ is not denied the name Son of God, a name which even his flesh alone in the tomb merited to be called. For what else do we confess when we say that we believe in the only-begotten Son of God, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried? And what of him was buried but the flesh without the soul? And so, since we believe in the Son of God who was buried, we surely call even the flesh, which alone was buried, the Son of God. So Christ himself, the Son of God, equal to the Father in the form of God, because he emptied himself, not losing the form of God but taking the form of a servant, is greater even than himself; because the form of God, which was not lost, is greater than the form of the servant, which was taken. What wonder, then, or what indignity, if speaking according to this form of a servant the Son of God says, "The Father is greater than I," and speaking according to the form of God the same Son of God says, "I and the Father are one"? For they are one according as the Word was God; the Father is greater according as the Word became flesh. I will say also what Arians and Eunomians cannot deny: according to this form of a servant the boy Christ was less even than his parents, when as a child he was subject to his elders, as it is written. Why then, heretic, when Christ is God and man, does he speak as man, and you slander God? He commends human nature in himself; do you dare to disfigure the divine nature in him? Unbeliever, ungrateful man, do you diminish him who made you because he tells what he was made for you? For the Son, equal to the Father, through whom man was made, was made man so as to be less than the Father; and unless this had been done, what would man be?

Let our Lord and Master plainly say, "If you loved me, you would surely rejoice, because I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I." Let us with the disciples hear the words of the teacher, not with strangers follow the cunning of the deceiver. Let us acknowledge the twofold substance of Christ: the divine, by which he is equal to the Father, and the human, by which the Father is greater. Yet both together are not two but one Christ, lest God be a quaternity and not a Trinity. For as a man is one, a rational soul and flesh, so Christ is one, God and man; and therefore Christ is God, a rational soul, and flesh. We confess Christ in all of these, Christ in each. Who then is he through whom the world was made? Christ Jesus, but in the form of God. Who was crucified under Pontius Pilate? Christ Jesus, but in the form of a servant. Likewise with the several parts of which a man consists. Who was not abandoned in hell? Christ Jesus, but in the soul alone. Who, about to rise, lay three days in the tomb? Christ Jesus, but in the flesh alone. So Christ is spoken of in each of these too. But all these are not two or three, but one Christ. So he said, "If you loved me, you would surely rejoice, because I go to the Father," because human nature is to be congratulated in that it was so assumed by the only-begotten Word as to be established immortal in heaven, and thus earth became exalted, so that incorruptible dust sits at the right hand of the Father. For in this way he said he would go to the Father. For surely he was going to him with whom he already was. But this was to go to him and withdraw from us: to change and make immortal what he took, mortal, from us, and to lift into heaven that by which he was on earth for us. Who would not rejoice at this, who loves Christ so as to rejoice that his own nature is already immortal in Christ, and hopes that he himself will be so through Christ?

Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ had said to his disciples: "If you loved me, you would surely rejoice, because I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I." That he said this from the form of a servant, not from the form of God in which he is equal to the Father, is known to the faith that is fixed in devout minds, not feigned in slanderous and demented ones. Then he added: "And now I have told you before it happens, so that when it has happened you may believe." What is this, when a man ought rather to believe before that which is to be believed happens? For this is the praise of faith, if what is believed is not seen. For what great thing is it if what is seen is believed, according to that saying of the same Lord when he rebuked the disciple, saying: "Because you have seen, you have believed; blessed are those who do not see and believe"? And I do not know whether anyone is to be said to believe what he sees; for faith itself is thus defined in the Epistle written to the Hebrews: "Now faith is the substance of those who hope, the conviction of things not seen." Therefore, if faith concerns things that are believed, and the same faith concerns things that are not seen, what does the Lord mean by saying, "And now I have told you before it happens, so that when it has happened you may believe"? Should he not rather have said, "And now I have told you before it happens, so that you may believe what you will see when it has happened"? For he too to whom it was said, "Because you have seen, you have believed," did not believe what he saw; he saw one thing and believed another: for he saw a man and believed God. He saw and touched living flesh which he had seen dying, and he believed God hidden in that very flesh. So he believed with the mind what he did not see, by means of what appeared to the bodily senses. But even if things that are seen are said to be believed, as everyone says he has believed his own eyes, yet that is not the faith that is built up in us; rather, from things that are seen it is brought about in us that things not seen are believed. Therefore, beloved, as to my present subject, the Lord's saying, "And now I have told you before it happens, so that when it has happened you may believe": by "when it has happened" he certainly means that they would see him alive after death and ascending to the Father; and when they had seen this, they would believe that he was the Christ, the Son of the living God, who could do this after he had foretold it, and foretell it before he did it. And they would believe this not with a new faith but with an increased one; or at least one that had failed when he died and was restored when he rose. For it is not that they did not believe him to be the Son of God before; but when what he had foretold had come about in him, that faith, which was small when he was speaking to them and almost none when he was dying, both revived and grew.

Then what does he say? "I will no longer speak much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming" (who, but the devil?) "and in me he has nothing": that is, no sin at all. For so he shows that the devil is the ruler not of creatures but of sinners, whom he now calls by the name of "this world." And whenever the name "world" is used in a bad sense, it refers only to the lovers of this world, of whom it is written elsewhere, "Whoever wishes to be a friend of this world will be made an enemy of God." Far be it, then, that the devil should be understood as ruler of the world as if he held the rule of the whole world, that is, of heaven and earth and all that is in them; of which world it was said, when the discourse was about Christ the Word, "And the world was made through him." So the whole world, from the highest heavens to the lowest earth, is subject to the Creator, not to the deserter; to the Redeemer, not to the murderer; to the Liberator, not to the captor; to the Teacher, not to the deceiver. But how the devil is to be understood as ruler of the world the apostle Paul has shown more plainly: when he had said, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood," that is, against men, he added and said, "but against principalities and powers and the rulers of the world of this darkness." For by the next word he explained what he had said by "of the world," when he added "of this darkness," lest anyone understand by the name "world" the whole creation, of which the deserting angels are in no way the rulers. "Of this darkness," he says, that is, of the lovers of this world; from whom, nevertheless, were chosen, not by their own merit but by God's grace, those to whom he says, "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord." For all were under the rulers of this darkness, that is, of ungodly men, as darkness under darkness; but thanks be to God, who has rescued us, as the same apostle says, "from the power of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love." In him the ruler of this world, that is, of this darkness, had nothing, because neither had God come with sin, nor had the Virgin borne his flesh from the stock of sin. And as if it were said to him, "Why then do you die, if you have no sin to which the punishment of death is owed?", he at once added, "But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, so I do. Rise, let us go from here." For he was reclining and speaking to those reclining. And he said "let us go": where, but to the place from which he, who had no desert of death, was to be handed over to death? But he had the Father's commandment to die, as the one of whom it was foretold, "What I did not steal, I then repaid": about to pay death without owing it, and to redeem us from the death we owed. But Adam had stolen sin, when, deceived by presumption, he stretched out his hand to the tree, to seize the incommunicable name of a divinity not granted him, which nature, not robbery, had conferred on the Son of God.

This passage of the Gospel, brothers, where the Lord calls himself the vine and his disciples the branches, he speaks according to the fact that he is head of the church and we his members, "the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." For vine and branches are of one nature; therefore, since he was God, of whose nature we are not, he became man, so that in him human nature might be the vine, of which we men too could be the branches. What then is "I am the true vine"? In adding "true," did he refer this to the vine from which this likeness is taken? For he is called a vine by likeness, not in the proper sense; just as he is called sheep, lamb, lion, rock, cornerstone, and other things of this kind, which are themselves rather the true things from which these likenesses, not proper names, are drawn. But when he says, "I am the true vine," he certainly distinguishes himself from that vine to which it is said, "How have you been turned to bitterness, foreign vine?" For how is that a true vine which was expected to bear grapes but bore thorns?

"I am," he says, "the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he will take away; and every one that bears fruit he will prune, that it may bear more fruit." Are the vinedresser and the vine one? Christ is the vine, then, according to that by which he says, "The Father is greater than I"; but according to that by which he says, "I and the Father are one," he too is the vinedresser. And not such as those who render a service by working from outside, but such as to give the increase also from within. "For neither is he who plants anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase." But certainly Christ is God, because the Word was God; hence he and the Father are one; and if the Word became flesh, which he was not, he remains what he was. Finally, when he had said of the Father as vinedresser that he takes away the fruitless branches but prunes the fruitful ones that they may bear more fruit, at once, showing that he himself too cleanses the branches, he says, "You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you." See, he too cleanses the branches, which is the office of the vinedresser, not of the vine; he who has even made the branches his workers. For although they do not give the increase, they nevertheless contribute some help, but not of their own: "For without me," he says, "you can do nothing." Hear them also confessing it: "What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, and as the Lord gave to each. I planted, Apollos watered." This too, then, was "as the Lord gave to each": so not of their own. But what follows, "but God gave the increase," he does not do through them but through himself: this exceeds human lowliness, exceeds angelic loftiness, and belongs to none but the vinedresser Trinity. "You are already clean": clean, that is, and yet to be cleansed. For unless they were clean, they could not have borne fruit; and yet the vinedresser prunes everyone who bears fruit, that he may bear more fruit. He bears fruit because he is clean; and that he may bear more, he is cleansed still further. For who in this life is so clean as not to need cleansing more and more? Here, "if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us; but if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness": to cleanse, certainly, those who are clean, that is, fruitful, so that they may be the more fruitful the cleaner they are.

"You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you." Why does he not say, "You are clean because of the baptism with which you were washed," but says, "because of the word which I have spoken to you," unless because in the water too it is the word that cleanses? Take away the word, and what is water but water? The word comes to the element, and it becomes a sacrament, itself also a kind of visible word. For he had said this too when he washed the disciples' feet: "He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is clean all over." Whence this great power of water, that it touches the body and washes the heart, except by the word's doing it: not because it is spoken, but because it is believed? For in the word itself, the passing sound is one thing, the abiding power another. "This is the word of faith which we preach," says the Apostle, "that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." Hence one reads in the Acts of the Apostles, "cleansing their hearts by faith"; and blessed Peter says in his Epistle, "So baptism saves you too; not the removal of the dirt of the flesh, but the questioning of a good conscience." This is "the word of faith which we preach," by which beyond doubt baptism too is consecrated so that it can cleanse. For Christ, the vine with us, the vinedresser with the Father, "loved the church and gave himself up for her." Read the Apostle, and see what he adds: "that he might sanctify her," he says, "cleansing her by the washing of water in the word." The cleansing, then, would in no way be attributed to the fluid and unstable element unless "in the word" were added. This word of faith has such power in the church of God that through the one who believes, offers, blesses, and dips, it cleanses even a tiny infant, though it is not yet able to believe with the heart unto righteousness and to confess with the mouth unto salvation. All this is done through the word, of which the Lord says, "You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you."

Jesus said that he is the vine, his disciples the branches, and the Father the vinedresser; we have already discussed this as best we could. But in this reading, while he was still speaking of himself, who is the vine, and of his branches, that is, the disciples, he says: "Abide in me, and I in you." They are not in him in the same way that he is in them. But both benefit not him but them. For the branches are in the vine in such a way that they do not contribute to the vine but receive from it that by which they live; but the vine is in the branches in such a way as to supply them with vital nourishment, not to take it from them. And so both having Christ abiding in them and abiding in Christ benefit the disciples, not Christ. For when a branch is cut off, another can sprout from the living root; but the one that has been cut off cannot live without the root.

Then he adds and says: "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me." A great commendation of grace, my brothers: it instructs the hearts of the humble, it stops the mouths of the proud. See, let them answer this, if they dare, who, "being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own, have not submitted to the righteousness of God." See, let those answer this who are pleased with themselves and do not think God necessary to them for doing good works. Do they not resist this truth, "men corrupt in mind, reprobate concerning the faith," who answer and speak iniquity, saying: "From God we have it that we are men, but from ourselves that we are righteous"? What are you saying, you who deceive yourselves, not defenders but destroyers of free choice, who hurl it from the height of pride through the voids of presumption into the depths of drowning? For your claim is that man does righteousness of himself: this is the height of your pride. But the Truth contradicts you and says, "The branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine." Go now over the cliffs, and, having nothing to fasten yourselves to, be tossed about by your windy talk. These are the voids of your presumption. But see what follows for you and, if you have any sense, shudder. For whoever thinks he bears fruit of himself is not in the vine; whoever is not in the vine is not in Christ; whoever is not in Christ is not a Christian. These are the depths of your drowning.

Consider again and again what the Truth still adds and says: "I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without me you can do nothing." Lest anyone think that the branch could bear at least some small fruit of itself, when he had said, "he bears much fruit," he did not say, "for without me you can do little," but "you can do nothing." Whether little or much, then, it cannot be done without him without whom nothing can be done. For even if the branch has borne little, the vinedresser prunes it so that it may bear more; yet unless it abides in the vine and lives from the root, it cannot bear any fruit at all of itself. And although Christ would not be the vine unless he were man, yet he would not provide this grace to the branches unless he were also God. But because without this grace one cannot live, while death lies in the power of free choice: "If anyone does not abide in me," he says, "he will be cast out like a branch and will wither; and they will gather it and cast it into the fire, and it burns." So the wood of the vine is as much more contemptible if it does not abide in the vine as it is more glorious if it abides; in short, as the Lord also says of these through the prophet Ezekiel, when cut off they are of no use for any purpose of farmers and are put to no carpenter's work. One of two things befits the branch: either the vine or the fire. If it is not in the vine, it will be in the fire; so, that it may not be in the fire, let it be in the vine.

"If you abide in me," he says, "and my words abide in you, you will ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you." For abiding in Christ, what can they wish but what befits Christ? What can they wish, abiding in the Savior, but what is not foreign to salvation? For we wish one thing because we are in Christ, and another because we are still in this world. For from our dwelling in this world it sometimes creeps up on us that we ask for what we do not know is not good for us. But far be it that it be done for us, if we abide in Christ, who does nothing when we ask except what is good for us. Abiding in him, then, when his words abide in us, we shall ask whatever we wish, and it will be done for us. For if we ask and it is not done, we are not asking what belongs to abiding in him, nor what belongs to his words that abide in us, but what belongs to the desire and weakness of the flesh, which is not in him and in which his words do not abide. For certainly that prayer which he taught belongs to his words, where we say, "Our Father, who art in heaven." Let us not depart in our petitions from the words and meaning of this prayer, and whatever we ask will be done for us. For his words are to be said to abide in us when we do what he commanded and love what he promised; but when his words abide in the memory and are not found in the life, the branch is not counted in the vine, because it draws no life from the root. To this difference applies what is written, "and to those who keep his commandments in memory, to do them." For many keep them in memory so as to despise them, or even to mock and attack them. In these the words of Christ do not abide; they touch them in a way but do not cleave to them; and therefore the words will be to them not for benefit but for witness. And because they are in them in such a way as not to abide in them, they are held by them only so that they may be judged by them.