Tractates on the Gospel of John 86.1–89.5

It is rightly asked how we are to take what the Lord says: "But I have called you friends, because all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." For who would dare to affirm or believe that any human being knows all that the only-begotten Son has heard from the Father, when no one even grasps how he hears any word from the Father, since he himself is the Father's only Word? What of the fact that somewhat later, in this same discourse which he held with his disciples after supper before his passion, he says, "I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now"? How then are we to understand that he made known to the disciples all that he heard from the Father, when he does not say many things precisely because he knows they cannot bear them now? But surely he who has made the things that are to be says he has done what he is going to do. For as he says through the prophet, "They dug my hands and my feet" (he does not say, "They will dig"), speaking as of things past and yet foretelling things to come, so in this place too he says that he has made known to the disciples all the things which he knows he will make known in that fullness of knowledge of which the Apostle says, "But when what is perfect has come, what is in part will be done away." For there he says: "Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known; and now through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face." For the Apostle himself says that we have been saved through the washing of regeneration; yet in another place he says, "In hope we have been saved. But hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." Hence his fellow apostle Peter too says: "In whom, though you do not see him now, you believe; and when you see him you will rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of honor, receiving the reward of faith, the salvation of your souls." If, then, now is the time of faith, and the salvation of souls is the reward of faith, who can doubt that the day must be spent in the faith that works through love, and that at the end of the day the reward is to be received: not only the redemption of our body, of which the apostle Paul speaks, but also the salvation of our souls, of which the apostle Peter speaks? For the happiness of both in this time and in this mortality is possessed in hope rather than held in reality. But there is this difference: our outer man, that is, the body, is still being corrupted, but the inner, that is, the soul, is already being renewed day by day. So, just as we await the immortality of the flesh and the salvation of souls as future, although, having received the pledge, we are said to have already been saved, so we ought to hope that the knowledge of all that the Only-begotten heard from the Father is still to come, although Christ said that he had already done this.

"You did not choose me," he says, "but I chose you." This is that ineffable grace. For what were we when we had not yet chosen Christ, and therefore did not love him? For one who has not chosen him, how does he love him? Was there already in us what is sung in the Psalm: "I have chosen to be cast down in the house of the Lord rather than to dwell in the tents of sinners"? Certainly not. What then were we, but wicked and lost? For we had not yet believed in him, so that he might choose us; for if he chose us when we already believed, he chose as one who had first been chosen. Why then would he say, "You did not choose me," unless because his mercy went before us? Here surely the vain reasoning of those falls flat who defend the foreknowledge of God against the grace of God, and therefore say that we were chosen before the foundation of the world because God foreknew that we would be good, not that he himself would make us good. He does not say this who says, "You did not choose me." For if he had chosen us because he had foreknown that we would be good, he would at the same time also have foreknown that we would not choose him first. For in no other way could we be good, unless perhaps one is to be called good who has not chosen the good. What then did he choose in those who were not good? For they were not chosen because they had been good, who would not have been good unless they had been chosen. Otherwise grace is no longer grace, if we contend that merits came first. For this is the election of grace, of which the Apostle says: "So too at the present time a remnant has been saved by the election of grace." Whence he adds: "But if by grace, then no longer from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace." Listen, ungrateful one, listen: "You did not choose me, but I chose you." You cannot say, "I was chosen because I already believed." For if you believed in him, you had already chosen him. But listen: "You did not choose me." You cannot say, "Before I believed, I was already doing good works; therefore I was chosen." For what good work is there before faith, since the Apostle says, "Everything that is not of faith is sin"? What then shall we say on hearing, "You did not choose me," except that we were evil and were chosen, so that we might be good by the grace of the one who chose us? For it is not grace if merits came first; but it is grace; so it did not find merits but produced them.

And see, beloved, how he does not choose the good, but makes good those whom he has chosen. "I," he says, "chose you, and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain." Is not this the fruit of which he had already said, "Without me you can do nothing"? He chose us, then, and appointed us to go and bear fruit; so we had no fruit for which he should choose us. "That you should go," he says, "and bear fruit." We go in order to bear fruit, and he himself is the way by which we go, the way in which he has appointed us to go. So in all things his mercy goes before us. "And that your fruit should remain," he says, "so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give you." Let love remain, then; for it is our fruit. This love is now in longing, not yet in fullness; and by that very longing, whatever we ask in the name of the only-begotten Son, the Father gives us. But what it is not good for us to receive, if we are to be saved, let us not think we ask in the name of the Savior; we ask in the name of the Savior what belongs to the principle of salvation.

In the Gospel reading that precedes this one the Lord had said: "You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give you." You remember that we have already discussed these words as the Lord granted. But here, in the following reading, which you have just heard read, he says: "These things I command you, that you love one another." And by this we ought to understand that this is our fruit of which he says, "I chose you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain." And as to what he added, "so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give you," he will certainly give it to us then, if we love one another; since he has given us this very thing too, he who chose us when we had no fruit, because we had not chosen him, and appointed us to bear fruit, that is, to love one another: a fruit we cannot have without him, as branches can do nothing without the vine. Love, then, is our fruit, which the Apostle defines as "from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith." By this we love one another, by this we love God. For we would not love one another with true love unless we loved God. For each one loves his neighbor as himself if he loves God; for if he does not love God, he does not love himself. For "on these two commandments" of love "hang the whole Law and the Prophets": this is our fruit. So, giving us a command about fruit, he says, "These things I command you, that you love one another." Hence the apostle Paul too, when he wished to commend the fruit of the Spirit against the works of the flesh, put this at the head: "The fruit of the Spirit," he says, "is love"; and then he wove in the rest as springing from this head and bound to it: "joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control." For who rejoices well who does not love the good over which he rejoices? Who can have true peace except with one whom he truly loves? Who is patient, remaining perseveringly in the good, unless he is fervent in loving? Who is kind, unless he loves the one he helps? Who is good, unless he is made so by loving? Who is faithful to his salvation, except by the faith that works through love? Who is gentle to good purpose, if love does not temper him? Who refrains from what defiles him, unless he loves what makes him honorable? Rightly, then, does the good master commend love so often, as if it alone were to be commanded: without it other good things cannot benefit, and it cannot be had without the other good things by which a man is made good.

For the sake of this love we must also patiently endure the hatred of the world. For it must hate us, whom it sees unwilling to have what it loves. But the Lord consoles us very greatly from his own example; for when he had said, "These things I command you, that you love one another," he added and said, "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before you." Why then does the member exalt itself above the head? You refuse to be in the body if you are unwilling to endure the hatred of the world together with the head. "If you were of the world," he says, "the world would love what was its own." He says this, certainly, to the whole church, which he often also calls by the name of the world; as in this saying, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself." And likewise: "The Son of Man did not come to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him." And John says in his Epistle: "We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins; not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world." So the whole world is the church, and the whole world hates the church. The world, then, hates the world: the hostile hates the reconciled, the condemned hates the saved, the defiled hates the cleansed.

But this world which God reconciles to himself in Christ, which is saved through Christ, and to which every sin is forgiven through Christ, has been chosen out of the world that is hostile, condemned, and defiled. For out of that mass which perished wholly in Adam are made vessels of mercy, in which is the world that belongs to reconciliation; this world is hated by the world which, out of the same mass, belongs to the vessels of wrath, made for destruction. Finally, when he had said, "If you were of the world, the world would love what was its own," he at once added, "But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." So they too were from there, and they were chosen out of there so as not to be of it: not by their merits, for no good works of theirs had gone before; not by nature, which had been wholly corrupted at its very root through free choice; but freely, that is, by true grace. For he who chose a world out of the world made what he would choose; he did not find it. For "a remnant has been saved by the election of grace. But if by grace," he says, "then no longer from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace."

But if it is asked how the world of perdition, which hates the world of redemption, loves itself: it loves itself, certainly, with a false love, not a true one. So it loves itself falsely and hates itself truly. For "he who loves iniquity hates his own soul." But it is said to love itself because it loves the iniquity by which it is wicked; and again it is said to hate itself because it loves what harms it. So it hates its nature in itself and loves its vice: it hates what it was made by God's goodness and loves what has been done in it by free will. Hence we too, if we understand rightly, are both forbidden and commanded to love it: forbidden, namely, where it is said to us, "Do not love the world"; commanded, where it is said to us, "Love your enemies." They are the world that hates us. So we are both forbidden to love in it what it loves in itself, and commanded to love in it what it hates in itself: God's workmanship, namely, and the various consolations of his goodness. For we are forbidden to love the vice in it and commanded to love the nature, while it loves the vice in itself and hates the nature; so that we may both love and hate it rightly, while it loves and hates itself perversely.

Exhorting his servants to bear the hatred of the world patiently, the Lord sets before them no greater and better example than himself; since, as the apostle Peter says, "Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow in his steps." And if we do this, we do it with his help, who said, "Without me you can do nothing." Finally, to those to whom he had already said, "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before you," he now also says, in what you heard when the Gospel was read: "Remember the word that I said to you, A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also." But in saying, "A servant is not greater than his master," does he not plainly show how we ought to understand what he had said above, "No longer do I call you servants"? For see, he calls them servants. For what else is "A servant is not greater than his master; if they persecuted me, they will persecute you too"? It is clear, then, that that servant who does not remain in the house for ever, the one belonging to the fear which love casts out, is to be understood where it was said, "No longer do I call you servants"; but here, where it is said, "A servant is not greater than his master; if they persecuted me, they will persecute you too," the servant is meant who belongs to the chaste fear that endures for ever and ever. For this servant is to hear, "Well done, good servant, enter into the joy of your Lord."

"But all these things," he says, "they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me." What are all these things they will do, but those he named: that they will hate, persecute, and despise your word? For if they did not keep their word, and yet did not hate them or persecute them; or even if they hated them, but did not persecute them, they would not be doing all these things. But "all these things they will do to you on account of my name": what else is this than to say, they will hate me in you, they will persecute me in you, and they will not keep your word because it is mine? "For all these things they will do to you on account of my name": not yours, but mine. So the more wretched are those who do these things on account of this name, the more blessed are those who suffer them on account of this name; as he himself says in another place: "Blessed are those who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake." That is, for my sake, or for my name's sake; because, as the Apostle teaches, "he became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption; so that, as it is written, he who glories, let him glory in the Lord." For the evil do these things to the evil too, but not for righteousness' sake; and therefore both are wretched, those who do them and those who suffer them. The good also do them to the evil; and there, although the good do it for righteousness' sake, the evil do not suffer for righteousness' sake.

But someone says: If, when the evil persecute the good for the name of Christ, the good suffer for righteousness' sake, then surely the evil do these things to them for righteousness' sake; and if this is so, then also when the good persecute the evil for righteousness' sake, the evil too suffer for righteousness' sake. For if the evil can persecute the good for the name of Christ, why can the evil not suffer persecution from the good for the name of Christ, that is, for righteousness' sake? For if the evil do not suffer on account of that for which the good act, because the good act for righteousness' sake and the evil suffer for unrighteousness, then neither can the evil act on account of that for which the good suffer, because the evil act for unrighteousness and the good suffer for righteousness. How then will it be true, "All these things they will do to you on account of my name," since they do it not on account of Christ's name, that is, not for righteousness' sake, but on account of their own iniquity? This question is solved if we understand "All these things they will do to you on account of my name" as said in such a way that it all refers to the righteous; as if it were said, "All these things you will suffer from them on account of my name," so that "they will do to you" means "you will suffer from them." But if "on account of my name" is taken as if he said, "on account of my name, which they hate in you," then it can also be taken as "on account of the righteousness which they hate in you"; and so the good, when they persecute the evil, can rightly be said to act both on account of righteousness, out of love for which they persecute the evil, and on account of iniquity, which they hate in the evil themselves; and so the evil too can be said to suffer both on account of the iniquity which is punished in them and on account of the righteousness which is exercised in their punishment.

Likewise it may be asked: if the evil too persecute the evil (as ungodly kings and judges, when they were persecutors of the godly, also punished murderers, adulterers, and any evildoers whom they knew to have acted against the public laws), how are we to understand what the Lord says, "If you were of the world, the world would love what was its own"? For the world, by which we see the kinds of crimes mentioned above very often punished, does not love those whom it punishes; unless the answer is that the world is in those by whom such crimes are punished, and the world is in those by whom such crimes are loved. So that world which is understood in the evil and ungodly both hates what is its own, in that part of men which harms criminals, and loves what is its own, in that part of men which favors those same fellow criminals. So "All these things they will do to you on account of my name" is said either in the sense "on account of which you suffer," or in the sense "on account of which they themselves act," because they hate this too in you while they persecute you. And he added: "Because they do not know him who sent me." This is to be understood as said of that knowledge of which it is written elsewhere: "But to know you is perfect understanding." For those who know with this knowledge the Father by whom Christ was sent in no way persecute those whom Christ gathers, because they themselves too are gathered with them by Christ.

Above, the Lord had said to his disciples: "If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also; but all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me." But if we ask of whom he said this, we find that he came to these words from what he had said, "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before you"; and now, by what he added, "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin," he points more expressly to the Jews. So he was speaking of them in those earlier words too; for the very connection of the words shows it. For he says, "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin," of the same people of whom he said, "If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also; but all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me"; for to these words he adds also these: "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin." So the Jews persecuted Christ, as the Gospel shows most plainly; Christ spoke to the Jews, not to other nations; so in them he wished to be understood the world which hates Christ and his disciples; or rather, not in them alone, but he showed that they too belong to that same world. What then is "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin"? Were the Jews without sin before Christ came to them in the flesh? Who, however foolish, would say this? But he wishes a certain great sin, not every sin, to be understood, as under a general name. For this is the sin by which all sins are retained, and if anyone does not have it, all his sins are forgiven him: namely, that they did not believe in Christ, who came precisely so that he might be believed in. This sin they certainly would not have had if he had not come. For his coming became as deadly to those who do not believe as it was saving to those who believe; as if he, the head and chief of the apostles, became what they said of themselves: to some "a fragrance of life unto life," but to others "a fragrance of death unto death."

But what he added, saying, "But now they have no excuse for their sin," may move inquirers to ask whether those to whom Christ did not come and to whom he did not speak have an excuse for their sin. For if they do not, why is it said here that these have none because he came and spoke to them? But if they do, do they have it so as to be exempt from punishment, or so as to be punished more mildly? To these questions I answer, as far as I can grasp, by the Lord's gift, that those to whom he did not come and to whom he did not speak have an excuse, not for all their sin, but for this sin by which they did not believe in Christ. But those are not of that number to whom he came in his disciples and to whom he spoke through his disciples, as he does even now; for through his church he has come to the nations, and through the church he speaks to the nations. For to this belongs what he says, "Whoever receives you receives me," and, "Whoever rejects you rejects me." "Or do you wish," says the apostle Paul, "to have proof of the Christ who speaks in me?"

It remains to ask whether those who were overtaken, or are overtaken, by the end of this life before Christ came to the nations in the church and before they heard his gospel can have this excuse. They plainly can, but not on that account can they escape condemnation. "For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law; and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law." Since "they will perish" sounds more terrible than "they will be judged," these words of the Apostle seem to show that this excuse not only does not help at all but even makes things worse. For those who excuse themselves on the ground that they did not hear will perish without the Law.

But it is rightly asked whether those who, when they heard, despised it, or even resisted, not only by contradicting but also by persecuting with hatred those from whom they heard it, are to be counted among those of whom the words "they will be judged by the Law" seem to sound somewhat lighter. But if it is one thing to perish without the Law and another to be judged by the Law, and the former is heavier and the latter lighter, beyond doubt these are not to be placed in this lighter penalty, because they did not sin under the Law but refused altogether to receive the Law of Christ, and, as far as in them lay, wished it to be nothing at all. But those sin under the Law who are under the Law, that is, who accept it and confess it to be holy, and the commandment holy and just and good, but through weakness do not fulfill what they cannot doubt it most rightly commands. These are the ones who perhaps can in some way be distinguished from the perdition of those who are without the Law; if indeed the Apostle's "they will be judged by the Law" is to be taken as though he had said "they will not perish," which would be surprising if it is so. For he was not speaking of unbelievers and believers when he said this, but of Gentiles and Jews; and both of these, unless they are saved in that Savior who came to seek what was lost, will beyond doubt belong to perdition. Although it can be said that some will perish more heavily, others more lightly; that is, some will suffer heavier, others lighter punishments in their perdition. For he is said to perish to God who is separated by punishment from that blessedness which God gives to his saints; but the diversity of punishments is as great as the diversity of sins; and how this stands divine wisdom judges more deeply than human conjecture can search out or express. Certainly those to whom Christ came and spoke do not have, for the great sin of unbelief, the excuse of being able to say, "We did not see, we did not hear"; whether that excuse would not be accepted by him whose judgments are unsearchable, or would be accepted, if not so that they would be freed from all condemnation, then at least so that they would be condemned somewhat more leniently.

"Whoever hates me," he says, "hates my Father also." Here it may perhaps be said to us: Who can hate one he does not know? And certainly before he said, "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin," he had said to his disciples, "These things they will do to you, because they do not know him who sent me." How then do they both not know and hate? For if they think, not what he is, but something else of him, then they are found to hate not him but what they imagine, or rather suspect in their error. And yet unless men could hate what they do not know, the Truth would not have said both, that they both do not know his Father and hate him. But how this can be, if with the Lord's help it can be shown by us, cannot be shown now, because this discussion must now be closed.