Tractates on the Gospel of John 95.1–96.5

Promising that he would send the Holy Spirit, the Lord says, "When he comes, he will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment." What is this? Did the Lord Christ not convict the world of sin when he said, "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin"? But lest anyone perhaps say that this applies properly to the Jews and not to the world, does he not say in another place, "If you were of the world, the world would love what was its own"? Did he not convict it of righteousness where he says, "Righteous Father, the world has not known you"? Did he not convict it of judgment where he says he will say to those on the left, "Go into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels"? And many other passages are found in the holy Gospel where Christ convicts the world of these things. Why then does he attribute this, as if it were proper to him, to the Holy Spirit? Is it perhaps because Christ spoke only among the nation of the Jews, and so seems not to have convicted the world, if the one convicted is understood to be the one who hears him convicting? But the Holy Spirit, in Christ's disciples spread through the whole world, is understood to have convicted not one nation but the world. For this is what he said to them as he was about to ascend into heaven: "It is not for you to know the times or moments which the Father has set by his own authority; but you will receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and to the ends of the earth." This is to convict the world. But who would dare say that the Holy Spirit convicts the world through Christ's disciples and Christ himself does not convict it, when the Apostle cries out, "Or do you wish to have proof of the Christ who speaks in me?" So those whom the Holy Spirit convicts, Christ certainly convicts too. But as it seems to me, because through the Holy Spirit love was to be poured out in their hearts, the love that casts out fear, by which they could have been hindered from daring to convict the world that raged with persecutions, therefore he said, "He will convict the world"; as if he said, He will pour out love in your hearts; for so, when fear has been driven out, you will have the freedom to convict. We have often said that the works of the Trinity are inseparable, but that the persons had to be commended one by one, so that both the unity and the Trinity may be understood, not only without separation but also without confusion.

Then he explains what he meant by "of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment." "Of sin," he says, "because they did not believe in me." For he put this sin before the others as if it were the only one, because while it remains the others are retained, and when it departs the others are forgiven. "Of righteousness," he says, "because I go to the Father, and you will no longer see me." Here we must first see how, if anyone is rightly convicted of sin, he can rightly be convicted also of righteousness. For if a sinner must be convicted because he is a sinner, will anyone think that a righteous man must also be convicted because he is righteous? Far from it. For even if a righteous man is sometimes convicted, he is rightly convicted because, as it is written, "There is no righteous man on earth who will do good and not sin." Therefore even when a righteous man is convicted, he is convicted of sin, not of righteousness. For in that saying too which we read as divinely spoken, "Do not be overly righteous," it is not the righteousness of the wise man that is censured but the pride of the presumptuous. He, then, who becomes overly righteous becomes unrighteous by that very excess. For he makes himself overly righteous who says that he has no sin, or who thinks that he is made righteous not by the grace of God but by his own will as sufficient: nor is he righteous by living rightly, but rather puffed up, thinking himself to be what he is not. How then is the world to be convicted of righteousness, if not of the righteousness of believers? So it is convicted of sin, because it does not believe in Christ; and it is convicted of the righteousness of those who believe. For the very comparison with the faithful is the censure of the unfaithful. The explanation itself shows this clearly enough. For wishing to make plain what he had said, he says, "Of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will no longer see me." He does not say, "And they will no longer see me," meaning those of whom he had said, "because they did not believe in me." In explaining what he called sin he spoke of them, saying, "because they did not believe in me"; but in explaining what righteousness he meant, the righteousness of which the world is convicted, he turned to those to whom he was speaking and said, "Because I go to the Father, and you will no longer see me." So the world is convicted of its own sin but of another's righteousness, as darkness is convicted by light: "For all things that are convicted," says the Apostle, "are made manifest by the light." For how great the evil of those who do not believe is can appear not only through itself but also from the good of those who believe. And since the usual saying of unbelievers is, "How can we believe what we do not see?", the righteousness of believers had to be defined thus: "Because I go to the Father, and you will no longer see me." For "blessed are those who do not see and believe." For of those too who saw Christ, their faith was not praised in that they believed what they saw, that is, the Son of Man, but because they believed what they did not see, that is, the Son of God. But when the very form of a servant had been withdrawn from their sight, then indeed was fulfilled in every respect, "The righteous lives by faith." For faith, as it is defined in the Epistle to the Hebrews, is "the substance of those who hope, the conviction of things that are not seen."

But what is "you will no longer see me"? For he does not say, "I go to the Father, and you will not see me," so that he might be understood to have signified an interval of time in which he would not be seen, short or long but certainly limited; but by saying, "you will no longer see me," the Truth foretold, as it were, that they would never see Christ again. Is this righteousness, never to see Christ and yet to believe in him, when the faith by which the righteous lives is praised precisely because it believes that it will one day see the Christ whom it does not now see? Finally, according to this righteousness, are we to say that the apostle Paul was not righteous, who confessed that he saw Christ after his ascension into heaven, the very time of which he had said, "you will no longer see me"? According to this righteousness was the most glorious Stephen not righteous, who said as he was being stoned, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God"? What then is "I go to the Father, and you will no longer see me," except: as I am while I am with you? For then he was still mortal, in the likeness of sinful flesh, able to hunger and thirst, to be weary and to sleep. This Christ, then, that is, such a Christ, they were no longer to see when he had passed from this world to the Father; and this is the righteousness of faith, of which the Apostle says, "Even if we knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer." This, then, he says, will be your righteousness, by which the world will be convicted: "because I go to the Father, and you will no longer see me"; since you will believe in me, whom you will not see; and when you do see me, as I shall be then, you will not see me as I am with you now: you will see not the lowly one but the exalted one, not the mortal but the everlasting, not the one to be judged but the one who will judge. And of this faith of yours, that is, your righteousness, the Holy Spirit will convict the unbelieving world.

He will convict also of judgment, "because the ruler of this world has been judged." Who is this, if not the one of whom he says in another place, "Behold, the ruler of the world is coming, and he will find nothing in me"; that is, nothing that is his by right, nothing that belongs to him, namely, no sin at all? For it is through this that the devil is the ruler of the world. For the devil is not the ruler of heaven and earth and all that is in them, which is the sense of "world" where it is said, "And the world was made through him"; but the devil is ruler of that world of which he there at once adds, "And the world did not know him": that is, unbelieving men, with whom the world is filled throughout the whole earth. Among them groans the faithful world, which he through whom the world was made chose out of the world; of which he himself says, "The Son of Man did not come to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him." The world is condemned when he judges, the world is saved when he helps; for just as a tree is full of leaves and fruit, and a threshing floor of chaff and grain, so the world is full of unbelievers and believers. So the ruler of this world, that is, the ruler of this darkness, that is, of unbelievers, from among whom the world is rescued, to whom it is said, "You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord"; the ruler of this world, of whom he says elsewhere, "Now the ruler of this world is cast out," has certainly been judged, since he has been irrevocably destined to the judgment of eternal fire. And so of this judgment by which the ruler of the world has been judged, the world is convicted by the Holy Spirit; since it is judged with its ruler, whom in its pride and ungodliness it imitates. For if God, as the apostle Peter says, "did not spare the angels who sinned, but thrust them down into the prisons of the darkness of the underworld and handed them over to be kept for punishment in the judgment," how is the world not convicted of this judgment by the Holy Spirit, when the Apostle says these things in the Holy Spirit? So let men believe in Christ, so as not to be convicted of the sin of their unbelief, by which all sins are retained; let them pass into the number of the faithful, so as not to be convicted of the righteousness of those who have been justified and whom they do not imitate; let them beware of the judgment to come, so as not to be judged with the ruler of the world, who has been judged and whom they imitate. For lest the hard pride of mortals think it will be spared, it must be terrified by the punishment of the proud angels.

In this chapter of the holy Gospel, where the Lord says to his disciples, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now," the first thing that presents itself to be asked is how he said above, "All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you," and here says, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now." But how he said that he had done what he had not yet done, just as the prophet testifies that God has made things that are to be, saying, "Who has made the things that are to be," we have already explained as best we could when we were treating those very words. Now then you perhaps want to know what these things are which the apostles could not bear at that time. But which of us would dare to say that he is already capable of what they could not take in? And therefore you must not expect me to say things which perhaps I could not take in if they were said to me by another; nor could you bear them, even if I were so great that you could hear from me these things that are too high for you. It may indeed be that there are some among you already fit to take in things which others cannot yet take in; if not all the things of which the divine master said, "I still have many things to say to you," then perhaps some of them; but to wish to presume and to say which these things are that he himself did not say is rash. For the apostles, to whom he said, "You cannot follow me now," were not yet fit even to die for Christ at that time; whence the first of them, Peter, who had presumed that he could already do this, found it otherwise than he thought. And yet afterward men and women, boys and girls, young men and virgins, old with young, were crowned with martyrdom in countless numbers; and sheep were found able to do what the shepherds could not yet bear at the time the Lord spoke these words. Ought it then to have been said to those sheep at that moment of trial, when they had to contend unto death for the truth and shed their blood for the name or teaching of Christ, ought it, I say, to have been said to them, "Which of you would dare to think himself fit for martyrdom, for which Peter was not yet fit when the Lord himself was instructing him face to face"? So, in the same way, someone might say that we should not say to Christian congregations who desire to hear what the things were of which the Lord then said, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now": "If the apostles could not yet bear them, much less can you." For perhaps many can hear what Peter could not yet hear then, just as many can be crowned with martyrdom, which Peter could not yet be then; especially now that the Holy Spirit has been sent, who had not yet been sent then, and of whom he at once added and said, "But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will teach you all truth"; thus showing that they could not bear what he had to say because the Holy Spirit had not yet come to them.

Suppose we grant that it is so: that many can now, since the Holy Spirit has been sent, bear what the disciples could not bear then, when he had not yet been sent. Do we therefore know what the things are which he would not say, as we would know them if we read or heard them said by him? For it is one thing to know whether they can be borne by us or by you, and another to know what they are, whether they can be borne or not. Since he himself kept silent about them, which of us can say, "They are this or that"? Or if he dares to say it, how does he prove it? For who is so vain or rash that, even if he has said true things to whomever and whatever he wished, he would affirm without any divine testimony that these are the things which the Lord would not say then? Which of us could do this and not incur the greatest blame of rashness, since no prophetic or apostolic authority stands out in us? For surely, if we had read any of them in the books confirmed by canonical authority which were written after the Lord's ascension, it would not be enough to have read it, unless it were also read there that this was among the things which the Lord would not then tell his disciples because they could not bear them. As if, for example, I were to say that what we read at the head of this Gospel, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God," and the rest that follows, is among the things which the Lord would not then say because the disciples could not bear them, since it was written afterward, and it is not narrated that the Lord Jesus said it when he was here in the flesh, but one of his apostles wrote it as his Spirit revealed it to him: who would listen to me saying such things so rashly? But if where we read this we also read that, who would not believe so great an apostle?

But it also seems to me most absurd to say that the disciples could not then bear the things about invisible and most lofty matters which we find in the apostolic writings, written afterward, which the Lord is not related to have said when he was visibly with them. For why could they not bear then what now, in their books, everyone reads and everyone bears, even if he does not understand? Unbelievers, indeed, both fail to understand some things in the holy Scriptures when they read or hear them, and cannot bear them when read or heard: as pagans cannot bear that the world was made through him who was crucified; as Jews cannot bear that he is the Son of God who loosed the sabbath in the way they celebrate it; as Sabellians, that the Trinity is Father and Son and Holy Spirit; as Arians, that the Son is equal to the Father, and the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son; as Photinians, that Christ is not only a man like us but also God, equal to God the Father; as Manichees, that Christ Jesus, through whom we are to be freed, deigned to be born in the flesh and of the flesh. And all the other men of perverse and diverse sects certainly cannot bear whatever is found in the holy Scriptures and in the catholic faith that is brought forward against their errors; just as we cannot bear their sacrilegious vanities and lying madness. For what is it not to be able to bear, except not to accept with a calm mind? But all that was written with canonical truth and authority after the Lord's ascension, what believer, or even catechumen, before he receives the Holy Spirit in baptism, does not read and hear with a calm mind, even if he does not yet understand it as he ought? How then could the disciples not bear any of the things written after the Lord's ascension, even before the Holy Spirit had been sent to them, when now catechumens bear all of them before they have received the Holy Spirit? For even if the sacraments of the faithful are not disclosed to catechumens, this is not done because they cannot bear them, but so that they may desire them the more ardently, the more honorably they are hidden from them.

Therefore, beloved, do not expect to hear from us what the Lord would not then tell his disciples because they could not yet bear it; but rather make progress in love, which is poured out in your hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to you; so that, fervent in spirit and loving spiritual things, you may be able to know the spiritual light and spiritual voice which carnal men cannot bear, not by any sign appearing to bodily eyes nor by any sound striking bodily ears, but by inward sight and hearing. For what is wholly unknown is not loved. But when what is known in however small a part is loved, by that very love it comes to be known better and more fully. If then you make progress in love, which the Holy Spirit pours out in hearts, "he will teach you all truth"; or, as other manuscripts have it, "he will lead you into all truth"; whence it is said, "Lead me, O Lord, in your way, and I will walk in your truth." So it will come about that you learn those things which the Lord would not then say, not from outward teachers, but because you will all be taught by God; so that the very things you have learned and believed about the nature of God through readings and sermons applied from outside (that it is not bodily, not enclosed in any place, nor stretched out like a mass through infinite spaces, but everywhere whole and perfect and infinite, without the brightness of colors, without the shapes of outlines, without the marks of letters, without a sequence of syllables) you may be able to behold with the mind itself. See, I have said something which perhaps comes from that source, and yet you have received it; and not only could you bear it, but you even heard it gladly. But that inner master, who, while he was still speaking outwardly to his disciples, said, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now," if he wished to say to us inwardly what I have said about the incorporeal nature of God in the way he says it to the holy angels, who always see the face of the Father, we could not yet bear it. So I do not think that his saying, "He will teach you all truth," or "He will lead you into all truth," can be fulfilled in this life in anyone's mind (for who, living in this body which is corrupted and weighs down the soul, could know all truth, when the Apostle says, "We know in part"?); rather, it is because through the Holy Spirit, of whom we have now received the pledge, it comes about that we will arrive at that fullness too, of which the same apostle says, "But then face to face," and, "Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known." It is not that anyone knows the whole in this life; that the Lord promised us for the future, at that perfection, through the love of the Spirit, when he said, "He will teach you all truth," or, "He will lead you into all truth."

Since these things are so, beloved, I warn you in the love of Christ to beware of impure seducers and sects of obscene foulness, of which the Apostle says, "For the things done by them in secret it is shameful even to speak of"; lest, when they begin to teach horrible uncleannesses which no human ears of any kind can bear, they say that these are the very things of which the Lord said, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now," and claim that it is through the Holy Spirit that those unclean and abominable things can be borne. There are evil things which any human modesty whatever cannot bear, and there are good things which small human understanding cannot bear: the former are done in unchaste bodies, the latter are far removed from all bodies; the one is committed by impure flesh, the other is scarcely discerned by a pure mind. "Be renewed, then, in the spirit of your mind," "and understand what the will of God is, what is good and acceptable and perfect," "that, rooted and grounded in love, you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length, breadth, height, and depth, to know also the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." For in this way the Holy Spirit will teach you all truth, as he pours out love more and more in your hearts.