Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus XIII-XIX

made, and through Me rules when He rules. He said these things, but to whom? To the deaf, the blind, the lame, the sick, who did not recognize the physician and who, as if in a frenzy with their mind lost, wanted to kill Him.

16. Accordingly, what did the Evangelist say next? Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the sabbath, but also called God His father. Not in just any way: but how? Making Himself equal to God. For we all say to God, Our Father Who art in heaven (Matt. 6:9); we read also that the Jews said, Since Thou art our father (Isa. 63:16 and 64:8). So it was not on this account that they were angry, that He called God His father, but because He did so in a way far different from men. See, the Jews understand what the Arians do not understand. For the Arians say that the Son is unequal to the Father, and for that reason the heresy has been driven out of the Church. See, these very blind men, these very slayers of Christ, nevertheless understood the words of Christ. They did not understand Him to be the Christ, nor did they understand Him to be the Son of God; but they nevertheless understood in those words that such a Son of God was being set forth as was equal to God. Who He was they did not know; yet they recognized that such a one was being proclaimed, because He called God His father, making Himself equal to God. Was He then not equal to God? He did not make Himself equal, but that One had begotten Him equal. If He made Himself equal to God, He would fall through robbery. For he who wished to make himself equal to God when he was not, fell (Isa. 14:14–15), and from an angel was made a devil; and he gave this pride to man to drink, the pride by which he himself was cast down. For he said this to man, whose standing he begrudged, being himself fallen: Taste, and you will be as gods (Gen. 3:5); that is, seize by usurpation what you have not been made, because I too was cast down by seizing. He did not disclose this, but he urged this. But Christ had been born equal to the Father, not made: born of the substance of the Father. Hence the Apostle sets Him forth thus: Who, when He was in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal to God. What is, He thought it not robbery? He did not usurp equality with God, but He was in that in which He had been born. And how would we come to the God Who is equal? He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant (Phil. 2:6–7). So He did not empty Himself by losing what He was, but by taking what He was not. The Jews, despising this form of a servant, could not understand the Lord Christ as equal to the Father, although they did not in the least doubt that He said this of Himself, and for that reason they raged: and yet He still bore with them, and sought the healing of those who raged.

Tractate 18.

On that passage of the Gospel, Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything of Himself, but what He has seen the Father doing; for whatever things He has done, these the Son also does likewise. Chapter 5, verse 19.

1. John the evangelist, among his fellows and co-partakers, the other evangelists, this particular and

proper gift he received from the Lord (on Whose breast he reclined at the supper (John 13:25), so that by this he might signify that he was drinking higher secrets from His inmost heart), that he should say such things about the Son of God as might perhaps rouse the attentive minds of little ones, but could not fill them, since they are not yet capable; but to minds somewhat more grown, and to those arriving at a certain inwardly manly age, he gives something in these words by which they may be both exercised and fed. You heard it when it was read, and you remember from where this discourse has come. For yesterday it was read that the Jews wished to kill Jesus for this reason, that He not only broke the sabbath, but also called God His father, making Himself equal to God (ibid. 5:18). What displeased the Jews, that pleased the Father Himself. This without doubt pleases also those who honour the Son as they honour the Father; for if it does not please them, they will be displeasing. For God will not be greater because it pleases you; but you will be less if it displeases you. Now against this calumny of theirs, coming either from ignorance or from malice, the Lord speaks not at all what they may grasp, but that by which they may be stirred and troubled, and perhaps, being troubled, may seek the physician. And He was saying things that would be written, so that they might afterwards be read by us too. Let us leave aside, then, what took place in the hearts of the Jews when they heard these things: let us rather consider what takes place in us when we hear them. For heresies have not been born, nor certain dogmas of perversity that ensnare souls and hurl them into the deep, except when good Scriptures are understood not well; and what is not well understood in them is also rashly and boldly asserted. Therefore, dearly beloved, we ought to hear these things very cautiously, for the grasping of which we are little ones; and with a pious heart and with trembling, as it is written, holding this rule of soundness: that what we have been able to understand according to the faith in which we have been instructed, we may rejoice in as in food; but what we have not yet been able to understand according to the sound rule of faith, we may put away doubt and defer understanding; that is, that even if we do not know what something is, we may in no way doubt that it is good and true. And I, brethren, who have undertaken to speak to you, must be considered by you as to who I am that have undertaken it, and what I have undertaken: for I, a man, have undertaken to treat divine things; a carnal man, spiritual things; a mortal, eternal things. Even from me, dearly beloved, let vain presumption be far, if I wish to dwell soundly in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and firmament of truth (1 Tim. 3:15): according to my small measure I grasp what I set before you; where it is opened, I am fed with you; where it is shut, I knock with you.

2. The Jews therefore were moved, and were indignant; rightly indeed, in that a man dared to make himself equal to God: but for this reason wrongly, that in the man they did not understand God. They saw the flesh, they did not know God: they discerned the dwelling, they were ignorant of the dweller. That flesh was a temple, God dwelt within. Jesus, then, was not making the flesh equal to the Father, He was not comparing the form of a servant to the Lord; not what was made for our sake, but what He was when He made us.

For who Christ is (I am speaking to Catholics) you know, because you have believed well: not the Word only, nor the flesh only; but the Word was made flesh, that He might dwell among us. I go over concerning the Word what you know: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: here is equality with the Father. But the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:1–14): than this flesh the Father is greater. Thus the Father is both equal and greater: equal to the Word, greater than the flesh; equal to Him through Whom He made us, greater than Him Who was made for our sake. To this sound catholic rule, which you ought above all to know, which you who know it must hold, from which your faith ought not to slip at all, which by no arguments of men is to be wrested from your heart, let us direct the things that we understand; and the things that perhaps we do not understand, let us put off directing to this rule until some time when we shall have become fit. We know, then, that the Son of God is equal to the Father, because we know that in the beginning the Word was God. Why then did the Jews seek to kill Him? Because not only did He break the sabbath, but He also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal to God: seeing the flesh, not seeing the Word. Let the Word, then, speak against them too through the flesh, and let the inner Indweller sound forth through His dwelling; so that whoever can may know Who dwells within.

3. What then does He say to them? Jesus therefore answered, and said to them, stirred up as they were because He made Himself equal to God, Amen, amen I say to you, the Son cannot do anything of Himself, except what He sees the Father doing. What the Jews answered to this is not written: and perhaps they were silent. Some, however, who wish to be regarded as Christians, are not silent, and in a certain way draw from these words some things to be said against us: things which are not to be despised, both for their sake and for ours. For the Arian heretics, who say that not through the flesh, but before the flesh, the Son Himself Who took up flesh is less than the Father is, and is not of the same substance of which the Father is, take from these words a handle for slander, and answer us: You see that the Lord Jesus, when He noticed that the Jews were stirred by this, that He made Himself equal to God the Father, added such words as to show that He was not equal. For this stirred the Jews against Christ, they say, that He made Himself equal to God; and Christ, wishing to correct them from this agitation, and to demonstrate to them that the Son is not equal to the Father, that is, equal to God, said, as if saying, Why are you angry? Why are you indignant? I am not equal, because the Son cannot do anything of Himself, except what He sees the Father doing. For he who cannot, they say, do anything of himself, except what he sees the Father doing, is surely less, not equal.

4. In this twisted and crooked rule of his heart, let the heretic hear us not yet rebuking, but still as it were inquiring, and let him explain to us what he thinks. For I suppose, O whoever you are (for let us make him present as though he were here), you hold with us that in the beginning was the Word. I hold it, he says. And that the Word was with God? This too, he says, I hold. Follow on, then, and hold this more firmly, that the Word was God. This too, he says,

I hold; but that God is greater, that God is lesser. Now it smells of something pagan, when I thought I was speaking with a Christian. If there is a greater God and there is a lesser God, we worship two gods, not one God. Why, he says? Do you too not speak of two gods equal to each other? This I do not say: for I understand this equality in such a way that I understand there also an undivided charity; and if an undivided charity, a perfect unity. For if the charity which God has sent to men makes of the many hearts of men one heart, and makes of the many souls of men one soul, as it is written in the Acts of the Apostles of those who believed and loved one another, They had one soul and one heart towards God (Acts 4:32): if, then, my soul and your soul, when we think the same thing and love each other, become one soul, how much more are God the Father and God the Son, in the fountain of love, one God?

5. But turn your attention to these words by which your heart has been stirred, and recall with me what we were inquiring about the Word. We already hold that the Word was God; I add something else, that when he had said, This was in the beginning with God, the Evangelist straightway added, All things were made through Him. Now I press you by questioning, now I move you against yourself, and I challenge you against yourself: only keep firmly in memory these things about the Word, that the Word was God, and all things were made through Him. Hear now the words by which you were stirred to call the Son lesser, namely because He said, The Son cannot do anything of Himself, except what He has seen the Father doing. Yes, he says. Explain this to me a little: you understand it thus, as far as I suppose, that the Father does certain things, and the Son watches how the Father does them, so that He too may be able to do the things which He has seen the Father doing. You have set up, as it were, two craftsmen: so the Father and the Son, as also master and pupil, in the way that craftsmen fathers are accustomed to teach their sons their craft. See, I come down to your carnal sense, for the moment I think as you do: let us see whether this thought of ours finds a way out in accordance with those things which we have already spoken together about the Word and hold together, that the Word is God, and all things were made through Him. Suppose, then, the Father as a craftsman, doing certain works, and the Son as a pupil, Who cannot do anything except what He has seen the Father doing: for He gazes, in a manner, at the Father's hands, so that as He has seen Him fashion, so He too may fashion something of the kind in His own works. But all those things which this Father does, and wishes the Son to watch Him and Himself to do the like, through Whom does He do them? Come now, it is time for you to stand by your former judgement, which you went over with me and held with me, that in the beginning [was] the Word, and the Word [was] with God, and the Word [was] God, and all things were made through Him. You therefore, when you have held with me that all things were made through the Word, again with carnal taste and childish impulse picture to yourself in your mind God making and the Word watching, so that when God has made, the Word too may make. For what does God make apart from the Word? For if He makes [anything apart from it], not all things were made through the Word; you have lost

what you held. But if all things were made through the Word, correct what you were understanding wrongly. The Father made, and He made nothing except through the Word. How then does the Word attend, so as to see the Father making without the Word something that the Word may likewise make? Whatever the Father made, He made through the Word; or else it is false that All things were made through Him. But it is true: All things were made through Him. Did that perhaps seem too little to you? And without Him nothing was made.

6. Withdraw, then, from this prudence of the flesh, and let us seek how it was said, The Son cannot do anything of Himself, except what He has seen the Father doing. Let us seek, if we are worthy to grasp it. For I confess it is a great matter, altogether arduous, to see the Father doing through the Son: not the Father and the Son doing separate works, but the Father doing any work whatever through the Son, so that no works are done either by the Father without the Son or by the Son without the Father, because all things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made. With these things most firmly established on the foundation of faith, what sort of thing is it now to see that the Son cannot do anything of Himself, except what He has seen the Father doing? You seek, I think, to know the Son doing; seek first to know the Son seeing. For what indeed does He say? The Son cannot do anything of Himself, except what He has seen the Father doing. Attend to what He said: except what He has seen the Father doing. Seeing goes before, and doing follows: for He sees in order to do. Why do you seek to know already how He does, while you do not yet know how He sees? Why do you run to what is later, leaving behind what is first? He spoke of Himself as seeing and doing, not as doing and seeing: for He cannot do anything of Himself, except what He has seen the Father doing. Do you want me to explain to you how He does? You explain to me how He sees. If you cannot explain this, neither can I explain that; if you are not yet fit to perceive this, neither am I fit to perceive that. Let each of us, then, seek, let each knock, that each may deserve to receive. Why do you, as though learned, cavil at one unlearned? I as to the doing, you as to the seeing: both unlearned, let us seek from the Master, and not quarrel childishly in His school. Yet together we have already learned that all things were made through Him. Therefore it is manifest that the Father does not do other works, which the Son may see so that He Himself may do the like; rather, the Father does the same works through the Son, because all things were made through the Word. Now, who knows how God does? I do not say how He made the world, but how He made your eye, clinging to which in a carnal way you compare visible things with invisible. For you think of God such things as you are accustomed to see with these eyes. But if God could be seen with these eyes, He would not say, Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God (Matt. 5:8). So you have the eye of the body for seeing a craftsman, but you do not yet have the eye of the heart for seeing God; therefore what you are accustomed to see in a craftsman you want to transfer to God. Put earthly things on the earth: the heart on high.

7. What then, dearly beloved? Are we going to explain what we have asked: how the Word sees, how the Father is seen by the Word, what the seeing of the Word is? I am not so bold, so rash, as to promise to explain this both to myself and to you; however I may surmise your measure,

yet I know my own. So if it pleases you, let us not linger any longer; let us run through the reading, and let us see carnal hearts troubled by the words of the Lord; troubled to this end, that they may not remain in what they hold. Let some plaything or other be wrenched away from them, as from children, with which they wrongly divert themselves, so that more useful things may be implanted in those who are older, so that those who crawled on the ground may be able to advance. Rise, seek, sigh, pant with longing, and knock at what is shut. But if we do not yet long, do not yet gape after it, do not yet sigh, we shall be casting pearls to just anyone, or we ourselves shall find pearls of whatever sort. May I therefore have stirred up longing in your heart, dearly beloved. Conduct leads to understanding: a kind of life leads to a kind of life. One life is earthly, another heavenly; one is the life of beasts, another the life of men, another the life of angels. The life of beasts seethes with earthly pleasures, seeks after earthly things alone, is bent and cast down upon them: the life of angels is heavenly alone: the life of men is midway between that of angels and that of beasts. If a man lives according to the flesh, he is compared to beasts: if he lives according to the spirit, he is joined in fellowship with angels. When you live according to the spirit, ask also, within the angelic life itself, whether you are small or great. For if you are still small, the angels say to you: Grow; we eat bread, you, be nourished with milk, the milk of faith, that you may come to the food of sight. But if there is still gaping after filthy pleasures, if frauds are still being devised, if lies are not avoided, if lies are heaped upon perjuries; does so unclean a heart dare to say, Explain to me how the Word sees; even if I were able, even if I myself already see? Moreover, if perhaps I am not in such ways of life, and yet I am far from that vision; how far is he who is not yet caught up by this heavenly longing, weighed down by earthly longings? There is a great difference between one who turns away and one who longs: and again there is a great difference between one who longs and one who enjoys. You live like beasts, you turn away: the angels enjoy to the full. But you, if you do not live like beasts, no longer turn away: you long for something and do not grasp it; by that very longing you have begun the life of angels. May it grow in you and be perfected in you; and may you receive this not from me, but from Him Who made both me and you.

8. Yet the Lord has not left us just anyhow, He Who wished it to be understood that in what He said, The Son cannot do anything of Himself, except what He has seen the Father doing, the Father does not do some works which the Son is to see, and the Son other works when He has seen the Father doing them; but the very same works are done by Him, both Father and Son. For He went on to say: For whatever He has done, these things the Son also does likewise. Not that when He has done them, the Son does other things likewise; but whatever He has done, these things the Son also does likewise. If the Son does these things which the Father has done, the Father does them through the Son: if He does through the Son what the Father does, the Father does not do some things and the Son others; but the very same works are the Father's and the Son's. And how does the Son also do the same things? Both the same and likewise. Lest perhaps they should be the same but done unlike: The same, He says, and likewise. And how could the same things be done not likewise? Take an example which I think will not be too great for you: when we write letters, first our heart makes them, and then our hand.

Surely, why did you all cry out, except because you understood? What I said is certain, and plain to all of us. Letters are made first by our heart, then by our body; the hand serves the heart that commands it, and both heart and hand make the same letters: does the heart make some and the hand others? The hand does indeed make the same ones, but not in the same way: for our heart makes them intelligibly, but the hand visibly. See how the same things are made in different ways. Hence it was not enough for the Lord to say, Whatever the Father does, these the Son also does, unless He added, likewise. For what if you were to understand it in the way in which whatever the heart does, the hand also does, but not likewise? Here, however, He added, these the Son also does likewise. If He both does these things and does them likewise, wake up: let the Jew be bound fast, let the Christian believe, let the heretic be refuted; the Son is equal to the Father.

9. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does (John 5:20). Here is that word, shows. Shows to whom, as it were? Surely to one who sees, as it were. We come back to what we cannot explain, how the Word sees. Behold, man was made through the Word; but man has eyes, has ears, has hands, different members in the body: through the eyes he can see, through the ears he can hear, through the hands he can work; different members, different offices of the members. The one member cannot do what the other can: yet because of the unity of the body, the eye sees both for itself and for the ear, and the ear hears both for itself and for the eye. Must we suppose that there is anything of this sort in the Word, since all things were made through Him? And Scripture said in the Psalm, Understand, you who are senseless among the people; and you fools, at last be wise. He Who planted the ear, shall He not hear? or He Who formed the eye, does He not consider? (Ps. 93:8–9). If, then, the Word formed the eye, because all things were made through the Word; if the Word planted the ear, because all things were made through the Word: we cannot say, The Word does not hear, the Word does not see; lest the Psalm rebuke us and say, You fools, at last be wise. Therefore, if the Word hears and the Word sees, the Son hears and the Son sees: yet are we to look for eyes and ears in Him too, in different places? Does He hear from one part, see from another; and can His ear not do what the eye can, and the eye not do what the ear can? Or is He wholly sight and wholly hearing? Perhaps so: nay, not perhaps, but truly so; provided, however, that His very seeing and His very hearing are in a far different manner from ours. Both seeing and hearing are together in the Word, nor is hearing one thing there and seeing another; but hearing is sight, and sight is hearing.

10. And we who hear in one way and see in another, how do we know this? Perhaps we return to ourselves, if we are not transgressors, to whom it was said, Return, you transgressors, to the heart (Isa. 46:8). Return to the heart: why do you go away from yourselves, and perish out of yourselves? why do you go the ways of solitude? You go astray by wandering; return. Where to? To the Lord. It is quickly done: first return to your heart; an exile from yourself, you wander outside; you do not know yourself, and you ask by Whom you were made! Return, return to the heart, take yourself away from the body: your body is your dwelling; your heart perceives even through the body

your body: but your body is not what your heart is; leave your body too, return to your heart. In your body you found eyes in one place, ears in another: do you find this in your heart? Or do you not have ears in your heart? Of which, then, did the Lord speak, He who has ears to hear, let him hear (Luke 8:8)? Or do you not have eyes in your heart? Whence the Apostle says, The eyes of your heart enlightened (Eph. 1:18). Return to the heart; see there what perhaps you perceive of God, because there is the image of God. In the inner man Christ dwells (ibid. 3:16–17), in the inner man you are renewed according to the image of God; in His image know its Author. See how all the senses of the body report inwardly to the heart what they have perceived outside: see how many ministers the one inner emperor has, and what he does within himself even without these ministers. The eyes report to the heart white and black things; the ears report to the same heart melodious and discordant things; the nostrils report to the same heart fragrant and stinking things; taste reports to the same heart bitter and sweet things; touch reports to the same heart smooth and rough things: and the heart reports to itself just and unjust things. Your heart both sees and hears, and judges the other sensible things; and where the senses of the body do not reach, it discerns just and unjust, evil and good. Show me the eyes, ears, nostrils of your heart. Diverse are the things that are referred to your heart, and yet diverse members are not found there. In your flesh you hear in one place, you see in another: in your heart you hear in the same place where you see. If the image is thus, how much more powerful is He Whose image it is? Therefore the Son both hears, and the Son sees, and the Son is Himself the seeing and the hearing: and for Him to hear is the same as to be, and for Him to see is the same as to be. For you, to see is not the same as to be: for even if you lose your sight, you can be; and if you lose your hearing, you can be.

11. Do we think we have knocked? Has something been raised up in us by which we may even faintly guess whence the light comes to us? I think, brothers, that when we speak these things, and when we meditate on them, we exercise ourselves. And when we exercise ourselves in them, and are as it were bent back again by our own weight to these accustomed things, we are like people with bleary eyes when they are brought out to see the light, if perhaps before they had no sight at all, and begin to recover that same sight in some measure through the diligence of physicians. And when the physician wishes to test how much health has come to them, he tries to show them what they longed to see and could not while they were blind: and, the keenness of their eyes now returning in some measure, they are brought out to the light; and when they have seen, they are in a manner beaten back by the very brightness, and they answer the physician who shows it to them, Just now I saw, but I cannot see. What then does the physician do? He calls them back to their usual state, and adds an eye-salve, so that the patient may nourish desire for that which was seen and could not be seen, and by that very desire be more fully cured; and if any stinging remedies are applied to restore health, he may bear them bravely, so that, kindled by love of that light, he may say to himself: When will it be that I may see with firm eyes that which I could not with wounded and weak ones? He presses the physician, and asks him to cure him. Therefore, brothers, if perhaps something of this kind has happened in your hearts, if in some measure you have raised your heart to see the Word, and, beaten back by its light, have fallen back to your usual things, ask the physician to apply eye-salves