Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus XXXVI-XLV

22). We have already discussed these same words of the Gospel, and now we point out that this was not said because the Father will not be with the Son when He judges, but because in the judgement the Son alone will appear to the good and to the wicked, in the form in which He suffered, and rose again, and ascended into heaven. For while the disciples were then watching Him ascend, an angelic voice sounded: Thus will He come, just as you have seen Him going into heaven (Acts 1:11); that is, in the form of man in which He was judged He will judge, so that that prophetic word too may be fulfilled: They will see Him Whom they pierced (Zech. 12:10; John 19:37). But when the just are going into eternal life, we shall see Him as He is; that will not be the judgement of the living and the dead, but the reward of the living only.

13. Likewise, let it not trouble anyone that He says, In your Law it is written that the testimony of two men is true, and let no one on that account suppose that that law was not God's, because it was not said, In the law of God: let him know that it was said thus, In your Law, as if He were saying, in the Law that was given to you; and by whom, if not by God? Just as we say, Our daily bread; and yet we say, Give us today (Matt. 6:11).

Tractate 37.

From that which is written, So they said, Where is your father? as far as this, And no one seized Him, because His hour had not yet come. Chapter 8, verses 19, 20.

1. What is said briefly in the holy Gospel ought not to be expounded briefly, so that what is heard may be understood. For the words of the Lord are few, but great; they are to be valued not by number but by weight: nor are they to be despised because they are few, but to be searched out because they are great. You who were present yesterday heard how, as we were able, we discussed what the Lord said: You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. And yet if I do judge, My judgement is true; because I am not alone, but I and the Father Who sent Me. In your law it is written that the testimony of two men is true. I am He Who bear witness concerning Myself, and the Father Who sent Me bears witness concerning Me (John 8:15–18). On these words, as I said, a sermon was rendered yesterday to your ears and minds. When the Lord had said these things, those who heard, You judge according to the flesh, made plain what they had heard. For they answered the Lord as He spoke of God His Father, and said, Where is your father? They took the Father of Christ in a carnal sense, because they judged the words of Christ according to the flesh. Now He Who was speaking was openly flesh, hiddenly the Word: man manifest, God hidden. They saw the garment, and despised the One clothed in it: they despised Him because they did not know Him; they did not know Him because they did not see Him; they did not see Him because they were blind; they were blind because they did not believe.

2. Let us see, then, what the Lord answered to these things too. Where, they say, is your father? For we heard you say, I am not alone, but I and the Father Who sent Me: we see you alone, we do not see your father with you; how do you say that you are not alone, but are with your father? Either show us that your father is with you

And the Lord: Do you see Me, then, that I should show you the Father? For this is what follows; this He answered in His own words, the exposition of which words we set out beforehand. For see what He said: You know neither Me nor My Father. If you knew Me, perhaps you would know My Father too. You say, then, Where is Your Father? as though you already knew Me; as though I were the whole of what you see. Therefore, because you do not know Me, for that reason I do not show you My Father. For you think Me a man, and so you seek My Father as a man, because you judge according to the flesh. But since I am one thing according to what you see, and another according to what you do not see, and I, hidden, speak of My Father, Who is hidden, it comes first that you should know Me; then you will know My Father too.

3. For if you knew Me, you would perhaps know My Father too. He Who knows all things, when He says perhaps, is not in doubt, but rebukes. For notice how this very perhaps, which seems to be a word of doubt, is said by way of rebuke. It is indeed a word of doubt when it is said by a man, who doubts because he does not know; but when a word of doubt is said by God, since nothing at all is hidden from God, by that doubting unbelief is reproved; it is not that the Godhead is conjecturing. For men sometimes doubt by way of rebuke about things they hold as certain, that is, they use a word of doubt while not doubting in their heart: as if you were angry with your servant and said, You despise me; consider, perhaps I am your master. Hence the Apostle too, speaking to certain people who despised him, says: But I think that I too have the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 7:40). He who says I think seems to doubt; but he was rebuking, not doubting. And the Lord Christ Himself, in another place, rebuking the future unbelief of the human race, says: When the Son of Man comes, do you think He will find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8).

4. Now, as far as I judge, you have understood how perhaps is used: lest any weigher of words and examiner of syllables, as one who knows how to speak Latin, should find fault with a word which the Word of God spoke; and by finding fault with the Word of God should remain not eloquent but dumb. For who speaks in such a way as the Word speaks Which was in the beginning with God? Do not consider these words, and do not wish to measure from these familiar words that Word Which is God. For you hear Word and despise it; hear God and fear: In the beginning was the Word. You bring it back to the usage of your own talk, and you say within yourself, What is a word? What great thing is a word? It sounds and passes away; it strikes the ear when the air has been beaten, and afterwards it will not be. Hear further: The Word was with God: it abided, it did not pass away by sounding. Perhaps you still despise it: The Word was God (John 1:1). Within yourself, O man, when a word is in your heart, it is something other than sound; but the word which is within you, in order to pass over to me, seeks sound as a kind of vehicle. It takes up sound, then, sets itself in some manner into the vehicle, runs across the air, comes to me, and does not depart from you. But the sound, in order to come to me, departed from you, and did not remain with me. Did the word, then, which was in your heart, pass away when the sound passed away? What

you were thinking, you said; and so that what lay hidden with you might reach me, you sounded syllables: the sound of the syllables carried your thought to my ear; through my ear your thought descended into my heart, the sound in between flew past: but that word which took on sound was with you before you sounded it; because you sounded it, it is with me, and it has not departed from you. Attend to this, whoever you are who weigh sounds. You despise the Word of God, you who do not comprehend the word of a man!

5. He, then, through Whom all things were made knows all things, and yet by doubting He rebukes: If you knew Me, perhaps you would know My Father too. He rebukes the unbelieving. For He spoke such a saying to the disciples: but there there is no word of doubt, because there was no cause for rebuking unbelief. For what He has just said to the Jews, If you knew Me, perhaps you would know My Father too, He said also to the disciples when Philip questioned Him, nay rather made a demand, and said, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us: as if he were saying, We ourselves already know Thee, Thou hast appeared to us, we have seen Thee, Thou hast deigned to choose us, we have followed Thee, we have seen Thy wonders, we have heard the words of salvation, we have received Thy precepts, we hope for Thy promises; Thou Thyself hast deigned to confer much on us by Thy presence: but yet, though we know Thee, because we do not yet know the Father, we are inflamed with the desire of seeing Him Whom we do not yet know: and therefore, because we know Thee, but it is not enough for us until we know the Father too, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. And the Lord, so that they might know that they did not know what they thought they already knew: Have I been with you so long a time, and you do not know Me? Philip, whoever has seen Me has seen the Father too (John 14:8–9). Does this saying contain a word of doubt? Did He say, Whoever has seen Me has perhaps seen the Father too? Why? Because a believer was listening, not a persecutor of the faith: therefore the Lord was not a rebuker, but a teacher. Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father too; and here, If you knew Me, you would know My Father too: let us remove the word by which the unbelief of the hearers was marked, and it is the same saying.

6. Already yesterday we commended to your Charity, and we said, that the sayings of John the evangelist, in which he tells us what he learned from the Lord, ought not to have been discussed, if that were possible, were it not that the fabrications of heretics compelled it. Briefly, then, yesterday we intimated to your Charity that there are heretics who are called Patripassians, or, after their founder, Sabellians: these say that He Who is the Son is the Father Himself; that the names are different, but the person is one. When He wills, they say, He is the Father; when He wills, the Son: yet He is one. Likewise there are other heretics who are called Arians. They confess indeed the only Son of the Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, that One the Father of the Son, this One the Son of the Father; that He Who is the Father is not the Son, that He Who is the Son is not the Father: they confess the generation, but deny the equality. We, that is, the catholic faith, coming from the teaching of the Apostles, planted in us, received through the line of succession, to be handed down sound to those who come after, has held the truth between both, that is, between either error. In the error of the Sabellians He is one alone, the Father is Himself the Son: in the error

of the Arians, the Father is indeed one, the Son another; but the Son Himself is not only another [person], but also another thing: you, in the middle, what [do you say]? You have shut out the Sabellian; shut out the Arian too. The Father is the Father; the Son is the Son: another, not another thing; for I and the Father, He says, are one (John 10:30), as I also set forth yesterday, as far as I was able. When he hears "are", let the Sabellian depart confounded; when he hears "one", let the Arian depart confounded: let the Catholic steer the vessel of his faith between the two, since shipwreck must be guarded against on either side. Say therefore what the Gospel says, I and the Father are one. Therefore not diverse, because one; not one person, because "are".

7. A little before He said, My judgement is true; for I am not alone, but I and the Father Who sent Me: as if He were saying, My judgement is therefore true because I am the Son of God, because I speak the truth, because I am the truth itself. These men, understanding carnally, said, Where is your father? Now hear, Arian: You know neither Me nor My Father; for if you knew Me, you would know My Father also. What is "if you knew Me, you would know My Father also", except "I and the Father are one"? When you see someone like someone else (let your Charity attend; it is an everyday way of speaking; let not that be hard for you which you notice to be customary): when, then, you see someone like someone else, and you know whom he is like, you say in wonder, How like that man this man is! You would not say this unless there were two. Here the one who does not know him to whom you say this one is like says: Is he so like? And you to him: What, do you not know him? And he: I do not know him, he says. Then you, to make known to him the one he does not know from the one present whom he sees, answer and say: You have seen this one, you have seen that one. Certainly, in saying this, you did not assert that there is one and deny that there are two: but because of the likeness you gave such an answer, You know this one and you know that one; for he is very like, and differs in nothing at all. Hence the Lord too says, If you knew Me, you would know My Father also, not because the Father is the Son, but because the Son is like the Father. Let the Arian blush. Thanks be to the Lord that even the Arian has withdrawn from the Sabellian error and is not a Patripassian: he does not say that the Father Himself, clothed in flesh, came to men, that He Himself suffered, that He Himself rose again, and in a manner ascended to Himself; this he does not say: he acknowledges with me that the Father is the Father, and that the Son is the Son. But, O brother, you have escaped that shipwreck; why do you head for the other? The Father is the Father; the Son is the Son: why do you call Him unlike? why diverse? why of another substance? If He were unlike, would He say to His disciples, He who has seen Me has seen the Father also? would He say to the Jews, If you knew Me, you would know My Father also? How would this be true, unless that also were true, I and the Father are one?

8. These words Jesus spoke in the treasury, teaching in the temple: with great confidence, without fear. For He would not suffer what He did not will, He Who would not even have been born if He had not willed. Then what follows? And no one seized Him, because His hour had not yet come. Some likewise, when they hear this, believe that the Lord Christ was subject to fate,

and they say: See, Christ had a fate. O if your heart were not fatuous, you would not believe in fate! If fate, as some have understood, is so called from fari, that is, from speaking, how does the Word of God have a fate, when in the Word Himself are all things that have been founded? For God did not establish anything which He did not know beforehand; what was made was in His Word. The world was made; and it was made, and it was there. How was it both made, and there? Because a house which a builder builds was first in his art; and there it was better, without age, without ruin: yet to show his art, he constructs the house; and the house proceeded, in a certain manner, from the house; and if the house falls, the art remains. So with the Word of God were all things that have been founded; for God made all things in wisdom (Ps. 103:24), and He made all things known: for He did not learn because He made, but He made because He knew. To us, because they have been made, they are known; to Him, unless they had been known, they would not have been made. The Word, therefore, went before. And what was before the Word of God? Nothing at all. For if there were anything before, it would not have been said, In the beginning was the Word; but, In the beginning the Word was made. Then what does Moses say about the world? In the beginning God made heaven and earth (Gen. 1:1). He made what was not: if then He made what was not, what was there before? In the beginning was the Word. And whence heaven and earth? All things were made through Him (John 1:1, 3). Do you, then, place Christ under fate? Where are the fates? In heaven, you say, in the order and revolutions of the stars. How then does He have a fate, through Whom heaven and the stars were made, when your will, if you are rightly wise, transcends even the stars? Or, because you know that the flesh of Christ was under heaven, do you therefore think that the power of Christ too was subject to heaven?

9. Hear, fool: His hour had not yet come, not the hour at which He would be compelled to die, but that at which He would deign to be slain. For He Himself knew when He ought to die: He considered all the things that had been foretold about Him, and He was waiting for all the things to be accomplished which had been foretold as going to happen before His passion; so that when they had been fulfilled, then the passion too would come, by the order of a disposition, not by fatal necessity. Then listen, so that you may prove it: among the other things that were prophesied about Him, it is also written, They gave gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink (Ps. 68:22). How these things were done we know from the Gospel. First they gave gall; He took it, tasted it, and spat it out: afterwards, hanging on the cross, so that all the things foretold might be fulfilled, He said, I thirst: they took a sponge full of vinegar, they bound it on a reed, and they brought it to Him as He hung; He took it and said, It is finished. What is, It is finished? All the things that had been prophesied before my passion have been fulfilled: why then am I still here? Then, after He said, It is finished, having bowed His head He gave up the spirit (John 19:28–30). Did those robbers crucified beside Him breathe their last when they wished? They were held by the bonds of the flesh, because they were not the creators of the flesh: fastened with nails they were tormented for a long time, because they were not masters of their weakness. But the Lord, when He wished, took flesh in the virgin's womb; when He wished, He came forth to men; for as long as He wished, He lived among men; when He wished, He departed from the flesh: this belongs to power, not to necessity. This hour, therefore,