Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus XXXVI-XLV

He also gave two coins, to be spent on curing the wounded man (Luke 10:30–35): perhaps these are the two commandments on which the whole Law depends, and the Prophets (Matt. 22:37–40). Therefore, brethren, the Church too in this time, in which the wounded man is healed, is the inn of the traveller; but for the Church herself, above, is the inheritance of the possessor.

Tractate 42.

From what is written, I know that you are sons of Abraham, but you seek to kill Me; up to this, Therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God. Chap. 8, vv. 37-47.

1. Our Lord, even in the form of a servant not a servant, but even in the form of a servant the Lord (for that form of flesh was indeed servile, but although it was the likeness of sinful flesh [Rom. 8:3], it was not sinful flesh), promised liberty to those who believe in Him; but the Jews, as though proud of their own liberty, disdained to be made free, though they were slaves of sin. And they said they were free for this reason, because they were the seed of Abraham. What then the Lord answered them to this, we heard when today's reading was recited. I know, He says, that you are sons of Abraham: but you seek to kill Me, because My word does not take in you. I recognize you, He says: you are sons of Abraham, but you seek to kill Me. I recognize the origin of the flesh, not the faith of the heart. You are sons of Abraham, but according to the flesh. Therefore, He says, you seek to kill Me: for My word does not take in you. If My word were taken, it would take; if you were taken, you would be enclosed within the nets of faith like fish. What then is, does not take in you? It does not take your heart, because it is not received by your heart. For such is the word of God, and such it ought to be to the faithful, like a hook to a fish; it takes when it is taken. Nor is injury done to those who are taken: for they are taken for salvation, not for destruction. Hence the Lord says to His disciples: Come after Me, and I will make you fishers of men (Matt. 4:19). These, then, were not such: and yet they were sons of Abraham; sons of a man of God, yet wicked men. For they derived the lineage of the flesh, but they had become degenerate, by not imitating the faith of him whose sons they were.

2. You have certainly heard the Lord saying, I know that you are sons of Abraham; hear what He says afterwards: What I have seen with My Father, I speak; and you do what you have seen with your father. He had already said, I know that you are sons of Abraham. But what do they do? What He said to them, You seek to kill Me. This they never saw with Abraham. But the Lord wishes God the Father to be understood when He says, What I have seen with My Father, I speak. I have seen the truth, I speak the truth, because I am the Truth. For if the Lord speaks the truth which He saw with the Father, He saw Himself, He speaks Himself: because He Himself is the Truth of the Father, which He saw with the Father; for He Himself is the Word, which Word was with God. These men, then, the evil which they do, which the Lord rebukes and reproves, where did they see it? With their father. When we hear in what follows it said more openly who their father is, then we shall understand what sort of things they saw with such a father: for He does not yet name their father. A little above He mentioned Abraham, but by origin of the flesh, not by likeness of life: He is about to speak of another father of theirs, who neither

begot them, nor did he create them so that they might be men; but nevertheless they were his sons insofar as they were evil, not insofar as they were men; in that they imitated, not in that they were created.

3. They answered and said to Him: Our father is Abraham: as if to say, What are you going to say against Abraham? or, If you can do anything, dare to rebuke Abraham. Not that the Lord did not dare to rebuke Abraham; but Abraham was such a man as would not be rebuked by the Lord, but rather praised: yet these men seemed to be provoking Him to say something bad about Abraham, so that there might be an occasion for doing what they were plotting. Our father is Abraham.

4. Let us hear how the Lord answered them, praising Abraham together with their condemnation. Jesus says to them: If you are sons of Abraham, do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill Me, a man who has spoken to you the truth which I heard from God: this Abraham did not do. Behold, he is praised, these are condemned. Abraham was not a murderer. I do not say, He says, I am the Lord of Abraham: though if I said it, I would be saying what is true. For He said in another place, Before Abraham I am (John 8:58): then they wanted to stone Him: He did not say this [here]. Meanwhile, what you see, what you behold, what alone you think Me to be, a man I am: a man telling you what He heard from God, why do you wish to kill Him, unless because you are not sons of Abraham? And yet above He says, I know that you are sons of Abraham. He does not deny their origin, but condemns their deeds: their flesh was from him, but their life was not.

5. But we, dearly beloved, did we come from the race of Abraham, or was Abraham in any way our father according to the flesh? The flesh of the Jews draws its origin from his flesh, not the flesh of Christians: we came from other nations; and yet by imitating we have been made sons of Abraham. Hear the Apostle: To Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed. He does not say, he says, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to your seed, which is Christ. But if you are Christ's, then you are the seed of Abraham, heirs according to the promise (Gal. 3:16, 29). We, then, have been made the seed of Abraham by the grace of God. It was not from the flesh of Abraham that God made co-heirs for him. Those He disinherited, these He adopted: and from that olive tree, whose root is in the Patriarchs, He cut off the proud natural branches and grafted in the humble wild olive (Rom. 11:17). Therefore when the Jews came to John to be baptized, he burst out against them and said to them, Brood of vipers. For they gloried above all in the loftiness of their origin: but he called them a brood of vipers; not even of men, but of vipers. He saw the form of men, but recognized the venom. Yet they had come to be changed, since indeed they came to be baptized: and he said to them, Brood of vipers, who has shown you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance. And do not say within yourselves, We have Abraham as father: for God is able from these stones to raise up sons to Abraham (Matt. 3:7–9). If you do not bring forth fruits worthy of repentance, do not flatter yourselves on that stock: God is able both to condemn you and not to cheat Abraham of sons. For He has the means whence to raise up sons to Abraham: they will become sons who have imitated his faith

God is able from these stones to raise up sons to Abraham. We are [those]: in our forefathers we were stones, when instead of God we worshipped stones; from such stones God made a family for Abraham.

6. Why then does empty and vain boasting exalt itself? Let the sons of Abraham now cease to glory: they have heard what they ought to have heard, If you are sons of Abraham, prove it by deeds, not by words. You seek to kill Me, a man: for the moment I do not say the Son of God, I do not say God, I do not say the Word, because the Word does not die; I say this which you see, because what you see you are able to kill, and Him Whom you do not see you are able to offend. This, then, Abraham did not do. You do the works of your father. And still He does not say who that father of theirs is.

7. Now, what did they answer? For they began in some measure to understand that the Lord was speaking not of birth according to the flesh but of the ordering of life. And because it is the custom of the Scriptures, which they read, to call it fornication in a spiritual sense when the soul, as though prostituted, submits itself to many and false gods, to this they replied: They said therefore to Him, We were not born of fornication; we have one father, God. Abraham has now become cheap [to them]. For they were repulsed, as they ought to have been repulsed, by the truthful mouth; because Abraham was such a man that they did not imitate his deeds and yet gloried in his lineage. And they changed their answer, saying, I believe, among themselves: Whenever we name Abraham, He will say to us, Why do you not imitate him in whose lineage you glory? So holy, just, innocent and great a man we cannot imitate: let us call God our father; let us see what He will say to us.

8. Did falsehood really find something to say, and truth not find what to answer? Let us hear what they say, let us hear what they hear: We have, they say, one father, God. Jesus therefore said to them: If God were your father, you would surely love Me: for I proceeded from God and came. For neither did I come of Myself, but He sent Me. You call God father; acknowledge Me at least as brother. Yet He roused the hearts of those who understand, and touched on what He is accustomed to say, I did not come of Myself, He sent Me, I proceeded from God and came. Remember what we are accustomed to say: He came from Him; and from Whom He came, with Him He came. The sending of Christ, then, is the incarnation. But that the Word proceeded from God is an eternal procession: He through Whom time was made has no time. Let no one say in his heart: Before the Word was, how was God? Never say: Before the Word of God was. Never was God without the Word; because the Word is abiding, not passing; God, not a sound; through Whom heaven and earth were made, not something that passed away with the things that were made upon the earth. Therefore He proceeded from Him as God, as equal, as only Son, as Word of the Father; and He came to us, because the Word was made flesh, that He might dwell in us (John 1:14). His coming is His humanity; His abiding is His divinity: His divinity is where we are going, His humanity is the way by which we go. Unless there were made for us a way by which we might go, we would never reach Him Who abides.

9. Why, He says, do you not recognize My speech? Because you cannot hear My word. Therefore not

could recognize, because they could not hear. But why could they not hear, except because they were unwilling to be corrected by believing? And whence this? You are of the father, the devil. How long will you keep naming your father? How long will you keep changing fathers, now Abraham, now God? Hear from the Son of God whose sons you are: You are of the father, the devil.

10. Here now the heresy of the Manichaeans must be guarded against, which says that there is a certain nature of evil and a certain race of darkness with its princes, which dared to fight against God; and that God, lest the hostile race should overthrow His kingdom, sent against it, as though they were His own vitals, princes from His light; and that this race was overthrown, and from it the devil derives his origin. From this, they say, our flesh derives its origin; and accordingly they think it was said by the Lord, You are of the father, the devil, because they were as it were evil by nature, drawing their origin from the contrary race of darkness. So they err, so they are blinded, so they make themselves the race of darkness, by believing what is false against Him by Whom they were created. For every nature is good; but the nature of man was corrupted through an evil will. What God made cannot be evil, unless man himself is evil to himself: but plainly the Creator is the Creator, the creature is the creature; the creature cannot be made equal to the Creator. Distinguish Him Who made from that which He made. The bench cannot be made equal to the carpenter, the column cannot be made equal to the builder; and yet the carpenter, if he made the bench, did not himself create the wood. But the Lord our God, because He is almighty, made even by the Word what He made: for all that He made He had nothing from which to make it, and yet He made it. For they were made because He willed, they were made because He spoke; but things made cannot be compared to the maker. Do you seek something to compare? Acknowledge the only Son. Whence then are the Jews sons of the devil? By imitating, not by being born. Hear the usage of holy Scripture. The prophet says to the Jews themselves: Your father an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite (Ezek. 16:3). The Amorites were a certain nation, from which the Jews did not derive their origin; the Hittites too had their own nation, wholly foreign to the race of the Jews. But because the Amorites and Hittites were impious, and the Jews imitated their impieties, they found for themselves parents, not of whom they were born, but by following whose ways they would be equally condemned. But perhaps you ask, whence is the devil himself? Assuredly from the same source as the other angels. But the other angels persevered in their obedience: he, by disobeying and by pride, fell as an angel and became the devil.

11. But now hear what the Lord says: You, He says, are of the father, the devil, and the desires of your father you will to do. See how you are his sons: because you desire such things, not because you were born of him. What are his desires? He was a murderer from the beginning. See what this is: the desires of your father you will to do: You seek to kill Me, a man Who tells you the truth. He too envied man and killed man. For the devil, when he envied man, clothed in a serpent, spoke to the woman, and through the woman poisoned the man as well. They died by listening to the devil (Gen. 3:1), to whom they would not have listened, if

had been willing to listen to the Lord: for man, placed between Him who created him and him who fell, ought to have obeyed the Creator, not the deceiver. Therefore he was a murderer from the beginning. See the kind of murder, brethren. The devil is called a murderer, not armed with a sword, not girded with iron; he came to man, sowed an evil word, and killed. Do not then think that you are not a murderer when you urge evil things upon your brother: if you urge evil things upon your brother, you kill. And that you may know that you kill, hear the Psalm: The sons of men, their teeth are weapons and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword (Ps. 56:5). You therefore will to do the desires of your father: that is why you rage against the flesh, because you cannot rage against the mind. He was a murderer from the beginning: in the first man, certainly. He was a murderer from the time when murder could be done: murder could be done from the time when man was made. For man could not be killed unless man were first made. A murderer, therefore, he was from the beginning. And whence a murderer? And he did not stand in the truth. Therefore he was in the truth, but by not standing he fell. And why did he not stand in the truth? Because the truth is not in him. Not as it is in Christ is the truth in him, so that Christ Himself is the truth. If, then, this one had stood in the truth, he would have stood in Christ; but he did not stand in the truth, because the truth is not in him.

12. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own; because he is a liar, and his father. What is this? You have heard the words of the Gospel, you received them attentively: see, I repeat them, that you may recognize what you are asking. The Lord was saying of the devil those things which ought to have been said of the devil by the Lord. He was a murderer from the beginning: it is true, for he killed the first man; and he did not stand in the truth: because he fell from the truth. When he speaks a lie, that is, the devil himself, he speaks from his own; because he is a liar, and his father. In these words certain people thought that the devil has a father, and they asked who the devil's father was. Here indeed the detestable error of the Manichaeans has found yet another means by which to deceive the unlearned. For they are accustomed to say: Suppose the devil was an angel and fell; sin began from him, as you say: who was his father? We reply: Which of us has ever said that the devil has a father? And they in reply: The Lord says it, the Gospel speaks it, saying of the devil, it says, He was a murderer from the beginning, and he did not stand in the truth; because the truth is not in him: when he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own; because he is a liar, and his father.

13. Listen, understand; I am not sending you far off, understand it in the very words. The Lord called the devil the father of the lie. What is this? Hear what it is; repeat now the very words, and understand. For not everyone who lies is the father of his own lie. For if you have received a lie from another and have spoken it, you have indeed lied in uttering the lie; but you are not the father of that lie, because you received the lie from another. But the devil was a liar of himself; he begot his own lie, he heard it from no one. As God the Father begot the Son, the truth, so the devil, having fallen, begot as it were a son, the lie. Having heard these things, repeat now and recall the words of the Lord: catholic mind, mark what you have heard, attend to what He says. He: who? The devil;

he was a murderer from the beginning. We acknowledge it: he killed Adam. And he did not stand in the truth. We acknowledge it, because he fell away from the truth. Because the truth is not in him. It is true: by withdrawing from the truth he does not have the truth. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own. He does not receive from elsewhere what he may speak. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own; because he is a liar, and its father. He is both a liar and the father of the lie. For you perhaps are a liar, because you speak a lie: but you are not its father. For if you received what you say from the devil, and believed the devil, you are a liar, you are not the father of the lie: but he, because he did not receive from elsewhere the lie with which, as a serpent with poison, he was to kill man, is the father of the lie; just as God the Father is [the Father] of truth. Withdraw from the father of the lie, run to the Father of truth; embrace the truth, that you may receive freedom.

14. Those Jews, then, saw with their father what they spoke: what, if not a lie? But the Lord saw with His Father what He should speak: what, if not Himself? what, if not the Word of the Father? what, if not the truth of the Father, eternal, and coeternal with the Father? He, then, was a murderer from the beginning, and did not stand in the truth, because the truth is not in him: when he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own, because he is a liar. And not only is he a liar, but he is also its father: that is, of the very lie that he speaks he is the father, because he himself begot his lie. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin; as I convict both you and your father? If I speak the truth, why do you not believe me; unless because you are sons of the devil?

15. He who is of God hears the words of God: therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God. Again, do not attend to the nature, but to the fault. These men are thus of God, and are not of God: by nature of God, by fault not of God. I beseech you, attend; in the Gospel you have the means to be healed against the poisonous and wicked errors of the heretics. For the Manichaeans are accustomed to say about these words too: See, there are two natures, one good and the other evil; the Lord says it: what does the Lord say? Therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God. The Lord says this. What then, says he, do you say to these things? Hear what I shall say. They are both of God and not of God; by nature they are of God, by fault they are not of God: for the good nature which is of God sinned by the will, by believing what the devil urged, and was corrupted; therefore it seeks a physician, because it is not healthy. See what I say. But it seems to you impossible that they should be of God and not be of God: hear that it is not impossible. They are of God and are not of God in the same way that they are both sons of Abraham and are not sons of Abraham. Here you have it; there is nothing for you to say. Hear the Lord Himself; He Himself said to them: I know that you are sons of Abraham. Would the Lord lie? Far from it. Then is what the Lord said true? It is true. It is true, then, that they were sons of Abraham. It is true. Hear Him denying it. He who said,