Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus XXXVI-XLV

the Son of God Who had taken up flesh, he says: I believe, Lord. "I believe" is little; do you want to see what kind of belief he has? Falling down, he worshipped Him.

16. And Jesus said to him. Now He is that day, distinguishing between light and darkness. For judgement I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind. What is this, Lord? Thou hast brought a great question upon the weary; but raise up our strength, that we may be able to understand what Thou hast said. Thou camest that those who do not see may see: rightly, because Thou art the light; rightly, because Thou art the day; rightly, because Thou dost set free from darkness: this every soul accepts, every soul understands. What is this that follows, And those who see may become blind? Is it then that, because Thou camest, those who used to see will become blind? Hear what follows, and perhaps you will understand.

17. Some of the Pharisees, therefore, were stirred by these words, and they said to Him: Are we also blind? Hear now what it was that stirred them: And those who see become blind. Jesus said to them: If you were blind, you would not have sin. Although blindness itself is sin. If you were blind, that is, if you recognized yourselves as blind, if you called yourselves blind, and ran to the physician; if then you were blind in this way, you would not have sin: because I came to take away sin. But now you say, We see: your sin remains. Why? Because by saying, We see, you do not seek the physician, you remain in your blindness. This, then, is what a little earlier we had not understood, that He said, I came, that those who do not see may see: what is "that those who do not see may see"? Those who confess that they do not see, and seek the physician, that they may see. And those who see may become blind: what is "those who see may become blind"? Those who think they see, and do not seek the physician, may remain in their blindness. Therefore He called this distinguishing a judgement, when He says, For judgement I came into this world, by which He distinguishes the cause of those who believe and confess from the proud, who think that they see, and are therefore the more grievously blinded; as if the sinner who confesses and seeks the physician had said to Him, Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from a nation that is not holy (Ps. 42:1): namely of those who say, We see, and their sin remains. But He has not yet brought upon the world that judgement by which He will judge the living and the dead at the end of the age. For according to this He had said, I judge no one (John 8:15): since He came first, not that He might judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him (John 3:17).

Tractate 45.

From that which is written, Amen, amen I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the sheepfold of the sheep, but climbs up from elsewhere, he is a thief and a robber; as far as this, I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly. Chapter 10, verses 1-10.

1. Concerning that man who was born blind and was given light, the Lord's discourse to the Jews arose. Your Charity ought therefore to know, and to be reminded, that today's reading is woven together with that one. For when the Lord had said, For judgement I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind (which, at the time when it was read, we explained as best we could), some

of the Pharisees said, Are we also blind? To whom He answered: If you were blind, you would not have sin; but now you say, We see: your sin remains (John 9:39–41). To these words He joined the things which we heard today when they were read out.

2. Amen, amen I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the sheepfold of the sheep, but climbs up from elsewhere, that one is a thief and a robber. For they had said that they were not blind; yet they could see then, if they were Christ's sheep. Whence did they claim light for themselves, who were raging against the day? So it was on account of their vain and proud and incurable arrogance that the Lord Jesus wove these words together, in which He has wholesomely admonished us, if we pay attention. For there are many who, according to a certain custom of this life, are called good people, good men, good women, innocent, and as it were observing the things that are commanded in the law; paying honour to their parents, not committing adultery, not perpetrating murder, not committing theft, not bearing false witness against anyone, and as it were observing the other things that are enjoined by the law; yet they are not Christians: and very often they boast in the manner of these men, Are we also blind? But since all these things which they do, while not knowing to what end they should refer them, they do in vain, the Lord in today's reading set forth a parable about His flock, and about the door by which one enters into the sheepfold. Let the pagans say, then: We live well. If they do not enter by the door, what does that in which they glory profit them? For living well ought to profit each person to this end, that living for ever may be given to him: for to one to whom living for ever is not given, what does living well profit? For neither are they to be said to live well, who either through blindness do not know the end of living well, or through being puffed up despise it. But no one has a true and certain hope of living for ever, unless he acknowledges the life, which is Christ, and enters into the sheepfold by the door.

3. So such people very often seek even to persuade others to live well, and yet not to be Christians. By another way they wish to climb up, to plunder and to kill; not, like the shepherd, to preserve and to save. There were, then, certain philosophers, treating many subtle matters about virtues and vices, dividing, defining, concluding most acute reasonings, filling books, airing their wisdom with crackling cheeks; who would even dare to say to people, Follow us, hold to our school, if you wish to live happily. But they had not entered by the door: they wished to destroy, to slaughter and to kill.

4. What shall I say about these? See, the Pharisees themselves used to read, and in what they read they gave voice to Christ, they hoped for Him as one to come, and did not recognize Him when present: they too boasted themselves to be among those who see, that is, among the wise, and they denied Christ, and did not enter by the door. Therefore they also, if perhaps they led any astray, would lead them astray to be slaughtered and killed, not to be set free. Let us leave these too: let us see whether perhaps those enter by the door who glory in the name of Christ Himself.

5. For there are countless people who not only boast that they see, but wish to be seen as enlightened by Christ:

but they are heretics. Have they perhaps entered by the door? Far from it. Sabellius says, He Who is the Son is Himself the Father: but if He is the Son, He is not the Father. He does not enter by the door who says the Son is the Father. Arius says: The Father is one thing, the Son another thing. He would speak rightly if he said "another [Person]", not "another thing". For when he says "another thing", he contradicts Him from Whom he hears, I and the Father are one (John 10:30). So neither does he enter by the door: for he preaches Christ such as he fashions Him for himself, not such as the truth declares. You have the name, you do not have the reality. Christ is the name of a certain reality: hold fast the reality itself, if you wish the name to profit you. Another, from I know not where, such as Photinus: Christ is a man, he says; He is not God. Neither does he enter by the door, because Christ is both man and God. And what need is there to run through many things and to enumerate the many vanities of the heresies? Hold fast this, that the sheepfold of Christ is the Catholic Church. Whoever wishes to enter into the sheepfold, let him enter by the door, let him preach the true Christ. Not only let him preach the true Christ, but let him seek the glory of Christ, not his own: for many, by seeking their own glory, have scattered the sheep of Christ rather than gathered them. For the door, Christ the Lord, is lowly: he who enters by this door must humble himself, so that he may be able to enter with his head unhurt. But he who does not humble himself, but exalts himself, wishes to climb over the wall: and he who climbs over the wall is raised up only in order that he may fall.

6. Yet the Lord Jesus still speaks in a veiled manner; He is not yet understood: He names the door, He names the sheepfold, He names the sheep; He commends all these things, but does not yet explain them. Let us read on, therefore, because He is going to come to those words in which He may deign to explain to us some of the things He has said: and from the explanation of these He will perhaps grant us to understand also those things which He has not explained. For He feeds us with what is plain, He exercises us with what is obscure. He who does not enter by the door into the sheepfold of the sheep, but climbs up from elsewhere. Woe to the wretch, for he is going to fall! Let him therefore be humble, let him enter by the door: let him come on level foot, and he will not stumble. That one, He says, is a thief and a robber. He wishes to call another's sheep his own: his own for this purpose, that is, carried off by theft, not that he may save them, but that he may kill them. Therefore he is a thief, because what belongs to another he calls his own: a robber, because what he has stolen he also kills. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep: to him the doorkeeper opens. Concerning this doorkeeper let us inquire then, when we have heard from the Lord Himself what the door is, and who the shepherd is. And the sheep hear His voice, and He calls His own sheep by name. For He has their names written in the book of life. He calls His own sheep by name. Hence the Apostle says: The Lord knows who are His (2 Tim. 2:19). And He leads them out. And when He has sent out His own sheep, He goes before them: and the sheep follow Him, because they know His voice. But a stranger they do not follow, but flee from him; because they do not know the voice of strangers. These things are veiled, full of questions, pregnant with mysteries. Let us therefore follow and hear the Master opening something out of these obscurities; and through that which He opens, perhaps making us enter.

7. This proverb Jesus spoke to them; but they did not understand what He was saying to them. Perhaps neither do we. What difference, then, is there between them and us, before we too recognize these words? That we knock so that it may be opened

to us; but they, by denying Christ, were unwilling to enter in order to be saved, but rather to remain outside in order to perish. Since, then, we hear these things piously, since before we understand them we believe them to be true and divine, we stand apart from these men by a great difference. For when two people hear the words of the Gospel, one impious, the other pious, and they are such that perhaps neither understands them, the one says, He has said nothing; the other says, He has spoken truly, and what He said is good, but we do not understand it: this one, because he believes, is already knocking, and is worthy to have it opened to him, if he persists in knocking; but that one still hears, Unless you believe, you will not understand (Isa. 7:9, according to the Septuagint). Why do I commend these things to you? Because even when I have expounded these obscure words as best I can, whether because they are very deeply hidden, or I shall not have grasped their meaning, or I shall not have had the ability to explain what I understand, or someone shall have been so slow that he does not follow even the one expounding them, let him not despair of himself: let him remain in faith, let him walk in the way, let him hear the Apostle saying, And if in anything you think otherwise, this too God will reveal to you: nevertheless, to what we have attained, in that let us walk (Phil. 3:15).

8. Let us begin, then, to hear Him expounding, Whom we have heard propounding. Jesus therefore said to them again: Amen, amen I say to you, that I am the door of the sheep. Behold, the very door which He had set before us closed, He has opened. He Himself is the door. We have recognized it; let us enter, or let us rejoice that we have entered. All, as many as have come, are thieves and robbers. What is this, Lord: All, as many as have come? Why so? Didst Thou not come? But understand: I said, All, as many as have come, meaning of course apart from Me. Let us recall, then. Before His coming the Prophets came; were they thieves and robbers? Far from it. They did not come apart from Him, because they came with Him. He Who was to come was sending heralds, but He possessed the hearts of those whom He had sent. Do you wish to know that they came with Him Who Himself always is? For He took flesh in time. What, then, is "always"? In the beginning was the Word (John 1:1). Those, therefore, came with Him who came with the Word of God. I am, He says, the way and the truth and the life (John 14:6). If He Himself is the truth, those came with Him who were truthful. As many, therefore, as came apart from Him are thieves and robbers; that is, [they came] to steal and to kill.

9. But the sheep did not hear them. This is a greater question: the sheep did not hear them. Before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which He came humble in the flesh, the just went before, believing in Him as one who was to come, just as we believe in Him Who has come. The times have changed, not the faith. For the very words too change according to tense, when they are variously inflected: "He is to come" has one sound; "He has come" has another sound: the sound has changed, "He is to come" and "He has come"; yet the same faith joins both together, both those who believed that He was to come and those who believed that He had come. At different times indeed, but we see that both entered through the one door of faith, that is, through Christ. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin, came in the flesh, suffered, rose again, ascended into heaven: all this, as you hear in words of past tense, we believe to be already fulfilled. In the fellowship of His faith there are

with us those fathers too who believed that He would be born of a Virgin, would suffer, would rise again, would ascend into heaven: for the Apostle points to them where he says, But having the same spirit of faith, as it is written, I believed, on account of which I have spoken; we also believe, on account of which we also speak (2 Cor. 4:13). The Prophet said, I believed, on account of which I have spoken (Ps. 115:10): the Apostle says, We also believe, on account of which we also speak. But so that you may know that the faith is one, hear him saying, Having the same spirit of faith, we also believe. So too in another place, For I do not wish you to be ignorant, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses, in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. The Red Sea signifies Baptism; Moses the leader through the Red Sea signifies Christ; the people passing through signifies the faithful; the death of the Egyptians signifies the abolition of sins. In diverse signs the same faith: so in diverse signs, as in diverse words; for words change their sounds through the ages, and certainly words are nothing else than signs. For it is by signifying that they are words: take signification away from a word, and it is an empty noise. All things, therefore, were signified. Did they not believe the same things, those by whom these signs were ministered, by whom the same things that we believe were prophesied and foretold? Certainly they believed: but they believed that these things were to come, we that they have come. Therefore he says thus too, They drank the same spiritual drink. The same spiritual drink, for the bodily drink was not the same. For what did they drink? For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10:1–4). See then, the faith remaining, the signs varied. There the rock was Christ; for us Christ is what is placed on the altar of God. And they, as a great sacrament of the same Christ, drank water flowing from the rock; what we drink the faithful know. If you consider the visible appearance, it is something different: if the intelligible signification, they drank the same spiritual drink. As many, therefore, as at that time believed either Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob, or Moses, or the other Patriarchs and the other Prophets foretelling Christ, were sheep, and heard Christ: they heard not a stranger's voice, but His. The Judge had been in the herald. For when a judge speaks through a herald, the recorder does not write, The herald said; but, The judge said. There are others, then, whom the sheep did not hear, in whom the voice of Christ was not, men going astray, saying false things, babbling empty things, inventing vain things, leading the wretched astray.

10. What is it, then, that I said, This is a greater question? What does it have that is obscure and difficult to understand? Listen, I beseech you. Behold, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself came and preached: certainly it was much more the voice of the shepherd, uttered by the very mouth of the shepherd. For if through the Prophets it was the voice of the shepherd, how much more did the very tongue of the shepherd bring forth the voice of the shepherd? Not all heard. But what are we to think? Were those who heard sheep? Behold, Judas heard, and he was a wolf: he followed, but covered with a sheep's skin he lay in wait for the shepherd. But some of those who crucified Christ did not hear, and sheep

were: for He saw those very ones in the crowd when He said: When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am (John 8:28). How then is this question resolved? Those who are not sheep hear, and sheep do not hear; certain wolves follow the shepherd's voice, and certain sheep speak against Him; finally, sheep kill the shepherd. The question is resolved: for someone answers and says, But when they did not hear, they were not yet sheep, they were wolves then; the voice, once heard, changed them, and made sheep out of wolves: so when they were made sheep, they heard, and found the shepherd, and followed the shepherd; they hoped for the shepherd's promises, because they did His commands.

11. This question has been resolved after a fashion, and perhaps it may satisfy someone. But it still troubles me, and what troubles me I share with you, so that, seeking in some manner with you, I may, as He reveals it, be worthy to find it with you. Hear, then, what troubles me. Through the prophet Ezekiel the Lord rebukes the shepherds, and says among other things concerning the sheep, The straying sheep you have not called back (Ezek. 34:4). He both calls it straying and names it a sheep. If, when it was straying, it was a sheep, whose voice was it hearing so as to stray? For without doubt it would not stray if it heard the shepherd's voice: but it strayed for this reason, that it heard the voice of a stranger; it heard the voice of a thief and a robber. Certainly sheep do not hear the voice of robbers: Those who came, He says, and we understand, Besides Me; that is, Those who came besides Me are thieves and robbers, and the sheep did not hear them. Lord, if the sheep did not hear them, how do sheep stray? If sheep hear none but Thee, and Thou art the truth: whoever hears the truth surely does not stray. Yet those stray, and are called sheep. For if in that very straying they were not called sheep, it would not be said through Ezekiel, The straying sheep you have not called back. How is it that it both strays and is a sheep? Did it hear the voice of a stranger? Certainly the sheep did not hear them. Then, at the present time many are gathered into the sheepfold of Christ, and from heretics become catholics; they are taken away from thieves, they are given back to the shepherd: and sometimes they murmur, they feel weariness towards the one who calls them back, and do not understand the one who was slaughtering them; nevertheless, even when they have come resisting, those who are sheep recognize the shepherd's voice, and rejoice that they have come, and blush that they strayed. When, therefore, in that error they gloried as if in the truth, and certainly did not hear the shepherd's voice, and for that reason followed a stranger, were they sheep or were they not? If they were sheep, how is it that sheep do not hear strangers? If they were not sheep, why are those rebuked to whom it is said, The straying sheep you have not called back? Even among those already made catholic Christians, believers of good hope, evils sometimes happen; they are seduced into error, and after error are called back: when they were seduced into error, and were rebaptized, or after the fellowship of the Lord's sheepfold rolled back again into their former error, were they sheep or were they not? Certainly they were catholics. If they were catholic believers, they were sheep. If they were sheep, how were they able to hear the voice of a stranger, when the Lord says, the sheep did not hear them?

12. You have heard, brothers, the depth of the question. I say, then: The Lord knows who are His (2 Tim. 2:19). He knows the foreknown, He knows the predestined: for of Him it is said,

"But those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be made conformable to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined, them He also called; and those whom He called, them He also justified; and those whom He justified, them He also glorified. If God is for us, who is against us? Add further: He Who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how has He not also given us all things with Him?" But to which "us"? To the foreknown, the predestined, the justified, the glorified: concerning whom there follows, Who shall bring accusation against the elect of God? (Rom. 8:29–35). The Lord therefore knows who are His; these are the sheep. Sometimes they do not know themselves, but the shepherd knows them, according to that predestination, according to that foreknowledge of God, according to the election of the sheep before the foundation of the world: for this too the Apostle says, As He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4). According, then, to that foreknowledge and predestination of God, how many sheep are outside, how many wolves within; and how many sheep within, and how many wolves outside! What is it that I said, how many sheep outside? How many now live in wantonness who will be chaste; how many blaspheme Christ who will believe in Christ; how many get drunk who will be sober; how many seize the goods of others who will give away their own! Yet for now they hear a stranger's voice, they follow strangers. Again, how many within praise who will blaspheme; are chaste who will commit fornication; are sober who will afterwards bury themselves in wine; stand who will fall! They are not sheep. (For we are speaking of the predestined; we are speaking of those whom the Lord knows, who are His.) And yet these, as long as they are of right mind, hear the voice of Christ. Look, these hear, those do not hear: and yet according to predestination these are not sheep, those are sheep.

13. There still remains a question, which for the present seems to me able to be resolved thus. There is a certain voice, there is, I say, a certain voice of the shepherd, in which the sheep do not hear strangers, in which those who are not sheep do not hear Christ. What is that voice! He who perseveres to the end, he shall be saved (Matt. 10:22). This voice one's own does not neglect, the stranger does not hear: for He preaches this to him too, that he should persevere with Him to the end, but by not persevering with Him he does not hear this voice. He came to Christ, he heard this word and that word, this one and that one, all true, all sound: among all of which there is also that voice, He who perseveres to the end, he shall be saved. Whoever hears this is a sheep. But someone or other was hearing it, and grew foolish, grew cold, heard a stranger's voice: if he is predestined, he went astray for a time, he did not perish for ever; he comes back to hear what he neglected, to do what he heard. For if he is of those who are predestined, God both foreknew his error and his future conversion; if he wandered off, he comes back to hear that voice of the shepherd, and to follow Him when He says, He who perseveres to the end, he shall be saved. A good voice, brothers, true, a shepherd's voice; this is the voice of salvation in the tabernacles of the righteous (Ps. 117:15). For it is easy to hear Christ, easy to praise the Gospel, easy to applaud the preacher: to persevere to the end, this belongs to the sheep that hear the voice of the shepherd.

Temptation befalls you: persevere unto the end, because temptation does not persevere unto the end. Unto what end will you persevere? Until you finish the way. For as long as you do not hear Christ, your adversary is on this way, that is, in this mortal life. But what does He say? Come to agreement with your adversary quickly, while you are with him on the way (Matt. 5:25). You have heard, you have believed, you have come to agreement. If you were in opposition, come to agreement. If it has been granted you to come to agreement, do not go on quarrelling any further. For when the way is to end you do not know, but He nevertheless knows. If you are a sheep, and if you persevere unto the end, you will be saved: and for this reason His own do not despise this voice, and strangers do not hear it. As I was able, as He Himself granted, I have either expounded to you or discussed with you a very deep question. If any have understood less, let piety remain, and the truth will be revealed: but let those who have understood not exalt themselves as quicker over the slower, lest by exalting themselves they go off the track, and the slower arrive more easily. But may He lead us all, to Whom we say: Lead me, O Lord, in Thy way, and I will walk in Thy truth (Ps. 85:11).

14. Through this, then, which the Lord has expounded, that He Himself is the door, let us enter into those things which He set forth but did not expound. And as to who the shepherd is, although He did not say it in this reading which was recited today, yet in the one that follows He says it most plainly: I am the good shepherd. And even if He did not say it, whom else besides Him ought we to understand in those words where He says: "He who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens: and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out. And when he has sent out his own sheep, he goes before them: and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice"? For who else calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out from here to eternal life, except He Who knows the names of the predestined? Hence He says to His disciples, Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven (Luke 10:20): for from this He calls them by name. And who else sends them out, except He Who forgives their sins, so that, freed from hard chains, they may be able to follow Him! And who has gone before them whither they are to follow Him, except He Who, rising from the dead, dies now no more, and death shall no more have dominion over Him (Rom. 6:9): and when He was visible here in the flesh He said, "Father, those whom Thou hast given Me, I will that where I am, they also may be with Me" (John 17:24)? Hence comes that which He says: "I am the door: by Me if anyone enters, he shall be saved; and he shall go in, and shall go out; and shall find pasture." In this He evidently shows that not only the shepherd but also the sheep enter by the door.

15. But what is this: he shall go in, and shall go out, and shall find pasture! For to go into the Church through the door, Christ, is very good: but to go out of the Church, as this same John the Evangelist says in his Epistle, They went out from us, but they were not of us (1 John 2:19), is certainly not good. Such a going out, therefore, could not be praised by the good shepherd, so that He should say, and he shall go in, and shall go out, and shall find pasture. There is therefore not only a good going in but also a good going out through the good door, which is Christ. But what is this praiseworthy

and blessed going out! I could indeed say that we go in when we think something inwardly, and go out when we do something outwardly; and since, as the Apostle says, Christ dwells in our hearts through faith (Eph. 3:17), to go in through Christ is to think in accordance with that faith, while to go out through Christ is to act in accordance with that same faith outside as well, that is, before men. Hence also in the Psalm it is read, Man shall go out to his work (Ps. 103:23); and the Lord Himself says, Let your works shine before men (Matt. 5:16). But it pleases me more that the Truth itself, as the good shepherd and therefore the good teacher, has in a manner admonished us how we ought to understand what He said, 'he shall go in, and shall go out, and shall find pastures', when He went on to add, 'The thief comes not except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I have come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly.' For He seems to me to have said, That they may have life in going in, and have it more abundantly in going out. But no one can go out through the door, that is, through Christ, to eternal life, which will be in sight, unless through that same door, that is, through the same Christ, he has entered into His Church, which is His sheepfold, to temporal life, which is in faith. Therefore He says, I have come that they may have life, that is, faith, which works through love (Gal. 5:6); through which faith they enter into the fold that they may live, because the just man lives by faith (Rom. 1:17): and that they may have it more abundantly, those who, persevering to the end, go out through that door, that is, through the faith of Christ, since the true faithful die; and they will have life more abundantly by coming where that shepherd has gone before, where they may never die thereafter. Although, therefore, pastures are not lacking here too in the fold itself, since we can understand what was said, and shall find pastures, of both, that is, both of the going in and of the going out, yet they will find true pastures then, where those who hunger and thirst for justice are filled (Matt. 5:6); such pastures as he found to whom it was said, Today you shall be with Me in paradise (Luke 23:43). But how He Himself is the door and He Himself the shepherd, so that He too may be understood in some manner to go in and go out through Himself, and who the doorkeeper is, would take too long to inquire into today and to explain in discourse as He Himself shall grant.