Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus XLVI-L

He gave by begetting. So He gave Him His own equality, Whom He did not beget unequal. But while the Lord was saying these things, since the light was shining in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it (John 1:5), A division arose again among the Jews because of these words. And many of them were saying: He has a demon, and is mad; why do you listen to Him? This was the densest darkness. Others were saying: These are not the words of one who has a demon; can a demon open the eyes of the blind? Now the eyes of these men had begun to be opened.

Tractate 48. From the place, The Encaenia took place in Jerusalem; as far as, But all things whatsoever John said about this man were true: and many believed in Him. Chapter 10, verses 22-42.

1. What I have already commended to your Love, you ought to remember steadfastly: that the holy John the evangelist does not wish us always to be nourished with milk, but to feed on solid food. But whoever is still less fit to take the solid food of the word of God, let him be nourished with the milk of faith, and let him not hesitate to believe the word which he cannot understand. For faith is the merit, understanding the reward. In the very labour of attention the keen edge of our mind sweats, so that it may lay aside the little filths of the human mist, and be made clear towards the Word of God. Let the labour, then, not be refused, if love is present: for you know that he who loves does not labour. For all labour is heavy to those who do not love. If greed bears such great labours along with the avaricious, does charity not bear them along with us?

2. Attend to the Gospel: Now the Encaenia took place in Jerusalem. The Encaenia was the festival of the dedication of the temple. For in Greek kainon means new; whenever something new has been dedicated, it is called Encaenia. Now usage too has this word: if anyone puts on a new tunic, he is said to encaeniate. For the Jews solemnly celebrated that day on which the temple was dedicated: that very feast day was being kept when the Lord spoke the things that have been read.

3. It was winter. And Jesus was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews surrounded Him, and were saying to Him: How long dost Thou take away our soul? If Thou art the Christ, tell us openly. They did not desire the truth, but were preparing a false accusation. It was winter, and they were cold: for they were slow to approach that divine fire. But to approach is to believe: he who believes, approaches; he who denies, withdraws. The soul is not moved by feet, but by affections. They had grown cold towards the charity of loving, and were burning with the desire of harming. They were far away, and they were there: they did not approach by believing, and they pressed upon Him by persecuting. They sought to hear from the Lord, I am the Christ: and perhaps they had a notion of Christ according to man. The Prophets proclaimed Christ: but the divinity of Christ, both in the Prophets and in the Gospel itself, not even heretics understand; how much less the Jews, as long as the veil is over their heart (2 Cor. 3:15)? Then, in a certain place, the Lord Jesus, knowing that they thought of Christ according to man, not according to

God, according to that which He was as man, not according to that which He remained as God even when the man had been assumed, He said to them: What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is He? They answered according to their own opinion: David's. For so they had read, and this alone they held: because they read of His divinity, but did not understand it. But the Lord, in order to raise them up to seek His divinity, whose weakness they despised, answered them: How then does David in the spirit call Him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at My right hand, until I put Thine enemies under Thy feet? If then David in the spirit calls Him Lord, how is He his son (Matt. 22:42–45)? He did not deny, but questioned. Let no one, when he has heard this, think that the Lord Jesus denied that He was the son of David. If the Lord Christ denied that He was the son of David, He would not have enlightened the blind who called upon Him so. For He was once passing by, and two blind men sitting beside the way cried out: Have mercy on us, son of David. Having heard this cry, He had mercy; He stood still, He healed, He gave light (Matt. 20:30–34); because He acknowledged the name. The apostle Paul also says, Who was made for Him of the seed of David according to the flesh (Rom. 1:3); and to Timothy, Remember that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my Gospel (2 Tim. 2:8). Because the Virgin Mary drew her origin from the seed of David, hence the Lord is of the seed of David.

4. This the Jews sought from Christ as a great thing, so that if He said, I am the Christ, according to what alone they understood concerning the seed of David, they might bring the slander against Him that He was claiming royal power for Himself. What He answered them is more: they wished to slander Him concerning the son of David; He answered that He was the Son of God. And how? Listen: Jesus answered them: I speak to you, and you do not believe; the works that I do in the name of My Father, these bear witness concerning Me: but you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep. Already above (in Tractate 45) you have learned what the sheep are: be sheep. They are sheep by believing, they are sheep by following the shepherd, they are sheep by not despising the Redeemer, they are sheep by entering through the door, they are sheep by going out and finding pasture, they are sheep by enjoying eternal life. How then did He say to these men, You are not of My sheep? Because He saw them predestined to everlasting destruction, not purchased for eternal life at the price of His blood.

5. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me: and I give them eternal life. Behold, here are the pastures. If you recall, He had said above, And he shall go in, and he shall go out, and he shall find pasture. We have gone in by believing, we go out by dying. But just as we have gone in through the door of faith, so let us as faithful go out from the body: for thus do we go out through that same door, so that we may be able to find pasture. Good pasture is called eternal life: there no grass withers, everything is green, everything flourishes. A certain herb is commonly called ever-living: there, only living is found. Eternal life, He says, I will give to them, to My sheep. You seek slanders for this reason, because you think about the present life.

6. And they shall not perish for ever: you are to understand [it] as though He had said to them, You shall perish for ever, because you are not of My sheep. No one shall snatch them from My hand. Listen more attentively: What My Father has given Me is greater than all. What can the wolf do? what can the thief and the robber do? They destroy none but those predestined to ruin. But as for those sheep of whom the Apostle says, The Lord knows who are His (2 Tim. 2:19); and, Whom He foreknew, them He also predestined; and whom He predestined, them He also called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified (Rom. 8:29–30): of these sheep the wolf does not snatch any, nor the thief carry any off, nor the robber kill any. He is secure about their number Who knows what He gave for them. And this is what He says, No one shall snatch them from My hand: and likewise concerning the Father, What My Father has given Me is greater than all. What did the Father give the Son that is greater than all? That He Himself should be His only-begotten Son. What, then, does has given mean? Was there already one to whom He might give, or did He give by begetting? For if there was one to whom He gave that He might be the Son, then at some time He was, and was not the Son: far be it that at some time the Lord Christ should have been, and not have been the Son. Of us this can be said: at some time we were sons of men, we were not sons of God. For us He made sons of God by grace, Him by nature, because He was so born. And you cannot say, He was not before He was born: for He was never not born Who was coeternal with the Father. Let him who understands grasp it; let him who does not grasp it believe, be nourished, and he will grasp it. The Word of God is always with the Father, and always the Word: and because the Word, therefore the Son. Always, then, the Son, and always equal. For not by growing but by being born is He equal, Who is always born of the Father, the Son, God from God, coeternal from the eternal. But the Father is not God from the Son: the Son is God from the Father; therefore the Father by begetting gave the Son to be God, by begetting gave Him to be coeternal with Himself, by begetting gave Him to be equal. This is what is greater than all. How is the Son life, and the Son having life? What He has, this He is: you are one thing, you have another. For example, you have wisdom; are you yourself wisdom itself? In short, because you yourself are not what you have, if you lose what you have, you return to not having it: and sometimes you take it up again, sometimes you lose it. Just as our eye does not have light inseparably in itself; it opens and receives it, it closes and loses it. Not so is God the Son of God, not so is the Word of the Father: not so is the Word, which does not pass away by sounding, but abides by being born. He so has wisdom that He Himself is wisdom and makes men wise; He so has life that He Himself is life and makes men living. This is what is greater than all. John the evangelist himself considered heaven and earth, wishing to speak of the Son of God; he considered them, and passed beyond. He pondered the thousands of the host of Angels above heaven, he pondered and passed beyond the whole of creation in his mind, as the eagle passes beyond the clouds: he passed beyond all great things, he came to that which is greater than all; and he said, In the beginning was the Word (John 1:1). But because He Whose Word it is is not from the Word, while the Word is from Him Whose Word it is; therefore He says,

What the Father has given Me, that is, that I should be His Word, that I should be His only-begotten Son, that I should be the splendour of His light, is greater than all. Therefore, No one snatches, He says, My sheep from My hand. No one can snatch from the hand of My Father.

7. From My hand, and from the hand of My Father: what is this, No one snatches from My hand, and, No one snatches from the hand of My Father? Is there one hand of the Father and of the Son, or is the Son Himself perhaps the hand of His Father? If we understand the hand as power, the power of the Father and of the Son is one, because the divinity is one; but if we understand the hand as it was said through the prophet, And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? (Isa. 53:1), then the Son Himself is the hand of the Father. This was not said as though God had a human form and something like the members of a body, but because through Him all things were made. For men too are accustomed to say that other men, through whom they do what they wish, are their hands. Sometimes also the very work of a man, which is done by the hand, is called the man's hand, as each person is said to recognize his own hand when he recognizes what he has written. Since, therefore, even a man's hand is spoken of in many ways, though he properly has a hand among the members of his body, how much more is it not to be understood in one way only when the hand of God is read of, Who has no bodily form at all? And for this reason in this place we better understand the hand of the Father and of the Son as the power of the Father and of the Son; lest perhaps, if we took it that the Son Himself is here called the hand of the Father, carnal thinking should begin to seek a Son of the Son Himself as well, whom it might likewise believe to be the hand of Christ. Therefore, No one snatches from the hand of My Father; that is, No one snatches from Me.

8. But lest perhaps you still waver, hear what follows: I and the Father are one. Up to this point the Jews were able to bear it; they heard, I and the Father are one, and they did not endure it; and, hard after their manner, they ran to stones. They took up stones to stone Him. The Lord, because He did not suffer what He did not wish to suffer, and suffered nothing except what He willed to suffer, still addresses them as they long to stone Him. "The Jews took up stones to stone Him. Jesus answered them: Many good works I have shown you from My Father; for which of those works do you stone Me? And they answered: For a good work we do not stone Thee, but for blasphemy, and because Thou, though Thou art a man, makest Thyself God." This they answered to what He had said, I and the Father are one. See, the Jews understood what the Arians do not understand. For they were angry precisely because they perceived that I and the Father are one could not be said except where there is equality of the Father and the Son.

9. But see what the Lord answered to the slow of understanding. He saw that they could not bear the splendour of the truth, and He tempered it in words. Is it not written in your Law, that is, the Law given to you, that I said, You are gods? God says through the Prophet in a Psalm to men: I said, You are gods (Ps. 81:6). And the Lord called all those Scriptures the Law in a general sense, although elsewhere He speaks of the Law specifically, distinguishing it from the Prophets, as in, The Law and the Prophets until John (Luke 16:16); and, On these two commandments the whole Law hangs and the Prophets

(Matt. 22:40). But at another time He divided the same Scriptures into three, where He says: "All things had to be fulfilled which are written in the Law, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms concerning Me" (Luke 24:44). But now He has called the Psalms too by the name of the Law, where it is written: "I have said, You are gods. If He called them gods to whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken, do you say of Him Whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God?" If the word of God came to men so that they were called gods, how is the very Word of God, Which is with God, not God? If through the word of God men become gods, if by participating they become gods, is that in which they participate not God? If lights that are lit are gods, is the Light that lights them not God? If those who are warmed, in a certain manner, by the saving fire are made gods, is that by which they are warmed not God? You approach the light and are lit, and you are numbered among the sons of God; if you withdraw from the light, you are darkened, and you are reckoned among the darkness: yet that Light does not approach itself, since it does not withdraw from itself. If then the word of God makes you gods, how is the Word of God not God? The Father therefore sanctified His Son, and sent Him into the world. Perhaps someone may say: If the Father sanctified Him, was He then at some time not holy? He sanctified Him in the same way as He begot Him. For He gave it to Him to be holy by begetting Him, since He begot Him holy. For if whatever is sanctified was not holy before, how do we say to God the Father, "Hallowed be Thy name" (Matt. 6:9)?

10. "If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me: but if I do them, even if you will not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him." The Son does not say "the Father is in Me, and I in Him" in the way that men can say it. For if we think well, we are in God; and if we live well, God is in us: the faithful, participating in His grace, enlightened by Him, are in Him, and He in us. But not so the only-begotten Son: He is in the Father, and the Father in Him, as an equal in Him to Whom He is equal. In short, we can at times say, We are in God, and God is in us: can we say, I and God are one? You are in God, because God contains you; God is in you, because you have been made a temple of God: but because you are in God, and God is in you, can you say, He who sees me sees God, as the Only-begotten said, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father also" (John 14:9); and, "I and the Father are one"? Recognize what is proper to the Lord, and what is the gift to the servant. Proper to the Lord is equality with the Father: the gift to the servant is participation in the Saviour.

11. "They sought therefore to seize Him." Would that they had seized Him, but by believing and understanding, not by raging and killing. For now, my brothers, when I say such things, weak, strong things, small, great things, frail, solid things, both you, as from the same lump from which I too am, and I myself who speak to you, all of us together wish to seize Christ. What is it to seize? You have understood, you have seized. But not so the Jews: you have seized in order to possess, they wished to seize