Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus LXVI-LXXXIV

a guest is accustomed to remain visibly; He explained what He had said, "He will remain with you," when He added and said, "He will be in you." Therefore He is seen invisibly: nor, if He is not in us, can the knowledge of Him be in us. For in this way our own conscience too is seen by us within us: for we see the face of another, our own we cannot see; but our own conscience we see, another's we do not see. But conscience is never anywhere except in us: whereas the Holy Spirit can be even without us; for He is given so that He may be in us also. But He cannot be seen and known by us as He is to be seen and known, if He is not in us.

Tractate 75. On that which Jesus says, "I will not leave you orphans," up to this: "And I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him." Chapter 14, verses 18-21.

1. After the promise of the Holy Spirit, lest anyone should think that the Lord was going to give Him as if in place of Himself, in such a way that He Himself would not also be with them, He added and said: "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you" (John 14:18). Orphans are wards. For the one is the Greek name of the same thing, the other the Latin: for in the psalm too, where we read, "To the ward Thou wilt be a helper" (Ps. 9:14), the Greek has "to the orphan". Although, then, the Son of God has adopted us as sons to His Father, and has willed that we should have through grace the same Father who is His Father by nature, yet He Himself also in a certain manner shows a fatherly affection towards us, when He says, "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you." Hence it is that He also calls us sons of the bridegroom, where He says: "The hour will come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then the sons of the bridegroom will fast" (Matt. 9:15). And who is the bridegroom, if not the Lord Christ?

2. Then He goes on and says: "Yet a little while, and the world no longer sees Me" (John 14:19). What then? Did the world see Him at that time, since by the name of the world He wishes those to be understood of whom He spoke above, saying of the Holy Spirit, "Whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him, nor know Him" (John 14:17)? The world plainly saw Him with fleshly eyes, visible in the flesh, but it did not see the Word that lay hidden in the flesh: it saw the man, it did not see God; it saw the garment, it did not see Him Who was clothed in it. But since after the resurrection He was unwilling to show to those not His own even His very flesh, which He showed to His own not only to be seen but also to be handled, it is perhaps on this account that we are to understand it to have been said, "Yet a little while, and the world no longer sees Me: but you will see Me; because I live, and you will live."

3. What does "because I live, and you will live" mean? Why did He say of Himself in the present that He lives, but of them in the future that they will live, if not because He promised them too that the life even of the flesh, rising again indeed, such as was going before in Himself, would follow? And because His own resurrection was soon to be, He used a verb of the present tense to signify its swiftness; but since theirs is deferred to the end of the world, He does not say, "you live", but, "you will live". Two resurrections, therefore, namely His own soon to come and

our [resurrection], which is to come at the end of the age, He promised elegantly and briefly with two verbs, of the present time and of the future. Because I, He says, live, you also will live: because He lives, therefore we also shall live. For by a man came death, and by a man the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive (1 Cor. 15:21–22). For no one [comes] to death except through him, no one to life except through Christ. Because we did not live, we are dead: because He Himself lived, we shall live. We are dead to Him when we have lived for ourselves: but because He died for us, He lives both for Himself and for us. For because He lives, we also shall live. For just as we were able to have death through ourselves, we are not likewise able to have life through ourselves.

4. In that day, He says, you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. In what day, if not the one of which He says, and you will live? For then it will be that we are able to see what we believe. For even now He is in us, and we in Him: but this we now believe, then we shall also know it; although even now we know it by believing, yet [it is] what we shall know by contemplating. For as long as we are in the body such as it now is, that is, corruptible, which weighs down the soul, we are away from the Lord: for we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor. 5:6). Then, therefore, [we shall walk] by sight, since we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2). For if Christ were not in us even now, the Apostle would not say: But if Christ is in you, the body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness (Rom. 8:10). And that we too are even then in Him, He shows clearly enough where He says: I am the vine, you are the branches (John 15:5). In that day, therefore, when we shall live that life by which death will be swallowed up, we shall know that He is in the Father, and we in Him, and He in us; because then will be perfected this very thing which even now has already been begun through Him, that He be in us and we in Him.

5. He who has, He says, My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me. He who has them in memory, and keeps them in life; who has them in words, and keeps them in conduct; who has them by hearing, and keeps them by doing; or who has them by doing, and keeps them by persevering; he it is, He says, who loves Me. Love must be shown by deed, lest the calling of the name be fruitless. And he who loves Me, He says, will be loved by My Father; and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him. What does I will love mean? As though He were going to love then, and does not love now? Far from it. For how could the Father love us without the Son, or the Son without the Father? How, when They work inseparably, do They love separably? But He said I will love him with a view to what follows, and will manifest Myself to him. I will love, and will manifest; that is, I will love to this end, that I may manifest. For now He has loved to this end, that we may believe and hold fast the commandment of faith; then He will love to this end, that we may see, and receive that very vision as the reward of faith: because we too now love by believing what we shall see; but then we shall love by seeing what we believe.

Tractate 76. On what follows: Judas, not that Iscariot, says to Him, etc., up to this: The word which you have heard is not mine, but His Who sent me, the Father's. Chap. 14, vv. 22-24.

1. As the disciples ask and Jesus their master answers them, we too learn as though together with them, when we either read or hear the holy Gospel. Since, then, the Lord had said, Yet a little while, and the world no longer sees me, but you will see me, Judas asked Him about this very thing: not that betrayer of His who was surnamed Iscariot, but he whose Epistle is read among the canonical Scriptures: Lord, what has come about, that You are going to manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world? Let us be with them as disciples asking, and let us too hear our common master. For Judas, holy, not unclean, not a persecutor of the Lord but a follower, sought the cause why Jesus was going to manifest Himself not to the world but to His own; why yet a little while and the world would not see Him, but they themselves would see Him.

2. Jesus answered and said to him: If anyone loves me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our dwelling with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words. See, the cause has been set out why He is going to manifest Himself to His own, not to strangers, whom He calls by the name of the world; and this is the very cause why these love and those do not love. It is the very cause of which the sacred Psalm sounds forth, Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from a nation not holy (Ps. 42:1). For those who love are chosen because they love; but those who do not love, if they speak with the tongues of men and of angels, become sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; and if they have prophecy, and know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and have all faith so as to move mountains, they are nothing; and if they distribute all their substance, and hand over their body to be burned, it profits them nothing (1 Cor. 13:1–3). Love distinguishes the saints from the world, love which makes those of one mind dwell in a house (Ps. 67:7). In this house the Father and the Son make their dwelling; They Who give that very love as well, to whom They are to give at the end also Their very manifestation: about which the disciple questioned the master, so that not only those who were then hearing it from His mouth, but we too through His Gospel might be able to know this. For he had asked about Christ's manifestation, and he heard about love and dwelling. There is therefore a certain inward manifestation of God, which the ungodly know nothing of at all, to whom there is no manifestation of God the Father and of the Holy Spirit; but of the Son there could be one, though in the flesh; which is neither such as that other is, nor can it always be present to them, whatever kind it may be, but only for a short time; and this for judgement, not for joy; for punishment, not for reward.

3. Now therefore it remains for us to understand, so far as He Himself deigns to open it, how it was said, Yet a little while, and the world no longer sees me, but you will see me. It is true indeed that after a little while also the body

of His own, in which even the impious could see Him, He was going to withdraw from their eyes; since after the resurrection none of them saw Him. But since it was said, with the Angels bearing witness, He will come just as you saw Him going into heaven (Acts 1:11), and we believe nothing other than that He will come in the same body to the judgement of the living and the dead, without doubt the world will then see Him, by which name those estranged from His kingdom are signified. And for this reason it is far better understood that He meant to signify that time when He said, Yet a little while, and the world no longer sees Me: when at the end of the age He will be taken away from the eyes of the damned, so that those may see Him thereafter with whom, as they love Him, the Father and He Himself make an abode. And He said A little while because even that which seems long to men is very brief before the eyes of God: for of this little while this same John the evangelist says, Little children, it is the last hour (1 John 2:18).

4. Moreover, lest anyone think that only the Father and the Son, without the Holy Spirit, make an abode with those who love them, let him recall what was said above of the Holy Spirit: Whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him, nor know Him; but you will know Him, because He will remain with you, and will be in you (John 14:17). See, the Holy Spirit too makes an abode in the saints together with the Father and the Son; within, indeed, as God in His temple. God the Trinity, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, come to us while we come to them: they come by succouring, we come by obeying; they come by enlightening, we come by beholding; they come by filling, we come by receiving: so that our sight of them may be not external but internal, and their abiding in us not transitory but eternal. Thus the Son does not manifest Himself to the world: for by "the world" in this place are meant those of whom He immediately added, He who does not love Me does not keep My words. These are they who never see the Father and the Holy Spirit; but the Son they see for a little while, not that they may be made blessed, but that they may be judged; and Him not in the form of God, in which He is equally invisible with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but in the form of man, in which He willed to be contemptible to the world by suffering, terrible by judging.

5. But as for His adding, And the word which you have heard is not Mine, but His Who sent Me, the Father's: let us not wonder, let us not be afraid. He is not less than the Father, but He is not except from the Father; He is not unequal to Him, but He is not from Himself. For He did not lie in saying, He who does not love Me does not keep My words. See, He said that the words were His; is He then contrary to Himself when He said again, And the word which you have heard is not Mine? And perhaps for the sake of some distinction, where He called them His, He spoke in the plural, that is, words; but where He said that the word, that is, the Word, was not His own but the Father's, He wished Himself to be understood. For in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1). Indeed the Word is not His own but the Father's: just as He is not His own image but the Father's, nor is He His own Son, but the Father's. Rightly therefore does the Equal ascribe to the Author whatever He does, from Whom He has this very thing, that He is without difference equal to Him.