Augustinus, In Joannis Evangelium tractatus LXVI-LXXXIV

said, If you loved Me, you would surely rejoice, because I go to the Father; because human nature is to be congratulated, in that it was so assumed by the only-begotten Word that it was established immortal in heaven, and thus earth was made exalted, so that incorruptible dust might sit at the right hand of the Father. For it was in this way that He said He would go to the Father. For assuredly He was going to Him Who was with Him. But this was to go to Him and to withdraw from us: to change and make immortal what He took up as mortal from us, and to raise into heaven that through which He was on earth for us. Who would not rejoice at this, who so loves Christ that he congratulates his own nature, already immortal in Christ, and hopes that he himself will be this through Christ?

Tractate 79.

On what He says, And now I have told you before it comes to pass, etc., as far as, Arise, let us go hence. Chapter 14, verses 29-31.

1. Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ had said to His disciples: If you loved Me, you would surely rejoice, because I go to the Father; because the Father is greater than I. That He said this from the form of a servant, not from the form of God in which He is equal to the Father, the faith knows that is fixed in devout minds, not feigned by slanderous and demented ones. Then He added: And now I have told you before it comes to pass, so that when it has come to pass, you may believe. What is this, when a man ought rather to believe before that which is to be believed comes to pass? For this is the praise of faith, if what is believed is not seen. For what great thing is it if what is seen is believed, according to that saying of the same Lord, when He rebuked a disciple, saying: Because you have seen, you have believed; blessed are they who do not see and believe (John 20:29)? And I do not know whether anyone should be said to believe what he sees; for faith itself, in the Epistle which is written to the Hebrews, is thus defined: Now faith is the substance of those who hope, the conviction of things which are not seen (Heb. 11:1). Wherefore, if faith is of things which are believed, and the same faith is of those which are not seen, what does it mean that the Lord says, And now I have told you before it comes to pass, so that when it has come to pass, you may believe? Should it not rather have been said, And now I have told you before it comes to pass, so that you may believe what, when it has come to pass, you may see? For he too to whom it was said, Because you have seen, you have believed, did not believe what he saw; but he saw one thing and believed another: for he saw a man, he believed God. For he beheld and touched living flesh, which he had seen dying; and he believed God hidden in that very flesh. He believed, then, with the mind what he did not see, by means of that which appeared to the senses of the body. But even if things that are seen are said to be believed, as each one says that he has believed his own eyes, yet that is not the faith which is built up in us; rather, from the things which are seen, it is brought about in us that those things are believed which are not seen. Therefore, dearly beloved, as to that about which I am now speaking, that the Lord says, And now I have told you before it comes to pass, so that when it has come to pass, you may believe: by when it has come to pass He surely means that they were going to see Him living after death, and ascending to the Father

and, having seen it, they were going to believe this: that He was the Christ, the Son of the living God, who was able to do this when He had foretold it, and to foretell it before He did it. They were going to believe it, however, not with a new faith but with an increased one; or at any rate with a faith that had failed when He died and was restored when He had risen again. For it was not that they did not believe even before that He was the Son of God; but when what He had foretold beforehand had come to pass in Him, that faith which was small at the time when He was speaking to them, and almost nothing at all by the time He was dying, both came back to life and grew.

2. Then what does He say? "I will not now speak much with you; for the prince of this world is coming": who, if not the devil? "And in Me he has nothing": no sin at all, that is. For in this way He shows that the devil is the prince not of creatures but of sinners, whom He now calls by the name "this world". And whenever the name "world" is used in a bad sense, it signifies only the lovers of this world; of whom it is written elsewhere, "Whoever wishes to be a friend of this age will be made an enemy of God" (Jas. 4:4). Far be it, then, that the devil should be understood to be prince of the world in such a way as though he held the principality of the whole world, that is, of heaven and earth and of all things that are in them: the world of which it was said, when the discourse was about Christ the Word, "And the world was made through Him" (John 1:10). The whole world, therefore, from the highest heavens down to the lowest earth, is subject to the Creator, not to the deserter; to the Redeemer, not to the slayer; to the Liberator, not to the captor; to the Teacher, not to the deceiver. How the devil is to be understood as prince of the world, however, the apostle Paul disclosed more plainly, who, when he had said, "Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood", that is, against men, added and said, "but against the princes and powers and rulers of the world of this darkness" (Eph. 6:12). For by the word that follows he explained what he had meant by "world", when he added "of this darkness": lest anyone should understand by the name "world" the whole creation, of which the deserter angels are in no way rulers. "Of this darkness", he says, that is, of the lovers of this world: from among whom, nevertheless, the elect have been chosen, not through their own merit but through the grace of God, to whom he says, "For you were once darkness, but now light in the Lord" (Eph. 5:8). For all were under the rulers of this darkness, that is, of ungodly men, as darkness under darkness: but thanks be to God, "who has rescued us", as the same apostle says, "from the power of darkness, and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love" (Col. 1:12–13). In Him the prince of this world, that is, of this darkness, had nothing; for neither had God come with sin, nor had the Virgin brought forth His flesh from the stock of sin. And as though it were said to Him, "Why then do You die, if You have no sin to which the penalty of death is due?", He at once added, "But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father has given Me commandment, so I do; arise, let us go hence." For He was reclining as He spoke to those reclining with Him. And He said "Let us go": where, if not to that place from which He was to be handed over to death, He who had no desert of death? But He had the Father's commandment that He should die, as He of whom it had been foretold, "What I did not seize, then I paid back" (Ps. 68:5):

to pay death without owing it, and to redeem us from the death we owed. Adam, however, had seized sin when, deceived by presumption, he stretched out his hand to the tree in order to usurp the incommunicable name of a divinity not granted to him, which nature, not robbery, had conferred on the Son of God.

Tractate 80.

On what He says, I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman; as far as, Now you are clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. (John 15:1–3).

1. This passage of the Gospel, brethren, where the Lord calls Himself the vine and His disciples the branches, He speaks according to this, that He is the head of the Church and we are His members, the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5). For the vine and the branches are of one nature: for which reason, although He was God, of whose nature we are not, He was made man, so that in Him human nature might be the vine, of which we men too might be able to be branches. What then is, I am the true vine? Did He, in adding true, refer this to that vine from which this likeness has been transferred? For He is called a vine in this way, by likeness, not by literal property; just as He is called sheep, lamb, lion, rock, cornerstone, and the other things of this kind, which are rather themselves the true things, from which these likenesses, not literal properties, are drawn. But when He says, I am the true vine, He certainly distinguishes Himself from that vine to which it is said, How are you turned into bitterness, strange vine (Jer. 2:21)? For in what way is that a true vine which was expected to yield grapes, but yielded thorns (Isa. 5:4)?

2. I am, He says, the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman. Every branch in Me not bearing fruit, He will take it away: and every one that bears fruit, He will prune it, that it may bring more fruit. Are the husbandman and the vine one? According to this, then, Christ is the vine, according to which He says, The Father is greater than I (John 14:28): but according to that which He says, I and the Father are one (John 10:30), He too is the husbandman. And not such as those are who, by working from outside, render a service; but such that He gives the increase also from within. For neither is he who plants anything, nor he who waters; but God, who gives the increase. But Christ is certainly God, because the Word was God; whence He and the Father are one: and if the Word was made flesh (John 1:1, 14), which He was not, He remains what He was. Accordingly, when He had said of the Father, as of the husbandman, that He takes away the unfruitful branches but prunes the fruitful ones so that they may bring more fruit, He at once showed Himself also to be the cleanser of the branches, saying, Now you are clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. See, He too is the cleanser of the branches, which is the office of the husbandman, not of the vine: He who has even made the branches His workmen. For although they do not give the increase, they nevertheless contribute some help; but not of their own: For without Me, He says, you can do nothing. Hear them too confessing: What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Ministers through whom you believed, and to each as the Lord gave. I planted, Apollos watered.

And this too, then, as the Lord gave to each one: not, therefore, of their own. But as for what follows, but God gave the increase (1 Cor. 3:5–7): this He does not through them, but through Himself. This surpasses human lowliness, surpasses angelic sublimity, and belongs to none at all but the husbandman Trinity. Now you are clean: clean, that is, and yet to be cleansed. For unless they were clean, they could not have borne fruit; and yet every one that bears fruit the husbandman purges, that it may bring forth more fruit. It bears fruit because it is clean; and that it may bring forth more, it is purged still further. For who is there in this life so clean that he does not need to be cleansed more and more? Where "if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us; but if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, Who forgives us our sins and cleanses us from all iniquity" (1 John 1:8–9): He cleanses, surely, the clean, that is, the fruitful, so that they may be the more fruitful the cleaner they have become.

3. Now you are clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Why does He not say, you are clean because of the Baptism with which you have been washed, but says, because of the word which I have spoken to you, unless because in the water too it is the word that cleanses? Take away the word, and what is water but water? The word comes to the element, and it becomes a Sacrament, itself also a kind of visible word. For He had said this also, certainly, when He washed the disciples' feet: He who has been washed has no need except to wash his feet, but is clean all over (John 13:10). Whence comes this so great power of water, that it touches the body and washes the heart, unless by the word's working it: not because it is spoken, but because it is believed? For in the word itself, too, the passing sound is one thing, the abiding power another. This is the word of faith which we preach, says the Apostle, that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation (Rom. 10:8–10). Hence in the Acts of the Apostles we read, Cleansing their hearts by faith (Acts 15:9); and blessed Peter in his Epistle says, So Baptism also saves you; not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the questioning of a good conscience (1 Pet. 3:21). This is the word of faith which we preach, by which without doubt Baptism too is consecrated, so that it may be able to cleanse. For Christ, Who with us is the vine, with the Father the husbandman, loved the Church and gave Himself up for her. Read the Apostle, and see what he adds: That He might sanctify her, he says, cleansing her by the washing of water in the word (Eph. 5:25–26). The cleansing, therefore, would by no means be attributed to the fluid and unstable element, unless there were added, in the word. This word of faith has such power in the Church of God that through him who believes, offers, blesses and dips, it cleanses even a tiny infant, though not yet able to believe with the heart unto righteousness and to confess with the mouth unto salvation. All this comes about through the word, of which the Lord says, Now you are clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.

Tractate 81.

On what He says, Abide in Me, and I in you; up to this, Whatever you will, you shall ask, and it shall be done for you. Chapter 15, verses 4-7.

1. Jesus said that He is the vine, and His disciples the branches, and the Father the husbandman: on which a discussion was held some time ago, as best we could. But in this reading, while He was still speaking about Himself, Who is the vine, and about His branches, that is, the disciples, He says: Abide in Me, and I in you (John 15:4). They are not in Him in the same way as He is in them. Yet each of the two benefits not Him, but them. For the branches are in the vine in such a way that they do not contribute to the vine, but receive from it that by which they live; whereas the vine is in the branches in such a way that it supplies vital nourishment to them, and does not take it from them. And therefore both to have Christ abiding in them and to abide in Christ benefits the disciples, each of the two, not Christ. For when a branch has been cut off, another can sprout from the living root; but the one that has been cut off cannot live without the root.

2. Then He adds and says: As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me (John 15:4). A great commendation of grace, my brethren: it instructs the hearts of the humble, it stops the mouths of the proud. Here is the one whom they should answer, if they dare, who, being ignorant of the righteousness of God and wishing to establish their own, have not submitted to the righteousness of God (Rom. 10:3). Here is the one whom they should answer who are pleased with themselves and think that God is not necessary to them for doing good works. Do they not resist this truth, men corrupt in mind, reprobate concerning the faith (2 Tim. 3:8), who answer and speak iniquity, saying: From God we have it that we are men, but from ourselves that we are righteous? What are you saying, you who deceive yourselves, not defenders but casters-down of free will, from the height of self-exaltation through the empty spaces of presumption into the depths of submersion? Surely this is your claim, that man makes righteousness of himself: this is the height of your exaltation. But the truth contradicts it and says, The branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine. Go now over the precipices, and, having nowhere to fix yourselves, be tossed about by windy talk. These are the empty spaces of your presumption. But see what follows for you, and, if there is any sense in you, shudder. For whoever thinks that he bears fruit of himself is not in the vine; whoever is not in the vine is not in Christ; whoever is not in Christ is not a Christian. These are the depths of your submersion.

3. Consider again and again what the truth further adds and says: I am, He says, the vine, you the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit: for without Me you can do nothing (John 15:5). Lest anyone should think that the branch could bear at least some small fruit of itself, after He had said, he bears much fruit, He did not say, for without Me you can do little, but, you can do nothing. Whether little, then, or much, it cannot be done without Him without Whom nothing can be done. For even if the branch has borne little, the husbandman purges it that it may bear more: yet unless it abides in the vine and lives from the root, however much fruit, of